Scary Old Sex

by Arlene Heyman

  Sometimes she thought she’d ended up where she was because of a series of random events, that her career, her life’s work, had come about by accident. In an undergraduate endocrine class she had agreed to write a paper on cystic fibrosis, confusing it with fibrocystic disease, which interested her because her mother had it—a common condition that thickened breast tissue into lumps that occasionally felt like cancer. During Lottie’s childhood her mother had had three (fortunately benign) biopsies to make the distinction.

  Cystic fibrosis damaged the lungs and pancreas of children. Her professor had sent her to watch the autopsy, her first, of an undersized boy who’d died of it, and she never forgot that light-haired seven-year-old lying like a white water lily in a metal pond, the water swirling around him, ready. She remembered the pathologists leaning over his fragile body with its small distended abdomen, the sad bunch of pediatricians, residents, medical students.

  She had learned the electron microscope by another peculiar route. The cell biology professor, an internationally known expert on the new technique, already had a full complement of graduate students and refused to take her on. Then a coup occurred in a small central African country she had never heard of, and one of the professor’s graduate students, an African on a government grant, packed up and left despite the university’s attempts to dissuade him. She still remembered the photo of him in the campus newspaper, smiling and waving, a black bulky figure bundled up against the Wisconsin winter. She’d gone uneasily to see the professor again, but he said he was holding the African’s place until his return. When a week later the man was hanged, she went again. Although it was the middle of the semester, the professor irritably accepted her on condition she finish the African’s project: he was working on rat salivary glands.

  Although she’d read all the Nancy Drew mysteries as a girl, and exchanged friendship rings and worn fluorescent socks and an Elvis Presley button, and prayed to God that Charlie Hart, who lived around the corner, would fall in love with her, she was also right from the beginning an observant, passionately curious child who lay for hours in summer fields watching the doings of lizards and bugs and worms. Staring through binoculars for a glimpse of a sparrow’s eggs hatching, she stayed all day in a tree one time when she was twelve, straining her eyes.

  Someone once asked her what had so caught her attention. She was startled by the question. Who would not be interested in seeing sparrows hatch? As an adult, she had come to recognize that most of the world would not be interested. At cocktail parties people were impressed that she was a scientist, but no one wanted to hear exactly what she did. Their eyes glazed over whenever she began to explain, no matter how simply she put things.

  Lottie drove off the highway onto a two-lane, nearly unlit road that she knew by heart. It was bordered by large shade trees that arched to form a leafy roof in places; Davy, her six-year-old, called it a “tree tunnel.” The air coming in the windows had turned cooler, sweeter; she opened her mouth and breathed it in with her whole body. Although the fields were dark and the huge trees were black shapes faintly outlined in the moonlight, and all she could see was an occasional night-light on the porch of a farmhouse in the distance or lighting up the front room of a gas station, she knew where things were; she could almost take her sights through her pores. It was a soft, familiar darkness.

  Where she lived now at forty was a town very much like the one she’d grown up in—rural, supported by farming, Presbyterian, bright with harsh fresh white paint and yellow forsythia and gaudy tiger lilies, plants that made it through hard winters and burst out, when it was time, in pride and self-reliance—even in a kind of fierceness. In the spring the air was suffused with the odor of apple blossoms, a scent that always saddened her, and with the sweet smell of lilacs. Nowadays she was the lady scientist, the one who had kids from two different marriages, and another kid, a dark one, who showed up for half the summer, and a Jew for a husband (though he played Sundays at the church for free), and two ratty cars and a place that needed a paint job and a mow job bad.

  As she pulled into their gravel driveway the dogs yapped briefly and then quieted, recognizing whatever modern-day dogs recognize: the rhythm of the mistress’s motor? The scent of her buffers and fixatives? She got out of the car and stretched for a moment in the moonlight. The night was dense with tiny intermeshing sounds—insects and frogs, a whippoorwill crying monotonously far away, the dogs moving restlessly behind the house. She did a few slow painful knee bends. Then she took her pocketbook and laundry bag and briefcase and, patting the dogs briefly, went in through the back.

  The night-light was on in the kitchen. A few coloring books lay open on the floor, crayons nearby, marbles scattered here and there, a couple of them glowing brilliantly in the dim light. An Oreo cookie had been stepped on and smashed. No one had cleared the remains of dinner off the kitchen table. She looked at the chart on the refrigerator to see who was in charge of dishes. She was. She didn’t mind the disarray so much as she felt irritated at the food left out. She put the margarine and milk in the refrigerator, noting on two covered casseroles DO NOT TOUCH! signs in her stepdaughter Ruth’s tight block printing—probably these were dishes for the fancy dinner she made her father Saturday nights. Lottie closed the refrigerator door quietly.

  From the bedroom off the kitchen she could hear the girls’ soft breathing. It was hard on her daughter, Lila, to have to share her room every August when Ruth came, but there was nothing for it; Ruth, at fourteen, couldn’t be put in with the boys and she couldn’t be asked to sleep on the living-room couch like an overnight guest. It wasn’t easy for Ruth, either, especially since she was meticulous by nature and disdained Lila’s cluttered ways, so much like Lottie’s. The only neat part of the house was Ruth’s half of the room, as if a magic circle had been drawn around it. She even slept neatly and with a certain style, the sheet smooth up to her neck, her black hair in one long braid, her pink ballet slippers next to each other beside the bed. She was thin and dark and angular, on her way to being tall. Lila at eighteen was taller than either of them: she was built on a grand scale, like a Viking queen—people told her she resembled Liv Ullmann, which delighted her. Across the room she turned in her twisted sheets, mumbling.

  When Lottie got to her and Jake’s bedroom, Jake was asleep in his underwear, one arm around Simon, their two-year-old, the other off the side of the bed. He was snoring softly in the moonlight. She eased the child out from under him, felt Simon’s diaper, and carried him to his crib. Davy was in bed with the new baseball glove Jake had given him. These were her brownish children, a cross between the two of them, everything burnished, those eyes she could almost see the blue genes behind, that berry-bright skin. In the bathroom she brushed her teeth and patted some after-bath splash on herself, then peed quietly into the toilet bowl full of their pee (at night they didn’t flush so as not to disturb anyone) and closed the lid.

  She eased herself into bed beside Jake—he smelled faintly of sweat and Simon’s baby powder—and snuggled her alcohol-cooled breasts against his warm back. She licked two of her fingers and massaged her clitoris with them. She put her other hand under the elastic waistband of his shorts. He was moist and soft. Lightly she stroked the hairy skin of his thighs, the corrugated scrotum, the delicate fine skin of his penis. Slowly she felt him bloom, like a night flower.

  “Lottie.” Half asleep, he turned toward her. “Sweetheart.”

  She kissed his eyelids.

  She helped him take off his undershirt and shorts, and dropped them on the floor next to her side of the bed. Sleepily he kissed her throat and her breasts and her belly. Then he lifted himself over her and came into her slowly. She lay on her back running her hands through his thick hair—Davy’s already had something of the same texture—and looked up through the skylight at the bright stars.

  She woke at eleven in the morning in a sudden flood of rock music, as if the pipes had burst. She ran to the window. Ruth was out in front in her black leotar
d with a massive radio blaring—she brought the city with her—doing her exercises. Lottie was annoyed at being awakened so sharply, and embarrassed at having this exotic-looking child-woman on the front lawn, her legs in the air, sensual music saturating the area as if they were hosting a block party. “Do it in the back!” Lottie yelled, her head out the window.

  After a moment, Lottie thrust her arms out the window as well and waved them around to catch Ruth’s attention. The girl seemed not to see her, although she was facing Lottie’s way. Lottie rolled the newspaper into a truncheon, then unrolled it. She ripped some pages into pieces and let them drop out the window. They wafted here and there in the warm summer morning, a few coming down a couple of feet from Ruth without seeming to attract her notice. Lottie hollered the girl’s name twice and then in a fury took a bottle of hand lotion off the dresser and threw it at the radio. She missed them both.

  Ruth turned the radio down but not off. She looked up at Lottie.

  “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you hear me? Don’t you see me?”

  Ruth shook her head no.

  “Turn that off!” Lottie yelled.

  Ruth turned it down a little more.

  “You didn’t see me? I can’t believe you didn’t see me. I’m right in front of you! I’m dropping newspaper out the window! What did you think it was, snow?”

  The girl began doing pliés.

  “I’m talking to you!”

  “I’m listening to you. What do I have to do, stand at attention?”

  “Show some respect,” Lottie said.

  “Look, what do you want anyway? I’m doing my exercises.”

  Lottie took a deep breath. “Just do them in the back. I want you to keep that radio down and do your exercises in the back.”

  “I’m not going in the back. There’s dog shit all over the back.”

  “Well, use the exercise mat.”

  “I don’t want to. It smells back there. And I like the radio loud. Why can’t I have it on loud? It’s after eleven. What are you going to do, sleep all day?”

  Lottie, her head and arms out the window, remembered reading about a French woman who committed suicide by jumping from the roof of the Notre Dame Cathedral; she hit an American tourist who was standing on the ground and both women died.

  Lottie took a deep breath and after a moment said in a softer voice, “What’s wrong here? What’s wrong? Turn the radio off, Ruth, and come into the house. I want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you!” Ruth yelled. “I’m not going into the house! Anyway, it’s not a house—it’s a shit house!” She turned the music up full blast.

  In a rage Lottie saw the station wagon pull into the driveway. Jake waved to her and to Ruth, then went around to help Simon out of the child seat. The dogs leaped out of the open car and Davy climbed over the backseat wearing his baseball glove and went around with Lila to the trunk. Jake threw her the keys and Lila opened the trunk and began lifting out the bags of groceries. As if he were turning a doorknob, Jake made a hand gesture to Ruth to turn the volume down. She continued doing jumping jacks. Slowly, as in a pantomime or a silent movie, the musical score eighties heavy metal at earsplitting volume, all of them, Jake and Lila with the groceries, Simon and Davy dragging a mesh bag of oranges, walked to the middle of the lawn. Ruth began doing pliés.

  Jake gestured to Ruth. She waved her arms and pointed up at Lottie. Jake smiled up at Lottie, then turned back to Ruth. He opened his arms to her but she turned away from him and stamped her foot. She pointed up at Lottie again and Lottie could see her face was contorted. Jake leaned over and turned the radio off, and all at once, as if the sound had suddenly come back on, or as if Lottie had lost her senses and now in a single instant had regained them fully, Ruth was standing in the middle of the lawn stamping her foot in its pink ballet slipper and screaming in a harsh cracked voice, “I hate her! I hate her! I hope she drops dead!”

  “I only wanted her to turn it down,” Lottie said to Jake. He was sifting flour for waffle batter and Lila was squeezing oranges with the electric juicer. It made a buzzing sound as she pressed the oranges against the reamer with the heel of her hand,

  Lottie said, “It was on so loud I’m surprised nobody complained.”

  He tapped the sifter against the bowl a few times to knock the flour loose. “Just let her be. She’ll come around.”

  “I can’t stand it when she wishes me dead.”

  “She doesn’t mean it.”

  “She means it.”

  “Well, everybody wishes everybody dead now and then.”

  “Oh, Jake, she won’t talk to me. She won’t look at me.”

  “That’s how she is. She sulks. She does the same with me.”

  “Well, I can’t stand it.”

  “Well, she knows you can’t.”

  Lottie took a sponge from the sink and began wiping off the table. “I’ll bet she still holds it against me that you’re not with her mother. And she knows it’s not my fault.”

  “She knows and she doesn’t know.”

  “Maybe I ought to have a talk with her.”

  Lila cut two more oranges in half. “She doesn’t look in the talking mood, if you want my opinion.”

  “I don’t want your opinion.”

  “What am I supposed to be, a statue?”

  Ruth burst in with the pink bottle of hand lotion. “She was throwing things at me,” she said. “Do you think it’s right of her to throw things at me?”

  “I didn’t throw that at you! I threw it at the radio! I couldn’t get your attention! You wouldn’t pay any attention to me!”

  “What do you mean, I wouldn’t? I couldn’t hear you! I couldn’t see you. I had the sun in my eyes!”

  “That’s bullshit!” Lottie yelled. “You have a million reasons for everything, but they’re all hoked up. Why don’t you say there was an eclipse going on so you couldn’t see me?”

  “Are you calling me a liar? Is that what you’re calling me?”

  “Yes!” Lottie cried. “That’s what I’m calling you!”

  “Look, honey, please,” Jake began.

  They both looked at him.

  “My dears, cut it out, both of you. You have to cut it out. Ruth, don’t exercise on the front lawn. Do it in the back or go out in the fields. And cut the volume in half. All the cows in the area will miscarry from that stuff.”

  “What about her? You always take her side.”

  “No, I don’t,” Jake said. “She shouldn’t throw things at you.”

  “I didn’t throw it at her! If I wanted to throw it at her, I would have hit her.”

  “Lottie,” Jake had a pleading look in his eye. “I wish you wouldn’t throw things at her. And if you didn’t throw it at her, then I wish you wouldn’t throw things near her anymore. If you want Ruth’s attention, go down and get it.”

  “Yeah,” Ruth said grinning.

  “Don’t ‘yeah’ her,” Jake said. “Do you hear me?”

  Lila cut four more oranges and pushed them half after half against the reamer. They all listened to the buzz.

  “You’re cutting too many oranges.” Lottie said. “That’s enough now.”

  Lila shrugged but stopped.

  They stood in the quiet kitchen.

  After a moment Lottie put the sponge back in the sink and dried her hands. She held her right hand out to Ruth. Ruth looked at Lottie. Lottie continued to hold out her hand. Ruth looked down at her feet in their ballet slippers. She pointed a foot, then relaxed it. Without looking at Lottie, she walked past her out the back door.

  Lottie showered. Her anger was burnt out and she felt ashamed and sick of it all. She wanted to do exercises in the fields herself. She wanted to light out for the West.

  Why did she let Ruth get her goat? Why must she take it personally?

  She told herself that the girl’s heart had a rent in it and there were many ways to patch a rent. Ruth had patched it with barbed wire: “Why should I? It
’s not my house.” “It’s a shame about the broken blood vessels in your thighs.” “Do you think my breasts will flop at forty?”

  And maybe it was true what Lottie told herself but it didn’t stop her filling up with wild, vindictive thoughts—lashing out, and then sinking slowly into a slough of shame and depression and remorse.

  Once after a weekendful, Lottie woke in the middle of the night with an uneasy feeling in her chest and she asked Jake did he love her and he mumbled in his sleep yes; and she asked him in a small voice did he love her more than anyone else in the world, and he said, yes, there was no one else in the running. Tears ran down her face in the middle of the night as she lay beside her sleeping husband.

  During breakfast Lottie tried to act as if bygones were bygones while Ruth answered her in monosyllables. Afterwards Jake got out his flute and Lila her violin and they began playing Telemann’s First Canonic Sonata in G Major in the living room. Jake played in his dungarees, barefoot and bare chested in the heat, swaying with his silver flute, eyes half closed, sweat dripping. Lila, in flowery halter and shorts, her hair a bright cloud, her fingernails and toenails newly painted a soft rose color, sat concentrating on the score. She moved the bow of the violin lightly, brightly, as if it were a wand. After a while Ruth noiselessly pushed aside some storybooks and a can of talcum powder to clear a six-foot-square space in front of the players. She found a green ribbon that had been on a box of chocolates one of Jake’s pupils had brought him and tied it around her neck. She did a half dozen pliés, then took off in a sweet summery improvisation, as if she were picking flowers and following the flights of bees or birds. As she danced, the pinched disdainful quality left her face and the thin angularity of her body softened. She seemed easier, hardly more than a child dancing to music, given up to it, lost in it and at peace. Davy stood on his chair and waved his arms, conducting as he’d seen the maestro do at Carnegie Hall, where Jake had taken him for his first concert: he was masterly and joyous. Simon, in Lottie’s lap, watched Davy and waved his arms in imitation. Davy shot him a dirty look. Slowly Lottie leaned back in her old chair, got her feet up on the hassock, and let the morning’s travail recede a bit, come back and recede again, if not be carried wholly out to sea.