A Woman's Place

by Barbara Delinsky

  We curled in side-by-side armchairs by the bed, pulled at fresh croissants, sipped coffee, and talked—hushed and intimate—as we hadn’t done since we had been pubescent teenagers intrigued with boys. Now, instead of boys we talked about men—Rona of her husbands, me of Dennis. Whether we felt drawn to confessions because of the quasi-religious nature of the occasion, I didn’t know. But, there in the purple-blue light of dawn, with the hospital world barely launching its day, Rona confessed to having a nonexistent sex life with Harold, and I confessed to being evicted by Dennis.

  “Do you miss him?” she asked when I was done with my tale.

  I had asked myself that more than once. By rights, what with the suddenness of the separation, I should miss him, well beyond the mourning period Dean Jenovitz had presumed. When a person was part of your everyday life for fifteen years, the place he had taken up should feel empty, shouldn’t it?

  “Those first few days were so filled with fury that there wasn’t room for missing much besides the kids,” I said. “Now? I miss knowing I’m married. There’s security in being married. I miss having my life settled. There’s security in that, too. I miss the anonymity I used to have walking around town. People have questions now. Sometimes they just look at me and I know they’re wondering. Obviously, I miss the kids. That never stops. Do I miss Dennis? The man himself?” I thought for another minute, just to be sure I wasn’t being rash. But, of all the emotions I had felt in the last few weeks, missing Dennis wasn’t one. Those good parts of my marriage were memories now. Pearls. I would never lose them. But there wouldn’t be any more that included Dennis.

  “No. I don’t miss him. We had grown apart emotionally.” It was so very clear to me now. “We aren’t the same people we were when we got married. We shaped each other in ways that made us less compatible. Ironic, isn’t it? And pathetic that it took such drastic action on Dennis’s part for me to see it. Boy, was I blind. I kept thinking that every marriage had its rocky spots, that no marriage was perfect.”

  “Did Dennis cheat on you?”

  “No.” I thought of Phoebe. “Well, not until the end.” At least, I assumed that. Was I off base there, too?

  “Did you cheat on him?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing with Brody?”

  “Not yet.”

  She didn’t say a thing, just gave me a sly smile.

  Quickly I said, “I don’t know what I’d do without Brody. He’s been just about running the business single-handedly since all this began. It’s a big load off my mind.”

  “Does Dennis know you’re here?”

  “I called him yesterday.” My eyes drifted back to Connie. My voice was low, one step up from a thought. “I felt he needed to know. To be prepared. He said he would fly out with the kid…if necessary.”

  Connie remained comatose through Monday. Exhausted by evening, Rona and I left the hospital, picked up pizza on the way to Rona’s house, scarfed it down in her kitchen, and slept until early morning. Then we returned to the hospital.

  That Tuesday we talked about our childhood, tossing memories back and forth across Connie’s bed. Sometimes we included Connie in the discussion. Other times we talked above her. On occasion we laughed, and laughed hard. Our own emotional survival demanded it.

  Besides, we didn’t think Connie would mind. She would have liked the idea that Rona and I were communicating after being emotionally distant for so long. She had asked me to look after Rona. I rather thought we were going one better, looking after each other, at least for this short time.

  During those hours, I grew complacent. Enclosed in that small hospital room, with the machine beside Connie beeping rhythmically and my sister and I getting along, I felt oddly relaxed. I was with my mother. I was with my sister. For that little while, I had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Work, the children, the custody battle—all seemed distant. I was living through an intermission in the drama of my life, actually enjoying it, in an odd kind of way.

  Tuesday night, the bubble of tranquility burst with the rattle of Connie’s breathing. The doctor diagnosed pneumonia and started an antibiotic drip. Rona and I took to looking at each other across that bed in alarm with each new sound that Connie made.

  The noise ended in abrupt silence just shy of midnight. The doctor came and made the pronouncement, followed by the nurses, who turned off the machines. Rona and I stood holding each other while they did what they needed to do, but when they would have taken Connie from the room we protested.

  “A few more minutes?” I begged. Rona was crying softly by my side.

  They backed out and closed the door, leaving the three of us alone a final time.

  I drew Rona with me toward the bed. On initial view, Connie looked much the same as she had looked before. The differences were subtle.

  “How smooth her skin is,” Rona whispered. “Every last wrinkle is gone.”

  “They left with her tension,” I said. It had been gradual, of course, the slow releasing of life. The waxiness I had noticed earlier had been a movement toward this. “She looks peaceful. I hope she is.”

  “So do I. She wasn’t such a bad mother.” She drew in a shaky breath and said a wry, “Something has to explain why I stayed around so long.”

  “You loved her. And she loved you. Why else would she have stayed around so long?”

  “Guilt? A misguided sense of responsibility?”

  “No. Mothers are simply, always there. They never give up on their kids. They can’t. It isn’t in their constitution.”

  “So now she’s gone,” Rona whispered and started to cry again.

  My own eyes filled. I reached down and touched Connie’s hair, ran my fingers over her forehead, then her cheek. I couldn’t remember having ever done that before. It struck me that there was something else we had missed—and suddenly I wanted to grab her up and breathe the life back into her, and do all those missed things, so that there wouldn’t be this awful regret.

  Of course, I couldn’t.

  We buried Connie Thursday morning in a brief graveside ceremony beneath a cold and somber sky. It did my heart good to see that not only the minister, but more friends than I had known Connie had, were touched by her death.

  I hugged Kikit through the service, passing her to Rona from time to time, while Dennis held Johnny close.

  Brody had flown out, too, though his presence was as much torment as comfort. I loved having him close. But I wanted him to hold me, and I had to show restraint.

  Brody flew home Friday morning, Dennis and the children later that day. I stayed on until Saturday evening to be with Rona.

  Our goal was to spend the day at Mom’s apartment deciding what to do with its contents, and for a time we did try. First memory distracted us, though, then grief. By the time Rona drove me to the airport, the only decision we made was that I would take the cat. I boarded the plane with my overnighter on one shoulder and Valentino in his bag on the other.

  Brody met me in Boston. We had planned it this time. He took my bag and Valentino, threw an arm around me, and guided me to the car. I remember driving over the bridge, but I slept right through a stop at the market for cat food and litter. He woke me when we reached the lighthouse, carried everything inside, and got Valentino set up while I stared out at the sea. Then he poured me a glass of wine and held me close in the huge wicker chair-and-a-half in the dark of my den.

  He had been my haven through the worst of my ordeal with Dennis, and this was similar. He made me feel safe enough to give up control and let go. So I cried. I cried for Mom and for Rona, cried for unfulfilled dreams and regrets that didn’t have to be. By the time I ran out of tears, I was sleepy again, but I wouldn’t let Brody leave. We fell asleep there in the chair, my body burrowing into Brody, his molding me close. I was so overloaded with feelings that the only thing making sense was how much I loved him.

  I don’t know how long I slept, an hour, maybe two. I awoke restless, and moved against him. By the time I
realized that he was awake, aiding and abetting, I was needing him so badly that, short of the lighthouse falling into the sea, nothing was pulling us apart.

  We kissed, and kissed deeply, but no amount of tongue play could ease the hunger. We touched—my hands under Brody’s sweatshirt sifting through the hair on his chest, his hands under my sweater kneading my breasts. We rubbed and arched and shifted, pushing clothing aside to feel flesh, and if there was anything unwise in what we did, I couldn’t think of it. I loved Brody. He filled my empty places, gave me a sense of peace even in the midst of the storm we stirred. I needed to be closer, then closer and closer. If I could have buried myself in him, I would have.

  I don’t think I’ll ever forget what I felt when Brody entered me that very first time. We had joked about my being virginal, but, so help me, I had never known the kind of fullness I did then. It wasn’t only his penis, though that was so engorged inside me that I felt its every quiver and thrust. It was the rest of him—broad chest expanding as the feeling built, tight belly clenching with the bowing of his back, lean hips undulating under my hands. It was his heat and the scent it released. It was his heart and soul filling me until I cried out in wonder.

  I cried out more than once, in near-fear at the end because the sensation was so high and my body so out of control that the goal it reached for was a puzzle. That goal came with explosive force, no puzzle at all, simply the most exquisite and divine pleasure.

  Brody felt it, too. I heard it in the hoarse sounds he made, felt it in the trembling of his arms, savored it in the long, hard pulsing inside that signaled his release. I might have actually come again, the pleasure of his pleasure was so strong and prolonged, but I wasn’t of a mind to make such fine judgments as where the body stopped and the mind began. It was enough to know that the pleasure was there and was right.

  We curled against each other and slept. When I awoke, Valentino was sitting inches from my face, staring at me with large obsidian eyes. He might have been named for a lover but not the lover I wanted.

  “Brody?” I called and listened for a response. Frightened, I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest. “Brody?”

  He didn’t answer. But I heard water start to run through the pipes.

  I ran to the second floor bathroom, slipped inside, and leaned back against the door. His body was fogged by steam on the glass of the shower stall, but I could see his arms stretched to the wall and his head hanging low beneath the spray.

  My own head was suddenly clear. I removed the few of my clothes that remained, slipped into the stall, and leaned back against that door, too.

  Brody looked at me over his shoulder. The small shift in his body was enough to redirect the spray. I yelped.

  “It’s freezing cold!”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Warm it up, Brody!”

  “Not a good idea.”

  Taking shelter in his body, I wrapped my arms around him from behind, locked my fists over his chest, and said a fast, “I know how your mind works, Brody Parth. It’s saying you took advantage of me at a time when I was weak, and if not that, it’s saying you’ve single-handedly blown my chances of getting the kids back, but it isn’t so. I don’t regret what we did for a minute. Not for one minute!” I emphasized the last with squeezes to his rib cage and waited for his response.

  It was a sputtering laugh and the shake of his head.

  “What?” I challenged, shivering against him.

  He unfurled my fists and pushed my hands down his body until they collided with an impressive erection. I barely had time to possess it when he turned, barely had time to take a breath—or realize that the water had warmed—when he took my mouth with a hunger that would have given me plenty to think about had I been able to think. But it was like before. Thought left. Fear left. There was only a need to be part of him, and he me.

  Foreplay was unnecessary. I was ready for him when he hiked me against the shower wall and drove into me. My arms were around his neck, his were under my bottom. I linked my heels at the small of his back and went with his thrusts, wanting to feel him, taste him. The pleasure rose and rose. It crested with a shimmer and a series of gasps, then, incredibly, rose again. I reached my second climax at the same time that Brody reached his first. I loved that his lasted longer. Not for anything would I have missed that pulsing sensation, or the satisfied sounds he made as awareness slowly returned.

  He kept me against the tile for a while, half-holding me, half-sagging against me. From time to time he pushed his hips forward and made sounds that said he was savoring a sweet little afterspasm. Finally, shifting me higher, he turned so that we shared the direct force of the spray, and still he held me. He didn’t speak. Our eyes said all that was needed—that was wonderful, even better than my dreams, I’ve wanted you for years, I love you.

  Eventually, he lowered me, soaped me, rinsed me. Odd, but I felt shy. After all those years of being close in every respect but this, it was the first time he had seen me naked in the light, and he looked his fill, touched his fill of those parts previously hidden. Not that I kept my own eyes shut. Brody was beautifully endowed. I couldn’t seem to look away—which embarrassed me even more. I blushed when he caught me at it.

  “I can’t help it,” I muttered, annoyed with myself for being so naive.

  Grinning, he resumed his ministrations.

  I put on a long robe, Brody his jeans. He made us cappuccino with the machine he had given me as a house-warming gift—no pffffft-shhhhhhhh sounds and instant powder for us, only the real thing would do. We drank it sitting on stools at the breakfast bar, smiling inanely at one another between sips. He took my hand to his mouth, kissed it, pressed my palm to his chest.

  “I have no regrets,” he said. “Not a one.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ve wanted you for a long time. A loonnng time.”

  “You never let on.”

  “How could I? You were married to my best friend.”

  I moved my hand on his chest, smoothing the hair there. “Did you ever think the marriage would fall apart?”

  “No.”

  “Did you think it should have?”

  “Hard to separate what I thought should be from what I wanted to be. There were things that bothered me. I didn’t think Dennis was doing his share. I didn’t think he was giving you emotional support, or financial support. I didn’t know what to think about the sex.”

  I ran my hand down the center of his chest and hooked my fingertips into his jeans. “It was okay. Nothing like—” I hitched my chin toward the den with its just-christened chair-and-a-half, glanced up in the direction of the shower, shrugged, winced, grinned. “Dennis thought I was pretty lousy.”

  “I think you’re pretty incredible.”

  “You weren’t disappointed, not even the tiniest bit, after all that waiting?”

  “Did I feel disappointed to you, up there in the shower?”

  No. He hadn’t felt disappointed to me. He had felt hard and huge, and, afterward, satisfied. Still, I had had to ask. Too clearly I recalled what Dennis had said that day at the house. I hadn’t satisfied him, that was for sure. “Did Dennis cheat on me? Before Phoebe?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You never suspected anything, not even once?”

  “No. Did you?”

  “No. But the wife is the last to know. And there was that thing with Adrienne.”

  “He wasn’t married then.”

  “She was. And he knew she was. That bothered me for a long time. I finally put it aside because it wasn’t something I could live with. This thing with Phoebe brings it all back.”

  “From what I hear about Phoebe, it won’t last. She flits from client to client. I’m amazed there haven’t been any complaints filed with the Bar Association. There would have been, if it had been the other way around, but a man isn’t about to complain that he was seduced and then jilted. It’d kill his pride. You watch. Dennis will say he dumped her.”
>
  I was thinking about what he’d said. “Maybe I can file a complaint against her with the Bar Association.” When Brody shook his head, I asked, “Why not? If she stacked the case against me—”

  “She isn’t his lawyer of record. Heuber is, and he’s a powerhouse himself. We’d be hard-pressed to prove she’s calling the shots. And there’s nothing unethical in Dennis screwing his lawyer’s partner.”

  “Maybe not unethical, but certainly immoral.” I was starting to feel differently about certain things. “I’m going to win this case,” I said with conviction, and tugged at Brody’s jeans for emphasis. “I’ll do whatever it takes, Brody. I’m not going to find myself five or ten years from now wishing that I’d done more. My mother died thinking of all she didn’t do. I don’t want to be like that.”

  I was silent then, thinking of Connie.

  Brody gave me that time, a silent meditation. Then he put the pad of his thumb to my mouth. “Is that what our making love was about?”

  I slipped from my stool to his lap, took his face in my hands, and said in a whisper-soft voice, “Our making love was the most positive thing to happen to me in days. It was the most honest. The most real. I’ve been sitting around feeling helpless for nearly a month now, but, God, I’m tired of it. I need to be proactive, not reactive.” I tipped his glasses up with my thumbs, pressed kisses on his eyes and the bridge of his nose, and let the glasses return. “What time is it?”

  He glanced at the clock behind me. “Two.”

  “Sleep with me?”

  His mouth twitched. “Didn’t I just?”

  “No. Sleep with me. In my bed. Until morning. I need to roll over and feel you there. I need to wake up and see you there. It’s been one hell of a week.”

  I could see he was pleased. Still, he said, “What if there’s someone out there on a boat with an infrared telephoto lens?”

  “I’m a separated woman,” I said, for the first time feeling the full freedom of that. “I can do what I want.”

  That thought held when Dennis rang my bell the next morning at the ungodly hour of eight. I might have lied when he mentioned Brody’s car outside. I might have said Brody had come over for an early breakfast, but there were two problems with that. One, with my hair disheveled, my eyes flecked with sleep, and no nightgown visible at the neck of my robe, I had clearly just rolled out of bed, and two, I was done with being made out to be the guilty party.