The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield

by Anna Fishbeyn

  “She’ll die soon, poor girl,” Natasha said. “You never let her out, did you?”

  “How could I—I’m never here,” I said, feeling unsteady, thwacked by guilt.

  I went to my room and sank my limp body into my bed.

  Two feet away, an unfinished canvas stood in judgment of me, one half stark white, the other gratuitously black. If only I could tell him this, this indicting, haunting memory, he’d understand. He’d understand why I could not go on a second longer, not splintered thus in half, my mind frayed, depleted by its own dichotomy, by this merciless invasion of two selves. This double life, which once thrilled and terrified and opened up my veins to emerald wilderness and raw possibility, had sown a prison over my head. I couldn’t wriggle any parts of me; from both sides, I was now spoken for—so that I had lost the freedom to devote myself to one or the other man. I couldn’t ride it like a wave, like an intrepid surfer, like a free-wheeling hedonist, because I wasn’t one. I had been carefully circumscribed into a moral box, abetted on every side by limitations and fear of an omniscient God. I needed to cleanse my moral palate of this debris and rot, and to do that—to do that—I was certain I had to lose both men. That ought to be the price for my sin, and yet, yet … how there was always a “yet!” If I told Alex the truth, I’d destroy the one chance I had for a happy, unobjectionable family life. And if I told Eddie the truth, I’d destroy the rare chance life handed us for truly selfish pleasure, for the kind of temporary ecstasy women remember long after they’re married and saddled by children, sipping their midday glasses of white wine, reminiscing with their female friends of that thing they did—that thing they did when they were carefree and young and brimming with reckless lust!

  I reached for the phone and dialed.

  “Alex, Sashenka, there’s something I must say—we need to speak in person. I need to come to Chicago,” I said.

  “Wonderful, let’s activate the volcanoes, I’ll prepare the grounds,” Alex cried, and my father purchased an emergency ticket for me to Chicago.

  I pushed the phone away and drifted into a dream. I must have fallen asleep because I was awakened by a loud thump at the door. With half-opened eyes, stumbling through the dungeon’s corridor, stringing together slivers of my dream, I made it to the front door and thoughtlessly unlatched it. I was wearing a white T-shirt that barely covered my buttocks and revealed the lace of my pink underwear.

  “It was as if you knew I was coming!” the man said. It took me several minutes to place his face but the toad resemblance was unmistakable. Eric stood before me, clad in a shiny black suit.

  “What are you doing here?” I pulled the T-shirt as far down as I could but it snapped back into place.

  Within seconds he was in my hall, loosening his mauve tie.

  “It’s not fair, it’s just not fair that he should get everything, fucking everything—”

  “What are you talking about?” I looked around, hoping to see Natasha, but she had left. I was alone.

  “Your Eddie—that fucking star—Grant is going to make him managing director soon—”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “Oh everything, everything has to do with you!” His mouth curved downwards. He advanced toward me with sudden speed.

  “There’s a picture of you in your element—painting—on his desk. Very pretty! I told you to dump him, didn’t I?”

  “Have you lost your mind?” I staggered backward.

  I stumbled into my room but before I could slam the door in his face, he was inside.

  I felt my knees buckle and opened my mouth to speak, but only saliva fell out. I was five foot six and 110 pounds, and he was at least six feet, twice my weight, with muscles protruding from his chest and arms. His physique, if it were to be painted, would turn opaque on a canvas, robbed of human shadows, a one-dimensional object held together by crude black lines.

  He threw me on the futon edging into our feet, his legs already in a straddle. With thick thighs, he squeezed my body and flattened me into the mattress.

  “You owe me! You owe me!” he screamed. “I warned you if you don’t behave yourself, I’ll treat you like a common Russian whore! I offered you a deal!”

  “What deal? I don’t remember any deal.” I replied, as if this were a sane exchange between two civilized people.

  His eyes raced wildly, but he wasn’t actually looking at me. “I gave you many chances but no, you didn’t listen! No more Mr. Nice Guy! Now you owe me big time!”

  I blinked and in a flash I saw it: an anthropomorphic steamroller, its weight, its height, the mass of its robotic muscle, its power grid and dirty stench, its metal inhuman fingers creeping up my legs, its front roller heading to my vagina, ripping out my hair, squashing, pulling, raiding the private parts of me. I couldn’t see through the blur of pain, pain accumulating in my ribs and abdomen, pain in my chest. I was breathing sporadically, in gusts, hiccupping, inhaling, exhaling grim loud sounds—of dread. Vomit rose up my throat and I yearned to burn him with my stomach acid, to disfigure him, bring out the ugliness I saw. But I was helpless, powerless, numbed. Each act was a quickening, a fermenting of the thing to come, a breach of more personal space, I heard a zipper open: his pants dropped. My diaphragm contracted into my back. I can’t breathe, I whispered. One arm was still loose and I pushed him up and off of me, but he sank in deeper into my lungs, until I saw it—his white boxer shorts within inches of my face and I was suffocating in it: the stench of penis and balls—a mixture of cologne, piss, and sweat—clogging my nostrils, closing my throat. At last a pool of vomit spilled out.

  He noticed and laughed uproariously.

  “Get off, you motherfucker! I owe you nothing!” I let out in a hoarse voice.

  His expression froze, his eyes menacing.

  “You know, fucking can be traumatic if you’re not wet enough. Dry and bloody! But hey, you look easy—what—a hot-blooded Russian bitch like you? A little naughty immigrant? I like all of it, all of you little multicultural bitches. And you’re so fucking pretty—how did you get to have such a fuckable face—do you want me to pummel that face in or are you going to talk nicely—with respect?”

  He brought a giant fist to my mouth and chuckling, hovered it there, pretending to strike. When I reeled back in fear, he pulled his erect pink penis out and said: “Now suck it, you ungrateful bitch! Suck it!”

  I lost my tongue; it hung limp inside my mouth like a cold dead animal. He grabbed my hair and pulled it, together with my head and neck, to his penis, my mouth landing painfully on its tip.

  “Suck it! Now!” He screamed, pushing his dick against my closed lips and teeth.

  My skin burned, my heart a wild zigzag in my chest.

  NO, I screamed, rape, I screamed, how did I end up here, I screamed, No, No, No, I screamed, but none of it was out loud. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, he’d get in.

  In an instant, I was transported to my childhood, to Russia, to fleeing the KGB. Survive … escape … think … run, someone’s following you, they’re behind you, run … think, think, dumay, dumay bystreye, pridumay chto-to, I broke languages inside myself. Lenochka gde ty?

  My transformation was sudden and radical. My synapses relaxed, my neck loosened, my eyes opened. I winked at him, at it. The words “Relax, Eric, relax, all in good fun” came out of my mouth. My voice changed an octave, acquired a lewd tonality. A seductive hue washed over my face. My eyes retrieved their habitual sensual blurriness, then landed on his erect penis. With the loose hand, I stroked it, moving it away from my lips.

  “Nice,” I said. “I never would have guessed you’re so well endowed.”

  His entire body pulled back, away from me, and the pain across my chest and breasts dissipated. I breathed again.

  “Really? You like him? I call him Spiderman.”

  “That’s adorable, Spiderman,” I murmured, looking only at his organ. “I think if we’re going to make this fun, we shouldn’t do it here. It’s too m
issionary, too prosaic! I can talk Russian to you if you like.”

  “Ooooooooh, that would be such a turn-on.”

  “I think we should head into the living room. More space. Better lighting. I like to look when I suck.”

  “I knew it, I knew you’d be fun!” He appeared to change into a little boy, eager and excited.

  “Can you put something sexy on?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, “but you go into the living room and wait for me.”

  “No, I want to watch.”

  I pulled a short leather dress out of the closet and stood there.

  “Well, put it on, take off your T-shirt, take off your underwear.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Eric. Don’t you know about the art of seduction? You Americans! Let me teach you somezhing.” I spoke suddenly with a Russian accent. “Close your eyes and turn around. I want zhis to be slow, special.”

  He obeyed. My hands were shaking.

  The dress was tight and difficult to pull over my head but once it stretched over my figure, accentuating every curve, it infused me with an instant jolt of power. I put on leather high heels with spikes, a miraculous find in a shop in East Village, and clicked loudly against the wooden floor.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” I commanded and led him to the couch.

  “When can I open my eyes?” he pleaded.

  “Wait, I said, wait!”

  I tiptoed across the living room to the cage and unlatched the lock. Upon rolls of dried grass and leaves, the iguana was sprawled in all her fat glory, wheezing, shrouded in sleep.

  I stroked her broken nose and her right eye popped open and stared at me, watering, as if in comprehension.

  “Now you can open your eyes,” I said to Eric.

  I stood upright before him clad in leather and artificial confidence, my legs spread in a military stance. My time was limited: his penis had grown fully erect, and he and it stared imploringly at me, like two siblings separated at birth. I imagined the tip of his penis to be the tip of his nose—I painted the image in my head, face superimposed on a penis, penis protruding from a face.

  “Wow,” he said, “you’re so hot, so fucking hot.”

  I swung my hips from side to side and snapped my fingers, like my mother, like Carmen at the bonfire, raising my skirt, dancing, you’re dancing, I told myself, tapping your feet to the rhythm of this stage.

  Suddenly, I heard it: an echo, a shuffling sound trailing the beat of my heels against the floor. The iguana had climbed out of the cage and was now hissing, heaving, moving sluggishly toward me. I wondered if he could see her. She was almost five feet long if you took into account her purple tail.

  But he couldn’t. He only saw me.

  “Enough, enough fucking foreplay!” His voice turned acrid, the muscles in his jaws and neck visibly twitched like denuded wires. “Now drop on your knees and suck my dick, you Russian bitch!”

  “Of course, as you wish.”

  I felt the animal at my back. I made the motion to lean down but instead I jumped away from him, sideways, in a violent jerk, tapping the iguana’s bruised nose with my sharp heel. The animal screeched and turned wild, thrashing her terrifying jagged tail, reaching wide stretches of space. The movements were so quick and bellicose that I barely had time to comprehend: the iguana’s triangular turquoise head drove directly into Eric’s penis. He let out a high-pitched shriek, but I wasn’t sure if it was from pain or shock. The animal had climbed up his leg and froze in position, its claws digging into his pants, as if she and I had planned the entire attack in advance.

  “What the fuck! What is this freak show? Is this your pet or the product of a radioactive experiment?”

  He tried to push the iguana’s face away but she hissed, its bottom jaw unhinging to reveal a set of perfectly aligned, ghoulishly sharp teeth.

  “Get this hideous monster off of me.” His eyes narrowed, fear shone in his gaze. But the iguana slammed her tail against the floor with defiance, and amid flight, the tail’s sharp jagged edge caught on his pant leg and cut the cloth, revealing a sliver of his calf.

  “Oh God, did it cut me, am I bleeding?” he whimpered, attempting to look at himself.

  The animal turned her deformed face toward me, as if awaiting my command. I made two steps toward the iguana and then I bent my head to hers. The tail stopped moving; her breathing grew calm.

  I stroked her head. Tears rose up my throat but I pushed them down, down into the underground of my subconscious, locking them in my secret vault of memories. I stared menacingly at Eric and waited.

  “Please,” he begged, the irises of his eyes watering, “please, Emma, get this thing off of me.”

  “Don’t ever return here,” I said. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shut your mouth. I don’t want to hear you speak. Just nod once that you understand.”

  He nodded.

  “Next time I’ll tell the iguana to bite your dick off.”

  I clicked my heels, turned toward the hallway, and began to walk. Heaving and hissing, the animal followed me into my bedroom. I could hear Eric get up after a minute and then run down the corridor and out the door. A loud slam reverberated through the apartment and pierced the walls of my room. The iguana shuddered. Then she collapsed, sinking her weary, corpulent body into the floor, nestling between my paintings, as if painting herself in. I took my heels off and stroked her bruised face and wept.

  The next day I flew to Chicago, postponing seeing Alex, shortening my calls with Eddie. I’m not feeling well, I told them, I think I have the flu. My voice was hoarse, shaky: they believed me. The repetitive circle of violence, I thought, the way it chains us to its vicious circumference, from childhood to adulthood, the way it sticks like glue to our souls. I walked along neatly manicured lawns unfurling before identical luxurious red and white and yellow brick mansions, and then veered down a hill to a muddy-colored lake, our Lake Michigan in the heart of Winnetka. The wind was soft, soothing, but I felt nothing on my skin, only the nagging dull pain poking periodically at my ribs and climbing up my throat. I didn’t know whether to feel triumph or devastation. I escaped the ultimate violation, the entries from inside, his stampede into my mouth, my vagina, and yet I could not escape the feeling of having been imprisoned nevertheless: the physicality of the assault, the repulsiveness of his face, his corrosive sweaty touch, the putrid stench of him infected all my senses, as if he had been etched into my flesh, the memory of his words hurtling themselves at my head like bullets—quick, hard, repetitive.

  Five days later Alex picked me up at my parents’ house because he couldn’t wait any longer. “I don’t care if you cough on me,” he said, “I have an excellent immunitet!” He was meticulously dressed in causal starched khakis and a light blue shirt that accentuated his vivid brown eyes. His skin glowed in peach hues as though it had been lightly stroked by the sun. I caught myself gaping at him, the instinct of possession overtaking me.

  He gave me a rudimentary peck on half of my mouth and said, “You look exhausted.”

  “Do I? I feel exhausted,” I murmured.

  “It’s about time you came back to Chicago—how long has it been? More than two months? You missed my mom’s Fourth of July party!”

  “I’m sorry. Are you angry about something?” I asked robotically.

  “No, I’m not angry—who said I was angry—but you haven’t done anything for the wedding. Mother tells me plans have virtually come to a halt since you—since you gave some sort of ‘career’ excuse—”

  “I’ve three Incompletes, Alex—I need to finish them if I ever hope to even get a master’s in this field. I can’t move forward until I finish—”

  “Well, you’ve got to pull yourself together—you’ve got to get organized.”

  “You sound just like my dad,” I retorted, turning away from him.

  “I don’t want to squabble,” he said softly, patting my arm. “I’ve missed you and I’m so, so glad—well, that you
’ve finally come around.” He pulled two tickets out of his pocket to Shubert Theater where they were staging a revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

  “I love Fiddler on the Roof,” I said absently, and imagined us cuddling under a polyester blanket to watch it, not in some impersonal red-velvet theater, but on his VCR, with a steaming glass of Earl Grey at our lips, a remote control at our fingertips, and me wailing “Sunrise, Sunset” at my whim. (As an afterthought, it occurred to me that this was the type of fantasy I’d never have about Eddie.)

  We drove to his house in the heart of Buffalo Grove. Small white and yellow houses were pressed against each other like identical portly companions peering from identical miniature squares of grass and dilapidated driveways. He clicked on the remote clipped to the overhead mirror several times before the door jangled upwards. We drove into a dark, cluttered space, where the stench of garbage and diesel fuel assailed my sensitive stomach, and his hand reached for my thigh. “Please, let’s get out of here,” I begged. “You’re not wearing any makeup,” he whispered in my ear as he pulled me into their kitchen and examined my face under a harsh fluorescent light. “Is that a problem?” I asked.