Whenever You Call

by Anna King

  Moment of truth. Another unblinking look into the mirror. Phew. Forty-eight years old, two martinis, midnight, no make-up, and bold lighting. Daunting. I grinned at myself in an effort to vanquish fear and went out to check my e-mail.

  Rabbitfish.

  I keep thinking about music.

  I stared at the computer screen, only vaguely aware of the men’s voices babbling and burbling down the stairs from the living room. I keep thinking about music. What a strange statement. Was he talking about some specific piece of music, or music in general, and, if so, why? What did that have to do with me? I picked up a pen and doodled without paying attention to the results. My mind had catapulted to various possibilities in answering him. Then I looked down and saw that I’d made a whole note.

  Quickly, I opened the top desk drawer and took out the slip of paper where I’d drawn the design left on the napkin by Rabbitfish on Friday night. If I added muscial notation lines, it became a whole note.

  Naturally, I wanted to answer the e-mail, but I wasn’t sure whether that was a good strategic move. He deserved to be kept waiting, the way he always, ultimately, kept me waiting. It was difficult, but I summoned the discipline and turned off the computer. Then I sat at my desk, thinking.

  I wrote the word M U S I C in big letters on the same piece of paper where I’d doodled the whole note. I added a small “e” after M U S, and got “muse.” At that moment, Isaac’s voice called down the stairs.

  “Rose, have you drowned in the toilet?”

  I pushed the paper into the drawer and stood up. “What a charming question,” I yelled back.

  “Come join us!”

  When I returned to the living room, I found the ultimate cozy scene. Roaring fire, only one lamp lit to its lowest wattage, and a very young Joan Baez crooning, “Oh, Stewball was a race horse … ,” from the stereo system. Isaac and Elliot scooched further into the corners of the couch, leaving the middle for me. I curled up, tucking flannel nightgown and robe around my cold feet.

  Isaac said, “What would you like to drink?”

  “Actually, hot tea sounds good.” I unwound my legs, preparing to go upstairs and make it.

  Noah, in the armchair by the fire, leapt to his feet. “Who else wants tea?”

  “A good move.” Isaac sighed.

  Elliot held up his glass and shook it so that the ice clinked. “Wimps.”

  “It’s called middle-age,” Isaac said.

  I tried to smile like the good sport that I was, but inside I could only muster gratitude that the light was dim. It occurred to me that I was thinking about my age a lot, more than when I was being a too-too writer. Something about going out into the real world was making me uncomfortably aware of my real age.

  The word I remembered the way he moved me around in bed, positioning me with great skill and aggression. Yeah, I was still in the mood.muse briefly floated again, and then I deliberately banished it. I glanced at Isaac, trying to gauge whether I was still in the mood. His strong profile jutted out from the rambunctious black curls of his hair.

  Of course, I would never have considered sleeping with a former husband if said former husband weren’t becoming a monk the very next morning. This way, I could take my pleasure and not have to worry about the repercussions. While Noah, Isaac and I sipped our tea, Elliot had yet another drink.

  Isaac said, “Aren’t you going to feel that in the morning?”

  Elliot shrugged. “I never get hung-over.”

  “Cool,” Noah murmured.

  “Yeah, but the downside is that I take forever to get a buzz on.”

  “If you don’t have a buzz on by now … ,” I said.

  He interrupted. “Oh, I do now.”

  We laughed because all you had to do was look at his body slumped into the corner of the couch to know that he was wasted. His long feet, in blue socks, wrapped around each other like lovers.

  I sniffed. “Elliot, are your socks clean?”

  He lifted his feet into the air and stared at them. “Jeeze, I’m not sure.”

  I wanted both Noah and Elliot to go to bed, but it wasn’t as if they were five years old and I could order them into their pajamas. On the other hand, it was worth a shot.

  “Okay, boys, time for bed!” I clapped my hands like I used to when they were small.

  Nobody moved. Except Isaac. He stood up like an obedient child, stretching and yawning. I had this vague suspicion that he knew I planned to seduce him.

  The boys continued to stare into the flames of the crackling fire, ignoring both of us. The room smelled powerfully of wood smoke, with whiffs of dirty socks and male perspiration folded in. It had been a long time since I’d experienced such an overwhelmingly masculine environment.

  I stood up and spoke to Isaac. “Let me show you the setup,”

  He trailed me down the stairs. I kicked at the inflated mattress. “Here you go.”

  “This is so cozy.” He picked up the pile of bedclothes and moved them off the mattress before beginning to put on the mattress pad. I moved around to the other side and, silently, we made up the bed. It did look inviting.

  “Do you need something to sleep in?” I asked while willing him to say No.

  Isaac grinned. “Nope.”

  I grinned back.

  He cocked his head toward the ceiling, above which was the living room. “Think they’ll ever go to bed?”

  “Boys will be boys.”

  Suddenly the floor boards started to squeak and creak and carry on. Big boys walking around.

  “Huh,” Isaac grunted.

  We heard heavy footsteps on the stairs going to the second floor.

  “I think … ,” I said.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  Then he pounced.

  He was so familiar, my old love. I buried my nose into the crook of his neck and gave him a hicky that would’ve made a teenager proud. He yelped and pulled away.

  “Whatzamatter?” I whispered.

  “That hurt.”

  “S’posed to.”

  He kissed me gently on the lips. Our eyes were open and staring into each other. And, it was the strangest thing, but I felt as if I was with a stranger now. What had happened to the familiar sensation of just moments ago? This man wasn’t Isaac. And, no, he wasn’t Rabbitfish, either, in case anyone thought my fantasy life had completely taken me over. I lost track of everything. Soon, we were sprawled across the inflatable mattress, bouncing gently as the air seeped slowly from its nozzle. Nothing about the experience of sex with Isaac was like sex with Isaac, or sex with anyone else, for that matter. Of course, it was a given that sex was always unique between two people. But, despite the myriad ways in which it could differ, it was also always the same.

  Not this time.

  Later, I thought about how Jen had described making love to Tom for the first time and feeling as though she suddenly possessed legs. It’s not that I experienced anything like new appendages, but I did have the sense that this wasn’t normal. Isaac was great in bed, and I’d been with a handful of men who were great in bed. But this. This wasn’t great in bed. This went beyond bed.

  We ended up with the mattress totally deflated into a thin skin spread over the floor, which, though carpeted, still felt plenty hard under my butt.

  “I think this mattress has sprung a leak somewhere,” I whispered. “You’re going to have to sleep in my bed.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I rose up on my elbow and peered at him. “Isaac? Are you all right?”

  He opened a single eye. I’d never seen anyone actually do that before. One eye wide open and the other eye closed. Finally, he spoke, “That was kinda weird.”

  Even though I had to agree with him, I was also hurt. No one liked to be told that their sexual performance was weird. I pulled away slightly, clutching a flannel sheet over my shoulders.

  He continued. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “Maybe it’s the monk thin
g.”

  I sat up and went scrambling for my nightgown.

  “Nice view,” Isaac said.

  I turned and looked at him. “Now that’s Isaac.”

  He blinked.

  We stared at each other, somewhat confounded.

  “I came, anyway,” he said defiantly.

  “Are you sure?” I didn’t want to go into details with him, but I hadn’t felt anything that suggested he’d actually come inside me. He’d made all the appropriate noises and body movements, but something basic had been missing.

  He pulled down the sheet and peered at his penis.

  “I definitely had an orgasm—a really good one.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I crawled over and looked at it, too. There was no fluid. A very dry-looking penis.

  Isaac muttered, “I swear to God, I had an orgasm. It felt different, but it was definitely an orgasm.”

  “Of course,” I said, patting his penis as if it was a good little boy. “Let’s go to my bedroom and get some sleep.”

  “Okay.”

  I set the alarm for five a.m., which was only four hours away. When Isaac climbed into bed next to me, I expected that we’d assume our old marital spooning position, but instead he curled himself up along the edge of the bed, without any physical contact. I lay awake, sad that he wasn’t holding me and, then, glad he wasn’t.

  And that said it all. I had changed. Before this long stint of celibacy, I couldn’t have handled sex with Isaac followed by such a disconnect. At minimum, I would’ve wrapped myself around him, hugging tightly, as if to convince myself that love was there, whether it really was or not. I’d been needy for love. I lay next to Isaac and saw that the motivation for my flirting over so many years had been a desperate need for attention. Perhaps that was why I hadn’t been as flirtatious lately. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t intend to sleep with anyone, but more that I simply no longer needed to. I didn’t want to jettison flirting completely, however. I was somehow certain that I, and any woman, could still flirt without an underlying motivation of need.

  How about desire, after all?

  I turned onto my back and stared up at the mottled light and dark ceiling. Moonlight slanted through the window, where I’d forgotten to close the curtains, and cast shadows across the room. I was profoundly awake and I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep before the five o’clock alarm went off. Usually, I had no trouble sleeping, but when I did, I made it into a big deal. Plus, it was obviously somewhat disconcerting to have Isaac back in my bed. I wasn’t sure whether it had been a big mistake, a small mistake, or a mistake that was just right to have had sex with him.

  And I wasn’t convinced I’d had sex with him, anyway.

  I was becoming more and more, well, for want of a better word, odd about reality, which I could only assume stemmed from my interactions with Mr. Rabbitfish, who also appeared to have a strange relationship with reality. I kept feeling as though the floorboards under my feet were shifting and sliding, or that the shadows on the ceiling above me whispered. I closed my eyes tightly and concentrated on opening my ears so that the whispers would grow loud enough to actually hear what was being said. At first, all I could make out was a roaring cacophony of sound. Then, pop! I felt like I’d gone through the wardrobe door and into my own little Narnia. Quiet, peaceful, still.

  The utter silence was such an intense experience that I popped right back out again. I opened my eyes. Little sparkly white lights, like infinitesimal fireflies, scattered in front of me. I knew then, in a way almost impossible to verify or explain, that nothing was as I had always thought it was.

  Isaac suddenly spoke out loud, shocking the shit out of me.

  “You know, don’t you?” he said.

  I bit my lip to keep from blurting out the usual disclaimer, as in, “What the fuck do you mean?”

  Instead, I nodded my head.

  Apparently, he could see the motion, or he simply understood, because he said, “I always thought you had it in you.”

  “What exactly?”

  “The mystery.”

  I hesitated. Actually, I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, and I also thought he was beginning to sound way too New Age'y for me to stomach. But I was glad to have him to talk to because, yes, nothing was as I had always thought it was.

  “I think we had some kind of divine experience when we made love,” he said.

  I had no idea what he meant. And I hated the word divine. It sounded so fake and stupid. I could hardly bear to hear it in my head, just as a thought, much less the way it sounded spoken out loud in Isaac’s voice, the voice of a future Buddhist monk.

  Divine.

  Yuck.

  I fell back on the ubiquitous, “I don’t know.”

  “Yeah, you do,” Isaac whispered, “but you’re just not ready to admit it.”

  At that moment, I felt like turning the clock ahead so that it would be time for him to go. If my reality shifts had to do with the divine, I wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Isaac, but I have no patience for this kind of mumbo jumbo.”

  He turned over in bed carefully. Now he faced me, but still no part of him touched any part of me. “I can have visitors at the monastery.”

  “That surprises me.” I knew why he was mentioning this. He wanted me to visit him.

  “I think you might find it interesting.”

  “You know, the trouble with zealous converts is that they’re always trying to convert everyone else!” I turned towards him in bed and my right foot kicked him gently in the shin.

  “Buddhists don’t proselytize.” His voice remained calm.

  It was so annoying the way he never got annoyed.

  “Isaac, I really don’t think it would be good for me to come visit you.” I was worried about hurting his feelings. “I need to go forward in my life, not backwards. You know I care about your happiness and stuff, but I just don’t see us being friends, especially with you living in a Vermont monastery.”

  Isaac laughed.

  “Shhh, the boys’ll hear you,” I hissed.

  “They’re the ones who told me I should get laid tonight.”

  I groaned. “I’m their mother.”

  “Not really.” Isaac chuckled again.

  “I am absolutely their mother.”

  “They think of you more as a friend.”

  His hand inched across the bed, under the covers. He touched my arm. “Let’s see what happens this time.”

  I had zero sexual desire. And though I knew I could probably get aroused in a couple of minutes, I also knew I didn’t want to. So, I was faced with the old me again because, in the past, I would’ve gone along with him, despite my own inclinations, simply to please Isaac.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. But I took my other hand and wrapped it around his, where he touched my arm.

  He said, “I’m not going to be able to fall asleep.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Would you mind if I took off now?” He shifted in bed. “I could be there as the dawn came up. Sort of feels right.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.” I tried not to reveal the glee I felt.

  We both threw back the covers.

  “Maybe I’ll take a quick sponge bath before I go.”

  “Sure, go right ahead.”

  While Isaac made splashing noises in my basement bathroom, I rolled up the deflated mattress and stuffed it into a trash bag, then folded and put away all the bedding. I’d turned on a few lights, and now I crept up to the kitchen. I found a thermos, made a cup of coffee, and poured the coffee into the thermos. I’d baked blueberry muffins for the boys’ breakfast, so I bagged two of them. When I tiptoed back downstairs, he was in the living room, stuffing his dop kit into his small duffle.

  I held up the baggy of muffins and the thermos. “Here’s something to eat and hot coffee.”

  He turned around. “God, that’s so nice.”

  My throat constri
cted. I was swept with grief, much more so than at any time when our marriage was in its death throes. The emotion, and the surprise of the emotion, made it even worse. I burst into tears, threw my arms around him, and hugged tight. I felt his body release and then I knew he was crying, too.

  “We’re so silly,” I said.

  He pulled away, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Thank you for your tears.”

  That was as bad as the word divine. “Isaac!”

  He laughed. “Okay, okay.”

  I pounded his chest. “You’re no angel and you’ll never be an angel, so quit trying.”

  “I promise.”

  I walked him out to his car. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and the moon was already lowering in the clear sky. As my eyes adjusted, it seemed more light than dark.

  We hugged again and, without a word between us, he settled behind the driver’s wheel. He slammed the car door and the noise echoed through the silence. I lifted one hand and waved, but his gaze was on the road ahead and he never looked back.

  15

  AL’S WOUND JIG-JAGGED LIKE lightning across his face. When he smiled, it wrinkled and made me wince.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why are you being such a good sport about this? You should be furious with me.” I sipped my vodka martini.

  “Number one, this means you owe me, big-time.”

  I nodded. True enough. Couldn’t argue.

  “Number two, I just got the biggest part of my life because of the scar.” He gulped his beer. “They’re making a Stephen King film about a Harvard scientist who falsifies his research on mad cow disease, only to find out that his nonexistent data is not only true, but an infectious element has been released into Boston’s famous clam chowder and half the city is infected with mad cow.”

  What a peculiar plot, but if anyone could make it work, Stephen King could. Naturally I wondered whether Al had actually gotten the starring role of the scientist, but since that seemed unlikely, I kept my mouth shut. We were in a small neighborhood bar just off Davis Square, a place I’d never been to. It reminded me of Al’s descriptions of the bar in “Tie Me To the Bedpost,” which probably explained why I was agitated. Just like in his story, a woman’s scream could reverberate through the place any minute, and fiction become nonfiction. I shifted my feet across the old wooden floor and felt sticky patches cling to their soles.