Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  So she called to him now, “Yes, dear, that would be very nice, making love.” She removed from her pocketbook the note card on which she always wrote down the time she had taken her last bite of any meal, checked her watch, and did the acid reflux calculation: “Give me forty-five minutes, please.” She hung up her coat, leaned against the wall for a moment to steady herself from the alcohol, while she watched him hotfoot it out of his office to the bathroom medicine chest, where he took his pills. He joined her in the foyer, gave her a little hug. Then he returned to his computer to keep working until the medicine would take effect.

  “No frills today, huh?” she called after him, disappointed that he’d gone back to work. They might have talked about Billy’s predicament, or this or that.

  “The server’s down in New Jersey and I’ve got a hundred e-mail complaints.” His eyes were fixed on the screen.

  She walked down the long hallway to their black-and-white-painted bedroom and undressed there, put on a loose cotton robe. Placing some pillows between her back and the wall, she sat down in the lotus position on the kilim and did some breathing exercises, then tried to meditate. Her son’s wretchedness kept intruding itself; she had images of slapping Lyria around until her face was the same color as her long, flaming hair, Lyria who didn’t work or cook or clean, who took voice lessons but never sang when anyone was around to hear. A silent, sullen diva. She would pout or suddenly go into a tirade at Billy, no matter who was around to hear. Their apartment, littered with musical scores and smelling of cat piss – she owned half a dozen Persian cats, which she didn’t take care of, so the place was covered with hair – was uninhabitable. Marianne and her first husband, and now just Marianne, had paid for years of therapy for Lyria, without so much as a thank-you. Or any sign of improvement. Yet Billy loved this woman. Although Marianne repeated and repeated her mantra, she could not block out her daughter-in-law’s high, thin voice. Finally Marianne gave up. She showered, put on a sleek sky-blue nightgown, and swirled a minty mouthwash around in her mouth to get rid of the taste of vodka.

  She and Stu used to watch porn sometimes to warm up for sex, but not after she’d read Gloria Steinem’s essay about how Linda Lovelace was beaten and literally enslaved by her husband and keeper, Chuck Traynor; after Lovelace managed to escape, the same man married Marilyn Chambers and treated her the same way. With that knowledge, watching Deep Throat or Behind the Green Door was worse than crossing a picket line. So she resorted to her own manifold fantasies. She had asked him did he fantasize while making love and he said no, he thought about her. He didn’t ask about her. Was this an unliberated aspect of their marriage, that they didn’t tell each other their fantasies? He claimed he didn’t have masturbatory fantasies. What he had was an “athletic sex” video on his computer: he did everything at his computer.

  Now she got into bed under the bright-white duvet and readied the box of tissues and the tube of K-Y Jelly.

  He came in naked and she remembered again why she did not like to make love in the daytime. She joked sometimes that no one over forty should be allowed to make love in the daytime. There he was, every wrinkle exposed, as if he were in a Lucian Freud painting. He had loose flesh on his chest, small sagging breasts beneath his nipples, and little pink outgrowths here and there. His pubic hair was colorless and sparse, and he happened to have the smallest penis she had ever seen, although he was a large bear of a man. His penis looked like a small round neck with an eyeless face barely peeking out above his pouchlike scrotum. When she got angry at him, she felt like telling him so, yelling it out, but she figured if she did that, he’d never get another erection; and erect, he was big enough to do the job so long as they didn’t use Astroglide or any of those thin liquid lubricants. She couldn’t feel him then. But the thick K-Y Jelly provided some traction and he did just fine.

  She didn’t like how she looked anymore, either. Her breasts and waist were not bad, maybe better than that, if you ignored the yearning her breasts seemed to have developed for her waist. But tiny, bright-red raised spots had appeared here and there on her torso – she recalled her father had had them in old age. And her ass and thighs were bony, the flesh hanging a little. And while her pubic hair was still blondish brown, you could see the skin beneath. Where was that thick bush of yesteryear?

  He moved in next to her under the duvet. It was winter and, mercifully, the whole episode might take place under cover. Although once she got into it, she got into it, and also she kept her eyes and her critical faculties shut, at least mostly.

  She moved into a spoon position with her back up against his chest and her ass against his penis. She felt him grow hard. He tried to turn her toward him and she resisted for a moment, then yielded. “Talk to me,” she said. “Tell me something intimate.”

  He laughed. “You first.”

  She said, “I’m afraid I’ll die without ever making another movie I’m proud of.” After being a social worker for years, in an act of bravery or foolishness, she had trained as a documentary filmmaker. But she had trouble raising money – her first husband had underwritten her two best films – and since he died, she’d shot mostly commercials.

  Stu said, “I have three faculty members coming up for tenure and I have to read their books. And I’ve put it off and off.”

  “That’s not intimate. That’s something you’d tell anyone. Tell me something you’d tell only me, your wife.”

  “You want me to share some misery with you. I don’t have any. I’m a contented man. I love my work.” He paused. “And I love my wife.”

  She kissed him hard.

  He began rubbing her nipples.

  “Not like that, sweetie. You’re doing it mechanically. Pull on them. Bite them a little. Pay some concentrated attention.”

  He obliged. She lay back and after a moment felt the sensations start high up, way back in her vagina. Higher. What was higher than that? The cervix, the uterus – her first husband, a doctor, had drawn her diagrams she vaguely remembered. The cunt.

  Too soon he said, “Shall I eat you?”

  “Not yet. Don’t stop doing what you’re doing.”

  “I can do both at the same time.”

  “Always multitasking, aren’t you.”

  He grinned and took a pillow from the bed and laid it on the floor, then went down on his knees on the pillow and she moved to the edge of the bed and opened her legs wide. She ran her hands through his hair that was still sticking up. He needed a haircut. He often needed a haircut and a beard trim – he let white stubble grow on his cheeks sometimes for days, and on his neck; he just didn’t notice. Evidently nobody else noticed, either, at least no one commented to him about it, but it offended her aesthetic sensibilities. And in bed it scratched her face, and occasionally the skin on the inside of her thighs. She would sometimes shave him herself, although she wasn’t into cutting his hair. Now he opened the tube of K-Y Jelly and smeared some on her nipples, then pulled at them while he ran his tongue over her clitoris. She found herself thinking about her strawberry-blond-haired granddaughter, Jeanine, age four, who had smeared bright-orange finger paints all over her legs and face, laughing delightedly. She had smeared them on her grandma as well, and they ended up taking a bubble bath together in the master bathroom. Would it be more difficult to see her granddaughter, now that her son was getting divorced? Not if Billy got joint custody or at least decent visiting rights – he might even bring Jeanine around more, for what was a single man to do by himself with a small child? Well, she supposed these were unliberated thoughts as well, for there were many men now who helped bring up the children. Her deceased husband, David, had been pretty good with Billy, even sewing up rips in his clothes, although David had been the busiest of orthopedic surgeons. How witty and playful he was, once painting flowers on her ass in bed; another time he had constructed a man with a fuse box for a chest and a papier-mâché face and put pajamas on him and had the creature waiting under the covers for her when she came in expecting to
make love. Now she thought she couldn’t let herself think about David. She’d get sad and wonder why she had to be with Stu instead of with David, why did David had to have a heart attack at fifty-two and die? Lean and light-boned David, who’d run six marathons, pale skin shiny with suntan lotion, bush of black hair sweat-slicked to his scalp. She could still see him in his signature red shorts and black T-shirt reaching out to take the paper cup of water someone offered him, barely breaking his stride.

  Death had come out of nowhere. David was playing a fathers-and-grown-up-sons ball game with Billy, Billy who had the same fair, eager-to-burn skin, the same perspicacious hazel eyes. David had run after a long ball in that effortless, loose-limbed, almost jaunty style of his, he’d leaped high, reached and got his glove on the ball, held on to it, held on to it, and collapsed. She had been sitting there watching, thought he was fooling around, she’d even stood up and applauded. Marianne knew if she pursued this line of thought she’d never come, and it wasn’t fair to Stu, who was working away with his tongue. She bent over, blinking back tears, and kissed his head, then rubbed his neck for a while, massaged it. “Do you want to come in me, dear?”

  He bobbed his head once but went on eating her. She put her hands under his armpits, trying to pull him up, and said, “It’s enough, dear. I don’t want you hurting yourself.” He had arthritis in his neck, and once, while eating her, had developed back spasm and was laid up for a month – she’d waited on him hand and foot, sucked him off, and still felt guilty.

  He got into bed beside her now and ran his tongue over her hand.

  “Got a hair stuck in your mouth?” she asked him.

  “Yes, but I’ll swallow it.”

  “You don’t have to. Wash your mouth out, honey. I can wait.”

  But he shook his head.

  She took the tube of K-Y Jelly and squeezed some onto her fingers and lathered his penis with it, rubbing him to grow his erection. Slowly he entered her, and she put some jelly on her forefinger and started rubbing her clitoris while he moved in and out. He was over her, supporting himself on his hands, and she looked at his shaggy beard and knobby skin, which hung a little around his kindly face. She had cherished his kindness, remembered their first date at the Moroccan restaurant he’d taken her to, where the tablecloths were rose and chartreuse with little mirrors sewn on them. Did she eat? Through much of the meal she’d wept about her husband, dead a year, worried to this stranger that she was leeching the marrow out of her twenty-seven-year-old son whom she called sometimes two or three times a day to hear his scratchy-edgy voice, so like his father’s. And Billy had his father’s long, thin fingers – she’d made a short video of the movements of her son’s hands. Billy’d quipped while she shot it that he didn’t think the film would have wide appeal. And she bemoaned not having had more children with her husband. A daughter. And Stu listened and nodded and patted her arm, and passed her a little cellophane pack of tissues he carried with him because his nose was often congested.

  Stu had seemed a little – oh, more than a little – heroic to her. His sheer size in the tiny restaurant. Big blocklike hands. They had their appeal. Still did. And some things he’d done back in the day impressed her, though she’d had to pull them out of him: he’d dreamed up software, armor really, that protected computer networks from attack – saved the traffic lights – imagine New York City without traffic lights! And one time he’d even gone in to rescue the police department from a hacker, although he had mixed feelings about police departments.

  She closed her eyes now and kissed Stu with her tongue and opened her legs wide and, rubbing herself with one hand and caressing his neck with the other, imagined herself a stupid little girl, maybe twelve years old, who came to clean at a house of old men, one of whom explained to her that she’d get much smarter in school if she sucked semen out of them, that semen was the source of intelligence, and the more orifices of hers she could get their semen into, the smarter she’d be. And one man took her clothes off and began rubbing her little clitoris, and another put his old gray penis in her mouth and she sucked and sucked eagerly until she got some semen out of it and then she begged for more and sucked off another old man. Her job was to clean the house and they set her doing it in a servant’s frock with no underpants on, so any old man who wanted could begin massaging her clitoris, and she would beg to suck him off. She didn’t notice any improvement in her grades at school, but felt she had only just started with this sucking business and there were all her other openings and she wondered about her ears.

  Stu continued moving in and out of her. Marianne nibbled at his neck and at his ears. She put more K-Y Jelly on her finger and imagined herself a woman in her twenties, with a shaved head and pussy, lying naked in a doorway while one woman rubbed her clitoris, another pulled at her nipples. There was a party going on inside and any man who was entering the party had to step over her. He was allowed to do anything he wanted to her, so long as he didn’t hurt her. The women kept her in a constant state of excitement. A stranger might enter her casually while chatting with one of the women. Or he might chat with his friend who was accompanying him; the two might together enter Marianne, one in her mouth, one in her ass. One or the other might come on Marianne’s belly and rub his semen all over her breasts.

  Marianne kept rubbing herself, her husband kept thrusting, she felt she was almost there, almost there. She put more jelly on her finger and imagined herself a thirty-year-old woman on a stage making love with a younger man while an audience of Japanese businessmen took photos of her, one or another running up onstage to get a better shot. Occasionally the man who was banging her asked if anyone in the audience wanted to take over. Several rushed onto the stage. Soon there was a line snaking out the door.

  In bed Marianne opened her legs as wide as she could, as if someone were forcing her open, and whispered urgently to Stu, “Stop moving! Stop!” She was starting to come, little waves of contractions passed through her, and if he kept moving, she would miss feeling them. She kept rubbing herself through the contractions, which intensified them, and finally when they stopped, she put her arms around Stu’s back and kissed him deeply. After a moment, she said “Now.” And he began to move gently, quietly, then forcefully in and out. And she tried very hard not to look pleased – she kept a frown on her face. She wanted to say, “Pull out if you feel you’re going to come,” but she was afraid to say anything.

  She kept her eyes closed and he said, “Can I come now?”

  “No!” she nearly hollered. He stopped moving, and they waited. Then he started again. “Tell me when I can come.”

  “Not yet.”

  Then his breathing got heavy, heavier. “I’m going to come,” he said desperately, and then he was breathing heavily into her ear and made a few quick thrusts and fell onto her.

  She had wanted more, and she felt disappointed, a little empty. Still, she kissed his face and he came out of her, put tissues on his penis and between her legs, and she got out of bed and hobbled to the bathroom holding the tissues in place, then dropped them into the toilet and peed. She washed her hands and breasts and washed between her legs and got back into bed. He was lying naked with tissues on his limp penis. She kissed him and spooned up against him. She thought to ask him, “Why couldn’t you have held on just a little bit longer?” But he was already snoring, which was just as well. She’d complained to him a few times about his failure to last longer, but she never said why didn’t he last as long as David had or why didn’t he make even half the money David made. She did ask why couldn’t he go with her to see an occasional avant-garde film, and wear a suit and tie on the rare occasions they went together to her arts club – she was chairperson of the film committee. And he’d yelled at her, “I give talks all over, and I’m treated with respect, like a valued person. Only at home am I sniped at.”

  He had slept on the living room couch that time – it was not the first time – and in the middle of the night, she’d gone in and apologized,
and dragged his offended hulking self back into bed with her. She tried to get him to make love to her, but he wouldn’t. “I’m not in a loving mood.”

  “It’ll put you in a loving mood.”

  But he wouldn’t.

  *

  Cleaning out their storage cages in the basement of the apartment building, she came upon boxes of documentation David had saved for income taxes. Stu said they could all be thrown out, they were more than ten years old, but she couldn’t bear to throw away anything to do with her dead husband without at least looking over each item, including canceled checks (they reminded her of where they’d been and what they’d done). So she laid a tarp over the Oriental rug in the foyer, and Stu helped drag up the dusty boxes, some of which had dried bits of plaster in them; she vacuumed the boxes.

  There were income tax returns that showed her husband had made half a million dollars some years, a million others, and that was when money was worth more. There were airline tickets and stamped documents proving that he had attended surgical conventions, which made their family trips tax-deductible. There were journals in which he’d published papers – he was an expert on repairing the labrum, a membrane in the hip joint, which often tore in athletes. In fact, he had invented the procedure. Other surgeons simply removed the damaged labrum, but sewing it up seemed to make for less arthritis in later life – at least that was the case in animal studies. The data were only now, decades later, starting to come in on humans, and a colleague of his told her everything seemed to bear her husband out. David would have been thrilled.

  There were receipts from different restaurants where they’d eaten in Venice: Locanda Cipriani, Crepizza, il Cenacolo, da Bepi. She remembered the family watching a glassblower in Murano. From one of the thunderous red furnaces, the skinny, pockmarked fellow had pulled out a long pipe with reddish-yellow molten glass at the end of it. He’d blown into the pipe and the blob of glass expanded and elongated, and Billy, age seven, watched fiercely, swaying a little in the hot, noisy room, clasping and unclasping his hands. Marianne asked did he need to go to the bathroom, but the boy shook his head without taking his eyes off the changing glass. David hoisted Billy up onto his shoulders, where he sat rapt as the worker rolled the glass in dark-green powder and thrust it back into the furnace, blew it up again, and tweezed it, astonishingly, into the shape of a man playing the piano – all very small, but you could see the pianist’s fingers and the piano keys. Billy bounced with delight on David’s shoulders and begged to stay for another demonstration. Afterwards they ordered a whole orchestra of the small green-glass figurines for Billy, who was learning to play the trumpet at school. Billy now owned a bookstore, and he had those figurines out on a table in the books-on-music section. It was amazing that the orchestra had survived his childhood, so many years ago, intact. But Billy had been a careful, thoughtful boy. How had he married such a flailing, chaotic woman?