‘Where did you stay up in Idyllwild?’
I got into bed.
‘I don’t know if you’ll remember it, but there were these cabins we both thought were quite nice one time when we were up there. We were right about them, and I was right about going to Idyllwild, especially this time of year. It was pretty laid-back up there.’
I closed my eyes, expecting that would be it. I had said more than I had wanted, but when I opened my eyes again, I saw he hadn’t moved, not even moved his fingers, the sight of which was beginning to irritate me. Cathedrals, crosses, the Star of David, whatever, religious symbols or icons disturbed me. It was too much like having magic wands. I was happy that my parents weren’t particularly religious, despite how they were raised. They never threatened me with God or hell. Restricting freedom was more effective.
‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’
‘When you met that old college friend for dinner at Gianni’s in Fullerton, who paid?’
‘What?’
‘Who paid for the dinner?’
‘Why?’
‘It’s not on our credit card account – any of them, in fact. I review those accounts weekly,’ he said. ‘Charges are recorded instantly.’
‘She paid. She ate the most,’ I added, ‘and I wasn’t going to argue with her about it.’
‘Did you pay for the cabin up at Idyllwild with a credit card?’ he quickly followed, ‘because I have yet to see any evidence of that. I checked on my smartphone today at your father’s condo. Those things are instantly posted.’
‘My father’s condo,’ I muttered. ‘How quickly property is transferred in your mind.’
He turned a little red. ‘I just meant—’
‘Why did you do that during the funeral? You’re beginning to annoy me, Ronnie. I don’t like feeling you’re watching everything I spend and where I spend it.’
‘I’m only—’
‘Annoying me,’ I said and turned my back to him. ‘Put out the light and sit in the dark if you have to,’ I added. ‘I’m going to sleep.’
I didn’t like how I was feeling. I went from fear to anger, angry at him for bringing on the fear, and all this just before I was going to sleep. He still hadn’t moved. In a fury, I spun around, opened the bedside table drawer, took out a sleeping pill and practically gulped it down with a half-glass of water. I didn’t look at him while I did it, and then turned over again so my back would be to him. Finally, I heard him get up.
When you’re married to someone as long as I’ve been married to Ronnie, you can feel his moods in the air between you, especially his anger. I was tempted to turn on him and get hysterical the way any one of my girlfriends would, because it would be an easy way to take advantage. At this time, with my mother’s funeral food still warm, as Hamlet exaggerated about his father’s, Ronnie chose to interrogate me about spending money. I could make him feel terrible. The thing was that wouldn’t be why I would get hysterical. He might sense there was another reason, which would only bring on more questions, more suspicions – if not now, eventually.
I just kept my body tight, my eyes closed, and said nothing. He turned off the light and slipped into bed. I thought he whispered, ‘Sorry,’ but it might have been wishful thinking. I turned away from him and concentrated on my sleeping pill, urging it to work faster and get me out of here.
Thankfully, the image of Lancaster smiling at me at the cemetery returned and remained under my closed eyelids until I drifted into sleep on the raft of the sleeping pill. When I awoke in the morning, Ronnie was already dressed and gone. I looked at the miniature walnut grandfather clock on my dresser and realized Kelly would be gone by now as well. After I sat up, I suddenly had the sense that I wasn’t alone, however. My radar circle of awareness reached farther than the house. Slowly, I rose and went to the window.
He was out there, standing by his car, his arms folded across his chest, and looking up at me, that smile glittering around his lips. Dressed in those tight, straight-leg black jeans I loved on him and wearing a short-sleeve shirt in turquoise, my favorite color on him, he was radiating with the self-confidence of someone who knew he was where I wanted him to be, needed him to be. I stared down at him, rushing my body to wake up. I couldn’t restrain myself.
The idea of actually doing this had never occurred to me. I had fantasized him in my bed; before, though, it always frightened me even to think about inviting him into my house. It all felt different now. Some other door had been opened. I was drowning in a flood of conflicting emotions. He was right. I needed him, desperately, before I disappeared.
I nearly tripped rushing down the stairs. When I opened the front door, he was standing there. He anticipated my every thought, I realized. I had the sense to look out to see if any of our neighbors were passing by. No one was. The world was on pause just for me, for us. I stepped back and he entered the house. A line was crossed. I closed the door. Neither of us spoke. I just took his hand and started for the stairway.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked as we began to ascend.
‘Very,’ I said.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do.’
‘I like your house. It’s big but has a cozy feel.’
I had heard that said many times. Unlike most of my girlfriends who had homes as big and as expensive as ours, I did my own decorating, even when I was working full-time. It was important to me to keep the house warm, to steer away from what would give it more of a museum feel. This was a house where people truly lived, not visited by its inhabitants on a daily basis.
‘It’s not cozy for me anymore,’ I replied. ‘It’s become more of a dungeon. I see darkness where I never did before. Sometimes, I even imagine chains on the walls.’
He laughed.
‘Thank God for hyperbole,’ he said. ‘How dull our conversations would be without it.’
‘Amen to that. Great minds think alike.’
He paused outside of my bedroom. I still held on to his hand, but our arms extended like a rope fully protracted. I could feel his resistance.
‘Do I have to pull you in? I told you that I was sure.’
‘Are you really fully aware of the danger? You will no longer see your husband beside you in that bed. His warmth won’t feel the same. The way he moves will irritate you. You’ll recoil when he touches you. Even your dreams could be different.’
‘That’s all already true,’ I said.
‘For most marriages, the bed the couple share becomes their life raft. Their sex, the way they comfort each other, their softer conversations, merely the sound of each other breathing keeps them together, safe. You’re casting all that away.’
‘It’s already gone. There’s nothing left to throw overboard to keep us floating.’
His resistance dwindled and disappeared. He followed me to the bed. I pulled back the blanket and he began to undress. I was naked in an instant, but he was moving slowly, still tentative and still anticipating me changing my mind. When he was down to his briefs, he said, ‘There’s no turning back, no escape hatch, no way to be rescued.’
‘Contrary to what you think, that thought helps me move forward.’
He smiled the smile I wanted, slipped off his briefs and gracefully moved beside me and then over me. I felt his warm breath on my closed eyes, and when I opened them, he seemed to be liquefying and dripping his body on to me. Perhaps the most complete act of love was literally two people becoming one, and we were in the process of doing just that.
‘In the name of fairness, I must tell you not to start making comparisons,’ he warned, ‘not unless you vividly recall the way it was with your husband in the beginning and not the way it is now.’
‘It wasn’t any different,’ I insisted. ‘I was just too naive to realize it.’
‘You’re a hard case.’
‘Soften me,’ I challenged.
He began with short, sweet kisses on my face, my hair, my breasts, pausing to look at me often, scanning my face for the sli
ghtest indication of regret. Was he really expecting me to change my mind, even now? I relaxed my legs and opened the pathway to assure him I would not turn back. He settled between them as softly as a balloon floating back to earth. My moan was more like a prayer, a chant, a way of bargaining for ecstasy. I was Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea, making promises to God if He would just let me bring back the big fish, only I wanted an orgasm that would make all previous ones pale in comparison.
Before either of us could continue and successfully create the consummate love experience, the phone rang. I looked at it. It seemed to ring louder each time, like someone screaming more and more desperately.
‘Not answering might bring more attention,’ he suggested. ‘It might even be your father.’
‘I doubt it.’
Nevertheless, after the next ring, I picked up the receiver, but I didn’t say hello quickly enough for him.
‘Clea?’ Ronnie asked, as if he wanted to be sure he had called the right number. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m all right,’ I said, unable to disguise my disappointment.
‘You didn’t say anything when you picked up, so I—’
‘You didn’t give me a chance. Actually, you woke me.’
‘You’re still in bed?’
‘I’m getting up now. Unfortunately.’
‘I was worried about you sleeping so late, but you were sleeping soundly so I didn’t try to wake you.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Check it off your list.’
‘Look, I’m sorry I asked you all those questions last night, but they were on my mind and—’
‘I’ve forgotten all about them,’ I said. His silence told me he didn’t like that response. ‘I’ve got to take a shower,’ I added.
‘What are you going to do today?’
‘Why?’
‘If you’re going out, perhaps we can meet for lunch. I found this new health food restaurant with the best veggie burgers ever, and I thought, knowing how much you like those, that you might want to meet me. I can adjust my time to—’
‘I don’t know. Don’t wait. If I feel like it, I’ll call you ahead of time. This house wasn’t kept as clean as I had hoped while I was gone. I have a lot to do.’
‘We can still talk about the maid returning.’
‘Later,’ I said. ‘I’m still in the fog of sleep. You might remember that I had taken a pill.’
My tone made it clear that I was blaming him.
‘OK. Call me if you want to do something. They have called for rain today, but it’s supposed to clear out by late afternoon. Maybe we could all go out to dinner tonight. Any place you want,’ he added.
His tone of desperation released guilt inside me and up my throat like a surge of acid reflux. It was the one feeling I wanted to avoid right now, mainly because of Lancaster’s prescient warnings.
‘I’m getting up. I’ll see how the day goes,’ I said with just an iota of warmth and hung up.
Lancaster had gotten off the bed while I spoke to Ronnie and was now standing by the window, looking down the way I had stood looking down at him.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think we’ll do better somewhere else,’ he said. He looked around the bedroom. ‘This lacks …’
‘What?’
‘Newness, originality, adventure.’
‘I thought you said it was dangerous to be here.’
‘That’s a different kind of danger, an internal danger.’
‘Are you trying to be my conscience?’
‘I’m everything else. Why not that?’
I threw off the blanket.
‘I’m taking a shower,’ I said. ‘You can join me if you want.’
‘That’s what Ronnie does,’ he said. ‘Do with me what you don’t do with him; go with me where you don’t go with him. Otherwise …’
‘Otherwise?’
‘Otherwise, I’m just a stand-in, an understudy on the same stage. You know where to find me when you want me,’ he added and went for his clothes.
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere else,’ he said. ‘Maybe the motel.’
‘I don’t want anything to become routine. That’s what I’m fleeing now.’
He smiled.
‘Believe me, it won’t be. I’ll give you a call later to see what sort of mood you’re in.’
I watched him continue dressing a moment and then I went into the bathroom to take my shower – or more like sulk under a stream of warm water. Any frustrating of my craving for pleasure, for freedom and for a solution to boredom turned me into a petulant child. Perhaps I was always spoiled; maybe there was never a time when I didn’t get my own way.
Maybe I was full of flaws – Miss Imperfect who had no right to condemn anyone for anything, least of all my husband and daughter, and certainly not my parents. Maybe I had turned to Lancaster because he was someone who didn’t care, someone who wouldn’t mind or fault me for it.
I knew there were many who would blame me for that, of course – rows and rows of hypocritical friends as well as clergy of all faiths – but I had gone beyond caring about the morality of it all.
I suppose that was an additional flaw for me to swallow and digest and absorb into myself as I constructed my new identity.
It was the most exciting thing in my life now – being reborn – but unlike the first time, the first birth, I could be God and reconstruct myself according to my own design.
Who wouldn’t want to be able to do that?
As if he was still here, I could hear Lancaster’s answer.
‘Anyone who didn’t want the burden of the responsibility and the dangers inherent when you begin to worship yourself.’
THIRTEEN
I did start to clean the house. It was my form of penance, at least for the moment. I suppose it was more correct to say I attacked it with a vengeance, repeatedly running the vacuum cleaner over the same spot as if I wanted to suck the life out of it. Suddenly, it was clear to me. The house was indeed my enemy, something I never dreamed I would come to believe, especially when I recalled how excited I was about our buying it and redoing the landscaping as well as the interior decorating.
I recalled the first time we looked at it, wondering if we could really afford it. Ronnie was so proud that we could and, in my mind, overpaid just to prove it to the real estate agent. Kelly was almost five years old and was just as amazed at the size, especially the size of her room. I remember thinking, Maybe we do need more children if we’re going to have a house like this. It’s too big for only the three of us. Eventually, I realized, however, that having all this space between us kept us satisfied, especially Kelly and Ronnie. Perhaps that was a clue about what was to come.
Somehow, now, it had become a heavy weight on my conscience, an anchor I did not want. It kept me from sailing on. It was so demanding with its appliances breaking down, its light bulbs dying and needing replacement, and the dust tormenting me by sneaking in and around daily to coat the furniture, furniture that moaned and cried for polishing. There was the making of beds and washing of clothes, sheets and pillow cases. Of course, there was all the maintenance, the pool man and the gardener, and servicing the air conditioners. With Ronnie at work and me now the at-home housewife, who do you think was left seeing after all this?
Burdens. Everything I once enjoyed had become a burden. The obvious solution from the beginning was to have a maid. All my friends did. But eventually a maid had come to symbolize how distant you became from the life you had chosen. Sometimes, when she was younger, Kelly would even act as if the maid owned the furniture, as well as most everything else. She wasn’t afraid to say things like, ‘Marta won’t like you putting a glass on that table without a coaster.’ Or, ‘Marta gets the clothes softer.’ Or, ‘Don’t tell Marta I spilled that on the floor.’
Marta had been with us even before I began to work for Sebastian Pullman. She was a forty-year-old mother herself, with three children and a husband who seeme
d to be constantly out of work as a plumber, which Ronnie couldn’t understand. He bought into the stereotype of a plumber being one of the richest tradesmen in our world. He was probably right about him being lazy, though. I tried to get him to do some work for us, but he was always otherwise occupied. One thing good about Marta, she never looked for sympathy. She was very independent, and, though at least twenty pounds overweight, had a very pretty face and clearly had been very attractive when she was younger. I had no trouble deciding on hiring her rather than the others who were recommended.
Ronnie’s mother had always had a maid, even before she had him and his younger sister, Tami. More than my mother, from the beginning his mother was on me to hire a maid as soon as possible.
‘Men expect you to carry ninety percent of the load without complaint. They hate looking after the children and think the wife has it easy. Don’t let Ronnie treat you that way. I never let his father,’ she told me.
Maybe it was in the nature of a mother-in-law to try to ally herself with her daughter-in-law, first by emphasizing the need for ‘us women’ to band together for our own self-defense. In those days, she was like my attorney, negotiating with the management. I didn’t complain. I appreciated Ronnie’s mother taking the brunt of any argument, and I was certainly happy to have someone else do the housework.
Nevertheless, it got so I anticipated Marta’s criticism of me as well. She hadn’t reached the point where she would dare say to me something she would say to Kelly, but I had a hair trigger by now, and just an offbeat comment about how someone had been dropping crumbs of cookies constantly behind the sofa pillows in the living room brought on a snappy reply.
‘That’s why we hired you,’ I said. ‘If we didn’t have things to clean, we wouldn’t need you.’
She looked at me with pain in her eyes. I had never said anything like that to her. If anything, I was her major supporter here, going after Kelly for not looking after her things, criticizing Ronnie for being too messy in the kitchen or leaving his office untidy and making more work for Marta. Usually, I would agree with her comments and move on, but not this time. This was also about the time Sebastian was thinking of retiring and therefore it was probably another reason for my not wanting to continue working outside the house. Now, all that had changed. I wasn’t exaggerating when I had told Lancaster the house too often felt like a dungeon.
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