Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed

by Judith Arnold

  “No.” She jerked away, sudsy water splattering from her hands as she dropped the roasting pan into the sink. “Don’t do this, Curt. Please.” The last word emerged on a sob.

  He stepped back and sighed. “Ellie, it’s been so long. A year and a half—”

  “I know exactly how long it’s been since Peter died,” she snapped.

  He closed his eyes, drew in a breath and then opened them again. “It’s been a year and a half since we made love.” She heard the tension in his voice, saw it in the jut of his chin and the curling of his fingers into fists. “I want that back, Ellie. I want to make love to my wife.” He drew in another deep breath and let it out. “I want my life back. Our lives.”

  She was shaking, queasy. She wanted her life back, too. She wanted Peter’s life back. She wanted to be able to have fun. But she couldn’t. The grief was still too thick around her, a dense, cold fog that refused to release her. Grief and remorse and a crazed longing to go back in time, to revive the past, to make everything come out differently.

  That she could get through a day without weeping, that she could put together a nutrition curriculum at work, that she could cook a well-rounded dinner—she considered these tiny successes nothing short of phenomenal. Curt couldn’t ask her for more. Not yet.

  “Damn it, Ellie…” He sighed again. “What is it? Are you punishing me?”

  “I’m not punishing you,” she retorted. “I just can’t…I can’t feel these things. I can’t make myself want this. I can’t…” Another sob threatened, and she swallowed it down. “I’m not ready.”

  “I’m ready,” he said. “What the hell do I have to do to make you ready?”

  He’d been ready the day of the funeral. She remembered that horrible night, hours after they’d buried their youngest child. They’d climbed into bed together and she’d sobbed in his arms, and he’d held her, consoled her. And his comfort had evolved, his caresses changing from soothing to sexual. “My son isn’t even cold in the ground,” she’d moaned. “How can you even think about that?”

  “It would make us feel better,” he’d explained. “Maybe we could just forget, for a few minutes…”

  “I can’t forget,” she’d argued. “I don’t want to forget.”

  He’d backed off that night, and made no more overtures for a while. But then, a few months later, he’d brought home a bottle of an expensive Bordeaux and refilled her glass several times over dinner, and when her mind began to get fuzzy he’d tried to seduce her again. “Not yet,” she’d begged, bursting into tears. “Not yet.”

  He’d comforted her then. He’d hugged her and rocked her gently and murmured, “Okay, it’s okay, Ellie,” while she’d bawled like a baby.

  It wasn’t okay now, and he clearly had no intention of comforting her tonight. “Maybe you should try some more therapy,” he suggested, doing his best to sound reasonable.

  “I went through plenty of therapy,” she reminded him. “The therapist said mourning has no timetable. There’s no set schedule that says I’m supposed to be over it by now, or I’m supposed to be ready for sex after a certain amount of time. She said we all heal at our own pace.” And your pace is pretty damn fast, she thought bitterly. You were all healed by the time we left the cemetery. Peter’s dead, what a pity. Let’s distract ourselves with a little hanky-panky.

  “Ellie…” He wiped a hand over his face, but the gesture didn’t soften his scowl. “How long? Just tell me how freaking long I’m going to have to wait for you to come around.”

  “If I had some disease you could name—cancer or MS or something like that—you wouldn’t be pressuring me for sex,” she railed. “I’m sick, Curt. I’m coping the best I can, I’m dragging myself through each day, but my son is dead and I can’t just make that horrible truth disappear. You can, and good for you. I can’t.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then scooped his keys from the counter and stormed out of the kitchen, through the mudroom to the garage. She heard the muted roar of his sporty new BMW as he revved the engine. The sound retreated as he backed out of the garage, down the driveway and away.

  She told herself she didn’t care where he was going. At that moment, she wasn’t even sure she loved him. Love was something alien to her. It meant joy, didn’t it? It meant strength. It meant faith. It meant confidence. She didn’t possess any of those things right now. Joy, strength, faith and confidence had all abandoned her one sunny Saturday morning a year and a half ago.

  Curt didn’t get it. He didn’t feel as deeply, didn’t mourn as deeply, didn’t suffer Peter’s death the way Ellie did. A bad thing had happened, but now he was over it. Sex felt good, and why shouldn’t he do something that felt good? Why couldn’t she be a good sport and spread her legs for him?

  He had no idea what she was dealing with. No idea how sorrow could wrap around a person and smother her, how it could steal hope. He had no idea how much she hated the fact that he was over it, no longer crippled by the pain. He had no idea how much she resented him for having recovered—and herself for being unable to recover.

  THE Z4 FELT LIKE A ROCKET beneath him, so smooth he might as well have been soaring through the air rather than racing down Route 2. It still had that new-car smell—a sweet, crisp scent that mingled with the aroma of leather from the seats. The dashboard was sleek, the sky beyond the tinted windshield moonless but sprayed with stars.

  When he’d told Ellie he wanted the BMW for his fiftieth birthday, she hadn’t objected. Of course she hadn’t. The only thing she objected to was sex.

  He cursed, banged his fist against the steering wheel and then let up on the gas a little. He was in no hurry to reach a destination—or to return home, for that matter. He just wanted to get his rocks off. Driving this baby was as close as he’d come to that.

  Honest to God, he was going crazy. A year and a half, damn it. He was a physical guy. Ellie knew that. When Peter was still alive, she’d been a physical woman. She’d loved sex. Wild sex, tame sex, warm sex, hot sex. All he had to do was touch her and she was ready to rock and roll. Hell, half the time she was the one who initiated things.

  But now…nothing.

  As he’d told Ellie, he wanted his life back. It hadn’t been easy for him to return to work, to force himself to care about his clients, to accumulate his billable hours and regain his awareness of his colleagues. But he’d done it. Like plodding up the world’s highest mountain barefoot, he’d progressed one painful step at a time. He’d made it to the summit. The air was cleaner here, the sun brighter.

  He wanted Ellie on that summit with him. But she refused to hike the path. She sat at the bottom of the mountain, shivering in its shadow, afraid to let even a hint of happiness into her soul.

  Maybe they should try marriage counseling, he thought. But why the hell should he have to go through counseling? He was fine. Ellie was the one who was screwed up.

  He loved her. He ached for her. But he couldn’t save her. She had to save herself. She had to take that first step on the trail to the top.

  And meanwhile, all he could do was stand in the shower and jerk himself off like a horny teenager. Or drive and drive, fly through the night in this raging sports coupe and let the engine do his howling for him.

  By the time he got home, Ellie was in bed. The bedside lamps were off, and the only light in the room was what spilled in from the hallway. He didn’t know if she was asleep, and he told himself he didn’t care.

  He wouldn’t sleep at all. Cruising sixty miles up and down Route 2 hadn’t unwound him. He was tuned as tight as a guitar string, and if someone plucked it the feedback would be deafening.

  He crawled into bed next to her and listened to her breathe for a while. It didn’t sound like the deep, steady respiration of sleep. So—keeping his arms rigid at his sides to prevent himself from accidentally touching her—he said, “Look, Ellie. Peter wouldn’t want you to be like this.”

  She didn’t respond immediately, and he thought he’d guessed w
rong about her being awake. Just when he was about to roll away from her, she startled him by saying, “Like what?”

  “Wallowing in your misery.”

  “Peter doesn’t get a vote,” she said coldly. “Neither do you. Neither do I, for that matter. I’m not choosing to be in this much pain.”

  “A little cuddling might ease the pain a little.”

  “A little cuddling?” She laughed wryly at his euphemism. “You want sex that badly? Go ahead and do it. Just do it.” She threw back the blanket and hiked up her nightgown.

  Jesus. He didn’t want sex that badly. He wanted his wife. He wanted her whole again, and happy, and loving him. “Stop it,” he said, sickened by her bitter invitation. “I don’t want sex. I want our marriage back. I want us to be good together, the way we’ve always been. That’s what I want.”

  “And I want my son to be alive. You know how the song goes, Curt. You can’t always get what you want. Neither of us will ever be what we used to be. It’s too late. I’m too damaged. The scars are too deep.”

  “What are you saying? We’re never going to make love again?”

  “Of course we will.” She sighed. “I hope we will,” she said less certainly. “I wish I knew what the future held, but I don’t. I used to think we’d grow old, surrounded by our three children and their children. Now that’s not going to happen. I’m afraid to make predictions.”

  “You’re afraid of everything,” Curt muttered.

  “Yes,” she agreed, sounding so sad his anger relented a little. “I’m afraid of everything.”

  There was nothing more to say, other than good-night. He turned onto his side, his back to Ellie, but as he’d expected, sleep eluded him.

  MOIRA KERNAN GREETED HIM with a hug when he entered the conference room the next morning. “Curt! Great to see you! Look at you New England Yankees,” she teased, her gaze passing from Curt to Jonelle, the associate assisting him with the Benzer case, and his secretary. “You’re all so pasty. Too little sun and too much snow.”

  “We’ve just had a gorgeous summer,” Curt argued. “Highs in the eighties every day, and never a drop of rain. And anyway,” he added with a taunting smile, “I bet you miss the blizzards. Admit it, Moira. You fantasize about the snow.”

  Moira laughed. “Sure. Sometimes I stand in the open door of my refrigerator, just to feel an icy breeze.” Her skin was a golden hue, and her hair had bronze highlights, something he didn’t remember from when she’d been working in Boston. Her suit was profoundly stylish, beige and black, all angles and slanting lines. She still wore her trademark red lipstick.

  She looked terrific.

  Maybe Curt ought to take Ellie to California. Or someplace else—the Caribbean, Hawaii or any other warm, romantic paradise. They’d lie in the sun together and sip sweet, frothy drinks with paper umbrellas sticking out of them, and the tropical winds would lull them. They’d get massages and dance in the moonlight. Ellie might let go of some of her pain.

  What a terrific idea. As soon as this Benzer deal was settled, he’d research some spa resorts.

  “So tell me,” he asked Moira once his secretary had started up her laptop and then left the conference room to get coffee for everyone, “it’s not just a coincidence that you’re here, is it?”

  She laughed. “Are you kidding? They hired me because I used to work with you. They figure I’ll know how to game you.”

  “It didn’t occur to them that I used to work with you, too?” Curt felt the first hot rush of competitive energy in his veins. He used to enjoy sparring with Moira when they were on the same side of a case. Sparring with her when they were on opposite sides ought to be even more entertaining.

  The sparring began. While they sipped their coffee, they analyzed Dr. Benzer’s patents one at a time, Moira lowballing the earning potential of each patent and Curt highballing it. They evaluated Benzer’s agreement with his former colleague to make sure Benzer wasn’t trading in any patents that weren’t his. They discussed the value of Benzer’s company and just how far Moira’s clients could take that company with their superior marketing and fabrication facilities. Several times, Moira left the conference room and shut herself inside an empty office, where she could confer with her West Coast clients by phone. Several times Curt called Benzer at MIT to clarify a point or obtain a technical explanation.

  At twelve-thirty, Curt’s secretary phoned out for sandwiches. At one, the sandwiches arrived, along with fresh coffee. They ate, they drank and they argued.

  If only Ellie felt the kind of passion in her work that Curt felt in his. As a school nurse she did essential work—more important work than what most attorneys did, even if attorneys got paid a heck of a lot more—but he doubted she ever felt surges of adrenaline when a fourth-grader entered her office with a scraped knee or when she lectured a class of second-graders on the importance of eating leafy green vegetables. Where was the thrill in that? Where was the excitement, the challenge, the triumph? Perhaps she didn’t need a tropical vacation to snap out of her depression. She needed something exhilarating, something that got her heart pumping faster. It didn’t have to be debating over how much a prosperous high-tech firm in Silicon Valley should pay an MIT professor for his tiny research corporation. But if there was something, anything that could get Ellie psyched…

  Damn if Curt knew what it was. And really, it wasn’t his job to solve Ellie’s problems for her. He’d tried, God knew. He’d been trying since the day Peter died. He’d been patient. He’d been supportive. He’d offered suggestions, cheered her on, accepted the crumbs she tossed his way—a cheek kiss here, a hand squeeze there. But if she wanted to get better, she was going to have to do the hard work herself.

  Meanwhile…what else could he do but wait? And wait. And wait.

  Moira reentered the conference room after one of her phone calls to California, tossed her head to flick her bangs out of her eyes and said, “Where’d you go, Curt? I was only gone five minutes.”

  “I didn’t go anywhere,” he said, automatically standing at her entrance and then dropping back in to his chair onces he was seated.

  “You were zoned out. Now’s my big chance. Time to lunge.” She flashed him a smile and introduced a new payout schedule. Hardly a lunge, but Curt ordered himself to forget about Ellie and stay focused on his hand-to-hand combat with Moira.

  The negotiations continued until five-thirty, but by the time his secretary closed her laptop and Jonelle had scribbled her last note onto a legal pad, most of the issues had been resolved. Moira had a satisfactory package to take back to her clients in California, and Curt had an even better package to take to Professor Benzer, one that would ensure him a decent payout up front and continuing royalties and licensing fees for the next twenty years. Everyone shook hands, congratulated one another and themselves and filed out of the conference room.

  Curt felt drained but enormously pleased. He was good, damn it. With a deft mixture of charm, stubbornness, legal finesse and verbal dexterity, he could win, even against an opponent as sharp as Moira Kernan. And he’d won today. It took all his willpower not to raise his fists into the air and do a victory dance.

  He paused outside his office to issue some final instructions to his secretary, then shoved open his door. Feeling a hand on his sleeve, he stopped and turned around.

  “Curt.” Moira gazed up at him, her confident grin replaced by a solemn expression. “I heard about your son. I’m so sorry.”

  Curt shrugged. “Not as sorry as I am,” he said, then forced a smile. “Thanks.”

  “I remember when he was born. You gave us all blue bubblegum cigars. Not only did the gum taste vile, but it made my tongue blue.” She shook her head. “I’m really sorry.”

  Curt shrugged. No clever response existed for expressions of sympathy. He’d learned to simply accept them in silence.

  “You look like hell, you know,” Moira added.

  That made him laugh. “I wish I could say the same about you, but unfortun
ately, I can’t. You look fantastic.”

  “Yeah. Ever since I stopped shoveling snow, I dropped ten years off my life. Maybe the Botox helped a little, too.” Her smile was gentle. “You want to talk? We could get a drink and you could cry on my shoulder.”

  “You don’t want to see me cry,” he joked, afraid to admit how tempting her invitation was.

  “My shoulder would be honored to hold your tears, Curt. Seriously. We’re old friends. If you want to talk, here I am.”

  The truth was, he hadn’t cried on anyone’s shoulder. Not on Ellie’s—her shoulders were much too fragile to bear the weight of a single teardrop. Not on his parents’; they’d just moved to Arizona, hoping the desert climate would alleviate the arthritis in his father’s knees and hips.

  Not on any of his colleagues’ shoulders, either. Unlike Moira, they tiptoed around the subject of Peter’s death. The firm had sent him and Ellie a huge bouquet of flowers and several of the partners had sent smaller bouquets individually. When Curt had returned to work a few days after the funeral, his coworkers had anticipated his every need, bringing him coffee and documents he hadn’t even gotten around to requesting. They’d given him poignant smiles and spoken to him in muted tones, as if he were feeble.

  Because he’d despised the kid-glove treatment, he’d deliberately projected strength and hardheadedness. I’m back, he’d communicated with his attitude. I’m strong and I’m coping. Treat me normally.

  The idea of, well, not crying on someone’s shoulder but un-burdening himself a little and accepting some heartfelt sympathy…God, that would be nice.

  “I’m staying at the Westin at Copley Place,” Moira told him. “Why don’t you close up shop here and meet me at the lounge there. I think it’s called Bar 10.”

  “Okay. Give me twenty minutes.”

  She nodded, smiled and vanished down the hall.

  He entered his office, closed the door and took a deep breath. A drink with an old friend. That was all this was. A chance to catch up with Moira, laugh over old times and—hell, why not?—cry on her shoulder. Wasn’t that what friends were for?