So, reluctantly, Elizabeth moved a few blocks away from her parent’s home into a house that David and she rented. Then, after a few years, when David was promoted from Constable to Corporal, they bought a big older house in the same neighborhood, only streets away from where she’d grown up. He was going to be transferred one day. They were sure of it. They’d sell their house and move to wherever the RCMP sent them. Unfortunately, it never happened. For twenty years they waited, while David worked his way up the ranks, moving from corporal to sergeant and then to staff sergeant. Elizabeth never asked David to request a transfer, fearing it would impede his now successful career, and David never noticed the disappointment on his wife’s face. So they settled into their lives in Vancouver. On days off they’d renovate their old house. Once or twice a year they’d travel south to Mexico or southern California to escape the winter rains of Vancouver. Their plan was the same plan that all young couples have. They wanted to have successful careers, a warm comfortable home and a family. David and Elizabeth wanted children.
At first their lack of progress didn’t worry them, but as the years passed and they renovated the spare rooms in their home, the rooms that called out for children, they started to become concerned. They visited doctors, took tests, sought advice from books. There was nothing wrong with either of them. The doctors told them that it would happen. It was just a matter of time. They knew the times of the day and month that would work best. David tried to schedule his shifts around his wife’s peak impregnation times. She’d laugh while waiting in bed for him, hearing his big feet bounce up the stairs towards their bedroom. Tearing his uniform off and sliding under the covers with her, he’d always say the same thing, “Are you ready to make a baby, Lizzy?”
She’d smile and reach down for his already hard member. “Yes, I am, officer. Fire away.”
It was funny to them. It was funny for a while. Then, as their late twenties turned into their thirties, it stopped being funny. They stopped scheduling their baby-making times and settled into complacency. The rooms that were decorated for children sat unused, with the doors closed. When they were together and saw families with small kids they’d smile a sad forlorn smile, yet, they’d never look at each other. They’d avoid each other’s gaze, not wanting to fully acknowledge what was happening or, perhaps, what wasn’t happening. They’d make love still, and enjoy each other’s bodies. David’s large muscular body stayed firm and hard and Elizabeth always took delight when he removed his uniform and took her to bed. And Elizabeth was the only woman that David had ever known. She was his Elizabeth and she was the only woman that he ever had to know.
At a family dinner, Elizabeth’s mother brought up the topic of adoption once. Her father “shushed” his wife and told them to pay her no heed. As the four of them ate their dinner in silence, David held his fork in the air, thinking to himself, before speaking. “There’s nothing wrong with adoption. It would be like giving up, though. And we’re still trying. We’re still trying.”
Elizabeth looked over at her husband’s big kind face and smiled back at him. Yes, she nodded in agreement, they were still trying. So, although they didn’t schedule baby-making sessions anymore, they still tried and for a long time they pretended to each other that it was still going to happen.
Thirty was easy for Elizabeth, and even thirty-five was acceptable, but when she got closer to forty, something inside of her stopped pretending. Something inside of her realized she was living in a city she had never intended to live in without the children she had always wanted to have. It didn’t happen overnight. It was gradual. She didn’t make a concentrated effort to examine her life. It just happened in little bits. She loved David. She knew that. He was the man that she’d always wanted. She’d felt safe in his embrace from the first time she held onto him in his big old car and that hadn’t changed. He made her smile and was the kindest person that she’d ever known. It wasn’t him. It was just life, the life that they’d both made together.
She started feeling there was more that she was entitled to, more that she had missed out on. She’d never been a dishonest person and on the occasions when she did attend church she could listen to the minister with a clear conscience. She just needed some kind of a spark, something that would make her feel alive. Jim Gretzky was that spark and, as she pulled weeds from her garden on the Sunday of the Canada Day long weekend, she found that she could think about him without feeling any sense of guilt.
She looked over at her husband as he effortlessly placed large slabs on the ground that would form a new walkway in their garden. “Do you need a hand, big guy?” she asked him.
“Nah, you just keep making the flowers look pretty, honey.” They held their smiles on each other for a moment longer than most couples would, enjoying their shared feelings.
That’s interesting. I feel fine. I know where I’m going tomorrow and what I’m going to do and I’m okay with it.
“What’s so funny?” David could see her laughing to herself as she picked the weeds and stacked them into a small pile.
“Nothing, honey, just enjoying being here with you, just enjoying it.” And she was. She was enjoying all of it, the anticipation of tomorrow and the fact that she had a secret, a secret that nobody else needed to know about.
The sun beat down on them and David carefully placed the slabs, one after the other, curving them towards their front door, while the two of them enjoyed the quietness of the afternoon. Elizabeth’s sweatshirt hung over an old wooden deck chair that was sitting between them and a beep sounded intermittently from one of the pockets in it.
David was closest. “Sounds like a text. I’ll grab it.” Slapping the dirt off his hands, he reached into the big pockets of the sweatshirt and searched for his wife’s phone.
For a split second, the smile stayed on her face and she didn’t think of who the caller might be. She just kept her hands on the pile of weeds and carried them over to the refuse pile. As David pulled the phone out and held it away from the sun, so he could look at the little screen, Elizabeth had a sudden thought. The caller might just be someone other than her mother or one of her girlfriends. Dropping the weeds, she reached towards her husband, beckoning for the phone. “I’ve got it, honey. I’ll get it. I’ll get it.”
There was a slight panic in her voice as she held her hand out towards her husband. Jim Gretzky would have her phone number. She knew that. He’d never called her or texted her at home before, but you never know. You just never know.
If David detected anything, he didn’t show it. He held onto his wife’s phone a moment longer than he probably should have, but he didn’t look at the screen. And, when Elizabeth reached for it with her dirty hands, he handed it over, again, without looking at the screen.
“Mom,” the letters glowed on her phone. Her mother had recently learned how to text from her phone and was fond of sending out random messages to both of them.
With a relieved smile on her face, Elizabeth said, “It’s just my mom. I’ll answer her later.” Her husband smiled at her as she slipped the phone into the pocket of her jeans. Silently, she chastised herself for sounding panicked when he had it in his hands.
He wouldn’t ask. There was no reason to. She knew that, but she changed the subject anyways. “Dinner? Ideas? I’m getting hungry.”
He was back at his slabs, straightening them out, and for a moment she thought that maybe he was ignoring her, or perhaps he was just thinking about how to answer her back. His short silence didn’t last. “I don’t know, honey. I can barbecue if you want. There’s steaks in the freezer. I’m easy though, whatever you like is good with me.” And he was. It was all good. If he’d noticed anything in the way she grabbed for the phone it had passed already. This was David. This was them. It was all good.
* * * *
Jim loved the anticipation, too. He really genuinely did. He spent Sunday of the Canada Day long weekend mowing the lawn, just like hundreds of other people do on a sunny day. As he ran the mowe
r over the grass in perfectly straight lines, Elizabeth was never far from his thoughts. When he finished his mowing, he smiled to himself and thought of how large and firm her breasts had felt when he held his hands under her blouse. Grinning, he grabbed an old worn soccer ball from the garden shed and called out to Stephen, his stepson. “Spud, let’s go. Let’s kick the ball.”
Stephen, or Spud, as Jim had christened him some years previously, had been watching his stepfather from his upstairs bedroom, waiting for him to finish. He was downstairs and into the yard, just barely in time to dive on the ball and stop it from hitting the side of the house. “No fair, you didn’t warn me that you were going to kick it, Jim. You need to give me warning.”
Jim smiled back at the child, enjoying the mock seriousness on his face. “I told you before, Spud. You gotta be ready. You always gotta be ready. Kick it back to me.”
Stephen carefully placed the ball in front of him and took four long seven year old steps back. He looked over at Jim then ran towards the ball striking it solidly with his right foot. Seeing that it wouldn’t quite cover the distance between them, Jim pounced forward and grabbed the ball, rolling backwards as though he were saving a much harder shot.
“That was good, Spud. That had some power on it and straight. It was straight as could be. You’ve got a real skill there, a real hard shot.”
The little boy stood with his hands on his hips and kicked at the ground, just as he’d seen soccer players on television do. “Thanks, Jim. I kicked it hard. I know I kicked it hard.”
Amanda appeared from around the corner of the house and called out to her husband. “Hold on a second here, is your name Gretzky or Beckham? I’m confused. Shouldn’t you be teaching him how to play hockey?” She held her hands on her hips in the same manner that her son did, smiling and squinting from the bright sun.
Loving the attention and smiling as widely as he could, Jim spoke to Stephen and pretended to ignore his wife. “Did you hear something, Spud? Was there a noise coming from somewhere?”
It was a game they’d played many times before. Stephen put his hand on his ear and pretended to listen, while barely suppressing a huge grin. “Nope, don’t hear a thing. Nothing to report from over here at all, Jim.”
Jim looked at Amanda for a moment, enjoying the way she was staring at the two of them. She was wearing her summer shorts and her tanned legs glowed a golden brown color in the afternoon sun. Her T-shirt hung straight down by her sides, showing off her narrow waistline.
Enjoying his stare, Amanda tilted her hip to one side, knowing the effect that it had on him. “Whatcha staring at, soccer player man?”
“Nothing that I can tell you about right now, Amanda. I’ll discuss it with you later. At length.” He smiled at his wife as she shook her head at him and turned to go back to her chores.
Having had his seven year old patience stretched thin, Stephen kicked at the ground repeatedly. “Kick the ball to me. I’m ready. Kick it, Jim. Kick the ball.”
Jim took an extra second or two to enjoy watching Amanda’s slow walk back to the side of the house before lining up the ball and kicking it back to Stephen. Sometimes life was good. Yes, sometimes life was very, very good.
Chapter Six
She awoke thinking about his cock. Not the way that it looked when it was pushing through his pants. No, she thought about how hard it was going to feel when she finally got to touch it, feel it, stroke it. She thought of how solid it had felt when he pressed it up against her, pinning her to the table in the copier room. She couldn’t wait. It had been a long time since she'd woken with a feeling like this. For the first time in years, she couldn't wait to get dressed and go to work. Lazily, she stretched and pulled the covers off. As she started to rise, she looked at the empty space in the bed beside her and could see the imprint of where David had been sleeping. For a moment she looked at the space and thought of her husband, only for a moment though. Jumping out of bed, she quickly smoothed the sheets over; erasing any signs that anyone had been sleeping there.
Three wardrobe changes later, she was driving through the almost-deserted streets on her way to work. Summer had finally arrived and it was already inching towards that magic thirty degrees Celsius temperature that Vancouverites dream about. For once, Canada Day was going to be hot.
Elizabeth had dressed appropriately.
She'd decided on tight shorts that doubled as a skirt, a dark red tube top that she'd never normally wear to the office and heels that were just a little higher than she was used to. She hadn't worn the tube top in years, in fact she'd forgotten that she had it, and when she slipped it on and saw how it accentuated the heaviness and roundness of her breasts, she smiled, imagining Jim's reaction when he saw her.
The main street that ran alongside the box company was deserted except for a few families who had set up their lawn chairs at the edge of the road. The Canada Day parade would pass by the building later in the morning and the few early risers who wanted the best views of the marching bands and decorated floats had already staked their claims. A woman sat comfortably in her chair, coffee cup in one hand, and her Canadian flag in the other as Elizabeth drove by. When Elizabeth turned her car into the parking lot of the box company, the woman nudged a young child who was sitting in front of her. The little girl looked up at her mother then grabbed the little red and white flag from her and waved it at Elizabeth as she passed. Slowing down, Elizabeth waved back at the little girl and mouthed the words “Happy Canada Day” to her.
The heat hit her as soon as she stepped out of the car. The office was on the second floor of the building and the air conditioner had been giving them problems. When they’d run it on the few warm days that they’d had, it sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. She touched the handle of the front door and winced at the heat from it, hoping that today, the air conditioner would decide to function properly. The door was unlocked and she locked it behind her as she entered. Purposely clicking her heels up every stair, she wondered where he’d be. In the small reception area at the top of the stairs perhaps, waiting for her with his cocky grin and legs stretched out in front of him? Or maybe, he’d be hunched over his desk pretending to work. She hadn’t been nervous all morning. Not when she’d debated over what to wear, before deciding on the tube top, not when she’d sprayed her favorite perfume on her chest, not even as she’d pulled into the parking lot and seen that the only other car there was Jim’s. She’d acted this out so many times in her head already. She’d touched herself so many times and dreamt about him, over and over. She knew she’d be fine. She just couldn’t wait.
The reception area, which usually housed a cheerful receptionist behind a desk, was empty, and the two couches that were used for visitors sat bare with no Jim Gretzky resting on them. When she looked through the glassed partition, behind the reception area, and into her office, there was no one there either. All she could see was row after row of perfectly aligned, but empty desks. He had to be here somewhere, though. Someone had turned the lights on at the front of the building and opened some of the windows, letting a little air in. The air conditioner obviously had decided not to work today.
She looked down the hallway towards the restrooms, in there perhaps? He had to be. There was nowhere else that he could be hiding in the big open building. Then she saw it, and her heart started beating a little faster. Towards the back, coming from under a door, there was a shaft of light. Of course he was in there. He was in the copier room. He wanted to continue in the same room where they’d started.
The sound of her heels clicked on the polished laminate floor, and she made her way past all the idle desks. Her own desk sat at the front of the accounting department’s area. A small consolation for all my years of service.
The door was closed, but she knew that he had to be in there. She stood in front of it for a moment, straightening her shorts, and wetting her lips. When she pushed it open, Jim Gretzky was perched on the edge of the table they’d used previously, looking glor
iously smug, waiting for her. That’s when she started to feel the beat of her heart moving up from its usual place, into her throat. She was going to be nervous after all.
Jim was dressed for work. He was wearing a dark blue tie, loosened at the top, as usual, and his shirt was crisp and white. His thin blonde hair was combed back and his lifeguard blue-green eyes were piercing, shining right into her. He’d pushed the table from the other day against the far wall shelves and had a file folder in his hands, reading it. When he saw Elizabeth, he tossed the file onto the shelf behind him, giving her his full attention.
“Well, wow,” he exclaimed, almost stammering. “Happy Canada Day, I see that you’re dressed appropriately.” He motioned to her red tube top as he spoke, and his eyes stayed on her chest, hypnotized.
Elizabeth let out a breath and tried to relax. Smiling, she folded her arms in front of her, pushing her breasts even higher, enjoying Jim’s reaction. “Happy Canada Day to you, too. I hope you haven’t been waiting very long for me.”
Jim pulled his gaze from Elizabeth’s breasts and met her eyes. He slipped down from the table and stood directly in front of her as he spoke, slightly towering over her. “Two years, Elizabeth. I’ve been waiting two years for this.”
She knew. She knew that it was close. Everything was close. Everything that she’d thought about, imagined, dreamt, was very, very close now. She let her hands come back down to her sides and then nervously, slipped them in her pockets. “Waiting for what, Jim? Waiting for me?” Then, feeling brave and playful, she looked down at her breasts then smiled at him. “Or, have you been waiting for these?”
Undressing Elizabeth Page 5