The Seducer

by Claudia Moscovici

  “Hold on. Let’s clean this up first,” Ana rushed to save the pristine poster board, first wiping the table with a moist paper towel, then drying it with a dish­rag. “Okay, so what do we need to do?”

  “I need to paste pictures of myself on here. So I can show my class what I like to do for fun,” Allen replied, his lips turning slightly downward, his staple expression before throwing a temper tantrum.

  “This project sounds like fun,” his mother tried to preempt the upcoming storm. “We can look over the vacation photos Daddy printed last weekend from his digital camera. Do you also need to write a report?”

  “No. All I have to do is talk about the pictures.”

  “Well then, why don’t you pick out some of your favorite pictures from this pile,” Ana proposed. She brought out a shoebox filled with recent family photographs and placed it in front of Allen. “Let’s glue them on the poster board and see what you remember about each one.”

  The boy began digging through the box with both hands. He was so absorbed in his task that his tongue stuck out from the side of his mouth. After about ten minutes, Allen showed his mother eleven pictures he had selected.

  “Can you try to narrow it down to six or seven?” she proposed, going to get the glue stick and a black marker from the kitchen counter.

  When Ana returned to the table, Allen was holding six pictures in his hand. “These are my favorites.”

  “Do you remember where these pictures were taken?” his mother peered over his shoulder at the photographs.

  “Sort of,” Allen replied, which Ana translated as “not really.”

  “I’ll help jog your memory,” she told him.

  “But Mama, I don’t like to run,” Allen joked, beginning to relax.

  “This one here was taken in Alabama at Grandma Jenny’s,” Ana pointed to a photograph of her and Allen sitting on a porch at her mother-in-law’s house. Both of them squinted to block off the intense afternoon light. “We barely have our eyes open. How come you picked it?”

  “Because Almond’s in it,” Allen placed his index finger below a little black poodle, which, for several years, had been the love of his life.

  “How could I forget! What about this one?” she pointed to a picture of Allen and Michelle at the beach. “Do you remember where we took it?”

  “At the beach,” the boy answered brilliantly.

  “Which one?”

  Allen shrugged.

  “Remember where we went on Memorial Day?” his mother jogged his memory.

  Allen shook his head.

  “To Traverse City, where we stayed at that nice, expensive inn by the beach.” Ana recalled how much the kids loved playing in the waves, jumping with a mixture of shock and delight whenever the ice-cold water lapped at their bare feet.

  “Oh, yeah,” Allen said. “My favorite part was when we went on the motor­boat ride. Daddy let me and Michelle drive it for awhile.”

  Ana felt quite certain that the jet skiers they almost hit didn’t forget that day either. “How about these ones? They go together,” she moved on to the next set of images. The first one featured Allen riding a mechanical bull, holding on for dear life. The second displayed him falling flat on his behind. “Daddy took these photos on spring break, when we went to that bull show in Tennessee.”

  “Ha, ha!” Allen laughed at the recollection. “That was fun. And I wasn’t scared at all. It didn’t even hurt when I fell down. They put straw on the ground,” he boasted.

  “You’re so courageous,” Ana patted the little boy on his soft, closely cropped hair. It occurred to her that each of these trips had been carefully orchestrated by her husband. Rob spent hours organizing each family vacation so the kids would have fun. Ana’s attention was caught by the striking contrast between the last two photographs Allen lay down on the poster board. The first one was taken during their summer vacation in New Hampshire. Rob had asked a stranger to take their picture when Ana had protested that he, being the one who took most of the family photos, was hardly in any of them. The four of them looked so happy together, all smiles and, miraculously, with their eyes open—since usually at least one of them blinked at the flash. Ana recalled how much they had enjoyed that short, easy hike. She also remembered the vicarious pleasure, even complicity, she and her husband had shared in seeing the kids skip down the trails like mountain goats. She felt a tinge of regret when she realized that, given her infidelity, she might never relive such untainted pleasure with her family again.

  The second photograph confirmed this intuition. It was taken earlier that fall in their back yard, right after she had become involved with Michael. The whole family was raking leaves. Their next-door neighbor, a quiet, retired fellow, offered to take their picture. Although Rob, Allen and Michelle smiled for the camera, their smiles appeared forced. Ana, herself, looked sullen. Her jaw line was set and rectangular. She gazed at the camera with a strange combination of shame and reproach. Before and after Michael, Ana silently observed, her eyes passing back and forth between the last two images her son was gluing to the poster board. The two pictures, lying side by side, captured her emotional oscillations ever since meeting her lover.

  Whenever she was with Rob, Ana couldn’t help but focus on the accumulation of lies and excuses she had to tell her husband in order to see her lover. Rob was pleasantly surprised that even in the midst of the recession, his wife’s paintings were becoming increasingly successful. Ana met with more clients and gallery owners interested in her artwork than before. The fact that she had deposited nearly $ 7,000 during the past few months into their bank account after Michael purchased two of her paintings, made her case appear more credible. Yet Ana couldn’t help but feel remorse when she looked into Rob’s eyes and told him such blatant lies.

  At the same time, an overwhelming force had drawn her towards Michael from the day they met. Although their mutual attraction excited her, it also frightened her, making her feel like she had fallen under a spell so powerful that nothing, not even love for her children, would be able to break. Ana sometimes wished she could swallow a pill to forget her lover. Oblivion, she speculated, was the only way to resist Michael’s inexplicable hold on her. No matter how often she went over her husband’s attributes—his loyalty, fidelity, culture, intelligence and sense of duty—they couldn’t move her in the way that Michael’s puzzling combination of angelic and devilish characteristics did. There was something about the fact that she knew her lover had a dark side that made all of his qualities—his boyish charm, intelligence, humor, fierce sensuality and intense passion—pop out all the more, in full relief.

  When she had asked Michael one day over lunch to explain to her why good girls fall for bad boys, he had shrugged with the confidence of a man who’s expressing a self-evident truth: “Pure goodness is boring. Besides,” he grinned, “I’m a good boy, I swear.”

  Michael looked so clean-cut, youthful and innocent that Ana almost believed him. Almost. “No you’re not,” she playfully contradicted him.

  He frowned like a child. “Me? I wouldn’t even hurt a fly.”

  She had to laugh. “If you want to convince me that you’re a nice guy, please don’t quote Psycho.”

  Michael smiled in response, then adopted a more serious demeanor. “My personal hunch is that women want to feel like they have something to tame in a man. If he’s already domesticated, it’s no fun. You always have to have a challenge. Otherwise life gets too predictable.” Ana recalled how Michael had looked at her, with a mixture of indulgence and intensity. “But don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “You’re not a good girl either. Because if you were, you wouldn’t be here with me, now would you?” Ana had to concede that her lover had a point. The same one, in fact, that her husband had made when they first got engaged and were discussing their previous relationships. “Nice guys always finish last,” Rob had commented. He was referring to his ex-girlfriend, who had left him for a womanizer. Never in a million years, Ana thought, would Rob
have suspected that she, the woman he loved, married and had children with, would one day similarly betray him.

  Quite often Ana succeeded in deflecting her guilt by painting Rob as an incompatible partner in a comatose marriage. During those moments, she felt entitled to pursue happiness with her lover. Yet as she looked at Rob’s face in their family photos, his smile seemed that of an unjustly wronged man. She was drawn to his rounded lips, his triangularly shaped head, his high cheekbones and even to his slightly crooked nose, the result of a deviated septum that he had been afraid to fix. She had always relied upon her husband’s loyalty, sturdiness and good character. Whatever his faults may have been, Ana felt, he didn’t deserve this betrayal.

  Chapter 4

  Upon a whim, Michael decided to skip class that afternoon and surprise his girlfriend at her gallery. He peeked in through the glass door, to observe her without making his presence known. Ana stood in front of one of her latest paintings, next to a man in a gray suit. From what Michael could tell, the painting featured two bright figures, a man and a woman, whose profiles blended into each other to form one spherical, sunny whole. Michael couldn’t help but smile. He took full credit for Ana’s shift towards more cheerful artwork, which seemed to match the lightness of her mood since they had fallen in love. She wore a professional pinstriped pencil skirt and white blouse. He saw her gesture with one hand towards the painting. The dark curves of her lower body eclipsed, with its suggestive silhouette, the fiery burst of color in the painting. The man in the gray suit inched closer to Ana. He grabbed her by the elbow with one hand and pointed towards the canvass with the other. Ana approached to see what he was indicating, then turned to the man and laughed out loud. Michael could hear the ring of her girlish voice even through the thick windowpane. A flash of jealousy moved through him like lightning, as if his girlfriend had revealed an intimate part of herself to another man.

  Within seconds, Michael stood by Ana’s side. “It’s me, Baby, it’s me,” he whispered into her ear. As she turned around startled, he ostentatiously planted a kiss upon her lips.

  Ana tried to pull away, uncomfortable with this gesture of intimacy in the gallery. “Everyone knows me here,” she whispered to him.

  But her lover only pressed her tighter against him, his fingers interlocked behind the small of her back. “How I’ve missed you,” he said. “I couldn’t help myself. I skipped my afternoon classes just to be with you.”

  Despite the compromising situation, Ana felt touched. “You’re such a naughty schoolboy.”

  Michael looked above her head, appearing pleased with something. She turned around and noticed that her potential customer, the man in the dark suit, was heading out the door.

  “I guess he wasn’t interested in your painting after all,” Michael observed with a sense of satisfaction. “He was interested in you.”

  “You’re so cynical,” she countered.

  “I just think like a man, that’s all,” Michael made his way forward, backing his girlfriend into a quiet corner of the gallery.

  “I come here regularly with my husband and kids. Tracy knows them,” Ana protested casting nervous glances in both directions, like a trapped animal. Although the gallery owner was in her office at the moment, several customers looked at them askance, as if they had never seen people showing affection in public. One elderly woman seemed particularly scandalized by their behavior. Ana silently pointed her out with her pinkie.

  “Let them think whatever the hell they wish. Just don’t flirt with anyone else from now on,” Michael said, looking down at his girlfriend. His mouth plunged to devour hers. Ana felt her heart race with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Tingles of pleasure made their way from their joined lips, through her chest and abdomen, all the way down to her toes. This man moves me like no other, Ana observed, electrified by her lover’s mix of eroticism and assertiveness. Once their lips momentarily unlocked, she took a step back, to admire him. “Let’s get out of here,” she proposed, her senses ablaze.

  But Michael didn’t budge. His gaze glided over her, territorially. “Sometimes I wish you’d wear a black dress all the way down to the floor. And cover your head and your hair, so that you’d be invisible to other men,” he said, picking up a strand of her glossy black hair between his fingertips, then allowing it to cascade upon her shoulder again.

  “I thought you wanted me to wear miniskirts and sexy dresses, not bursas,” she retorted with a smile.

  “Miniskirts around me, burqas around everybody else,” Michael murmured, his voice hypnotic and low.

  “I didn’t know you were the jealous type,” Ana remarked, feeling strangely proud of the passion she had ignited in such an attractive man. It was as if her lover’s masculine possessive desire confirmed, and even enhanced, the value of her own femininity.

  Michael looked pensive.

  “Why the long face?” she pouted flirtatiously.

  “Do you feel that what we have is special?”

  Ana gazed into his piercing dark eyes. In the obscurity of the corner of the gallery where they had hidden from view, they seemed black as coal. “Of course,” she affirmed.

  “In what way?” he continued quizzing her.

  Ana didn’t know how to respond. It was difficult to put into words the sudden, all-consuming passion that had swept over her life. “I don’t know ... In every way,” she replied, somewhat discombobulated. “I’ve never felt anything like this before.”

  Michael, however, didn’t seem pleased with her vague response. “That’s not an answer,” he said with an air of impatience. “Just because you’ve never felt a certain way doesn’t mean that feeling is positive. Be more specific.”

  Ana felt chastised, like a schoolgirl who had given the wrong answer in front of the class. “What do you want me to say?” she asked, taken aback by his severe manner. “I’m just getting to know you. When you put me on the spot like this, it’s more difficult to wax poetic about us.”

  “I’m sorry, Baby,” Michael backed off. He wrapped his arms around Ana again, to melt the chilling effect of their exchange. “It’s just that I feel so frustrated sometimes. I wish I could have you all to myself. I wish you could come live with me and paint all day long to your heart’s content. That way we’d have our own perfect little universe. Nobody would ever try to steal you away from me during the day,” he said, alluding to the man in the dark suit. “And nobody would ever take you away from me at night either,” he added, alluding to her husband.

  “You’re forgetting a little detail. Three of them, to be exact,” Ana reminded him of her family.

  “I know Baby, I know. But a man can always dream, can’t he? Sometimes I close my eyes and wish I were all you ever needed. I want to satisfy your every whim,” he said, as his gaze flowed lovingly over her body, “and make you perfectly happy.” His eyes were aglow. “Because my happiness is your happiness. What my Baby wants, my Baby gets. This will be my motto from now on.”

  “You’re such a dreamer,” Ana shook her head. “Perhaps if we had met much earlier, before the kids were born ...” her voice trailed off wistfully. But this thought wasn’t as pleasant as it should have been. Even for the sake of ideal love, she couldn’t unwish her children’s existence.

  “If we had met before, you’d have everything you ever dreamed of,” Michael dove into the flow of her unfinished train of thought. “I’d support you without ever complaining about it. I’d hide you in our little nest and inspire your painting. You’d never have to worry about anything again. Except for what you love best: me and your art.”

  Ana felt touched by her lover’s mixture of idealism and generosity. Momentarily forgetting that they were in a public place, she laid her head upon her lover’s chest, to be comforted by his bodily warmth and racing heartbeat. “You’re so wonderful,” she whispered gratefully.

  Michael felt her words as a moist wave of heat moving through him. “And if you ever became famous,” he continued enticing her, “I�
�d be right there, by your side. We’d travel all over the world together to your gallery exhibits.” He knew he had touched upon her not-so-secret desire; upon any frustrated artist’s dream.

  “I wish I could do something to make you feel as happy as you do me,” she reciprocated, moved by his show of devotion.

  An idea that had been obsessing him for a while suddenly sprung into his mind at this opportune moment. “You can,” Michael replied, elevating her head gently, to gaze directly into her eyes. “But I’m not sure that you will,” he qualified, appearing to hesitate.

  “Try me,” Ana encouraged him.

  “I’d like to be able to make love to you in the middle of the night,” Michael said, his gaze absorbing her into him.

  “Me too,” she smiled awkwardly.

  “No, I mean it,” Michael insisted, with a sense of urgency. “Let’s do it tonight, when everyone’s asleep.”

  “Are you crazy?” Ana exclaimed, pulling away from him. “With my husband and kids in the house?” The bubble of complicity had burst.

  “You said ‘anything,’” Michael reminded her.

  “I didn’t think you’d ask me something so outrageous!”

  “I see. You only meant doing what you wanted.”

  “Michael!” Ana cried out, feeling like he had pushed the envelope too far this time. “How can you possibly ask me to insult my family? Isn’t what we’re doing to them bad enough? Please!” An unpleasant idea crossed her mind. Was her lover a sadist? Was he so jealous of her husband that he’d want to use her to humiliate Rob?

  Responding to her alarm, Michael didn’t press the issue further. “Baby, I didn’t mean to upset you, alright?” he reverted to his familiar, warm and tender, manner. “I know it was a crazy idea. It’s just that I love you so much that I wish we could be together for the rest of our lives. I dream about being free to see you whenever and wherever I want. It kills me to have to share you with another man.”