Lion's Share

by Rochelle Rattner

  Before the month was out, Steve Whitman had called to say he found her work perfect for the Three Artists, Three Cities show; his secretary would be mailing the contract next week. Before the month was out, Jana found herself spending every night at Ed’s apartment. They seemed to grow closer every night—emotionally, if not physically. “This is making love,” Ed assured her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Comfort She’d Wanted

  ED WALKED into the restaurant with that same peacock strut Jana had observed last March. He kissed her hello, sat down, and ordered a split of champagne. “Here’s to Frank’s levelheadedness,” he said, lifting his glass. “I told him we’re seeing each other.”

  “What? Why?” Jana’s first swallow went down the wrong pipe. She’d heard stories about men spreading their romantic conquests throughout the office, but she hadn’t expected it from Ed.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Ed said. “I had to talk to Frank. It’s one thing to have a few dinners with someone who works for an organization we’re funding. Even spending a night or two with them isn’t exactly condoned by the higher-ups, but everyone tends to look the other way. Seeing that person on a regular basis is another story, and we’ve been together a month now.”

  Trying to stay calm, Jana asked what Frank had said. Ed’s chest puffed out again. “He told me what I did on my own time was my business. He assumed I was a consenting adult when he hired me, and he’ll continue to expect adult behavior from me. Then he went on to praise the work I’ve done so far on the exhibition.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Just about all. There were the usual formalities—he assured himself that my interest in you had no bearing on my recommendation of The Paperworks Space for funding, and he warned me to let him know if I saw our relationship starting to interfere with my job. All said and done, it wasn’t nearly as tricky as I’d feared.”

  Jana set her glass down firmly on the table. “What if he’d said no?” Ed was letting Frank call the shots. If Frank had said they couldn’t see each other, he’d have sent her back to her own apartment. It was that scene at camp all over again. “You have to go back to your bunk tomorrow,” the doctor had told her. “The counselors are getting suspicious because you’re here all the time.”

  “Hey, Frank didn’t say no.” Ed’s voice was saying. “At worst, I imagined he might take me off the exhibition, but he wasn’t going to insist we stop seeing each other. Basically, I think he’s happy for us. His last words were ‘enjoy yourself.’”

  The same thought simultaneously crossed both their minds: Little does he know. They burst out laughing. “Does Frank suspect there’s a scared high school virgin underneath this polished surface?” Jana asked when she’d caught her breath again.

  “There won’t be for long,” Ed promised.

  Everything seemed simple while Jana was at Yaddo: she’d lose her virginity within a week at most, then she’d see a gynecologist. But she’d been with Ed for over a month now, and she was still a virgin. The longer she put off going to a doctor, the more intimidating the prospect loomed. No matter how responsive she might be to Ed’s gentle fingers, she didn’t trust the excitement to continue. Some manipulative doctor could touch her in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and that would be the end of it. All she needed now was to wind up with another Dr. Anderson.

  She’d gone to Natalie’s gynecologist six years ago. Before even starting the examination, Dr. Anderson asked if her periods had been regular, then scolded her viciously when Jana responded that she didn’t know. After what seemed a grueling examination, she diagnosed a yeast infection and gave Jana a tube of medication, along with an applicator that looked like a gaping needle, instructing her to apply it twice daily. “Isn’t there a pill I can take instead?” she pleaded, revolted at the prospect of touching herself “there.” Making no effort to hide her disgust, Dr. Anderson asked if she had ever thought of seeing a psychiatrist. An hour later Natalie assured her crying friend that yeast infections eventually went away on their own. Wrapping the tube and applicator securely in a brown paper bag, Jana threw it in a garbage can.

  Thinking back on it now, Jana felt a chill that probably had more to do with this paper gown that was supposedly covering her. It didn’t wrap all the way around and had ripped when she’d lifted herself onto the high table. Recalling Ed’s promise that there would be more, and better, love-making to come, Jana waited nervously for this new doctor. The stirrups, threatening a few inches away from her unshaven legs, didn’t seem as far apart as they had been on Dr. Anderson’s table. She lay back, testing the feel of it: hard.

  A knock on the door. Dr. Barbash, a short plump woman with freckles, her hair in one long braid, entered. She sat on the stool at the end of the table, then walked its wheels closer, like a kid who’d outgrown her tricycle. She fumbled with some instruments in a metal tray.

  Jana tensed as she felt the gloved finger enter. There was pain, but she had felt similar pain before: it was Ed’s pain. The glove paused. Dr. Barbash told her to take a deep breath. She took a Pap smear, then reached for a different instrument and continued probing. Jana screamed. Dr. Barbash eased her way out. “Almost done now, stay there for one more moment.”

  She caught sight of the glove suspended in air and had to fight the temptation to reach out and fondle it. This was not Ed, Jana told herself—the doctor’s hand might have entered her vaginal cavity, but it did not bask in her wetness. Instead it pulled a tissue from a gray, unmarked box and wiped her dry.

  Dr. Barbash told her to get dressed, then come across the hall to her office. Jana found it uncomfortable to close her legs, hard to walk straight. The thick seam of her jeans rubbed painfully against her crotch.

  “I suggest you continue using prophylactics for the time being,” Dr. Barbash began. She explained that birth control pills had too many side effects once a woman turned thirty, and in Jana’s case a diaphragm might cause needless pain. Apparently her vagina was “the size of a seventeen-year-old’s.”

  “I feel an obstruction there, possibly a cyst,” Dr. Barbash continued, “but I can’t get close enough to tell precisely what it is. As your sex life increases, you’ll be easier to examine. Meanwhile, let’s wait and see if the Pap smear indicates any problems.” She asked Jana to find out if her mother took DES during pregnancy, commenting that similar blockages were often found in DES babies. Smiling reassuringly, she ushered her new patient to the door.

  On the subway downtown, Jana struck upon the perfect image for the Artistic Response to the Environment exhibition: a series of inkblots. She’d title them “Vaginal Blockages: DES Babies.” “No thinking about the environment exhibition today,” she chided herself, closing her eyes in disgust. As Natalie continually reminded her, life at The Paperworks Space couldn’t come to a halt simply because of the city-wide exhibition. They scheduled twelve six-week shows, two at a time, with three days between shows for taking one down and hanging the next. Life was always busiest during these interim periods.

  The packer was putting the lids on three crates when Jana walked in. “The artist isn’t going to be very happy about getting these back,” Natalie mumbled.

  “I know,” Jana said. Those crates seemed larger and more imposing today than when they’d first arrived. “How many sold?”

  “Two. And they were the cheapest works.”

  “Does he know yet?”

  “Not unless you told him. Those details are your responsibility.”

  “I was trying to forget.” Jana sat down and shoved paper in her typewriter. She banged out the artist’s name, then tried to think what to say next. With most people, she could write “We’re delighted to inform you that The Paperworks Space sold x number of drawings,” but this guy wouldn’t sit still for that. A native Georgian who had not previously shown in New York, he’d formed unrealistic expectations: All New York shows would be covered in every major arts magazine and sell out the first week. He’d already complained when The Village Voic
e was the only paper to review the show. He’d probably blame the insignificant sales on the gallery’s poor management. For the first time this season, Jana made her yearly vow to exhibit only artists who displayed a professional outlook. Even as she made that promise, she glanced at the crates stacked against the far wall and wondered if the artists they’d begin hanging tomorrow would be any easier to work with.

  “You’ve got to be more patient with people,” Ed would say if he saw her now. In his job, in his life, in their life together, Ed was a living, breathing model of patience. “And look where it’s gotten us,” Jana thought angrily, pressing her hand to her stomach.

  Ed massaged her clitoris, still sore from the doctor’s probing. “I always thought I ought to be a doctor,” he told her.

  “You would have made a wonderful doctor.”

  “When I was four years old, my aunt gave me a doctor kit for Christmas. I went around for weeks treating everyone in the family. I used up the candy pills, so they gave me jelly beans to put in the bottle. I still remember: the white ones were for headaches, the yellow ones were for fever, the pink ones were for upset stomachs. My cousin kept faking sick because he wanted candy, but I fixed him good—I gave him shots instead.”

  Ed moved his fingers gently while he talked, recalling how those nights when his mother returned from the doctor were the hardest. Usually the doctors—one after another—could find no physical cause for her symptoms, and she would get depressed and lie in bed for days. “My mother told me I was better than those insensitive doctors who treated her,” he said out loud. “She taught me to dab the skin with alcohol before giving a shot. She taught me to warm the stethoscope in my hands before I held it against her. I was so proud.” He kissed Jana’s chest.

  Jana felt her body tense. It seemed as if every time Ed touched her in some new way, it sparked some vague, hazy feeling of shame. She guided his hand stiffly back to her crotch. “Harder, please.”

  “Not tonight, dear.” He rubbed more and more gently, easing the sensation until it vanished. “You’ve been through too much today,” he told her. “But I wanted you to realize your body could still yearn to be touched, even after that doctor.”

  “Even after that doctor.” She repeated Ed’s words to herself, gradually drawing the image into focus. That doctor told her he would ease her stomachache. He led her into his small, narrow room in the camp’s infirmary. She closed her eyes and remembered his warmth against her, then buried her head in Ed’s chest to suppress the image.

  “Tomorrow,” Ed whispered. “Tomorrow.”

  “I’m not a doctor,” Ed mumbled as he was about to drift off to sleep.

  Jana reached out an arm and let it rest on Ed’s nipple. “I know that,” she whispered. She saw herself clearly now, lying on top of the bleached white sheets and the thin green wool blanket that made her itch, while the doctor towered above her. He was telling her the counselors suspected that she was faking sick. “The kids hate me,” she was crying. “If you send me back to my bunk they’ll start teasing me again.”

  “Nobody hates you,” he assured her between kisses. He worked his way lower. “Besides, if things get too bad, you can always come back here. You’ll always be welcome here.” Tomorrow, Ed had whispered, tomorrow.

  “I can’t help being afraid,” she told Ed. “I still expect you to tell me I have to go back to my apartment tomorrow. You’ll say the neighbors are starting to get suspicious because I’m here all the time. Like he did.”

  “Like who?”

  Jana sat up in bed, trembling. She’d certainly been thinking about that experience a lot lately, but she hadn’t planned on telling Ed about it, not yet. The words just slipped out. She stared out the window at the blue haze coming from someone’s TV set across the street. “A doctor who treated me when I went away to camp,” she said finally, and for the first time in years, she spoke his name: “Dr. Waters.”

  Ed rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He tried to press her close, but she pulled away. “I was ten years old,” she continued as if speaking from a trance. “I had no friends at home. I thought if I got around new people, some place where no one knew me, all the kids would like me. I pleaded to go to camp in the Catskills, but even there nobody wanted to be my friend. Then I started developing stomachaches. Dr. Waters kept me in the infirmary overnight, as a precautionary measure. My stomach started hurting again late that night, when there was no one around. He assured me he wasn’t going to make me drink more medicine, that he knew another way to soothe the pain. Then he took me into his room and kissed me—low, around my crotch. I developed chronic stomachaches and spent a lot of nights in the infirmary that summer. Whenever no one else was around, he’d take me into his room, lay me on his bed, pull down my pajamas, and kiss my tummy.”

  “So that’s what it was,” Ed mumbled. “I knew there had to be something in your past to make you so afraid.” Gently he rubbed her back. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you and if I want to hug you or kiss you it’s only because I love you. I care about what happens to you. That’s the difference between me and that doctor.”

  Jana clung to his body as if trying to rob it of all its strength. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe how much you care,” she told him. “Or when I do, it frightens me.”

  “I know, dear. And I’m not going to pretend there won’t be emotional consequences. It’s never easy to care about another person, but as long as we love each other, I want you here with me. Sometimes it feels as if I’m going to want you here always.” He wanted to hold her tighter, kiss her all over her body, kiss her stomach, kiss her crotch, make the hurt of every doctor go away. Instead he sucked her breast.

  That first night, last summer, she’d enjoyed it immensely when Ed cupped her breast in his soft, warm hand. Later she’d sat by the window at Yaddo and tried to play with her breast herself. But it was different now, he sucked like an infant, her nipples grew hard, and a sensation started in the upper half of her body that felt inappropriate, dirty. “Ed,” she said, cautiously, “you can kiss me, uh, lower down if you want.” Maybe he would just rub her there. She would love it if he’d massage her clitoris, like he’d done earlier tonight. Get the sensation back in the right place, make it strong enough, then maybe she’d be able to tolerate the rest.

  Neither his hand nor his mouth moved.

  “You’re not some seventy-year-old doctor,” Jana continued. “I know that now, and I want to be able to prove it—to prove how much I love you.” Don’t you feel a little bit loved? Ed would often ask as he was fondling her. Was this really what love was? Last spring she’d frozen when he’d clasped her hand. Ed could take her hand now and she didn’t back away. But holding her hand was a long way from intercourse. Maybe she’d end up frigid after all.

  “I’m not that doctor. And you’re not that little girl.” Ed moved his hands slowly, gently down her body. He kissed along the crease her panties’ waistband left, wet, warm. Then he kissed along a slightly lower line, then …

  “No!” she cried. “Stop, please.” Unable to control herself, she pushed his head away from her abdomen. Pushed as she’d never dared push Dr. Waters. “I’m sorry,” she cried a moment later, drawing him back. “I thought I could, but I can’t. Not yet. I’m sorry.”

  “Not to worry, dear. Not to worry.” Holding her, he pictured that selfish bastard of a doctor: wife gone, kids grown, retired except for two months at a summer camp, thinks he’s all alone in the world, picks on some innocent child, trying to recapture the validation he felt in honest relationships. “Pervert,” Ed called him aloud. “All that mattered was his own gratification, as if your body was his God-given right. He never stopped to consider how harmful it would be for you.”

  “He didn’t hurt me,” Jana halfheartedly tried to argue.

  “Yes he did, dear. I have a feeling he hurt you much more than you realize.”

  “It wasn’t as if he raped me.”

  “Of course he raped you! You don’t have t
o be penetrated to be sexually molested. The important thing is not what he did to you, but how the experience affected you.” He thought about how confused she’d been by her wetness at first. And even before that, the way she’d stiffened that first time he’d touched her. Her warm body pressing against his that night she’d been so upset about the subway commission. The way she’d pressed against his chest earlier tonight even, pleading, as if his touch was the only thing in the world which could quiet her. That summer, Jana had been on the brink of adolescence, a time when children tend to exaggerate their emotions. For all Ed knew, that doctor might not have done anything. But there was no denying how painful the experience had been.

  They lay silently, unstirring, for what seemed like hours. Jana’s thoughts drifted back to the scene in Dr. Waters’ narrow room—she’d been lying there, turning her attention to crickets outside the open window, a frog or two croaking from the pond down the hill. She’d known that what he was doing was wrong, yet she’d lain there pretending she didn’t know.

  She closed her eyes and tried to just be with Ed, the down comforter over them, flannel sheets beneath them. There’s no place I’d rather be, she tried to tell herself. But there weren’t any street noises, let alone crickets, to distract her from those memories. The quieter it got, the closer Dr. Waters loomed. “Maybe a drink will help me get to sleep,” she said, getting out of bed.

  “Here, I’ll get it for you. We could both use a drink.” Ed grabbed his robe and followed her into the kitchen. She already had a bottle of cognac on the table. Ed got two glasses and poured healthy shots.

  They sat silently, drinking until the glasses were half-empty. “What you were doing did feel pleasurable,” Jana said, looking up at him. “I think maybe that’s what frightened me.” Cling to me, Ed had said those first times she’d been frightened by his advances, cling to me.