A first attempt led to his closet, but the next door was to his bathroom, and she used his dull-bristled toothbrush to brush her teeth, spitting out a smeary worm of toothpaste and washing it down the drain. After she lowered the toilet seat to make use of the toilet, grateful for the last scrap of toilet paper, she lifted it back to its original, male-inspired position, trying to ignore the dried pale yellow droplets of urine decorating the rim. She washed her face with a thinned bar of soap, brownish colored and smelling of sandalwood, summoning a feeble lather by rubbing it between her hands, and dried it with the one towel available, tattered and musty. His Mason Pearson hairbrush was the only sign of luxury, and she used it to tame her hair, noticing in the small mirror above the sink that her face contained a subtle flush, a glow that came only after sex.
She watched herself, peering closer, vain and highly self-critical. The deepened shadows under her eyes heightened her beauty, accentuating the raw, sad features of her face, but the light hummed with a fluorescent, institutional tint, accentuating her flaws: a trio of newly formed pimples at her chin (probably from the rubbings of Charlie’s stubble), and creases at her eyes that she hadn’t noticed before—more wrinkles!
The skin on the undersides of her breasts stung. She’d used tape to hold them in Brenda’s low-cut, swooping dress. She saw the curled ball of evidence, like some massive tangled spider, in the wastebasket.
Charlie hadn’t been patient with the dress (she remembered a ripping noise), and then he’d looked confounded upon seeing her breasts in their taped state; in their passion, she’d allowed him to pull off the adhesive, enjoying the sensual clench of pain, the throbbing aftermath. Had she been in a more practical state, she would have used warm, soapy water to dislodge the tape.
Along with the curled ball of tape, she saw a wrinkled, translucent condom stuck to the side of the trash can like a parasite. She knew there was one more condom somewhere amid the rubbish, imagining Charlie throwing the items away before he’d left, in the hopes of her not having to consider them.
After glancing behind the faded blue plastic shower curtain, taking quick note of the inadequate showerhead, the mildewed tile, the lone corkscrew pubic hair by the rusty drain, and the Pert Plus combination shampoo and conditioner, she decided against a shower. Checking his medicine cabinet, she found shaving equipment, Advil, an old yellowing tube of Neosporin, and an ancient box of Band-Aids. There was no lotion.
She fingered her breasts, observing the damage—pink crescentshaped abrasions. After checking for an expiration date (3/1995), she rubbed Neosporin on the skin, experiencing instantaneous relief.
All these actions were done with a necessity and without much consideration to her situation.
But as she opened Charlie’s dresser, selected a T-shirt, and pulled it on, she understood that she would pay for what had happened. Grandma Eileen believed in virginity before marriage (impossible), thereafter unvarying monogamy until death. Men were allowed to indulge in sex, but for women (unless, like Brenda, you already had unshakable power and social standing), sex was a grave affair, a sign of morality and worth.
Esther’s remorse was so great that for a moment she mistook it for heartbreak over Paul. But then she remembered his shaking hands, his close examination of his fingertips after using them to rub near his ears, the pink dents at the sides of his nose when he removed his sunglasses, and his flickering, lizardlike tongue whenever they kissed.
She lay back in Charlie’s bed, her head against his pillow. He was near, even in his absence—she could taste him, smell him, feel him. She closed her eyes to it, pressed her hand at her stomach.
The prelude—the touching and kissing—was within her control. But not sex. She went over what had happened:
He’d whispered something in her ear as he’d moved inside her, something that had sounded vaguely like “I want you, I want you,” or “I love you, I love you,” or some such combination.
“I love you, I want you, I love you, I want you . . .” and his murmurings had heightened her pleasure (as remembering was pleasuring her now, a warm wetness deepening between her legs), had caused her to make similar murmurings, their breathing and commentaries becoming oddly synchronized. But she didn’t want to admit what she’d said back to him just now.
And then there was the crying. Any woman could cry, and she prided herself on not using such blatant tactics.
She was not a crier, but something had released, a space that she’d sealed off, a clean, bright pain. And like a released genie, there was no way to get it back in its bottle.
After recovering his breath, Charlie had placed his hand on her hip. She could barely see his face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
A sense of desolation, of unending loss, tears dropping from her chin. Her body spent, empty, evaporated. She shifted, turned from him.
And what had surprised her the most: At the base—underneath everything—had been something childlike and tender.
She didn’t think it appropriate to have a spiritual awakening as a result of sexual intercourse, and she was half-ashamed, half-astounded by what she’d felt. She didn’t like being out of control, and she was ambivalent that Charlie had been the one to make her feel that way.
Not wanting to remember additional details (and that was just the first time; she hadn’t even broached the second, maybe an hour later—tender, half-awake, rocking together), she surveyed his studio apartment.
A floor-to-ceiling bookcase dominated the room, taking a full wall. She could see the kitchen, with its medium-size refrigerator. The apartment was one big room, only his closet and bathroom separated by doors.
The furniture was selected haphazardly, as if to get it over with: bed, sofa, chair, dining table, desk. Posters of Winslow Homer seascapes—a lighthouse, a lone sailboat—in plastic frames. A triptych of photographs was above his desk, documenting the golf swing of Ben Hogan. And there was a photographic portrait in profile of an unattractive man with a spindly mustache and kinked hair (he’d told her that the man’s name was Ezra Pound).
Books were stacked on the floor, against the walls—excess from the bookcase. The thought and attention he’d neglected to give to interior decoration, he had obviously spent on the acquisition of books.
He’d told her that most people read to have their ideas confirmed, that deviations unsettled and annoyed them, but that he read for all kinds of reasons. Next to the bed was a paperback of Homer’s The Odyssey. Of course she’d heard of the book, but she’d never met anyone who had actually read it. She wondered if Charlie kept it there to impress people. But she knew that was impossible. If he wanted to impress people, he needed to get a better apartment.
She opened the book, careful not to displace the bookmark, and tried to read—but by the second sentence (“Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds . . .”), she gave up.
She’d always been fascinated by books, as if they contained a secret knowledge, but she was a painfully slow reader. And no one she knew actually read books, except for her father. But even he hadn’t read that much, besides his magazines and newspapers. Grandma Eileen had said that the only book worth reading was the Bible. Even the Bible was like The Odyssey, written for someone else.
Aunt Lottie and Mary belonged to a reading group, but they were only trying to show off. The group met once a month, and they usually argued over what to feed the ladies. Was reading a luxury or a chore? It confused her.
Yet she believed that she might’ve been a reader had other things not sidetracked her: if she’d had the opportunity to stay in college, if her father hadn’t gotten so sick, and if she hadn’t been intimidated. She’d read some of the classics: The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, The Call of the Wild, and, well, she couldn’t remember what else. In fact, she couldn’t even remember what those books had been about—just a vague recollection that, at the time, they’d maintained her interest.
Beside the front door was a wooden vase with a bouquet of hi
deous, stiff, brown fake flowers. Worse was a pelican lamp on his bedside dresser with a yellow lampshade; the pelican was made from seashells, hardened on with paste. She saw that he had folded Brenda’s dress across the back of a chair. The dress had a rip at the front, and she knew that Brenda would make her pay for it.
Esther had left in Charlie’s Honda; Grandma Eileen’s BMW was still parked at Brenda’s.
Had he slept with Brenda in this same bed? Charlie had gained more from women than he’d lost, a perpetual bachelor. And no wonder. He knew how to please women. God—his thumb on her clitoris, his fingers inside her.
Brenda would have thought of herself as slumming, enjoying the cottage-cheese ceiling. Esther remembered Brenda’s warning stare, but she’d left with Charlie anyway. It had all happened quickly: Charlie insisting that Nora would understand; they’d taken separate cars for that purpose.
“It’s not a date,” he’d said, echoing Nora’s earlier admission, and he’d left Esther’s side to let Nora know, returning with an urgency, as if Esther might have changed her mind in the interval.
On their way out the front door, Brenda had silently watched Charlie pass, stopping Esther with a hand to her shoulder.
Esther had been triumphant pulling away from Brenda’s grip—a look passing between them—and she’d continued walking. (She’d relived it a number of times, for the pleasure: grip, turn, stare, release, and freedom.)
She saw from Charlie’s alarm clock that it was past 10:00. Grandma Eileen had probably already used her cane to rap on Esther’s bedroom door, giving her one last chance to get ready for church. Aunt Lottie, Mary, and Grandma Eileen were most likely discussing her absence. She imagined their conversation, Mary and Aunt Lottie making sure Grandma Eileen was aware that she—Esther—was letting her down:
She should know better.
And to think of all you’ve done for her.
She’s taking advantage of your kindness.
The one thing that gave her solace was that Grandma Eileen didn’t care what they thought, and made her judgments on her own.
A tapping at the front door made her sit up and wrap the sheets and blanket around her. The doorbell rang. More tapping. And then she heard the front door creaking open. “Charlie?” came a voice. “Charlie, it’s not raining! Come on!”
And then Nora, wearing a nylon tracksuit, was in the doorway. Esther was used to adapting, becoming the person that the situation required her to be, but with Nora she was at a loss. A faint twinge of guilt lingered around her, as she intuited that Nora was in love with Charlie.
“We jog every Sunday,” Nora said, at the same time as Esther spoke: “He’s not here.” And then Nora’s gaze fell to the floor.
“I’ll tell him you stopped by,” Esther said.
“Don’t bother.” Nora looked past Esther, to the kitchen. Esther was embarrassed for her, more so than for herself, because Nora couldn’t even look at her. She seemed to be under a painful amount of strain, her face coloring.
And without saying anything, Nora went to the kitchen. It was obvious that she was familiar with Charlie’s apartment, opening a cupboard and reaching for a glass, and then filling it with water, her thin face overloaded with her eyes, nose, and mouth—making her strangely vulnerable.
Esther wanted to say something that would appease her. She wanted to allay the barrier between them. But it didn’t matter, because Nora drank her water and, without looking at her again, left.
ONE DAY PASSED, two, raining heavily, smacking against the windows, thick black clouds in the day, visible through the curtains; there were pauses of nothing, then showers of rain, sounding like fingertips tapping against the glass, and when Esther looked out the window, rainwater was streaming from the gutters, soaking the grass, running down the street.
Charlie had come home with groceries: toilet paper, a toothbrush, eggs, milk, orange juice, lotion, cold cuts, crackers, cheeses, olives—making sure they had provisions—and she’d used his shower and his Pert Plus shampoo-conditioner and it wasn’t that bad, although she wouldn’t want to live like that.
But what had helped change everything and convinced her to stay was when he’d pulled the can of lychees from a paper sack, and then a bag of sugar, a bottle of Cointreau, Skyy vodka, and a lemon.
“I’m going to make you a lychee martini,” he said.
She watched him heat the sugar and water in a small saucepan, and then pour it into a bowl. “Who needs Shark Island?” he said, reading from a pocket-size cocktail book; she could tell he was nervous. “I’ll show you a martini.”
Absorbed in the preparation, when his cocktail book fell to the floor, he looked up, startled, and frowned.
He shook the ingredients in two large glasses, and liquid spilled. All he had were regular glasses, and they sipped at the thick and unpleasant drink and laughed. Then he pulled off the T-shirt she was wearing. “What’s it like being a professor?” she asked, watching him watch his thumb press against her nipple.
“Mechanic, professor, president of the United States, whatever,” he said, his mouth at her neck, words hot against her skin. “We’re all the same.”
He pulled the sheets and blanket over their bodies, creating a cocoon. He showed her how to touch him, using his hand over hers. And when he came, it created a splotch on the sheet. She didn’t know how she liked to be touched, so they spent time figuring that out. She felt a shuddering orgasm, his fingers sliding back and forth inside her. He wanted to put his mouth on her and make her come again. Her face flushed, and she agreed to let him. Her head left the cocoon and she stared around the room, her body floating past the walls, dresser, and window, while he stayed underneath. Unable to stay in her skin, she asked him to stop.
Afterward, they ate potato chips and drank large glasses of milk. He asked her about Grandma Eileen. She told him about how Grandma Eileen had gotten mad at her new son-in-law, George Famous, for leaving a poop smear in a toilet after flushing one of his larger bowel movements. “Now he’s not allowed to use her toilets.” His eyes widened, and then he laughed, hand at his forehead.
She asked about his family. He reminded her that he was the youngest of three, and that, thanks to his siblings, he didn’t have as much pressure to please his parents, since the older kids had already achieved so much.
“What’s your brother like?” she asked.
“Frank’s older, he went to USC, played football, business major. Same with my sister, Karen—not the football, but a business major.”
“What about you?”
“Yes,” he said. “USC, although I wasn’t a business major, didn’t play football, and I wanted to go somewhere else; I just knew it would break Dad’s heart. But then, I suppose I’ve hurt him in other ways, the way I wouldn’t . . .” He didn’t finish his sentence, his voice trailing off. She decided not to ask him more questions about his family.
“What about your father?” he asked.
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “tell me anything.”
She told him about how her father used to leave her detailed notes on her pillow, complete with numerals and subtopics (A, B, C’s) within the numbered topics on her self-improvement, marital potential, and wardrobe, and how, although she’d pretended otherwise, it used to bother her that she needed so much constant upgrading.
“Like what?” he asked.
“God, I don’t know,” she said. “Everything: makeup tips, skin-cleansing diets, fashion advice, conversation starters, conversation fillers, how to be efficient with time, how to floss my teeth, avoid bad breath, avoid gas . . . um, what else?”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”
His apartment was dark, only a light from the bathroom—door cracked open, day and night blended in the frame of the window, an overcast uniformity. It seemed permissible, given the downpour, for Esther to exit her life and responsibilities: the overdue bills and Grandma Eileen’s waiting judgment; for Ch
arlie to call in sick to work; for Esther to call in sick to work; for them to stay inside and order in food and watch movies on his VCR that made a whining-whistling noise until Charlie smacked its side a couple of times. The rain and cold made her think about Eric, but she forced her brother from her thoughts, remembering the cash she’d given him, and the jacket.
The way Charlie looked at her made her feel like she was the only one—like he was acknowledging that he had never belonged to anyone else—but she also understood that her refuge was impermanent.
She wore his sweatpants, the waist rolled up to fit her, and his T-shirt; and he put Brenda’s dress in his closet so she didn’t have to look at it. The only mirror was the small one above the sink in his bathroom. She avoided it, purposely looking at the floor when she used the toilet or showered.
Their sex was frequent and tender. Those first two times had made her more cautious, and Charlie obliged her, sticking to traditional positions, nothing too wild. She felt contentment, as if in a dream. An unusual state for her, and even more poignant because of its rarity. But there were spasms of grief at the anticipated end, the fleetingness.
Not once did they speak about their future. The closest was when he said, “Women crave the illusion of security that comes from marriage, since women are treated like objects, but that’s just what it is—an illusion.”
And then he told her that marriage was an archaic and patriarchal institution, and that the only way a marriage could be happy was if both parties agreed not to get much happiness from it. “The minute you make love a duty,” he said, “you kill the principle behind it.”
“What does ‘archaic’ mean?” she asked. He told her.
“What does ‘patriarchal’ mean?”
He took his time explaining, making sure she understood, even pulling out a dictionary.
She’d always known that business, society, government, families were dominated and controlled for the most part by men—she didn’t need a fancy word to tell her that men had more power than women.
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