But she also believed that women had power over men, if they learned how to utilize it. Was there a word for that? Some women had an extra sense of perception: They tapped into men’s consciousness. She’d become so well trained that sometimes she couldn’t turn off her perception—and she felt it in other women. Women were taught to see underneath. Her business was in the daily underground of events—of mingling through the unseen. Was there a word for that?
She wanted to argue with him, believing that he was simplifying marriage. But she thought of all his books.
Besides, when she asked herself what she thought, she didn’t know. Did it bother her, this patriarchy? The word was thick and foreign. Did she feel that patriarchy was unjust? Was she angry about it?
It frightened her that she didn’t know. All her life, she’d simply digested the opinions and thoughts of others. And no one had ever asked her to think before, to have opinions, except at True Romance, regarding wardrobe.
Nora would have all kinds of opinions, and she would know how to express them. Nora had probably read as many books as Charlie.
A flare of jealousy rose up. But it died quickly as Esther thought of Nora in her nylon tracksuit. “Nora’s in love with you,” she said, to reinforce her advantage.
“We have a special relationship,” he said. “We’re close. We love each other—but it’s not like that.”
She shook her head, her hair swinging about her shoulders. “I know,” she said, “what’s going on with her.”
“You don’t,” he said, his face blank and innocent, and she understood that Charlie knew nothing about some things, even if he’d read ten thousand books.
2
CHARLIE AND ESTHER were in his bed with their backs propped against the headboard, watching number eighteen, The Bridge on the River Kwai. He’d made a list of his top twenty favorite movies, and then slowly acquired the videos. Next, he’d show her Fanny and Alexander, number four. Onscreen, the British prisoners were forming lines, feet stamping in the dirt as they marched and whistled. From his side vision, he watched the light from the television move on Esther’s face, and when it hit just right, he could see the way her eyelashes curled. His observations had a marked penetration and profundity, as if everything around her was alive and worshipful—the pelican lamp, the blanket, the plaster wall, the light flickering across her—and it was his responsibility to notice. Her face was attentive, in tune with the movie, but even more so with his reactions. He could feel her measure his responses.
His relationship with Brenda had been purely sexual. They’d even had sex with her leaned against her dryer, the rumble providing extra stimulation. During their last argument, he’d pointed out the hypocrisy of her loveless marriage, and she’d said, “You don’t get it, do you? You’re just a little boy, afraid to grow up.”
He believed that love created vulnerability. What he felt for Esther was sexual—but there was more to it. Already, with every moment that passed, he imagined that his own weaknesses were doing push-ups and sit-ups, gaining strength and momentum.
On the screen, William Holden, running from the guards, was shot. He fell, his tan body limp, off a cliff into the brown water of the river Kwai. Charlie wanted, in that second, to protect Esther; he wanted to protect William Holden; he even wanted to protect Brenda. He would have given his life to do so. But he felt weak, stupid, and insignificant.
And then Esther turned and smiled at him. A slow, sweet smile burrowing through him, hooking into his bowels. Her teeth glowed in the light and they looked wet. “You,” she said. Impulsively, he kissed her, violent and confused, his teeth clanking against hers. She was soft, her mouth was warm, and someone made a noise like a sigh—he wasn’t sure if it came from him.
He arranged himself over her, pushed against her, applying pressure to her crotch with his thigh. For a second, he lost control, he could see only black, and it was as if he were yelling with his body, screaming and crying, so he moved back.
Esther pulled off the shirt she was wearing—his shirt—and flung it aside; then she eased and slid the elastic of his sweatpants down her legs, shot them away with a foot. Even in the dark, he could see that her gaze was direct—sexually open and asking for him. He turned the TV off with the remote and then drew her down on the bed, kneeled before her, fingered and licked her, his nose burrowing into her pubic hair. He felt her body surrendering.
Excited and on the verge of discharge himself, he parted her thighs and entered her with the pleasure and beseeching he saw in her eyes. A tightening of resistance, and then he slid deeper, further.
Her eyes shone, widened and startled with his movements. Excited and amazed by her expressions, he closed his eyes, knowing if he continued to watch her face, everything might end sooner than he wanted.
The drizzle whispered against the glass of the window above them, and her breathing echoed it in whispery gasps.
“Oh, yes,” she said, moving with him. “Charlie, Charlie.”
He opened his eyes and saw her: rapt, eyelids half-closed, head slightly turned.
Heart thudding, he was seized momentarily with grief. Death was all around them. He’d known that death and sex were connected, but never had he felt the connection’s weight. The knowledge added to his pleasure in a morbid heightening of purpose.
He fell upon her, sucked at her neck. Oh. So good.
“Oh,” he said, “oh, oh.”
“Oh,” she responded, “oh, oh, oh.”
And he was pulled and gripped inside her, a releasing and trembling within him. Distantly, he reminded himself to pull out when he came, knowing that he wasn’t wearing a condom.
When it was over, she laughed happily, and so did he. He moved away, gave her room, turned on the pelican lamp. Their bodies were slick with each other. He took his T-shirt from the floor and wiped his semen from her stomach and leg.
“I love you inside me,” she said, flat on her back. Her breasts lolled generously at her sides, fat and pinkened, the nipples still hard.
He was worried that he might weep: big fat grateful tears all over her. He threw the T-shirt to the side of the bed.
She moved, on her side, supported herself with an elbow, and looked directly at him, her eyes shining. The sensation of death hadn’t left him, but it wasn’t as forceful—he felt it as a quiet nearness.
“Afterwards,” she said, “I still feel you.”
“You mean it hurts?”
She laughed, kindly, and he was momentarily embarrassed: Did she think he was worried about his size? She smiled slowly, abashed. “Well, sort of,” she said. “It’s just, you stay with me.”
Weak like a child, needy, he touched her shoulder. “Esther,” he said, to fill up a scared space inside him. He wanted to say more but was afraid of belittling the immensity of what he felt. She was looking at him, and he saw with relief that he didn’t have to say anything else.
“WHAT WE NEED to do,” Charlie said the third night, turning from the window where he’d been watching the rain flickering in the backdrop of the streetlights, “is get away.”
Esther sat on the sofa with her feet tucked beneath her.
“And I mean that metaphorically, not physically. It feels impossible, but it’s possible. It has to be.”
Charlie thought she looked particularly feminine. And she was beautiful, no doubt about it, even more so wearing his sweatpants and T-shirt, no makeup. A nakedness to her face—a rawness, small lines at the corners of her mouth, the beginning signs of age.
Rick had called earlier—a “family emergency,” he wasn’t “comfortable” disclosing any details over the phone—and he was on his way to pick Esther up. Beside her was a paper bag containing Brenda’s dress, shoes, and purse.
Agitated and confused, Charlie had limited time to figure out their future—which he had avoided discussing—before the outside world intruded.
“Hmm,” she said—but it sounded more like a question. She appeared visibly grave. He could barely stand
to look at her. The only way to contain his panic was by talking.
“We’re taught to neglect or exploit people in order to advance our own interests,” he said. What a crock of shit, he thought. There was a giant sob collecting at his throat. Don’t leave, he wanted to say.
“Even the ones we love,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He felt an unbearable tenderness—she looked so earnest.
“We’re being trained to become this thing we don’t want to become,” he said, “and if we try to escape, we’re going to be alienated and helpless.”
“Remember when you asked, ‘Who are you?’” she said, her fingers tracing the material of the couch.
He had to pull himself together. “I think so,” he said, racking his memories—he didn’t remember.
“Well, I don’t even know,” she said. Her fingers stopped tracing, and she looked him full in the face. “I don’t know.” She sounded a little shocked.
He rubbed his mouth with his hand.
“Now I think about it all the time,” she said, looking away. He was relieved when she faced him again, adjusting her legs and sitting up straight.
“We have to acknowledge where we come from,” he said, “but develop beyond it.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Not only that, but the ruthlessness of cutting ourselves off from the world, the men and women who are below us on the social ladder. We’ve become socialized into a form of power. To take it for granted.”
Standing before her with his hands in his pockets, he could see that she was taking all he had said into consideration.
“And what I really can’t stand,” he said, “is when I hear people—okay, my dad—talking about how the poor have just as much opportunity. How bad affirmative action is. Excuse me, but fuck that!”
“What does he say?”
“He talks about how the poor need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and take advantage of the opportunities afforded to every American,” he said. He couldn’t believe he was bringing his dad into the conversation. It was familiar territory—too easy.
“What he’s doing,” he said, “is blaming the poor for not being strong enough, smart enough. So they get the credit: They’re rich and powerful because they’re inherently better, you see, not because of social conditioning or accidental birthright. And then we can, you know, we can blame other people—others get to be blamed for turning into criminals or not fulfilling some American potential—for not being as great.”
What was it about her? He couldn’t decide which feature it was that made her so beautiful, one standing out beyond the others, then another and another. Or the combination.
He thought of her sitting in his bed, a towel turbaned around her head, another covering her body, back bent, reading a book. She’d been thumbing through his books—Henry Miller, Sigmund Freud, Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, an old copy of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, a paperback of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Her lips moved when she read and it saddened him; at the same time, he found it endearing, as if she were a little kid. She had a private look even when she smiled or laughed, as if she were allowing him to see into her. He felt a pain where his heart was.
“Let’s take the women at Clothing for Change,” he said. He would give her a solid example. He and Nora had spoken extensively about her clients.
But even as he spoke, he had the sensation that his liberal views were a luxury. If Nora were here, she would call him on it. You have to live your radical views, she would say. Otherwise, they’re just entertainment. He expunged Nora from his thoughts, but sadness continued to gnaw at his heart.
“The women at Clothing for Change,” he said, “have to be grateful for our handouts. They become a part of the agreement to hide the reality—that having access or benefiting in any way from those in power means having to hide these inequalities and incongruities. The women are asked to be passively grateful, and to hide the loose ends of how they got to where they were in positions of need.”
She nodded, prompting him to continue.
“The wealthy have a horror, you see, of being exposed to the sights and smells and realities of disadvantage—to the people—to these people’s being the same, essentially.” With a small shock, he realized that he was repeating Nora, verbatim.
“Because then,” he said, “they would have to acknowledge their dependence on those beneath them to continue the illusion, and, even worse, their own proximity to an accidental life of servitude.”
“Sounds like my life,” she said.
He walked to the sofa and sat, facing her. Her family life was like one of those appalling Vanity Fair articles, a self-righteous and voyeuristic entrée, explicitly chronicling the moral cowardice of wealthy families.
Comparatively, his family was placid, accepting. It would be easier not to get involved in her problems, but he was elated and tense. Being with Esther was a wonderful and crazy thing.
As if reading his thoughts, she said, “Being with you, it’s like I’m coming out of a long sleep.” An unbearable sadness seemed to come over her, and he wanted to look away because it frightened him.
“I remember,” she said, “when the nurses would make my father rate his pain on a scale of one to ten, he would always say eleven. No matter what, he’d say eleven.”
“Why?”
“Because that way,” she said, “they might actually do something about it.” He had the sense that he was mistakenly giving her the impression that he understood what she was trying to tell him.
She paused, her forehead wrinkling. “I’m ready to separate: from my family, from Newport.”
The air was electric, like a slap on the face.
“When I told my dad,” he said, “that I wasn’t interested in his business, I was scared, of course. I couldn’t put my heart and soul into it. And when I told him, I was doing what I needed to do. The whole family was mad. They were all disappointed. My dad tried to talk me out of it for months. But I was firm. And you know what? The whole time, I was afraid. I was afraid but I was alive.”
“I feel that way now,” she said.
Without looking away from her face, he took her hand. He was surprised to see a miniscule booger at the hole of her nostril, latched at the end of a hair, and he watched it flicker with her breath.
In order not to look at it anymore, he kissed her, and she opened her mouth, drew his tongue into her. His tongue wavered inside her, in the shapeless wet space, and when he pulled back, he missed the lost feeling. He went back for more.
The next time he pulled away, to regain his composure and breathing, her face looked blurred, her mouth a gash, and there was a visible sadness—an aura—that continued to surround her. He was drawn back again, preferring to be lost.
He glided the back of his hand across the slope of her left breast, pausing at the imprint of her nipple against his shirt, then down the right. He felt the appreciation in her body, a release of pressure inside her, and he realized that this was what he should continue doing: keep touching her, keep kissing her. Don’t stop.
3
RICK’S BANGS WERE angled at his forehead, his expression foreboding, lips slightly pursed. His sweatshirt had blue cursive lettering at the front: LOOK BETTER NAKED. Esther wondered what it meant, but this wasn’t the time to ask. Grandma Eileen’s Mercedes’ windows were fogging, and he turned the key to start the engine, pressed a button to defrost the windows. Drizzle sparkled across the windshield, wipers swiping it, and sparkled again.
“Oh, sister,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know about this.” He looked down at her bare feet and the paper bag with Brenda’s things and shook his head some more.
Esther numbed her way back to reality, estimating how much damage she could possibly have incurred from her two-day, three-night absence. Disappointment and resignation fought for priority, but she had Charlie with her—he was in her pores. The rain made steady taps against th
e Mercedes, and there were halos of fog and sprinkles around the streetlights. Her feet were cold and wet, and she realized what she must look like, wearing Charlie’s sweatpants and T-shirt, no bra.
Rick didn’t speak as he pulled the Mercedes away from the curb outside Charlie’s apartment, the headlights glowing in the light rain, the wipers whirring in the background. He made an abrupt turn, taking them in the direction of Santa Ana. He drove past the bus stop near Winchell’s, where she saw her brother’s figure sleeping underneath a clear plastic tarp.
Rick didn’t say anything, but she understood that he’d brought Eric the tarp. She pressed her cheek against the cold glass of her window. Streets, buildings, and lights rolled past, glistening and wet, and she floated through the passing scenery, separate, belonging to no one.
Her breath clouded the glass, muffling her view. They drove for twenty minutes or more, and she wanted the drive to continue, but Rick pulled up next to the curb, with a view of the ocean, and stopped the engine. He kept the key turned for heat. The ocean and sky were black, lights blinking from the bell buoys and boats, the windshield speckling with rain. Beyond the hum of the heater, she could just barely hear the murmur of waves.
“You’d better thank your lucky stars,” Rick said, rubbing his hands across his thighs, as if wiping perspiration, “that Grandma Eileen didn’t die.”
Panic and exhilaration rolled through her. She couldn’t help but be excited by the idea.
“Captain Ahab,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve been feeding him; she told me to stop, but I kept feeding him.”
She’d purposely forgotten about the cat; his name caused all her worries and responsibilities, all the waiting bills, to resurface, colliding in one worrisome thrust at her chest.
Rick duplicated Grandma Eileen’s throaty voice: “‘Don’t take care of him. Let him starve.’” He coughed into his fist. “She was already mad,” he said, “because Brenda had her BMW towed, and we got the phone call from Harbor Towing. Brenda must really hate you, to have the BMW towed.”
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