Shar’s eyes swivelled up from her ministrations. “I love doing this.”
“I’m dizzy. My body is not used to experiencing so much pleasure.”
“Tantra, baby. The spiral. Up and up. Just take a few slow, deep breaths. Pull some of that energy into the rest of your body.”
“I want to do it to you. It’s been so long since I’ve…done that.”
“Done what? Just say the words!”
“Gone down on a woman.”
“You mean it’s been so long since you’ve licked a woman’s clit and made her come in your mouth? So it won’t be your first time, then?”
“No.” Eliza smiled, almost demure.
“Ah! So you have a tantalizing story to tell me about your past!”
“Maybe later.” Eliza sat up and grabbed Shar’s ass, trying to haul her up. “I can’t talk with my mouth full.”
“Oh, yes, please,” said Shar. She crawled panther-like over Eliza’s body, already spreading her legs.
20
What Ecstasy?
THE NEXT MORNING, ELIZA LOCKED THE BATHROOM door and stood naked in front of the mirror. She was disappointed. Bang your shin, you get a bruise; make a mistake with a razor, you bleed for an hour. But ecstasy just vanishes.
Desire was all-consuming, all-encompassing, a ravenous god. And invisible. Was it invisible? She stepped closer to the mirror and examined her hips and her breasts for bruises. Reflected around her naked flesh was the glass-filled room, turquoise towels, opaque white glass tiles. She saw nothing but Shar’s hands on her. She had remained in bed, eyes closed, until Andrew had got up and gone downstairs.
Well, adulterous lesbian sex looked good on her. Despite three hours of sleep, she was glowing. Seeing herself naked made her feel how swollen and chafed and hungry she still was. She wanted to lie down on the cold marble floor and masturbate. Not that it would be the same as last night. Nothing could be the same as last night. Last night had gone on for too long. If she hadn’t had to leave, she would still be there: a terrible fact. The guilt lay down in her alongside the lust.
Naked, breasts covered in fingerprints, she cleaned furiously. Andrew had left the entire contents of his electric razor in the porcelain sink. She did not curse him. She poured out Mother Hubbard’s Organic Cleanser (no harsh chemicals for her family, nothing toxic in her hallowed home) and swished away his gold and copper and grey stubble. To the tears that pricked her eyes, she muttered, “Oh, fuck right off.”
She let the shower run hot, then stepped into the glass cubicle. Just as she was washing the DNA evidence away, Jake stuck his head through the door. Under the noise of the water, she saw his mouth form the word that she could not hear him say: Mommy?
She opened the glass shower door. “What is it?” She tried to keep the impatience out of her voice.
“Daddy says my hair smells like dead dog. He says to take a bath with you.” Jake stepped into the room and pushed down his pyjamas pants.
She sighed. Jake asked, “Are you mad at me?”
Why did Andrew do that? “No. It’s okay. I’m just in a rush. And I’m not taking a bath, as you can see.” He stepped into the shower. Self-conscious, she folded her forearms over her breasts before leaning over to sniff his dog-head. He’s only six, she thought. There was nothing for him to see or smell. But she always wondered what Jake could feel. “Honey, I disagree with your dad. It’s not dead dog, not yet.”
“So I don’t have to wash my hair?” He pressed up close against her body, then turned and elbowed her belly as he angled for a greater portion of spray.
“You do have to wash your hair, now that you’re in here hogging the water.”
They washed together. After he rinsed the shampoo from his hair, he stood away from the hot water and eyed Eliza. Critically, she noticed, waiting for whatever was rising in his mind to lift out of his mouth. And there it came, less like a speech bubble in a cartoon than a bubble clotting inside a vein, disrupting the rhythm of her heart.
“Mommy, you don’t have to scrub so hard. You’re not that dirty.”
—
By the time they went downstairs, blow-dried and dressed, it was already after eight. She braced herself before entering the kitchen; Andrew would be there. She exhaled a long controlled breath, then gasped, going in.
But he wasn’t at the table; he wasn’t by the island. “Where’s Dad?”
Marcus’s eyes remained glued to the iPad screen. “Second floor. Office.” She’d glanced at the office door at the end of the hallway on the second floor, but the light was off.
“Have you had breakfast, Jake?” They needed to be out the door by eight thirty to get to school on time.
Marcus piped up, “He wouldn’t eat the quinoa crunch. Dad got mad at him.” He held the edges of the iPad as if it were the yoke of a small plane; he was shooting enemy targets.
“Marcus, I wasn’t talking to you. Jake, what do you want for breakfast?”
“Cereal.”
“Cornflakes?”
“Anything except for that healthy stuff.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to feed the quinoa crunch to the birds.” She poured Monsanto-engineered cornflakes into a bowl and splashed in some milk.
Still swerving in his seat, not looking up from his mission, Marcus said, “Dad already tried that. Even the birds won’t eat it.”
“Have you brushed your teeth, honey?” He launched a missile at an enemy target. It was a hit; the explosion was too loud for a seven-year-old on a Monday morning. “Can you please turn that thing off and go and brush your teeth? How long have you been on there anyway?”
Through a mouthful of cornflakes, Jake said, “Since he got up. And he won’t let me have a turn.”
“I did so let you have a turn, you liar!” The boys started arguing. The word liar reverberated in Eliza’s head. She marooned herself at the far end of the island and chewed on a piece of cold toast, sipped at a glass of water. It’s all I deserve, she thought. Bread and water. She glanced toward the staircase. What was Andrew doing in his office? Online, sending his mother most of his salary, probably. Good, it would keep him occupied. She might be able to leave without seeing him.
The fight was escalating.
“Enough, you two! Jake, eat your breakfast.” She stalked over to Marcus. “You have three seconds to give the iPad to me. Turn it off.” He swore under his breath. “What did you say?”
“Flowers.” He smiled at her mockingly.
Jake crowed, “He said fuck!”
For the first time since Eliza had come down the stairs, Marcus looked up from the iPad long enough to shoot his sibling a look of disgust. “Stop being such a tattletale!”
“One…”
“Jake said a swear word, too!”
“Two…” Jake took his bowl to the counter and walked by Eliza, sticking his tongue out at Marcus, who turned the iPad sideways and blasted out another shot.
“Three! Right now, Marcus. Otherwise there will be no screen time tonight.”
Marcus sneered in protest but snapped the cover shut and shoved the iPad toward her.
From the third floor—he must have left the office and gone up to their bedroom again—Andrew yelled, “Do you know where my blue shirt is? That nice Italian one?” She swore under her breath more quietly than her son had.
“Hurry up, boys,” she said. “We have to go.”
She went to the base of the stairs and called, “I took it to the dry cleaner’s, remember?” He did not remember; he never did. The boys filed into the downstairs bathroom and began brushing their teeth. An essential act of wifedom, she thought: shouting from a distance about other people’s clothes. “Okay, guys, boots, coats. Jake, where are your mittens?” She remained at the base of the stairs, pure-hearted, deceitful, and desperate to get out the door heard but unseen. “Darling, we’re off! I’m taking the boys to school!” To the boys, “Say goodbye to Daddy.”
“Bye, Dad,” shouted Marcus, gruffly, and left the house
. Jake trundled past her, boots on, and called, “Daddy, I love you so much!”
“I love you, too, Jacob! Have a great day!”
“I’ll be careful, Daddy!”
“I know, Jacob! Don’t you worry! You’ll have a great day!”
Eliza wondered what he’d been worried about, but forgot to ask him in the final push to get out the door. All the way to school, the boys fought verbally, sparred physically, swore covertly when they raced ahead of her, complained when they trailed behind, and kicked slush at each other. One dirty plume missed Jake and caught her silk-and-wool trouser-leg instead. She hissed at them, flapped her arms. She couldn’t get them to school soon enough.
Which turned out to be literally true. They were late. Mother and sons stood at the locked playground doors, peering in the windows. “This is what happens when you’re distracted in the morning. You have to go to the office.” She pulled on the door again, uselessly. “No one’s going to open for us. Come on, we have to go all the way around to the front.”
Jake said, “Mommy, it’s good the school is locked. Because if it was open, the bad man could walk in and shoot us.”
“What? What are you talking about?” She glared at the back of Marcus’s head. “Were you watching some horrible zombie video this morning?”
Marcus glanced over his shoulder at his brother. “You weren’t supposed to tell her.”
“Tell me what? Jake, don’t walk through that puddle!” He sloshed directly through it. “Tell me what?”
“Daddy was listening to the news this morning.”
“And?”
“There was a big shooting.”
“In the U.S.?” Or had the gun virus migrated? Was it here now, too? She gazed at the windows of the school, dark with reflection; it was impossible to see the children inside.
“He got the gun,” Marcus began in an eerily adult voice, but Jake broke in boisterously, “From Walmart!” Marcus continued, still formal, “It just happened a couple hours ago. A man shot fourteen children. They were at school early for a volleyball practice. Daddy said ‘fuck’ and turned off the radio.”
The hair on the back of Eliza’s neck stood up; her stomach flipped. She could not know what destabilized her more in that moment: the tragedy of the news itself or the cool, oddly mature voice of her seven-year-old relaying it to her. Some noise escaped her; she stopped walking. Didn’t you have to stop? How could you keep walking? She forgot about the silk-and-wool-blend slacks and dropped down, braced a knee on the sidewalk, opened her arms. “Come here. Let me give you each a hug. That’s such horrible news.” Hugging them, she teared up. She often told Andrew not to listen to the news at breakfast time; this was exactly the sort of thing she didn’t want the boys to hear. Yet they would hear about it at recess, or after school. The terrible world pressed up against their lives; they lived in the terrible world. She squeezed them to her, harder, until she could feel their shoulder blades through their coats. Marcus said, “Okay, Mom.” She let him go. He said, “Don’t cry.” She wiped the tears off her face and stood up. They kept walking along the sidewalk; Jake sloshed through the next slush puddle.
Marcus remained serious. “Dad said that it could have been worse. The man was going to hide in the school to kill more kids. He had lots and lots of bullets. Hundreds of them. He didn’t know about the volleyball practice. But a janitor caught him. He shot the janitor first, then he went to the gym.”
“Sweetie, we can talk about it later. Maybe we can talk about it at home, because it’s not a happy way to begin the day.” If she told them not to talk about it at school, it was the first thing they would bring up. They stood at the front doors now, which were also locked. Jake pushed the buzzer. With uncharacteristic patience, both boys stood there, waiting to be let inside. Locked doors and a goddamn buzzer! Her stomach twisted. As if some rampaging nutcase couldn’t just shoot his murderous way through in fifteen seconds. And the Americans, ah, the endlessly innovative, powerful Americans, and their fine gun lobby. A moment later, a different buzzer sounded, from inside; Marcus stepped forward to pull open the door. Normally Eliza would leave them as soon as the door opened, but this time she went to the office with them, signed her name, made sure they got their late slips, stamped with a turtle. The dark-haired secretary was chatty, smiling; she hadn’t heard the news yet. Eliza did not tell her.
The moment she stepped out of the school again, her phone rang. Work, Kiki. “Da main sink is blocked.” Again. A month ago, they spent $300 on an emergency plumber to unclog the sink. It didn’t have commercial-size pipes. “And I poured flower-ass water in dere dis morning, so it really stinks.” In crisis, her accent and her gift for hyperbole kicked into overdrive. “It stinks like dead bodies rotting in da cupboards.”
Eliza let go a dry sob, turned it into a cough. “Open all the doors and windows. Mrs. Minta is coming in this afternoon, and you know how difficult she is.”
“Dat woman! Bianca’s trying to air da place out already, so we are freezing in ’ere. We need da plumber!”
Eliza rushed down the street, hoping that the ice under the slush had melted. She couldn’t afford another fall. Think of those parents right now—no, don’t think of them—the pipes for that sink were non-commercial—the landlord had lied about that and still refused to change them—and Mrs. Minta was coming in. Stupid woman. Who, in the midst of so much ugliness, did not love flowers simply because they existed? Every day, I leave the kids at school, trusting they’ll be all right. She hurried across the street, undone, the trail of pleasure through her body lost. She had begun the day thinking, unbelievably, of ecstasy.
What ecstasy?
21
Day of Liberation
AFTER THE NEWS, ANDREW DECLARED THAT HE WAS peckish. “We should celebrate all these liberation protests in the Middle East. Come down and have a glass of wine with me.”
“Wine, at ten o’clock at night? That’s romantic,” she said, and gave him a come-hither smile. “But it will make me fat.”
As she stood up, he slapped her butt. “Good. You’re looking way too fit lately. All that swimming. Eat something!” He wanted to tell Eliza about his visit to the urologist; to do that, he needed to fortify her with food.
In the kitchen, while his wife put out cheese and crackers and sliced up an apple, Andrew opened a bottle of reasonably good red. They sat down on stools along the island, clinked glasses. “To liberation,” he said. She echoed his words with a smile. He added, “I’m not just talking about the Arab world.”
“Good. It should be an aspiration for the whole planet.”
“Actually, I’m toasting something closer to home. Much closer to home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had an appointment with the urologist today.”
She stared at him blankly.
Then fear, of cancer or some other illness, rose into her eyes. He quickly said, “Nothing disastrous. I went to discuss getting snipped.”
Her mouth opened; no word came out.
“We’ve been talking about a vasectomy since Jake was born. So I finally went and met the urologist. Just a preliminary appointment.” He decided not to reveal that he’d already booked a date for the procedure. It couldn’t happen until May. She would have plenty of time to adjust.
Eliza took a larger sip of wine and held it in her mouth for a few seconds. Swallowed. Then she said, “How could you do that to me?”
He laughed. Judging from the expression on her face, this was a mistake. “Come on. It makes sense. And nothing is going to happen to you.”
“It doesn’t make sense. What if…?”
Andrew reached across the cool stone counter and took her hand. “What if you wanted to have another baby? You have to face the facts, Eliza. I’m done having kids. And if I have a vasectomy, we would be free. We wouldn’t have to worry about an accidental pregnancy anymore. Sex would be a lot less stressful. In case you haven’t noticed, condoms are not working all that well for me th
ese days.”
“It’s not ‘what if I wanted another baby.’ I don’t want another one. I am managing the longings. No more babies.” He looked unconvinced. “Really. But what if you have the same pain that Sheila’s husband developed after his vasectomy?” She slid her hand away from his.
“Sheila’s husband had a vasectomy?” Andrew frowned. “Really?” Sheila’s husband Karl was a tall, athletic man—Andrew often saw him out running; running, not jogging—who wrote historical novels about his Norwegian ancestors. They were Andrew and Eliza’s neighbours to the south. Sheila was an English professor, and an author, too. “What pain? Karl didn’t mention anything to me.”
“How often do you see him?” Eliza asked in a withering tone. “At the neighbourhood barbecue once a year.”
Andrew ignored the jab. “At Janet’s, for Christmas drinks, remember?”
“Okay. Twice a year.”
“We always chat if we run into each other at Loblaw’s.”
Eliza shook her head. “He’s not going to tell you about the excruciating pain in his genitals at Loblaw’s. He was in agony. He had to get it reversed. And their sex life still isn’t back to normal.”
“When do you see Sheila?” Andrew asked, baffled by this surfeit of personal information about neighbours who were friendly but not close. When did women talk about all this stuff, anyway?
“At the pool. She swims too.”
“Why did he get a vasectomy?”
“Andrew! Don’t you remember the summer I was pregnant with Marcus?” He squinted. No. He did not remember. “I can’t believe that you could forget. She was pregnant with twins. And miscarried in month five. The babies died.”
“Oh, god, yes. Oh, yes. I remember now.”
“That’s why Karl got a vasectomy. Sheila never wanted to experience anything like it again. Don’t you remember how freaked out I was? We were in the middle of renovations and my ankles were swollen up like gourds. I was just past five months myself. How could you forget that?”
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