Genevieve

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  “Guess I’m feeling incompetent.”

  My vulnerable moment rests between us, staring at her, then at me.

  She sighs. “It wasn’t a big one, but I had an orgasm.”

  “But you don’t come all the time.”

  “What is this about, my orgasms?”

  I take a breath. “Maybe… maybe this isn’t about you coming.”

  “What’s the issue?”

  I swallow. “Remember the movie The Lover?”

  “What?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Yes. Another movie with a wretched pedophile.”

  “He wasn’t a pedophile.”

  “She was a young girl and he was a grown man.”

  “I’m talking about the love he felt for her, the love she felt for him.”

  “Why are you talking about that movie right now?”

  “At the end when he calls her and tells her that he still loved her, tells her that he would love her until his death… do you feel that way about me? About us?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I think, and what word comes to mind is strange. Equinox. I want to ask her if we have a sexual equinox, or if we will continue to be as different as night and day. That seems shallow.

  Instead I ask what makes sense. “Are you happy?”

  “What?”

  I tell her, “I’m asking about our marriage as a whole.”

  “All because of an orgasm?”

  Despite the fact that she adopts a forward attitude when confronted, I firm my voice and press through her barriers, let her know I am the man in this bed, say, “Answer the question.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  “No, answer.”

  “If you’re asking me if you satisfy me, that means that I’m not satisfying you.”

  I snap, “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t do that reverse-psychology bullshit.”

  Silence.

  She whispers, “I’m here to bury a relative.”

  “Talk to me. Tell me… tell me something.”

  “Please. Don’t do this to me. Please? I have enough grief and stress as it is. If you’re going to become a burden, if you’re going to badger me, go back to the airport.”

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? If I went back home. What are you afraid of?”

  Silence.

  I get close, smell her hair, then ask, “Where did you vanish to?”

  She pulls away, knows what I’m asking. About her habit of vanishing to set fire to an herbal shrub. She struggles with herself, then says, “Stop sniffing me like you’re a damn dog.”

  “I hope you didn’t bring any of that bullshit on the plane.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  I shift around. “It was code orange today. See how they were searching people? They were searching eighty-year-old white women, making them take off their orthopedic shoes.”

  “Do I smell like I’ve been getting high?” she snaps. “Do I?”

  “Last thing we need is to get pulled to the side, get busted and treated like terrorists. Something foolish like that could be damaging to our careers.” Then I lighten my stiff tone. “Or worse, we could get banned from the airlines and have to ride Greyhound next time.”

  “Last time, get off my case.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I went to cry. I needed some space and I went down to the lobby, couldn’t find anywhere to go, so I went into the library, found a corner, and I cried. Is that okay?”

  Her shattered tone rocks me. Makes me feel distant to her emotions. I’ve never seen her cry. I wish she did not sequester herself with her sadness, wish she threw her arms around me and let me dry her tears. But she cries, evokes sadness under her own terms.

  Just like that I feel bad for thinking her to be so stolid. Things affect her but she’s not good at expressing them, not like I am. I wear my heart on open display.

  I feel shallow for bringing up that issue when the air has been seasoned with death.

  I remind myself of what I already know. Of what I have read. Of how Plato described loving the beautiful soul, that which is unseen. It might start off with the physical, but under the influence of true love, we are drawn nearer to the vast sea of beauty until at last we perceive beauty itself, not existing in any being, but beauty alone, absolute, simple, and everlasting.

  We become the friends of God. To that consummation we are led by love.

  I remind myself that I am flawed. That Genevieve is beautiful.

  I love her.

  I whisper, “Sometimes I just want to get lost in you. But it feels like you’re guarded. Like I’ve told you before, you’re on the other side of a very clean, very sterile glass wall.”

  “You say that like I’m… like I’m in a goddamn prison.”

  “Exactly. Only it’s not Plexiglas. Glass so clear that I can’t tell it’s there until I reach out to you, not until then do I feel how thick it is, not until then does it get in the way.”

  “So that’s how you see me.”

  “I know you’re there, but I just can’t get to you. And it hurts running into glass.”

  Silence.

  She asks, “So you’re trying to say that you think I have a sexual dysfunction?”

  “All I know is that I get rejected a lot. If I didn’t jack off, I’d have blue balls. If you have hypoactive sexual disorder-syndrome, Intrinsa refuels sexual desire.”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  “You should be at your peak. Don’t you think your desire level is low?”

  “No.”

  “Then maybe I just don’t do it for you.”

  “And if I did have hypo-what-the-hell-ever it was, I’m not poisoning my body with pills that cause acne and weight gain, not to mention liver damage. Would that make you happy? Having a fat, horny wife with horrible skin and a bad liver?”

  Regret makes me shift. I rub my temples. I try not to, but set free an aggravated sigh.

  She asks, “Would it? Is that what it would take to make you happy?”

  I don’t answer that ringing bell. Leaving her question unanswered irritates her.

  I say, “Good night, Genevieve.”

  She sits up and snaps, “Maybe the problem isn’t me.”

  “What are you saying, it’s me?”

  “Maybe you need to stop looking out the window and look in the mirror.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Maybe I’m not hypo, you’re just hyper. Maybe you need to take saltpeter.”

  “Saltpeter?”

  “What they give men in prison to reduce their desire to fuck each other in the ass.”

  “Saltpeter is not an anaphrodisiac. It’s a reagent in analytical chemistry.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Get your facts straight, Doc.”

  “ What-the-fuck-ever.”

  “And if it is, maybe that’s what you need to take out of your diet.”

  Silence.

  She lies down, back to me.

  She whispers, “You were abused. That’s why you are the way you are.”

  “Abused? What are you talking about?”

  She repeats, “You were abused as a child.”

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “A thirty-year-old woman took your virginity, stole your innocence. She was a predator. A pedophile. She took you to the mall and bought you presents, treated you kind, but in the end there was sex. If she had done all those things without sex, she still would be questionable.”

  I sit up, stare at her silhouette. “Where did this come from?”

  “Maybe that’s where your addiction, your satyriasis, your behavior stems from.”

  “Addiction? What addiction?”

  “That sexual addiction you have stems from you romanticizing and glowing over being abused by a sexual predator, having all types of illicit sex with a damn pedophile.”

  “Pedophile?”r />
  “That’s why you worship movies like Lolita and The Lover, films that praise sexual deviants.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Am I lying? Oh, I’m sorry. Since it was dick getting pussy there was no crime.”

  “Where is all of this coming from?”

  “If you had a thirteen-year-old daughter and a thirty-year-old man was buying her presents, seducing her, having sex with her, even if she called it love, what would you call it?”

  “You sit around reading grisly serial-killer-of-the-month novels and you want to chastise me? What does that say about you, somebody who sits around reading novels about killers?”

  She persists, “What would you call it? Love or statutory rape?”

  “Okay, Genevieve, where are you going with this?”

  “The sad thing is that you romanticize your exploitation.”

  “I wasn’t exploited.”

  “Of course not. I’m the stupid one. Why is it when a man gets laid, if there is pussy in the end, why is it in his mind that he has won the battle? Do you fail to see what it has cost you?”

  “What it cost me?”

  “Innocence.”

  “I lost my fucking innocence in Pasadena. On a rainy day. When my mother… if anything took my fucking innocence it was the rain, it was the streets, it was that fucking city. That fucking accident changed my life and left me living with two people who couldn’t give a shit about me.”

  “You watched your mother die. I saw my mother get murdered. That is no excuse.”

  “Why in the fuck are you… what is your fucking problem?”

  “You were exploited as a child. As a teenager. When you were… thirteen.”

  “Was I?”

  “By a pathetic and desperate thirty-year-old woman in Fresno.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “And you’re so fucked up that you fail to acknowledge the crime against you.”

  Silence smothers me. I have to stand, have to pace, have to come back and face her.

  I say, “You always have to win, don’t you?”

  “Me? You can’t win a fair fight, so you attack me—”

  “I didn’t attack you.”

  “You attacked me.”

  “I did not fucking attack you.”

  “Attacked my womanhood.”

  “I did not attack your womanhood.”

  “Told me I need… unbelievable how you just… I suck your dick… swallow your jism… then you say that I’m not sexually competent—”

  “That is not what I said.”

  “That made me feel… like shit.”

  Silence.

  She says, “All because you are incapable of making me come the way you want me to come. Don’t blame your incompetence on me, sweetheart. Your shortcomings are not my fault.”

  That coldness stings. Stings hard.

  I get in the bed, stare at the ceiling, knowing that words are not enough. Primal thoughts rise and I think about choking my wife to death, then standing over her body, beating my chest, making Cro-Magnon sounds. But I don’t want to end up playing dominoes with Scott Peterson.

  She’s bouncing her foot. Making disgusted sound after disgusted sound.

  I wonder what her thoughts are, if she is pondering my unexpected demise.

  I try to become Zen. Still my mind drifts, shifts away philosophical thoughts, and this physical vessel refuses to ignore what stirs in its restless soul. Conflicts play out in my mind, create their own mental movie. Polaroid images of my next sixty years, of our next sixty years, and I stir and wonder what time will do to us, that great healer and destroyer, wonder if what is now, what is certain, wonder if this is the best it will get between us, wonder if that is good enough for me, wonder if my restless soul will settle into a state of complacency.

  Genevieve cuddles next to me, as if reading my thoughts, erasing that movie in my mind.

  She whispers, “I’m sorry.”

  I put my arm around her. She kisses my flesh, then settles herself.

  I say, “Sorry, too.”

  Her glass wall becomes thinner. My shield eases down.

  But her words, her excited utterances that were meant to damage me, I feel the pain.

  She does not understand me. I do not understand her. She does not see the world the way I see the world. But no two people see the world with the same eyes. We have an animal instinct to go after what makes us happy. Right or wrong, we go after what makes us happy.

  I convince myself that I was not abused. That when I was thirteen I searched for love.

  I close my eyes and drift. The sound of the rain stalks me; humidity continues to smother me, both demons following me into my dreams. I land in a place where my ancestors work for years, blood on their fists, work from sunup to sundown without release, without respect.

  The hotel phone rings.

  Like at home, the phone is on my side of the bed. I jump to answer before Genevieve wakes up. But she is not asleep. Our conversation left her disturbed. Genevieve turns to me, a stressed-out silhouette breathing roughly in the darkness. She shifts as I answer, listens.

  I say, “Hello.”

  There is a pause.

  “May I speak to… to… Doctor Forbes?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Kenya.”

  “You’re calling from Africa?”

  “No. This is… who am I speaking with?”

  “Her husband.”

  “This is her sister.”

  I hand Genevieve the phone.

  She covers the receiver, looks confused, asks, “Who is calling me here?”

  I tell her.

  Genevieve sits up, wide awake. “Kenya?”

  Just like Grandpa Fred and Willie Esther, another name I have not heard before.

  My wife is not breathing. She takes the phone and moves away from the bed. Her conversation doesn’t last five seconds, but that seems like forever.

  I ask, “What’s going on?”

  “Says she’s in the lobby.”

  “Your family is here?”

  “I don’t know who she’s with. Maybe… maybe they have come here.”

  Genevieve pauses, stares out the window at the never-ending rain for an eternity.

  I say, “You never mentioned anyone named Kenya.”

  “I never mention my brothers either.”

  “Which one of your sisters is she?”

  She doesn’t answer, just rushes to put her clothes on.

  Body lethargic, I’m moving at half her pace, doing the same.

  She tells me, “Could you let me… I want to… maybe I should go alone.”

  “You sure?”

  She becomes jittery, overwhelmed. “My hair.”

  “Your hair is fine.”

  “Makeup.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. Nobody cares.”

  “I smell like sex. You’re still draining out of me.”

  “Then shower. I’ll go and tell your family you’ll be down in a minute.”

  She snaps, “No.”

  I look at her.

  Genevieve takes a deep breath. “You smell like sweat and sex too.”

  Her voice sounds cagey, disturbed, owns a darkness that only a shadowed past could bring. As if something that she has been running away from is tapping her on the shoulder.

  Her eyes don’t blink, voice trembles. “Wait up here.”

  I stand for a moment, thinking, then give in to her wishes and sit on the bed.

  She dresses, after she brushes her teeth again, after she washes her face, after she cleans her sex. She kisses my forehead, whispers, “What I said, I didn’t mean that. I was angry, more with myself than at you. You satisfy me. I love you.”

  She combs her hair, puts on lip gloss as she walks toward the door. Then she freezes.