The Naked Truth

by Leslie Morgan

  “Yes.” I kissed him back. “But first, I better check to make sure the girls are okay.”

  I took my phone out from the bike pack under my seat.

  “Holy shit.” There were three text messages from Bella. Somethings wrong with Jennie, one read. The next elaborated: She cant walk right. Then, the slightly panicked I dont know what to do.

  Jake checked his phone, too. Bella had left him two additional messages. His face turned white and streaky with worry. We hopped on our bikes and pedaled furiously up Walnut Street, sweating in the cool night air.

  Jake let his bike fall on the sidewalk by the front steps of the brownstone. He tripped and hit his shin on one of the red sandstone stairs as he rushed to the door. He didn’t even swear, he was so frightened. As soon as he hit the brass knocker, the girls swung the door open. I could see Jennie’s brown body lying motionless on the black and white marble floor behind Bella.

  “Jesus, Leslie, go get my car,” Jake said, clutching his bloody leg. “I’ll bring her out front.”

  I drove his Jeep, Jake cradling Jennie in his lap in the backseat, to the twenty-four-hour vet in South Philly. Jake had wrapped her in a makeshift sling made out of one of my white throw blankets. I helped him carry Jennie sideways up the stairs to the automatic emergency room doors, each of us clutching two edges of the blanket. Tears dripped down his face.

  Jennie wasn’t a pet to Jake. They’d been together for sixteen years. She was on par with a child to him.

  “She’s the only relationship I’ve ever had that’s lasted,” Jake said to me, as we sat on the green plastic waiting room chairs after we gingerly transferred the sling to two veterinary technicians. I searched for the right words. She’s lived a good life, or You can always get another dog, didn’t cut it. He buried his face in his hands. All I could think to do was wrap my arms around his shoulders.

  Two hours later, the disheveled, overtired vet in dirty blue scrubs and orange Crocs came out. We both stood up simultaneously. I reached for Jake’s hand and gave it a squeeze. It was cold and clammy and he didn’t squeeze mine back.

  “Jennie.” The vet said her name like you would a human’s, and then paused. “Is okay, for a sixteen-year-old large-breed. Her blood work shows she’s developed an age-related balance issue called ataxia.”

  Jake’s shoulders plummeted, like a comic book character exaggerating collapse.

  “Oh God, she had that before, a year ago,” he explained, his voice hoarse with relief. “But it only made her head tilt sideways a little bit.”

  “Well, she’s older and weaker now. She’s living on borrowed time. You’ve kept her alive with your . . .”

  The vet looked down at her clipboard.

  “Six hand-cooked meals and those fifteen vitamins and pills a day. Going forward, she’ll have trouble coordinating her legs, and her bowels, but she’ll get noticeably better once the antibiotics kick in.”

  The doctor’s eyes softened when she looked at Jake, and she put her hand on his shoulder.

  “You know, she may only have a few weeks left, no matter how beautifully you take care of her.”

  Jake nodded at her, and then looked away, squeezing his lips together tightly so he wouldn’t cry again.

  We got Jennie home around three in the morning. I was exhausted and cold. Jennie seemed drugged and slow moving. Jake was silent, distant, and overwhelmed. We were still in our bike clothes. The girls were asleep on the couch in their pajamas. Both of their mouths were open. The TV was blaring.

  A not very happy New Year had indeed begun.

  * * *

  Jennie made a surprisingly quick recovery, given her age and overall frailty. Jake was swamped with a deadline for a film festival submission, so he headed back to New York with Jennie lying on a blanket in the back and my mermaid strapped into the passenger seat of his Jeep. His emails washed up in my inbox like perfect sand dollars on the beach.

  Monday.

  Taking a quick writing break to tell you how much I adore you. (A lot.)

  Tuesday.

  I’m so in love with you.

  Wednesday.

  Every time I see you, I want to make love to you, immediately, but the best part is that the whole magnificent, carnal package is part of YOU, in all your wonderful you-ness, with everything else about you that I love so much. I’m so glad you’re in my life. I can’t wait to see you again.

  Thursday.

  I love spending time with you. And the more time we spend together, the more I love you. Spending Christmas with you opened up my heart; after you gave me the mermaid, I staggered off to walk Jennie with tears running down my cheeks. I hope I deserve your love. Or is this all a dream?

  Friday.

  It’s not a dream: It’s crazy and wonderful, and real. And while I think we both recognized, pretty early, that this was something special (Atlantic City, for me), you’re the one who’s kept it going, with your patience, your openness, your willingness to take a huge emotional risk. I love you so much.

  Saturday.

  Is it OK if I love you in some way for the rest of my life?

  I read, and reread, Jake’s words in my sunny office, the space heater humming at my feet as I wrote and paid bills and researched summer camps for the kids. I was too anxious to reveal to him, or even myself, that I was so moved by his vulnerability that my palms got sweaty reading them. This fairy tale was happening. Finally, I’d found a man I loved who treated me the way I deserved.

  * * *

  “A speaking engagement two days before Valentine’s?” I complained over the phone a few nights later. “In Miami? On a Saturday night? It blows the weekend.”

  “Yeah, I feel so, so badly for you,” Jake teased back. “You know what’s great about Miami? It’s only three hours from Tulum. I’ll take you to my favorite beach for Valentine’s Day. It’ll be our practice honeymoon.”

  Practice honeymoon? The idea of getting married again still made me retch. But about one thing I was certain: I wanted, forever, the warm-cocoa feeling I got from knowing that Jake wanted and needed me. And the sex, so spectacular every single time.

  “You’re crazy, Jake.” I avoided repeating the phrase practice honeymoon like newly planted grass, too tender to risk trampling. “Mexico sounds incredible. Let’s do it.”

  The fund-raiser in Miami turned out to be worth the trip. The agency raised a half million to help Jewish victims of domestic violence with hotel rooms, groceries, childcare programs, therapy, and legal assistance—people from devout families whose communities still clung to the myth that relationship abuse was something shameful that didn’t happen to “people like us.” Mickey Silverstein, the chairman of the board of the agency, took me out to a South Beach bar for drinks to celebrate afterward. When he heard I was heading to Tulum, he told me that his family had a retreat—an actual tree house with six bedrooms—there.

  “You have to go on a hike to my favorite secret cenote,” he explained as he dipped a chip in guacamole. “It leads you through a purple bougainvillea tunnel, utter magic. Then you come to a private volcanic well, lined with black lava, where you can swim in spring-fed fresh water and stand under a waterfall. The most romantic place I’ve ever seen. No tourists ever go there.”

  I wrote down the top-secret directions, excited to tell Jake.

  “Jake, guess what we’re gonna do?” I said, taking his hand in mine as we reconnoitered the open-air Cancún airport on Sunday morning, after taking separate flights, mine from Miami, his from New York. We wandered under the hot sun, surrounded by milling tourists, all of us gringas wearing identical confused expressions, scanning the airport roadway for hotel shuttles like ship captains searching the horizon for shore.

  “Doesn’t that hike sound idyllic? I cannot wait.”

  Jake didn’t respond as he lifted my duffel and his backpack onto the van, crowded with German tourists who were already drunk.

  Once the bus deposited us outside our resort in Tulum, we carried our bags acr
oss the scalding sand to our private thatched-roof hut. Our villa was nestled in the dunes, only yards from the crashing blue waves. Jake had stayed at this boutique hotel before, probably with another girlfriend, but I was with him now. It felt right. I felt lucky. That’s what mattered.

  “Babe, about that hike. I don’t want to go. I’ve been to cenotes before,” Jake said as he put on his black sunglasses, surprising me. “I’m exhausted from the Silverdocs submissions. I want to be lazy on the beach. With you. All day and all night.”

  “Okay,” I said, flattered. But also disappointed, a little thrown off by how spent he sounded. He was usually more adventurous. And willing to indulge me.

  “I want you, now,” he said, taking my duffel bag off the bed and putting it on the wooden slat floor. “Stop packing. Take off your clothes.”

  “Bathing suit?” I asked, slipping off my pants and pulling my shirt and bra over my head.

  “No. Nothing.”

  He lay me out naked across the bleached linen bedspread, which was hot from the scorching Mexican sun. He ran his hands over my body and spread my legs open. He licked my pussy for twenty or thirty minutes. As the ocean wind whipped the white curtains at the front of our villa, he plunged his fingers inside me again and again, in the rhythm he knew drove me crazy. The sun and the bliss of his mouth and his hands on me warmed my bones.

  “I can’t live without this, Jake. I love you. I love you,” I repeated over and over. A multiwave orgasm built until I screamed into the wind, not caring if anyone heard. Jake drew himself up to me and made love to my swollen pussy until he came deep inside me. Sweaty and exhausted, we lay on top of the bed, wrapped together in the sun and the fierce wind.

  The next day, we drank black Mexican coffee and ate flaky churros dipped in powdered sugar for breakfast. We snorkeled in the pale aqua water until we were covered in salt from the sea. Late that afternoon, we took an outdoor shower together on the deck of our small villa. After all the salt water, the shower tasted sweet, like iced mint tea. As I soaped up his back, I told him I couldn’t get the bougainvillea tunnel out of my head.

  “Jakey, I may never come to Tulum again. I think I’m going to go on that hike anyway. I’ll get up early one morning and let you rest. But I really want to see it.”

  He looked over his shoulder at me with a bemused expression, like I was a child stamping her foot, about to throw a tantrum.

  “Okay,” he said, shrugging, looking back at the ocean, picking up his towel to dry off and draping it over his shoulders. “Whatever. I’ll catch up on emails while you’re gone.”

  The second-to-last day we were there, I snuck out in the misty predawn shroud, tucking the covers over Jake’s bare chest before I left. I caught a local guagua bus with Mexican maids heading to area hotels. After the van dropped me by a chain-link fence alongside the road, I didn’t see a soul as I hiked barefoot along the dusty dirt path disappearing into the jungle. Emerald-green parrots flew around me and brown howler monkeys chattered in the bougainvillea. But after an hour of hiking, I felt lonely without Jake. I got to the cenote, looked in, marveled at the cobalt water, and turned around, eager to get back and to slip between his arms.

  I found Jake wrapped in a blue and white striped towel on his beach chair in the blistering sun. I bent to kiss him and he laughed at my feet, dirty up to my shins from the hike. We lazed on the beach all afternoon and walked into town for our bittersweet last dinner. We finished the night with languid, relaxed sex in our bungalow as the waves crashed and the wind roared. We fell asleep with him on top of me and his cock inside me.

  As we packed up early the next morning, Jake was quiet.

  “Honey, anything wrong?” I asked. “You’re not getting a bug from the water here, are you?”

  He looked away. “No, just tired. I guess.”

  We had separate flights home to our separate houses in our separate cities. I kissed him long and hard at the Cancún airport security portal, where we said good-bye. Two Mexican guards in uniform stared at us. A crowd of oblivious Brits, hungover and sunburned lobster red, hovered nearby.

  “This has been a great vacation.” I almost said practice honeymoon out loud. I didn’t, even though I’d repeated the words silently in my head so often they’d taken on a mythic ring. I was afraid that repeating his words would spook him, or me, and destroy their magic. Instead, I looked in his gray-blue eyes as the last hunk of loneliness that had been wedged behind my ribs for several decades dissolved. “The best vacation ever, Jake. Can’t wait to see you in a few days. I hate being apart from you,” I whispered in his ear as I hugged him good-bye before we went to our separate gates.

  “Okay. See ya.”

  His words sounded off-key. I watched him hoist his backpack over his shoulder and walk away from me. Then, as I went in search of my gate, I decided something was wrong. I looked up his gate number and rushed to it, hauling my duffel. I waited as long as I could, for at least twenty minutes, scanning the crowd for him. Jake never showed. When my flight was about to board, I finally texted him. Where are you, babe?

  The three dots on my phone blinked.

  Stopped to get a gin and tonic. Sorry. See you back in the States.

  It was eleven thirty in the morning. Early for a gin and tonic, right? I found my way to my assigned seat, puzzled.

  The flight to Philly took four hours. When I turned my phone back on, there weren’t any texts from Jake. None that night, either. Strange. He had two deadlines for work. Plus he liked to spend a lot of time with Jennie whenever he had left her alone, especially given the ataxia health scare. But surely he had time to shoot me a text? Two days later, he finally sent an email. It popped up on my phone as I sat on a stool in the kitchen watching the evening news and slicing cherry tomatoes for our dinner salad. There was no subject line. I clicked it open.

  Leslie, I’m still really pissed you went on that hike without me. Tell me the truth: were you meeting some guy? The helicopter pilot?

  Holding the knife midair, I momentarily stopped breathing. I stared at the words on my phone screen in disbelief.

  The helicopter pilot? From Mexico City? Six hours from Tulum? I’d told Jake the whole story about Jefe Jeff and his crazy seven-year girlfriend, and Jake had thrown his head back with laughter. And now he thought I’d snuck out at five in the morning to have sex with that same stranger hundreds of miles away? During our Valentine’s Day practice honeymoon? Me? The day before my cenote hike, with enthusiasm that’s impossible to fake, I gave him two blow jobs in the space of eight hours. It’s hard to argue with that fairly explicit declaration of passion and devotion. How could he believe I betrayed him?

  Before I could type any kind of answer, or pick up the phone to call him, another email blinked through to my screen.

  Leslie, I know it was wrong to send you that email or even think that. I’m crazy. Forget it. Please ignore that I sent you that. Please. Promise me. Ok?

  How did Jake’s jealousy, or his tequila and mezcal boondoggles, or the fact that we couldn’t talk about any of these problems, fit with the Jake who loved me?

  * * *

  I was busy with the kids in Philly. Jake was holed up in his New York apartment. It seemed best not to bring up his strange email over the phone; maybe he would talk about it more easily when we were in the same room—or, better yet, in the same bed. We spoke briefly a few days after we got back from Mexico. He sounded distracted. I figured he was deep in work zone, pressured by his deadlines. I called him again Sunday morning. I was lying in bed with the cats, feeling too sleepy to get up. I asked what he’d done the night before.

  “Ah, went bowling in the Village. With some friends. Allan, Erica, and—” He paused. “Never mind.”

  He sounded evasive, frankly. But he’d told me so many stories about how prior girlfriends had been possessive, and suspicious, that I let it go, to give him some freedom and privacy. BGE, right?

  On Monday, I told Sara about Jake’s accusation that I had snuck a
way to see Jefe Jeff in Mexico. I also told her that he’d done the same thing with Sig before Christmas. This was starting to look like a pattern I couldn’t deny.

  “Leslie.” She sounded calm and sure over the phone, in her breezy California way. “If Jake or any man threatens to leave you, or accuses you of cheating when you haven’t, you cannot beg him to stay.”

  She made it sound so simple. I held my hand up to the phone, which of course she couldn’t see, to signal to her to stop criticizing our relationship. When my first husband started abusing me, my reaction was similar: we were fine, I wanted to help him, to teach him what true love was, to fix what was broken in him through love and passion.

  My pattern wasn’t looking much prettier than Jake’s. At least I could see that. It wasn’t doing me much good, though.

  Sara kept talking.

  “Jake is almost fifty, Leslie. Not that sixteen-year-old boy you fell in love with when you were a teenager,” she said.

  “Well, okay. But no relationship is perfect. I don’t want perfect. I want Jake. Jake wants me.”

  “Okay,” Sara said. “Let’s talk about what’s not perfect. List a few things you wish Jake didn’t do.”

  It felt disloyal to criticize him, but I tried to conjure up the times he made me feel less than, invisible.

  “Well, um, he sometimes makes derogatory comments, and gives me funny looks, when I put on comfy PJs instead of lingerie. I mean, come on, I can’t wear my four-inch heels to bed every night. When someone compliments me on my TED Talk about how difficult it is for domestic violence victims to leave, instead of backing me, he always makes a remark that it was unfortunate that I’d been twenty pounds heavier when the video was filmed. He complains that, like all women, I talk too much.”

  “Okay,” Sara said. “Not nice. Is there more?”

  “Umm, on the way to Bella’s birthday dinner, he exploded and threatened to get out of the car because I wouldn’t follow his driving directions. All I could think about was that Bella’s feelings would be hurt if he bailed, so I gave in. He did not care at all that he was making me cry on the way to my daughter’s birthday celebration. He told me, ‘Everyone finds you insufferably bossy. Your kids, do, too,’ he’d added. Jesus! He has no idea what my kids think, anyway!”