Must Read Well, page 14
Then he wriggled back up to put his face to mine, rose on his arms and came down, more or less falling on me. He entered me a moment later and stayed there, moving with more and more force, till I felt well and truly fucked.
After he’d come (with quite a lot of noise himself ), he lay against me for a whole minute, catching his breath before saying, “Hello.”
It was so funny just then, the funniest “Hello” I ever heard. We exploded with laughter, rocked with it, so much so that I almost fell off the bed. When he caught me and pulled me back to him, I was astonished to feel him already hard again. He slid his hand down my body and felt to make sure I was ready for him. In he came, this time moving slowly and looking directly into my eyes.
Then we were quiet for a long while, just listening to our own breathing. How odd to think that all this time, nothing had been said but that single “Hello.” Eventually, I began to wonder how long it had been since I arrived. I got up and walked over to look at my watch, which he had left near the pile of clothes on the piano bench. Today, I walked brazenly, naked though I was. It was three o’clock; I had been there almost an hour.
“I need to take a shower,” I said, “and then I’ll go. It was awful the other day, leaving here with no time to recover, and your smell all over me.”
He grinned like an animal reveling in having marked his turf. I went into the bathroom. It is very small and purely utilitarian, with the pink and black tiles fashionable thirty years ago. They’ve lost their shine, and the grout between them is yellow and crumbling. The shower is tiny, a triangle in a corner with a cloudy glass door. No shampoo, a dry, cracked, and not especially clean bar of soap. I turned on the water (a paltry, lukewarm spray), put my face up into it and was startled to feel a cold rush of air. Greg had crept in behind me. He crammed himself into the stall, how I don’t know; it’s so very small.
Then, from out of nowhere, it came to me to wonder if he’s done this before. Until now, absurdly, it had never even occurred to me he might have had other women up to his studio. What a fool, when he’s so widely known, so gifted, such a celebrity. And his charm, his easy seductiveness. Now I asked myself about that very ease. He has made me feel as if his need to be with me were an unprecedented compulsion, something entirely unexpected, irresistible to him, uniquely provoked by my qualities, as if I were the great exception in his life. But after all, has he really shown any of the shock I feel, the surprise at my own behavior? On the contrary, he came straight to me, sure of himself.
I froze. How could I have failed to think of all this? I wondered. A man who travels constantly without his wife. Who is in the public eye all the time, admired, applauded, adored on stages all over the world. He is a star. Women must swarm over him.
I shoved these images out of my mind as soon as they came into it. At the least, I told myself, even if he’s slept with many women, his feelings for me are different—a real bolt from the blue, a true coup de foudre. That he feels out of control of his desire, as shaken by it as I am. And before I left, I was sure I was right.
There were a few lines left blank here. I looked up to tell Anne and found her faded eyes were tearing up. She said nothing. After a pause, I went on.
Cut off five minutes ago as Steve came down the hall and knocked on my door. All he wanted was to be reminded what night we’re going to the Halyards’ for cocktails. Thankfully, he only poked his head in, too briefly to see my agitation. My heart has settled down now, and so—and so, back to the shower.
Greg reached around me and took the soap out of my hand. Then he slid it over my shoulder blades (there was no washcloth), rubbing in gentle circles before moving on to another spot. The nape of my neck. My spine, the small of my back and—and on all over me to my feet. Then he turned me around—the gap between us was so slight that even looking down we couldn’t see each other’s bodies—and repeated his downward transit. Even at my most sensitive points, his touch was exploratory and tender more than erotic. Tender. He was very tender.
I didn’t try to return the favor, just said, “I have to go.”
He slipped out of the stall and handed me the single towel in the room, a bath towel on the small side and not very fresh.
“Dry off in there,” he said. “I’ll get your coat so you don’t freeze when you come out.” Still dripping himself, he returned with it and wrapped it tight around me. I suddenly remembered the delicious, luxurious sensation of being wrapped in a sun-warmed towel by my father after I’d climbed, teeth chattering, out of a hotel swimming pool. How old was I? I must have been very little, because the towel seemed as large as a blanket.
When I’d gotten back into my clothes, Greg offered me a cup of coffee. But I didn’t want to stay too long. That is, I did want to stay, but I knew I’d regret it later, so I told him no.
“Anyway, I should let you practice,” I said.
“Unfortunately true. I leave for Philadelphia tomorrow afternoon, for a rehearsal Friday morning.”
“Then I’m off.”
He helped me into my coat, kissing my earlobe, then my cheek, my nose, my mouth. How exactly I remember all this! By now we were facing each other, of course, and I’d started to button up to go into the cold—I always forget how cold it is at this time of year—when he put a tentative hand on mine to stop me. He looked at the floor and said in a low voice, “Forgive me. Maybe I’m asking too much, but is there a chance you would meet me there, so we could spend a whole night together?” He sounded like a schoolboy, shy and afraid I would take offense. “Would you like that?”
“I would like it very much.”
Suddenly, he began to cry. Real tears, copious enough that three rolled down his cheek.
“Thank God,” he said. “Thank you.”
I smiled and brushed the tears away. It was at that moment that my sudden, mad suspicion that he is some sort of callow playboy disappeared. Perhaps it was the hesitancy with which he suggested the idea, confessed to his desire, as if he really feared his request might offend me. Perhaps it was the tears. Whatever it was, it was a huge relief.
“But can you think of a way to get out of town so suddenly? A discreet way?” he went on.
A plan had already come into my mind, as readymade and detailed as if I’d been keeping it in my back pocket for just such an occasion.
“As it happens, I have a close friend in Philadelphia, an old friend, a childhood friend. She’s single, just divorced, no kids, and Steve knows she’s been very low lately. If she needed someone to spend a day or two with her, be there for her as she dealt with—oh, a medical emergency, say—he would never question my going to help her. I think she’d agree to cover for me,” I added.
I didn’t like the clarity of my own last words. They made it all too plain that I would be betraying Steve. I would have to lie to him, not by omission but outright, something I haven’t needed to do so far. Still, I said them.
And yet, the moment they were out, a hot flame of resentment rose in my chest. What right did Steve have to imprison me, to commandeer my time? Why should I be accountable to him for my every movement? This was no more than a sort of defensive self-justification, I realize, to excuse myself from blame. Steve is not a bad man—he is a good man, if a somewhat unimaginative one—and I doubt he would ever be unfaithful to me. As for “imprisoning me,” he’s never done anything remotely like it. Never said a word to discourage, let alone forbid, my stays at Yaddo or Bread Loaf, never objected to my frequent (and innocent) dinners with Matt Bianchi, never tried to prevent me from writing when he had a day off from work, or even when we were in Paris on vacation.
As I read this paragraph, I thought of the early scene in Vengeance when Howard Clark explodes with fury at Catherine for refusing to quit her job. “You do this and people think my wife has to work!” he shouts, stalking around and around her as she sits on their living-room couch. “Is that why you do it? On purpose to humiliate me? Just stay at home, for Chrissake! Just stay home, Cathy. How hard is that to do?”
Later, he blames her miscarriage on the stress of the office job she’d insisted on keeping and, still later, finally persuades her to quit when she is—very briefly—pregnant after the previous miscarriage.
In this passage of her journal, I saw that Anne was capable of conjuring anger at Stephen Pace when it suited her. But could pure imagination have sustained the torrent of rage in her book? Questions flew back and forth through my head as I continued reading.
Happy as a child, Greg threw his arms around me. He squeezed me almost painfully, then loosened his grip and kissed me on the mouth before whispering, “Just to let you know, I’ll be there three nights—Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday, of course. Sunday afternoon I have a date for coffee with an old teacher of mine and then I come back to New York. So you can pick the night that works best for you. Or—” the whisper dropped till I could hardly hear him—“you could come for all three.”
“Three,” I echoed. “Three nights.” It was unnecessary to say more.
“Of course you’d be alone a lot,” he went on. “You couldn’t come to the rehearsal, and that afternoon, I’m scheduled to eat lunch and play a little music for fun with some friends in the Berlin Phil. You couldn’t visit me after the concert. We couldn’t be seen together anywhere.” Almost apologetically, he added, “People recognize me.”
I should have realized, at once, this would be a problem but I hadn’t. A lurch of disappointment ran through me. I said nothing about it, however. Instead, “I’ll find plenty to keep me busy on my own,” I told him. “I go there to see my friend now and then, but I haven’t been to the Barnes in years. Or the Academy of Fine Arts. For that matter, I can really go and visit my friend, or just take a bus tour of the city; I’ve never even seen the Liberty Bell. But what about Susan? Won’t she go with you?”
“Susan leaves tonight for a week in Taos with an old friend from Juilliard,” he said. He had stepped back and let go of me, but our faces were almost touching and his voice was still low. “She often uses my absences to get out of town herself. It’s not that my career doesn’t interest her. It’s just painful for her to see me in the spotlight since she’s had to stop performing.”
I found that I didn’t give a damn about Susan. I was almost happy about her affliction if it kept her out of my way. What is happening to me? I’ve known myself to be ambitious, competitive, even ruthless, but not, I think, cruel.
“So we’ll have time to ourselves—plenty of time,” he went on. “Every night, and most of Saturday besides.”
I nodded, smiled. Looking back, it astonishes me that all these plans were thrown together in a matter of minutes, as if we were a pair of practiced thieves interrupted mid-crime agreeing to flee in different directions and meet up later. And aren’t we thieves? Thieves and con artists, swindling the people who trust us most.
ELEVEN
After the paragraph in which Anne branded herself and her lover criminals, she left a few lines blank. When I looked up to say so, she raised a hand to stop me from resuming. I was grateful for the breather. For several reasons, I found the morning’s passages difficult to read aloud. One reason is obvious: they were so extremely explicit, so completely intimate, and there sat its author, not two yards away from me. But the scene also provoked insidious thoughts in me—thoughts about what Tim may or may not have done with his “other woman” before he ended our relationship.
With the journal resting open in my lap, I waited for her to say something, unsure whether she wanted only a pause or was ready to end the reading for the day. She took off her glasses and a long minute went by while she sat very still, head bowed as if she were inspecting the surface of her pretty desk. I took advantage of that minute to reread what she’d written apropos of her own deception. “Thieves and con artists.” The phrase reverberated uncomfortably inside me.
As for “What is happening to me?” that was, more or less, my own recent question about myself. Was I ambitious? Check. Competitive? Check. Ruthless? Not until lately. It interested me that Weil would write that she had occasionally been ruthless. For me, this was the first time. But as to being cruel—no, I insisted to myself. No, I did not feel cruel. I felt I was on a mission, and like people on a mission, I felt righteous.
When at last she looked up again, all the animation had gone out of her face. Her eyes were dull, cheeks drawn, shoulders slumped. Even her martial spine was curved, touching the back of her chair. Clearly, the passion of the tryst she’d just revisited had been superseded in her mind by the final self-accusation.
“Go ahead and read the rest of the entry,” she said, voice flat, listless, as if she were an admitted murderess in the dock.
I complied.
Midnight
At nine, phoned Ginny from my study, with the door closed and in the hushed voice of a conspirator. Which I am, and am now making her as well. She was reluctant but agreed to have a sudden attack of appendicitis Wednesday morning, to have called an ambulance for herself and been taken to the hospital. They operated within hours but it turned out it had ruptured, complicating matters and making her recovery precarious. (I know about all this because it happened to Pauline Cornish, of course.) Now, she would “tell” me, she was just out of the recovery room and calling to beg me to come and help her. She needed someone to deal with the doctors, to make sure they followed her case with attention, see that the nurses took good care of her, and help her figure out whatever decisions might have to be made farther down the road.
I imagine it was easier for her to join me in my deception because she hasn’t seen Steve in a very long time. I always go to see her, somehow; she never comes here. Steve is almost theoretical to her, a character I sometimes mention. Moreover (and this is a relief to us both), she’s very unlikely to be put to the test. I’ll say I’m staying at her apartment and call Steve daily. I’ll tell him she has no phone in her hospital room. I suppose he might someday come to suspect the whole story and ask her to confirm it, but she can do even that in a pinch. She’s not a bad liar. After all, she lied to me about the state of her marriage for years.
Still, it’s a nasty thing to ask of her and I feel especially bad because I don’t, in fact, plan to get together with her at all while I’m there. This is partly because I think it would be even harder to lie to Steve if I do see her, healthy and whole as she is, but more because I want to keep every possible minute free for Greg. I’m ashamed of myself, but the truth is I’m too eager to be with him to care.
I’ve mentioned a man named “Greg” to Ginny before, but have been careful not to tell her who he is, and she hasn’t asked.
There was another blank line here but I didn’t bother to mention it.
I’ve just read over the above. I should have written it in invisible ink. I should lock it in a vault. If Steve were to see it, he would know without thinking who “G.” is. Then God help us.
Again a blank line.
On the subject of Steve, he wanted to have sex tonight and I went along as (almost) always in order to behave normally, even though it made me feel like a whore. (Now there’s a sentence.) Much worse than that, I have a chilling feeling that I really did murmur Greg’s name as I fell asleep. Did I? If so, did Steve hear me? With another man, I would think surely not, or he would have reacted. But Steve can be so controlled. He stores up information until he’s had a chance to analyze it, a lawyer’s habit.
God I miss Greg. Already, even though I saw him this afternoon. I want to hear his voice. I long for the smell of his hair, its singular, tangy scent, to feel his hands on my wrists as he reared up over me. The power of his mismatched eyes on mine, on my body. I keep saying to myself that I’ll see him soon, and not for hours but for days. Yet it isn’t soon enough.
“That’s all for that entry,” I told her.
Anne’s eyes turned to me from her apparent scrutiny of the delicate desk. Her face had regained its expressiveness and she put her glasses on again. She was smiling the small, nostalgic smile I had noticed in the past, and I saw once again the hauntingly beautiful film star she might have been. After a moment, she announced that she wished to end today’s reading here.
The next morning, to my alarm, I did not find her when I went to the kitchen. Though it was a Sunday, Marta appeared at ten and reported that Mrs. Anne was once more feeling unwell, that she had asked her to come in and help her as she spent the day in bed.
I offered to go out and get chicken soup, cold remedies, a humidifier, anything that might be of use. In part, I was still curious to see her room. In part, I was eager to ingratiate myself further. But most of all, I am glad to be able to say, I was genuinely concerned about her as a fellow human. I was sorry she was suffering, and anxious lest this cold or flu or infection or whatever it was carry her off forever—and not only because I would then lose access to the journals.
In the last few days, I had come a long way from my fantasy of conking her on the head. If I had once thought of her as mere prey to be devoured, I saw her now as a truly remarkable woman. Half-blind, shut in, constantly in pain, she was still curious and engaged with life. She endured with grace and even humor the mortification of revealing her most intimate doings to a stranger. I did still see her, in a sense, as my quarry, but I also thought she was gallant. Should I live to such a great age, I hope I have even half her strength of mind.
The next morning, Marta came in early, at eight o’clock. She hovered noiselessly around the house, peeking often into Anne’s bedroom to make sure she didn’t need anything, offering tea, soup, a heating pad, cough syrup, fetching whatever she asked for. I went up to campus for the afternoon to prepare for class the next day and returned to 10A that evening to find her still there. Anne had been awake for only a few very brief intervals during the day, she told me; all the same, she stayed until ten p.m. and returned at eight the next morning.
