Shadows, page 17
Alex opened his eyes, realizing he must have dozed off. He yawned and looked at his watch. It was a few minutes before five. “I’m going to call my office,” he said.
He asked at the desk if he could use their phone to make an outside call and was told it was ok. When Ruthie answered he explained that he wouldn’t be back. Mr. Roth got on and asked him about the Georgian Silversmith’s account and how far had he gotten with collecting the twenty-five K owed to them.
“The file’s in my desk. They’ve made two payments of five thousand dollars each. Another one should be due soon. I’m not sure when.”
“Okay,” Roth said. “Good luck. Hope everything’s okay.”
Back in the room, Alex said, “Let’s go get something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Neither am I. I just need to do something.”
“You go ahead. I’ll wait here. The doctor might show up.”
“You want me to bring you anything?”
She shook her head, her gaze on Richard.
He found the coffee shop, a cold, unappetizing place, partly filled with uniformed hospital workers as well as visitors. All he could think of to eat was a corn muffin and coffee. One bite of the muffin was enough. It tasted like straw. At least the coffee helped.
Back in the room, the time passed slowly. Alex imagined the sand in an hourglass draining particle by particle, one grain at a time. He kept shifting in his chair, trying not to think about what was happening to his son’s eyes, hoping that everything would eventually turn out all right.
At just past seven o’clock, Dr. Mackay finally arrived. He was wearing a suit and tie and appeared to be quite different from the man in surgical scrubs. He pulled the curtain between Richard and the white-haired patient. He felt for Richard’s pulse and nodded. “As I told you before, the operation went well. His temperature is normal. So far there are no complications. They’ll be changing the dressing soon. There’s nothing else to do now but wait.”
“When is he going to wake up?” Alex asked.
“Soon, probably. It’s just the anesthesia. Sleep is good. Nothing to worry about. You folks might want to go home and rest.”
After he had gone, Miriam covered her face with her hands.
Alex said, “I want to believe him.”
“I do believe him. I’ve asked around. He’s one of the best eye surgeons in New York.”
At eight o’clock a nurse came in and said they had to leave.
“Might as well,” Alex said. “You must be exhausted.”
Miriam stood up and kissed Richard. As they began to leave the room the old man in the other bed spoke, “You’re going home now?” His voice was hoarse and there was a trace of an indeterminable foreign accent.
“Yes.”
“Good night,” he said. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“Same to you,” Alex said.
The elevator was crowded with both visitors and hospital workers. Two teenagers, who might have been coming from the maternity ward, smiled and high-fived each other while Alex and Miriam stood side-by-side, shoulders touching, enveloped in a fog of weariness. On their way out he asked, “Where are you parked?”
“There’s a lot on the next block.”
Now he decided this was the time, or maybe he had decided long before. He took a deep breath and said, “Do you want me to walk with you?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” She stopped and turned toward him, her look puzzled. But only for a moment. Her eyes grew hard, understanding. “Aren’t you coming home?”
The words tumbled out of his mouth, guilt combined with anguish. “I thought you might want a break. Be away from me a while. Maybe it would be better if I went to a hotel.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know. There’s so much going on I can’t think straight. I have the feeling that you’re blaming me for a lot of this.”
“For Richard getting beaten up? That’s ridiculous.”
“Not for that. For being a lousy father. A lousy husband. Not being there when I should have been there.”
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? I don’t blame you. But if you don’t want to come home, fine. I’m too tired to argue.” She stepped off the curb, away from him. She became smaller as the distance increased. Then she was gone.
Chapter 34
Nobody pushed him. Why now, he had no idea, it just seemed inevitable. He had jumped off the cliff all by himself and now he felt as if he was still in the air, carried along without direction, like a balloon cut loose by its owner. Consequences? He didn’t want to think about them.
He walked back to the hospital and called Wanda from a payphone.
“How is your son?” she asked immediately.
“Doing okay as far as we know.” He drew a deep breath. “I want to be with you.”
“And I’d like to be with you.”
“I mean now.”
There was a moment of dead air. “I don’t know about this.”
“Please. I need you.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“I’m not sure about anything.”
Silence again. Then, subdued, “All right.”
He knew she lived in Long Beach. “What’s your address?”
She gave it to him.
He took a taxi to Penn Station and had to wait twenty minutes for a train. While waiting he tried to shut down his brain. He didn’t want to think about what he was doing. But on the train ride he could not help himself. It was as if he were being assaulted by a dream, with various images coming out of darkness for a split-second in bright light and then darkness as the next one appeared: Miriam’s eyes filled with tears, Richard’s bandages, the shaven-headed man sitting up in bed, JaMarcus’s handsome face, Wanda…When he thought of Wanda the image did not remain frozen. She moved, stretching, arching her body.
He felt a stirring between his legs and opened his eyes realizing abruptly they’d been closed. Having slept little in the past few days, the motion of the train had put him out. Perhaps it had aroused him as well. He stared out the window into the darkness, unwilling to allow that feeling to continue when his son lay on a hospital bed. It wasn’t right, he knew. But he also knew he was fooling himself. What he wanted right now more than anything, was Wanda. He wanted her body. He wanted urgently to be inside her.
She was on the top floor of an elevator building. The elevator was slow, increasing his impatience. It was an old building with an old elevator that rattled itself slowly as it rose.
He rang the bell, his heart pounding, his knees weak. When she opened the door, he didn’t see her. He saw a vision, an aura. He stepped in and kissed her hungrily, forcing his tongue deep into her mouth. She was wearing a robe. He pulled it open and saw that she was naked. He put the palm of his hand on her breast and felt the nipple come erect.
She looked into his eyes while her lips curved into a small smile. She led him into the bedroom and undressed him, deliberately taking her time removing his jacket and tie, unbuttoning his shirt, loosening his belt, and unzipping his fly. He closed his eyes feeling the clothes being removed from his body. All the while his desire grew until he could hardly breathe.
He was inside her immediately and came almost at once. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“I’m not usually a selfish lover.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He felt no release, only exhaustion.
Wanda said, “Do you want to talk?”
“About what? The man in the moon? How lousy I make love, why I’m here?”
“Either, or.”
“No. I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay,” she said.
He closed his eyes and was immediately asleep. He was dreaming again, only this time he knew it was a dream. He was walking on a beach. He was alone and the wind was fierce and blowing sand into his eyes. He tried to rub his eyes to stop the irritation but couldn’t manage to do it.
He woke to find his arms stretched out above him. He couldn’t move them. Then he realized he couldn’t move them because they were tied to the bedposts.
He didn’t see Wanda. “What’s going on?” he called out.
“You don’t have to yell,” Wanda said. “I’m right here.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to make your troubles go away. At least for a little while.”
“I don’t think I like being tied up,” he said.
“You will.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You sound worried,” she said.
“Maybe I am.”
“Don’t be. Everything will be all right. Trust me.”
“Do I have a choice?”
She laughed. “I think maybe you should have your legs tied, too. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes you do.”
He watched her go to the night table and open the drawer. She was still naked. He looked at her body and couldn’t help admiring how beautiful it was, her breasts full, her ass round and dimpled, her skin silky and glowing, like one of Modigliani’s nudes. She came back with foot-long lengths of old-fashioned rope, the kind with fibers that scratched and might leave marks on him like fine cuts. He couldn’t help thinking that Miriam might see them, then laughed at himself because it was too late to worry about that.
She made a loop around each ankle and attached them to the front posts. When she finished, she asked him if she had made them too tight.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure.”
She sat on the side of the bed and put one hand flat on his chest. Then slowly she contracted her hand so that her nails all but punctured his skin.
“Don’t draw blood,” he said, and he heard the sound of his voice strange and hollow.
“I like blood,” she said. She leaned over and began to lick his nipples. After a while, she sucked them, then gently bit, her teeth like the edge of scissors. He could feel himself harden. Some time after that she took him into her mouth.
A long interval seemed to go by before she eventually rode him, quick breaths, making sounds that were uniquely her own. He struggled against the ropes, pulling with his arms, his legs, trying to raise himself higher, trying to get his body in motion to match hers. He struggled to thrust upwards against the constraints that held him back. As he made the effort he could hear the noises he was making intermingling with hers. She moaned as she came, and when he finally did, it was an explosion he had never before experienced.
Chapter 35
Wanda made it plain that his stay with her was temporary. “A few days. A week, maybe. I’m not ready to live with anyone.”
He didn’t try to change her mind. He was glad of the refuge, temporary as it was. And in fact, he soon realized he was glad it was temporary. He understood from the beginning that his attraction to Wanda had come from some kind of need in him. He knew he was not in love with her. Indeed, in the morning, going to the office together, he could feel guilt descending on him, falling on his shoulders like a soiled towel. He had done it, finally, broken the vow he’d upheld for so long.
He remembered the time he’d been sure Miriam was having an affair. He was selling then. He had quit teaching because it didn’t pay enough, her mother letting him know that if he wanted a family, he had to make a decent living and teaching science to a bunch of spoiled kids in a private school was not the way to do it. He had not tried to explain that most of the kids were fucked-up, not spoiled and that he got a sense of fulfillment when he was able to get through to one or two of them.
One day he had been in the neighborhood where Miriam worked. He decided to surprise her by taking her to lunch. When he walked in, he learned she was already out, having lunch in a nearby restaurant. They told him the name and where it was.
He found her in a booth with her boss, Mitler. There was a familiarity in the way their heads leaned toward each other, their eyes focused on each other. Then he saw the man’s hand move quickly from the table. Had it been covering hers? And it seemed to him they greeted him with too much enthusiasm.
Later that night he’d accused her of having an affair. He’d lost his temper and pushed her so hard she fell. Talk about guilt. The guilt he felt now was mild compared to how sick he’d felt then. He was a monster. He begged her to forgive him. He would love her forever.
A bitter memory. That promise was now a lie. And now, of all times. With his son in the hospital. How insane was that? And what was he going to do about it now? Would it continue? Would he keep seeing Wanda? Should he break it off immediately and confess all to Miriam? How could he, with all that was going on? He’d have to be out of his mind. Then it struck him that was exactly how he felt. Out of his fucking mind.
Chapter 36
When Alex told Miriam he was going to a hotel rather than accompanying her home, her immediate reaction was to be shocked and upset. But because she felt it would somehow diminish her in his eyes, she wouldn’t allow him to see that. She’d managed to hold herself together and told him it was fine with her. He could do whatever he wanted, including go fuck himself, but she didn’t say that.
After she’d driven only a few blocks tears came into her eyes. And then she began sobbing so intensely she was forced to pull over to the curb. She sat there and cried, her hands over her face, her body shuddering. She was lost, wandering desperately in an unfamiliar place of wildness and terror. It seemed the tears would never end, but gradually the intensity began to wear off, the sobbing slowed, and she began to be aware of what had just happened. When it was finally over she took a deep breath and pulled the visor down to look at herself in the mirror behind it. Her eyes were streaked with red, mascara had run, leaving black streaks. Her skin was pale and gray. I look like an old hag, she thought. No wonder Alex didn’t want to be with her.
She used a tissue to pat her eyes and erase what she could of the mascara and resolved to do something about how she looked when she got home.
The first thing she did was strip off her clothes and take a long hot shower. Afterward, she wrapped herself in a towel and rested on the bed. Of course, she knew her looks had nothing to with Alex not coming home. In fact, underneath it all, she shouldn’t have been surprised. What he’d done was simply acknowledge to both of them that their marriage no longer existed. What had been so good, so meaningful for twenty years had come to its closing stage.
It was hard to believe that a marriage she’d once considered a fairy tale could end this way. Their first years of marriage had been a honeymoon cliché. Their need for each other was astounding. They made love at every opportunity, in every location, and in every way their imagination took them. When they ran out of ideas they bought the Joy of Love and tried all sorts of maneuvers, some of which made them laugh so much they couldn’t manage to accomplish them. For a long time, they continued to fuck themselves blind.
In time, of course, the sex slowed down, but what happened was that even though the physical aspect diminished, they became even closer in spirit. Their thoughts and ideas commingled on almost every subject. They liked the same movies, music, friends. The only thing they differed on was their taste in food. She loved sweets. All kinds of desserts and especially chocolate. She always had Hershey’s chocolate in the fridge and extras in the pantry so she could have her daily, sometimes twice daily, glass of chocolate milk. Alex, on the other hand loved ethnic food, beginning with bagels and lox, hot dogs, corned beef and pastrami, pickles. Second best was pizza, sausage and peppers, linguini and clam sauce, and third best was Chinese.
She sighed, sat up, and put on her nightgown and a robe. What was the use in reliving the past? She had to deal with her current problems. The biopsy had been a week ago. The results should be coming soon. If it was cancer, would they take her breast, leave her disfigured? It was a distinct possibility, one she’d tried to put off thinking about because it was so distressing, but it wasn’t possible. Her mind kept coming back to it, picking at it as if it were a scab.
She opened the closet door with the full-length mirror on it. She took off her robe and nightgown, letting them drop to the floor, and observed her body. She was no longer the young girl with an 18-inch waist. She’d gained some twenty pounds. She had some rolls of fat on her belly, her breasts were no longer thrusting upwards, but they didn’t droop too much. All in all, her figure wasn’t too bad for a forty-something.
But how would she look with one of her breasts gone and a hideous scar in its place? Or perhaps both breasts might have to go. Would any man want to look at that? Of course she knew there were options like reconstruction and special bras, but that was too gruesome to even think about just now. What she had to do was recognize that it was about time for her to stand up, pull her head out of the sand, and deal with whatever happens.
She closed the closet door, put her clothes back on and went downstairs to the kitchen. She wasn’t hungry enough to eat a meal, so she had toast with strawberry jam and a cup of tea. The house was quiet, except for the humming sound of the refrigerator. Occasionally, a car passed by. She felt comfortable in her kitchen. She’d decorated the whole house, but the kitchen was her favorite. There was abundant counter space, pale yellow cabinets, the best appliances, and a pantry. And even though desserts were what she enjoyed the most, she still liked to cook. She did mostly simple meals, but she could also make a more complicated dish like a coq au vin or a boeuf bourguignon.
Her thoughts returned to her son’s terrible experience. The trauma would probably be with him for the rest of his life. Would his eyes be normal again? She prayed the doctor’s diagnosis was correct and all would be well. But nothing was guaranteed.
