Chapter 11
July
This month, my name is Priscilla, and I’m an investment banker. I wear my blond hair in a tight French twist. I wear pearl earrings in the tiny, perfect lobes of my ears. Everything about me is flawless, slim, put-together. I’m not beautiful, but nobody ever notices.
My friend Tandy’s party is sedate and leisurely. Conversation buzzes about stocks, bonds, the theater, books. The background music is something classical with strings and piano, and I don’t bother pretending I care what it is. I’ve got wine in my hand, but nothing to eat although the table’s laden with plates of fancy food.
“But if you compare the Utopian future of Huxley’s Brave New World and the Dystopian future of Orwell’s 1984,” the man beside me says earnestly, “don’t you have to agree that neither one is a viable scenario when you take into consideration the current financial and moral climate?”
Save me, I mouth to the man inching past me toward the buffet. He’s a couple inches taller than I am, and I’m wearing my tall shoes. He’s blond, too, with light eyes of which I can’t tell the exact color. Like attracts like, and it’s evident even from the first that we’re a nicely matched set.
“The point is,” the new man says easily, “both are fiction, Benson. Fiction. Means made up. Get it? And both of those novels reflect the society the author was living in at the time, so of course their ideas of what the future will be like are way different than what we can extrapolate now.”
I’m impressed. He’s fast, this one. He reaches around behind me to snag a couple biscuit-wrapped frankfurters, putting a casual hand on my forearm to keep from bumping into me as he does. Benson’s eyes lock onto the hand on my arm and he steps up the argument.
Do men really still think it’s about the conquest?
Apparently Benson does, because he leans in closer, sandwiching me effectively between the two of them. “I know it’s fiction, Wilder. I’m not a moron.”
Wilder, who hasn’t moved away from me although he could, laughs. “Of course you’re not.”
Benson seems to think Wilder’s mocking him, because he scowls. “Look, man, I’m just saying that today’s society doesn’t leave room for a Utopian future, but nobody expects Big Brother, either.”
Beside me, his shoulder brushing mine with every movement, Wilder pops a frankfurter into his mouth. “Frankly, Benson, if I’m going to read futuristic fiction, give me some about Pleasurebots and unlimited sex.”
Benson looks aghast, his gaze going immediately to my face as though to check for my reaction. While the comment has taken me rather aback, it’s exciting, too, to hear something so blatant. Besides, Benson is boring me. Wilder…is not.
“What about you?” Wilder turns to me, an easy smile spreading across a mouth made for it. “What do you like to read?”
I don’t read fiction, usually, and when I tell them both so, Benson looks scandalized. Well, I’m pleased, because whatever he was looking for in me must have included a passionate interest in reading novels. He backs up a step, giving up the pursuit but with a disdainful glance toward Wilder as if to say Benson wasn’t beaten—he was voluntarily dropping the pursuit.
I’m not sad to see him go. Benson was becoming overbearing. Wilder, on the other hand—
“Priscilla Eddings.” I hold out manicured fingers for him to squeeze.
“Joe Wilder.” His hand holds mine for just a second longer than necessary for a social greeting.
I don’t mind. I also don’t mind he’s still standing so close I can smell him, a cologne I can’t place. I can also see that his eyes are not gray, as I’d thought, but a greenish-blue.
No matter. We still look good together, both tall, slim, well-dressed and coiffed. We’re even wearing complimentary colors, his suit dark charcoal and mine pale dove.
“So, Joe Wilder,” I say. “What do you do when you’re not rescuing women from overexuberant discussions of literature?”
“Save people from overexuberant discussions about alimony and child support.”
“You’re a divorce attorney?” I flick my gaze over his body again, taking a second look at the suit, which, yes, is more expensive than I’d first thought. I like that. He’s not ostentatious.
“Mediator, actually. In divorce and family affairs.”
Even more interesting. Attorneys can be self-absorbed pricks. Mediators tend to focus more on other people, and they still make the same amount of money.
Not that I need a man who makes money since I make my own, and quite a bit of it. But it’s better to be with one’s own sort. Slumming gets tiresome after awhile.
I have a feeling there’s no slumming with Joe. In fact, the more he says, the more convinced I become that Joe is exactly the sort of man I’m looking for. I put on a wide smile and lean in, just a little.
“I’m going to get a drink…”
“Let me. What can I get you?” He looks toward the bar, then back at me, his eyebrow raised in expectation.
It’s the perfect answer. “White wine, please.”
He nods and heads toward the bar where Tandy’s husband Bill is pouring drinks. I watch his walk. I like it.
“I see you’ve met our Joe.” Tandy is a dear friend, but she tries too hard to be stylish. You either are, or you’re not. You can buy clothes, but you can’t buy style.
I watch Joe chat with Bill. “What makes him ‘your’ Joe?”
Tandy also tends to simper. “Oh, you know. Just that he’s our best single, worthwhile male friend.”
The key word being worthwhile, as it seemed likely Benson was single, too. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Ta, sweets,” says Tandy and returns to her role as hostess.
Tandy might lack style, but she clearly doesn’t lack taste. When Joe comes back with the drinks, I’ve decided I’m going to spend the rest of the night talking to him.
Which I do.
I’m used to getting what I want, in business and in pleasure. In this, too, Joe and I appear to be well-matched. Our conversation is carefully worded, a game we both know how to play. I speak. He listens. He talks and I weigh what he says against what he means and find little difference between them. I respect that. I’m used to men wanting me but being either too intimidated to tell me so, or else being so arrogant they’re certain they can woo me into acquiescence.
There’s no wooing to be done with me. I know what I like and what I want, and I’m not really interested in pretense. I don’t go to bed with men who don’t hold an interest for me long-term, who don’t meet my minimum standards.
Sex is as much an act of business as it is of pleasure. I’m not interested in the mess and complications of passion. I like my sex to be as neat and tidy as my appearance. Not without strings or emotion, of course, I’m not an entirely cold fish.
“Benson is giving us the evil eye.” Joe leans in to whisper in my ear.
His breath is hot, and I turn to look across the room where Benson is, indeed, watching us. I dismiss the other man with a sniff and turn my gaze to Joe. He’s smiling as he sips from a glass of very good whiskey.
“Let him look,” I say.
Joe lifts his glass to me. “Absolutely.”
We negotiate with glances and casual touches. Joe moves into my personal space, and I allow him. The rest of the room goes away as I focus on him. It pleases me to see he isn’t looking over my shoulder to scope out other possibilities. His responses to what I have to say are pertinent and interested.
He’s got good stories to tell, but he doesn’t overwhelm me with solely talking. He listens, too. The night moves on and the party gets a little raucous. Alcohol loosens inhibitions, makes people friendlier or more combative. Tomorrow morning a lot of the men and women here are going to wake with throbbing heads and regret the alliances they’ve made and broken as a result of too much wine.
Benson appears to have moved on. Joe and I can hear his impassioned speech from across the room, where he’s cornered a stunned-looking brunette who works for my bank. The couple next to us are about to start tongue-kissing at any moment, both of them giddy and flushed, their glasses empty. I move closer to Joe to get away from them, since they’ve obviously lost all sense of propriety.
“Another?” Joe points to my empty glass, but I shake my head.
He’s going to ask if he can see me home, and I’m going to let him. “I should be going.”
“Do you have a coat?” he says right away. “Let me get it for you.”
This time when I watch him walk away, I smile. Oh, there’s time for it to sour, for him to muck up our unob trusive negotiations by behaving like so many men do with overeager hands and mouths. I’ll be sad if that’s the case, because Joe’s not only good-looking and charming, he’s smart, too. He gets it.
He brings my Burberry trench coat and helps me on with it with a compliment. He’s got one almost the same, and this satisfies me, too.
Because I only live three blocks from Tandy’s house, I walked to the party. Standing on Tandy’s front porch with the night air cool but not uncomfortable, it would be easy for Joe to say good-night and leave me. I know he’s not going to.
“May I walk you home, Priscilla?”
Neither of us pretend he’s offering only to be polite. The negotiations have stepped up a bit. I can’t deny the small flutter I feel in the pit of my stomach. It’s the same sensation when a particularly good investment comes through, or I finagle a deal that nobody else has managed.
It’s sweet anticipation and it makes me smile.
“I’d be delighted.”
The brick sidewalk is uneven and though I can walk miles in these heels, I don’t mind taking the arm Joe offers. He charms me further on the walk to my house with stories of his childhood menagerie of constantly escaping pets. I share details about my last vacation. These are not intimate stories, but they take us one step along the path we both seem interested in taking.
At my door, I pull out my keys but don’t fumble with the lock to give him an excuse to help me, therefore initiating an invitation inside. We stare at each other, both with pleasant smiles. Now’s the time he’ll either sink or swim, and though I’m hoping he’ll swim I’ve had it all go south at my door more times than not.
“Good night, Joe.”
We’re standing close enough that the hems of our coats brush with the slightest shift of our legs. I hold my keys in my left hand, and I glance at the lock before looking back up at him. I tilt my head the barest inch to meet his eyes.
“Good night, Priscilla.”
Joe’s voice is warm and friendly. Both of us pause and the air between us thickens again with anticipation. I wait, wondering if I’ve read him wrong after all, and he’ll turn out to be one more just like all the others.
“I had a great time tonight.”
I smile. “I did, too.”
I wait. He smiles. The hems of our coats kiss, but we do not.
Joe holds out his hand for me to shake, which I do, and in that moment there is no question in my mind that I’ll be seeing him again.
I sat in silence. Stunned. I hadn’t even touched my salad, though my stomach had been grumbling since this morning. Now it churned.
Joe sat up straight on the bench, staring directly ahead. A woman jogged by, the cords of her headphones dangling from beneath her baseball cap. She turned her head to look at him as she passed, a gesture that seemed so automatic as to be unconscious. Joe didn’t seem to notice.
After another few minutes in which the only sounds between us were the rush of traffic and the occasional barking of dogs, Joe turned his head toward me with a motion stiff and precise, almost robotic.
“Ask me, Sadie.”
I shook my head.
“Ask me why I didn’t fuck her.”
I couldn’t look away from his face. If he smiles, I thought, I’ll walk away and never come back.
“Don’t you want to know?”
I didn’t want to know. He’d broken the rules, unspoken but understood. If there was no story to tell, I had nothing to listen to. And we had no reason to meet.
“I’ve seen her three times since then.” His voice wasn’t defiant, nor smug, only matter-of-fact. “I’m seeing her again tonight.”
I swallowed my response like it was a spider, bitter and sick-making. When I said nothing, Joe straightened his body on the bench again. A soft breeze lifted the end of his tie. He crossed long legs, his trousers pulling up to show dark, patterned socks. The intimacy of seeing the bump of his anklebone was too much, and I had to look away.
“Why didn’t you fuck her, Joe?”
He looked at me again. “Because she’s different.”
His description of her appearance, their conversation, the way she smelled, all had told me this woman was not the same as the dozen others he’d shared with me. He’d spoken of others with more admiration. More lust. Even some with more enthusiasm.
But until today, he’d never admitted to dating any of them.
“Don’t you want to know why she’s different?”
I shook my head. “No, Joe. I don’t.”
He looked away from the emptiness of the path in front of us. I gave a tiny shrug, a little raise of brow and tilt of lip. He ran his fingers through his hair and scrubbed at his eyes, made a disgruntled groan and got up.
A young mother holding a child by the hand crossed the path in front of us. The boy toddled with determination, almost falling once but deftly caught by his mother. Joe and I both watched them until they rounded the corner and disappeared.
“Have a good time tonight.”
I sounded so sincere I almost convinced myself I meant it. I wasn’t so sure I convinced Joe, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded and walked away.
“He looks like you.” I studied the tiny, wrinkled face of the infant in Katie’s arms.
Katie, face drawn with exhaustion, smiled. “Gee, thanks. You’re saying I look like a bald old man?”
“Of course not. But he has your nose.” I touched the sleeping fuzzy head. “When are Mom and Dad coming back?”
“Evan had to go in to work for a few hours, so they’ll bring Lily in from pre-school. About an hour.”
“I should go, then. Let you get some rest.”
“Sadie—”
I looked up from my examination of my new nephew. “Hmm?”
“Do you want to hold him? I have to pee.”
“Sure. Of course.”
We made the trade. Katie got out of bed gingerly and disappeared into the bathroom. I stared down at my armful of infant.
James Trevor Harris had ten perfect little fingers and toes, and a rosebud mouth, pursed now, perhaps in dreams of milk. He had perfect golden lashes shut over sweet, smooth cheeks. He had perfect little brows, furrowed a bit in the effort of existence outside the womb. Everything about him was perfection.
He startled when my tear dropped onto his small face, but didn’t wake. I wiped it away before it could slide down his forehead to his cheek. His skin felt like rose petals. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and I held mine in anticipation of a wail that didn’t come.
“You don’t have to leave before Mom and Dad get here,” Katie said quietly. She got into bed with a wince and a groan. “You know they’re going to want to see you.”
“I know.” I didn’t want to be there, though, to watch them fussing over Katie. Simple and selfish, but true.
Katie gave a weary laugh. “Sure. Abandon me to the smothering. Thanks a lot.”
“You’ll live. Maybe they’ll focus on James.” I returned her son to her arms. “He’s beautiful.”
Katie smiled, lost in contemplation of her son. “He is.”
“Congratulations.”
She looked up. “You sure you have to go?”
“I do, actually, I have to—”
“Get back to Adam. I know.” She nodded. “Okay.”
I hugged them both, mother and son, and slipped away.
* * *
“Everything looks good, but we’ll need to keep an eye on that pressure sore starting on his left buttock.” The visiting nurse was new and borderline manic. She smiled so fiercely it looked like she was baring her teeth instead of grinning, and I thought, she must be new to this.
“I’m over here.” Adam’s didn’t waste his efforts trying to sound falsely genial.
The nurse turned to look at him. He gave her a harder version of the grin I fell in love with. It was like watching a puppet with my husband’s face. The same expressions but slightly off.
“Beg your pardon?” She had to be new, unless she was just one of those irritating caregivers who should know better but insist on thinking spinal cord injury means brain damage.
“I’m over here. You can address me.” He was in his chair, as he preferred to be when the homecare assistants came. It was because it made him feel more in control of what was going on.
The nurse turned to him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Danning. As I was saying to your wife, everything looks good, but we’ll have to—”
“I did hear you,” Adam said, impatient. “The first time.”
I said nothing. I was there to observe and make note of this one small piece of the immeasurable amount of care he needed on a daily basis. I was there because it was my job as his wife to know what was going on with his health, even though the nurse’s breezy, tossed-aside commentary only served to make me more anxious than ever.
She seemed chastened. “I’m sorry.”
Adam was entirely out of sorts, and she didn’t know him well enough to realize when it was a good time to leave him alone. She blathered on for another few minutes about matters so basic I didn’t blame him for being insulted she felt she had to instruct him upon them.
“My accident was more than four years ago,” he told her, voice dripping with sarcasm when she explained for the second time how it was important for him to drain his bladder every four to six hours. “I know all about how to piss through a tube.”
“Well, all righty then,” I broke my silence to say in a bright tone I could see set his teeth on edge. “Thanks so much, Mrs. Carter, but I think I can take it from here.”
Bless her do-gooding heart, she still didn’t get it. She kept chirping as merrily and irritatingly as a parakeet about bowel programs and intermittent catheters as I escorted her down the stairs and out the front door. I bid her goodbye on the front porch and shut the door against her unfailingly cheerful advice.
I didn’t mean to be rude, but she’d put Adam into a bad mood. A brilliant mind trapped in a body that doesn’t work the way it should leads to inventive cruelty. He couldn’t hit out with his fists, so he lashed out with his tongue, instead.
I heard him cursing before I entered the room. I was almost a coward and didn’t go in, but Dennis wouldn’t be on duty for another few hours, and I had no choice. Adam needed me, much to his disgust and my despair.
As if he heard me outside the door, he stopped muttering, and I went inside. He had his face turned away, toward the window. Bars of late afternoon sunlight striped his cheeks.
“Don’t have her back again,” he said.
“All right. I’ll make sure.”
“I’m not a fucking idiot.”
“I know that.” I was never sure what to do for him when he was like that. In the past. I’d have left him alone to work it out, but I couldn’t leave him alone now. Even if I left the room, he’d be calling me back in a few minutes to help him with something. Sometimes, maliciously.
“Do you want some lunch?”
He grunted an answer that I took to be yes.
“Anything in particular?”
Another grunt. I didn’t push. I made sure the intercom was working and clipped the monitor to my pocket before going downstairs to fix him some food.
Marriages fail all the time from lesser disruptions than the unexpected disability of a spouse. It takes work and compromise to keep even an untested marriage strong, and ours was anything but untested.
When Adam had his accident I was working part-time as a junior counselor at a college health center until I could get my license. The money was bad but the hours made it possible for me to spend most of my time at the hospital. Adam had woken from his coma and taken the news of his injury without even blinking. He’d taken on recovery like a man shot from a cannon in flames. He’d been determined to heal, to function. Despite all advice to the contrary, I’m sure he was determined to walk.
As time passed and Adam began his hours of physical therapy, I was able to spend more time away from the hospital. The few hours I spent at home became a refuge, a haven away from the stink of antiseptic and human waste. A quiet place where I could weep or scream as loud as I wanted, where I didn’t have to keep on the brave face. I broke down at home, or spent hours looking through our photo albums, or simply made myself a meal that didn’t taste of the hospital. I guarded those precious few hours jealously, as the key to my maintaining sanity.
We had insurance and we qualified for grants, but we were two years away from the settlement from the company whose faulty ski bindings had caused Adam’s accident. We had enough to pay for a few hours of care a day while I was at work or school, but the bulk of his care fell to me. In the hospital I’d been his voice when he didn’t have the strength to speak. The blanket to shield him from the cold. I was his nurse, his maid, his advocate, his door and his window. Now, I was the wall against which he could throw his fury and frustration and the hands he used to smash it.
I thought I was ready for him to come home. It was all we’d spoken of from the time he could talk again. Of how it would be when he could be home again. Of how it would work, what we’d do, how it would be so much better when he could be in his own environment again. When we could again maintain the happy bubble of exclusivity we’d enjoyed for so many years. When we could have our privacy back.
The doctors assured us that though our lives were forever changed, they didn’t have to be ruined. Adam had an excellent outlook. There was no reason why he couldn’t, when he’d healed, work. Make love. Be a person again instead of a patient.
I cried when I moved myself out of the bedroom I’d refinished and loved so much. I wept when the work crew began reconstructing the bathroom, when I had to sleep alone in our bed staring at an unfamiliar ceiling.
I didn’t weep when Adam came home. I was Superwife. He needed everything done for him. It was a job, a duty—a role—and I did it without complaint.
We’d never experienced what Katie called “baby blur,” the state of mind caused by lack of sleep from being woken every night. Adam was not an infant, but he needed as much, if not more, care. He had to be rolled every two hours to prevent bedsores. Our budget didn’t allow for the special bed that inflated or deflated, or for overnight care. It was up to me to set the alarm and take care of him. Night after night, until I no longer knew quite whether I was awake or dreaming, I woke and stumbled to his side to make sure he was taken care of. Every muscle ached, but I dared not complain because at least I could feel the pain. Adam couldn’t feel anything.
Adam needed constant attention. He could do nothing for himself; not until after the settlement were we able to afford the mouth and voice operated equipment that gave him the independence he had now. No sooner did I sit to eat, to read, to go to the bathroom, when he paged me via the monitor.
For two years, we’d struggled together, the extent of his injuries making anything else but struggle impossible. But we’d done it, worked hard, and he’d made such progress it was difficult to believe he wouldn’t really get up and walk again, someday. When the settlement came from the ski boot company and we could hire Mrs. Lapp and Dennis to take some of the burden off me, when I could return to work and when we could afford the adaptive equipment that allowed Adam to explore his independence again, I thought our lives would improve even more. Yet that was when he started to change. Surrounded by machines and gadgets that could let him read and watch television, operate a wheelchair and answer the phone, Adam began to withdraw. The more he could do, the more apparent it became there was so much he couldn’t do. That was when the anger began.
Four years later, I’d gained more empathy for my patients than I ever could have before. I understood the need for oblivion so great it drove people to drink and drugs. I understood affairs. How the simple need for touch could obliterate rationale, how the desire for passion could override everything else.
I didn’t want to know this.
“Sonofafuckingbitch,” Adam said when I brought in the tray of Mrs. Lapps’s good vegetable soup. “I’m hungry, Sadie. I don’t want that.”
I didn’t let him rile me. “That’s what I made. If you’re still hungry after you’re done I’ll make you something else.”
“I don’t want goddamn soup!”
“Then you should have told me what you did want when I asked.” I kept my voice even, calm.
“You know I don’t like soup,” he gritted out.
I paused in laying out the napkin and spoon. “Since when?”
“Jesus, Sadie.” Adam’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “Since fucking forever.”
He wasn’t being truthful. He was trying to bait me into argument. I steadfastly refused to look at him as I stirred the soup to cool it and settled into the chair, ready to feed him.
“I don’t want it.”
“Adam,” I said. “You have to eat something, and this is what I made.”
“Fuck you, Sadie. Shove the fucking soup up your god-damned ass!”
My hand stopped halfway to his mouth. “That’s uncalled for.”
His eyes gleamed. “Why? Because I’m not allowed to be pissy, is that it?”
“Of course not!” I put the spoon down. My shaking hand made it clatter on the tray before I let go of it.
“Because I should be the happy crip, right? Look at how brave? I’m not disabled, I’m differently abled, right?”
His words were as sharp as glass, dripping poison. His mouth twisted with their bitterness. High color rose in pallid cheeks as his head jerked in the only range of motion he had.
I had to fist my hands in my lap to keep them still. My stomach churned and my throat got tight.
“Say something, Sadie!”
I shook my head, mouth clamped shut, doing my best to refuse to rise to his challenge.
Adam sneered. “What, you can’t shout back at me? You’re going to let me talk to you like that? Just sit there and take it, because why? Because you don’t want to upset the crip?”
“Stop it, Adam!” I got up and made to take the tray away.
“Fuck you, Sadie! It’s true, isn’t it? Fuck you and fuck your soup and fuck that nurse!”
I lifted the bowl before I knew it. It shattered against the wall and left a stain. The spoon landed on the carpet and bounced, reflecting a stray bar of sunlight.
“Fuck you!” I shouted so loud it hurt my throat. “You can fucking starve for all I care, you bastard!”
“Yeah, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? Let me starve to death? Then you wouldn’t have to worry about any of this anymore, right? No more taking care of me—”
“You shut up!” I screamed it into his face, kissing distance. “Shut your goddamn mouth, Adam, and quit being such an asshole!”
His eyes, those blue eyes, blazed. “Quit being such a fucking cunt and tell me the truth!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice was cold as I bent to begin cleaning up the soup. Giving him my back was about the worst insult I could give, since he was powerless to do anything to make me face him.
Adam launched into a tirade of insults so inventive and vile I would have admired his creativity if that venom hadn’t been directed at me. He hit me in every place he knew would hurt, pushed every button I had, played upon every insecurity I had ever shared and many he only guessed at. He dissolved me into weeping, on my hands and knees at the base of his chair, and even though I knew he did it out of hatred for his situation, it felt too much like he did it because he hated me.
“Admit it,” Adam said finally, his voice cracked from screaming. “You wish I’d died.”
I got to my feet. Again, I got in his face, giving him the aggression he was giving me. He couldn’t shrink away. I think he wouldn’t have, even if he could.
“Yes,” I told him. “Sometimes I wish you had.”
We stared at each other for what felt like a very long time.
“So do I,” Adam said.
I didn’t know what to do with him when he cried, except to hold him as best as I could. To stroke his hair, to shush, to kiss his mouth that tasted now of tears. I could hold him, but he couldn’t hold me back. There was no one to hold me when I cried, nobody to tell me it was going to be all right. There could be no room for selfishness in this marriage any longer. No room for anything but struggle.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said, over and over, and I told him, over and over, it was all right.
I didn’t know what to give him except my compassion, and it didn’t seem I’d ever have enough.