Broken (4 page)

She really took excellent care of us. I smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Lapp.”

She nodded and headed back the hall toward the kitchen and her impatient husband. Belly empty and growling, I postponed my dinner for another few minutes. I climbed the narrow stairs, a hand on the carved and polished railing Mrs. Lapp kept so clean.

At the top of the stairs, I stopped to listen. To my right was the short part of the hall, with the bathroom, the guest room, the elevator and the stairs to the third floor. To my left, the long part of the hall, with two more rooms, the entrance to the back stairs and the master bedroom and bath. From upstairs I heard the faint sound of the television and then the creak of footfalls. Dennis. A moment later he peered over the railing.

I liked Dennis. At six-foot-two-inches and 230 pounds, he looked like a linebacker, but he was equally sensitive as he was strong. Though he’d only been with us for two years, I could no more do without him than I could with Mrs. Lapp.

“Hi, Sadie. You’re home late.”

“Traffic,” I told him, too.

“I’ll be going out in about twenty minutes. I’ll check on him before I go,” he told me and disappeared into his room again. I heard him talking, then making some calls.

Everything has its price, and the cost of having Dennis and Mrs. Lapp was my privacy. No matter how often I wistfully remembered being able to walk around in my underwear and eat peanut butter straight from the jar, that life was a part of the past. My mother-in-law euphemistically called them “help.” I called them necessity. The three of us worked together like synchronized machinery to keep this household functioning. Without them, I’d have been lost.

I paused in Adam’s doorway to put on the right face. A pleased half-smile with just the right touch of weariness to indicate the battles of the highway. A fond gaze.

Adam was already in bed, but he turned his head to look at me when I came through the doorway. He’d been reading something on his laptop. “Close program,” he ordered the computer. He could operate most everything in his room via the voice-operated command system. “You’re late tonight.”

“I feel so loved. You’re the third person tonight to tell me so.” I kept the reply light, joking, slipping so easily into the role of wife.

I pushed the computer table out of the way and bent to brush his lips with my evening kiss. His mouth felt cold beneath mine, and I closed my eyes, willing it to warm.

“Long day?” Adam asked when I’d pulled away. “You look bushed.”

Even before I could answer, my stomach gurgled, and I put my hand overtop to quiet it. “Mrs. Lapp made soup. I’ll go have some. I wanted to say hi, first.”

He smiled again, still looking so much like the man I’d fallen in love with it made my guts hurt. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I reached to push his hair off his forehead. His mouth had been cold but his forehead and cheeks were flushed. “You feel warm.”

“Ah, you caught me reading.” He wiggled his eyebrows. For a man without the use of anything below his shoulders, Adam never had a problem making his expressions clear.

I looked at his laptop. “You’re reading smut again?”

“Please.” He affected a haughty tone. “It’s literature.”

“For class or for fun?” I stroked my hand across his forehead again, pretending a caress but really checking for fever.

“Class.”

Adam’s poetry had once won national awards. Now he taught online English courses for Penn State University. As far as I knew, he no longer wrote poems.

“Prison Poets?” I straightened a hand that had fallen askew, legs that had bent a bit during the course of the day. I tucked blankets in all around him with swift, practiced movements, making him a mummy.

“The Marquis de Sade versus Oscar Wilde.” Adam’s eyes followed my course around the bed.

“Sounds positively kinky.”

I leaned across him to tuck the blankets on his other side. He breathed in deep and his lips grazed my throat. Heat and memories flooded me.

“You smell so good.” Adam’s voice was hoarser than usual.

I froze. He tilted his head to brush his lips against my skin, and breathed in again. He nuzzled me. My nipples tightened and knees got weak as instant arousal, eager as a puppy, bounded through me at that one, simple caress.

His tongue flickered out. “You taste good, too.”

I turned my face to his and kissed him, our mouths parting. His tongue stroked mine and another bolt of pure liquid pleasure washed over me. I put a hand on his shoulder to steady myself. The flannel of his pajama shirt was soft, the bones beneath padded enough by the fabric not to hurt my palm.

I wanted to kiss him forever, to melt into him. The kiss broke and left both of us breathing hard. I leaned in again, my mouth seeking his and finding it closed to me. Shut out, I pulled away.

“Hey, how about we watch a movie tonight?” My hand lingered on his cheek. “Give yourself a break.”

“Can’t.” He smiled, rueful. “I’m already behind on this stuff from being sick.”

Even a simple head cold knocked him harder than it would have for me. I understood. Even so, my heart still hammered in my chest and my thighs trembled with desire. Joe’s stories did that, but so did Adam’s kisses, as they always had. I leaned close to breathe into his ear and run a hand over his chest.

“I could make it worth your while.”

“Sadie,” Adam said after a moment. “I really need to get this done.”

We looked into each other’s eyes for a moment infinite with silence. I had no illusions that my husband did not know every part of me, every thought, every single stir of emotion. The accident that had taken the use of his body hadn’t damaged his mind. He’d always known me better than anyone ever had.

So why did it so often feel like he’d forgotten?

I pulled away, putting the mask back on. This was not the first time he’d lacked interest in physical intimacy. It wouldn’t, I was sure, be the last. I could’ve asked him why he’d rather read about sex than have it, and in the past, in our life before, I would have. But that was long ago and far away, and those sorts of questions often hung between us, never spoken. We both bore scars, and not all of them were visible. There was enough damage to contemplate without creating more.

“You’d better go eat,” Adam said. “Your stomach is growling.”

I nodded. “Do you need anything?”

“No. I’m good for now. I’ll finish this up and go to sleep.”

The entire room had been adapted to his use. He was perfectly capable of putting himself to sleep without me or Dennis to help him, though he’d still need help with the regular turning that helped prevent pressure sores. Tonight was Friday, and that meant it was my job to wake every two hours and check on him, since Dennis was off-duty for the weekend.

I kissed him again, without the heat from before. “Call if you need me.”

His attention had already gone back to his work, shutting me out. “’Night, babe.”

“G’night.” I pulled the door half-closed behind me and stopped to lean against the wall with one arm crossed over my stomach and the other elbow resting on top of it to support the hand covering my face. I was trying hard not to shake, but not quite succeeding.

“Sadie? I’m heading out now.”

At Dennis’ concerned tone, I straightened up and shifted my features again into neutrality. “Thanks, Dennis. Have a good time.”

He studied me and looked as though he were about to comment, but instead just grinned. “Yeah. It’s open mic night at the Blue Swan.”

I laughed, the sound barely hollow. “Ah. And what are you planning on reading?”

“Me? Nothing. I’m there for moral support. Scott and Mark are going to sing.”

Envy attacked me from behind, biting the back of my neck and jabbing its stinger into my spine like an electric shock. I wanted to go out with friends, have some drinks. I wanted to—

“Have fun,” I told him, and he nodded.

“I will. See ya Monday.”

He headed down the stairs two at a time, quiet despite his size, and I waited until I heard the front door slam before I went down the stairs after him.

I lingered over a single bowl of soup and a mug of hot tea. I washed the bowl and mug carefully by hand instead of using the dishwasher. I fed the fish and set the timer on the coffee maker. I checked the locks on the doors, all three downstairs and the one in the basement.

When at last I climbed the stairs again, the hour had grown late enough that it almost made me wonder if I should bother to go to bed at all. After all, I’d only have to wake again in a couple of hours. I’d regret it if I didn’t, but though every muscle ached and my head throbbed, my mind was too restless for sleep.

I peeked in on Adam. His lights were out and his breathing slow and steady. The faint green glow from the night-light gave his face an alien cast. I didn’t need light to see what I was doing. Adam barely woke as I turned him. We didn’t speak. We never did if we could help it, as if somehow silence made all of this a dream. I finished everything I had to do and made sure he was all right before I crept away.

Though I slept in his room on the weekends when Dennis was off-duty, we no longer shared a bedroom. The room that had been ours now needed every inch for the equipment and supplies that kept Adam functioning. I’d made that room a haven for us in the early days of our marriage, when the rest of the house had been a hodgepodge shambles of late ’70s décor and early ’80s substandard renovation. I’d loved that bedroom and our art deco furniture, salvaged from thrift stores and auctions. I’d loved the bathroom, with its claw-foot tub and Victorian toilet with the pull chain. Now gutted to accommodate a wheelchair-capable shower and toilet, it was a room of function, not luxury.

The room I used was just on the other side of the back stairs. It was much smaller than the master, but I’d cut an arched doorway through the wall into the room next to it, creating a sitting room/study that gave me all the space I needed, and that room connected to the bathroom also accessible to the hall. I only had to share when we had houseguests, since Dennis had his own bathroom on the third floor.

I made certain the intercom was working and set, in case Adam woke and needed me, then set about stripping out of my work clothes. The mirror tried catching my attention, but I ignored it. I no longer knew the woman who lived in there.

I ran a bath and added essence of lavender, then dimmed the lights. I settled into the water and let it enfold me. Hold me. It cradled me, and I slid deeper, up to my chin, while my hair spread out around me like seaweed.

I found sanctuary in the dark and quiet, in the one place where I didn’t have to be strong, optimistic, happy, or anything else anyone thought I should be. Where I couldn’t and didn’t have to pretend I didn’t know the truth.

My husband didn’t love me anymore, and I didn’t know how to make him.

I met Joe two years before, two random strangers sharing a bench in the atrium of a local business complex for lunch. Frigid January weather had made our secluded bench a real treasure, and we’d shared it with the glee of kids who’d stumbled onto a candy shop giving away free samples.

We’d made polite conversation, nothing serious, nothing deep. We checked each other out in the surreptitious way men and women do when they have no intention of flirting but want to see if it might be worth the effort. I noticed his smile first, the expensive suit some time later. He made me laugh almost right away during a time when I thought I’d forgotten how.

Remembering Joe’s smile, I slid my hands over my body in the hot water. The bath oil made my skin slick. Smooth. My palms skidded over my belly and thighs. I sank lower, my ears covered, listening to the secret underwater shush shush of my heart beating.

With one thing or another, I didn’t make it back to the atrium until an entire month had passed. It was something like a magic number—thirty days—and when I flipped my calendar something reminded me about the man on the bench and my feet led me back there as if I had no choice but to see if he were there again. I’d ignored the way my heart jumped into my throat when I saw him striding toward me beneath the hanging ferns. The sun had lit his hair into shining gold. His smile was even brighter than that. That was the first time he grumbled about tomatoes on his sandwich. We spent an hour and half on that bench talking. I didn’t ask him if he had to get back to work. I was late for my first afternoon appointment. And something unspoken had passed between us. An agreement.

In March, I made sure to wear lipstick. In April, we moved outside to the park, where a hanging willow muted the echo of our laughter and made it something secret. In May we shared a thermos of lemonade, in June he brought me a muffin and I’d lent him a book we’d talked about the month before.

By July, the conversation was no longer polite.

The first time he told me a story, I’d sat, riveted to the bench, my sandwich eaten but untasted. Joe was an exquisite raconteur. He left out not even the smallest detail of sensation. He’d enthralled me, bound me with his words.

Joe, in his words, loved women. Their curves, their scents, their moods. He loved long hair, big asses, sturdy thighs, concave bellies, tiny, cherry-tipped tits, blue and green and brown eyes. He loved women, and he loved fucking. And every first Friday of the month, when we met for lunch, he had a new story to tell me. He was Scheherazade, saving not his own life, but mine.

I cupped my breasts, their weight made light in the water’s embrace. I stroked them, passing a palm over my nipples before pinching them both between forefinger and thumb. A sigh leaked out of me as they burned and tightened. I tugged and felt an answering pull in my clit, my cunt, my ass. I moved the firm flesh back and forth, jerking them like twin erections.

My thighs fell open as my hips pushed against the water. Eddies left behind by the motion swirled heat against my clit and I rocked harder, but the pressure was too light to do more than tease.

Still tugging on my left nipple, I slid my right hand between my legs. My clit already poked out of its hood, hard, ready for my touch. I bit my lip, the gentle stroke-stroke enough to make my hips jut forward again. I pinched my clit like I pinched my nipple, moving in time, alternating. The water supported and lifted me. My shoulder blades bumped the bottom of the tub as I pushed my pelvis against my fingers.