Full Frontal Fiction (18 page)

Robbery

BY KAREN BENDER

ELLA ROSE SAT BESIDE her husband, Lou, as they drove through the streets of the San Fernando Valley. It was dusk, and the streets were grand, golden with the vanishing sun. The car was quiet, for Lou did not turn on the radio, and the two of them did not speak. They had just dropped their retarded daughter, Lena, and Lena's husband, Bob, off at Panorama Village, a residence for people who could not live on their own. Now Ella and Lou were going home.

Ella was in her early sixties, as was Lou, and they had lived in their home on La Buena Street for about forty years. But now she and Lou approached their home cautiously, like robbers. With Lena gone, it seemed an unfamiliar, almost illicit place. Ella could not remember how it felt to have the house belong only to them. Lena had been born thirty-one years ago, and for all that time she had been a constant presence.

The car stopped in front of the house. Lou had left the sprinklers on, and enormous glass flowers seemed to be sprouting out of the lawn. The spray sent thousands of clear droplets sparkling into the air, and the front yard, in its mist, seemed like an unearthly place. Ella and Lou got out of the car and, for a moment, watched the spray. Then Lou switched off the sprinklers, and the grass glittered in the blue-pink dusk.

Her husband's eyes seemed raw, young to her. “After you,” he said to Ella, with a gentlemanly bow.

It had taken Ella a long time to decide that Bob and Lena should live at Panorama Village. Ella had chosen it carefully, and slowly, examining room sizes and dessert offerings and the kindness and number of aides. It was the place that satisfied most of her stringent requirements. That afternoon, Ella helped Lena and Bob arrange snapshots of themselves and the family up on a bulletin board. “Bob's picture goes at the top!” Lena announced, gazing at her prize, her husband of five months. Her admiration made him blush; he watched as she gave his photo its own special spot. Ella understood, in some honest part of herself, that this was where Lena and Bob would live for the rest of their lives.

And it was where she had left her daughter. She did not know what she and Lou would be like now in their home. She went inside and stood in the kitchen. She had made sure to thoroughly clean up before they left, so as to come home to a house in order. Lou grabbed a black cherry soda from the refrigerator and downed it quickly, with great thirst.

They looked at each other like restless children. A variety of feelings hovered, like clouds, in the air. She wanted, just now, to avoid them. They would come upon her, powerfully, soon enough.

Lou stood on the gleaming tile, his hands thrust into his pockets. He was utterly irreplaceable to her. She had not known, when she was first married, what it would be like to love this person, a husband, for so many years. Every marriage was a secret, containing its own bargains, frustrations, and theirs also had its own dealings, its own limits and joys. But right now she felt completely vulnerable to him.

He smiled, a little evil smile, for he sensed she was thinking kind thoughts about him. He shuffled his feet a little and swayed his hips in a silly, hopeful way.

“And, God, could that man dance,” he said.

He looked so absurd she could not help laughing. She ducked in to give his stomach a little slap. He grabbed her wrist and held it.

“Let's look around,” he said.

She and Lou had to reclaim the house. They both understood this. Holding her hand, he stepped into the hallway first. He had always been braver than she was.

Lou did not bother to turn on the lights. It seemed enough to get used to the rooms like this. They walked into the living room. Suddenly, she felt him behind her, his hands on her blouse.

“Don't move,” he said, softly. He held her waist firmly with one hand, and with the other unbuttoned her blouse and slid it gently off her arms. The air was cool on her bare skin. She looked at him, surprised, a little thrill going up her spine, but could not see his face.

“Let's go,” he said. She followed him, now in her skirt and bra. His hand was warm, paternal, encircling hers.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the house. In each room, he stopped and removed a piece of her clothing. He did it stealthily, throwing each item onto the floor. He did not touch her besides removing her clothing. Her bra fell onto the floor, then her shoes, then her skirt. He left articles all over the house—strewn beside her cabinet filled with porcelain figurines, tossed onto the wing-backed divan, little piles on the powder-blue carpet.

By the time they had walked a circle around the house, she was naked, and he was still clothed. She could see him gazing at her, and she loved to hold his attention like this; she turned around slowly for him, letting him see all of her.

He came up to her and tenderly stroked her hair, her cool shoulders.

“What about you?” she whispered.

How utterly she knew his body, in all its lives. As a young man, its hard arrogance, the illusion of infinite strength. Then the lovely softness that evolved as he grew older, more successful; in his fifties, the ways he grayed. She did not think either of them looked that different than they did when they were younger. It was only when she saw old photos of them, forty years ago, that she was shocked by the naivete in their expressions, the slickness of their hair. She had always imagined she would look back at the two of them at twenty, envy their smug beauty, but now the untouched quality of their former faces seemed less lovely to her. The young versions of themselves were so greedy. They wanted everything to be easy and right. They could not have known how their shared sorrows would sweeten their lust for each other.

Love was the ultimate form of robbery. She needed to take his body from the rest of the world and make it hers. She went to Lou and removed his clothes quickly, hungrily, and she felt his naked arms, soft but strong, curve around her.

They knelt, carefully, on the carpet of the living room, this most illicit place, and she felt the exquisite pressure of his lips butterfly against her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. “Shh,” he said, bringing her down to the floor, beside him. He touched her skin slowly, tenderly, for they took longer now, as though, with age, both of them had become more female. They understood each other's bodies, the responses that delighted and annoyed them utterly, yet now their bodies seemed to be revealing new secrets. He touched her ear in a light way that felt marvelous; she kissed his neck and unearthed a new kind of sigh. Their skin was soft and babyish in the light; her long, steely hair fell out of its clip and tumbled onto him. No one would find them in their living room, trespassers, as they loved each other's hair and skin and lips. In the darkness, in the luscious quiet, they kissed and fell into each other. That night, they made the house theirs.

Aubade

BY CAROLYN BANKS

THE OBITUARY PAGE stared up at her from the foot of the bed. She looked at the faces of the people pictured there: husbands, wives. One day her own photograph would be there, or his. One day she would live alone, or he would.

And what then?

She would feed on remembering those skin-on-skin mornings, the cache of warmth beneath the quilts and blankets of that otherwise cold, high-ceilinged room. The way her eyes would fall on things: his easel, her books.

“Listen to this,” he would say, Sundays mostly, in bed with all the fat sections of newspaper. Some bit of news, ironic, unruly, or both.

What else would she think of? Cigarette ashes falling like snow. Light from the north.

And how they wore tops to bed, usually, and were slow to take them off. He would lift his and she hers, and they would yearn against each other. She would feel his ribs and marvel, thinking always of the first time they'd been together and how each time after was the same: delicious and fierce and sweet.

His arms and legs would wind around her. He was climbing her, he said, climbing her higher than he thought a man could go.

And she was tiny beneath his fingers, tiny like the Carolina wren just outside the bedroom door.

Oh, that spring.

He pulled a thick white sweater over his head and went outside without putting on his pants.

They were in the city and she stood in the doorway watching as the darkness lifted. She sneaked back into bed without his knowing she had seen him out there, eyeing the sky near dawn.

And she laughed to think of their neighbors.

When he slid back beside her the room was gray with morning and his knees and his belly and his testicles were cold until she kissed them.

You were awake, he said in mock reproof, reaching for the radio. And then Neil Young's voice, its remarkable innocence, was there in the room too.

No one wins...

No one wins...

“What a fucking lie,” he whispered in her ear.

He would paint that morning, day breaking like a blossom, sky bleaching pink. “Baby-ass pink,” he would say. And he would tell her how hard it was to find the color, and how long, how long, he had tried.

Anniversary— Eleven Years

BY VICTOR LAVALLE

HIS FACE WAS BAD AWFUL but I loved him because he loved my eggs. I promise. He would say it sometimes, same as last night, when we got down for sleep.

—I love your eggs. You are not barren.

This morning, very early as always, he woke, showered and tried to put a pick through his hair, but the naps had all set in. Real hard. I told him not to get them out, that they were beautiful like the tangled nets when fish are caught—they're full of life. I meant it, I don't lie to my man any more than the minimum—which is thirty percent. You really think he wants to know I've had bigger? Truth is, he fits fine enough so that's what I call him, Fine. He takes it complimentary since he thinks I'm talking about his face; you get to have your little jokes when you're married.

Our home is small, but the bedroom's big. We bought it for that; with both of us working as we do he'd said—We'll be sleeping or out so let's forget a den and all that.

We have enough space in here for two beds, cots too. When relatives visit it becomes like a monastery—we all say our prayers and are otherwise chaste. But as we were alone this morning he hopped about—even in front of the window—and as he stood in the sunlight the blemishes up and across his back came out sure and proud. It looked like he'd been ticked by wasps all over but there was none of that. This silly man had such skin from driving a bus all times and in the heat he would sweat but not move and it ruined his flesh so I can barely rub his shoulders. What a mess.

So he was flipping about like we were young and I pulled the covers over my head, called out—You are a fat fool! To which he answered by perching at the side of the bed where I turn my head when sleeping and slapped a salute against his rump loud enough to sound like lightbulbs being smashed in the next room. When I pulled down my covers he was laughing hard enough for two. Then he said—It's Sunday, better dress for church.

He walked off, his cheeks a bit red from his foolishness, to the closet where he'd prepared a suit and my dress on hangers the night before. But I sat up and let the sheets fall, told him to return to bed presently, that we would be lax this morning and bear the scrutiny of our neighbors and friends next week. I peered to the wall where he'd hung our marriage certificate, all framed as he'd prepared it six years ago, as a gift. Today, if I may say so, I didn't want to share him, even with God.

Fourteen Days and a Possible Cure

BY KARLA KUBAN

HER BOYFRIEND OF EIGHT YEARS took her twice around the world and lavished her with everything. But he withheld what was most accessible: sex, babies. He didn't want babies. Then one day, he packed up and moved to Canada, and for some time they exchanged letters and telephone calls until they agreed that they were
finito.

For a month after the end, she ate apples and popcorn and toast. She had no appetite for anything else, not because she was so brokenhearted over him, but because she had betrayed herself, fooled her own heart. Her colleagues at the university told her she looked gaunt and depressed. She was nearly forty. “I want a child,” she told them. Some sighed and others offered remedies. That new professor in the German department, good genes there. Artificial insemination, maybe? What about a good, safe, one-night stand?

In her fortieth year, a year after she and the boyfriend had split up, here is what occurred: She was artificially inseminated for six months but didn't get pregnant. Her doctor put her on fertility drugs. Her body made big, ripe egg follicles and finally she succeeded. In the fourth month of her pregnancy, she had an amniocentesis. The baby, as seen by the sonogram, bounced inside her womb. The doctor measured its little femur bone. Then he ran a damp, cold cotton swab around inside her navel, disinfected a coin-size area of her stomach, pushed Lidocaine into the disinfected skin and told her to watch the screen. The needle's tip could be seen white, peeking into her womb. He told her to hold her breath and to keep very still. She stopped breathing and the needle broke through. There was a little cramp, but nothing horrible in light of the tumbling baby, beautifully spiderlike, nimble-bodied, bucking. The sonogram was being recorded for her to watch at home.

In seven days, the amnio results came back and indicated that her baby, a boy, had Down's Syndrome. She put a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. The baby's disabilities and deformities could not be predicted, her doctor said, and she thought: How can I raise this child? Will he live? For how long? She spent the night awake, and in the morning phoned her doctor: “Please. Make the arrangements.”

For months after she terminated the pregnancy, she played the videocassette over and over of her baby floating in her womb, flexing and somersaulting, the amnio needle plunging in and withdrawing the fluid. She watched the four-minute video with deadened eyes. She slept on the fold-out couch because she couldn't face the bed (she had spent so much time there, nauseated and tired during her pregnancy). She lost sixteen pounds. She went out only to teach, to hold office hours, to get groceries and stamps. At night she read and read, wishing the words would put her to sleep.

Then one morning, she went to her sliding-glass door and looked out over her backyard. It was small, had a cedar fence around it and a lilac bush in the corner where raccoons had been leaving their droppings in the snow. The nasturtiums and impatiens in red clay planters were bare and brittle, brownish, dead against the snow. She had not taken the cushions off the metal furniture. She hauled them into the basement, each cushion frozen in chair form, stacked them there and went back outside to sweep away the snow on the patio, to pull the dead flowers from the planters and fill the bird feeder with seed.

She went to the music store and bought two CDs, one Renée Fleming, the other an old Donna Summer her ex-boyfriend's dog had taken and buried. At Dunn Bros., a green-haired boy made her a double Café Mocha. She opened the weekly newspaper,
City Pages,
and read the movie reviews. Then the personals. She read “Women in Search of Men” to see if any women advertised for a baby-maker. None did. Then “Men in Search of Women.” No men were searching for women to make babies with. There was one that looked as if he might be willing, as if he had the wherewithal: M.D., recently transplanted from Anchorage, 6'1‘, blue eyes, patiently starved (was this a pun?) ISO SWFDDFHWP (she had to check the key on the back page to decipher the acronyms), who wants/loves walks around Lake of the Isles, Jimi Hendrix blasting, a tent for two in Costa Rica, 911 Turbos, Gorecki, a raw love machine.

She telephoned the voice mail of the
City Pages,
punched in his ad number, left a message and that night he called her back. In their thirty-minute conversation, she learned many things about him: Bob was an only child, he ran six miles a day, had been married and divorced twice, no children. He was an anesthesiologist, not on-call the following night.

They met at the Palomino restaurant. There he was, sitting widekneed at the bar. His hair was short and blond; he wore tiny, round, wire glasses; jeans tight as duct tape; black cowboy boots and a white T-shirt. The way he said
Bobby
made her think of the Beach Boys' song “Barbara Ann.” Bob Bob Bob. Bob Bobberan. He was halfway through a martini.

She thought of making a joke about his putting people to sleep all day, but she couldn't think of anything too funny. She was looking at him, at his boots and hair and mouth, thinking of making a baby with him. She saw babies, babies, babies in their imagined sex. In his ad he hadn't specified wanting a long-term relationship, a commitment. Weren't non-specifiers out for a good time? They weren't out for babies, were they? Maybe he'd be open to it? No strings attached. No parenting required. He kissed her goodnight at her car door, her back against it, his body pressing urgently into her.

Three nights later, they went to a reading at the Hungry Mind bookstore, and as Michael Ondaatje read, Bob's eyes were brimming with tears. “Did you like that poem?” he whispered into her ear.

Sex, she thought, feeling the forward edge of prospect.

They had dinner and drank a bottle of wine, and he asked her what she wanted to do next.

“Your place,” she said.

They went to his car, a neon yellow Porsche, and sped off. He ran a red light. She asked him to pull over and he apologized for scaring her.

“I want to tell you about my baby,” she blurted out.

“Oh?” he said.

Then she told him. She told him she wanted to try again, and he said they would have to talk about it, but he was flattered, and then he frowned and asked if she was using him.

“I'm not lying to you, am I?” she said. “If I were using you, I'd lie. I suppose asking for your sperm is asking for something free, for a part of you, but I'm telling you now what I want, so it's your decision.”

“Are you ovulating?”

“I might be.”

“There are tests for that. You can buy them anywhere.”

“I know.”

“When was your period?”

“Twelve days ago.”

“Then you're ovulating, or about to. Are your periods regular?”

“Yes, and you know the score. I told you. What do you think about it?”

“I'm thinking.” He said almost nothing the rest of the way to his place, and she thought, If he doesn't go for it, I'll find another one, and I don't have to be so honest. That's all. I'll keep looking. It's not a perfect situation, but it's rational. It is what it is.

They took the elevator to the twenty-first floor. In the kitchen he leaned her back on the table. He didn't take off her panties, he just pulled the crotch aside. Artificial insemination—a lousy way to get pregnant. A pinch like a straw through the cervix. You don't even feel the semen; it goes directly in so the swimmers don't have to work so hard. Bobberan, she thought.

What did he have to say about her egg and his sperm? Not a thing. He wasn't worried or didn't care. Why ask? Their relationship wasn't founded on stable expectations or committed love. If they pondered over the hows and whys, it might ruin everything.

“I'm tired,” she said. “Can we go to bed?” She wasn't hostile or happy. She was hopeful. He led the way to the room and pulled down the covers. In bed, he touched her gently at her temples and down her neck.

The morning-after-Bob was a disappointment for her. He was a doctor; he knew the dope on disease, on sperm and eggs. They hadn't even discussed STDs. Stupid. She was a grown woman. Stupid. She was a masochist, she thought, and wanted to run out of there. Was he really a doctor? Maybe he was sterile. Had he had a vasectomy? She should have checked for the tiny vasectomy scar. Maybe Bob (he had asked her to shout his name, Bobby, Bobby, as he fucked her, and she had whispered it, then shouted Bobberan—God, the things we do when we have sex) was a psycho-killer, and maybe the next time she went to him, he would strangle her. How could she know?

But he called her, they went to a movie that she hated, then back to his place. They undressed in his bedroom, he with a lofty air of superiority, staring at her thinness so she felt mocked and desperate. What did he have in mind? He knew what she had in mind with him. He asked about her siblings, said she was lucky not to have been an only child. Only children are lonely, he said. Then they got into bed.

“What if I'm pregnant?” she asked quietly, so quietly that he asked her to repeat it. When he felt her leg and around her buttocks, he squeezed hard and she told him it hurt.

“Do you think you might be?” he asked, squeezing her breast.

“That hurts. Don't. I told you,” she said abruptly. It was as if he'd never heard her say that she wanted a baby. And why would he be so willing to have unprotected sex? She asked this question over and over, but she didn't ask him.

“Good night then,” he said, and rolled over. She stood up, turned on the light and dressed. He didn't move. She went to the kitchen and called a cab, waiting in the doorway for the headlights.

He called her the next morning and apologized. He was exhausted, he said, frustrated at work, had been unfair to her. They talked about going to Santa Fe. It would be romantic, they agreed. He said traveling was a good way to get to know each other. She had to admit she was surprised by his suggestion of romance, and she was pleased and willing.

Was he really a doctor? She called the state medical examiner's office. Born in 1945. Graduated from the University of Nebraska. No pending actions against him. “What does that mean?” she asked the clerk, “ ‘no pending actions'?”

“No pending actions,” the woman said.

“Does it mean someone, for example, may have filed a malpractice suit but it hasn't gone to court yet?”

“I don't have that information.”

“Lawsuits can take ten years.”

“I'm sorry, I don't have that knowledge.”

Was her hair right? Did she dress more provocatively when she ovulated? She was not particularly successful in her career, not especially patient in her teaching, wasn't happy in love or socially confident. She was lonely and isolated, and she thought, Buck up.

It snowed two feet and she didn't feel like meeting Bob. She called and told him so, and he said that he'd already bought tickets to the symphony. He would go alone though, he told her, not a problem.

She didn't have the safe option of calling a mutual friend, one who might have set them up, one who could explain Bob's almost obsessive fascination with Bill Gates and the digital watch on his left wrist that illuminated phone numbers (how many eligible women's?), one who could clarify his high school nickname, Roamer (but really, what needed to be clarified about a name like that?), or say why he kept dead roses in a brown bag by his bed, their heads small and shriveled like cherries? When she asked he said, “I don't know,” and she felt pathetic for asking. Not knowing didn't bother her so much as the vacant, calm manner of his response.

On the airplane to Santa Fe, they did it in the bathroom. She was convinced by then that because of the reckless manner in which they were doing it, never mind whether she had ovulated or was about to, whether she had or had not lied about her menstrual schedule, he must have had a vasectomy and that was why he was so gung-ho. His eyes in the bathroom seemed vacant one minute, and earnest the next.

The thought of a vasectomy made her cringe. In their seats, she eyed him with contempt. What were the odds of a vasectomy reversal? Fifty percent, no better. She cried now and was embarrassed and turned away from him. She missed her baby. She cried because this man wanted to fuck, but not for a baby. How could she have been so optimistic? But in truth, she'd known all along.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“I don't know what you want from me.”

“Why do I have to want anything?”

“Do you?”

“Sure,” he said. “I like you. Let's not get heavy, let's not have one of those discussions I keep sensing you want to have.”

“You do?”

“If you want me to define this relationship for you, I can't. We've only just met. We're in the process of getting to know each other. Isn't that okay for now?”

It made sense. Sure it did. She put her head on his shoulder and he kissed her hard on the mouth. He pushed his tongue through and she pulled away.

“Better?” he asked. “We're going to have a very nice time.”

“I hate this,” she said, and he turned to look out the window. Finally, he looked at her.

“Do you want to tell old Bobby what's wrong?”

“No thanks.”

“Is it something I said?”

“It's something you didn't say,” she said, “but I'm not myself and it's not your fault.” She dismissed the whole thing with a wave of her hand. He put his hand on her thigh. Her smile was as tight as a bootlace, and she practically mouthed the words so that he had to lean in to her. “Do you do this very often? Take trips like this, with women?”

“This jealousy,” he said, “is getting to me.”

“This is the first time I asked.”

“I can sense it with you all the time.”

“So I'm a mess. Shoot me.”

He picked up his Bill Gates book and buried his nose in it. She watched him read. He looked over at her and cleared his throat. He cracked his neck by moving it right and left. He smiled at her. She smiled back. He told her her eyes were so bright, such a blue, in the light there. With his face in the light, the light of the sunny blue, above-clouds sky, she noticed a small, barely visible line at the bottom of his teeth, slightly up from the ivory edge. Inside were lines of his authentic teeth that laminate had overlain. She noticed his hair, streaked the many colors of blond, the colors summer sun puts into tawny or auburn hair. But his roots were dark. So he's vain. Big deal. Or adventurous. So what?