Spirit Lost (20 page)

That was the kick in the stomach, the terrible, swift blow that made her bring her hands to her waist in an attitude of defense: the sight of those soiled sheets.

Once she had heard Mark and John laughing together about college days when a friend had arranged to rent a pornographic movie for a stag party. He had borrowed a projector from the university library but had used one of his own sheets off his bed for the screen. “God, his sheets were worse than the movie!” Mark and John had laughed.

Now Willy stared down at her filthy husband sprawled on his soiled, stained sheets, and tears came into her eyes. She was shaking, too, because of the extreme cold of the attic.

“Dear God,” she whispered. “What’s been going on?”

She knelt by the bed and took her husband’s face in her hands. “John,” she whispered. “John. Wake up. It’s me. It’s Willy. I’m home. Wake up.” She shook him slightly; she caressed his face.

At last his eyes opened. He seemed drugged. He looked right at Willy and said, without any kind of preface, after all their three weeks apart, “I’m tired. Let me sleep. Please let me sleep.” Then he closed his eyes.

“John!” Willy protested. She gently shook his shoulders. “Hey,
John
, come on!”

He opened his eyes again. “I need to sleep,” he repeated.

But Willy was firm. “Then you can sleep downstairs. With me. After you’ve had a shower,” she added. When he closed his eyes and turned his head away, she said, more loudly, “I mean it, John. I’m not leaving you up here in this cold alone. My God, what have you been doing? What’s been going on?”

One more time John opened his eyes. He looked at Willy long enough for her to understand that he was conscious now and that he was aware of what he was saying.

“Willy,” he said. “Go away. I want you to leave me alone.” He voice was firm. His look was firm.

The hurt plunged through her so fiercely that it was as if it were her own body that had plunged through some cold, scraping element. She recoiled in disbelief.

But they had been married for so long, and something in her now came to his defense more powerfully than to her own. Even as she felt her body flinch backward from his words, she felt something else within her rise to steel her intentions and steady her voice. She gazed back at him with a look so calm it was almost a glare.

“No,” she said, her voice quiet but deliberate. “No, John, I won’t go away. I won’t leave you alone up here. I want you to come downstairs with me.”

He closed his eyes and turned his head away. He lay there, ignoring her.

Willy looked at her husband, feeling her chest expand with pain and frustration and anger and fear. And with cunning, for she heard herself saying, “All right, then,
I’ll
get in bed with
you
.” And she rose and began to take off her clothes.

“No,” John said, twisting on the bed to look at her. “Stop, Willy. You can’t sleep
here.”

She was shaking now, from the cold, from fear, from anger. She didn’t reply but kept on undressing.

“Goddammit!” John said, and pushed himself up off the bed. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go. Come on. I’ll go downstairs.”

Willy gathered up her clothes; she had stripped down to her corduroy trousers and bra. She followed her husband down to the second floor, sighing in relief.

He went into the bathroom. Willy followed, her clothes in her hands, and leaned against the doorframe, watching him. When he turned, she said, “This is a lovely homecoming, I must say, John.”

John looked at his wife. He ran his hand through his hair. He seemed completely exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” he said without seeming to mean it. “I’m just so tired, Willy. I must have the flu.”

“You must,” Willy agreed. “You look like a fucking cadaver.”

This made John burst into an abrupt bark of laughter. “A fucking cadaver!” he echoed. Then he edged his way past Willy out of the bathroom and headed to the guest bedroom. “I’ve got to get some rest, Willy,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”

“John,” Willy protested, “wait a minute! You can’t go to sleep now, not yet! I haven’t seen you for three weeks. And look at you—you’ve lost so much weight. You look horrible. You’ve got to tell me what’s been going on!”

“Tomorrow,” John said, falling onto the twin bed.

“No,
now
!” Willy demanded. “John, why are you sleeping in the guest bedroom? Why won’t you sleep with me?”

But John did not answer. He turned on his side and, without pulling up any covers, closed his eyes and fell asleep. Watching, Willy was alarmed at how fast her husband fell asleep. She sat down on the twin bed across from him and just looked at her husband for a while. She had never seen him looking so awful. He had never seemed so distant—so cruel; he had never hurt her so much.

And that part of her that was wounded cried out for extreme and dramatic reactions now; she wanted to cry and scream and wake John up and yell at him and hit him and throw things against the walls. “Go away,” he had said to her, his voice as cold as ice. And he had not wanted her in that dreadful bed in the attic. She wanted to rage
with jealousy and anger.

Yet something stronger within her again came to John’s defense, and she was not as jealous as she was afraid, afraid for John’s sake.

Aimee strolled into the room and, seeing Willy, sat just inside the doorway and meowed.

“Oh, poor kitty.” Willy laughed, glad to see the cat. “I’ve forgotten all about you. Here. Come here. Come up with me.”

With the cat curled up next to her, purring and warm, Willy began to relax. She could not puzzle this all out tonight. She had to talk to John; she had to get him to talk to her. But that would have to wait until morning. Still—still she did not want to leave his side, and so she did not rise to unpack her bag or change into a nightgown, but only snuggled under the covers and fell asleep on the guest room bed, her cat next to her, her husband across from her, sleeping his fathomless sleep.

Chapter Eight

When Willy awakened the next morning, she noticed first that John was still asleep and then that Aimee was still next to her, curled in a ball at the bend of her knees. She lay for a while appreciating the way the weak winter sun shone through the windows, filling this small room with a glazy light. Stretching, she looked at her wristwatch and was amazed to see that it was almost eleven o’clock. She glanced back over at John, alarmed—how could he still be sleeping so deeply?

Sitting up in bed, she pondered what to do next. Should she leave him alone to sleep? He had finished so many canvases; it was possible that he had pushed himself to the point of exhaustion. It was possible that it was only that that had happened while she was gone. But she did not think so. Yet she had no proof, only her suspicions and the memory of his voice and face as he told her to go away.

For a while, petulant, she decided she would damn well stay by his side for every minute of this day. But after she had settled back down into the bed, she grew restless. She never had been good at staying in bed all day. So she rose and showered and dressed, coming in now and then to check on John, who still slept.

Several times she walked past her sewing room, but it did not lure her now. All her thoughts were intent on one thing: What could she do to get John back to normal again? How could she get him to love her—to look at her, talk to her, touch her, confide in her, to be her lover, her friend, as he had always been? How could she win him back from whatever strange mood it was that had overtaken him?

She decided to seduce him. She never had enjoyed nagging—never had had to do much of it—and she did not look forward to a day filled with scenes and questions and recriminations. Better to lure him, to seduce him, to win him back to her side with love and little luxuries.

So while he slept in the guest room for the greater part of the day—and she kept checking, and still he slept—she hummed in the kitchen, determined, cleaning up the debris of the past three weeks and filling it with the aromas of foods John loved best: her homemade whole wheat bread, beef stew in Burgundy, apple cinnamon pie.

But she discovered that in the late afternoon, when she went out to buy fresh
flowers to arrange around the house, John had awakened and gone up to the attic without touching anything in the kitchen, without fixing himself so much as a cup of coffee.

“John?” she called up from the bottom of the attic stairs. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I’m painting, Willy,” was his only response.

Brazen now, Willy went uninvited up the attic stairs to see exactly what it was her husband was up to. And he was, in fact, painting, another dreary, dark, disturbing canvas. Willy stood at the top of the stairs, watching for a while. John was completely engrossed, sweeping the paint on in swirling motions, seemingly unaware of Willy’s presence.

Willy took advantage of this to look around the attic. No other person was there—had she really expected someone would be? Had she expected some gorgeous ghost to be hovering just over John’s left shoulder, inspiring him as he worked?

“I’m surprised the paint works in this cold,” Willy said. “I’m surprised
you
can work in this cold.”

He was silent so long she thought he was not going to answer, but finally he said, in a low voice, “The heaters are turned on. It just takes a while for the room to warm up.”

He kept on painting, absorbed, until at last Willy turned and went down the stairs.

She walked through the lovely old house, thinking. Already the light was fading from the sky, and the rooms were filled with shadows. It was almost six o’clock; she wished John would come down to eat. The food smelled heavenly—how could he resist?

By seven he still had not come down, but she would not give up. There were other ways to seduce him.

She went to the bedroom and took out her sexiest nightgown, the red satin one that clung and dipped in just the right places. She brushed her hair out so that it hung shimmering down her back and over her shoulders. She applied what little makeup she owned—some lipstick and blush—and perfume. Finally, after scrutinizing herself in the mirror—her breasts were so exposed in this gown!—she went slowly up the stairs to the attic.

John was in the process of cleaning his brushes. He did not turn when Willy came to his side. So she moved behind him and leaned up against his back. She wrapped her arms around his waist and began to nuzzle and lightly kiss the back of his neck, the back of his ears, while at the same time running her hands up and down the front of his body.

“Through with work for the day?” she purred.

John pulled away from her. “Willy,” he began.

She let him pull away. She stepped back so that he could get a good look at her. Then, because he only stood looking at her without speaking or moving, she took his hands and placed them on her breasts. She smiled at him and moved her head slowly so that her hair slid forward over his hand.

“Don’t, Willy,” John said, trying to pull his hands away.

“Don’t what?” she asked, smiling, moving closer to him. “Why not? I’m your wife.”

When he jerked his hands away in response, she moved even closer and put her arms up around his neck. “I think you’ve been working too hard,” she said. “I think you need a little … rest and relaxation.”

She kissed his neck, his face, his mouth, while moving her hands down his shoulders and over his body. It had been a long time since she had been so close to him physically, and she found herself becoming aroused by her actions. She wanted him. At some point she stopped operating, stopped manipulating, and let the instinctive need in her take over. She ground her body against his in little pushing movements.

And she felt him respond. Her breath came out in a jagged sigh, a mixture of relief and desire. When he began to kiss her back, to hold her to him, tears came into her eyes.

“Come,” she whispered, and pulled him to the bed that lay waiting, rumpled, in the corner of the attic.

“No, Willy,” John said, resisting, but at last he let himself be led to the bed, where they fell, husband and wife, together.

Willy was the assertive one. She rose above her husband, letting the strap of her gown fall down one shoulder so that most of one breast was exposed, and began to unbutton John’s shirt, kissing his chest as she worked. She unzipped his pants.

But although he had been erect when they were standing on the other side of the attic, his body now would display no sign of interest. No matter what she did with her hands and mouth, he stayed limp. Willy looked at her husband, who lay with his arms crossed over his face in an attitude of surrender.

“John?” she asked softly.

“It won’t work, Willy,” he said. “I can’t.”

“Lift up your hips so I can get your jeans off,” Willy said.

Without speaking, John did as she said. As Willy tugged, she felt a movement
behind her and, turning to look, saw that Aimee had come up the stairs and, after sniffing at the edge, had jumped up onto the bed. The cat sat at the end of the bed, watching the humans, purring her approval.

Willy removed John’s jeans and undershorts. She took off her gown. Finally, they were naked together, after so many weeks apart. She lay down on top of him, nuzzling her head against his shoulder, subtly moving her hips against his.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You’re tired, you’re exhausted, you’ve been working so hard, and you’ve got to be hungry.” She began to kiss him softly as she spoke, licking here and there. “It’s good just to be together like this, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s been so long since we’ve been together; you’ve forgotten how it is for us, haven’t you? Oh, Johnny, I love you, sweet man,” she said, and she felt his body responding. She smiled, secretly triumphant.

She pushed herself up in order to move him inside her. He had moved his arms now so that his hands were on her breasts, and he lay looking at her with an expression she could not read. Just as she lifted her hips so that he could enter her, a sound tore the air next to them, startling Willy.

“Wrrrooow!”

The cat’s cry was piercing, high, and frightening.