Three Women (5 page)

Afterward Chad lay as if dazed. “Do you do this a lot?” he asked finally, trying to recover himself.

“We fuck all the time,” Evan said. “We study and we fuck. But it’s the first time we’ve ever taken anybody else with us. You should consider it an honor.” He was grinning widely.

“Did you like being with us?” Elena asked almost shyly. He was so beautiful, Chad with the blue blue eyes and the carved face.

“I’ve spent worse afternoons.” He reached out and pulled her down on the bed with him. He was staring into her eyes. “I don’t understand you.”

“Sometimes I don’t understand myself.”

With a light caress now his hand moved over her breast. “You’re like something I made up lying in bed at night.”

She jerked away. “I’m no fantasy.”

Evan said, “You know, we could all have a lot of fun.”

Chad looked at him, his hand coming to rest on Elena’s bare thigh. “I think you’re right.”

Suzanne

Rachel was silent for an entire week. Suzanne tried to call her twice at the apartment she shared with two other rabbinical students. Suzanne left pleas on the answering machine, but Rachel did not return her calls. Finally a reply came in her E-mail.

It seemed to Suzanne that Elena somehow occupied seventy percent of the apartment. Her jacket lay on the back of the couch. Her CDs were scattered about as if flung. She left the television on and wandered away. Her flame red brassieres and bikini panties hung on the rod in the
bathroom. She was on the telephone as much as in high school, when Suzanne had gotten Elena her own phone in self-defense. Furthermore Suzanne had to deal with Sam, who dropped in on his adopted daughter a little too frequently for Suzanne’s comfort.

Sam was ensconced on her couch at the moment. “I pulled Judge Fogarty. That man must be a hundred years old. Why don’t they have mandatory retirement for judges? It would help if they had to leave the bench before senility overcomes them.”

Sam was big—broad shoulders, big bones, and curly sandy hair. He had been a good-looking man when she had married him, twenty-three years ago, but he had spread out considerably since then. She had never been madly in love with him the way she had with Elena’s father, Victor. She had not wanted to be. She had seen herself going down the same road as her mother, rendered idiotic by blind passion for a series of ill-chosen men. Sam had been a rational choice. She had made that choice as much for Elena as for herself. She had loved him, certainly, but with clarity, with her mind as well as her body.

Their careers had got in the way, so that in an average week, most of the time they spent together was in bed and almost all of that, asleep. They were both young political lawyers very much on the make and far more passionate about their cases than about each other. Their marriage had disintegrated under the pressure. But Sam had always been a good father, to his three children with his current wife (who did not work); to his own daughter Rachel and to Elena, whom he had adopted shortly after the marriage. She had chosen well in that regard, and as much trouble as Elena had got into, it might have gone far worse if Sam had not been there for her. Elena’s own father had disappeared before she was born. Suzanne heard about him very occasionally. He was in the mountains in Nicaragua. He had been shot down on the streets of Guatemala City. He turned up again in Chile. He was in jail in Panama. She wondered. His family had money, and she would not be surprised if he were running one of their corporations instead. He did Elena no good, except to excite her imagination. Suzanne still remembered seeing a composition Elena had written in her second college: “I am a bastard out of Brookline, Massachusetts. I am a bastard, the daughter of a bastard. My father was a hero and a guerrilla leader.” Suzanne sighed. Sam was looking at his watch.

“Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t have been more truthful with Elena about her father. Then maybe she wouldn’t romanticize him so ridiculously.”

Sam shrugged. “Compared to us, he was a romantic figure. You were crazy about him.”

“For a while. For a while. Until he took to abusing me. I did not find that romantic.”

“I bet you didn’t.” Sam grinned. “Besides, what harm does it do to give her a sense of a colorful background? It isn’t as if she’s about to go off to the jungle to look for him. Or as if she’s ever taken a serious interest in anything political.” Sam looked at his watch for the third time.

Sam was waiting for Elena. Doing anything with Elena usually involved a great deal of waiting. Elena had only begun to dress when Sam arrived. They were going to a concert by a Chilean group. If Elena did not appear soon, they would be late. But Suzanne was determined not to hurry Elena. She was constantly telling herself to treat her daughter as if she were a houseguest rather than a child of hers. Of course, she rarely entertained houseguests. She was too busy. Aunt Karla came to see her and the girls every year, yes, sometimes with Rosella and the twins, and Beverly visited maybe once every five years. That was about it. But what she tried to keep in mind was that a hostess was far more polite to a guest than a mother to her daughter, and she needed to muster all her tact and resources to handle having Elena back home. She felt an intense usually subliminal fear for Elena, always, that she would get into some desperate trouble, that something violent would happen to her. For Rachel, her fears had always been more mundane. Don’t catch cold. Don’t strain your eyes. Are you sure you can handle six classes? But there was no limit to her anxiety for Elena.

Suzanne hit “return” on her E-mail program and sat there, trying to figure out what to say. Panic told her to type that she was going to be out of town, out of state, out of the country. She was planning to drop dead on Friday night. The memorial service had already been arranged. Jake was not invited.

What does it matter, she told herself, if he’s disappointed in me. So what? So we will or will not continue corresponding. Maybe I’ll be disappointed in him. Of course I’ll be disappointed in him; how could I not be? What good can come of this? She could not think what to say and she ended up getting off the computer altogether, as if even being on a potential link with Jake was too dangerous to handle.

Elena was still in bed. Suzanne ran upstairs to Marta. “He does want to see me! He wants to spend Sunday with me. What am I going to do?”

“I guess you’re going to spend at least part of Sunday with him.” Marta smirked. “So what could be so bad? Even if it’s a disaster, you can eat out for a month on the story. It’s romantic, Suzanne. Meeting a man on the Internet is so trendy and fin de siècle. I’m rotten with envy.”

“If you truly are, dearest one, you can meet him in my place. He doesn’t know what I look like.”

“Hmm.” Marta pretended to consider, head cocked. “But Jim and I have to go to New York this weekend.” Her son, Adam, was at NYU. “He’s showing the film he made. I have to go see it. I was thinking of asking Beverly if we could sleep on her couch. I don’t want to drop a thousand for a stupid weekend. If we have a free place to stay, we can fly instead of driving and worrying myself sick about the car.” Marta had a new Jeep Cherokee she did not look forward to parking in Manhattan.

“Ask her. Beverly likes you. In fact I think she likes you better than me.”

“Well, my mother always liked you better than me. We should have traded mothers twenty-five years ago and made everybody happy.”

“What a wonderful idea.” Suzanne sat up. “Elena could get into that. Suppose when you went away to college, you exchanged parents. Everybody by lot draws somebody else’s. Or a computer could make matches. So much less angst. I think I’m onto a great piece of social engineering.”

“You’ve changed the subject from Jake. Jacob Kallen, eco-terrorist.”

“He is not, counsel. He is an eco-activist.”

“Jacob, who wrestled an angel, or god, or whatever.” Marta played with her long braid the color of weathered shingles. “Think he might want to wrestle you?”

“Don’t be obscene, Marta. This is an absurd tête-á-tête I backed into. The truth is, I never thought of him as a real man. He was a figment of my computer. And I liked it that way.”

Suzanne did nothing about Jake that day. The next morning she did not even turn on the computer but spent an extra fifteen minutes on the treadmill, then took a long hot shower. By the time she had breakfast and dried her hair, it was time to rush off to the university.

The gender equity committee of the law school met every Thursday at seven-thirty, so she had supper with Alexa, a friend from women’s studies, and then went to her committee meeting. When she got home just after ten, Elena was watching a gangster movie on TV. At the next commercial she strolled into the kitchen, where Suzanne was setting up her coffee for the next morning. “Oh, some guy called. From California. He wanted the address and directions.”

“Is he going to call back?”

“He goes, ‘Well, is she going to be around?’ Anyhow, I looked at your schedule and I told him that Sunday looked clear all day. Is he some kind of friend of yours?”

“You told him I’m going to be around? On Sunday?” She spilled ground coffee all over the counter. “You said I was going to be here?”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“I hadn’t decided.”

“Whatever,” Elena said, losing interest. She strolled back into the living room, where her movie had resumed.

Suzanne

Suzanne spent an hour dressing for lunch. Jake had called her from the Inn at Harvard Square. She felt like a bloated adolescent about to go on a date: ridiculous and pitiful. To spend all this time worrying about her appearance was humiliating. No matter what she did to herself, she would still look forty-nine and she had never been beautiful. She was simply pleasant-looking and small, and that summed up the best she had to offer to the gaze of any man.

The truth was, most of her clothing that could be called dressy was selected for class or for court. She had a bunch of suits in gray or navy and some silk dresses, conservative and careful. She had two party dresses she wore at holiday time. She had a couple of caftans, comfortable and interesting-looking, in which she entertained, on the occasions she had time and energy to do that. She had exercise gear. Almost everything was ordered out of catalogs, because she found shopping tedious. It was always too hot in department stores. It took hours to find anything, and then they would be out of size eight. Finally she dressed as if for class (rather than court): nice pants, a chenille top, and a silk blazer. Earrings and pendant. She avoided looking in the mirror and marched out of her bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Elena asked suspiciously.

“I might be back for supper, I might not.” She paused. “I almost certainly will be back. But I’m not sure.”

“I’m going out with this guy, Roy, so I won’t be here for supper anyhow. But where are you going?”

“To meet a friend.”

“What kind of a friend? This is that guy who called from California, isn’t it, and you’re dressed up for him. Who is he?”

Suzanne shrugged, a little flustered. “I hardly know him.” She yanked on her coat and ran for the door.

“So who is he,” Elena called after her, stimulated into curiosity by Suzanne’s reticence. “How do you know him?”

All right, all right, she would meet Jake and blow their silly thing out of the water and she would save ten minutes every morning. Get it over with.

The two elevators in the atrium of the Inn were side by side. She was sitting, as she told him on the house phone, on a couch facing them. Two men got out, arguing. A woman and a child. Then the doors opened and a small man emerged, looking around. Of course he was not small compared to her, but still he struck her as small. She realized that both the fathers of her children had been a foot taller than she was. She had never thought about that. Did she have a preference for tall men? Had she had a preference for tall men when she was younger? In years, she had not exercised a preference for men of any sort. He was perhaps five feet seven and wiry, small boned. He had piercing brown eyes in a sharp face. His brows were arched in surprise (what had he expected?) and he was smiling tentatively. He stuck out his hand. “Suzanne, I presume?”

“Jake?” They shook hands, rather shyly. She asked, “How was your trip?” Then forgot to listen to his answer. His handshake had been firm, his hand warm, almost hot.

Afterward she could not remember anything they said on the way to the restaurant. When they sat down at a table, he said, “You shouldn’t be nervous with me. I haven’t bitten anyone in several years. And I have been tested for rabies.”

That cut through her mental fog. She was beginning to feel desperate. They had not had a real conversation yet and she felt herself frozen into mechanical jabber. She was an experienced and competent litigator, seldom at a loss on her feet. She had pulled more than one case out of the fire with a brilliant closing, but here she was unable to make coherent contact. She had somehow expected him to be a vegetarian, but he said he ate just about anything. “Except ham and anchovies. I don’t know why. A childhood antipathy.”

She pulled herself together. “Have you ever spent time in the Boston area?”

“Is that like doing time? Sure, I went to Brandeis as an undergraduate. I was born on Long Island and then my family moved to Worcester. But it’s been close to twenty-five years.”

“It’s a big leap from the Bay Area. Climate, culture, how people relate. Different ocean, different orientation. You face west, we face east.”

“I thought if you had time, you might take me on a tour and let me look around. Not the tourist things. But neighborhoods. The kind of places I might live and shop and eat and hang out.”

“I’m free,” she said, although she had planned to work on her brief. “We’ll improvise.”

The food was good, and he had an appetite. As she began to relax, she began to eat. There was something about his voice, deep and resonant and quirky, that moved her. She liked hearing him talk. She asked him about his recent trip to Antarctica. He told her about acres of penguins. The breath of a whale—fishy, warm, that touched his face when she breached beside the small boat. Sterile mountains beautiful and grim. It was summer there in January, and the sun barely set, glittering blindingly off the ice. But often it was overcast and the wind cut through his clothes. He kept getting windburn. His eyes had a steadiness and intensity that made her keep catching on his gaze as if it were barbed. His hands were large for his size but finely shaped. He had presence. Of course: he was an organizer, a macher, a leader. Why should she be surprised that in the flesh, he radiated strength, energy like radiant heat? As they were leaving, he said, “Let’s take a walk around here, if you’re willing.”

They walked along the Charles together. The sun was out, the snow had melted the week before, and the temperature was above freezing. It was not yet spring, but it promised spring. The Charles was free of ice. Families of mallards paddled along. There was even a rower pushing the season.

“It’ll be a shock for you to go through winter again.”

“I lived up in the mountains for a couple of years. We had fierce winters. We were snowed in sometimes for a week.” He made a gesture up over his head. “That was my mountain man phase.”

“But for the last fifteen years, you’ve been living in Oakland, and you haven’t seen a snowflake or an icicle or a sleet storm.”

“Actually, in Antarctica,” he said mildly, “I saw quite a lot of ice. Besides, even at home, I did go through a couple of earthquakes and a fire that just missed my house by three blocks…. Are you trying to talk me out of this move?” He sat down on a bench in the sun and motioned
her beside him. He turned to her then, taking her by the shoulder. “What are you afraid of?”

“In general? Death, accidents, disease, something happening to my daughters—”

“All right, let’s go at this another way. What do you want, Suzanne?”

“I want things to continue. I like my work. I like my house. I like my friends.”

“Everything just the way it is. No changes.”

“Well, life is never like that, is it? I’d like Elena to find her own place to live. I’d like my mother to make an effort to see me as I am, I’d like my dean to stop patronizing me—”

“And what do you want from me? Anything?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a much softer voice, almost choked. “What do you want?”

“I’ll show you.” He took her hand and stood. He kept her hand as they walked. “For two years we’ve been talking, we’ve been flirting, we’ve been sharing our minds. I don’t want it to be less real now. I want it to be more real.”

“I’m not…perhaps who I’ve seemed to be…I don’t…have affairs, go out with men, that sort of thing.” She was deeply, poignantly confused. She knew him and she didn’t know him at all. He was a close friend, an intimate confidant, a stranger.

“Obviously you’ve been with men in the past. Your daughters weren’t the result of virgin birth. You told me about their fathers.”

“I can’t believe how much I told you.”

“Believe it. Why not? You have some idea who I am.” With her arm tucked securely in his, he walked briskly back in the direction of the Square.

“It was easy in my office, alone there in the mornings, typing messages on a screen. I’m sure I came across as far more at ease, far more…sophisticated, far more interesting than the woman you see. I’m dynamite in a courtroom but so awkward right now I feel like a twelve-year-old.”

“You’re out of practice. But I’m not a set of skills to be mastered, not a brief to be prepared. I’m just a man who’s interested in you.”

Heat slammed up her body. She could think of absolutely nothing to
say. Yes, she had entertained fantasies about Jake, but the best thing about them had been that they were fantasies. They cost her nothing. They did not make her vulnerable, being as easily put away as Rachel’s paper dolls had been, into a box covered with gold foil that had held chocolates. But this fantasy was out of its box.

“When you listed the things you want, you never mentioned love. Most people would. I would. Why not?”

“I suppose because I’m a realist.”

“And you don’t let yourself want what you don’t think you can have?”

“Something like that. Or something I think might harm me.”

“I won’t harm you. Intentionally. We all step on each other’s toes now and then.”

The heat of his hand on her arm made her imagine the heat of his body. He had remarked at lunch that he had a high metabolism and burned up food. His body felt like a little furnace glowing in the chilly air.

She felt giddy. This was all unreal. It was intoxicating and flattering and outside of her real life. He would go back to California and she would go home and it would be sealed into itself, whatever happened, whatever. For some reason, she felt safe now. She relaxed. He put his arm around her as they approached his hotel and she did not draw away. She felt like laughing aloud. Nobody would believe this was Suzanne the Sensible being led along to his hotel room, which was obviously where they were headed. This man had emerged from her computer and he would vanish back into it. Lately she had been having occasional hot flashes and she had missed a couple of periods last year, including one in December. Her gynecologist told her it was the onset of menopause. Change of life. Perhaps one aspect of that change was hallucinating this man whose arm was around her waist, whose hip occasionally bumped hers as they walked, as they crossed Mass. Ave., as they entered the lobby of the Inn.

She felt ridiculously pleased and excited, even aroused as they went up in the elevator and walked along the corridor open on one side to the central atrium, then around a corner to his room. It was neat. He had his laptop set up and several folders on the desk. No clothes lay around, no wet towels.

He put his hands on her hips. “We’ve both been moving toward this for two years. Don’t be coy with me now, Suzanne. Don’t you want to know how we are together? Haven’t you imagined this time and again?”

“Of course,” she said honestly. She did not add that imagining was all she had expected.

He kissed her then, his mouth strange and invasive and exciting. As she kissed him back, as she loosened his shirt even as he undid her blouse, this molten Suzanne was familiar. She felt twenty again, back in late adolescence and early adulthood when sex had been an adventure, when she did not yet fear her own body and the consequences of passion. Here, she thought, there were none. It was all happening in cyberspace. He was a visitor in every sense of the word. A Suzanne she had thought dead, stirred, blossomed, grabbed control. Things moved quickly. She had always liked leisurely lovemaking, but her hunger wanted satisfying now, fast. He was slender but tight, the body of an active man, not buff like a young athlete, for he had a soft belly, but fit, stronger than his size would indicate. Easily he picked her up and spread her on the queen-size bed.

It had been so many years since she had put anything in her mouth besides food and a toothbrush, she was surprised how quickly her old skill at giving head came back to her. She ran her tongue around the head of his prick, then took him in her mouth. She still felt giddy. He was going down on her before she suddenly thought of contraception. She hadn’t been on the pill in over a decade. Lectures she had given her daughters about unprotected sex came back to her with a sudden rush. “Uh…do you have a condom?”

He showed her the packet and she helped him put it on. He hurt her a little, although he entered slowly and she was wet. It was hard to separate the pleasure from the pain, the sharpness from the urgency. He settled into a steady rhythm and she bounded up to meet him, thrust for thrust. He was waiting for her and she concentrated. As excited as she was, she did not think she could come. She was too nervous with him. After several minutes, she faked an orgasm, as she had remembered doing with Sam. He moved then into a harder rhythm, building toward his own climax, and as he pounded into her, the almost forgotten rush of warmth and power and pleasure began building in her until she exploded just before he did. Afterward she felt like laughing, because she
had made much less noise during her real orgasm than she had when she mimicked pleasure.

They lay for a while loosely holding each other. Then they showered and she began his tour of neighborhoods. It was clear they would make love again later. Have sex, at any rate. Although she felt close to him, she did not trust the intimacy. Nor did she fear it. Some women went on spa vacations to feel better. She was having a one-day affair.