Dream Lover (6 page)
“Do you suspect there were others?” Maggie asked as gently as was possible.
Pam looked out to the sea. She thought of the attractive young women who had shown up at Jack’s funeral—there had been at least twenty of them, and they had come alone—and thought she might have an answer. She remembered an odd young woman who had come to Bernice’s seventieth birthday party a few years ago, and then materialized again at the funeral; of the gorgeous model type who had just happened to run into Jack on the beach, right in front of the house, but claimed not to have known that the Smiths lived there. What would disclosure mean to her family? It was all hearsay. No one had any proof until someone stepped forward. What difference did it make? Would saying yes mean they would search further into his life? Truly, she wanted to know. Having her head stuck in the sand, as she evidently had done for most of her adult life, had not worked for her.
“Yes,” she answered. “But having said that, I must ask that you divulge what information you are able to gather to me. I won’t ask names, but I must know the truth.” And then she thought of her mother-in-law. She remembered reading Jack’s accusation in a legal brief found after his death, that his father had sexually abused him and his brother, Bill for most of their childhood.
Could Jack have gotten HIV from his father?
Then there was a risk that his mother was infected, too.
Oh, my God.
“I just thought of something,” she said looking at Maggie. “My mother-in-law may be infected.” She didn’t need to say another word. Betty James nodded her head. She reached out a hand to Pam.
“Please accept our deepest apologies for having put you through this. I wish there were another way to gather information. As for your request, we will stay in touch with you. That’s all I can say right now.” Betty looked over at Maggie for confirmation.
“Anything you need from us, you only have to ask,” Maggie said. “We will do what we can to help you through this, okay Mrs. Smith?” They stood up together to end the questioning. But Maggie wasn’t ready to leave. “Can I just walk down your path here? I am dying to see the water. It will probably be the only time this summer that I get to the beach.”
“Me too,” Betty said. “Every year, we say we are going to go to the beach for a picnic and then we end up in Philadelphia with my husband’s brother.” The three women walked down the wooden path to the beach. It was a gorgeous day for sunning and swimming, but not for them. They didn’t speak for several minutes. Finally, Maggie said it was time to go; they had to get back to the city by four. She was reluctant to move from that spot on the boardwalk. “But I don’t want to leave!” she whined.
The women laughed together, and Betty tugged at her colleague’s hand. “Let’s go,” Betty said. They gathered up their papers and stuffed them away. Pam, always the gracious hostess, waited patiently while the intruders prolonged their departure. Finally, they were gone and she was alone.
Yet another humiliation at the hands of Jack. One more slap in the face. Thank you, Jack! Great work! I wonder how we will escape public scrutiny this time. How much more can my pride take?
Her mind was running rampant as she cleaned up the cake mess from entertaining the public health pests. Her usual compassionate resolution wasn’t working. It wasn’t their fault that she was embarrassed by their questions, she reasoned. It really didn’t make any difference at all if the whole world knew what a scoundrel her late husband had been. The painful fact was that soon she was going to be forced to tell her children about the AIDS. Maybe once that task was over with, she would return to being her usual, content, optimistic self. But for now, she chose to wallow in self-pity, not caring where it took her. For once, she was giving in to something negative and painful without giving herself the usual pep talk. There was nothing she could say this time that would help.
Melissa
S
omething is happening to my body and it is really scaring me. If this keeps up, I will have to go to the doctor, which I hate. I hate how the nurses look at me as if I’m a freak when I walk in. No one in that clinic asks any questions to me directly. They start every inquiry with “I wonder” or “I guess.”
“I wonder if this could be related to your tattoos.” Or my favorite, “I guess this could be a residual effect of drug use.” No one has ever treated me for drug addiction, or tested me for it, that I know of. Their treatment of me comes from the way I look. And that pisses me off. One nurse in there is so goddamned fat that she has to walk down the hall sideways, her pannus swaying back and forth, yet she treats me like a pariah. A few years ago, she even had the nerve to comment aloud about a little weight I had gained…six pounds in a year. I went from a whopping 112 pounds sopping wet to 118. I am five foot six. I attributed the gain directly to Jack. That man couldn’t stand to be around me unless he had fed me first. We went out to dinner all the time.
Of course, when he started to see Sandra, that stopped. I understood. Jack and I were possibly better friends than we were lovers. As lovers, we were wild, depraved, sadistic. As friends, you couldn’t ask for a better man. He made sure that I was taken care of, I can tell you that. He knew he was going to die. I don’t know how he knew it, but he did. I read the paper, so I saw the obit right off. I was devastated. He had given me an envelope with twenty thousand in cash about six weeks before he died.
“Take this, doll, and get it in a safe place. I don’t care where you put it. You can use a bank but only for part of it, a little each month, or they start asking questions. That house you are in is safe enough.” He got me a real safe and installed it in my bathroom closet. He used a hand drill so my housemates wouldn’t hear the noise, and stuck it way in back, on the floor. That thing isn’t budging; no one will be able to get it out.
Over the years, he gave me money and I have a nice little nest egg, thanks to Jack. Until he died, he was giving me two thousand a month. I don’t have to touch what is banked. Twenty thousand will last me a long time. It doesn’t take much to live the kind of life I live. He bought my house for me. I live in the Bronx. I love it up here. I teach anthropology at the community college. My house is within walking distance of the school and only during the worst winter snow does it feel as though it’s too far. Jack also loved the Bronx. He told me his father once had an office there. He and his father had a great relationship and Jack was devastated when he died. It almost destroyed him. I saw a big change in Jack at that time. He lost a lot of his zest for living.
I am a New Yorker through and through. My parents lived in Bronxville until 9/11. That ruined the city for them. They couldn’t stand it anymore and moved to Florida. I thought that was passive aggressive. I’m almost an albino, for Christ’s sake! How can I go to Florida? Unless I become one of those women you see who wear the long-sleeved shirts with long skirts and big hats with veils. Or a nun. I could wear a habit. Or a burka.
When I saw that he died and where the funeral was, I got my friend Todd to drive me out to Babylon. I have a terrible sense of direction and never, ever, if I can help it, leave the city. But I had to go to Jack’s funeral. I had seen his wife before. A couple of years ago, she came to a birthday party at his mother’s mansion. He invited me and of course, I went. Jack knew he could trust me. I clean up nice, too; don’t stand out the way I do when I am in my regular clothes. I wear long sleeves and long pants and remove the jewelry from the most outlandish piercings. My hair is so blonde that it’s almost white, and it’s natural, too. My body hair is pure white, almost nonexistent. I have pale blue eyes. It set me apart all of my childhood. The best thing about having such pale skin is that tattoo artists love inking me. I have never paid for a tatt. Jack loved my tattoos. He often went with me to the Village studios; he liked watching them work on me. He had a fantasy that he was a tattoo artist. Once, we got fine-tipped felt pens and I let him go to town drawing on my body! Ha! I had marker on parts of me that I couldn’t even see. It was very erotic.
At the funeral, I tried to make contact with his wife. I felt certain it would be something that Jack would have wanted. But no matter how hard I tried, she would not acknowledge me. She knew. That was why. She looked at me with a stare that burned through me. Her face was expressionless, but I felt her hatred of me. I was glad then that Jack wasn’t there to experience it. I found myself curious about their relationship. It couldn’t have been much because he was so busy with his sexual conquests. He chose to stay with his wife and children, to have a life that everyone who knew them envied. But I knew better. And I wasn’t the only one.
During the years we were lovers and friends, Jack had many women, too many for me to count. I lost track of who he was seeing as a self-preservation tactic; it was too painful to be aware of him sleeping with someone I knew, or seeing him on the street with another woman. Once, about two years ago, while I was lecturing on the history of language and its relation to culture, I saw him out my window talking to a woman. I totally lost my train of thought as I walked over to look out at him. My students followed me and soon we were all standing at the window, looking at Jack.
Why is he even on campus
? I thought.
“Who are we looking at?” one of my students asked.
“That man there, the one in the suit talking to the redhead,” I replied. “I wonder why he’s here?”
“Ah, teach, that should be obvious!” Jack was taking the woman in his arms for a kiss. “What’s his name?” At that moment, they knocked on the window trying to get his attention, yelling and laughing. It worked, because he looked up and saw us. He made eye contact with me—even from a distance, I’m difficult to miss—and I waved at him.
That marked the end of our physical relationship, but we remained good friends, still seeing each other weekly or more often, and Jack still taking care of me financially. He had said that he never gave any other women money, not that it would matter to me. I didn’t ask for it. Jack was funny about people; he didn’t shy away from speaking his mind, but he also had a soft heart. I think because of my coloring, he felt sorry for me. I was different, but not grotesque, at least in his eyes. By giving me money, I was his own, personal charity and he didn’t have to get his hands dirty.
And then he started to see Sandra. He still called me every day, and came up at least once a week to take me grocery shopping or out to lunch. But the dinners and the shows and movies stopped. He explained right away that he thought he was in love. It was someone he had known for a while, someone from his office. To say that I wasn’t hurt would be a lie. I may have hoped down deep inside that he would return to me someday and that I would be the one who would change him, who could drive him to monogamy.
Sandra may have been the first woman he dated whom he took his time getting to know before seducing. They were friends for a long time before they dated. And he was “normal” with Sandra, if Jack was capable of normalcy. Jack thrived on kinky, almost masochistic sex. I didn’t see him having a long relationship without something depraved on the side. I mean, his marriage was the same thing. He may have been planning to replace Pam with Sandra. I was glad I didn’t have to be in on that fiasco. Of course, his death ended the threat.
Life without Jack is boring. Men who are interested in me are generally creepy middle-aged pedophiles who like a woman to look like a ten-year-old; or teenage boys who think I am cool because I look like a ghost with tattoos all over its body. So I am alone and will probably be alone for a while. I’m still grieving. No one has ever cared about me the way he did. He completely accepted me for who I am and embraced all my strangeness. I wish I could be friends with his wife; there are things I know he felt for her that she should know. But I doubt if that will happen because I don’t have any respect for her. Today I have to get the courage to make an appointment with a doctor. I am really frightened by what he will find.
S
andra got a cab to go the four or so miles to meet with Dee from the health department. Her afternoon thoughts had been dominated by how her relationship with the wealthy, upper-class Jack Smith had totally destroyed her life. She had hurt his wife, who was a kind and generous woman; contracted a deadly disease; put her unborn baby’s life at risk; and now was going to suffer through the humiliation of providing a survey of her sexual escapades to a stranger from the public health sector. All she thought about during the ride was how glad she was that she had not slept with her only male contact since Jack; a cop by the name of Tom Adams. He had entered her life like a whirlwind and exited it just as quickly. She imagined having to call him to tell him that he would be getting a visit from the Department of Health and it made her physically ill.
The cab stopped on the corner of Twenty-eighth and Broadway and she got out there. The door to the interview room was unobtrusive. She knocked. It was opened right away by a woman who could look Sandra in the eye. She rarely encountered another woman as tall as she was. Dee closed the door after Sandra passed through and then offered her hand.
“Thank you for coming. I’m Dee Frank,” she said. “And you are?” You just couldn’t be too careful when dealing with people’s lives; she wanted to hear who this was from Sandra’s own mouth before they moved on. Sandra identified herself. Dee led her to a pair of chairs with a small round table between them. She had several papers spread out. “Have a seat,” she said. Sandra sat down and Dee sat opposite her.
“I received notification of your blood test results, Miss Benson. You were named as a possible partner of Jack Smith. Could you verify that?”
“That’s correct.” Sandra would later add this to her list of things for which she had Jack to thank.
“Now, here are the questions that I must apologize to you in advance for asking. Have you had unprotected sex, which includes anal, vaginal, or oral with another partner? Unprotected means without the use of a condom or rubber dam.”