Folie à Deux (30 page)

I am speechless. Prepared otherwise, yet speechless.

When I can finally speak, I say, “Uh, Talia, are you sure? I mean we haven’t really talked about this much and I’m not sure either of us is ready.”

“I’m ready,” she snaps back and grabs me with her right hand to draw me close. My immediate reaction is to pull away until I realize that by letting her scuffle and grope her way through her own attempts she will hopefully frustrate herself. When she stops out of frustration I’m exonerated as the sole obstacle.

“The stupid ceiling fan must have dried me out,” she says disenchanted. I say nothing in relieved agreement. I hope that she is sated enough to avoid another attempt.

“I really want to have sex Jim,” she says breaking a few moments of awkward silence. Still no reply. Before I can provide a fictitious answer my cell phone rings from the living room.

I ignore the sound but know Natalia hears it too, she asks, “You going to get that?”

“If it’s important they’ll call back,” I dismiss.

I take a breath to answer her with something I have not taken time to formulate when the phone rings again. Without a word I walk into the other room, tracing the ominous vibration. Before I even pick up I see, “Call from: Dana” and am stricken with panic. I didn’t think that she would even know I was missing but now is looking for me. Is everything ok? Is one of my kids hurt? Did Sr. Karen come looking for me and ask Dana where I was? I pick up the phone already out of breath, fearful.

“Jim?” She asks with concern or maybe annoyance.

“Ya,” is the only word I can enunciate.

“Where the fuck are you?” she asks with typical decorum.

I hadn’t created a story to tell her because I thought that leaving work for just the morning would avoid having to lie. What I had not anticipated were the counselors that work under me asking her this same question.

“I’m at school, Dana. I’m interviewing someone for the vacant Spanish position,” I tell her in case she has spoken with Sister.

“I called you ten minutes ago. Where were you when I called?” She fires questions and I know that if my answers are not satisfactory there will be ensuing interrogation.

I stand in astonishment of how quickly I come up with an answer once I take the first step into my own fantasy world. “Listen, the interview is over, so I had to get into the storage closet to look
for books and I guess there is no service in there,” I tell her while a vision of the truth flashes through my mind.

I’m awoken from that daydream, “Bullshit Jim, where the fuck are you? Everyone is looking for you.” I know the second part is her typical exaggeration and now know that she hasn’t spoken to Sr. Karen.

“Dana I’m at school. I spoke to Sister this morning and she said it was fine if I came to sit in on the interview,” building confidence in solidarity with my lie.

“Well, all of the counselors I’ve seen today were asking because they haven’t seen you since morning prayer,” she finally clarifies the exact reason for her call.

“Well, I don’t work for them so I don’t have to tell them do I? Look, the longer we bicker the longer I’m going to be here. Let me go so I can get back,” finding my perfect excuse to end the call.

“Fine,” precedes her hanging up.

I know there will be more questions when I see her but I can now prepare myself. The nauseous feeling begins when I first hear Dana’s voice, but subsides as I talk my way through. Residual anxiety lingers and waxes back to full force as I put the phone down and prepare to tell Natalia, “Listen, I’m sorry but I have to get back.”

I walk into the bedroom to find her with the blanket up to her waist, seemingly very comfortable being bare breasted in broad daylight in front of me. She alleviates me having to broach the unsavory topic, “Sounds like we have to go huh?”

I give a half-frown, “Ya, unfortunately I have to go back to work.”

“Did she buy your story at least?” she asks absent any sarcasm but with genuine concern for my lies.

“I think so. I guess I’ll find out later,” more thinking out loud than trying to console our worries.

Natalia puts her index finger to her lower lip in a very pensive pose and says, “Well I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t have sex because we would have been interrupted.” I shudder inside at the level of thought that she puts into our daily existence. Worse than simple acceptance though is the false normalcy.

The conversation about when we will complete the act is inevitable, now arising several times a week. I sidestep as long as possible before arousing suspicion. Natalia finally puts the question to me in a cold, almost threatening tone, “Are we ever going to have sex or what?”

When I can no longer evade, I engage in the conversation. My ironic responses when finally facing reality are like advice a friend would give. I sound like the true selfless mentor I should have stayed. Even though I should be telling her to get away from me, she doesn’t see through me when I say, “The first time you have sex should be with a person who you share an emotional bond with. More importantly, a man who cares for you deeply.”

Mindfucking her to see only my version of the portrait, highlighting me as the only man that could possibly fit the mold.

She tells me with frightening conviction, “I’m certain that I want it to be you, Jimi.”

I’m so deeply entrenched in the idea that one’s virginity is linked indisputably and unfalteringly with love that I see it as the irreplaceable culmination of this union.

The conversation lingers around minutiae until we are able to decide a time and a place. She expresses her impatience despite impressing upon her the need to have all of the particulars in order. My procrastination has pushed us into preseason for
fall sports season and she is disappointed, but the advent of a new school year brings added securities.

We pick a time when she doesn’t have field hockey practice that we’ll go to her house. Although I’ve been there several times and her mother will be at work, I am very nervous. I take solace only in the knowledge that her room is in the basement, providing a convenient escape route if necessary.

A text message wakes me thirty minutes before my alarm, “I cannot wait for this afternoon.”

I cannot agree.

I wish I hadn’t made these promises, but I did and can’t back out now. I lie still in my bed, recalling so many times in my life when I looked at my surroundings and asked, “What am I doing here?” I remember an overwhelming amount of instances when I should have stopped myself but fear or lack of common sense seemed an impediment to self-preservation.

I seek explanations for mistakes in college, overly influenced by girls, simply complying to garner their affection. I regret not stopping advances from men when I lived in France, knowing now I should have realized something was amiss long before it was obvious. I wish so many transgressions to be undone caused only by inane loyalty to previous poor choices. The inability to trust my own emotions is a torment all its own I have never tried to decipher. I feel such a familiar shame as I reflect on the culmination of actions that lead to now.

As I imagine myself in her house today and speculate my reactions, I feel ill. I don’t belong there but I also feel vapid, as though I don’t belong anywhere, ever. I should neither be making this plan nor carrying it out but something inexplicable
drives me, something I do not want to fight. I’m going to satisfy an obligation coming from somewhere unknown.

There is always the same sickness every time I leave my wife and kids to see Natalia. It bears resemblance to an illness but borders on an anxious excitement that further clouds my ability to act appropriately. It’s a familiar sensation, having only recently resurfaced, but as it comes more frequently I remember it vividly.

This feeling was my body’s exact reaction as I would walk in the back door to my parent’s house as a teenager. This was the precise knot in my stomach that would twist painful as I entered school every morning for years. I can only assume that this awareness in my body is a coping mechanism. Since my adolescent mind could not process all the mental energy I was demanding, the manifestation of the stress was a physical feeling to cope with the overflow. I had no idea the pain was abnormal, it was just part of my life.

I have already told John, my other coach, the lie that will necessitate my early departure. Dana knows I’ll be staying late so I’m covered on both fronts. I leave the soccer field at eleven-thirty, perpetually on the brink of fainting. I drive to the cul-de-sac behind her complex and sit for several moments, taunted by my last chance to stop.

My phone rings uncontrollably but I’m petrified to look. It could be Dana telling me one of the kids is sick or it could be John having found out my lie. Instead it is the worst of all possibilities, Natalia wondering where I am, anxious and impatient.

I walk into her back patio door and she jumps into my arms, kissing me loudly on the cheek then my mouth while giggling. Her lips feel good on mine and she tastes like cold and strawberry. I pull away for a second, smile at her and ask, “What did you eat? You taste sweet.”

“An ice pop,” as she pulls me over to her bed.

We’ve done everything else that would normally lead to this moment, if this were normal. Still the air in the room is heavy with impending realizations of countless conversations. I’m hypersensitive to everything around me, the hum of a lawnmower in the distance and a dog barking. I hear every bird chirp and noises in the units on either side of hers’ further heighten my fear. I repeat the same things to make clear that I care for her well-being, disgusting myself more with each sanctimonious repetition.

What is lost in the excitement is that I have no business being in her bedroom at noon on a Tuesday in August. She should be with her friends waiting for field hockey practice and I should be standing on the soccer field waiting to be home with my family, but neither of us is doing what we should. I know all the reasons I shouldn’t be here but none of those reasons matter. I have manipulated her into thinking that I care about what is best for her and that I’m the man with whom she should be losing her virginity. This wave of uncontrollable nausea is my body telling me something which my mind is incapable. I push through, already here and knowing I’ve done worse to reach this place.

She says with a cute and elongated tone, “Soooo, what now?”

I am frozen beyond action. I cannot speak and for the most part cannot even think, except for the two questions that echo louder in my head with each reverberation, “What the fuck am I doing here?” and when that thought dead ends, “What do I do now?”

“What do you want to do?” I ask softly, barely above a whisper.

“I want to make love to you, Jim,” she says kissing me softly, but with a certain passion of long-harnessed desire. Her body shouldn’t belong to a fifteen year old as I see her half-naked in
the daylight. Even though she is developed more than what my instincts tell me she should be, the ghastly feeling flows over me, hindering my concentration.

My mind is elsewhere, all I think about is my need to finish what has begun. I cannot leave without fulfilling my promise. Lawnmowers and running faucets remind me the world outside is unaware of the unfolding fantasy I’m crafting.

After foreplay that delves into no uncharted territory, she takes off her thong and says, “Jimi, please make love to me.”

I move slowly, apprehensive about what to expect. The expression on her face clearly conveys pain, I ask often, “Do you want me to stop?”

Each time I hope she says, “Yes,” because perhaps this will never happen. Instead, she breathes deeply, pushing through and says, “No, I’m fine, just be gentle.”

The bile rises to the back of my throat. The weight of this snapshot is too much to bear and I feel again, like I might faint. A student of mine just asked me to fuck her gently because I’m causing her pain. I have no doubt about the pain, but she has no idea that it’s time released. The true ache doesn’t come for a long time, soreness will be born out of years of confusion, not a broken hymen.

She relaxes and falls into rhythm. I would not characterize the look on her face as pleasurable but she no longer looks in agony. Every noise, whether a car or voices on the street, makes me jump. It’s not as though it matters anymore, I am inside of her.

Despite the reality that the point of no return evaporated long ago, I still imagine as though I can save myself. My sexuality is all I’ve ever used to hunt self-esteem, the best and only tool I’ve ever wielded to make women love me. And now, again, I regret my misguided emotions.

I stop because her demeanor has, once again changed. She looks at me and starts to cry. The abhorrence disappears and all of the logical feelings I should have felt up to this point come flooding into consciousness in one devastating gush. I am nagged by the reality that I have betrayed and violated her trust. I ask, “Why are you crying?” as I hug her, holding her head in my hands.

She says the one and only thing that could possibly make me want to wretch even more. I can neither foresee this nor cut her off but when I hear the words I need absolutely all of my strength to not vomit in her bed.