Something New (34 page)

Back
at my house, Ben kneels on the floor of my kitchen, good-naturedly allowing Sally to smother him with dog kisses. His sport coat and tie are slung over the back of a chair and he has unbuttoned his shirt far enough to reveal his white undershirt.

“You’re a good girl,” he coos as he strokes her fur and scratches behind her ears. Sally looks like she has died and gone to doggie heaven, and I think,
I know what you mean, girl
.

I am trembling slightly as I pop the tops off a couple of beers, not because of Ben’s presence in my kitchen, but because I am still reeling from the helicopter ride. It’s as though all of the endorphins produced by a triathlon were injected into my veins at once and the euphoria has yet to evaporate.

“Would you like a glass?” I ask, Miss Manners that I am.

“No, thanks, the bottle’s fine.” He stands and walks over to the sink, much to Sally’s chagrin. She follows him, watery eyes pleading for more love, tail thumping back and forth. I set Ben’s beer on the counter next to him as he washes his hands, and then I grab a dog bone from the bag next to the fridge to offer Sally. She considers it an unworthy substitute
for Ben’s affections, but reluctantly takes it from me and carries it to her dog bed.

Ben dries his hands on the dish towel next to the sink as I try desperately not to think about the fact that that very towel was a gift from Jonah’s mother. Then he reaches for his beer. He turns to face me, and our eyes lock. There we stand, beers in hand, saying nothing for what feels like an eon, an eon I spend trying to resist the magnetic pull of his gaze. Honestly, his eyes are like two tractor beams and I am a mere star fighter whose thrusters are down. I take a step toward him, then another, and he closes the distance by taking a step of his own.

He’s going to kiss me
, I think.
He’s going to kiss me in my kitchen.

I break the stare first, look down at my beer, at the floor, at Sally, at anything other than his hypnotic brown eyes.

Ben sets his beer down, undrunk, and pulls mine from my grasp, returning it to the counter. Then he cups my chin in his hand and raises my face so that I can’t help but look at him. And now I am trembling because of him, because of the heat of his fingertips on my skin, because of the fact that this is the line, the point of no return, and as he lowers his head toward me, that inner voice suddenly comes to life with THX force, screaming,
No, Ellen! Stop, Ellen! DON’T, ELLEN!

His lips touch mine, tentatively at first, so soft and delicious, and the decibel level of the voice in my brain must be what causes people to go postal with machine guns, and I can literally feel the shocked glares of my husband and children from the photographs affixed to the fridge behind me, but I cannot stop myself, cannot pull away. Ben cocks his head ever so slightly to the right, then covers my mouth with his and claims it completely, crushing against me as the metaphorical
dam bursts. And suddenly, everything goes silent in my mind.

He presses me against the counter, his strong arms encircling my waist, his hands sliding across the small of my back as he kisses me hungrily, his tongue seeking out mine. And I kiss him back, yes, with reckless abandon, my arms reaching around his neck and clutching him fiercely as I feel every corpuscle in my entire body turn to molten heat. And I can’t breathe, and I don’t care because it feels so good, so goddamn fucking amazing that I don’t think I will ever stop kissing him, even if the Big One hits, even if my kids or Jonah walk into this room right now, because if I spent the rest of my life sucking face with this man I would die happy.

“Ellen.” A guttural whisper in my ear. One word, two syllables that make me instantly wet, and he grazes my neck with kisses, then begins to suck at the tender skin on the side of my throat, and it feels incredible, but his lips are no longer on mine, and I miss them already, so I grab his face and guide his mouth back to my mouth and experience that same inner explosion when our tongues meet again. And then I realize, with ever mounting anticipation, that I can feel his erection through both of our clothes, rock hard against my abdomen. Without thinking, I reach down and place my hand over it, tracing its outline with my fingers, my pulse throbbing in my throat as I detect
his
pulse throbbing in my palm.

A gasp escapes him and when I look up at him, I see that his eyes are practically rolling back in his head. I walk my fingers up to the clasp of his trousers, and quickly, urgently undo it, then tug on the zipper. So frantic am I to free him that I barely notice the small vibration coming from the pocket of his pants. Just as I reveal the cotton fabric of his underwear (boxer-briefs, for the record), his cell phone blasts me with a rendition of “Ballroom Blitz.” I immediately recoil
as though the cell phone has see-through vision and at this moment is recording the fact that my hand is on its owner’s crotch.

Ben moans, then says “Shit” under his breath as I disengage myself from his grasp and head for the sink. In a hasty move I’m certain he’s perfected at countless urinals, Ben restores his fly to its upright position, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell. His brow furrows as he reads the Caller ID, and he glances at me apologetically.

“I have to take this,” he says quietly, and I nod, not trusting my voice to come out sounding remotely normal.

He leaves the kitchen in a hurry, stopping at the foyer long enough to answer the call, then continues through to the darkened living room.

As much as I’d like to follow him and eavesdrop, I don’t. Instead, I open the tap at the sink and splash my burning cheeks and forehead with cold water, then reach for a glass in the dish drain and pour myself a healthy belt. I gulp it down, then refill the glass and sip it slowly as I stare out the kitchen window toward the park.

For the second time today I am waiting for the remorse, the guilt, the voice in my head to call me a sleazy no-good hoochie mama. But none of that comes. I am still glowing from the inside out. Everything in the room is vibrant and alive to my eyes, the tap water tastes like Evian, and my skin, from my forehead to the tips of my fingers, is buzzing with sensation. I have no doubt that the guilt will soon make an appearance, but at least I am getting a slight reprieve to bask in that long-forgotten glow of a transcendent first kiss. (Yes,
kiss
. The other doesn’t count because there were two layers of fabric between us.)

I turn to face Ben as he walks back into the kitchen, pocketing his cell phone, an ambivalent look on his face.

“Timing’s everything,” I say, trying for humor, remembering what happened at the marina yesterday when he merely unzipped my wet suit. God only knows what his reaction might be today. But as soon as he looks at me, he smiles, all ambivalence gone.

“I’m so sorry. I have to go.”

“I know,” I say, because I do. “I understand. It’s probably for the best anyway.”

“Look, Ellen…I’m really sorry about
that
. I shouldn’t have.…I’m sorry.…”

“Well, I’m not.” He looks surprised by my words. “I haven’t been kissed that way in over a decade, Ben. So, thanks.”

He does not come over to me, and I am glad for it. If he were to move any closer, neither one of us would be able to resist a good-bye kiss, and that would be dangerous, would lead to more kissing and then to the same place we were before, only this time, he wouldn’t be able to leave, despite the consequences. So he stays where he is, safe from the magnetic pull.

“I don’t want you to think that I do this—”

“I don’t,” I reply, cutting him off. “I don’t.”

I watch as he gathers his coat and tie from the kitchen chair and strides toward the foyer. At the archway, he stops and turns to me, but says nothing.

“Thanks for the surprise,” I tell him and he smiles warmly before walking out of my kitchen and out of my house.

T
he
garage door is open, letting in the fresh air and morning sun on this glorious March day. It’s the kind of spring morning that makes you want to go Rollerblading along the coast, or take a bike ride down the river, or a hike through Buffalo Park. It is not the kind of day you want to spend holed up in your garage sifting through ten years’ worth of accumulated junk. But that is exactly what I am doing at this moment, and I actually welcome the job. It is mindless and meditative, and since I read somewhere that purging is good for the soul, I can only hope that I have enough crap within these walls to wipe my proverbial slate clean.

The guilt finally claimed me last night as I was talking on the phone with my kids. I had been anticipating it for hours, like you do when you feel that first stomach rumble after eating something that doesn’t taste quite right. But it didn’t take hold of me until the middle of Matthew’s soliloquy about Meteor Crater, which he described as
totally boss
and
way cool
and
completely awesome
. My heart started pounding and my chest constricted to the point where I could barely draw breath and I realized I was about to have a full-blown anxiety attack. I struggled to calm myself, sucking in air slowly and rhythmically through my teeth as my oblivious son passed the phone to Jessie, who proceeded to repeat the exact same story, although with slightly different descriptive adjectives. By the time Connor got on the line, my heart rate had evened out, but I was drenched with sweat and could not hear a word he said because of the roaring in my ears.

I managed to make the appropriate noises while Connor spoke, oohing and ahhing in all the right places, though I did make a giant faux pas when I said, “That’s great, honey,” in response to his telling me that one of his grandparents’ rabbits had mysteriously vanished. I quickly covered my mistake by murmuring that rabbits are very resourceful and at least Grandma and Grandpa had twelve more where that one came from.

When Jonah took the phone, the roar in my ears had subsided, but I was feeling nauseated. And I couldn’t help but second-guess everything I said to him. I worried that “It sounds like the kids had a great time today” would come out as “I sucked face with another man in our kitchen.” Jonah seemed vaguely suspicious, but I realized that this was because I was being nice to him, which, quite frankly, I felt was my duty as a floozy. However, I did force myself to become chillier toward him as the conversation progressed, just to maintain our status quo. Wouldn’t want him to suspect me of adulterous behavior just because I was being civil to him.

After I hung up the phone, I paced around my bedroom for a full five minutes, waiting to see whether I would actually throw up (I didn’t). But as the night wore on, and the
conversation with my family became more distant, and the bottle of wine I had opened magically emptied, my shame and regret dissipated into the air like ether. And when I fell into bed at ten thirty, the last thing that went through my mind was a replay of my five blissful minutes with Ben.

This morning, I awoke before dawn and dragged my ass out of the house for an actual street run, taking a confused and utterly disinterested Sally with me. It was odd to be pounding the pavement, not listening to music or watching TV. The asphalt was hell on my joints, and my knees ached within the first ten minutes, but in an odd way, I felt like this was penance. My head was full of conflicting thoughts and emotions: the guilt, the pleasure, my children, Ben’s wife, Ben’s crotch, Jonah’s face, my name whispered on a sultry breath in my ear. Forty minutes later, when I returned to the safety of my kitchen, my clothes were drenched with sweat and my head was still full of noise.

Knowing I could not possibly face my blog yet, I quickly showered, ate half of a whole-wheat bagel, and headed for the garage.

So here I sit, surrounded by piles of old scooters (two Iron Man, one Batman, two generic Razors, and a pretty pink princess Razor with the faces of all the Disney princesses along the bottom, which Jessie refuses to ride because she doesn’t want to step all over Cinderella and Jasmine), roller skates, skateboards, helmets, and other assorted paraphernalia disgorged by the huge toy bin next to the garage door. Add that to the rusted tools from the interior shed to my right and the corroded camping equipment and long-forgotten sporting goods hauled out of the steamer trunk to my left. What I would like to do is dump everything into the recycling barrel, but my upper-middle-class guilt keeps me from doing so, and I mull over the fact that I am probably
more guilt ridden about the prospect of throwing away not-so-gently-used toys than I am over making out with Ben Campbell in my kitchen.

Do not go there, Ellen
, I warn myself, as it is only ten a.m. and I am already mentally exhausted. The point of garage purging, aside from my desire to create enough room to park the Flex next to Jonah’s Lexus, is to clear my mind.
Breathe in, breathe out. Goodwill for this Razor, recycling bin for this helmet. Breathe in, breathe out.

I hear the engine of an approaching car and I clutch Jessie’s old Elmo kneepads to my chest as though they will protect me from whatever temptation might be headed my way.
(Hahahahahahaha, today, boys and girls, we’re going to talk about
adultery.
Can you say that?
A-dul-tery.
Hahahaha. Oh, it’s Mr. Noodle!)
When Jill’s champagne-colored Chrysler Town and Country pulls into my driveway, I sigh with relief. I had forgotten her promise to bring the boys by to see if there was anything they might like to salvage from my garage. She pops out from behind the wheel, cardboard carry carton with two paper cups in hand, just as the back door mechanically slides open with nary a sound. The three
D
s jump out of the minivan and follow their mom up to the garage, eyes wide with the promise of discovering buried treasure.

“Hi-yo, Elle-belle,” says Decatur.

“Hi-
yo
yourself,” I return as I push myself off the garage floor to the musical accompaniment of popping joints.

Denver and Detroit each toss a “Hi” in my general direction as all three immediately begin to pilfer through the junk. Jill is wearing cream slacks and a mint green pullover sweater, and she looks around with alarm at the piles of dirt and dust-encrusted crap. I should have advised her to wear a hazmat suit. She gingerly steps over to me and hands me a
coffee. I try not to think of Ben as I peer at the Starbucks logo emblazoned on the side.