Talking in Bed (24 page)

Rachel bristled; Paddy's pillow talk, something he'd grown more confident in using, irritated her. He sounded like a cross between a country-western singer and a Las Vegas pimp when he tried it out on her.

"Seepy?" Paddy asked, now tender rather than excited.

"
Sl,
" Rachel corrected, enjoying his caresses in spite of his canned dialogue. "I like you," she admitted. "I think you're nice. What are you doing in bed with a snob like me?"

"Trying to get in your pants," he said, slipping a hand under her backside.

"My pants are on the floor," she said flatly. He'd learned his lines from bad movies, maybe bad books. She didn't want him to tell her things he'd read or heard before, especially when they were in bed together, especially then, when it made a great deal of difference that she was not just anyone. She asked him, not for the first time, "Are you
particularly
attracted to me, or did you just feel like sleeping with someone new?"

Paddy stopped moving his hand. Rachel felt the mean urge to ask if he couldn't perform the two things, talk and foreplay, at the same time.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, I get this feeling that men sometimes just want to fuck anything, anybody. Sometimes men seem just like automatic weapons, spraying randomly, hitting whoever happens to be standing there. I want to know that you want
me.
" Her words sounded suddenly absurd to Rachel. What the hell was she talking about, anyway? Wasn't she in bed with him, hadn't he sought out her, only her?

Paddy lay back on his pillow and crossed his hands chastely over his chest. He was silent for a long while, during which time Rachel reached over to check his penis. It curled, limp and warm, on his testicles.

"I'm sorry," Rachel whispered, closing her hand over his bundle of genitalia and waiting for it to respond. "Please don't be angry. I'm just nervous."

"I don't like that word," Paddy said.

"Which?"

"The F word. I don't like the way it sounds when you say it."

"And how does it sound when I say it? How is it different from when you say it?" Rachel was sitting up now, ready to get out of bed altogether.

"I don't say it," he said simply. "I don't like to hear anyone say it." He scratched his chest, where he still had a tan from last summer, one that ended where his Levi's began. He spent the summer in the sun, crawling around on roofs. He had to be the handsomest man she had ever been intimate with; in fact, his attractiveness played an undeniable role, which was new for Rachel. It had never, in the past, made a particular difference. Once again, Rachel was struck by the ridiculousness of their being together. She was also struck by his apparent code of behavior. He didn't say
fuck.
The word actually upset him. It was like his believing in God, another character trait Rachel had presumed outdated, if not extinct. "You're in the wrong generation," she told him.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know what I mean." She lay her head on his tanned chest. "Mr. Chivalry," she said. "The gallant guy."

***

Another time, Rachel told Paddy about her day, thinking she could charm him in the way she used to charm Evan. "I'm getting so nostalgic and sappy," she said as they lay in her bed, an early winter darkness settling outside the window. "Today I turned on
Sesame Street
just to listen to the theme song. Oh, it was weepy-weepy." She waited for Paddy to hold her, to treasure her female sentimentality, which was so unlike her. This was the way she had flirted with Ev, once upon a time, though he'd become immune to her tender moments as the years passed. He'd quit being moved by them. Beside her, Paddy also seemed untouched. He lay breathing noisily, awake and thoughtful.

She continued, "I never wanted a three-year-old more badly. The boys and I used to watch
Sesame
together every morning after Ev left for the office."

Suddenly Rachel had a scare, an instant's worth of terror: her boys were never going to be young again, her husband was quite possibly never coming back. Well, she knew that, and even now, a second after, the terror seemed manageable. But for that brief instant she had felt the spin of the uncontrollable, the sucking vortex of mortality.

"Paddy?" she said, as if he might have left her, too.

"Uh-huh."

"What are you thinking?" She wanted to hear how enigmatic she was to him; she wanted to hear him fumble for his feelings.

"Well," he said, lifting himself up on one elbow, facing her, "I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but you always seem to want me to feel sorry for you. And I don't want to feel sorry for you. I mean, I think we're having a good time, besides the sin of it all. Don't you?"

Now it was her turn to fall silent. She cast about for the eager little life vignettes she'd provided him these last few weeks and realized he was correct: she always made herself pitiful. Well. Even Ev, the trained analyst, had not been able to point this out to her. But then, Ev was sometimes oddly ignorant about what Paddy would most likely label the Big Picture. Rachel found herself not hurt by Paddy's observation but in awe of it. It was so astute and smart. And she hadn't thought of him as being smart, that was the real truth, the real thrill—that he might be worthy of her, body
and
soul.

"When I'm alone I imagine you're watching me," she told him then, which was true. She hadn't been able to sustain that game in a long time, not since her last crush, several years earlier, when the boys were ear-infected toddlers and she loved their pediatrician. She'd let him observe her all day long, bathing the boys, tucking them in, telling them clever tales. How she shone as a model mother when Dr. Nixon was around! And of course nothing had happened between her and Dr. Nixon. Soon the boys quit getting sick; then they started going to Ev's GP. But she liked having Paddy's shadow hovering near her. "I pretend you can see me driving along the freeway, singing songs, talking on the phone, whatever. I like to think you'd like me if you could see me."

"I
do
like you." Paddy had been about to tell her he loved her. It would be the first time he would have said it before the woman did; despite his capacity for outrageous gestures, that one he withheld, waiting so as not to be humiliated. But he wasn't sure he
did
love Rachel. Maybe it was age creeping up on him; maybe that thing he used to call love he wanted to name something new, such as affection or friendliness. Well, that was ridiculous, he told himself, he was more than affectionate or friendly in his attitude toward Rachel, but was it love? He knew he would rather be here naked with Rachel Cole than with any other woman he could think of. He knew he thought about her all day, although not in the way she had just described, where he was her audience, but much more about sex, much more about being in bed with her. He postulated to himself that he contemplated sex many more hours of the day than he actually performed it. Perfectly normal thing, he told himself, every man did the same.

Maybe it was having a daughter that made him question calling his feelings for Rachel love. He knew he loved Melanie; she was his gauge. Nobody—not his mother, not his wife, not his mistress—could claim the same sure position in his heart. And given that fact, he told himself he might as well tell Rachel he loved her; certainly he cared what happened to her, he fantasized about her; he wanted to fornicate with her. But if he loved his daughter, he did not love Rachel. It was not the same thing. So he kept this grand gesture to himself, he reserved it guiltily, because it was clear she could use the boost his words would give her.

***

It seemed to Rachel she'd been waiting all her married life for an excuse to have an affair. And since Evan had moved away—chosen to leave her—she felt justified. It was flimsy justification, but it would suffice. She drank too much and she slept with a different man.

She had had very little experience in sleeping around. She could count on one hand the men she'd had sex with. On the other hand she could count the boys she might have had sex with, if she had allowed it. And if there were a third hand, she might number the men in her married life she'd wanted to fall in love with.

It was always a matter of falling in love, for Rachel. She had to be in love before she'd have sex, just as Zoë had said of her. Otherwise, what was the point? Her pleasure was a quality of expectation, enhanced by the man's attraction to her, compounded by the forbiddenness of the relationship, enriched by the hours she spent fabricating his personality, until her love was a marvelous creation of her own imagination.

All Paddy Limbach had to do was put his hand on hers. She almost told him she was in love with him after their first night of lovemaking. It was not an entirely happy emotion for Rachel. She still loved Evan, she knew that, but Paddy was new, his problems were fresh to her, his drawbacks still elusive, his simple humanity still in question: maybe he was not a mere mortal like the other men.

"Everybody poops," she'd told her sons when introducing them to the toilet, then tried to talk herself into believing it was true. Some people—men she idolized—seemed incapable of that act. Her problem in love was just that simple, just that absurdly complicated.

Now she spent her days preparing for her evenings, the way she had in high school and college, making a pathetic attempt at improving her thighs by lying in front of the television in the mornings and lifting her legs along with the women on the screen, bathing in the late afternoons, choosing clothes that best hid her flaws, underwear that might distract from the aging portions of her physique. In fact, she bought new underwear, the unhygienic type that gym teachers always claimed would cause itching infections. It was unthinkable for Rachel to appear before Paddy wearing her usual panties, those flesh-toned cotton items—yes, comfortable, yes, functional, but utterly unfun. Fun underwear reminded you of its presence by sneaking between your legs, its elastic biting in ways and places your friendly cotton briefs simply didn't.

For his part, Paddy wore boxers. Rachel couldn't remember seeing a man in boxer shorts before. She liked them. They were modest yet sexy. They looked easier to want to launder than those white briefs with a blue-and-yellow-striped waistband, their stains of uncertain origin. Like neckties, boxers came in colors and patterns, silk and paisley, cartoon pigs, decoy ducks, plaid.

"I love your underwear" she said to Paddy Limbach. "I love the way you leave them in your jeans, all ready for you to hop back in, like a horse waiting for a cowboy."

Rachel did not care what Didi was like. Rachel already knew she was the superior lover more interesting, more erotic. Her confidence in Didi's inferiority made her indifferent to Paddy's romantic past—surely he'd never known anyone as fascinating as she? But Paddy was curious about Evan, and Rachel didn't mind talking about him. She appraised her husband with complete frankness, not exactly preferring him, but acknowledging his longer claim to her life and affection. She didn't mind noting the differences between him and Paddy; it was like comparing a doughnut to a bagel—same basic shape, but entirely other substance.

One night as they lay in bed, Paddy timidly asked, "Does this happen a lot in your marriage?"

"This what? This sleeping around?" Rachel was flattered: to think, Paddy believed her a veteran! "Of course not."

"Oh."

"And you?" She asked merely to be polite; nothing was clearer to her than Paddy's unpolished infidelity. When the phone had rung earlier he'd bitten his own tongue, nervous to the point of sweating bullets.

"Oh my heck, no." They listened to the elevator motor outside Rachel's apartment. Paddy wanted to know why Rachel would select him over her husband, who was more intelligent, more sophisticated, made more money, and knew better jokes. Was she doing this to get back at Ev? "Listen," he said, "I'm not a pawn, am I?"

"A pawn?" Rachel laughed. She put her dark head on Paddy's shoulder and kissed his chin. She rolled her wide friendly body up against his so that their parts matched. Paddy liked this aspect of her, the fact that she stretched his length, that she seemed capable of utter relaxation beside him. The difference in their weight was maybe twenty pounds. She was unlike little Didi, who always squirmed around during sex worrying about her thighs and stomach, who got distracted by the possibility of becoming fat while Paddy pumped away on top. He used to feel her pinching her own tummy, taking note.

***

In February, Paddy invited Rachel to a basketball game. He'd sold his father's farm to one of the assistant coaches at De Paul; somehow this entitled him to tickets. "The boys would love that!" she exclaimed, realizing after he'd gone that they would, in all probability,
not
love it.

The stadium stunned her. Zach sat down beside her and looked around at the mob. He said, "It's like
Where's Waldo?
" Marcus scowled. They knew nothing about basketball. Zach played soccer but the only sport Marcus had ever played was badminton with his uncle on the apartment building's roof, losing birdies over the side. Out on the floor during timeouts, girls flew akimbo into the air and boys caught them in their arms. While in the air, the smiling girls jerked into boomerang-like positions, then folded into sitting on the descent and, finally, landed cradled in their partners' arms. Every time one flew up, Rachel gasped. How could their mothers watch? she wondered. From living for many years with Ev she had grown graphically imaginative about the disasters lurking everywhere. All she could think when she saw a body sailing up into the stadium air was that if it fell, there would be a broken neck, a crumpled blue-and-white form on the floor.

"How many people are here?" Rachel shouted in Paddy's ear. He was eating popcorn, a handful at a time, and little crumbs were falling over him.

"Fifteen thou," he guessed. "I don't know."

She couldn't recall having sat in the same place with fifteen thousand people before in her life. It made her start thinking about snipers.