Talking in Bed (26 page)

His door was ajar that dark Saturday morning in late March; he expected her. Ev had his forehead to the floor when she arrived. "Back exercises," he explained.

"I thought you were praying," Rachel said, though what she'd feared was that he was weeping.

"Well," Ev said in his reflective, philosophical, taking-everything-seriously way, "it
is
a kind of prayer. I'm praying my back won't give out." He rolled gently to his side and then all the way over, rocking, grinding his spine against the floor. "Maybe all gestures are, strictly speaking, prayers?"

"So you got a weak back," Rachel said, overriding the philosophizing. "When'd you get that?" As Ev appeared to be considering an answer, she added, "You're supposed to say, 'Oh, about a week back.'" This was a joke she'd learned from Paddy.

Ev grunted, smiling his small tolerant smile, looking at Rachel the way he looked at their sons, pleased with a grudging pride of her silliness. He sat up, wrapping his arms around his legs, still rocking. Though he ate constantly, he was far too thin. In his maroon sweatpants he looked Third World, with the elastic cuffs loose around his ankles.
Skeleton,
Rachel thought. It was hard to remember that it was
he
who'd left
her.

"Sit," Ev said. Rachel looked around and selecting a file box beneath a paint-speckled wall mirror. Her view was of four windows that looked out on the brick building next door. She'd come to deliver mail, discuss unavoidable household whatnot—condominium bylaw revision, insurance claims, school dues, summer camp registration—but she couldn't believe the papers in her briefcase were in any way critical. Her husband looked like hell.

"Are you sick?" she asked him.

"In what sense?"

Rachel sighed, shaking her head. She turned to her briefcase, to the stack of papers whose lines required his signature.

For his part, Ev studied her for signs of a new sex life. He looked at her critically. She seemed physically relaxed, as if her joints had been lubricated, giving her flex and grace.
Joint oiling,
he thought.
Rachel's joint oiling with Paddy.
One of Paddy's best qualities was his loose limbs, the way he swung them like a marionette when he walked or played racquetball or rested his chin on a fist. Ev pictured those long limber legs and arms around his wife, wondering if it was his incredulity that made the image nearly impossible. He wondered if Paddy would know to pay sufficient attention to Rachel's breasts, which were terrifically erogenous for her. He wondered if he would find the softest stretch of her skin, matching patches inside her thighs. And would they be practicing birth control? Did she worry about disease? Did Rachel have any idea what, say, a dental dam was? His wife seemed a sexual innocent, and Ev found his concern about her possible affair straying toward the custodial.

Rachel leaned forward, and Ev realized she had come without a bra, which made him grieve for his right to touch her.

She said, "You know what, Ev? Statistically speaking, I don't think many couples that have a separation get back together again. I think I read that somewhere."

"That's probably true." He moved his gaze from her chest to her face.

"It makes me sad," she said, and began to cry.

It made her sad in both simple and complicated ways, like weaning her last baby, like watching her grandmother die. Her long marriage to Ev had no single form; its dissolution seemed inevitable and intolerable at the same time. The tenor of her pain kept drifting.

"But we've never been very statistically reliable," Ev said. He scooted toward her on his tailbone, put his hands on her calves, and rubbed the soft muscle.

Rachel let herself cry for a few minutes while he sat patiently on the floor at her feet, rocking sideways, massaging her in a friendly, asexual manner. Then he abruptly moved his thumbs up her legs and rose onto his knees, meeting her mouth with his.

She groaned involuntarily, astonished. He tasted and felt unbearably familiar and right. His hands moved into her hair and she felt herself free-fall, simply relax into his arms as if into the atmosphere from a great height. She loved him best; he knew her better. His tongue roamed her teeth; she reached for the curls at his neck, then slid without thinking off the file box and beneath him, their bodies performing the rites of homecoming as if there had never been any other role to fill.

Ev heard her say, "I love you," her emphasis on
you,
signifying that there was an alternative. His speculation about her infidelity now came to a shuddering close: she was sleeping with Paddy. He had shut his eyes against the moment, unsure why he'd been so instantaneously drawn to her, whether he was making love to her because he loved her or because he was still competing with Paddy, still on the court swinging for a win.

Rachel was crying again, and Ev understood that her reasons for doing so were at least as enigmatic as his in making love. Sex frequently made her cry, from happiness, but she also could feel guilty, or simply overwhelmed. There might be a thousand things the gesture signified. It upset him profoundly to be so ambiguous about his motives, to know himself, or Rachel, so poorly.

Finally, when he stubbornly would not answer her admission of her love, she said, "I also wanted to talk about Marcus. Do you want to talk about Marcus?" She snuffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, sitting up awkwardly on the floor.

"O.K." He would not say that he loved her, although he did love her. But he could not tolerate its being evoked merely as a response to the threat of Paddy Limbach. What sort of love was that? "What about Marcus?"

Rachel was pulling her jeans back over her hips, her sweater over her breasts, ignoring the splash of semen he'd left on her stomach,
white mud.
She used to roll onto Ev's side of the bed to leave the damp spot for him to sleep on; he could recall a time when he'd fallen asleep on top of her and they had awakened to find themselves glued together at the navel, the red wrenching-apart.

Ev adjusted his sweatpants, sat cross-legged, his knee touching hers until he very gently moved it away.

"Marcus is hostile." She held up her palm to quell his objection. "I know you don't trust that word, but he is. I have no idea how he acts around you, but he's being a jerk to me."

Ev said, "To you?"

"Well, to me and to Zach." And to Paddy, she might have added, but why muddy the waters? She looked into Ev's eyes, into the deep knowledge he had of her. Undoubtedly he could see straight into her confused heart, could see the new affection for Paddy sitting beside her dark knotty love for him, a puppy near the teeth of a dingo. She blinked in order to remember her point. "Marcus won't wait for Zach after school—not that he has to do that, of course."

"I'll get Zach."

Rachel nudged her knee into Ev's again to see if he had intentionally moved away from her touch. He moved away again, and she felt like a fool. Her tears threatened to start up once more. "You'll get Zach, that's good, that's a good solution." Rachel sensed herself launching into a tirade, which she did not want to do. It had to do with a rocking rhythm of anger and despair and humiliation in her mind that somehow began to roll off her tongue.
That's good, that's a good solution,
the refrain began, but soon it would naturally be followed with
Just one solution at a time, is that it, I'll just come here for my solutions one at a time, bring them to you like good King Solomon so that you can decide, you can make judgment, you can decree
... And so on. Why had he put his hands on her calves? Why had he just fucked her when now he wouldn't touch her? It had been too long since high school, too long since Rachel had been competent at these sorts of games, too long since she'd even recognized her incompetence at them. She had no idea how to play. She had no idea Ev knew how to play. She would fumble, she would fail, she would lose Ev forever.

She stood then, enraged. But where was her right to have rage, anyway? Hadn't all that rage been supposed to translate into sexual desire for her husband's friend? Wasn't that what she'd done with it? Why was it leaking out here? Where was the flaw in her displacement?

Evan was saying, "...and then he won't be so angry. He can sleep on the sofa, I'll put him on the train in the morn—"

"What did you say?"

"When?"

"What were you talking about? I lost track."

"I was saying Marcus could come stay with me for a while. Separate the two of you, the three of you."

"The four of us."

Evan stood up, his hand to his lower back. "I don't think that little episode on the floor did anything good for my disk."

Rachel realized that her head hurt. Her husband was giving her a headache. He was too difficult. Maybe it would be best simply to continue with Paddy, who was easy enough. How much simpler it would be to see Paddy if Marcus was gone. Zach slept like a bear. Zach actually liked Paddy.

Rachel's conflicted emotions made her wonder about her own character: was she monstrous? Ev would request the abstract of her, a guarantee of high scruples and constant ethical self-scrutiny: she could be better. It was too much for her, too heady and headachey. Before falling into Ev's arms, she'd considered herself to be kind of happily miserable. Maybe in truth she was one of those people who require drama in their lives. Maybe she needed an occasion to rise to.

Evan said, "Do you think I should move home?"

Taken aback, Rachel paused. "Well, yes, but not because Marcus is being a brat. I don't want you home if you don't want to be there. Obviously," she added, when Ev simply aimed his narrowed gaze at her.

He said, "Let him move here, just for a while, just for a week."

She nodded, already envisioning her own apartment late at night, Zach snoring away, Paddy with his hand over her breast. Paddy's teeth were perfect, she thought, not crooked and stained like Ev's. She looked at the floor the scrunched throw rug where she and Ev had just made love. It had felt more wonderful than any sex she'd had for a long time. But it was five minutes gone, and after he'd signed the sheaf of papers she'd brought and handed them back to her, Ev didn't touch her when they said goodbye.

When his door shut, it was as if Rachel had imagined the whole unlikely scene. The stairwell was still brown, the vestibule downstairs still exposed to the freezing elements, the liquor store across the street still advertising six-packs for four dollars.

***

Marcus had no intention of moving in with his father. His arguments against it were carefully whittled away—he could take his computet; his desk, his collections; the door to his room at home would be locked against Zach and Rachel—until only his naked stubbornness remained, a willful refusal that would not be weakened.

"You're hurting your father's feelings," Rachel heard herself say, but she quickly recovered by adding, "If you stay here, you must shape up. No more yelling at Zach, no more sullenness with me."

He nodded defiantly, and Rachel wished she could gather him into her arms. How hateful adolescence was, how full of isolation. Who could he hug? she wondered. Who would he allow to hold him, to comfort him? He had no physical attachment with any other human, a state of existence Rachel could recall well enough to know that there was nothing she, his mother, could do to help. To try to hug him now would be to force him to push her away.

Later, she wondered at his stubbornness. Did he suspect her of having an affair? Did he know about her and Paddy? Was he staying here merely to police the place? To monitor? To spy? She was tempted to go wake him. Unlike Zach, Marcus slept lightly and woke with a disarming clarity, utterly sentient; she could simply snap on his light and he'd sit up in bed. They could have a frank discussion. He gave all signs of knowing what he wanted and why he wanted it. He was intelligent and sensitive. He thought like a grownup in many situations; he was responsible and careful. The problem was that his childish personality was so well hidden that you thought he might have outgrown it. You might
think
that, but you would be wrong. He was a boy. He missed his father. He blamed his mother. He despised the interloper.

For her part, she was crying so often these days she bought waterproof mascara. The manufacturers seemed to think waterproof mascara was for swimmers, but Rachel knew better: it was for weepers. For years she'd kept makeup in her drawer until it went dry with neglect; now she was culling through a rainbow of colors at the Marshall Field counter, a beautiful young woman with a French accent aiding her. Was the accent assumed? Rachel didn't care; she liked to listen to accents. It was more interesting if it was affected, anyway. The young woman had flawless makeup, obvious yet perfect, like a beautiful mask. What did she look like underneath? An ordinary face, Rachel assumed; as usual, she laid the template of her husband's point of view on the situation. Evan would want to see the girl plain, without her mask. But maybe it was more interesting to see what the girl
wanted
to look like, the nature of her disguise. And perhaps, Rachel thought as the French girl packaged her purchases, people were more interesting in what they desired to be than in what they were naturally.

"Merci," said Rachel, not intending to tease.

But in her cold automobile, waiting for the traffic light to change, she felt foolish. What a ridiculous trip! What an adolescent situation! She'd looked forward all morning to this shopping excursion, as if she had a vital errand. Who was she? Who did she love? Her problem could for hours be comical and meaningless, something to fret over in theory, to turn happily around in her mind like a bright plastic toy, to feel deliciously sexy and flattered about. But on occasion it simply exhausted her. On occasion it seemed to her frivolous and self-destructive, obsessive and wasteful, disappointing and ugly. This was the way Evan would have thought of it, and sometimes his thoughts seemed to Rachel the only true ones, the ones that were her, naturally and thoroughly, underneath everything else. Ev lived in her heart like a kernel of her youthful self; they'd married, young and earnest, intelligent beyond their years about the fittingness of their own match. For sixteen years she'd slept only with him, kissed only him, considered others but always fallen back into his arms, into the sad dark truth that was his grasp of the world.