The Deep End (3 page)

“Well, he was sure looking at you,” Eve teased.

“Looking at my rotten backhand, you mean. If I hear the words ‘follow through’ one more time, I will scream.”

“It was your
backside
, not you backhand, he was looking at, and you know it.”

“He’s a natural flirt, that’s all. Besides, he thinks coming on to middle-aged women is part of his job.”

“He didn’t come on to me.”

“Your rear end doesn’t droop enough.”

“No, I don’t have your legs.”

“And I don’t have your mouth. Shut up, you’re making me self-conscious.”

“Why do you always put yourself down?” Eve demanded, her voice suddenly serious.

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You have ever since I’ve known you.”

“I just have a realistic understanding of my own limitations.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?” Eve asked. “Look at you. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you that a little self-confidence and a few blond streaks wouldn’t fix.”

Joanne ran an embarrassed hand through her light brown hair. “And losing five pounds, and getting rid of the bags under my eyes, and getting my teeth straightened.”

“Talk to Karen Palmer. Her husband’s a dentist. And while you’re at it, ask her who did her boobs.”

“Ask her yourself; she’s right behind you.”

“Hi,” a woman with a perpetually surprised expression greeted them. “Did you hear about the latest grisly Great Neck killing?”

“Third one this year,” Eve elaborated. “Same M.O.—that’s modus operandi—as my husband would say. I thought we all moved to Long Island to be safe!”

“That poor woman—strangled, then hacked all to pieces!” Karen Palmer further embellished, her voice assuming an almost eery lilt as she warmed to her subject. “Can you imagine what must have been going on in her mind during those last horror-filled moments? The terror she must have felt?” Karen Palmer’s eyes grew even wider, as if she were watching the scene in her mind. “Jim got hold of a porno movie once. It was supposed to be one of those ‘snuff’ films—you know, where they actually murder some poor girl on camera, and I swear you could almost
taste
her fear …”

“Do we have to talk about this?” Joanne interrupted.

“She’s no fun.” Eve smiled at the obviously deflated Karen Palmer. “She never lets you talk about any of the good stuff.”

Karen Palmer shrugged. “Did you just have a lesson?” she asked, seeking safer ground.

“The tennis pro has the hots for Joanne.” Eve laughed, removing her purse from her locker and slamming the locker door shut.

“Oh, I’d follow through on that one if I were you,” Karen advised with obvious relish.

“That’s exactly her problem,” Eve stated. “She doesn’t ‘follow through.’”

“Very funny,” Joanne told them, feeling her face redden.

“She’s blushing,” Eve teased triumphantly, always pleased when she could draw color to her friend’s cheeks. “Where there’s smoke …”

“He’s barely out of his teens …”

“At his peak.”

“He’s twenty-nine,” Karen told them.

“Past his peak,” Eve lamented. “But not bad, nonetheless.”

“You’re both crazy,” Joanne admonished them playfully as they left the clubhouse and walked toward the parking lot. “You both have perfectly nice husbands.”

“Nice, yes,” Eve corrected. “Far from perfect.” She turned directly toward Karen, who looked surprised to see her. “Where are you getting your hair done these days?” she asked, trying, but not quite succeeding, to keep her eyes away from the woman’s newly expanded upper torso.

Karen Palmer smiled. “Rudolph’s. I’ve been going there for years.”

“I have to find a new hairdresser,” Eve deadpanned. “I’m tired of homosexual hairdressers. You tell them to make you look sexy, they make you look like a boy.” All eyes moved immediately to Karen’s chest. “Well, nice seeing you again.” They watched the other woman maneuver herself into her Corvette, hitting her breasts against the door as she tried to lower herself inside. “I still haven’t quite got the hang of them.” She smiled self-consciously. “But it’s worth it,” she added, starting the engine, “if only to see the smile on Jim’s face every morning.”

“Let me tell you what makes Brian smile,” Eve began as they reached her car.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Hunter!” a masculine voice called from across the lot. Joanne looked up to see the new tennis pro running with long, careless strides toward them.

“A vision in white,” quipped Eve.

“You left these on the court,” he said as he reached the two women, producing from his back pocket a set of keys dangling on a chain.

“Oh my God, thank you. I’m forever leaving these things somewhere.” Joanne felt the blush spread across her cheeks and into her scalp as she took her house keys from the tennis instructor’s outstretched hand.

“See you next week.” He smiled and was gone.

“Mrs. Hunter is red all over,” Eve laughed as they got into the car.

“Mrs. Hunter is going home to take a shower.”

“Think you can wash your shame away?” Eve joked.

“You really enjoy embarrassing me, don’t you?” Joanne asked, good-naturedly.

“Yeah, I do,” Eve admitted and both women laughed. “I really do.”

The phone was ringing as Joanne stepped out of the shower. “Damn,” she muttered, throwing a towel around her wet body and running toward the bedside phone. “Hello?” There was no response. “Hello … hello?” She watched the drops of water make a trail down the length of her left leg and disappear into the soft beige carpet under her feet. “One last chance … hello?” She returned the receiver to its cradle in disgust. “Goodbye,” she said, catching a glimpse of one of the workers in the backyard
as he passed under her window to confer with one of his colleagues. He looked up, staring directly at her though he gave no acknowledgment of her presence. Immediately, Joanne ducked beneath the windowsill. Had he seen her? No, she thought, crawling back to the bathroom on her hands and knees. She could see him, but he couldn’t see her.

The thought of watching someone unaware of being watched gave Joanne a momentary shudder. She reached the bathroom, checked to make sure the blinds were tightly closed, and only then stood up, the towel falling from her body to the tile floor.

She caught her nude image in the full-length mirror, and instinctively turned away. She’d never liked confronting her naked body, even before time and the bearing of children had rendered it something less—or something more, depending on where you looked—than it once was. She thought of Karen Palmer, a few years younger than herself, who had subjected her body, and her psyche, to the repeated nips and tucks of the surgeon’s knife. For what? For her husband? For the sake of her own vanity? How did the woman feel when she surprised herself in the mirror each day, every year bringing forth a new model, like a line of new cars.

Joanne felt herself being drawn toward the bathroom’s full-length mirror, her eyes focused on her face. Aging was such an amazing process, she thought, her fingers reaching up to smooth out the small lines around her eyes. When had they first appeared? She touched the contours of her face, moving her hands along her neck, studying the natural creases of time. How noticeably we get older, she thought, and yet how invisibly. Her eyes,
while they reflected no great wisdom, certainly reflected the passage of the years. They were more knowing, less trustful. The bags beneath them, which used to evaporate with a good night’s sleep, were now a permanent part of her features. How long had it been since someone had stared into them and told her how beautiful she was? A long time, she thought.

Her eyes fell reluctantly to her breasts, breasts which in her youth had been high and firm, but which were now less clearly defined. They dipped in slightly just before the nipples, giving them the somewhat exotic look of Aladdin’s pointed-toed shoes. Her stomach, once concave, now rounded noticeably, and her waist was creeping inexorably into the area of her still-narrow hips. Only her legs, always her proudest attribute, showed no signs of betrayal, no little purple veins sprouting behind her knees such as the ones Eve had started complaining about. At forty-one, she still had no worries about saddlebags or cellulite, and if her rear end was a few inches lower now, well, at least Paul had never complained. Maybe he wasn’t an ass man, she thought, remembering Eve’s earlier remark. She hoped he was a leg man, she decided, realizing that he had never stated any particular preference, reaching into the cabinet under the sink for the hairdryer.

It wasn’t in the usual place. “Oh great, where did Paul put it?” she asked her reflection, opening another cabinet. It wasn’t there. But something else was, a magazine of some sort, pushed to the very back of the shelf. Joanne reached in and pulled it out. “Oh my,” she gasped, flipping it over to discover a smiling and full-bosomed young woman staring back at her as if she were an old and dear friend. While there was a certain innocence to the girl’s
expression, there was nothing innocent about her pose, which showed her nude and unquestionably voluptuous body reclining against a large and equally well-equipped stereo system, a microphone thrust none-too-discreetly between her legs. “And what are we going to sing today?” Joanne asked, hearing Eve’s voice filtering through her words. She began turning the pages, her eyes widening with each successive photograph. “My God,” she gasped, trying to look away, her eyes riveted to the boldly colored pictures. “Since when did Paul start going out with the likes of you?” she asked, recalling that Paul had seemed preoccupied of late, that his usually quick smile came slower these days, that he often appeared distracted, even depressed. She had assumed it had something to do with whatever was going on at work—Paul had always preferred not to bring the office home with him—and so she had chosen to ignore what she assumed was a temporary malaise. All couples, she concluded, especially ones who had been married as long as she and Paul, went through periods of decreased ardor. When his workload lessened, she reasoned, he would return to his normally gregarious self, his interest in her would pick up again. Could it be, she wondered now, that he had ceased to find her attractive? Had their sex life become so routine that he no longer required her active participation? Had her body lost the appeal it had once so effortlessly held for him? “Is that why you’re here?” she asked the smiling photograph. What does he see when he looks at you? What does he see, she amended the question further, studying herself in the mirror, when he looks at me?

Slowly, self-consciously, Joanne shifted her body into a position similar to that of one of the women in the
photographs, her arms back, chest thrust forward, knees up, legs well apart. “How do they get them so pink?” she asked aloud, standing up abruptly, embarrassed though she was alone. She had never subjected her body to such intense scrutiny before, never before tried to see herself through Paul’s eyes. Suddenly she bent over and grabbed her toes, echoing another pose in the magazine. “Beautiful,” she said sarcastically, staring at herself upside down from between her legs.

“Oh, Mom—gross!”

Joanne scrambled to straighten up, throwing the magazine inside the cabinet and kicking the door closed with her foot. At the same time, she grabbed one of the towels off the floor and wrapped it around her, feeling her damp skin grow warm with the heat of her embarrassment.

“What were you doing?” Lulu asked.

“I was looking at my toe.”

“You were looking at your toe?”

“I hurt it playing tennis,” Joanne told her, her voice noticeably shrill. “What are you doing home so early?”

“The teachers had a meeting or something. You know how they always have meetings on Friday afternoons.” She rolled her eyes. “Is it all right if I go to Susannah’s house? Her dad got a new pinball machine.”

“Sure, go on. But don’t be late for supper,” she called after Lulu, who was already halfway down the stairs. “Good God,” she sighed with a combination of discomfort and relief as she heard the front door open and close.

The phone rang.

She moved quickly to answer it, careful not to walk too close to the window. “Hello?” As before, there was no response. “Oh no, not again.” She waited a second, listening
to the ominous silence at the other end, feeling invisible eyes upon her, as if the phone were a camera, and she dropped the receiver back onto its carriage as if she had just received a sudden charge of electricity. “Go bother someone else,” she admonished it, falling back across her bed, feeling exposed though she wasn’t sure why.

That stupid magazine, she thought, renewed embarrassment creeping across her bare arms and legs as she contemplated her daughter’s startled expression at catching her mother with her head down between her thighs. Not that she was a prude about her body, Joanne thought. It was just that she had never made a point of parading around without her clothes in front of her daughters. She had never seen her own mother nude, she realized, until the woman had become too weak and sick to dress herself. What was Paul doing buying magazines like that? And why?

“Hello? Is anybody home?” the masculine voice called as, once more, Joanne heard her front door open and shut.

“Paul?” Joanne sat up, startled, quickly retrieving a robe from her walk-in closet and wrapping it around her before her husband appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing home in the middle of the afternoon? Are you feeling all right?”

He didn’t look well, she thought, kissing him gently on the cheek. “I wanted to talk to Mr. Rogers,” he said, looking out the window. “Has he been around today?”

“Just the workers. Although he might have been here—I was gone for a few hours. Eve and I had a tennis lesson at the club. A new instructor. He seems to feel that I have a certain natural ability, but I don’t know. It’s been so long since I played …” What was she rattling on about? Why was she so nervous?

She looked at her husband’s back as he stared out the window. There was something about his stance, something about the tilt of his head, the visible tension in his shoulders, that made her uncomfortable. He turned toward her, and she didn’t like the expression on his face.