Three Women (22 page)

The first crispness in the air the week after Labor Day perked up her spirits. She began her classes with energy, went shopping with Marta and bought a gray pinstripe suit in the newer cut they were showing, everything longer again. Fortunately, it came in petite, so skirt and jacket would not have to be altered. Marta bought a new gabardine dress, cut loosely. “Think ahead,” she said happily. “Four months and counting.”

“What did Jim say when you told him?”

“I haven’t….”

“Marta, you have to.”

“I’m scared.” Marta turned away from the mirror of the fitting room.

“What are you scared of?”

“That if I say it to him, I’ll lose the baby.”

Suzanne’s stomach clenched on itself. “Please tell him.”

“I will. As soon as my ob lady checks me over.”

“I thought that was last Monday?”

“She kicked me over to next Monday.”

“Are you sure Jim hasn’t noticed something?”

“We haven’t been at it much this summer. He’s a little depressed about work and his book. I haven’t pushed things, since I discovered I’m pregnant. I figure the less that goes on, the calmer it will stay for the little one.”

“Marta, you’re forty-six. This is going to make an enormous change in both your lives. I really think you better tell Jim, and soon.”

Marta shrugged, smoothing down the fabric. “Isn’t it funny how we just can’t bear to look at woolen things until the weather turns, even though we know damned well it’s going to be fall and then winter, just like every other year?”

“Marta, listen to me. You have to promise me you’ll tell him. I’m afraid for you. You can’t go on keeping this from him. He’ll be furious if you don’t share the news with him while it’s still early enough to do something about it if you both decide you don’t want the child.”

“Of course we want the child, Suzanne. Didn’t we try for three years nonstop?”

“That was ten years ago.”

“The years go by so fast, don’t they?” Marta took both her hands and squeezed them. “I promise, I’ll tell him. I’m seeing the doctor next Monday. Right afterward, if everything’s okay and the amniocentesis comes out well, I’ll tell him. Okay?

“Promise me you will. Promise! If you don’t, Marta, then I will.”

“All right! Don’t get brutal about it. Next Monday.”

Next Saturday morning Marta and she put in close to an hour target shooting, again getting up early to be there when the range opened. Today the canopy that protected the firearms from rain was flapping briskly like a sail over their heads. The wind carried a slight salt tang, coming in from the ocean and carrying a promise of rain that would wash the city air clean.

“We have to do things like this more often. Do you realize we did two things this week that weren’t demanded of us? We went shopping and here we are off to target shoot,” Marta said, eyeing the target. “We’re becoming frivolous. Next we’ll turn into ladies who lunch.”

“Lunch? What’s that? That apple I eat at my desk? The yogurt I gulp down in the car on my way to court?”

“Sometime this fall, we’ll do it! We’ll meet for lunch, like real ladies do. We’ll have a salad apiece and then dessert. We’ll dress up and carry shopping bags, even if there’s nothing in them but briefs. We’ll flirt with the waiter and complain about our husbands and our children. You can complain about Jake.”

“We’ll never do it,” Suzanne said bleakly.

“Oh, but we will, before I’m the size of a cruise ship.”

“If you tell Jim.”

“I’m telling him Monday, if the news is good. I see the doctor at one.”

“Good luck.”

“More than that. I want magic.”

When she got home, Suzanne spent some time with Beverly, while running up and downstairs to do her laundry. She felt she was annoying Beverly by zipping in, sitting for half an hour, then running off to move the wet laundry to the dryer and load the next pile of dirty clothes, but this was the time she had. Her time was almost all double-booked. Sheets from three beds, all those towels were a nuisance, but she could not add one more expense. She was going under financially. She had to do the laundry herself now.

“Makes me…nervous.” Beverly shook her head. “Always in hurry.”

“Mother, how does that make us different? You were always in a hurry too. We’re both impatient people. I get it from you.”

Beverly grinned crookedly. If Suzanne could amuse her, things were always better. That was one way that her mother remained accessible. “Mother, I’d like us to use this time to get closer.”

“Laundry time.”

“I mean these months. I’d like us to…do better with each other. Communicate better.” She could see the skepticism in Beverly’s eyes. She went on. “Why do you doubt me? Or do you think we just can’t do it?”

“Always…want each…other…different.”

Suzanne was trying not to guess, not to rush to finish Beverly’s sentences for her. Elena’s accusation stung. She sat nodding, leaning forward, settling back in the straight chair. “Maybe we can stop doing that and accept each other after fifty years.”

“Fifty years!” Beverly repeated, as if appalled or astonished. “So long. You fifty?”

“I will be next spring.”

“Goes fast.”

“Doesn’t it.”

“Okay.” Beverly lurched forward and patted Suzanne’s arm. “Will try.”

“No, she hasn’t told her husband.” Suzanne felt guilty, as if she had betrayed Marta by sharing her secret with Jake. “I keep begging her to.” He had been showing her photos of the Fraser River in British Columbia
where he had been last year at this time, with whom, she wondered. “It looks like Chinese landscape paintings—steep mountains like monoliths.”

“It’s a beautiful gorge. Where we were going, the only way across was a sort of hanging cage way above the waters.”

Who had he been traveling with? He always said “I,” but sometimes she observed another man or a woman in the photos: and in any case, someone was operating the camera. She suffered a throb of envy for the someone who had the freedom and time to pick up and wander off with him.

He lay propped on his elbow. The sun poured in through the slats of the blinds in his new apartment, igniting a stray white hair among the curls on his chest. “Marta had better tell him. Not something she should spring on him. By the way, dear, I’m actually not fat, I’m having contractions, so could you rush me to the hospital?”

“She’s superstitious about it. They tried for years to get pregnant after they lost a baby daughter. She kept miscarrying. Then they gave up.” She was still wondering who his “we” was.

“How does she know he wants a baby still?”

“I almost think it doesn’t matter. She wants it.”

“It’s his, right?”

“Of course! Marta wouldn’t have five minutes a week for an affair. It’s Jim I was suspicious of.”

“No longer?”

“I’ve been watching. I still don’t understand what was going on upstairs that afternoon, but I haven’t seen or heard anything since. A lawyer gets to be suspicious, and maybe my dirty imagination was running away with me.”

“Did you ask your mother?”

“She said nothing’s going on.”

“Well, she’s there a lot more than you are. Speaking of time, I need you to meet with the other lawyer who’s going to help us on the PCB case. Would you like me to set up an appointment, or do you want to talk to him yourself?”

No, she did not want to play telephone tag with Sid Braun. “I can make it Friday at three or the following Wednesday for a breakfast meet
ing.” She could not say
No
to Jake. It was a good cause, and she wanted him too badly. These times with him were a fix of pleasure, something that sustained her through the rest of the week. A hit of warmth.

“I’ll see what we can put together.”

She didn’t have this Sunday afternoon to spend lying here making love and chatting, and she didn’t have Friday at three to waste either, but she had to sacrifice them to Jake. Could she afford him? How could she possibly not try to? At her age and in her situation, having a lover was a luxury whose price had to come out of her flesh, but as long as she could have him, she suspected she would somehow manage. She only wished that he had less of an agenda. But if he were not the activist he was, rushing from court case to bargaining table to meeting to lobbying session, he would want far more than she could give him. If that time came, she did not know what she would do.

“I’d love to take you to British Columbia. A lot is still wilderness. It’s gorgeous. We could backpack into some of my favorite places. We wouldn’t see another soul for a week. Wouldn’t that be paradise?”

Suzanne could not imagine herself backpacking into the wilderness, even the beautiful mountains and waterfalls he had photographed, but it was all moot. He wasn’t going there anytime soon, and neither was she.

Elena

Elena was always super hot on Mondays, because usually Jim and she did not get a chance to be alone the whole weekend. This Saturday, they had from eight to nine-thirty in the morning: that was it. They almost got caught, because they had expected Marta to be at the range longer. Elena knew they simply could not continue like this. Yes, it made things hot, but it would be ever so much nicer to sleep and wake together, the ultimate couple thing: sleeping twined in the same sweet bed. She had never had that with anyone she loved, just guys who were
convenient, whose main virtue was that they were there: not since traveling with Chad and Evan, and then they had slept in sleazy motels or crummy hotels, in the car, beside the car. So many meaningless guys since then, sometimes she couldn’t remember what they looked like. She was not sure she would recognize some of them in the street. Far from wanting to spend the entire night with them, she was bored shitless having to deal with them the next morning when all she wanted was strong coffee and to get her blood moving with some aerobics.

That was one thing she had gotten from her mother—that she liked to move, she liked to work out. She had to say that Suzanne kept herself in shape for a woman her age. She had real muscles, unlike cow Marta, who had been gaining weight steadily, visible to Elena’s watchful eye. There’s someone who needed a workout and wasn’t bothering. Elena had only to look at Jim, tight, taut, buff, and then at Marta with her belly pushing on her pants to know they were no longer suited, if ever they had been.

He needed her, he did, or he would die inside. Electric Elena he called her, my soul. Even in her dreams, she was with him. Last night she had dreamed they were making love in a large warm pool, floating together. She had come in her sleep, then wakened alone in the bed, deeply resenting their separation. It had to end. If she contemplated life without him, it was a return to dust and ashes. It was worse than meaningless, it was total nothingness. Love centered her. Love impaled her and held her upright. Loving him made her thrum with energy. She felt as if her touch could heal. When she massaged Beverly’s shoulders, Beverly told her it felt wonderful. She knew it was the magic from her love that was giving her holy energy that coursed out from her like light.

She went into Beverly’s room to give her breakfast, as she did every Monday. Suzanne had cut back one day on Sylvia this fall. Beverly skipped bathing those mornings, for she did not want Elena’s help in the shower. Elena understood her grandma’s embarrassment, although truly she would not have minded. Sylvia told her she could have been a nurse. She knew Sylvia meant it kindly, but that was no life. Helping her grandma a couple of times a week was nothing. Spending forty to fifty hours a week doing the same with strangers would drive her up the wall.

She made Beverly scrambled eggs with peppers and hot sauce, one of her specialties. Beverly loved it. “Tired…bland food.”

“Every Monday, you get my special eggs. Maybe we’ll run off to Mexico together, you and me. Hey, Grandma, ever been there?”

Beverly nodded and held up three fingers. Three times.

Elena brushed out Beverly’s hair. It looked much better red again, bringing out the green in Beverly’s eyes. She loved to fix up Beverly, who totally appreciated the attention. It gave Grandma a lift to know she looked better—more like herself. It was funny the things that gave you that sense of identity. When she was still in high school, she had this tough black studded leather jacket she had got Sam to buy for her birthday. She had worn it winter and summer, when it was far too cold or too hot for the jacket. It had gone west with her into trouble and the death of her friends. When it had been stolen at a party her senior year, she was devastated. Suzanne bought her another, but it was never the same. Years later, she would have the impulse to put on that jacket, her real jacket of which all others were imitations, and feel the loss all over again.

She could hear Jim walking around upstairs. He trotted out for his run, down the front stairs. She would not go upstairs till later. He liked the mornings to himself. He ran, he lifted weights. He caught up on his E-mail and made phone calls and puttered around the Internet. That was fine with her. She was a night person and woke slowly to full alertness. She never put her fine lingerie in with the regular wash. Monday mornings she did her hand laundry, enjoying the spectacle of her salmon, grass green, blue, scarlet, and black bras and panties, camisoles and slips hung on the line. This time she put them outside instead of down the basement. It was a gorgeous day. Summer had come back, warm enough to wear a sundress, her favorite, a dark honey color that set off her skin and eyes. The light was the same color today. She stood outside with her eyes closed, feeling the sun hot and red on her lids. She liked the way her underthings looked, like pennants, flags of pleasure and delight, silk and satin and nylon banners moving languidly in the faint breeze that was like a sigh. After the rain of yesterday, the weather had warmed, humidity and sweet sun from the South.

“Did you like fancy underwear, Grandma?”

“Liked…my body.”

She helped Beverly into the living room and put on CNN for her. Neither of them had ever been able to get into watching the soaps, although Sylvia had her favorite,
General Hospital
, she watched every day. Elena thought that neither her grandma nor she could enjoy other people’s pretend lives, for they both liked real action too much. Soaps were for women who imagined taking lovers but didn’t dare, women stuck in fading lives, who knew now they would never be loved the way they dreamed of, the way she was loved. She held herself gently by the elbows as if she might fly apart. Never had she believed, since she was fifteen and her life had cracked like an egg, that she would know love again and be totally, vehemently loved. She walked with that love shining around her.

She was making a simple red dress for herself, a tank top A-line that would come to midthigh and move well. It would be perfect for dancing. She kept trying to get Jim to go dancing with her, but he was afraid to go out in public. “Like, do you think one of her judges is going to be boogying at a club?”

Beverly pointed, grinning. “Only you sew.”

“You mean I’m the only one in the family who can.”

Beverly nodded. “Never patient.” Pointing to herself. “Nor Suzanne.”

“I find it relaxing. I don’t do anything I don’t want to, Grandma. It’s sensual sometimes, the feeling of the material, seeing something take shape under my hands.”

Jim crossed over them, back from his run, and both women looked up. Beverly smiled at her. “You…love him.”

“Like crazy.”

“Powerful.” Beverly shook her head. “Big wind.”

Elena wasn’t quite sure what her grandmother meant, but she smiled and nodded back. Whatever Beverly meant, Beverly was on her side and wished her well, so it didn’t matter if she couldn’t exactly understand what the words intended. Big wind, she mulled over, something that tears the roof off. “You mean like a hurricane that blows everything inside out and tears the leaves from the trees and roofs off houses.”

Beverly nodded fervently. “All changed.”

She made lunch for them, hot dogs she found in the freezer. They were turkey hot dogs but that was better than tofu, anyhow. Didn’t people eat real hot dogs any longer? She also found whole wheat buns.
Beverly had no trouble managing a hot dog in a bun, since it was essentially one-handed food. They drank diet soda that Elena went down to the corner to buy, since Suzanne simply wouldn’t get it. Elena decided she would get real buns and hot dogs with her own money. If you were going to eat a hot dog, you wanted a real hot dog, not a health food imitation.

After a leisurely lunch, Elena loaded the dishwasher and turned it on. Then she kissed Beverly on the forehead and went upstairs. As she climbed the stairs, already her heart was beating loudly, quickly. She began to feel that warmth building in her groin, liquid heat pooling between her thighs. She liked the way it made her feel. She liked the leisurely morning with Beverly, getting ready, slowly moving toward him. By the time she pushed in the kitchen door, she could have fucked him right away. They kissed with her sitting in his lap feeling his erection against her stomach as she faced him, her thighs on either side of his narrow hips. They used to have lunch together on Mondays. Now they didn’t, but it was cool. They had lunch together Tuesday through Friday, and they had the whole afternoon to themselves on Mondays, a treat after the wasteland of the weekend.

His hair was all tousled, the way it got when he was trying to work on his book. She liked to muss his hair, hair almond brown, close to blond, with small patches of gray over both ears, fine and silky. She loved to tangle her hands in it. He wore it too close to his head. He looked much younger when it was messed. He was letting it grow lately, over his collar. His features were so chiseled. She kissed his nose, his forehead, his chin, his cheeks, his eyelids. “I adore you, I adore you.”

“I like being adored. Adore me some more.” He led her into the bedroom. With a practiced hand, he shucked her clothes, spreading her on the towel he always carefully placed over the wedding ring quilt on his bed. She hated that towel. It represented stealth and secrecy. She needed to be with him all the time, in light as well as in shadow, but she wanted him too badly to argue about it now. He was in a hurry, thrusting into her. The weekend drought stoked up his desire too. He told her he was no longer having sex with Marta, that it had been more than a year, and she believed him. Why would he want to? Getting thick in the waist and with her belly sticking out, obviously she didn’t care. He rode hard on her, his balls slapping against her. She tongued
his nipple as he rode, making it hard. Then she nipped him lightly. Riding her at a gallop, pounding. Lately she liked it that way. Hard, fast. Harder, their bodies thumping one on one, so that she felt as if they were rising and being pounded down at one and the same time, a complicated motion like those carnival rides she had loved as a child. And then at last she burst.

They showered together. Then they split a beer, both naked in the heat of the afternoon. She wished they could make love on a blanket in the yard. It must be eighty in the full sun and heat of midafternoon. She told him her wish as they lay on the bed again, just chilling. Relaxed together.

He grinned. “That would give the neighbors a thrill.”

“It would give me a thrill.”

“I can arrange that, without needing to trot downstairs.” Languidly he reached for her, and they began slow, easy, sensuous lovemaking. The towel had fallen to the floor. She noticed that but didn’t think he had. Good-bye, towel like a condom, towel like a no trespassing sign. They kissed and kissed, touching each other all over their sleek backs, his chest and her breasts, their bellies and thighs. She plucked a hair from his thigh, causing him to cry out. He bit her neck.

“Vampire!” she moaned.

“I am ze Count Drac-yu-lah…I do not drink…wine.”

Finally he spread her legs and began to eat her, his head buried in her thighs, doing her leisurely, feeling her, tasting her, flicking his tongue. She lay with her eyes closed, concentrating, when she heard something. Someone walking. She froze, but he did not notice. His ears were buried in her flesh. A woman’s voice called something. Marta. Elena controlled her reaction. She did not blink or move a muscle. Let Marta find them. Let the secrecy be over. Let the farce end. He was making those funny noises he made when he was eating her, as if she tasted like ice cream, and he heard nothing. Elena controlled her breathing, controlled her desire to bolt. She lay there, waiting.

Marta appeared in the doorway, stopping abruptly as if flash frozen. She stood staring, Elena saw through her lashes. Elena had her lids lowered, her head flung back, as if she were in a trance and could see nothing. Marta made an awful choking sound. Elena was cold through but determined. Let the pretense end. Let the lying stop. Marta was still
standing just inside the bedroom staring, transfixed. Elena was beginning to get nervous. She was trying to decide if it was time for her to see Marta and scream. She felt stone cold. How long could Marta just stand there?

Then Marta began to scream herself. “No!” She cried out, “No!” moving now, toward the dresser just inside the door, the chest of drawers with a green bag on top and a pile of books. Jim froze and then leapt from between Elena’s legs and knelt on the bed babbling. “Marta, I’m sorry! It doesn’t mean anything!” he cried out.

Elena was naked and exposed to Marta. She had to explain quickly. “We love each other. We have to be together. We’re going to live together. I wanted him to tell you, but he wasn’t ready….” It did not feel victorious but bad. Sickening. Wrong all through.

Jim was mumbling, “Oh my god, oh my god, shit, shit…” He hopped off the bed and took a step toward Marta. “Marta, never mind the kid—”

She tried to calm him. “Jim, it’s okay. It had to happen. We have to make her understand how we feel about each other.”

Marta was fumbling with the green gym bag on the top of the dresser. The books cascaded to the floor. “You bastards! I’m pregnant, you bastards.” She was holding something now in both her hands, letting the bag drop with the books. She was clicking something into place. Elena scrambled off the bed in Jim’s direction, the bed now between them and Marta, who was holding something out. Elena looked around the room for her clothes. She was not sure where they had fallen. She grabbed the bedspread off the bed and wrapped it around herself. Jim was stepping into his briefs, yanking them on as if it mattered. Then she saw what Marta had in her hand. She stared, disbelieving.

“No,” Jim was saying to Marta. He took a step toward her and then backed rapidly away. “Baby, this doesn’t mean what you think. It’s a mistake! You don’t want to do this, Marta. Put down the gun.” He climbed back onto the bed, crouching there.

“While I’m working and in court, this is what you do, you bastards.” She raised the gun in both hands and shot. Elena threw herself in front of Jim. Marta fired shot after shot. Elena waited for the bullets to tear through her flesh. She had been meant to die in the desert and she had failed then. Now it would be complete. At least she would save her lover.