Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






Chapter 35

Carolyn walked into her house and went straight to bed. When Paul came home she called out weakly from the guest room, “Could you get your own dinner? I think I’ve got the flu.”

He sat on the bed, felt her forehead, brushed at the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes. Exhausted, shamed, she would not look at him. She felt ravished by Val’s passion, humiliated and diminished by her raw need. In a depression so black and deep she did not care if she lived or died, she fell asleep.

At nine o’clock Paul awakened her. An arm supporting her, he fed her soup as if she were a child. She fell asleep again.

The next morning when she got out of bed she nearly collapsed from the weakness of her limbs. She realized that she had a fever—that she did, in fact, have the flu. When Paul came in later offering coffee she waved him away, mumbling instructions to call her office.

Throughout the day the phone rang. Either Paul or Val, she supposed, without caring.

Sometime that day there was a knocking on first the front door, then the back. She pushed the pillow against her ears.

Paul came home from work early. “I called a doctor,” he told her. Docilely she accepted the pill he gave her along with some broth, but refused solid food.

Again the phone rang. Paul came in to ask brusquely, “Do you want to talk to anybody?”

“Not even God,” she whispered.

She could hear him in the other room, his voice raised and harsh, “No, she doesn’t. Yes I asked her. I don’t have to tell you anything, you can—” He slammed the phone down. “Dyke bitch,” he snarled.

Time distorted, days and nights passed in a haze of phantasmagoric dreams and occasional awareness of sound: the phone ringing, knocks at the door. She somehow knew that Paul was leaving late for work and coming home early.

Except for liquids, she refused food. In the evenings Paul sat with her and watched the small portable television he had moved into her room. During one of those evenings the vice-presidential debate occurred; she slept through it. Afterward, in response to her sleepy-voiced question, she heard in Paul’s tone his condescending opinion of Geraldine Ferraro’s performance; she did not listen to his words.

On a Thursday, eight days after she had last been with Val, her temperature finally normal, her strength and her appetite for food having returned, she sat outside in warm afternoon sun for more than an hour, contemplating the still surface of the pool, the thin striations of cloud in clear, pale sky.

She supposed she was crazy. Why else had she allowed herself to be pulled into this vortex? Why else was she now repelled by the loving touch of her husband? How else could she explain this passion she felt for another woman, sensations unlike anything she had ever known with anyone, a sexual depth in herself she had never dreamed she possessed?

There was no one in her life she could turn to, whom she could trust with this confidence. Her weekly conversations with her mother were always inconsequential; her mother was helpless and usually tearful in the face of the smallest difficulty.



She thought of her father and smiled in affection as she remembered his ever-present billowing cloud of pipe smoke, a smell delicious to her to this day, evoking images of his huge physical size and strength and energy, his bear hugs and laughter. Like the expected death of a loved one, his defection from her life had not really surprised her. He had always seemed bored and impatient with any problem relating to her. She knew she was a mere diversion in his world—an exciting world, a masculine world of significant activities. With her father, she was beyond receiving or inflicting hurt; she had understood her precarious place in his hierarchy of value.

Why should Paul and Val suffer unhappiness now because of her? Why should either of them care this much? Both had succeeded in professions where comparatively few achieved success. They had more to give each other than she could ever offer either of them. Why did they want her? Why would anyone want her?

If she did not understand her desperate sexual need of Val, did it really matter? Did addicts understand their addiction? The one essential was that they understand and avoid the destructive source of their problems.

Perhaps she and Val could go on, be friends again—just friends. For that she needed distance and time to learn control over this sharp new hunger of her body. The fire of fever and a purging illness which had stripped away seven pounds had not reduced the capacity of her body to betray her. Even now, just the image of Val…

What Paul had done to Val was despicable. But he had sensed danger, had realized that her defiant friendship with Val Hunter threatened the foundations of their marriage, strained the bond of their love. Dyke, he had called Val Hunter. It had never occurred to him to apply the same label to his own wife.

Eight peaceful, contented, conventional years of marriage, with the promise of greater professional success for Paul. How could any alternative be better, more acceptable? Why this confusion, this distress, this rebellion without rational cause? What was wrong with her?

She heard the glass door behind her slide open: Paul had come home. He bent to one knee on the grass beside her and took her hands. “You look so much better, Princess.”

“I am. I think I can go back to work tomorrow.”

“Monday,” he stated firmly, “and don’t argue. Tomorrow’s Friday, what’s one more day? You’ll be at full strength Monday.” He added, “I won’t let you go back tomorrow.”

She smiled, grateful for his love. “All right, honey.”

“Some news, Princess. I’ve been trying to catch up with Dick Jensen’s performance numbers ever since the company transferred me here. I finally did it. My district won the third-quarter sales contest.”

“Paul, that’s wonderful! I’m so very proud of you.” A suspicion dawned and she asked, “Did you just get the news?”

“Last Wednesday.”

She looked away from him, guilt descending. The trouble between them, combined with her illness, had caused him to carry this triumph unshared for more than a week.

“It’s a good news–bad news kind of thing,” he said ruefully. “We get a real nice bonus—something over five thousand, I’ll get the exact number tomorrow. But it means entertaining the sales group. Think we can…get it together for a week from Saturday? Afternoon and evening, there’ll be wives and kids—”

“Honey, I see no problem.” She squeezed his hand, her mind gratefully at work on the logistics of a party for twenty or so. “Let me see about our dinner.” She started to get up.

He took her by the shoulders and gently settled her back into the lawn chair. “Woman, leave it to me, tomorrow night’s dinner, too. I’m getting good at this. I’ll put the chicken in the oven till we’re ready to eat. You stay out here where it’s nice. The sun is good for you.”

He went back through the glass door and she turned her thoughts again to the party. They would barbecue, of course…vegetable trays and cold pastas. She would buy some of that already made up. With any luck it would still be warm enough and the children could play in the pool and not be underfoot. Saturday would be the end of October, she reflected; people here were actually swimming outdoors in October…How very different it was to live in California.

Memories of Paul came to her, of when they had first moved to this city. He had been like an endearing country bumpkin the way he had gaped at the more outlandish citizens and the city’s unique landscape. He had been a little boy who held her hand and laughed in wonder and enchantment as they explored Disneyland together; he gawked like a ten-year-old at the sound stages and back lots of Universal Studios, the fairy-tale estates of Beverly Hills and Bel Air. But when she had coaxed him into further exploration of the city, into Chinatown and Griffith Park and the beach cities, he had become increasingly reluctant, wanting to retreat behind the walls of their new house, just as he had in the last two cities where they had lived.

A lonely, wistful little prince, she thought tenderly. Needing only his castle and trusting only his Princess…No one knew as she did how his cool demeanor and graying hair disguised a solitary and needy little boy. She did love him. How could she not love him? she asked herself as he came into the yard with a tall, frosted drink for her.

“Orange juice,” he told her. “Lots of vitamins. Just a tiny bit of vodka—that’s good for you too.” He touched her drink with his martini glass: “To your perfect health.”

She said slowly, “I thought…I’d come back to our bedroom tonight.”

As his eyes widened in happiness she glanced away, out over the pool where she had first found Val Hunter four months ago, to the fence Val Hunter had leaped over to come into her life.

Yes I love him, she thought, but I can’t have him touch me yet. Not yet.

She said, “But that’s all. I’m not a hundred percent about everything, about us. But I’d like to be back in our bedroom again if that’s okay.”

“It’s okay.” He started to say something else, and paused; then he said simply, “I’m glad.”

 



Date: 2015-02-03; view: 473


<== previous page | next page ==>
Chapter 34 | Chapter 36
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.008 sec.)