She rubbed his bottom lip. “It was very good for me.”
“It was very good for me, too.”
“What do you think are the chances of a woman coming the first time with a man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pretty slim, I think.”
“I was never sure if any girl did it with me before.”
“Are you sure now?”
“Not a question in my mind, but it’s probably because it’s been so long for you. You were more than ready.”
“You really think that?” She was still rubbing his lip.
“I told you once, I’m not really what you’d call a ladies’ man.”
“Well, you’re this lady’s man.”
He clamped his teeth on her fingertip and sawed sideways, putting a faint white dot beneath her nail. He released it with a kiss and her fingertips settled against his chin. They closed their eyes for a while and rested, neither of them in a hurry to disjoin, enjoying the flaccid warmth of afterlove, the texture of his hirsute legs between her smooth ones, lazily moving a finger or a toe against one another. She thought about how liquid and relaxed her body felt. He thought about her reaching orgasm the first time with him.
In time he spoke quietly, his voice opening her eyes.
“Would it be tacky of me to ask about your sex life with your husband?”
“No, I don’t think so. What we just did together removes a lot of barriers, don’t you think?”
“So what was it like?”
She put some thought into her answer. “Guilt-ridden before marriage. Much better afterward, though it ran hot and cool. Sometimes we’d do it four times a week, sometimes only a couple of times a month. Just depended on what else was going on in our lives. We had to work a little harder at my orgasms than you and I did, though.”
After a spell of silence, he lifted his head off the pillow and kissed her full on the mouth, then lay back as he’d been.
“You want to know something ironic?” he said. “I was scared to death that it wouldn’t be as good for you with me as it had been with him. Everything you read says these things take time and patience to get right, so I figured . . .” He shrugged and his glance flickered away, then back at her, leaving the thought unfinished. “Once I said to you that I wasn’t going to be scared of what might happen between us, but a lot of that was bravado. I was plenty scared, and most of it had to do with my being only thirty and you being so much older and experienced. That can be pretty intimidating for a man, you know. I thought, What if I make a play for her and she slaps my hand like I’m some naughty child?” After a pause he added, “But you didn’t.”
“Did you really think I’d do that?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Couldn’t you tell I was falling for you?”
“Yes, but I thought you’d resist because of the unwritten social laws governing ages.”
“Since we’re making confessions, I have one of my own. When I first suspected that you were getting a crush on me, I thought, Gosh, he’s so young. And I have to admit—I’m human—I had this other totally awful, unforgivable thought that did wonders for my ego: wouldn’t I look smart landing a boyfriend so young? It’s been a real hang-up for me ever since, because it would make me a very shallow woman if that were my reason for going to bed with you, just to snag a younger man. Now we’ve done it, and I didn’t do it for that reason at all; I did it because I love you and like you and respect you and have so much fun with you, but I have to admit— your age, your youth, your young, perfect body is a thrill I hadn’t imagined.”
He braced his head on one hand and used the other to push her slightly away so he could stroke her. He centered the butt of his hand between her breasts while fanning his fingers left and right, left and right, almost as if he were dusting her off.
“I’m glad we don’t have to go through these firsts again. They’re nerve-racking. Next time it’ll be so much easier.”
She smiled and teased, “Oh, so we’re going to do this again?”
He went on watching his hand play across her soft skin. Goose bumps of pleasure had raised on her breasts, lifting the fine hair and puckering her nipples. “We’re going to do this many, many times. As often as we can.”
“A full-fledged affair, then—that’s what we’ve started?”
He gave up dusting her breast and cupped her jaw instead while crooking an elbow beneath his ear.
“You can call it anything you want. Whatever it is, it’s too damned good for a one-timer.”
She studied him in the lamplight, which came from above and behind him, taking in the honey-hued nimbus outlining his brown hair, the russet lashes framing his blue eyes, his symmetrical features, which pleased her immeasurably. She studied his mouth, softened and polished by all the kissing they’d done . . . touched it as if unable to help herself. “Everything about you pleases me so much. I just can’t believe this has happened, that we actually got beyond all those barriers. I’m liable to be insatiable for a while, making up for lost time.”
“I won’t mind.” He caught her hand and began nipping its edge with his teeth. “Insatiable women are the best kind.”
It was a toss-up who was more insatiable when she pushed him to his back and rolled atop him.
LATER,she awakened him, lifting her head to read the alarm clock on the nightstand. They were beneath the covers by now, and her face held an irregularly shaped red blotch where it had been stuck to the hollow of his shoulder while she slept. Coming awake, he looked down at her and smiled sleepily.
“Gotta go home,” she whispered.
“Aw, no . . .” He rolled to face her, made a wishbone of his arms and captured her within them. “Noooo.”
“I can’t stay. Joey’s at home with his friend Denny, and Janice will be coming home, too.”
He lifted his head and left wrist, read his watch behind her back, then let himself go limp against the bedding again. “It’s not even twelve yet.”
“So, we jumped the gun a little bit.”
He chuckled deep in his throat, eyes closed, arms lying loosely around her. “I wish you could stay here till morning.”
“I know, so do I.” She turned back the covers and got up. “But I can’t.”
He rolled to his back, joined his hands beneath his head and watched her begin to get dressed. Watched her step into her underwear, contort her arms to hook her rear-closing bra, then sit on the edge of the bed and skin her panty hose up her legs. Next came her dress, and when she had it on, he said, “Come around here. Let me zip it.” She circled the foot of the bed and sat down with her back to him. He sat up and kissed her nape, threaded his arms inside her open dress, doubled them beneath her breasts and rested his mouth on the slope of her shoulder.
“I love watching you dress, watching you move around in my bedroom where I’ve imagined you doing just that.”
She covered his arms with her own, felt them firm and warm inside the red crisp cloth of her bodice, tipped her head to one side and closed her eyes.
“I love this,” she whispered, “just the feel of your arms around me. A man’s arms are so different than a woman’s. When you’re without a man like I’ve been, you miss the sex, of course, but sometimes you miss this even more—just the touching, the rubbing together, letting your weight sag against somebody who’s bigger, and smells different, and feels different than you. Promise me we’ll do this sometime . . . just enjoy the feel of each other without having to make love.”
“I promise. Now you have to promise me something.”
“What?”
“To dress for me sometimes, the way you just did, slow and relaxed while I lie and watch you. It struck me a minute ago— anybody can watch a person undress, but watching them dress is even more intimate. You learn the order they do things—pants first, bra second, panty hose after that. Tonight, after I take you home, I’m going to picture that while I fall asleep.”
She sighed, and let her head dro
p back, and they rocked gently with his arms still coiled about her and his lips on her neck. It would have been easy to fall back asleep, they were so contented with each other. But duty intruded, and she was forced to make her limbs move.
“I really do have to go. Zip me.”
When he had, and she’d retrieved her jewelry from the nightstand, and slipped into her pumps, she took a page out of his notebook and watched while he rolled up to sit on the edge of the bed and find his discarded clothing, while he stood and pulled them on, buttoned his shirt before zipping his fly, then stuffed his tails in and tugged on the waist of his jeans, closed the waist button and— finally—zipped up.
“You’re right,” she said, sauntering over to stand before him, resting her elbows on his shoulders and toying with his hair. “There is something more intimate about it. I’d never thought about it before.”
“Glad you enjoyed it,” he said, smirking, buttoning his cuffs behind her back.
“And I thought of something else,” she said.
“What’s that?” He held her lightly by the ribs, his thumbs in the hollows just below her breasts.
“That if you’d just had sex with a stranger, you’d have trouble watching him dress. It would seem tawdry, wouldn’t it? But watching you”—she kissed him lightly—“seemed like reading the P.S. on a love letter.”
They rested their hips against each other and shared a single, splendid, soporific kiss.
When it ended, he said, very seriously, “I love you, Lee.”
She imbibed the words, remaining silent while they seeped into her, filling all the empty troves that had been waiting years for this treasure.
Saying it became a reaffirmation, the ideal closing for this night of first intimacy.
“I love you, too, Christopher.”
And on that very fitting note, he took her home.
15
ON New Year’s Day everyone in the Reston household slept late. It was 9:50 when Janice awoke. She opened her bedroom door and slogged down the hall toward the bathroom, noting with lazy indifference that her mother’s door was still closed. The rarity of Lee Reston sleeping till late morning struck Janice as she returned to her room and opened her mother’s door to peek inside. Lee lay on her stomach with one arm crossed beneath her face and the other flopped up against the headboard. She was sprawled diagonally beneath the covers, breathing evenly. Her red dress lay neatly folded over the back of a chair. One standing red pump accompanied one fallen on the floor beneath her panty hose and bra.
Janice studied her mother and experienced a surge of embarrassment at the thought that Joey’s deduction might be true. If it were, she, Janice, would look like a stupid fool. It must be true: her mother had bought a new dress, a red dress with a tiered skirt and shoes to match! Lee, who seldom bought clothes, hadn’t even showed it to Janice in advance, hadn’t oohed and aahed over it the way one would expect her to. Had she been hiding it hoping Janice wouldn’t be around when Christopher came to the house to pick her up?
She silently closed her mother’s bedroom door and opened Joey’s. It was stuffy inside, smelled like old sweat socks and some dried-up orange peels that were sitting on his windowsill. He, too, was sound asleep, on his back with his chin in the air at an odd angle and his hands, with their huge knuckles, relaxed on the bedclothes. Denny Whitman was dead to the world in a sleeping bag on the floor.
She went inside, closed the door behind her, picked her way carefully over Denny and tiptoed to her brother’s bed.
“Hey, Joey,” she whispered, sitting down beside him in her long flannel nightgown. “Hey, Joey, wake up.” Joey pushed her away with one leg and rolled to face the wall, mumbling some syllables that sounded like gold and myrrh.
She jostled him and whispered, “Joey, wake up. I’ve got to talk to you.” She jostled him harder. “Darn it, Joey, will you turn over here!”
He did, with all the good nature of a pit bull.
“Jeez! Leave me alone, will ya? I’m still sleeping!”
“Joey, I have to ask you something. Be quiet so we don’t wake up Denny.”
“Ask me later.”
“I just want to know what time Mom got home, that’s all.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, were you up?”
“Yeah. It was early.”
“Early?” Her heart lifted with hope.
“Yeah, before midnight, I know that much, ’cause Denny and me had the TV on.” He was rubbing his eyes, then gave a huge yawn.
“Was Christopher with her?”
“No, he just dropped her off.”
“He didn’t come in?”
“No. Jeez, why don’t you ask her all this stuff?”
“I can’t ask her, not if what you said is true and she’s dating him seriously. Do you really think she is?”
“Heck, I don’t know. He’s here all the time.”
“But he wasn’t here at midnight? You’re sure?”
“No!” he whined, disgruntled. “I told you, he just dropped her off, and she came in and ate some popcorn with Denny and me, and she made us turn off our video games so she could see some stupid mob scene in Times Square.”
“Well then, maybe she’s not dating him. I mean, maybe they’re just friends after all.”
She stared hopefully at Joey. He only shrugged and said, “How should I know?”
“Wouldn’t they have stayed together at least till midnight if they were going steady, as you put it? I mean . . . if you were with Sandy on New Year’s Eve, what would you do at midnight?”
He blushed and said, “Jeez, why don’t you leave a guy alone?”
“Joey, listen . . .” She put her hand over his and went on sincerely. “You’re my brother. This is important. If she’s dating Chris, and if it’s serious, I think we should talk to Aunt Sylvia or somebody about it.”
“Why?”
“So Aunt Sylvia can talk some sense into Mom.”
“Why?”
“Well, she’s fifteen years older than he is, for heaven’s sake!”
“So what?”
“So what! How can you lie there and say ‘So what’? Do you want her to make a fool of herself?”
Joey stared at her awhile and said, “I don’t get it.”
Exasperated, Janice doubled forward at the waist and scratched her head until her hair looked wiry. Joey was too young, after all. She was talking in a circle around the subject of sex, but he wasn’t old enough to grasp it, and she realized it would be wrong of her to bring it up in the context of her mother and Chris. When Joey had used the term “going steady,” Janice had translated it into “having an affair.”
Yet she had no more proof than Joey did.
“Just listen,” she advised. “You’re around her more than I am now that I’m in school. But pay attention, will you, after I go back for third quarter?” She paused, but he kept looking at her blankly. “If she starts staying out late, or . . . or . . . well, you know . . . anything that keeps her away a lot, call me.”
Before Joey could answer, Janice sensed herself being observed and looked down at the floor to find Denny Whitman awake and listening.
She jumped up off the bed. “Go back to sleep, you guys. Sorry I woke you.”
WHENLee got up, Janice studied her with sensors a-quiver, but her mother only came out of the bathroom smelling like toothpaste and put the coffeepot on, as usual. “ ’Morning, dear,” Lee said. “Did you have a good time last night?” “It was okay. Did you?”
“I had a grand time, until I tried to do something called the whip. Nearly tore my arms off.”
“The whip?”
“It’s a country dance move. Christopher tried to teach it to me, but I messed it up so badly I’m afraid we gave up.”
Janice studied her mother moving about the kitchen, opening drawers and finding bagels, slicing them and putting them under the broiler, getting out cream cheese and jam, finding a carton of orange juice and shaking it, doing all
the ordinary things mothers do in the morning. What was she, Janice, staring at? Did she really think that if her mother was having an affair with Christopher it would show? That she’d look different this morning? A glimpse of a thought beamed across Janice’s mind’s eye, but she kept the beam narrow, so that it flashed too fast for her to picture her mother as the sexual partner of the man Janice herself had been trying to attract ever since she’d met him. But the thought had struck, and it left Janice grossly uncomfortable. Mothers simply were not to be considered sexual beings. Oh, maybe if fathers were still alive—but with anyone else the thought was unpalatable.
“Mom?”
Lee finished pouring a glass of juice and looked up at Janice, holding the carton stationary while its spout dripped. Janice was leaning back against the countertop, gripping her elbows tightly against her ribs, her bare toes curled into a scatter rug in front of the kitchen sink.
What’s going on between you and Chris?
The unspoken question was foretold by the scowl on Janice’s face, by her tight, self-imposed body hug, by the pinched look on her lips. Lee instinctively guessed what Janice was thinking, but if Janice wanted to know, let her ask. Lee herself was uneager to broach the subject, afraid of hurting Janice and reaping her censure. Furthermore, what was going on between herself and Christopher was too new, too fragile yet to broadcast and hold up to the family’s dissatisfaction.
“Yes, honey?” Lee replied.
The question hovered between them, unspoken, while Lee poured a second glass of juice. As she was handing it to Janice the phone rang.
Janice answered, swinging to face the counter, presenting her back to her mother.
“Hello?” After a pause, Janice handed Lee the receiver, knuckles down over her shoulder. “It’s for you.”
Lee set down the juice glass, took the phone and said, “Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year to you, too,” Christopher said, sounding happy and smiley.
“Oh, hi, Christopher. How did you survive last night? Did I break any of your arms on that dance floor?”