And all of that didn't matter much right here and right now. What maybe did was that she had gone on with the game longer than she had really wanted to because she had liked that hot little gleam in Gerald's eyes. It made her feel young and pretty and desirable. But ...
... but if you really thought it was you he was seeing when he got that look in his eye, you were misled, toots. Or maybe you misled yourself. And maybe now you have to decide--really, really decide--if you intend to continue putting up with this humiliation. Because isn't that pretty much how you feel? Humiliated?
She sighed. Yes. It pretty much was.
"Gerald, I do mean it." She spoke louder now, and for the first time the gleam in his eyes flickered a little. Good. He could hear her after all, it seemed. So maybe things were still okay. Not great, it had been a long time since things had been what you could call great, but okay. Then the gleam reappeared, and a moment later the idiot grin followed.
"I'll teach you, me proud beauty," he said. He actually said that, pronouncing beauty the way the landlord in a bad Victorian melodrama might say it.
Let him do it, then. Just let him do it and it will be done.
This was a voice she was much more familiar with, and she intended to follow its advice. She didn't know if Gloria Steinem would approve and didn't care; the advice had the attractiveness of the completely practical. Let him do it and it would be done. Q.E.D.
Then his hand--his soft, short-fingered hand, its flesh as pink as that which capped his penis--reached out and grasped her breast, and something inside her suddenly popped like an overstrained tendon. She bucked her hips and back sharply upward, flinging his hand off.
"Quit it, Gerald. Unlock these stupid handcuffs and let me up. This stopped being fun around last March, while there was still snow on the ground. I don't feel sexy; I feel ridiculous."
This time he heard her all the way down. She could see it in the way the gleam in his eyes went out all at once, like candleflames in a strong gust of wind. She guessed that the two words which had finally gotten through to him were stupid and ridiculous. He had been a fat kid with thick glasses, a kid who hadn't had a date until he was eighteen--the year after he went on a strict diet and began to work out in an effort to strangle the engirdling flab before it could strangle him. By the time he was a sophomore in college, Gerald's life was what he described as "more or less under control" (as if life --his life, anyway--were a bucking bronco he had been ordered to tame), but she knew his high school years had been a horror show that had left him with a deep legacy of contempt for himself and suspicion of others.
His success as a corporate lawyer (and marriage to her; she believed that had also played a part, perhaps even the crucial one) had further restored his confidence and self-respect, but she supposed that some nightmares never completely ended. In a deep part of his mind, the bullies were still giving Gerald wedgies in study-hall, still laughing at Gerald's inability to do anything but girlie-pushups in phys ed, and there were words--stupid and ridiculous, for instance--that brought all that back as if high school had been yesterday ... or so she suspected. Psychologists could be incredibly stupid about many things, almost willfully stupid, it often seemed to her, but about the horrible persistence of some memories she thought they were bang-on. Some memories battened onto a person's mind like evil leeches, and certain words--stupid and ridiculous, for example--could bring them instantly back to squirming, feverish life.
She waited to feel a pang of shame at hitting below the belt like this and was pleased--or maybe it was relief she felt--when no pang came. I guess maybe I'm just tired of pretending, she thought, and this idea led to another: she might have her own sexual agenda, and if she did, this business with the handcuffs was definitely not on it. They made her feel demeaned. The whole idea made her feel demeaned. Oh, a certain uneasy excitement had accompanied the first few experiments--the ones with the scarves--and on a couple of occasions she'd had multiple orgasms, and that was a rarity for her. All the same, there had been side-effects she didn't care for, and that feeling of being somehow demeaned was only one of them. She'd had her own nightmares following each of those early versions of Gerald's game. She awoke from them sweaty and gasping, her hands thrust deeply into the fork of her crotch and rolled into tight little balls. She only remembered one of these dreams, and that memory was distant, blurred: she had been playing croquet without any clothes on, and all at once the sun had gone out.
Never mind all that, Jessie; those are things you can consider another day. Right now the only important thing is getting him to let you loose.
Yes. Because this wasn't their game; this game was all his. She had gone on playing it simply because Gerald wanted her to. And that was no longer good enough.
The loon voiced its lonely cry out on the lake again. Gerald's dopey grin of anticipation had been replaced by a look of sulky displeasure. You broke my toy, you bitch, that look said.
Jessie found herself remembering the last time she'd gotten a good look at that expression. In August Gerald had come to her with a glossy brochure, had pointed out what he wanted, and she had said yes, of course he could buy a Porsche if he wanted a Porsche, they could certainly afford a Porsche, but she thought he might do better to buy a membership in the Forest Avenue Health Club, as he had been threatening to do for the past two years. "You don't have a Porsche body just now," she had said, knowing she wasn't being very diplomatic but feeling that this really wasn't the time for diplomacy. Also, he had exasperated her to the point where she hadn't cared a whole hell of a lot for his feelings. This had been happening more and more frequently to her lately, and it dismayed her, but she didn't know what to do about it.
"Just what is that supposed to mean?" he had asked stiffly. She didn't bother to answer; she had learned that when Gerald asked such questions, they were almost always rhetorical. The important message lay in the simple subtext: You're upsetting me, Jessie. You're not playing the game.
But on that occasion--perhaps in an unknowing tune-up for this one--she had elected to ignore the subtext and answer the question.
"It means that you're still going to be forty-six this winter whether you own a Porsche or not, Gerald ... and you're still going to be thirty pounds overweight." Cruel, yes, but she could have been downright gratuitous; could have passed on the image which had flashed before her eyes when she had looked at the photograph of the sports car on the front of the glossy brochure Gerald had handed her. In that blink of an instant she had seen a chubby little kid with a pink face and a widow's peak stuck in the innertube he'd brought to the old swimming hole.
Gerald had snatched the brochure out of her hand and had stalked away without another word. The subject of the Porsche had not been raised since ... but she had often seen it in his resentful We Are Not Amused stare.
She was seeing an even hotter version of that stare right now.
"You said it sounded like fun. Those were your exact words: 'It sounds like fun.' "
Had she said that? She supposed she had. But it had been a mistake. A little goof, that was all, a little slip on the old banana peel. Sure. But how did you tell your husband that when he had his lower lip pooched out like Baby Huey getting ready to do a tantrum?
She didn't know, so she dropped her gaze ... and saw something she didn't like at all. Gerald's version of Mr. Happy hadn't wilted a bit. Apparently Mr. Happy hadn't heard about the change of plans.
"Gerald, I just don't--"
"--feel like it? Well, that's a hell of a note, isn't it? I took the whole day off work. And if we spend the night, that means tomorrow morning off, as well." He brooded over this for a moment, and then repeated: "You said it sounded like fun."
She began to fan out her excuses like a tired old poker-hand (Yes, but now I have a headache; Yes, but I'm having these really shitty pre-menstrual cramps; Yes, but I'm a woman and therefore entitled to change my mind; Yes, but now that we're actually out here in the Big Lonely you frighten me, you bad beautiful
brute of a man, you), the lies that fed either his misconceptions or his ego (the two were frequently interchangeable), but before she could pick a card, any card, the new voice spoke up. It was the first time it had spoken out loud, and Jessie was fascinated to find that it sounded the same in the air as it did inside her head: strong, dry, decisive, in control.
It also sounded curiously familiar.
"You're right--I guess I did say that, but what really sounded like fun was breaking away with you the way we used to before you got your name up on the door with the rest of the type-A's. I thought maybe we could bounce the bedsprings a little, then sit on the deck and dig the quiet. Maybe play some Scrabble after the sun went down. Is that an actionable offense, Gerald? What do you think? Tell me, because I really want to know."
"But you said--"
For the last five minutes she had been telling him in various ways that she wanted out of these goddam handcuffs, and he still hadn't let her out of them. Her impatience boiled over into fury. "My God, Gerald, this stopped being fun for me almost as soon as we started, and if you weren't as thick as a brick, you would have realized it!"
"Your mouth. Your smart, sarcastic mouth. Sometimes I get so tired of--"
"Gerald, when you get your head really set on something, sweet and low doesn't come close to reaching you. And whose fault is that?"
"I don't like you when you're like this, Jessie. When you're like this I don't like you a bit."
This was going from bad to worse to horrible, and the scariest part was how fast it was happening. Suddenly she felt very tired, and a line from an old Paul Simon song occurred to her: "I don't want no part of this crazy love." Right on, Paul. You may be short, but you ain't dumb.
"I know you don't. And it's okay that you don't, because right now the subject is these handcuffs, not how much you do or don't like me when I tell you I've changed my mind about something. I want out of these cuffs. Are you hearing me?"
No, she realized with dawning dismay. He really wasn't. Gerald was still one turn back.
"You are just so goddamned inconsistent, so goddamned sarcastic. I love you, Jess, but I hate the goddam lip on you. I always have." He wiped the palm of his left hand across his pouting rosebud of a mouth and then looked sadly at her--poor, put-upon Gerald, saddled with a woman who had gotten him out here in the forest primeval and then reneged on her sexual obligations. Poor, put-upon Gerald, who showed no sign whatever of getting the handcuff keys off the bureau by the bathroom door.
Her unease had changed into something else--while her back was turned, as it were. It had become a mixture of anger and fear she could remember feeling only once before. When she was twelve or so, her brother Will had goosed her at a birthday party. All her friends had seen, and they had all laughed. Har-har, preety fonny, senhorra, I theenk. It hadn't been funny to her, though.
Will had been laughing hardest of all, so hard he was actually doubled over with one hand planted above each knee, his hair hanging in his face. This had been a year or so after the advent of the Beatles and the Stones and the Searchers and all the rest, and Will had had a lot of hair to hang. It had apparently blocked his view of Jessie, because he had no idea of how angry she was
... and he was, under ordinary circumstances, very much aware of her turns of mood and temper. He'd gone on laughing until that froth of emotion so filled her that she understood she would have to do something with it or simply explode. So she had doubled up one small fist and had punched her well-loved brother in the mouth when he finally raised his head to look at her. The blow had knocked him over like a bowling pin and he had cried really hard.
Later she had tried to tell herself that he had cried more out of surprise than pain, but she had known, even at twelve, that that wasn't so. She had hurt him, hurt him plenty. His lower lip had split in one place, his upper lip in two, and she had hurt him plenty. And why? Because he had done something stupid? But he'd only been nine himself-nine that day--and at that age all kids were stupid. No; it hadn't been his stupidity. It had been her fear--fear that if she didn't do something with that ugly green froth of anger and embarrassment, it would (put out the sun)
cause her to explode. The truth, first encountered on that day, was this: there was a well inside her, the water in that well was poisoned, and when he goosed her, William had sent a bucket down there, one which had come up filled with scum and squirming gluck. She had hated him for that, and she supposed it was really her hate which had caused her to strike out. That deep stuff had scared her. Now, all these years later, she was discovering it still did ... but it still infuriated her, as well.
You won't put out the sun, she thought, without the slightest idea of what this meant. Be damned if you will.
"I don't want to argue the fine points, Gerald. Just get the keys to these fucking things and unlock me!"
And then he said something which so astounded her that at first she couldn't grasp it: "What if I won't?"
What registered first was the change in his tone. He usually spoke in a bluff, gruff, hearty sort of voice--I'm in charge here, and it's a pretty lucky thing for all of us,
isn't it? that tone proclaimed--but this was a low, purring voice with which she was not familiar. The gleam had returned to his eyes--that hot little gleam which had turned her on like a bank of floodlights once upon a time. She couldn't see it very well--his eyes were squinted down to puffy slits behind his gold-rimmed spectacles--but it was there. Yes indeed.
Then there was the strange case of Mr. Happy. Mr. Happy hadn't wilted a bit. Seemed, in fact, to be standing taller than at any time she could remember ... although that was probably just her imagination.
Do you think so, toots? I don't.
She processed all this information before finally returning to the last thing he'd said--that amazing question. What if I won't? This time she got past the tone to the sense of the words, and as she came to fully understand them, she felt her rage and fear crank up a notch. Somewhere inside, that bucket was going down its shaft again for another slimy dip--a scumload of water filled with microbes almost as poisonous as swamp copperheads.
The kitchen door banged against its jamb and the dog began to bark in the woods again, sounding closer than ever now. It was a splintery, desperate sound. Listening to something like that for too long would undoubtedly give you a migraine.
"Listen, Gerald," she heard her strong new voice saying. She was aware that this voice could have picked a better time to break its silence--she was, after all, out here on the deserted north shore of Kashwakamak Lake, handcuffed to the bedposts, and wearing only a skimpy pair of nylon panties--but she still found herself admiring it. Almost against her will she found herself admiring it. "Are you listening yet? I know you don't do much of that these days when it's me doing the talking, but this time it's really important that you hear me. So ... are you finally listening?"
He was kneeling on the bed, looking at her as if she were some previously undiscovered species of bug. His cheeks, in which complex networks of tiny scarlet threads squirmed (she thought of them as Gerald's liquor-brands), were flushed almost purple. A similar swath crossed his forehead. Its color was so dark, its shape so definite, that it looked like a birthmark. "Yes," he said, and in his new purring voice the word came out yeh-usss. "I'm listening, Jessie. I most certainly am."
"Good. Then you'll walk over to the bureau and get those keys. You'll unlock this one"--she rattled her right wrist against the headboard--"and then you'll unlock this one." She rattled the left wrist in similar fashion. "If you do this right away, we can have a little normal, painless, mutual-orgasm sex before returning to our normal, painless lives in Portland."
Pointless, she thought. You left that one out. Normal, painless, pointless lives in Portland. Perhaps that was so, or perhaps it was just a little overdramatization (being handcuffed to the bed brought that out in a person, she was discovering), but it was probably just as well she'd left that one out, in any case. It suggested that the new,
no-bullshit voice wasn't so indiscreet, after all. Then, as if to contradict this idea, she heard that voice--which was, after all, her voice--begin to rise in the unmistakable beats and pulses of rage.
"But if you continue screwing around and teasing me, I'll go straight to my sister's from here, find out who did her divorce, and call her. I'm not joking. I do not want to play this game!"
Now something really incredible was happening, something she never would have suspected in a million years: his grin was resurfacing. It was coming up like a sub which has finally reached friendly waters after a long and dangerous voyage. That wasn't the really incredible thing, though. The really incredible thing was that the grin no longer made Gerald look harmlessly retarded. It now made him look like a dangerous lunatic.
His hand stole out again, caressed her left breast, then squeezed it painfully. He finished this unpleasant bit of business by pinching her nipple, a thing he had never done before.
"Ow, Gerald! That hurts!"
He gave a solemn, appreciative nod that went very strangely with his horrible grin. "That's good, Jessie. The whole thing, I mean. You could be an actress. Or a call-girl. One of the really high-priced ones." He hesitated, then added: "That's supposed to be a compliment."
"What in God's name are you talking about?" Except she was pretty sure she knew. She was really afraid now. Something bad was loose in the bedroom; it was spinning around and around like a black top.
But she was also still angry--as angry as she had been on the day Will had goosed her.
Gerald actually laughed. "What am I talking about? For a minute there, you had me believing it. That's what I'm talking about." He dropped a hand onto her right thigh. When he spoke again, his voice was brisk and weirdly businesslike. "Now--do you want to spread them for me, or do I have to do it? Is that part of the game, too?"