The man had been dead for several days, his rigid corpse swarming with flies. Standing there over the body Simon felt the flies attacking his own skin and he could do little to get them off. He reeled out of the room, gasping, his eyes tearing, and ran to the sink in the kitchen to wash his face, which he did not bother drying. He climbed the stairs slowly, murmuring her name over and over, but he heard no reply and he wondered if he’d even spoken it.
He found the girl in her bed, nearly unconscious and apparently hallucinating. The room was stifling with the windows shut tight and he flung them open, angrily, using his body, sensing the power of it. The walls of the room had been papered with old news clippings, certain details of which had been circled with pen. “THREE DIE IN EXPLOSION,” “GIRL LEAPS TO HER DEATH,” “LOCAL GIRL FOUND IN RAVINE.” A furious rain fell from the sky and he lifted the girl and carried her downstairs and out into it. The rain fell hard, and he washed her with it, and she began to come around.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “I’m here now.”
“Don’t leave me,” she begged him, clutching his shoulders.
The house didn’t have a phone, so he drove up to the graveyard and found the caretaker’s cottage. The caretaker was a reasonable man and helped him at once. They put a pine casket in the back of the man’s truck and drove together to the old man’s house. The caretaker gave him a cigarette.
“She’ll have to go into the orphanage now,” he said. “Ain’t but fourteen.”
Simon Haas remained quiet.
“The world won’t be any sorrier without the old bastard, I can tell you that. I don’t imagine she’ll miss him much.” The caretaker passed him a knowing look. “She never forgave him for what he done to her mama.”
“What did he do?”
“She got around with men. Came down sick with something, something bad, and her husband wouldn’t let her see a doctor. Like a punishment, see. For betraying him. He kept her locked up inside that house till she died. The girl was just four or five, I don’t know which.”
The story affected Simon; he felt sorry for the girl.
“She don’t got no relations in town,” the caretaker went on. “Far as I can tell, she ain’t got no relations period.”
Simon got to thinking.
“You ain’t no relation, are you?” The caretaker squinted at him, waiting for an answer that Simon readily supplied.
“I am, in fact, a distant relation. There will be no need for any outside help.” He rolled down the window, tossing the cigarette out into the rain. “She’ll be in good hands with me.”
It had been a mistake, he realized that now. He’d been thinking only of himself, his art. That’s how he’d been taught. To be thoroughly consumed. To think of nothing else. Painting, the paint itself, the intoxicating odors, the colors, the light rushing through the windows—it was all part of the indulgence, for it was an indulgence, and he controlled every aspect of it. He did not know if it was Lydia who’d made him famous, or if it would have happened anyway, if he’d been painting landscapes, for example, like some of his classmates. He couldn’t help thinking it was her, the strange mystery of her face, her slim child’s body. He liked to think he had saved her, but, he supposed, that was indulgent as well. In truth, he was frightened of her. She’d been his muse, the embodiment of his perversions, but apart from that, apart from how he’d used her, she was a complete enigma to him.
Several months after he’d moved into her father’s house, he woke one night to find her down on the floor in a puddle of moonlight, crying hysterically and beating her fists into the wood. He would later paint her that way, in greasy black lines, a muddled green background save for the splash of ocher, like urine, all around her—it was one of the paintings that had made him famous. “Lydia,” he whispered, moving toward her, not wanting to frighten her. “Lydia, what is it?”
She wouldn’t speak and he went beside her and held her, rocked her, and she cried. “My father,” she said finally. “I killed him.”
She clung to him. Shaking, wet, she held him; she begged him not to tell.
“I couldn’t stand it anymore. I just put the TV on and closed the door. And then you came.”
Her fingertips were full of splinters. It took hours to remove them all. He wondered, to this day, if he had managed to get every last one.
27
“BASICALLY HE DIED of dehydration,” Simon explained. “She’d stopped feeding him. He would have died anyway; she just sped up the process.”
Annie sat there, overwhelmed by the story. She finished her coffee, which by now was cold. “What a terrible story.”
The waitress came over. “You folks all done here?”
Annie pushed her plate away. “Yes, thanks.”
Simon looked at her, his eyes watering. “I warned you.”
“Was it really her fault?”
He wiped his eyes, nodding. “I believe it was.”
“What was it like, after that? When you knew?”
“She was just a kid. A fucking teenager. What could I do? Put her out in the street? Turn her in to the cops? I had no choice but to let her stay.”
“You were, what, twenty years older?”
“Twenty-two years. I was thirty-six and she was fourteen.”
Annie shook her head. “You’re right, it is a nasty story.”
“And I can see you’ve begun to hate me.”
“No. It’s just . . .”
“I never touched her, if that’s what you’re thinking. That’s something you have to understand. I waited.”
“How long did you wait?”
“Five years. I waited until she was nineteen. And then I married her.”
28
THE HUM DRUM MOTEL was fifteen miles west of the college. Simon had left a note on Annie’s office door that morning, asking her to meet him there. The motel had been built in the fifties, a white clapboard structure with window boxes full of plastic geraniums. The man who ran the place had lost an eye and did not wear a patch where the socket had been sewn. “He’s in there already,” the man told her. “Room 11. Been here almost an hour.” He shoved the key across the counter like a dare.
She took the key and walked down a cement path to the room. She knocked lightly and the door swiftly opened. Simon stood there, smiling at her. “Hello, Annie.”
“This is an interesting place to meet.”
“I thought you’d like it. Actually, I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“And are you besieged with guilt?”
She stood there awkwardly. “I’m cold.”
“I have a remedy for that. Come.” The room was damp and smelled of tangerines. He pulled off the garish bedspread and they got into bed with their clothes on. “Are you as nervous as I am?”
“Yes,” she admitted gratefully. “More.”
Their hands mingled.
“Your hands are cold,” he said.
“Freezing.”
He put his hands under her shirt. “Ah, that’s better. Warm. And what beautiful breasts you have.” Their mouths found each other and they began to kiss and the kissing was good and for several fleeting dreamlike moments she was somewhere else. Yes, it was good kissing him, it was divine, and she didn’t care about his wife, or his life outside of the little room, or her husband, or her children, or even the article. She ran her hands through his hair as he moved down her body, kissing her with both longing and fulfillment, wandering under her skirt, the wicked stockings, his tongue grazing her belly, her ripe sweet grass, and the dark space between her legs. She pulled him back up and kissed his mouth and tasted herself inside it, and their hands grappled with clothing, pulling and pushing and opening and tearing as though to save each other from this urgent anguish. And there was recognition in their discovery, as if they had been lovers in another life and this was their joyous reunion. He knew her body; he knew her
cold.
Now tears ran down her cheeks. “What is it?” he said, his hands around her face. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry. It’s stupid to be crying. It’s just, I don’t know, I’m overwhelmed.”
“I’m grateful you’re here. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for me, too.”
She nodded and let him kiss her wet face and her breasts and her nipples, budding with desire. And then he went into her and she knew, instantly, that everything had changed.
Besieged with guilt, she thought as she was getting dressed in the anonymous room. She did not mind that it was anonymous. She did not mind the smell of this man in her life. The smell of him on her body under her clothes. He was someone she needed now, and she did not know how long it would last and she did not care. It didn’t change how she felt about her husband, she reasoned; she still loved him, but they’d come to a place in their marriage where they were blind to each other, and it was mutual.
Annie opened the dusty curtains, allowing in the loud busy light of afternoon. Simon sat on the worn chair near the window and pulled on his socks. The gray light fell on his face. She put on her coat and went over to him and kissed him on the mouth. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded. He touched her face.
And then she left.
As the weeks passed, the warm hues of September gave way to early darkness, and October arrived with bleak overstatement. To Annie’s revelation, her desire for Simon Haas took on an almost perverse urgency, with all the characteristics of an obsession. This unruly lust brought about the highest form of joy, and she did not make any attempt to suppress it. Simon seemed to know her deeply, profoundly, in ways that Michael had never dared to imagine. Simon revealed her; he opened her like a gift. Her flaws seemed only to fascinate him—her evolving imperfections—and his admiration allowed her a sumptuous freedom. Often, during lovemaking, she found herself willing to experiment, allowing him to dominate her, to choreograph their primal dance, behavior that she would adamantly denounce in the company of her women friends—but here, with him, it seemed an inexplicable thrill. When he touched her, she was someone else, someone without the fancy trimmings, pure flesh. No language, no discussions or debates. No ambiguity. Only pleasure, his scent on her skin, the shimmering light beyond the window. She thought about him constantly, waiting for him to call or hoping to catch sight of him someplace on campus. She’d find irony in ordinary pockets of her day. The love songs that came on the radio seemed to be playing just for her. At night, lying next to her husband, it was Haas she was thinking of. It was Haas who filled her dreams now. And though she knew it was wrong, horribly wrong, she could not bring herself to stop.
29
IT DID NOT TAKE her husband long to conjure an obsession for Annie Knowles. It was fairly obvious to Lydia that he had fallen in love with the woman. Obvious in the way he moved about the house like a cautious guest, preoccupied with a gloomy longing that she, his wife, could not hope to fulfill. He ate his meals in silence, reading over his magazines or reviewing his students’ papers. He had acquired a sudden sobriety when it came to his teaching. Lydia found this almost laughable: he was no longer the lazy, self-absorbed madman strutting about the art studio; now he was expansive and generous and haplessly dedicated, a total bore. She imagined that his students missed the old Simon Haas.
The memory of the Spaulls’ party littered her head; her brain was a Dumpster full of ugly thoughts. How embarrassed she’d been when Simon had dragged her out of there, threatening to take her back to Blackwell for a spell of treatment, the idea of which had instantly sobered her. She’d cried softly on the way home while he drove wildly. They’d hit a raccoon, its blood splashing across the windshield; he hadn’t stopped to clean it off. “You left me alone,” she’d told him. “It’s your fault.”
“I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”
“What were you doing? Where did you go?”
“We took a walk. It rained. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“You don’t love me!” Her voice was shrill as a child’s. “How can we go on? You don’t love me, anymore. You’re not in love with me.”
“Stop, Lydia. Stop!”
“Where will I go? What will I do? I don’t have anybody, Simon. You’re all I have. You’re all I have!”
He pulled over, jammed on the brakes. Took her into his arms and held her, rocked her, and she cried into his chest, and he was gentle with her, the way he used to be when she was younger. “It’s all right now,” he muttered with his whiskey breath. “We’re going home. We’re going home.”
It had been two weeks since that night and she hadn’t left the house. Like a sick person she wandered the rooms, almost afraid of the air outside. Patty Tuttle sent over homemade cookies, all of which she ate in one sitting. A wild hunger consumed her that no food would satisfy. There was an unpleasant swirling in her belly, an ensanguined pressure, a bloating of wretchedness. She hated Annie Knowles with every inch of her being. Hate had caught in her throat like a small bone. She went to bed with hate and she woke up with hate. It sat on her tongue, black as licorice, insidious as arsenic.
When she finally returned to work, her mind was preoccupied with other things and her supervisor called her into his office. “I heard you were ill,” Martin Banner inquired.
She told him that she’d been sick with the flu. She was feeling better now. In time, she promised him, she’d be back to her old self, which was a lie. Martin Banner studied her carefully and asked if she’d ever seen a therapist. Lydia shrugged, mortified by the question. Banner scrawled a name on a piece of paper and handed it to her. The piece of paper went into her pocket, but the moment she got back to her desk, she put it into her mouth and swallowed it.
It was a slow day at work. There were only ten calls altogether, and nobody ordered anything interesting—salacious was the word Reverend Tim liked to use. Lydia spent the long hours thinking about Annie Knowles, imagining the various ways in which Simon touched her, imagining his body laid out next to hers, the shocking insolence of their nakedness, what he would do to her and how much she would enjoy it. Had she begged him for more? Had she screamed with pleasure? Lydia pictured Annie’s thick hair on the pillow, her ordinary face, a certain nasty mischief in her eyes, the rude substance of her flesh. Lydia imagined the two lovers in vivid detail until she felt sick, and on some occasions would rush to the toilet in the ladies’ room and vomit. And what would his lover think, Lydia wondered, if she should discover that he was still sleeping with his wife, his hands fumbling drunkenly in the dark like blind fish, the wicked rambling of his hands under her nightgown and the hopeless rot of his breath as he forced himself upon her night after night, greedy as a starving man. They were sharing him now, and in some strange way Lydia could almost taste the woman.
Her husband’s betrayal became the focus of her attention; it never quite left her mind and it embarrassed her, it shamed her. Desperate for advice, she read countless women’s magazines, but none offered any solutions. Suffering with her frustration, she decided to talk it over with Reverend Tim. It would be embarrassing, she knew, to admit that there were these awful problems in her marriage, but she felt she had no other choice.
After work, Lydia drove over to the new Life Force headquarters, out at the truck stop on the interstate.