Reverend Tim was just finishing up one of his healing workshops. The people looked content and serene as they stood around a table, drinking lemonade and eating cookies. Reverend Tim gave her a big smile and said, “Hello there, Lydia,” but she could hardly even speak, and he could read her pain like Braille across her face. “What is it, what’s wrong?”
She started to cry, she couldn’t help it. Embarrassed, she covered her face with her hands. He led her outside, into the parking lot. She could see the trucks roaring past on the highway. “Lydia? You all right?”
But she could not find her voice.
“It’s all right, now,” he said. “You just take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
She looked at him and wiped her eyes. He wanted to know why she was crying. He was waiting for an explanation. “It’s Simon,” she said.
“Well, I gathered that.” He waited.
“He’s seeing someone. He’s having an affair.”
She could see that the information disappointed him, and he looked away from her. “Deception is the evil of our times,” he said. His eyes found hers again. “Do you know who the woman is?”
She nodded. “That doctor’s wife. Annie Knowles.”
PART FOUR
Heart
30
SIMON HAD NOT SEEN Marrow since the night they’d gotten stoned, but he could not seem to shake the image of the man’s wife, whose gritty ran-cor dripped through his mind like grease from the diner’s griddle. She worked the dinner shift, behind the counter. He sketched her pouring syrup onto a man’s plate as the man grinned at her, grateful as an orphan. Simon drank coffee all night, painting her inside his head. Collecting her tips, her chipped pink nails scooping up change, a dime rolling just out of reach. She spoke to someone on the pay phone, blowing smoke all the way down to her dirty white shoes. He watched her wipe down the counters, shine and replenish the napkin dispensers, and snatch the skinny forlorn flowers out of the little green vases. When she put on her coat, something fake that looked like rabbit, he followed her outside. She was hovering over a cigarette, trying to light it in the wind.
“Remember me?”
She cocked her head, scowling for his benefit. “Oh, the professor.”
“You want to make some money?”
“Doing what?”
“Modeling. I’m a painter.”
She smiled, flattered. They always smiled. “How much?”
“Fifty bucks an hour. You’re not shy, are you?”
She shifted in the cold, smoking her cigarette. He worried that she’d slap him across the face and walk away. But she didn’t. She shrugged her shoulders. “That all depends on you, doesn’t it?”
He drove her in his car, the jazz station a raspy whisper. She smelled like French fries, a trace of honeysuckle. “You teach over at the college?”
He told her he did and she brayed with mockery.
“That must be a major pain in the butt. Fuckin’ bitches. Fussy types. I know; they come into the restaurant. This one don’t want no butter on her bread, she wants it on the side. This one don’t want no mayonnaise. This one don’t like American cheese, just the Swiss.”
He parked under a streetlight. It was after eleven, the streets were empty. They went into the building and up the service elevator to his studio. He unlocked the door and they went inside. He looked around at the bare walls, the large white canvas leaning there, waiting for paint. He closed the drapes and opened a bottle of Jim Beam.
“I should call the Bone, but it’ll just piss him off. Fuck it.”
“Here, have a drink. I’ll light us a joint.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Sit over here.”
She sat like a woman who had been on her feet all night, her legs falling open, her back curved into the chair. He dipped his fingers into a puddle of raw sienna and smeared it on the canvas.
“My uniform’s kind of dirty,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Gina.”
“You have a beautiful neck.”
He could tell she didn’t believe him but wanted to. Desperately wanted to.
“How would you feel about taking the uniform off? I’d like to paint you in your bra and underwear,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Ain’t wearing nothing fancy.”
“I don’t like fancy.”
She looked as if she were trying to decide. This posturing was a charade, he knew, and when more money was suggested it seemed to quell any moral misgivings. “I’ll pay you seventy-five an hour.”
She came over to him and turned around. “Well, unzip me, baby, the clock is ticking.”
She seemed more vulnerable in her underwear. “Crawl onto that mattress over there,” he told her. Her body had a fierce geometry that intrigued him. Her skin was chalky, mottled with freckles. She sat there on the mattress with the long window behind her and the yellow shade pulled halfway down. Even in the frayed underwear, she wore an expression of regal expectation, her posture defiantly dignified. It was an interesting contrast to the surroundings, her uniform crumpled on the bed, her name tag glowing.
After the session he took her home. He counted out the money in her shaking hand. He watched her through the dirty windows of the vestibule, unlocking the door and disappearing into her life. He wondered how she felt.
Back in the studio, he drank ice-cold vodka out of his lunch thermos and examined his work. She was still there, in a manner of speaking, her body, her flat little tits. He’d paint her all night if he could stand to. He’d paint her until he couldn’t see anymore. And in a few months, she’d be on a wall in the museum and people would look at her, discreetly imagining the fleeting thrill of touching her, and they’d take her image home with them, savoring her sooty flavor like the memory of any ordinary meal.
“I want to draw you,” he told Annie the following afternoon at the motel.
“Impossible,” she said. She was naked under the sheets, her hair wildly matted after lovemaking. The room smelled gloriously of her sweat.
“Do it for me,” he said, snapping off the sheet.
“Why should I?” she said, snapping it back on.
“You’re afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“I’ll make you look pretty, if that’s what you’re worried about.” The minute he said it he regretted it.
“Now, there’s a challenge.” She ripped off the sheet and got out of bed and began to get dressed.
“Annie.” He used his placating voice.
Angrier still. “What?”
“You’re beautiful, don’t you know that?”
“Fuck you.”
He grabbed the sweater out of her hand. She stood there before him with her magnificent breasts. “Fuck you,” he whispered, and reached out for them, feeling their marvelous weight in his hands. He grasped her nipples and twisted a little and she came toward him and he knew he had her. He kissed her and she kissed him back, and then they were fucking again and he told her again that she was beautiful.
And now softly, she said, “What difference does it make?”
“In this world it makes all the difference.”
“It bugs the shit out of me that I even care.”
“Please, just sit over there in that chair so I can draw you.”
After a moment’s deliberation, she got up and went to the chair and sat down and crossed her arms over her chest like an impatient teenager, then crossed one knee over the other and wiggled her foot. He sighed, looking at her. “You’re incredible.”
“What’s so incredible? It’s just another body, isn’t it?”
“No, Annie, it’s you.”
He opened the curtains and the gray light fell in on top of her. He studied her gently. He sketched her quickly, freeing himself in the lines of her body. Satisfied with the drawing, he held up the paper and mused, “I’ll call this one Just Fucked.”
31
IN THE MIDDLE of th
e night Annie woke to find Michael’s hands on her body, wanting to make love. “I can’t,” she told him, turning away, but he persisted. “Please, Michael, I need to sleep!” The awful truth was she no longer desired her husband. Unlike her lover’s seductive wizardry, Michael’s touch was clumsy and ineffectual. She felt contemptuous of him. Simon Haas possessed her now. Like an addiction, her need for him had become a torturous preoccupation. She was a ravenous beggar, yet it was not food she craved.
“What’s wrong with you?” Michael said.
“Nothing. I’m tired.”
He kissed her hard, determined, and she kissed him back and succumbed to him and when it was over she was relieved. Distantly, it occurred to her that she hadn’t put in her diaphragm.
When the alarm went off at six-forty-five, Michael was already gone. Whipping off the covers, she climbed out of bed and went and roused the children. “Up! Everyone up! Rise and Shine! Start moving or I’m going to tickle you.” Henry groaned and turned away. But Rosie giggled. Rosie always giggled at even the slightest notion of being tickled. “Up, my little bunny.” She tickled squirming Rosie. “My little lemon drop.” As predicted, scales of laughter. Into Henry’s room, her cynical boy of ten. “Up my grumpy boy.” She kissed her son’s soft cheek. “Rise and shine, my little man.”
“I don’t want to go,” he said. “I hate school.”
“Up! No complaining! Hating school is not allowed.”
“The kids are mean. Nobody likes me.”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“You don’t know, Mommy. You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t understand!”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and ruffled his hair. “I do understand and I know it’s hard. But you have to go to school. You’ve got to try.”
“It’s Daddy’s fault,” he said.
“Henry. Don’t say that.”
“It is. Everybody knows what he does.” He muttered under his breath, “I hate him.”
Annie took her son’s hand. “Henry, I know that isn’t true. And you know Daddy loves you very much. He’s doing the best he can right now.”
Henry got up. “It’s not good enough.” He went into the bathroom. He was his father’s son, she thought, wrangling the wild beast of life with his bare hands. What would Michael say if he knew how Henry felt? It would hurt him deeply, yet she had to wonder if he’d do anything about it.
Annie got dressed and went downstairs to start breakfast. Entering the kitchen, she couldn’t help feeling like she was being watched. She was sure their phone was being tapped; every time she used it she heard a loud click. When she thought over the past few months, she remembered things that had happened that, at the time, hadn’t seemed unusual but now gave her pause. Once, a man had pulled up to the house in a shiny red pickup truck and told her he was a photographer. Their house was so beautiful he wanted to take a picture of it, he’d said, and she’d smiled, flattered, and told him he could. One afternoon she’d come home to find dog shit on her Welcome mat. Just the other night, reading Rosie a bedtime story, she’d smelled cigarette smoke coming from somewhere outside. When she’d taken Molly out the next morning she’d found an empty Marlboro package on the driveway. Sometimes there were tire tracks in the mud of the front lawn. Strange as it was, they were getting used to it.
At breakfast, Annie reviewed her checklist of precautions. The children sat and listened, alert with expectation, of what she was not entirely sure. What pictures did they form in their heads, she wondered, based on her list of warnings? “No talking to anyone you don’t know. Even people you do know. Be careful. Even your teachers. If, for example, they ask you to help them with something outside of school. If a teacher comes up to you on the playground and asks you questions about Daddy and me. You don’t have to answer anything. Do you understand? Or if one of your friends’ parents comes up to you and questions you or wants something from you. It could be someone you know, or it could be a stranger. You need to watch out for each other. Henry? Do you understand? You need to watch out for Rosie on the bus.”
“Yes, Mom,” Henry droned, bored with the subject.
“Rosie?”
“We understand, right, Rosie?” Henry urged.
Rosie said nothing and stared with bewildered concentration at the cereal box.
Rosie did not understand.
32
PATHETIC AS IT WAS to admit, Michael preferred the hospital to his own home. The hospital was predictable, familiar, and these days he took comfort in familiarity, no matter how fucked up it was. The balmy climate of the corridors. The lingering smell of food from the cafeteria. The benign faces of the nursing staff. The diagonal swish of the janitor’s mop on the blue linoleum. But at home, he had no idea where he stood. Lately, Annie seemed habitually forlorn, and more than once he’d caught her staring vaguely into space, the slightest hint of a smile on her lips. On the rare occasion when they had dinner together, she hardly touched her food and their conversation was strained, limited to the activities of the children. After the kids were in bed, she would vanish into the bedroom to read. He would find her hours later, fast asleep, the book lying across her chest, the nightstand light shining in her face.
The stress was beginning to get to him.
When he entered the office that morning, Miranda, the receptionist, cornered him in the hallway. “Celina James is in your office.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t let Finney see her. He’ll probably call security or something.”
“Maybe she wants to discuss a case. Bring in the first patient, I’ll only be a minute.”
For safety reasons, Michael and Celina had agreed that seeing each other outside of the clinic was, for the most part, not a good idea. He hurried down the hall to his office. Celina was sitting in the swivel chair behind his desk.
“Nice place,” she told him. “Swank. You guys must have a hell of an overhead.”
“Celina, we’ve been over this. You shouldn’t be here.”
“I was in the neighborhood, I couldn’t resist.”
“I’ve got a waiting room full of patients.”
“I needed to see you.” She hesitated a moment, as if she were going to say something, but changed her mind. Then she added, “I wanted to see your office, where you work.”
“It’s not terribly exciting.”
“On the contrary.” In no particular hurry, she walked around the room, studying the photographs he’d taken when he and Annie had traveled overseas after medical school. They were large, framed prints and he was immeasurably proud of them. “Where’s this?” she asked, pointing to one of his favorite photographs of a group of young Guatemalan girls.
“Guatemala. They’re some orphans we met.” When he had taken the picture, he’d been considering pediatrics and the children on the streets had enchanted him with their uncanny strength and mystery. Another photograph showed a boy wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. The boy had no shoes, and his feet were riddled with cuts. Michael had been pleased with the picture’s inherent irony. “An interesting place,” he said.