No one had ever licked her neck. He traced the line of her jaw with his wet, warm tongue; electricity flowed through her. He was tender, verbal, aroused. He ate her alive.
A long time later he put his warm face between her breasts, nuzzling, while she stroked his soft fluffy hair, absent and happy. “These are the biggest ever for James Atterbury,” he said. She burst out laughing.
You are too good to be true.
“You are a lover,” he said.
At dawn Elizabeth awoke and for a second had no idea whom she was with, until she noticed that her feet were alone at the bottom of the bed. James. She bent her knees to rub feet with him. She felt as if she were holding a child. Still asleep, he nuzzled her face, and she smelled his breath and blanched. Once Elizabeth had gone to Rae’s car to get something, had discovered a smoldering red hot fire in the ashtray, burning butts and gum and paper. This is what his breath reminded her of, and she hoped that he didn’t want to make love again.
But he did, soon after, and his breath stopped offending her after the first minute of kissing. The room was warm and sunny, and she loved his face.
“What color are your eyes?” he asked.
“Hazel.”
“Flecked with gold.”
“I have to get to work now.”
“Won’t you stay for breakfast?”
“Not today. I have to go home and feed Leon, too.”
“Leon who?”
“Leon’s my dog.”
“Wouldn’t Lank feed him?”
“He’s at his girl friend’s.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay. When do I get to see you again?”
She shrugged.
“I like you so much, Elizabeth.”
“I like you, too. I’m busy tonight.” Alarm flickered across his face. “With Rosie and Rae. Rae is leaving for New Mexico tomorrow.”
He bent down to pick up his pants, and his socks fell out.
“Look at your shoes,” she said. They were lined up, heel to toe, pigeon-toed and still tied, poised as if about to run off. “Something vaudevillian there,” she said.
He smiled and bent down to kiss her. “Tomorrow night then?”
“Call me.”
She was unable to fall back to sleep, and lay watching movies of James in her mind. He was an original. They could turn out to be great friends and lovers, and Rosie would love him: but. The smoke, the shirt, his height; the way he chewed and the occasional but glaring pretension. It didn’t occur to her to give it time, to play it by ear, to forgive him his trespasses. Instead, to reinforce her ruling, she picked up Antimemoires and sat down in the easy chair. Glancing briefly at the pizza crusts in the cardboard box, on the floor by the fire, the butts in the ashtray, she read the first few pages.
At first she inwardly sneered as she remembered James as Alistair Cooke, pronouncing after several minutes that it was an excellent book, then read:
I have experienced time and again, in humble or dazzling circumstances, those moments when the mystery of life appears to each of us as it appears to almost every woman when she looks into a child’s face and to almost every man when he looks into the face of someone dead.
And she reread that sentence, that one sentence, closed the book and looked around. Oh, shit, she thought. It is an excellent book.
CHAPTER 12
James had the feeling he was being watched as he strolled up the walkway through the Ferguson garden, but failed to see the small girl’s face peering through a parting in the living room curtains, or the high-powered binoculars that had been trained on him ever since he’d driven up in an old Peugeot. (Mrs. Haas was appalled, scandalized by James’s bumper sticker. Her face came alive: a baseball bat and ball and, in huge black letters, THOSE FUCKIN’ A’S. She had never!)
He took in the roses, begonias, azaleas; the hose, coiled up neatly beneath the faucet; the small red bicycle lying on its side in the grass and The New Yorker on the porch swing. He cleared his throat several times, patted both his mane and the spiral notebook in the pocket of his jeans, and took a deep breath. He was about to meet Rosie for the first time.
Elizabeth was in the bathroom upstairs, applying yet another coat of mascara. She had bought a new lipstick to match the red silk blouse she wore. The lipstick color was Rose Madras. After she poured down the last of the scotch, she had to rinse the red impression of her bottom lip off the rim of the glass. The glass clattered when she set it down on the porcelain soap dish above the sink; her hands were shaking. She dabbed Chanel behind her ears and on her wrists, brushed her teeth with Aqua-Fresh, reapplied Rose Madras, and studied herself. Not bad. The ivory combs securing the bun in her black hair, the lips, the nose, the modified John L. Lewis brows, good, good. The neck was caving in on itself, needing a quick pressing. Feh. She winked at her reflection, snapped her fingers, Roy Scheider in All That Jazz: “It’s show-time, folks.”
She was putting Erase under her eyes when she heard the knocking at the front door. After a moment, she heard Rosie say hello.
“Hello, Rosie. Glad to meet you.”
“Come on in. Mama’ll be right down. Mama! He’s here! What’s in the bag?”
“Treats from the deli.”
Rosie led him to the living room and flopped into the arm-chair, dangling her legs over the armrest. James sat at the far edge of the couch, crossed his legs, and put the bag beside him. They heard Elizabeth’s footsteps at the top of the stairs. Rosie considered James. He cleared his throat.
“Does your hair singe?” she asked.
Elizabeth grimaced and entered the room. James stood, and they smiled at each other.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Here are some things for dinner,” he said, and held out the bag. She looked in and admired the contents: artichoke hearts, a tin of anchovies, smoked oysters, dolmas, chicken salad, and New York Jewish Rye bread.
“Thank you. Can I get you a drink?”
“Yes, please.”
“Scotch?”
“Fine.”
“Rosie, get your feet off the armrest.”
“Yes, Miss Mother.”
Elizabeth turned toward the kitchen. How could he have chosen such an ugly shirt? Beige terrycloth with red pockets. Rae, I swear to you. Zoris and white socks. What was his point?
Elizabeth downed a shot of scotch before pouring them each a drink over ice. She wanted it to be time for bed.
“Have you ever killed anybody?” Rosie asked.
James squinted, trying to remember.
“No, none that I can think of. But I tried to twice, when I was a kid.”
Rosie took in a deep loud breath of air. “Who?”
“First, when I was about six, I was sitting on our fence in a cowboy suit, with a holster around my waist, two new guns— chaps, even—and a black hat. When all of a sudden this horrible little girl named Debbie Solini—like Margaret in Dennis the Menace—comes walking down the sidewalk, and I said, ‘Come here, Debbie’”—his voice rising at here—. “‘I have something for you.’” James crooked his finger at Rosie. “And as soon as she got close enough, I whipped one of my pearl-handled revolvers out of the holster and cracked her over the head with the butt of it.”
“Oh, my God. Then what happened?”
“I don’t remember much about it. My old man belted me—but I don’t think Debbie was hurt much.”
“And who else?”
Elizabeth headed toward the living room.
“There was this kid named Sebastian in my third grade class who was always tattling on me and getting me and Denny Hoods sent to the principal’s—”
“There’s a girl just like that in my class,” said Rosie.
“There’s one in every class. Anyway, one day Denny and I decided to kill him.”
Elizabeth entered unobtrusively and gave him his drink, taking a seat beside him on the couch.
“Finish the story,” Rosie demanded. “He tried to kill this kid named
Sebastian in third grade.”
James clicked glasses with Elizabeth, and they took sips.
“So,” he continued, “my cousin Pete, who was in eighth grade and knew about such things, said the best way to kill someone was to get them to eat a mixture of aspirin and toothpaste.” Rosie’s eyes opened wide; her mind was racing. “So we crushed an aspirin into a teaspoon of toothpaste and then chased him around trying to force it down his throat—or to at least fling it at his mouth—because we thought one drop and he’d keel over.”
“So what happened?”
“We caught up with him, and he beat both of us up.”
“Would it have killed him?”
“Who knows?”
The three of them sat down at the dining table, in candlelight, with the moon rising outside the window. A small African floral tablecloth partly covered her full, cream-colored Irish lace. Chinese plates and laquered bowls held the food James had brought, along with sliced tomatoes and pesto sauce, crisp hot sourdough, cheeses, and two kinds of mustard.
James poured two glasses of Napa Valley Petite Sirah into cut crystal glasses. “A true maroon.” Their glasses reflected candlelight, and Elizabeth felt like a million dollars.
“Pass me the bright yellow, Mama.”
Elizabeth gave her daughter the mild mustard.
“James? Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How come the police don’t just arrest the Mafia?...
“James? Why is there wind? What makes it blow?...
“Are you afraid of quicksand?...
“Boy, I never saw anyone chew as fast in my life...
“Do you believe in God?...
“Did you ever read Old Yeller? Didn’t you just cry?”
“Saddest book I ever read,” said James. “I’m still getting over it.”
Elizabeth was watching James as he jotted something in his spiral notebook. James was watching her when she walked unsteadily to the stereo. Rosie was watching them watch each other.
“James? Do you know Andrea Kinkaid?”
“No. Should I? What album is this, Elizabeth?”
“Bruce Springsteen. ‘The River.’ Listen to the saxophone player, Clarence Clemons.”
James lit a cigarette and turned back to Rosie.
“Well, she’s this girl in my class. She’s this total drip. And you know what she goes and does? Well, one day, her mother goes over to Sharon’s house—”
“Sharon is Rosie’s best friend. You’ll like Sharon.”
“—and she brings Andrea along, and so Sharon gets stuck playing with her, so they go upstairs and Sharon gets out her coloring books, I mean these new ones, they’re for like adults or something, but they’re King Tut and Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the Jungle Book. You know?” James, transfixed, nodded. “So, well, like Sharon’s the best colorer in our school, and she’s got this big huge box of felt pens with these skeeny little tips, and so she gives Andrea King Tut and Andrea just ruins it; she goes totally all over the page— she doesn’t even stay inside the lines! She goes outside the lines on three pages. God. Sharon felt like crying, she said. I was so mad.”
James glared, clenched his teeth, crossed his arms, seethed.
“Here’s my plan,” he said. “Will you tell Sharon for me?” Rosie nodded gravely. “Okay. She goes to Andrea’s some day, and she acts all nicey-nicey at the door, right? Says she’s come over to play, but doesn’t go inside. You with me so far? Then she says, ‘Hey! By the way! Got any new coloring books? and if Andrea nods, then Sharon snarls, ‘Git ’em.’”
The Fergusons laughed.
“Listen,” said James, pointing to the stereo where Clarence Clemons was beginning a soaring, exuberant solo. “Listen to that sax, Rosie.”
Elizabeth stared off into space. James was too good to be true. “Clarence has something to say,” she said.
“It’s time for bed, honey.”
“No, no, wait, please wait....”
“It’s late. You’ve been up an extra hour. James and I want to talk.”
“What do you think we’ve been doing?”
Finally she shook hands with James, gave Elizabeth a reservedly dirty look, and huffily went upstairs.
“I’ll be up in a minute,” her mother called. She and James exchanged alluring looks.
Elizabeth bit her bottom lip and looked at him.
He licked his lips.
“I’ll be right down.”
“Are you going to marry him?” asked Rosie, as Elizabeth tucked her in.
“This is our third date, for God’s sake.”
Elizabeth kissed her daughter’s concerned face many times, gave her one last wet kiss on the lips, and told her good night.
She was just about to close the bedroom door when, in a voice that was almost a shout, Rosie called out, “Are you gonna fuck him in the butt?” Elizabeth closed the door, smiling. James was laughing when she got downstairs.
“Well, are you?” he asked.
“Ah, Rosie.”
“I would trade writing for a child like that.” They sat in front of the fire for a few minutes, giving Rosie time to fall asleep, and then, in an instant, Elizabeth was all over James like a cheap suit. There was magnificent sexual chemistry between them: there were no words. Elizabeth was transported so close to the edge that she thought she might lose consciousness several times, and they were both delirious with pleasure. Later, in bed, several hours later, they made love more tenderly and then lay giggling quietly. Their sexuality was like a drug to Elizabeth; it was crystal clear to her that she was hooked and would pay through the nose for it, and that he would too.
In the ensuing week, Elizabeth worked on repelling disdainful thoughts about his shirts—made of materials banned in the manufacture of baby clothes—and his chain smoking and sometimes succeeded in not caring at all. Other times, though, usually at breakfast, she felt a clamping in her eyes and heard voices in her head listing those things that were, ultimately, unacceptable. Largely on account of conditioning and prejudice, his height remained a problem for her, but it also triggered adolescent memories—a five-foot-eight thirteen-year-old with hideously, embarrassingly large breasts. And then she would be flooded with pictures of her parents.
Her subconscious, which she considered to be working well when it functioned as a lint filter, trapping and stifling old pains and furies, had been acting up since James. Sometimes she thought she might go crazy from the intensity of her feelings and the intensity of the ensuing numbness.
One evening, several days after Rosie and James met, they were playing catch in the back yard with mitts and a softball which James had brought. Elizabeth watched from the upstairs window. Leon, James’s retriever, was dashing back and forth between them, as in a game of Monkey in the Middle. Elizabeth thought it was a perfect scene for a movie, a warm summer night’s game of catch in an overgrown yard with bright flowers on the side, great trees, birds even, Leon dashing between Rosie, in her overalls and purple T-shirt, and James, who was wearing an A’s cap and a black T-shirt. Zoom in on the character in their faces, the agility with which they move, the beauty in the way Rosie runs after the occasional missed ball. Then the camera slowly climbs up the Victorian, and Elizabeth is standing, looking down with wistful sentimentality at her child and her lover. They look up and wave. Rosie does a cartwheel.
Elizabeth opened the window a crack, deep into her movie. She heard the crisp thwap of the ball against leather, back to Rosie, back to James, and she went into a trance. She was playing catch with her father on their front lawn, a lawn as cropped as Astro-turf. She could smell the salty worn leather glove he had bought her years before, redolent with dirt and sweat and oil; God, it smelled wonderful. Had her mother been upstairs, looking down from the window?
Elizabeth shook her head to clear it, shook and shook and shook, feeling so homesick and lonesome and disoriented that she walked as quickly as she could downstairs to the kitchen, and stood drinking scotch
from the bottle until the black hole in her chest subsided. She screwed the top on, blinked, heaved her shoulders, and returned upstairs to the bathroom to brush her teeth and tongue.
James and Rosie went into the kitchen for orange juice, happy, close, still wearing their mitts, Rosie holding the ball, and the first thing James saw was the waves in the bottle, on the counter, barely in motion. Rosie poured them each a glass of cold bright orange juice and asked him if cave children played catch.
“Absolutely. With rocks and apples.”
“But they didn’t have mitts.”
James shook his head, absently.
He looked sad.
“But they still had fun, James,” she said consolingly.
He smiled.
One night, when James had said he would be there at dinnertime but had arrived, nonchalantly, at eight thirty, he and Elizabeth sat across from each other drinking beer; he was annoyed that she was annoyed but he was affecting a look of beatific indifference while she sat like a statue of dry ice. She would not need this man more than he would need her.
“You look beautiful when you’re mad.”
She couldn’t believe he had said it and let a glimmer of a sneer pass over her face before looking back at the flames in the fireplace.
“Why be mad, Elizabeth? I’m sorry I was late.”
“You should have called.”
“‘You should have called,’” he mimicked her. “They’ve found ‘You should have called’ on hieroglyphics, on rune stones; I swear, it’s been the battle cry of women since Eve.”
“It takes two minutes. You know what a pain in the ass it is to be kept waiting for two hours.”
“I wouldn’t do it. I do not wait. I would read.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You can’t admit that you fucked up.”
“Oh, I can admit it. I said I was sorry.”