he was tired, and a little drunk, and bitter; and on nights when, making love, she sensed it in his body: a tender and humble and grateful presence that seemed to swoon in her arms.
She saw the boy when he took her to his bars. He had two favorites, near his stores, where he drank with men he called his friends, but they could not be, not really. In her life, a friend was a woman you spoke to on the telephone four or five times a week, and bought gifts for, something inexpensive that reminded you of her when you saw it in a shop, and you visited each other and drank coffee or tea or, if at night, a little wine; and you tried to make time at least twice a month for dinner together in a restaurant, or lunch and shopping in Boston, though it was usually once and sometimes not even that because you both had men in your lives, and some of the women had children too. And with your friend you talked, you did not banter; and you knew as much and probably more about her than her husband or lover did, and she knew as much about you. Though no woman knew, or ever would know, about that year with Larry when she learned how heedlessly she could draw someone’s life into her own, into the lustful pleasure and wicked dreams of her marriage, when she had learned that the state of being married, which had opened that life to her, was the very state that kept her from being a slut. So she had to take herself, and her slut with her, and go away from the marriage, and Larry; and she had to hold down that part of her being she had, she supposed now, always known was there, but in the nether reaches of her soul, where it was supposed to be, far from the light of sun and moon, to live only in the solitude of masturbation. She had to push it down again, into an oubliette, and keep it covered with the weight of a new life, and then with the solidity of a man who, by chance, or the circumstance of their being in-laws, turned out to be Greg.
So that, by trying to save herself, she had become again a woman she could not have, even two years ago, predicted herself to be. Now she had broken promises so implicit that you never spoke them: I will not make love with your father, take him from you and you from him, and your home, and Richie, and —So she was still a scandal to her self, the self who believed in honor, in trying one’s best to be a decent human being whose life did not spread harm. Sometimes, for no immediate reason save that her mood suddenly changed, she saw her vagina and its hair as a treacherous web, and with luxurious despair she imagined the faces of women, wives and lovers of men whom she had drawn to her from their places at the bar until they sat across the coffee table from her and Larry on the couch, and when Larry left she drew them across the room and into her body, where she spent them and then expelled them forever from her life. Because she and Larry never brought the same one home twice, even if they saw him again in a bar, even if he came to sit with them, for they were afraid that no man could believe his second night with Brenda was anything but collusion between wife and husband, and so perversion. And once she walked them to the door, she took their lovemaking into her bed, and lived it again with Larry, and as his passion crested hers did too, again, and she embraced both him and the lover, and they grew up and around her, like wisteria.
She did not believe any of these men ever felt used; but she knew they ought to, and most of them would not have gone home with her and Larry, would not have accepted the gambit nightcap, had they known the truth beyond her body, her face. So in those moods she punished herself, whether or not the men knew she deserved it; she punished herself by sustaining and deepening the mood with memories of her lies to the men (how many times had she pretended to be seduced? and how many times had she murmured: I’ve never done this before ?) and with imagining the faces of the women who
She saw the boy when he took her to his bars. He had two favorites, near his stores, where he drank with men he called his friends, but they could not be, not really. In her life, a friend was a woman you spoke to on the telephone four or five times a week, and bought gifts for, something inexpensive that reminded you of her when you saw it in a shop, and you visited each other and drank coffee or tea or, if at night, a little wine; and you tried to make time at least twice a month for dinner together in a restaurant, or lunch and shopping in Boston, though it was usually once and sometimes not even that because you both had men in your lives, and some of the women had children too. And with your friend you talked, you did not banter; and you knew as much and probably more about her than her husband or lover did, and she knew as much about you. Though no woman knew, or ever would know, about that year with Larry when she learned how heedlessly she could draw someone’s life into her own, into the lustful pleasure and wicked dreams of her marriage, when she had learned that the state of being married, which had opened that life to her, was the very state that kept her from being a slut. So she had to take herself, and her slut with her, and go away from the marriage, and Larry; and she had to hold down that part of her being she had, she supposed now, always known was there, but in the nether reaches of her soul, where it was supposed to be, far from the light of sun and moon, to live only in the solitude of masturbation. She had to push it down again, into an oubliette, and keep it covered with the weight of a new life, and then with the solidity of a man who, by chance, or the circumstance of their being in-laws, turned out to be Greg.
So that, by trying to save herself, she had become again a woman she could not have, even two years ago, predicted herself to be. Now she had broken promises so implicit that you never spoke them: I will not make love with your father, take him from you and you from him, and your home, and Richie, and —So she was still a scandal to her self, the self who believed in honor, in trying one’s best to be a decent human being whose life did not spread harm. Sometimes, for no immediate reason save that her mood suddenly changed, she saw her vagina and its hair as a treacherous web, and with luxurious despair she imagined the faces of women, wives and lovers of men whom she had drawn to her from their places at the bar until they sat across the coffee table from her and Larry on the couch, and when Larry left she drew them across the room and into her body, where she spent them and then expelled them forever from her life. Because she and Larry never brought the same one home twice, even if they saw him again in a bar, even if he came to sit with them, for they were afraid that no man could believe his second night with Brenda was anything but collusion between wife and husband, and so perversion. And once she walked them to the door, she took their lovemaking into her bed, and lived it again with Larry, and as his passion crested hers did too, again, and she embraced both him and the lover, and they grew up and around her, like wisteria.
She did not believe any of these men ever felt used; but she knew they ought to, and most of them would not have gone home with her and Larry, would not have accepted the gambit nightcap, had they known the truth beyond her body, her face. So in those moods she punished herself, whether or not the men knew she deserved it; she punished herself by sustaining and deepening the mood with memories of her lies to the men (how many times had she pretended to be seduced? and how many times had she murmured: I’ve never done this before ?) and with imagining the faces of the women who
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