Bodies and Souls (40 page)

All this talking made them shiver, or perhaps it was simply the October chill. But finally Mandy said, “Oh, let’s go home and get warm and have something to eat. Aren’t you hungry?”

So they walked back along the river and scrambled up the bank to the bridge and made their way to Mandy’s house along the familiar streets and sidewalks. This time they held hands all the way, past the houses, shops, the church, for anyone to see, and they were very aware that they were doing this, as if they were committing some loud, attention-getting deed, like blowing bugles or beating drums.

“Mandy?” Leigh called, hearing her daughter come in the door. “Where have you—Oh,
hello
!”

Leigh stopped and smiled at the sight of Mandy and the boy she had at her side, both of whom were wearing about the same amount of Mandy’s lipstick and mascara on not entirely appropriate spots of their faces. So this is what Mandy was doing all summer, Leigh thought. “Come in and have lunch,” she said.

She heated up homemade vegetable soup and brought out some rye bread, and chatted casually with Michael and Mandy, or rather at them. Mandy dropped the napkins, forgot where they kept the butter, and set four places. Michael just sat, such a huge man in this kitchen that was so accustomed to only one or two women. He cleared his throat often and answered Leigh’s friendly chatter with monosyllables that seemed to have been tortured out from his depths.
Oh, God
, Leigh thought, they really are in love. Eating with them was almost painful; each slurp and clink of soup or silverware seemed to reverberate. Leigh had been in love like this, more than once, so when lunch was finally over, she said cheerfully, lying, “Mandy, Michael, I hope you don’t mind, but I was planning to drive down to the Southmark hospital to see how Wilbur is doing. I’ll be gone about three hours. I’ve got some errands to do, too.”

“Oh, that’s
fine
, Mom,” Mandy said, not stopping to wonder what possible errands her mother could have on a Sunday afternoon.

“Well, I don’t want you to feel hurt, I mean since you’re only home for the weekend,” Leigh offered.

“Oh, nonsense, Mom, go on,” Mandy said. “It’s fine. Michael can keep me company.” She was trying to be pert, but at her last sentence she couldn’t help the smile that lit up her face, the silly grin.

Leigh turned away, pretending to look in her purse for her keys, in order to hide the tears that had ambushed her. That child is lost, she thought; and she was sad that Mandy was so grown up, and glad that she was so happy, and envious all at the same time.

“Well,” Michael said, the moment Leigh had gone out the front door. “Now what shall we do?”

They didn’t even stop to kiss first; they just raced, like children, to Mandy’s bed.

My God, I’m in a spaceship, Wilbur thought when he opened his eyes. They’ve gone and made me an astronaut; here I am all wired up to beeping machines, uniformed and strapped in and monitored and prone in my own little solitary capsule. I only wish I knew where they were sending me.

There were four wires attached to what looked like little suction cups stuck to his abdomen, and an IV stuck into his right hand, which was tied, as was his left hand, to the bars of the bed. There were tubes up his nose, and he knew without seeing that there was a catheter in his penis. There was a curtain pulled around his bed and various machines hung and stood and clicked and dripped all around him.

I’m not very happy about all this, Wilbur thought. But thank God, I’m not dead yet.

“Oh, good for you, Mr. Wilson,” someone said, coming into his view. “You’re awake.” It was a tall, skinny, gray-haired nurse. She touched his arm gently, an introductory gesture. “I’m Selma. You’re in the hospital, you know, and I’m going to be your nurse for a while. How do you feel?”

“Ready to go home,” Wilbur said.

“Ha-ha,” Selma replied. “Listen, hang on, I’ll get your wife for you. I know she’d like to come see you. Just for a minute or two.”

“All right,” Wilbur said. “You go get her. I’ll just wait right here.”

He wished someone would cover his chest; it looked so scrawny from his vantage point, so bony, so goddamned pitifully
frail
. But he supposed that any covering would disturb all those wires. What few chest hairs he had curled around his nipples, gray and lank. He wished now that at least he’d been a hairier man, had a chest with hair so thick and matted that it would cover his vulnerability. He just looked
too bare
.

“Wilbur,” Norma said, and bent down to kiss his forehead. She had such a strange expression on her face—as if she were proud.

“Can you tell me what time it is?” Wilbur asked.

“Honey, it’s just about three o’clock.”

“And still Sunday?”

“Still Sunday.”

“Well, that’s all right, then,” Wilbur said.

“Yes, you’re going to be fine. Probably the worst you can expect for the next few days is a good long spell of boredom. But you should see the people in the waiting room. Everyone’s out there, and they all want me to give you their love. They’re all pulling for you.”

Wilbur could see them there, a crowd of people, really pulling for him, tugging on the lifeline that would bring him back down from this eerie outer space where he floated, back to the solid earth. “Well,” he said, confused for a moment.

“Wilbur, do you remember anything that happened? Do you know that it was Liza Howard who gave you CPR?”

Those words yanked Wilbur right back to reality. “Liza Howard?”

“She got right down on top of you in her fur coat and silk dress and gave you mouth-to-mouth and pushed on your chest.”

“Well, hell,” Wilbur said. “Mouth to mouth with Liza Howard and I didn’t even know it. I wouldn’t call that fair.” But he grinned, just to think of it. “Would you thank her for me?”

“Yes, I’ll call her when I can. Stop grinning like that, you old reprobate. Stop thinking that way, you’ll get your heart all to racing.”

“It was my heart, then.”

“Yes, it was. I thought the doctors had told you—”

“Maybe they have. I’m not too clear about the past few hours.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Wilson, but your time’s up,” Selma said.

“Selma,” Wilbur said, when he was sure Norma was gone. The nurse was busy checking something at the foot of his bed. There was something about the way she wore her gray hair that reminded him of his grandmother, and so he didn’t feel too humiliated to ask his question. “Can you tell me how I am? I’m not going to die right away, am I?” Selma looked startled, as if his question had no relevance to his situation. “Why, no, Mr. Wilson, you’re not going to die right away,” she said, coming up closer to his face and smiling. “You’re going to be fine. You just need to rest.”

“I’m afraid to close my eyes,” he admitted. “It’s like when I was a little boy. Sometimes at night I couldn’t go to sleep. I was afraid that once I closed my eyes and—let go—I wouldn’t ever wake up again.”

“I promise you you’ll wake up again,” Selma said. “It’s been a very minor attack, Mr. Wilson. The more rest you get, the faster you’ll recover.”

Oh, I do love women who take care, Wilbur thought. I do love women who know answers and make things safe. It’s possible that he said aloud, “Selma, I love you,” or he might have just thought he said those words as he closed his eyes and fell away from his poor puny body into a generous sleep.

Priscilla and Seth had been invited by another family to go to Southmark Plaza to see Walt Disney’s
Cinderella
and then to eat at the new Pizza Palace, so Suzanna had dressed them up, tucked money in their pockets, and waved them off to their afternoon’s delights, smiling all the while at the thought of what delights
her
afternoon would hold. She could not remember when she and Madeline had been able to make love in the daylight—either they were always teaching or the children were around. At night, by the time the children were in bed and really asleep, Suzanna was so tired. But now it was Sunday afternoon, and a good four hours of freedom and light stretched out in front of her.

Up in her bedroom, she closed the curtains at the windows that opened onto the street and pulled back the curtains on the windows that gave onto the backyard. There was no house immediately behind her, no way that anyone could see in unless they happened to be parachuting by. The sky was overcast and the wind was blowing, tossing the amber leaves of the ash trees behind the house in a steady dance. It was a chilly day for October, and it looked chilly: a good time to be inside.

Suzanna stripped her bed and carefully spread on the new sheets she had bought,
silvery-colored satiny Christian Diors. She had stood for at least fifteen minutes in the department store in Southmark worrying over these sheets. Should she buy them? They were sinfully expensive. But they were also on sale. And they were so tempting, so luxurious. Now she smiled at her purchase as she smoothed the shimmering fabric across her bed, transforming it just as Madeline had transformed her life, from an ordinary thing into a thing that could shine with magic and beauty.

She looked around her room, pleased. It was
her
room now, painted the colors she had chosen, colors Tom would not have liked: oyster-pale walls with silver-blue woodwork and doors and mauve curtains and chair and spread. The sheets went perfectly with the room: they glimmered as the room did, opalescent.

She went downstairs and found the silver ice bucket—a gift to her and Tom when they married—and filled it with ice, and found the one bottle of champagne she had in the house. She carried it up and put it on the bedside table, then made another trip downstairs and up, bringing a silver platter with grapes, sliced pears, cheddar cheese, and bars of Swiss chocolate. She had been saving the champagne and the chocolate for a special occasion, and she had decided that today that occasion had arrived. She put the platter in the middle of the bed, and two long-stemmed crystal champagne glasses on the other bedside table. There, now. She stood for a moment, savoring the sight of all this silver, all these pleasures, until Glutton, the cat, appeared from nowhere, attracted by her incredible radar, to leap in one swift movement onto the bed. She was a beautiful cat and would have fit in nicely with the scene, but her eyes were clearly on the cheese, and weird cat that she was, she probably would have nibbled on the chocolate, too. Suzanna grabbed her up, tossed her out into the hall, and shut the bedroom door.

I’m ordinary, Suzanna thought, just a schoolteacher in a tiny New England town. I’ll never shape the world, I’ll never have glamour or drama or fortune or fame. I’m verging on chubbiness and middle age, and someday Fate will crush me just like it’s crushing poor Wilbur Wilson. But I can make this day special. If only for today, I can be the happiest person in the world.

She stripped off her church clothes and hung them up, instead of tossing them over her chair as she often did, then took out her white terry-cloth robe and went to the bathroom. She showered, powdered, and perfumed herself, looked at herself in the mirror. But the habit of being critical, even demeaning, about her own body was too strong within her, so she wrapped her robe around her body and thanked heaven that
Madeline saw her with different eyes.

The doorbell rang then: Madeline. She came in, wearing jeans, a beige knit shirt that looked very much like a waffled undershirt, and a blue down vest.

“Well,” she said, eyeing Suzanna in her robe. “Look at you!”

“I told you,” Suzanna said. “The children will be gone for four hours. Let’s go upstairs.” Out of force of habit, she locked the front door, and after they had climbed the stairs and entered the bedroom, she locked that door, too.

“Well,” Madeline said again, when she saw the silvery bed, the champagne, the tray of fruit and chocolate. “Look at all this. What a treat, Suzanna!” She turned to embrace her.

“Let’s get in bed,” Suzanna said. “I want to talk to you seriously.”

“Shall we take our clothes off?”

“Of course.”

But when they were finally settled, naked, sitting cross-legged, sipping their champagne in the middle of the bed, Suzanna realized she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate. She could never look at Madeline’s naked body without wanting to touch her.

“Oh, dear,” she said to Madeline. “I was wrong. We’d better put on some robes at least. I really do want to
talk
to you.”

Madeline rose from the bed then, and Suzanna thought that she was going to get a robe, but instead she turned, took the silver platter from the bed with one hand, and Suzanna’s champagne glass from her with the other, and set them on the table. Then she came back to the bed and knelt down just behind Suzanna, and lifted Suzanna’s hair, and spoke whispering against her neck.

“We can
talk
later,” Madeline said. “We can
talk
over the telephone. We can
talk
when your children get home.” As she spoke, she ran her hands lightly down Suzanna’s shoulders, back, neck, arms, and finally, so lightly, around and over her breasts.

“Yes,” Suzanna said. “Yes. All right.” She sat perfectly still, all her senses alert, receptive, as Madeline dallied her long slender fingers slowly over Suzanna’s skin. They had done this before, they had teased each other’s bodies awake, but rarely with such elegant restraint. Madeline would not let Suzanna turn to embrace her. She stayed behind her, sliding her tongue down Suzanna’s spine, nibbling at her shoulder blades, her hips, her back, all the while moving her fingers gently over Suzanna’s breasts and waist, until
finally Suzanna was too weak to sit, and sighing, “Madeline,” she slid downward on the bed. Madeline very slowly kissed and touched Suzanna, as if she were designing her body, each limb and finger, each rise and fall of flesh. Pleasure swirled in Suzanna’s body, just beneath her skin; pleasure beat in Suzanna’s blood and throbbed at the pulse in her neck, the pulse in her groin. Still Madeline kissed, licked, touched, all in a sliding motion, up and down Suzanna’s body, until Suzanna felt pleasure flowing in her like a liquid, curving through her limbs as if she were a riverbed and pleasure were the river, eddying and building and rushing through the channels of her body, until it stopped in desperation to pound and billow, caught, blocked, between her legs. She was hot, moist, frantic. “Madeline,
please
,” she said, and before her eyes closed, she saw Madeline’s smile. At last Madeline put her hand between Suzanna’s legs, and her mouth on Suzanna’s breast, and slid her long cool body against Suzanna’s, and with the elegant expertise of a locksmith, she fiddled, turned, slid, and thrust her fingers until the lock of Suzanna’s body opened and the floodgates of her pleasure surged full and burst. Suzanna was carried away in pleasure.