Deceptions (30 page)

'Tennis is what you need,' said Nat Goldner, startling him out of his thoughts. 'Anything that furrows the brow so menacingly can be exorcised only by demolishing a ball or an opponent. I offer myself. Unless you'd rather talk.'

'No, I'd rather demolish something. Good idea.'

They were equally matched and played a fast game. After an hour Garth began to relax. Nat was admiring. 'Good game. One of our best. Just think what we might have done

if I'd been as furious as you. Do you have time for a second breakfast?'

'Lots of time; no classes today. But I want to get to the lab by ten.'

At the Faculty Club, a Victorian frame house near the campus, they sat beside a bay window overlooking the lake. A freighter was on the horizon, riding low in the water. 'Loaded with cargo,' Nat said, attacking his eggs Benedict. 'Coal for the coming winter. Hard to believe in winter on a day like this. How is Stephanie?'

Garth spread butter on his rye toast. 'She's fine.'

*No aches or pains or megrims?'

Garth looked up. 'An old-fashioned word from a modem doctor.'

'I like it. How else would I describe, in one word, depressed and irritable, with erratic behavior?'

'From just a broken wrist?'

'From trauma, or shock. Did Stephanie talk to you about the maid Dolores sent over? Juanita?'

'Only that she did a good job - when was it? Day before yesterday, Tuesday. It was good of Dolores to loan her out. Was there something else for her to tell me?'

'According to Dolores, who is quoting Juanita, "That lady certainly know what she want; she give orders like royalty.'"

'Stephanie? Nonsense. She's uncomfortable ordering anyone around.'

'I'm only quoting Dolores.*

'Who is quoting Juanita. Who is probably exaggerating.*

'Garth, relax. No one is attacking Stephanie.'

'What else did reliable Juanita say via Dolores?'

'That Stephanie had her lunch on the patio while Juanita ate in the kitchen.'

'So?'

'It seems the women eat with the maids around here. I never knew that, but I'm never home.'

'Why should they eat together?'

'How do I know? Maybe the women want their maids to feel loved. Anyway, Stephanie didn't do it.'

'She's not used to having a maid.*

'Okay, I told you, I'm not attacking her. But, as her doctor, I ought to know about it if she's not acting like herself. She had one hell of a crack on the head, Garth, and she was frightened by it. Sometimes the fear lingers; patients think they're seriously hurt and the doctor is lying to them, having secret conferences with their family. All of which can make them act in tense, enatic, unpredictable ways. We can't deal with that if we don't know about it. So, does she?'

Garth left his toast unfinished and poured a second cup of coffee. 'No. She says her bruises hurt, that's all.'

Nat sighed. 'If she did behave like that, it would likely disappear within a short time as she got better.' Garth nodded. 'If you need to talk, anytime, you know where I am.'

'Nat, you're the one I'd come to. I value your sharp eye and your honest tongue. Even more, I value your friendship. And, of course, your tennis. When do our boys have their next soccer game? I forgot to ask Cliff this morning.'

'Tomonow. And next Tuesday ends the season. I don't like the way the coach handles them, but there's not much we can do about it—'

And, talking about their sons and soccer, they finished their coffee and left, looking. Garth thought, like two respectable professors with model families, secure reputations and no problems that couldn't be dealt with by a fast game of tennis and a friendly chat over coffee.

He looked at his reflection in the glass door of his laboratory. Am I that man, he wondered, with that family? How can I be, if I don't imderstand my wife and she can't seem to make up her mind whether to hold our marriage together or tear it apart? Or maybe something is happening te both of us and we are somehow changing - almost as if we are becoming different people.

Qiff dawdled on his way home from school. If Penny got there first, maybe she'd have the breakfast dishes washed before he arrived. He wished Mom would get her cast off so she could do things like she used to; though, come to think of it, he had a funny feeling that maybe she wasn't ever going to do things the way she used to, not exactly. It was kind of

weird, because Mom used to do everything. Now they never knew what she'd do and what she'd tell them to do and what she'd just sort of forget.

But she didn't get mad as much as before. Actually, she didn't pay as much attention to him and Penny as she used to. Sometimes he kind of wished she would. But probably her wrist hurt. Or something.

At least she was cooking again, with Dad's help, which just proved she could do other things, too. It wasn't fair that he had to work in the house after school and soccer practice. Maybe he'd talk to Mom about it; these days she talked to him almost like a grown-up.

*Mom!' he shouted, slamming the screen door and dropping his books in the hving room. He found her in the kitchen sitting on the couch with Penny.

'We're having a private talk!' Penny said.

*You didn't do the dishes.* he growled with a disgusted glance at the sink.

'You're supposed to do them, too.'

*I want to talk to Mom.'

'I'm talking to her.'

'Mom—* Cliff said.

'I could sell tickets,' she suggested. Cliff was confused; he'd expected a scolding for arguing with Penny, but Mom didn't look mad at all; in fact, she looked happy. 'Cliff, how about taking some cookies and milk to the backyard? It'll be your turn in a few minutes.'

Penny watched him maneuver through the door with cookies and milk and a box of pretzels and then turned back to Sabrina. 'The thing is, they make me feel so dumb - and kind of scared.'

'Scared of what?' Sabrina asked.

'What they all talk about. At recess. You know.*

'I'm not sure. What things do they talk about?'

*Well ... oh ... you know ... fucking and screwing and masturbating and—'

'Penny!'

She shrank back. 'I knew you'd be mad. Everybody says you can't talk to your mother. But I didn't know who else to talk to. Barbara's no help; she doesn't know any more than

I do. And I can't ask a teacher - if anybody found out, I'd die!'

Sabrina nodded, remembering. You couldn't go to a teacher; that would betray the conversations of the other girls, and you couldn't ask the other girls because that would give away your ignorance. But Penny could wait a few days, couldn't she? Until Stephanie got home? It was a mother's job, after all. She looked at the embarrassment and worry on Penny's face and knew she could not.

'Hold on a minute.' Sabrina went to the sink and ran a glass of water to gain time. What do I know about young girls? When we were Penny's age we didn't know anything. How come eleven-year-olds are talking about fucking and masturbating? Why aren't they thinking about ice cream sodas and swinmiing lessons?

She came back to the couch. 'Penny, don't you have classes in health or something where you talk about your body and growing up?'

'There's sex ed, but that isn't the problem. All that talk about sperm and eggs and menstruating and venereal disease - everybody knows all that! That's not the problem!*

Sabrina gazed at Penny blankly. 'What is the problem?*

i don't want to do any of it.'

In sixth grade? 'Of course you don't. Why should you? No one has intercourse in sixth grade.'

'But when they talk about it -what boys like best and what it would be like to screw with them - they make me feel dumb, like there's something wrong with me because / don't want to do it! Ever! It sounds awful. I don*t want boys touching me there and sticking their penises in me. But when I said that, these girls laughed at me—*

'Which girls?' Sabrina asked.

'These girls in my class. They're menstruating and they wear bras and you wouldn't buy me one—'

'Well, but Penny,* Sabrina said, looking at her flat chest.

'I know, but in the gym locker room I feel like a baby! And then they whisper and giggle and talk about—'

Sabrina listened, appalled, as Penny*s artless chatter described a generation she knew nothing about. At eleven she and Stephanie had felt daring because they'd run away

from a chauffeur. What did these children have to look forward to if they did everything in grammar school? Would they, at forty, take up hopscotch?

She sighed. It wasn't a joke. Penny was bewildered and forlorn, and looking for help.

'See,' Penny said, *I don't care what they do. I mean, if that's what they want, it's okay, but I'd rather draw or work on puppet costumes or things like that. Does that mean there's something wrong with me? Am I abnormal or something?'

'No,' Sabrina said quietly. 'I think you're the most normal one of all.'

'Really? Normal? Everything I said?'

'Not quite, because when you're older you'll change your mind about wanting to have intercourse—'

'You mean fucking.'

"That's one word for it; it's not mine. I'll tell you why. You know, don't you, that intercourse is also called making love?'

'Oh, sure, everybody knows that.'

•Really? But they prefer to call it fucking. Why do you suppose that is?'

*I don't know. I guess they just like it better.'

'Penny, why is intercourse called making love?'

'Because... you love somebody and you do it.'

'What if you do it with somebody you don't love?'

Penny frowned and then shrugged.

'You see, you can experiment with sex, and if you're lucky and things go well, it feels very good. You can do that with lots of boys and lots of times you'll feel good - like scratching a mosquito bite or eating a big meal when you're hungry. Or you can use sex only when you want to show a very special person how you feel. That's when it's called making love.'

She looked through the window at a climbing rose, heavy with late blooms. 'Making love is a way to show someone that you love him so much you want to be part of him. There are lots of ways to show you like someone: you talk and share private jokes; you smile at each other across a room; you hold hands and spend time together. But intercourse is more than all those things; it's the only way you can be as close to

another person with your body as you can be with your mind.'

Sabrina twined her fingers with Penny's. 'Like this. Thoughts and bodies. And that's when you know you're in love. Do you think those girls in your class know the first thing about this? Or care about it?'

Penny looked at their hands and slowly shook her head.

'Penny, please listen. Wait for this. Whatever others do, don't let them shame you into trying to keep up with them. Don't turn lovemaking into fUcking; don't make it as ordinary as a handshake. Wait until someone is so important in your life, so wonderful and special, that you want to share the things you are and the thingsyou feel in this one way that is like no other way. Intercourse isn't an after-school sport or a way of scratching an itch. Intercourse is a language. Penny; it's using your body to say "I love you." Wait for that. Wait until you find somebody so wonderful you want to tell him you love him with your eyts and your mouth and then with your whole body.'

Meeting Penny's eyes, wide with wonder at her intensity, Sabrina heard the echo of her words. Within her something fell away; she felt empty and desolate. I haven't followed my own advice, I wish —

'But, if it's so good, how come you and Daddy hardly ever doit?'

In the silence. Cliffs ball thumped rhythmically against the side of the house.

'Why do you think we don't?* Sabrina asked.

'Well, he hardly ever sleeps in your room anymore. Does that mean you don't love each other?'

'No,' she said quickly, to smooth this new anxiety from Penny's face. 'Sometimes grown-ups get complicated feelings that aren't easy to explain. They can love each other and still want to be apart now and then ... sort of take a vacation firom each other and think about themselves separately.'

'Is that why you went to China?'

'That was one of the reasons.'

'Lots of kids at school - their parents arc getting divorced.'

'Well, we're not.' Too defensive, she thought, and added more quietly, 'We're not going to. Penny.'

'When you went to China, Cliflf and I thought you were. 'Cause you went alone and Daddy was sad.'

Sabrina put her arms around her and Penny nuzzled her nose against Sabrina's breast. 'I love you. Mommy. Don't go away again.' Sabrina kissed the top of her head - black curly hair, like Garth's - and felt a rush of love and protectiveness she had never known before. Don*t be afraid. Penny. I won't let you be hurt,

'I love you. Penny,' she said.

Outside, the thump of Cliffs ball was like a heartbeat. The thump stopped. 'Hey,' he said, appearing at the door. 'Isn't it my turn?'

I'd like a five-minute break, Sabrina thought, but Cliff was peering through the screen like a refugee. 'Yes, it is. Come on in.'

'Can I stay?' asked Penny.

Sabrina looked at Cliff. 'Is this a private talk?'

'I guess not.' Cliff took the place of his sister, while Penny sat on the floor and began to draw in her sketch pad. 'I... uh.,. it's about working in the house.'

'Yes?' Sabrina smiled at him serenely.

'I don't like it,' he blurted. 'And 1 don't think I should have to do it. I already go to school and practice soccer, and I have homework.*

'Yes?'

'Well... that's three jobs.'

'Two, if you really call them jobs. Student and soccer forward.'

'Well, two. But if I work around here, that's three, and nobody has three jobs.'

'What about me?'

'You? You're just a ... a mother.'

•Just a mother. Well, think about this. I clean house; that makes me a maid - hardly as much fun as soccer. I'm a cook; job number two. I drive you around, so I'm a chauffeur; job number three. I'm a laundress; that's four. A gardener; that's five. I refinish furniture and arrange it, so I'm a decorator, that's six. I'm a hostess for our friends; that's seven. I nurse