Elena Undone (23 page)

“It doesn’t make me selfish? Unloving?”

“It makes you sane.” Elena assured her friend.

Diana stared at her squarely. “What...what’s going on with you? You seem...so different.”

Elena considered a moment. “I…I’m happy.”

Diana created an uncertain smile for her friend. “Well, Barry is far more understanding than Rich. You’re very lucky that way.”

The smile slid from Elena’s face. She nodded bleakly.

*

Back and forth Elena’s emotions went all afternoon and into the evening. She would live in a cloud of bliss, remembering the day before, replaying Peyton’s lips against her own, remembering the touch, taste, smell and feel of her, and with every recall, her body would surge with electric desire. She had never felt so little control over anything, the suddenness and intensity of the physical clamoring in her body—and just as suddenly those feelings would be dampened by her actually being in her day, picking up the dry cleaning, shopping for dinner, cooking dinner, half here, half there as somewhere in the background Nash and Tori attended to their homework, and she felt their presence as she always had but now it felt like two worlds overlaying one another.

As Elena was cooking dinner, she was planning the schedule in her head for the next couple of days and trying to find brilliant ways in which she could maneuver blocks of time around where she and Peyton could spend more than an hour at a time together.

“Mom, I said we needed green markers,” Nash lamented. “This set has every color BUT green!”

“Can it possibly make that much difference?” Elena asked.

“It’s a project about the green movement—ya think?”

“Nash!”
Tori called him out on his boorish teen behavior.

“Sorry, Mom. It’s just I told you right before you went to the store yesterday that this set didn’t have green.”

It was true. He had. But Elena hadn’t gone back to return the set, as she would have once so dutifully done, as possibly the first errand she would run for the day—to get ones that had green markers—because she had been wrapped in Peyton’s arms, kissing her, living inside her and everything else had completely vanished from her mind.

Barry walked in with three of the church congregants, whom he pointed on toward the living room. Elena frowned. Barry hadn’t told her he was bringing company and she was trying to figure out how to leave the house—so that she could see Peyton, feel Peyton…feel those lips against her own again, even if only for" w if onl minutes. She blushed, then shook her head.

“Hey, sorry, El,” Barry responded to her crestfallen face. “I tried to call you earlier.”

“I...I was actually going to go out tonight...”

“…but you didn’t pick up,” he ignored her words. “It’s three more for dinner.”

“...This project just proves how abject consumerism is total whack.” Feeling the tension Nash hunched over his project and Tori began one of her rambles. “—it’s like the more we have all this stuff, the less inside it we are.”

Elena attempted to speak through Tori’s chattering, “I don’t have enough for everyone. Can’t you just go out or order pizza?”

“I don’t think so.” Barry was looking a little peeved.

“—All kinds of food without fat, dessert without sugar, flavor—”

“Barry really—”

“—Our beliefs are without conviction—”

“It’s the board members. I’m not serving pizza.”

“—And who wants to read a book without pages?”

“Just defrost something please. We can wait. This is important, Elena.”

“—Commitment without honor.”

That stopped both Elena and Barry. They glanced from Tori back to each other.

“Can you just please…” Barry pleaded.

Elena shrugged. Of course she would. Didn’t she always?

Barry ruffled Tori’s hair. “Girls without manners.” Now that he had his way he was in a better mood, and walked over to Elena and kissed her quickly on the cheek. “Guests without dinner.”

“I just said I would do it!” Elena snapped. All three of them turned to her.

“I was just kidding, El!” Barry shook his head at the kids like,
What’s up with her?
then exited.

“It’s like we’re the antithesis society,” Tori pondered sadly. “Doesn’t it strike you as the ultimate contradiction that we have ALL this stuff that is full of nothing?”

Elena felt them all, knew exactly where they sat, exactly what expressions would be on their faces. She knew precisely how Nash would turn to Tori now and remark, “Stop already. I get the point.” He knew that Tori would return an adoring gaze and respond, notnd resp“Just sayin’,” and she knew that Barry would be enthroned on the La-Z-Boy as the congregants all sat staring at him with utter admiration from the couch. She knew it all. All of it she knew and she was sick of it. But she had no choice but to simply forge ahead, and she rotely pulled out steaks from the freezer. This was her life. How had she thought for a moment it was anything else?

*

The next afternoon Elena showed up again at Peyton’s door, unexpectedly.

“Look, I literally only have fifteen minutes. I just…I just…” Elena moved inside the door and boldly kissed Peyton. “I just had to see you…”

Elena practically slammed Peyton against the wall, attacking, her lips bruising, aggressive, her hunger undeniable. And just like that, as quickly as they had become engulfed, they had to part.

“Ohhh, God,” Peyton hissed, calming herself down.

“I’m sorry, Peyton…” Elena smiled sweetly at her. “I’m sorry—I know I should have called, but I was on my way to pick up the dry cleaning and I missed you so much. I miss you, Peyton, every minute I’m not with you.”

Peyton smiled grimly, but nodded. “I know.”

“Okay, then.” Elena kissed her again. “I…I’ve got to run. But I’ll call you later. Tonight.”

Elena left as quickly as she had arrived and Peyton felt her head begin to buzz.

*

“Hey it’s me…” It was around seven that night, and Elena’s voice on the phone to Peyton was bubbling over. “I’m free.”

Elena had walked into the house from finishing errands in record time and saw the note from Barry and the kids on the frig:
Gone to the movies—see you later, love Barry.

Elena, who had been a whirling dervish trying to find any conceivable way to get out of the house, could not believe her good fortune. She put on her makeup, took a quick survey in the mirror, called Peyton to alert her this time, and just as she was heading out the door, Barry, Nash and Tori all plowed in.

“Hey Mom.” Nash gave his mom a quick hug. “I’m starvin’.”

“I–I thought you were all going to the movies?” Elena heard the strain in her voice.

“We missed you too much!” Tori giggled.

“It was sold out...Mom can we have burgers?”

Barry brushed her ch>

Elena felt stunned as her life hit her full-on and knew she was going to have to call to cancel Peyton.

*

I once was lost, but now I am found

Was blind, but now I see

The head of the Holy Light’s chorus had just finished a beautiful a cappella of the song.

“Yes, now
I
see...” Barry nicely tied in as he stood tall and noble at the altar. “Yes, I see...but only because God’s love heals and allows me to see the sin within myself, to purge the temptations, the desires that are the devil’s work…”

Elena sat in the pew, thinking of her, thrilled at the prospect of seeing her in a few short hours. She had actually been able to carve out the entire afternoon and early evening for them to spend together, and getting to that moment was almost more than she could bear, so until the time when she could actually see her, she found herself thinking about her. Obsessively.

Never had she had these feelings, feelings that rushed over and through her like a brushfire, scorching one way, rippling with intensity the next, unstoppable, inextinguishable. Thinking of her skin, her lips, her eyes, how the touch of her sent a torrent of pleasure through her, how nothing in the world could have prepared her for the feelings that seemed to just involuntarily happen to her body the moment she was near her, how she wanted to feel her skin, lay her skin upon Peyton’s skin. Swallowing hard, feeling the tingling pressure between her legs, another new sensation Elena had never ever experienced in her life. That her body had a mind of its own, swollen with feeling that ached every moment for expression—

“…And only with God’s love...God’s glorious love do we become whole. Pure... Reborn. How many of us want to push those terrible urges from within us, those base human impulses, those craven desires of the flesh…”

Elena bolted upright. The words burned in her mind. She felt naked, as if every parishioner could see her body was this heathenous monster that Barry spoke of…as if somehow Barry were channeling her every thought in his sermon— “...that push us to do things we know are wrong...God, help us to force the evil from within... Let us pray for God’s guidance in moving beyond these desires that only lead to self loathing, that truly are not in our best interest...”

Elena swallowed hard, crossed her legs, felt the flame on her cheeks, felt Tori and Nash staring at her. She began to fidget, tapped her feet. Would this sermon never end?

Peyton paced about anxiously, then sat and reviewed the papers before her.

“Stop, stop, stop…” she whispered as she collected herself and carefully and deliberately made herself attend heiself atto the task at hand, organizing the photos from the archives to share with Elena.

“Stop, stop, stop…” Because if they just really focused on work, Peyton knew she could keep herself from straying, keep herself from wanting to ravish this woman who had come into her life like a thundering freight train.

“Stop, stop, stop…” All she had to do was just stay true to the work. She had amazing abilities to concentrate and become laser focused. That was one of the side effects of her OCD…she just needed to really tap into it.

Knock knock knock.

Elena stood at the door.

*

Seated on opposite ends of the couch in Peyton’s living room, they both glanced at an array of archival photos from the June Mazer collection; with everyone from Gloria Steinem to Peyton’s favorite mystery writer, Katherine V. Forrest. All the photos lay spread into varying categories of interest on the coffee table.

“I really love this one,” Peyton suggested, focused on the photos, really concentrating on keeping on task. “You know these women gold miners—pioneers—no one ever talks about them. But look at the camaraderie—”

Peyton showed Elena the photo. Elena looked at it briefly, nodded.

Peyton’s eyes caught Elena’s but she literally could not meet the intensity of their gaze. Ever since Elena had walked into the house, and kissed her with strength of purpose, Peyton had pushed back. She couldn’t allow herself to feel much more; if she did they were both going to go down a road for which neither of them were ready. She said to Elena, “It’s just so…well, I don’t know, shows a woman in a man’s world, just as rough and tumble…I just….well, I love it.”

“Hmmm,” Elena responded, because at the moment she could care less about any of these photos. She could only feel her body, driving, hungry, intent, as she watched Peyton, the real Peyton so much better than in her imagination.

“And this one...” Peyton picked up another photo, and then realized there was one missing that she really had wanted to share with Elena and dug through several stacks. “Oh…here it is.”

She turned to Elena but Elena wasn’t looking at the photo. She was looking straight into her.

“Make love to me, Peyton,” Elena said without a quiver of doubt.

Peyton’s heart dropped to her stomach. Her mouth went dry.

“I thought…” Peyton let out a deep sigh, forced herself to look back at Elena who sat in a stillness of waiting. “I thought you wanted to wait—to see if—”

“Peyton, make love to me.”

The air between them crackled.

“I...I...I want to, Elena, believe me...but once we go there...there is no going back.”

Elena saw the fear in Peyton’s face. She very slowly, and very deliberately picked up the file that lay between them on the couch. She tossed it to the floor, and slid herself up close to Peyton, her lips a breath away. In her eyes lived a force of certainty that helped to calm Peyton.

Elena said slowly, evenly, “I don’t want to go back.”

Elena took Peyton’s hand, led her to the bedroom. As she closed the door, she realized she had no earthly idea what to do.

Peyton moved to Elena, trembling as she touched the beautiful woman before her, more nervous with desire than Elena, who was transfixed, taking it all in, like a grateful child. No nerves, simply an unyielding certainty and readiness to indulge in an exquisite new experience.

Peyton slowly began to undress Elena, her fingers nervously awkward until Elena bent to kiss them, one at a time, and then both of them removed the remainder of their clothing with swift dispatch.