Keeping Secrets (3 page)

Lie, lie like a rug, she said to herself. Don’t admit a thing until you see how far he’s caught you out.

He laughed. It was a very nasty sound, the laugh that boiled up out of him when he was angry. She had never believed the laugh before, had thought it a stagey bit of business, his James Earl Jones in
The Great White Hope
routine. But this time she was a believer. He’d scare her pants off, if she were wearing any.

“Don’t play coy with me, you whore,” he snarled, and then he pulled himself out of her so quickly it was like a slap in reverse.

Before she could move away, he grabbed her and flipped her over. Her hands scrabbled to hold on to the side of the bed. He held one hand on the back of her neck, shoved her face deep into the pillow. The other hand was beneath her belly, lifting her up. He plunged into her again.

“Jesse, stop! I don’t want to!”

“I don’t give a shit what you want. What you want is that prick Tony, isn’t it?” He punctuated each phrase with his cock.

Who the hell was he talking about? Tony Boccia, the restaurateur who’d hired her to cook in his kitchen from time to time, who’d helped arrange her cooking abroad, was a beautiful and charming man, but was also as queer as they come. She almost wanted to laugh. Jesse, oh Jesse, how could you be so wrong? I told you you should have met him.

He was still pumping. She’d never felt him this hard before. She was going to die before he came.

“Do you think I’m a fool?” Behind her his voice was ice. “Did you think you could flaunt it in my face and I’d never know?”

He slid a hand up under her, searching for a nipple he found, and squeezed.

“Jesse!” she grimaced.

His mouth was on her ear. “Don’t you like it, my precious? A little pain? You could have used a bit of this years ago.”

Was that true? She felt dizzy, sick to her stomach. The tub, the warm bubbles, the slow stroking, the excitement, the aphrodisiac of guilt, the fear, the pain: she wasn’t sure where one left off and another began.

“I never slept with Tony.” Her words slurred against the pillow.

He ripped himself out of her once more and flipped her over again, slamming his body down flat atop hers. His face was inches away. On her wrists, his hands were steel bands.

The question came slowly, his beautiful voice insinuating, coaxing, almost sexy, almost to the end. “Well, if you didn’t fuck Tony and you didn’t fuck me, and I know
damn
well I haven’t been getting any,
then who the hell were you fucking this weekend?
”

His gaze drilled hers. Did he think if he looked hard enough he could read the answer printed in scarlet letters on her brain?

“Answer me.” He shook her wrists, and her hands flapped as if she were a chicken. “If not Boccia, then who?”

Emma had thought about the possibility of this moment for months now. She had carefully turned it this way and that as if it were a miniature, like the tiny moment frozen on the cameo she wore on a gold chain around her neck. And she had decided that when the moment came,
if
the moment came, she’d never say her lover’s name. No matter what, she’d lie. No matter whether Jesse thought it was Tony while the correct answer lay, probably still sleeping now, right up the hill.

“
Nobody
, that’s who.” Emma spat out the words while she screwed her eyes shut to hide their lie.

Jesse collapsed then. All the air sputtered out of him as if he were a great dirigible and her words had perforated his silver skin. He let go of her wrists, rolled off her and flopped over on his back.

“You make me crazy, do you know that?” His voice was weary. It sounded as if it came from far, far away. “You never fight fair, Em.”

“What’s fair?” she spat. “That you have a lover and so you wish I did, too? Would that make you feel better?”

Besides, I fight any way I can, she thought. And now I’m going to run while I can still get out of here.

She sat up slowly, testing the waters. Jesse didn’t move.

She edged off the bed and gingerly stood as if she expected the floor to slip away. Her robe was hanging on the doorknob.

Jesse rolled his great bearlike head and looked at her. “Where are you going?”

“To make some coffee.”

He sighed, but he didn’t move to stop her. His head rolled back and he stared at the ceiling.

Then she got while the getting was good.

Standing in the kitchen now, Emma carefully ground, then measured French dark roast coffee into a paper filter and poured boiling water over it. There was no sense in depriving herself of a good cup of coffee, she thought, just because her marriage was crumbling into ruins.

Jesse stepped into the room. He leaned against the countertop. “Em, I’m not letting this go. You have to tell me what you’ve been doing.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything, my man.” She was sloshing hot water now in her growing anger. He’d been cheating on her for months now. Who the hell did he think he was?

“Tell me!” The escalation was quick. Again Jesse was approaching fury, hot rage this time, different from his bedroom ice.

“Why? You want to swap war stories? You want me to tell you all about my lover, Jesse, and you’ll tell me what you and that tramp do in bed? Want to compare notes?”

At that Jesse slammed down his empty coffee mug so hard that it shattered, leaving only the handle on his forefinger.

“Leave Caroline out of this!”

“Why? Doesn’t she count? I mean, I know she’s not much, but we ought to at least consider her in the game.”

And then she stepped back. Both lightning and tears flashed in Jesse’s eyes. Oh, the histrionics, Emma thought. Talk about who doesn’t play fair.

Hot and cold, cold and hot, Jesse’s voice now came from an underground cave. “Caroline counts all right. She keeps me sane. If it weren’t for her I’d have gone crazy already, living with you!”

Emma leaned her chin into the cup of one hand and smiled. It was not a very nice smile.

“Does she like to do it every day, Jesse? Or does she fake the desire—” and now her voice began to rise as she lost control— “does she fake it like anybody would have to to keep you happy, keep you feeling like a man?”

“Fuck you, Emma!” And his hand, empty now, slammed again on the counter. Veins stood out on his neck. He had never hit her. He had never laid a finger on her. Yet she wondered if this time maybe she hadn’t gone too far.

But his explosion had given him a little distance. Just enough to grasp again the real, real for him at least, issue at hand.

He plopped down heavily on a stool. “But we’re not talking about me here, my lovely. What we’re talking about is
you
. And where you really spent this past weekend.”

Emma’s heart hesitated and her blood pooled. Keep it going, she said to herself. And keep it simple.

“You know where I was—with Maria and Clifton.”

“Yes.” The
s
hissed like a snake. Ah.
Now
he was closing in for the kill.

“Yes. That’s true. Almost. But I called yesterday noon, and Clifton fumbled around, then said you had already left. Six hours before you got home.” He dangled the next words slowly, as if
he
were the one with the secret. “What did you do with those six hours, Emma? Hmmmmmm? Or were you ever really there at all?”

How could she have been so careless? But she’d been furious when she left for the weekend with her lover, so angry she had grabbed at any story as if it were a sweater, a last-minute afterthought. She should have known Clifton would never get it right. After all, Clifton was
Jesse’s
friend. Well, it didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she be nimble, that she be quick. You can do it, Emma, you can tap-dance. You can dazzle him with the flashy spangles of your virtuosity as you lie through your teeth.

“I drove. I cruised around the hills. I picked up two sixteen-year-old boys and fucked them silly. It’s none of your damn business what I did.”

* * *

What she did. What she really did. Even as she said those words, she warmed inside, she tingled, just as she did under her lover’s stroking fingers.

She could lie forever in his arms on that boat bouncing out in the blue Pacific. He waited for her there, his patience endless, he had waited and taken her for a ride, out across the waves, out toward the sunset, out beyond the three-mile limit. Away from the pain of Jesse and his Caroline.

But no, that wasn’t right. Or was it? Was Jesse right when he said that Caroline was just a symptom? That he hadn’t stopped loving Emma, that she had pushed him away, that she’d never really wanted him?

“You let me get this close, Emma.” He had held up a thumb and forefinger, almost touching, but you could see light between them. “But never any closer. Do you think I’m going to steal your soul? Find out all your secrets and then run away?”

“I don’t have any secrets,” she’d said.

“I think you’re the biggest secret of all, Emma, from yourself. A goddamned mystery. You don’t know what the fuck you want. Or you do, and you lie about it.”

“You think
fucking
means being close, Jesse?”‘

For, even when he was angry with her, cold and distant, even after Caroline, he still demanded her flesh, all too often, as if coupling meant coupled.

“You never get it, do you, Emma? I still love you. Fucking you is the only way I have of getting inside you anymore.”

“No, that’s the only way you can control me anymore—with your dick.”

It was different with her lover. In his arms, it just flowed, she was free.

But Emma, a voice whispered, it isn’t for real, is it? He’s not free, you’re not free. You
can’t
be tied together. Or is that the real freedom?

* * *

“Oh yes, it is my business,” Jesse was saying, pulling her mind back into the kitchen. The rain was still pounding outside. It poured off the redwoods onto the deck like torrents of mountain tears. “It is most definitely my business and you’re going to tell me.” She could feel his breath on her face.

The coffee had dripped through. She reached for a mug and poured herself a cup. She stared at her hand, waiting for it to shake. It didn’t.

“I went for a long drive, Jesse. I wanted to think. Now, that’s the truth, and that’s the end of this stupid conversation.”

If he ground them any harder, she thought, his front teeth were going to snap.

“Then get out.”

She turned from the refrigerator, where she was looking for the cream.

“I beg your pardon.”

“I said get out.”

“Get out where, Jesse? Where would you have me go?” Her words were slow and deliberate, her blue eyes cool as a High Sierra lake. She stared at him until his gaze broke. Then his body followed, crumbling bit by bit like a china doll that had been dropped. He leaned forward as if his stomach hurt, his chin tucked. His right arm and leg pumped in unison, knee toward elbow. Tears poured down his face like the rain rivuletting on the kitchen windows. This didn’t look like acting anymore. This was for real, for, more than anything, though he didn’t know what to do about the mess they’d gotten themselves into, Jesse loved Emma to death.

His voice sounded like breaking glass as he cried, “I can’t stand this anymore!”

Emma stood staring at him for moments that seemed hours long, holding the cream in one hand, her pink-and-blue mug in the other. Everything inside her was stopped. There was a dazzling white quiet in her head.

Then something clicked. Finally, after months of indecision, Emma knew what she was doing.

“Jesse,” her voice so soft he could hardly hear her, “you’re right. I need twenty-four hours. I’ll be gone after coffee tomorrow morning.”

* * *

He stood naked in the doorway, early-morning bleary-eyed, watching as she slammed the trunk of her little blue sedan. Even the rumple of pillow prints on his face couldn’t hide his disbelief.

Had he thought she was joking?

“Where are you going?” he called into the bright air washed fresh by the rains the day before.

“Home.”

“To Louisiana?”

“No, to Alaska. Where do you think?”

“You
hate
it in Louisiana.”

“So what?”

“So why are you going there?”

“You know, Jesse,” she smiled her not-very-nice smile, “one of the nice things about leaving is that we don’t have to have these stupid conversations anymore.”

At that he turned on his heel with as much dignity as his nakedness would allow and slammed the door behind him.

She was almost out of the driveway when he reappeared, partially covered by his robe, followed by Elmer, their collie. Emma’s heart lurched. No problem leaving Jesse, she thought, but you’re sure as hell going to miss the dog.

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know,” she called over the revving engine.

“You’d better be back in time for dinner.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

She stepped on the gas and was gone.

The miles had flown by. Leaving California was easy, zipping down Highway 5, the straight six-lane north-south red line through the middle of the state. There was nothing to see and nothing to do but drive.