Keeping Secrets (33 page)

“What?”

“I said I’d love to go.” Emma pulled a T-shirt over her head, slipped into bed and turned out her light.

* * *

Caroline’s apartment was exactly what Emma had expected. Everything was very neat, in straight lines, her furniture a mix of black lacquer and light bleached oak. She did indeed paint—large floral watercolors. They weren’t bad, Emma thought. They weren’t good. Her children were five and seven, a girl and a boy, well behaved and beautiful like little windup toys.

But Caroline wasn’t beautiful today. She wasn’t even pretty. The mercurial quality Emma had spotted on the Fourth had landed wrong side up. Caroline looked as though she’d been run over by a truck. Her hair was drab and lifeless, her face was pale, except beneath her eyes where there were liver-colored spots. She wore a limp pink Indian cotton dress. Pink was not her color.

She smiled as she presented them with the piece of mirror that she had prettily gift-wrapped. But she couldn’t seem to think of anything to say. She managed her hostess duties, pouring tea for them into tiny cups. And she’d made little almond cakes. But nothing came together. Time hung there—a suspended afternoon.

Little fits and starts of chatter fizzled, then died out. From the children’s room came the drone of a television, a sound Emma detested, but welcomed now, as it filled the vacuum in the living room. Jesse, never good at small talk, sat staring at Caroline with a puzzled expression. Did your bubble of fantasy pop, my dear? his wife wondered to herself. Finally she took pity on all of them and opened her mouth.

“Didn’t you want to talk to Jesse about art?”

“Oh, yes.” Caroline brightened a little. And Jesse picked up the ball. He gave her a mini-lecture, telling her all he knew about art programs, advising that she call San Jose State, maybe talk with Clifton. He was as helpful as he could be.

Emma sat back and watched. There was something very strange about this woman. Very strange indeed.

“What do you think
that
was all about?” she asked as they headed afterward into Menlo Park for cheeseburgers at the Oasis, where once, like thousands of other couples, they’d carved their names in a wooden picnic table.

“Maybe she’s depressed about Rupert.”

“What about Rupert?”

“He dropped her. He’s moved on.”

Emma remembered Caroline’s saying she wouldn’t take Rupert from Lowie. Who had dropped whom?

“Moved on? Does Rupert screw around a lot? Does Lowie know?”

“I doubt it. Which question am I answering? Who knows?”

“Jesse, I haven’t talked with you about this because…” She paused. “But I feel insulted that Rupert thinks he can bring his girlfriends over to my house.”

“
Your
house?”

“Okay,
our
house. But Lowie is our friend. I like her. How am I supposed to act the next time she comes over with Rupert when I know he’s screwing another woman?”

“How do you know he was screwing her?”

“Come on, Jesse. Please.”

“It’s none of our business.” And as if that would end the conversation, Jesse gulped the rest of his beer and slapped his mug down.

“Rupert makes it our business when he drags his stuff into our house.”

“
Stuff
? Where do you learn words like that?”

“His piece. His honey. His cunt. What do you want me to call her?”

“
Whoa
. A little while ago you were being nice to her and now you’re coming down on her like she’s a whore.”

“Well?”

“She’s not a whore, Emma. She’s a perfectly nice woman with two kids who’s probably lonely.”

“Well, let her be lonely somewhere else.”

“Jesus Christ. You don’t have to make such a big production of it. Forget it, okay? It’s over.”

* * *

But it wasn’t. Because a week later Caroline called again. This time Emma was even less friendly on the phone. But it didn’t seem to matter. Caroline got straight to the point.

“Hello, may I speak to Jesse?”

Hello? What am I, some sort of answering service? Emma wondered.

“Yes?” Jesse said. This time he was home.

Emma sat and listened to his side of the conversation, imagining the other half, hearing Caroline’s breathy little voice that sounded as if she’d only just escaped from a boogeyman that very minute.

“Well, I guess I could. Where are the catalogues from?

“No, some programs are better than others. It
is
something you want to take a close look at.” Pause. “I don’t know. I’ll have to check my schedule. I have your number. I’ll give you a call.”

“She wants help picking out a school,” he said, looking Emma straight in the eye. Too straight, she thought. Guileless people don’t look at you like that.

“So I gathered. Does she think you’re her guidance counselor?”

“Emma, you don’t have to be so ungenerous. Just because you got all the breaks.”

“Breaks? Breaks? Tell me about all my breaks.”

“It’s hard when you’re alone with two little kids.”

“
I
didn’t tell her to have them.”

“What are you being so hysterical about?”

Emma thought about that for a minute. Was she overreacting? Was she imagining things? She turned back to the jeans she’d been ironing for Jesse before she answered the phone, fingered a thin place. She should put a patch there. How many times had she washed and ironed this same pair of jeans?

She ran her finger down the zipper. She still loved the preliminaries, watching Jesse unbuckling his belt, unzipping his fly. And then something disconnected. When he reached for her, it was as if she were watching a porno flick and suddenly the bulb blew out. The film kept going, but she couldn’t see the picture.

Maybe she ought to face it. Maybe she didn’t really want him anymore. But if she didn’t, what did she want? Did she want to be alone again, free to flit from man to man like a hummingbird?

She flipped his jeans over. On the back pocket was a heart she had embroidered their first year together in red satin stitches. In yellow she’d done the words “Jesse + Emma.” Fancywork was the only kind of sewing Rosalie had ever been able to teach her when she was a girl. Nothing practical, like dressmaking, Rosalie had sighed.

“Jesse,” she began, not knowing what her next words would be.

“Yes?”

She looked into his face, now soft and open. His irritation was gone. She put the iron down, reached across the ironing board and ran one finger across his cheek. He looked so sad, poor little boy.

Want me, Emma, he was thinking. Want me the way I want you. Let me get inside you—the only way I know to touch you anymore. Hold me in your arms and save me from myself, from women like Caroline who whisper sweet words to me on the phone.

Emma smiled. “What are you doing this morning?”

“What I always do. Going up to Skytop.”

“What are you doing right this minute?”

“Nothing. Talking to you. What do you mean?”

She switched the iron to off: “Come with me,” she said and took his hand. “I want to show you something.”

In the next room she pushed him slowly back on the bed.

“No, sit up,” she said. She hadn’t meant for him to recline completely. She plumped two pillows behind his shoulders, leaned over and kissed him, softly, with just a slip of her tongue between his lips. He reached for her. “No,” she said. “Don’t move. Let me do this.”

She turned and opened her chest of drawers and took out something, using her body as a shield so he couldn’t see, then left the room.

She was only a few minutes in the bath, slipping quickly in and out of her clothes. Returning through the living room, she dropped a record on the stereo, rummaged through the little brass box on the coffee table until she found a joint. She lighted it, took a deep drag and, as she glided back into the bedroom, handed it to him.

He laughed in mock protest. “Emma, we can’t smoke dope before noon.”

“It’s our house, and we’re consenting adults,” she said. “We can do anything we’re big enough to.”

Jesse took a hit, held in the smoke, and grinned as he heard the first strains of Jim Morrison from the living room. Emma had placed the stylus on the cut “Back Door Man,” the sexiest song she knew. She’d seen The Doors once in New York, Morrison in his black leather pants. She closed her eyes now, standing at the edge of the bed, swaying in time to the music, thinking of Morrison, listening to him sing about unnatural acts.

She slowly began to unbutton her blouse.

“Here, let me help you with that.”

“No.” She gently brushed his hand away. “I can do it by myself.” Still her eyes were closed. “Watch,” she whispered.

As he saw the first lacy edge of black, Jesse made a sound deep in his throat. For Emma had donned the underwear he’d bought her once on a trip to San Francisco. They’d been standing in a sexual novelty store on Broadway, laughing together, fingering the goods.

“You’d look great in this.” He’d held up the tiny strips of black lace.

“Don’t be silly.”

“No, you would.”

Emma had recoiled a little at the thought. She didn’t need props. But what the hell?

He’d been at the counter paying for the lingerie when a drunk Greek sailor approached him. The sailor looked back over at Emma, who was flipping through a magazine, and asked in broken English, “How much?”

“I don’t work here.”

“No, the girl, how much?”

Emma looked up. Then it dawned on both her and Jesse simultaneously. A black man and a white woman in a porno shop—the man thought Jesse was her pimp.

“A thousand dollars,” Jesse answered, and over the man’s head he winked at her.

“No!”

“Yes!”

“She must be something pretty good.”

Jesse grinned now, remembering that night and the words he’d said. He repeated them now: “She’s the best.”

Emma slowly dropped her blouse to the floor. The wisps of black lace barely covered her small breasts.

“More, more.” Jesse clapped his hands.

Emma played with the zipper of her jeans, released it slowly, wiggled out of her pants. Morrison was still singing in his bad-boy voice. Behind her closed eyes she watched him drop his black leather trousers on a stage.

Now she leaned across Jesse, slowly trailed the length of her blonde hair across his face.

“Your turn,” she said, pulling him up till they stood together against the edge of the bed. She loved that feeling, of being almost nude against a body fully clothed. She felt him hard behind his zipper, through his jeans.

The rest was slow and gentle, Emma whispering, “No, baby, let me, here, let me show you, come to Momma, there,” lifting her head for a moment, “now, doesn’t that feel good?”

For the first time in a long while, Jesse let her lead the dance, followed her shifting rhythms.

Behind her closed eyes, Jim Morrison pulled her onto the stage and the crowd screamed. Emma screamed, too.

“I think you woke up the dog,” Jesse laughed.

Emma dragged most of herself back into the room.

“What do you mean?” she asked. Her voice was still far far away.

“He’s scratching at the front door.”

Emma giggled. “Do you think I woke up the whole canyon?”

“Most of them aren’t still in bed at this hour on a Monday morning.” His voice too was languid with lust and the laziness of marijuana.

The sound at the door continued.

“Jesse, I don’t think that’s Elmer. I think someone’s knocking.”

“Hell, let ’em, they’ll go away.”

“Is anybody home? I need some help,” a man’s voice called.

“Stay there,” Emma said. “I’ll get it.” She grabbed her terry-cloth robe.

When she opened the door and saw the man standing there, tall, with wavy white-blond hair almost to his shoulders, she started. For at first glance she thought it was her long ago Atlanta lover Will. His eyes were the same sea-foam green. This man’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he looked down into hers.

“I’m awfully sorry to trouble you,” he said, shifting from one blue-jeaned leg to the other. “I’m your new neighbor up at the top of the hill.”

He wasn’t Will. Of course he wasn’t. The voice was different. “The Bradley place?” she said.

“Yes,” he said and smiled, showing a gap between his two front teeth. “I’m sorry as hell, but I seem to have run my van off in the ditch in front of your place. I’m stuck.”

Emma pulled her robe tighter around her. “No problem. Let me get my husband.
Jesse,”
she called.

Fifteen minutes later Jesse was back in bed. Emma, naked again under the covers, handed him a cup of just-brewed coffee.

“You got him out of the ditch?”

“Yeah. We lifted the sucker out.”

“You lifted his van?”

“Sure, have you forgotten that when he’s stoned your old man has superhuman strength? Here. Let me show you.” Jesse jumped out of bed and pulled Emma to her feet. He tossed her above his head and twirled her around.