Middle Age (47 page)

The first principle of human sanity is to maintain the challenging external life that’s called
social
. What the second principle is, Beatrice wasn’t so certain.

Camille will take in Thor
.
Of course! This all makes sense
.

Through the remainder of the day Beatrice would telephone a succession of women friends to recount for them the fascinating story of her visit to the Hoffmanns’ house. Everyone agreed that Camille was in a state of shock and that they must all be very kind to her. Beatrice was viewed as an angel of mercy. One day perhaps Camille would tell the story of how Beatrice Archer had saved her life . . . That night Avery returned home late from a medical conference in New York. Or had it been Boston, or Chicago? As he undressed silently in the dimly lighted master bedroom Beatrice recounted for him the story of her visit to the house on Old Mill Way. “That poor woman is in a state of shock, Avery. She hadn’t begun to recover from Adam’s death, and now Lionel has left her, damn him. He never returned your calls? He snubbed
you?
He’s ashamed, I suppose. He should be. Lionel Hoffmann, leaving Camille at such a time!”

Said Avery, “Maybe Lionel wants to save his own life, darling.”



For this I would kill
.
There is nothing else
.

Waking in a state of excited bliss, a woman’s plaited hair flung across his mouth. Deeply he breathed in the musky female smell, mixed with the smell of his own body. They were naked. Swimmers who have drowned together and whose limbs have become entwined. His groin was suffused



J C O

with blood, again he was a young man in the prime of his life. Desire slammed through him like a mallet crushing his bones. He had no resistance, he groaned in acquiescence.

Nothing! Nothing else
.

“C? Yes, I will be calling soon. I have time for only this quick message but I’m thinking of you. I know this has been difficult. It’s a difficult time for me, too. But I want you to know that—”

Slyly her hands moved over him. From behind. Stroking, caressing, gently squeezing. Not-so-gently squeezing. She was his monkey-girl sometimes, smelling of musk. Whispering
Mr
.
Hoffmann. Be very quiet
.

No one must know!

A groan broke from him, a strangled sob. The telephone receiver dangled at the end of its curly cord.

I B. How grateful like a greedy little girl she was, in the luxurious resort hotel, in a suite overlooking palm trees, the wide white beach, the dreamy aqua sea.
Maybe you do love me
.
Mr
.
Hoffmann
. Making love with him in bright sunshine Siri emitted cries like a child in pain.

Never had Lionel been so stricken with desire. Slyly the woman abased herself before him, the male. Kissing his hands, his chest, his belly. Pressing her face against his groin. If his wife had ever done such a thing—!

The very thought was preposterous, revolting. But Siri claimed him, Siri knew what he wanted even as he weakly protested. Even as he pushed her away she persisted, and his hands grasped her to clutch her tighter, to press her against him. In the night waking him with her mouth. His eyes shot open. Overhead the ceiling floated like gossamer. The balcony doors were open to the lapping sea.

Nothing! There is nothing else
.

“S, S   to see where you live. Your true life.”

Playfully she spoke of herself in the third person, as a child might. A willful sly-eyed child. Lionel supposed she’d been looking at the framed photos in the apartment. The Hoffmann family, of some years ago. The beautifully restored eighteenth-century house on Old Mill Way, Salthill.

Middle Age: A Romance



“Where your true life exists. And Siri isn’t welcome.” She was teasing, of course.

Playing monkeys with him, naked and scrambling in the bed, Siri panting, on top, straddling her patient with muscular thighs.

“Mr. Hoffmann. Be good. Try try try to re
lax
.”

G    informed him. His daughter, his son, yes and another time Mrs. Hoffmann, had all been trying to reach him. For days. “Thanks, Irene! I’ll be calling them back soon.” He was smiling, he was jaunty. He was in control here. “So if they call again, please tell them.”

Still Irene looked doubtful. “ ‘Tell them,’ Mr. Hoffmann?” “That I’ll be calling them back soon.”

M,   the apartment on Thursdays, was hesitant to inform him. Several bars of expensive French soap were missing from the cupboard in the guest bathroom. Mrs. Hoffmann’s soaps, and Mrs. Hoffmann’s Elizabeth Arden toiletries. Moisturizer, hand cream, bath salts.

And maybe one of the washcloths. Thick white terrycloth with white satin trim. Shy-eyed Maria in her halting English, hopeful her employer will know that she, she was not the one to have taken these things.

I B, in November, they’d been happy. At least he’d been happy. She’d seemed so. And their long weekend in Santa Monica where he’d gone on business, and taken Siri, in early December. He’d swear. He was in love. Siri was so beautiful! If not beautiful Siri was—Siri. Lionel was crazy about her. He panted, trotting beside her in hard-packed sand beside the Pacific Ocean. How other men, and boys, stared at her. Siri in tank top, bikini bottom, and barefoot. And her wavy-kinky unplaited hair straggling down her back. Admit it: he loved the intensity of their eyes.

Male-predator eyes. As a married man for decades he had not once glimpsed such eyes. He was thrilled! No, he was revulsed. It was low, lewd.

Still it was exciting. The glisten of her skin. A smudged soiled skin it sometimes appeared. And her sly, insolent eyes. Her throaty laughter.
She
doesn’t love you, asshole
.
She doesn’t give a shit about you
.
She’s laughing at you
with her young lovers
.



J C O

Disgusting! Such thoughts. Lionel was repelled by such thoughts yet even self-disgust excited him, where Siri was concerned. For so long his self-disgust had meant nothing except itself. “Bor-ing!”—as the kids would say. Bor-ing as the insipid feminine wallpaper Camille insisted upon. Bor-ing as the Pro Musica concerts Camille insisted upon where his handsome graying head nodded, brain swooning into the sweetest of oblivions even as Camille’s elbow nudged him back to wakefulness. Now, his disgust was very different. His disgust had a sexual wallop. He carried it inside his shirt, against his slimy skin. Inside his shorts, against his swelling groin. It upset him—his upset, his agitation, were disgusting to him—if Siri wasn’t available when he wanted her. If Siri had “other plans”

for the evening, or the night. If Siri was “out of town” for the weekend. If another therapist was taking over Siri’s shift at the clinic. He knew: Siri had a life of her own. He was a married man, and not once had he spoken of marriage to her. Not once had he spoken of divorcing his sad dull wife.

Certainly Siri had a life of her own as she’d more than once informed him.

Siri was not for hire. As a therapist she was for hire but otherwise, not.

And even as a therapist at the clinic, she was not obliged to work with any patient she didn’t wish to work with. This was a policy at the clinic, of course. For it sometimes happened that patients (male, predatory) began to be obsessed with their female therapists, tried to contact them outside the clinic, pursued and stalked them. “But Siri, Mr. Hoffmann, is not for hire. Yes?”

Yes. But no. Lionel loved to undress her roughly, yanking off her white nylon smock and trousers. By his request she wore her uniform to the apartment at East st. By his request she wore her hair plaited and knotted at the nape of her neck. It was his pleasure to unpin her hair, unplait the long crimped hair with its nutmeg-smell, its mildly rank unwashed monkey-smell he loved. While making love Lionel wrapped a strand of hair around her neck, in play. She taunted him
Mr
.
Hoffmann! Squeeze!

Hurt me! I know how you like it
. Laughing at his face dissolving in orgasm like something softly rotted, dissolving in water. Laughing and biting his lower lip, drawing a bead of blood.

H   believe: he’d become such a man.

That painful episode. At Christmas. He and Siri were about to leave for Key West. Siri was late meeting him at the apartment. The phone
Middle Age: A Romance



rang. Eagerly and imprudently he’d lifted the receiver. And there was the shock of Marcy’s voice. Whining accusing hurt-little-girl Marcy. “Daddy?

Is that you? This is your daughter Marcy”—her voice heavy with sarcasm, he could imagine her glaring eyes—“I’ve been trying and
try
ing to reach you, Mother has told me, oh, Daddy what is
happening?
—we’re not going to have Christmas this year—” And like a coward Lionel hung up.

“I can’t believe this. I’ve become a man who hangs up on his own daughter.”

He would not tell anyone this. Not even Siri to whom he told too many secrets. Instead, he poured Scotch into a glass and drank. Still, he laughed. It was funny.

I J , in the New Year. Things began to change. Siri began to murmur in his arms lightly mocking
Yes you love me like this, but do you respect me?
He caught a glimpse of her sullen hurt-little-girl face in a mirror and was shocked at its coarseness. And the glaring-wet eyes, like Marcy’s.

M   to him. Oh, Mr. Hoffmann! There was missing from his study one of the framed photographs. The frame was of fine leather, expensive. Maria was anxious to tell her employer, who stood grimly silent that she, she was not the one who took it, each week she dusted the photographs and always stopped to look at that one, Mr. Hoffmann so young and smiling, standing on the beach, and Mrs. Hoffmann so young and pretty, and the little girl so sweet, and the little boy, such a happy beautiful family, poor Maria was close to tears in the face of her employer’s enigmatic silence begging him to understand that she, she was not the one who took away the photograph, like the other items, please did Mr. Hoffmann believe her?

Lionel passed his fingertips over his eyelids. “Maria. Of course.”

H   to Siri. No accusations. Yet Siri seemed to take offense. Siri was silent, aloof. Siri refused to accompany Lionel to a cocktail party where, Lionel had planned this in his luxurious-erotic dreams, she was to wear a gorgeous lime-colored silk dress slit high up the thigh he’d bought for her at the trendy boutique Kyrie on Madison Avenue.
Yes, you



J C O

love me
.
Mr
.
Hoff
-
mann
.
But respect? Like Mrs
.
Hoffmann, you respect?
Tearing at the silk fabric, the exquisite cloth buttons. Till he caught her, held her, her hard-muscled angry limbs, feeling the strength drain from her, Siri sobbing against him, or seeming to sob.
Because I am made to feel hurt
by you, not respected by you
.
Only your wife, away in Salthill, in that house, you
respect
.

C, Lionel respected his wife Camille. And loved her.

No matter what his children were saying.

No matter what all of Salthill was saying.

He would not be cruel to Camille. Would not treat his wife of thirty years as other men, for instance that bastard Harry Tierney, had treated their wives.
Oh Christ but I am suffocating
.
If only Camille would leave me
.

That damned house! Adam bores me, too
.
His death
.

Over drinks with Harry Tierney he vowed he would not be cruel to Camille. He would make a generous settlement with Camille. He’d give her the house. Camille loved that house, the kids loved that house, the decent thing to do would be to give it to her outright—“And good-bye.”

Harry Tierney looking very youthful, slick tufts of dark hair sprouting on his shiny head, grizzled dark eyebrows, his left eyelid drooping in a smirk, lifted his glass of Scotch, saying cheerfully, “I’ll drink to that, friend.” Was Harry, that notorious selfish bastard, laughing at Lionel?

Laughing at Lionel Hoffmann, the man of conscience? Lionel began to speak quickly.
He
was a good decent man, yes, he was a Christian and proud of it. He’d been brought up to be a gentleman. Harry Tierney listened to this, chewing nuts. The men, who’d never been friends in Salthill, had become friends of a kind here in Manhattan where both now lived. They were in the Skytop Club,  Park Avenue, fifty-sixth floor overlooking nighttime sparkling Manhattan like jewels. At a distance, you can’t discern between true jewels and fake jewels because both are sparkling, dazzling to the eye. And so Manhattan was sparkling, dazzling to the eye. After some minutes Harry Tierney interrupted Lionel to ask,

“Who’s your new love, Lionel? This sounds serious.” Blushing, Lionel stammered, “I—I’m not sure.” Harry laughed, “Not sure of the girl’s name?” “Not sure if she’s my—” Lionel hesitated as if his mouth were filled with something sticky, “— ‘love.’ ” Harry asked how old she was, and Lionel, his judgment weakened by Scotch, answered, “She’s about—

Middle Age: A Romance



thirty. I think.” Harry nodded, as if this was a good answer. “And where’d you meet her, Lionel?” “At the clinic.” “The clinic?” “The Neck and Back Clinic on Park. You know—you recommended it a few months ago when I had neck pain.” Harry’s eyebrows lifted. He was chewing brazil nuts noisily. “She’s a therapist there? Which one?” Lionel swallowed. He was smiling in confusion. Did he dare—in this place, to this man—utter the name that meant so much to him! “S-Siri.” “Siri!” Lionel felt a stab of apprehension at the tone of his friend’s voice. Harry’s gaze was veiled, his jaws grinding a little less forcibly. Clearly he was taken by surprise, and he was embarrassed.