Original Sins (61 page)

Because I want to, came the answer.

But you'll ruin your safe neat orderly life.

Fuck it, came the reply.

She took Matt to the Museum of Natural History. On the way to his old friends, the dinosaurs, they passed her old friends in their glass cases—models of the ape men and early humans. Neanderthal Man, Java Man, Peking Man. She reflected that this, after all, was what sex used to be about—keeping the race going. Natural selection had ensured that a situation least likely to be enjoyable would prevail: Those strains survived in which males were able to pump the maximum amount of sperm into females. This occurred when males ejaculated quickly without bringing the female to orgasm. Perpetually turned on, she would demand unending ejaculations.

Obviously the race didn't need assistance in reproducing itself these days. But Scarsdale Man was stuck with this inherited physiology. Justin and she had it calculated to the thrust: the kind and amount of foreplay, the precise speed and angle that triggered orgasm for each. It had become a hygienic routine, like brushing teeth to remove plaque.

As she watched Matt studying the huge carcasses, she recalled that Justin and she hadn't always been so efficient. Sometimes in the winter they'd borrow a cabin in the Adirondacks and spend several days rolling around naked under bearskins by a fire. Many weekends they'd been in bed all day long discovering new ways to release each other. Rather than studying piles of old bones in museums. Their lovemaking had become efficient when they'd had to fit it in around naps and feedings and babysitters. This was nobody's fault. Routines and responsibilities were what parenthood was about. But they left little space for passion. Like a genie being released from the bottle of domestic duty, her attraction to Maria was taking on a life of its own.

After Matt was asleep, she put on a nightgown and robe and set a stack of records on the stereo. She sat on the couch reading a manuscript, with a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of wine. At some point she realized she'd smoked half the cigarettes and drunk most of the wine, and was only on page fourteen.

Someone was singing “Shenando.” She listened and was soon weeping.

“…
oh Shenando, I long to see you. / Far away, you rolling waters
…”

She kept thinking she'd escaped from the goddam place, but at the least excuse, longing for it would flare up like residual malaria in her bloodstream. Continuity, Stability, Loyalty, the values that growing up in that lush green valley had bred into her—these were important over the long haul. Maria and that bunch, they were butterflies. They darted from place to place, cause to cause, person to person, leaving in their wakes unfulfilled commitments. They weren't serious people. Maria would make love with her, and the next day she'd be off. So what was the point in shaking up Justin and Matt (and herself)?

On the other hand, why not do something just for fun, or just out of curiosity? Who'd be harmed? Probably Justin wouldn't care. He might even be relieved. And how could it harm Matt if his mother were having fun?

Another record fell. Tammy Wynette's voice filled the room:
“Stand by your man …”

She lit another cigarette, guzzled some wine and listened—about the brave wife waiting for the return of her carousing husband. Was Justin carousing at his meditation center? Did one carouse at a meditation center? What if he were? Justin had caroused from time to time, but he always came back to the Great Ear in the end. That was how men were. And how were women? A Real Woman waited with Patience and Loyalty. This was her role. And by God, she'd fulfill it! These were the values she'd been raised with, and they were admirable!

She smashed out her cigarette and marched into Matt's room. He slept so soundly, his hair damp and rumpled, his fists clenched. When she kissed his flushed cheek, he grunted, flung out an arm and turned over. Emily vowed she'd never do anything that might threaten his home life.

She hollowed out a nest among her blankets and pillows. As she lay with her head swimming from the wine, her hand sought her clitoris, and she moaned, trying to pretend it was Justin's hand rather than Maria's.

In the morning, hung over, she walked with Matt through Riverside Park. White, water-inflated prophylactics from midnight matings in the bushes quivered in the murky Hudson.

“What are those?” Matt demanded, as they leaned on the railing.

“Let's not go into it.”

“But what are they, Mom?”

“Dead fish or something. Hell, I don't know. Leave me alone.”

“Fish,” Matt decided. “Look at those funny fish,” he ordered the man next to him.

“Oh, do come on!” Emily dragged him away, aware of her missed opportunity to advance his sexual education. The less anyone knew about any of it, the better.

After lunch she read Matt a book about a family of anthropomorphic frogs who lived in a pond in Central Park. Then Matt went to play in his room, and Emily put on some records and gazed at the
Times.
Why they had to make the damn thing so thick was beyond her. People in other parts of the globe got through Sundays without four-inch-thick bundles of newsprint. She squinted through her hangover at the headlines of the latest atrocities. She suddenly reflected that you become an adult once you stop assigning human characteristics to animals à la Walt Disney and began assigning animal characteristics to humans. The paper dropped into her lap as she tried to figure out what had come over her yesterday. All that yearning and renunciation. What nonsense.

The record changed, and a woman began singing the slow song Maria and she had danced to. She recalled abruptly what yesterday's seizure had been about. “…
I've been waiting so long for another song
…”

The phone rang. It was Maria inviting her to supper.

“I don't know if I can. Justin's away.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. Well, bring Matt along.”

“He's got to get up early for the day-care thing. I'll see if I can find a sitter and call you back.”

“Hey, are you OK?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. Why?”

“I don't know. You sound a little weird.”

“I'm just hung over.”

“While the cat's away, and like that?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Emily sat down on the couch. She could call back and say she couldn't find a sitter. On the other hand, Maria was a close friend, and Emily couldn't avoid her indefinitely.

No, the whole notion was ridiculous. She'd been high on wine the night she'd danced with Maria, and again last night. She was lonely with Justin gone, and that was all. The loneliness was perching wherever it could, like a vulture on a tree branch. She wasn't reared to make love with women, and she wasn't reared to be unfaithful to her husband—it simply wasn't her. It was out of the question.

A Honey Sweet record came on, and she found herself listening intently.

“A woman needs a man to hold
…”

Garbage! Wasn't this what she'd left Newland to get away from? Sally trapped in that little wooden box in the mill village, poaching onions, with Pampers in her pockets, and teething rings through her buttonholes. Yet was Emily's life different except in external detail? She too spent all her time doing only what other people wanted, never consulting herself to find out what
she
might want. She marched to the phone and called the sitter.

It was a long supper that included two bottles of wine. They discussed the headlines, did a postmortem of the party, and avoided looking each other in the eye. Emily knew the first move, if there was to be one, was hers. It was a point of pride with Maria not to seduce her straight friends. What if she'd misunderstood and Maria wasn't interested? Maria would reject her, she'd be humiliated, her sex life would be set back decades. Or Maria would accept, but be surprised and detached. For the first time Emily understood some of the agonies of men. Why hadn't she stayed home with a good book?

“Well,” said Emily. “… guess I'd better be going … baby sitter … beauty sleep … work tomorrow …”

“Oh. Yes. Right. Fine. Let me get your coat.”

As Maria got up, Emily put her hand, trembling, on Maria's knee. They both looked at it as though it were a dying fish.

“Hmmm.” Maria sat back down.

“Damn it, I don't know how to do this.”

“You're doing just fine.” Maria picked up Emily's hand in both hers. “But this is the last thing in the world I want.”

Emily's heart collided with her stomach. She withdrew her hand, unable to look at Maria. “You're not … attracted to me?”

Maria retrieved her hand. “I'm very attracted to you. But I'm terrified.”

“You
terrified?”

“Well, it looks as though your plate's pretty full.”

Emily removed her hand. “It feels empty to me.”

Maria reclaimed the hand. “It's just that the cook's on vacation. But he'll be back, and I don't want to be responsible for shaking up your life.”

“You flatter yourself.” Emily laughed. “I promise I wouldn't fall in love with you, Maria, and get all mushy. I know you'd hate that.”

“Emily, everyone starts out thinking she's fallen for someone who just ‘happens' to be a woman. Or that she'll just have a piece of female flesh on the side, and that it's no big deal. But it usually becomes a big deal. It's not something to go into lightly. It involves a lot more than the sex of the people you sleep with.”

“Jesus, you make it sound like Saul on the road to Damascus.” Emily removed her hand. “Ah, shit, Maria, you're right, I know that much about myself. I can't keep things casual. When you grow up in a small town, you try to turn each encounter into a unique interpersonal experience.”

“That isn't exactly what I meant. What happens is, you turn yourself into an outsider. You're no longer playing by society's rules, so how you perceive those rules and the people who abide by them starts shifting. It can be very heavy.”

“But I've been an outsider all my life.”

They sat in silence.

“Why is this stuff always so awkward?” inquired Maria.

“Is it? I wouldn't know.”

She nodded.

“I don't know, it sounds as though this isn't fated to happen, Maria. But you should know how appealing I find you.” Emily stood up, relieved.

“And me you, darling.” Maria stood up, also looking relieved. They embraced. They kissed. The kiss went on and on. Emily found her hand of its own accord touching Maria's breast. A breast filling her shameless hand, the stiffening nipple nuzzling her palm …

Harold walked into her office and informed her he was switching companies. His projects here were being dropped. Emily stared at him. When editors left, they usually asked their secretaries to go with them. Emily noticed he was avoiding such an invitation. He muttered something about asking around to see if anyone here was looking for a “girl” and walked out. She tried to tell herself maybe he wasn't allowed a secretary at the new place, or one was already there.

She followed him into his office. “What about Maggie's book?”

“What about it?”

“Is it being dropped?”

He shrugged. “Don't know. Guess you'd be glad?”

“It's the jacket I hate, not the book.”

“Lots of luck. Maybe she'll find another editor who won't be so crass.” He began dialing the phone.

She understood she'd been trying to have it both ways—expecting Harold to part the corporate waters so she could skip dry shod into some editorial position. And at the same time, insisting on asserting contradictory opinions, when all he wanted was agreement. If it was patronage Emily was after, she had to fulfill her end. If she wanted to play in the big leagues, though, she had to take her chances just as he did. She'd been dumb enough to hitch her wagon to his star, but like everyone else up here, he was a comet—just passing through.

At supper she said to Matt, “Guess what happened to Mommy today? She got fired.”

He blinked. “Like with matches and stuff?”

“No. The man I work for doesn't want me anymore.”

“Oh goody, Mom! So you don't have to go to the office anymore. And you and me can stay home together all day?”

“I guess I'll have to find another job, honey.”

Maria came over after Matt was asleep, and Emily told her about Harold and her new sympathy for the pressures men were under.

“The stupid fucker,” Maria growled.

“No, he's not, Maria. He's actually a nice man. Come to think of it, it's so weird you don't know him. There are the people I know at work. The people I live with. The people I socialize with. And none of you know each other.”

“What's weird about that?”

“Well, in Newland everybody knows everybody else. You could talk about your boss to friends, and they'd know him and his family and have opinions on whatever he'd done. It's like having a live-in backup band.”

“Sounds horrible. You'd never have any privacy.”

“Well, I guess that's one way of looking at it”

“Jesus, how many years have you been away from that fucking place? And it still occupies your every waking moment.”

“Not all of them,” Emily said.

“Yeah, right. We were going to discuss Friendship tonight, weren't we? And whether or not sex messes it up.”

Emily described the ways in which sexual expectation had distorted her friendship with Raymond. Maria recounted a series of experiences, good and bad, involving sexual interludes with friends.

“What do you want out of this, Emily? Homosexual Experience?” Maria stood up. “You're an important friend. I don't want us to use each other.”

They laughed nervously and kissed at the door. Maria drew Emily's tongue into her mouth and Emily's stomach dropped through the floor. As a friend, as an enemy, she wanted Maria in her bed right away. Instead she closed the door after Maria and locked the three locks.