Other Women (30 page)

Eventually they lay with their mouths, tongues, and breasts rubtgr and their hands moving inside each other. Like a blind person reading braille, Caroline felt with her fingertips as the texture of the woman’s vaginal walls shifted from velvet to corduroy.

Increasher movements, she felt the woman’s vagina grip her fingers convulsively. And her own career as Saint Celibate terminated abruptly in slow shuddering heaves that obeyed the rhythm of the woman’s hand.

Later Caroline lay holding the woman and watching headlights from the street sweep across the room. So that was how women settled the issue of who came first-simultaneous orgasm? Diana would be pleased to know. She thought with satisfaction of how annoyed Diana would in fact be. But probably she wouldn’t tell her. Caroline needed a few secrets to sustain her in their struggle.

“If camp had been like this,” Caroline murmured, “I’d have gone every summer.”

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“Excuse me?” The woman propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at Caroline questioningly.

“Do you have any idea how wholesome you look?”

“So I’m told,” she replied with a white-toothed smile.

Caroline put her hands under her head and savored the fact that she didn’t know or care who’d told the woman that. They didn’t have to meet each other’s mothers or learn how much sugar to put in each other’s coffee. They’d never lay eyes on each other again.

But she realized if she stayed much longer, she’d be waking up next to this woman in the morning, which wasn’t part of the deal. “I’m afraid I have to go.”

The woman looked relieved. “You don’t need to rush off.”

“Someone’s expecting me,” Caroline lied. “How would you feel about our not exchanging phone numbers?”

The woman smiled. “Fine. I have certain …

complications in my life.”

“Don’t we all?”

“You’re a marvelous lover. Thank you.”

“Thank you. It’s been great. Take care.”

Caroline walked along the nearly deserted street to her Subaru feeling fantastic. She’d never known you could go to bed with people without assuming their debts, writing them into your will, adopting their children, folding their laundry, rubbing ointment into their hemorrhoids.

She’d had no idea irresponsibility could feel so good. She began whistling, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”

Caroline sat down and studied her new view of the parking lot. There was a photo on the wall next to the window that she’d never noticed from where she used to sit. Black and white, abstract. She couldn’t tell what it was.

“So what’s new with you?” asked Hannah as she looked up from her appointment book, thinking surely something was, because Caroline had perked up since their last session like a potato plant after you plucked off Colorado potato beetles.

“Nothing much.”

Hannah sat back and lit a cigarette. “You look really nice today.”

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Caroline wore cords and a flannel shirt, had had her Afro trimmed. The bruised circles under her eyes were less noticeable than usual.

“Thanks. So do you.” There was color to Hannah’s cheeks, and she looked rested.

“I was in Maine over the weekend. Eating lobsters, reading, sleeping late, breathing sea air. Wonderful.” It was also wonderful to return and find clients had done fine in your absence.

Caroline studied her. It seemed odd she had this full life Caroline knew almost nothing about.

Obscurely threatening. If Caroline had no hold over her, she could come and go as she pleased, even if Caroline happened to need her. She wished she could put her in a freezer, thawing her only as necessary. Then she realized she could, and did, summon Hannah’s image in her head whenever she liked.

Hannah’s physical whereabouts was irrelevant.

Unlike Pink Blanky, no one could take chat image of Hannah away, not even Hannah herself.

With a faint pleased smile Caroline said, “I went to Boston to leave the boys with their father.”

They’d phoned last night, excited because Jackson had tickets to a Celtics game. Jackson got on the phone, sounding as usual like Sergeant Friday on “Dragnet.” Neither he nor Deirdre could drive the boys home on Sunday.

Deirdre was going to put them on the bus at Park Square, and Caroline could meet them at her end.

They didn’t have to change. They’d be fine.

Caroline struggled with maternal terror: the bus would wreck; mowould abuse them en route; they’d get off at a rest stop and get back on the wrong bus; Jackson was a terrible father, and got worse each year. She listened to these thoughts. From her sessions with Hannah she understood she was railing at Jackson in her head for all those years in which she felt neglected by him, which in itself had something or other to do with her own absent father. The boys would be okay.

“All right,” she said.

“What?” said Jackson, left holding the weapons he’d assembled for her attack.

“I said all right. Fine.” She didn’t want to stand in for his perpetually critical mother anymore.

“Did you stay in Boston?” asked Hannah.

Caroline paused, summoning courage.

“Only long enough to get

laid.” She felt like a cat placing a dead mouse at its owner’s feet. Would Hannah praise her or kick her? Panic tightened her throat. Why had she told her this? Hannah would be bound to be disgusted. She had her wretched marriage.

“By whom?”

Caroline’s palms began sweating. Her scalp stung under her Afro. “By a woman I picked up at a sauna,” she said in a low voice, examining the tread on her snowmobile boot.

“Was it fun?”

Caroline looked up. Hannah was smiling wryly, evidently not appalled. How was this possible?

“Yes.

,greater-than

Hannah shrugged. “How nice.”

Caroline sat silent.

“What shall we talk about today?” asked Hannah, looking out the window to the frozen lake and thinking what a pleasure it was not to have to see that orange Le Car anymore.

Caroline’s face flushed. If Hannah could pass this off so casually, surely she didn’t get the picture. “The nicest part was that I just walked away afterwards. I don’t even know her name.”

“Which isn’t how you usually operate?”

Caroline was startled that Hannah realized there were other ways to operate than monogamous marriage.

“How I’ve always operated is to buy my lovers presents, water their plants, walk their dogs, put coins in parking meters for their cars.”

“To keep them around?”

Caroline paused. Was this why she’d done it? Not just that she was a nice guy? It hadn’t occurred to her to do anything else. “Yes, to keep them around.”

“You felt you had to do nice things to make them love you?”

“Uh, I guess so.” She glanced around for the Kleenex. Where had that damn chest been moved to?

Pain was rising to her throat like a creek overflowing its banks. The chest was right beside her. She rested her hand on its familiar polished wood surface.

“Do you see where that comes from?” asked Hannah, watching Caroline.

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Caroline closed her eyes and nodded. She grabbed a tissue as a tear rolled down her

cheek. “Damn it,” she muttered through gritted teeth, blotting the tears, her throat aching from holding them back.

“It’s all right. Cry if you want to.” As Caroline blew her nose, Hannah thought about the different ways clients did this. Some used the same tissue time after time. Others took a new one for each bout. Some wouldn’t stop once they started, using tears to avoid the issues. Some collapsed on the couch and sobbed; others reached out for her. Almost as revealing as a Rorschach test. Some, like Caroline, ground their teeth and struggled against each tear as though it were a drop of corrosive acid.

“What did you learn with the woman in Boston?”

asked Hannah.

Caroline looked up, her eyes red and puffy.

“Huh?” She expected some sympathy in return for her tears, but Hannah was just sitting there with her irritating expression of patience.

“I think you can judge whether an experience is worth the effort by what it teaches you.” She glanced out the window to the lake, perfectly still in its straitjacket of ice.

Caroline tried to decide if she’d learned anything. Mostly it had just felt wonderful after so many months to be touched by another human creature. “I guess I learned I don’t necessarily want to keep someone around. And I also learned I don’t have to do the laundry for them to want me. This woman said I was a marvelous lover.”

She flung down the last sentence like a gauntlet.

Hannah smiled as she lit another cigarette.

She enjoyed it when they began feeling their wild adolescent oats, which they hadn’t sown when they should have because they were so busy trying to be “good.” Caroline was looking at her, waiting for her response.

Having no idea what that would be, Hannah exhaled smoke, opened her mouth, and heard herself say, “Well, I wouldn’t have any way of verifying that, would I?”

Caroline looked at her speculatively. You could have, she thought. Hannah had a nice husband. But she’d admitted to bisexual feelings. Maybe she was monogamous by default. Maybe no one else had asked her lately … .

Oh God, thought Hannah. Any minute now Caroline was going

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to come on to her. She had her eyes fixed on Hannah’s. Hannah liked them to feel good, but not this good. She’d better head her off before the pass. “Does anybody in your family have blue eyes?”

Caroline looked startled. “Uh, I don’t know.

Yes, I guess my mother does.”

Hannah nodded. “You notice how you always stare at mine?”

“What?”

“How did your parents react when you started dating?”

Caroline frowned, then began talking in a bewildered voice. “They watched out their bedroom window when someone brought me home. If we kissed at the door, they’d be waiting at the top of the stairs with a lecture about career options in human services.

If we sat too long in the car, they’d flash the porch lights. When I was in nursing school, they dropped by my dorm at all hours. They always ridiculed my boyfriends, except for a couple who were polite and boring … …

“And sexless?” asked Hannah, raising her eyebrows.

“What?”

“Do you see what’s going on in here?”

Caroline blinked.

“For most of your life you’ve damped down all these facets to your personality in an attempt to be acceptable. They’ve been emerging lately, and I’m here to tell you that they’re absolutely fine.

You are fine, exactly as you are-sometimes sad and hurt and wanting to be taken care of, sometimes funny and charming, sometimes sexy, someaggressive, sometimes angry. They’re all you, and they’re all fine. Just because they weren’t fine to important people early in your life doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.”

Her voice was fierce, reflecting the anger she was feeling at the bullies who ran around telling tiny children how to win approval. Many clients at their first session had virtually no personality. Bland robots, identical, antennae extended only to pick up and obey the wishes of others. Until the suppressed emotions made them ill or exploded all over other people.

She thought about the flower border along the base of her house, the dozens of varieties, each with its own scent, color, and configuraTogether, they formed a scene so dazzling one could only be struck with wonder at a world in which such variety and intricacy were WOMEN

not only possible, but evident everywhere you looked. She was certain human beings possessed at least as much potential.

When Nigel was three, she planted the side field above the lake with bulbs-daffodils and yellow tulips. She and Nigel lay in the spring sun amidst the flowers, sniffing, touching, and discussing them. Later that spring Nigel came stumbling up to her, wailing. He clutched a purple hyacinth in one tiny fist. Between outraged sobs he explained, “Mommy, flowers are yellow. Bad flower!” He flung it to the ground and stamped on it … .

“Are you monogamous?” asked Caroline with a defiant tilt to her chin.

Hannah started, almost dropping her cigarette.

“What? Oh. Yes.” Did this really have to be part of her job?

Caroline felt her shoulders tighten. So, whatever she said, Hannah actually felt critical of Caroline’s promiscuity.

Hannah watched Caroline’s sullen stare.

Apparently she was determined to feel punished. How many times had she been assigned this role of avenging mother, by her own children and by hundreds of clients?

Caroline could have gotten it on with the Queen Mother and the Royal Horseguards for all Hannah

cared. “It’s not out of great moral conviction. It’s just simpler. And I’m at a time in my life when I value simplicity. I’ve got a lot of other things to think about. Besides, I get to hear about the exotic escapades of my clients.” She smiled whimsically.

“So you’re a voyeur?”

“Very probably.” She laughed. If she didn’t engage with the obnoxiousness, sometimes it just fell away, like a discarded stage on a launched rocket.

“You know, I can’t keep up with you, Caroline.

Last I heard, you were in hot pursuit of a man.”

Caroline frowned. “Who says I’m not now?”

Brian phoned last night after the boys. She had a date with him Saturday night. The boys would still be in Boston. She’d been making going to bed with him a life and death matter. Why not just do it for fun, as she had with the woman in Boston? It didn’t mean they had to spend the rest of their lives together.

“Okay,” said Hannah, gesturing like a flagger trying to slow down highway traffic. “Just checking.”

According to her theory formulated

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over the lobster in Maine, Caroline should want both men and women, since it sounded as though she hadn’t had much contact with either parent, with Daddy off to war and Mummy in despair, and then with them both out saving the world.

“This thing in Boston was just a fling. It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“Yes, but why did you pick a woman to fling with?”

asked Hannah.