Slow Hand (25 page)

They liked me because I shared their view that their friendship was their single best quality. I was an admirer, an audience. Unlike girlfriends, who came and went quickly, I didn’t
want to break them up, I wasn’t enduring an evening with both in hopes of getting one. In fact, being with only one of them made me nervous and edgy. It seemed unnatural.

What I really wanted was their memories. To be in the team picture for the junior high school floor hockey team. To be there Halloween night in Madison, when they dressed as Marx and Engels, ate mushrooms, and got paranoid. To see the smoke the night they almost burned down their college apartment while trying to make a rack of lamb. Failing that, I wanted them to know me as well as they knew each other. One year passed, two years. I grew closer to them, true. But they grew closer still. It seemed I could not catch up.

It was spring, a time of heavy, drenching rains. My boss asked me to house-sit so he could go climb a mountain with some other executives. I liked the idea of living among fine things, even if they weren’t mine, or to my taste. I liked the idea of being alone.

My boss lived in what had once been the guest house on a grand estate, in the rolling farm country north of the city. Developers had razed the main house and put a small subdivision on its site, leaving behind this shingled cottage in a grove of trees. Broken statues—one-armed Cupids, fawns with chipped ears, headless maidens—lined the rutted brick sidewalk that led through the trees. The house, mossy green with golden trim, was barely visible as you made your way up the path. The only sound was a small stream that ran behind the house. Polluted, my boss said, from the subdivision’s runoff.

Inside, it was simple and spare, but not cold. Large, unshuttered windows stared back into the trees, leafy enough now to shut out the modern world just beyond the grove. It was a place of solid colors, inside and out: green trees, green chairs, blue sofa, red table, blue rugs, white crockery, cream walls. The effect was deliberate, I think, a way of forcing the eye to my boss’s odd collections of things.

There were Mexican masks, for example. Not gourd masks, but larger, more delicate pieces, carved from soft wood. A woman’s face peered anxiously from between butterfly’s wings, caught at an awkward moment in her metamorphosis. A
mermaid stared stoically ahead as her tail—really a serpent—swallowed her. A bird’s face smiled with a woman’s bow lips. A jaguar had breasts and long, black hair, real hair, to judge by the feel of it.

In the kitchen, bird cages and bird houses lined the walls and counters. An egg had been placed in each. A Ukrainian one in a pseudo-Victorian cage. A black glass egg in a cage made of old coat hangers. A sugary diorama locked in a cage of twigs. A real robin’s egg in a house that was an exact replica of the cottage. I was convinced there was yet another replica within that bird house, and another within that, on and on to infinity.

Finally, in every room, there were oil paintings, vivid canvases of women draped in veils, crouched behind walls, hidden in courtyards, locked in towers. The women had purple faces, red hands, green hair. It was unnerving, especially in the bedroom where there was no other color, just a white iron bed and a white spread, and those women on every side of you.

I sat by the window in this lovely and disturbing place, watching the rain come down, waiting. The idea of being alone had been attractive. The practice was unbearable. I knew Caldwell and Mark would miss me eventually, would find me somehow. The odd little house would be my gift to them, one of my ongoing bribes to keep in their good graces. Chocolates. Good wine. My ears. My laugh, which is what they liked best, spilling out at their weakest jokes and stories. I sipped brandy and stared into the dense green leaves, casting a spell. I drew them to me. It didn’t take long. After all, I had left the directions on Caldwell’s answering machine, along with promises of expensive liquor and a large-screen TV set.

They were soaked to the skin by the time they found the cottage’s door. I watched them run up the curving path, laughing, in the middle of their never-ending conversation. Separated from them by the window, safe and dry within my cottage, I felt as if I were seeing them for the first time. Caldwell and Mark. Mark and Caldwell. I couldn’t imagine one without the other, didn’t want to. I wanted to be with them both, forever and ever. Even as I made my wish, I knew how impossible
it was. Others would claim us, one by one. Caldwell and Mark would manage to hold onto each other, I might manage to hold onto them. But it would not always be like this. Just the three of us. The perfect number in some ways.

I brought them coffee in white mugs, brandy in squat blue glasses. I brought them white towels for their hair, blue cotton blankets to wrap around their damp clothes. We sat cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in the blue and white light of an old-fashioned space heater. In front of us, the soundless television was turned to some out-of-town baseball game that no one cared about.

And, of course, we talked. They talked. Calculus class, in which Mark had cheated on the final and still flunked. Caldwell’s chronic lateness, which kept them from a concert that turned into a riot. Trying to smoke. Learning to drink, a bad experience with Jack Daniels and orange juice that led straight to the emergency room. Story after story, joke after joke, with one constant. Caldwell and Mark. Mark and Caldwell. Caldwell’s hands were like white lights rising and falling in the darkening room. Mark’s stories ended with self-deprecating sighs, a cue for me to laugh, which I kept forgetting to do. I was too busy thinking of how they had looked, running up the path toward me, toward this house. Give me both of them, I asked the mermaid and the butterfly, the jaguar and the smiling bird. Just for now.

“The White Sox might actually amount to something this year,” Caldwell said.

One man is easy, of course. We all know how to do one man—how to lean a little closer, how to touch a hand, or leave your fingers a moment too long on his arm. Every woman knows this. But if I touched one, the other would leave. Or perhaps, at best, wait and follow. That wasn’t what I wanted. I thought of the bird house on the kitchen counter, the cottage within the cottage within the cottage.

Mark’s voice now: “So this girl behind the counter, she repeats the order back very slowly, and gets everything wrong, absolutely everything …”

I slid Caldwell’s blanket from his shoulders, wrapped it
around myself, and laid down on the rug, as if I were going to sleep. They took no notice. So many times before, I had let their conversation be my lullaby, had faded away as they kept talking. Eyes shut, I listened to their voices—Caldwell’s slow rumble, Mark’s quicker, lighter rush of words. Beneath the blanket, I slipped off my clothes, touching myself. The wind moved in the trees outside, the rain-swollen stream rushed over the rocks, the purple-faced women whispered to me. They approved of me. I felt as if I were a solid color, too, as if my skin were changing from purple to blue to green to red to cream. I belonged in this house.

“No, what it said in the paper was that if the new law takes effect, it would be toothless, because there’s absolutely no enforcement …”

I thought of how I had caught them, from time to time, appraising the curve of a hip or a thigh, judging the length of my neck. Men did this, of course, even with friends. Especially with friends. What is it like, Caldwell had asked me once, to be looked at when you walk down the street? It’s like being a woman, I told him.

“… and she opened the car door, and there was this huge dog in there …”

Their voices now were indistinguishable. I couldn’t make out words, or who was speaking. All I had was the sensation of warmth—from the space heater behind us, from the sounds moving between them. Their voices wrapped around me, familiar and beloved, endless and perfect. I didn’t want them to stop. I took inventory of myself, noting how symmetrical the body was, how accommodating.

I sat up, the blanket falling to my waist. In the almost-dark room, my body absorbed all the light. It was shockingly white, the brightest thing in the room, I could no longer see their faces or their hands. And suddenly there was nothing to hear, except the rain, the wind, and the hiss of gas in the heater. They had stopped talking.

“Catherine—,” Caldwell began, almost sorrowfully, as if I were drunk, as if he might have to carry me to bed as he had so many times before. He looked at
me, looked away, looked at me again. He did not seem quite so sorrowful. Mark tried to pull the blanket back around my shoulders. But his hands kept shaking, and he gave up.

I wrapped my arms around myself, watching them watch me. The silence in the room was huge, deep, and wonderful. It was as if I were still watching them through a window, safe and dry, still waiting for them to find me. They still needed directions.

I kissed Caldwell, then Mark. Mark’s kiss was as light as his voice, his pretty mouth worked well. Caldwell was earnest, as if he were trying out for something. I tasted brandy and amazement and something else. Competition, older than time, going all the way back to second grade. As I started kissing Caldwell again, Mark brought his arms around my hips and lifted me onto Caldwell’s lap, so I was straddling him. Caldwell understood, began unzipping his jeans.

“It’s okay,” Mark said quietly to Caldwell, his hands cupping me, preparing to help me move up and down on Caldwell. He wanted Caldwell to go first, so he could best him, love me harder or longer. I knew this, somehow, and I knew I would not allow it.

Standing, I held a hand out to each of them and led them into the bedroom, into the center of the white-on-white bed. Stretched out between them, I undressed each of them, kissed each of them, held each of them. Naked, they were identical. They tasted the length of me, working from the ears to the shoulders, down to the breasts. But when their hands touched at the top of my thighs, they pulled away. They looked at me, almost angry, silently demanding I make it work, determined I make a choice.

Instead, I rolled toward Caldwell, fixing my mouth on his while reaching my arms back to Mark, opening myself to him. This was new to me, hot and tight. Mark stroked my belly and kissed my hair, reassuring us both, reassuring us all, even though he could barely move inside me. Caldwell’s bright eyes shone brighter than ever. It was only when I brought him inside me that everything felt right, as if I were balanced between them.

They reached around me, holding on to each others shoulders as if to steady themselves. Slowly, hesitantly, Mark started, gentle and easy within me, pushing in as far as he could, then pulling out again. Then Caldwell, picking up his rhythm exactly, did the same, stroking me gently and slowly, all the way in and out. Mark repeated himself. Caldwell answered back, deeper and more insistent, moving in as Mark moved out. They grew more sure of themselves, there was almost no lapse as they passed me back and forth. This, Mark seemed to say, pressing in until I cried out. No, this, Caldwell replied, thrusting deeper still. I could not tell them apart, could not tell us apart, could not separate one sensation from the other.

They quickened, as if they were arguing about something they cared about, became strident and passionate, their voices overlapping, interrupting. Yet the only sounds were the wind and the rain and the stream—and, for once, my voice, just my voice, until Mark groaned into my ear and Caldwell shouted into my breast, and one sensation ran through all of us and back again.

Silence. For a long time, no one moved and no one spoke. I had given them, given us, something new: a story we would never tell, not even to each other. We would leave the cottage and leave this behind, an intangible addition to my boss’s collection of wild and beautiful things. Our best anecdote.

We fell asleep, still joined, but in sleep our bodies separated of their own accords. No longer entwined, we were too much for the bed. I ended up crawling away, making my bed on the pile of blankets we had left in the living room. In the morning, when I went to check on them, they were still asleep, clasping on another’s hands, closer than ever. But this time, because of me.

AU
THOR’S NO
TE

In “Treats,” Rebecca Battle takes a vivid, angry look at a sexually awakened teenager’s unwillingness to play the demure role scripted for her by unseeing parents. As a narration, it reads like part-cinema verité, part-catharsis, and it seems to me calculated to remind us that in every household there are always several coexisting but very separate worlds.

I
t’s always around midnight when you hear them doing it in the next room. You are usually into your second package of saltines by then, slopping on peanut butter and honey with reckless abandon. When you can’t even force yourself to take another bite, your hunger—that other hunger—is finally, if temporarily, satiated.

You reach over to the bedside table, actually a light blue plastic crate with “Farmfresh” printed on the side, and push in the button to turn off the little black and white TV. The sounds from your parents’ bedroom are much clearer now. With all the furtive whispers and frantic shuffling, they could be disposing of a body or hiding a stash of stolen money. But having discovered
your father’s dirty magazines some rime ago, you know exactly what they are doing.