Stepping (33 page)

I had quite enough time to make decisions in advance. I had all the time, and all the information available, before I went to the hotel to meet Stephen. I am still amazed at how dazed and undecided I was right up to the moment I knocked on his bedroom door. I spent the days before his arrival, and the very minutes I sat on Bus 90 riding closer and closer to the Rautatientori and the Hotel Vakuuna, frantically asking myself questions. Did I love Stephen? Did I love Charlie? Did I want to sleep with Stephen?
Would
I sleep with Stephen?
Should
I sleep with Stephen? What about Ellen—she was my friend—what did I owe her? What about Charlie—he was my husband—what did I owe him? What did I want? How did I feel? What was important? What would I do?

Amazing. Amazing that a supposedly intelligent person could have such a thoroughly muddled mind on such clean-cut subjects.

I certainly acted as if I were going to sleep with Stephen, no matter what I thought I was going to do. I arranged for a babysitter to stay all day,
all day
, seven long hours, with my children, and I refused to think about the fact that she was an older woman with good recommendations from the American Women’s League in Helsinki, but that I and my children had never seen her before. I took a shower, shaved my arms and legs, put on creams and lotions and perfume, dressed in my most elegant and attractive casual clothes, even bought myself mouthwash and breath mints, like an eager young lover on a television commercial. I wore fresh underwear, my best pair.

When Stephen called from the airport to tell me he had arrived, I told him to go to the Hotal Vakuuna. Other hotels might have been better, certainly less centrally located, farther away from places where I might run into Americans or Finns who knew me. But of course when Stephen called I hadn’t thought of a place for him to stay, I hadn’t found out about any faraway intimate hotels, and the Hotel Vakuuna just popped out when he asked for a suggestion. Later I decided that it was a good choice even though it is so close to the America Center and the United States Information Service, and so on. For one thing, it was easy for me to get to, it didn’t involve time-consuming tram and bus changes or long walks in the cold. It was only a block from the large brick-paved square where the buses stopped. I had only to cut through the large marvelous railway station and cross the taxi island and another small street, and there I was. The other good thing was that the hotel was located next to Sokos, a large department store. If people who knew me saw me in the area, they would assume I was going into Sokos; in fact, on one side of the hotel there was a small door at right angles to a door leading into Sokos. If anyone saw me coming out of the Hotel Vakuuna, I thought I would simply laugh and say that I had gotten confused, had gone in through the wrong door.

But as it turned out, no one saw me.

I went in through the door of the Hotel Vakuuna and up the stairs; Stephen had called when he was settled in the hotel to tell me his room number: 561. The closer I got to his room, the more frantically my thoughts raced, the less sure I was of what I wanted. I felt I owed Stephen something simply because he had pursued me, because he had come, because he was there.

“Hello,” he smiled, opening the door.

“Hello,” I said, and entered the room.

Stephen was wearing a soft blue cotton oxford shirt, and the collar was open, and the sleeves were rolled up. He had apparently just washed and shaved; he looked and smelled clean. He was, there was no denying it, a marvelously handsome man, and I am susceptible to handsome things.

So, of course, after we smiled at each other a moment, we kissed. And kissed, and kissed.

“I need to take my coat and mittens off,” I gasped at last. “I’m getting hot.”

“Look,” Stephen said as he helped me take off my big fur coat, “I ordered up some champagne. Would you like some?”

“Champagne at ten o’clock in the morning!” I laughed. “Of course.”

Stephen crossed the room to the desk, where the ice bucket stood, and it was then, in the way that he lifted the champagne bottle from the bucket and poured it into the glasses, that I knew I still loved Charlie. Charlie is such a big man, but he does small things with a special grace. We have shared many bottles of champagne together, and the image of his large good hands lifting the bottle from its nest is imprinted in my mind. Stephen’s hands were shaking slightly, and they were not as big as Charlie’s; he did not care for the feel of the special bottle or for the sight of the champagne as it bubbled up in the glass. It was something he wanted to get over with, to hurry through, it was not a moment to be graced in itself. I saw in that instant how Stephen would pass over all things, expensive champagne in its rainbow iridescence, his wife, his children, my children, to get to me, to have me; whereas Charlie would not do that, Charlie would slowly treasure and value each thing at its best worth, give his time and attention to each thing, and then come at last to me, having chosen me as the best of all the good things in his life. Charlie is a Methodist from Kansas, too; he feels an obligation to give all things their due, to handle all things with appropriate seriousness. I could see that pouring a glass of champagne on our fourteenth anniversary would be a more significant act to Charlie than pouring a glass of champagne before making love to me for the first time would be to Stephen. Stephen was aimed for the act, the accomplishment; he was first of all an ambitious man.

“Stephen,” I said as I took the glass of champagne, “I want to talk about all this before I get snockered and do something I might regret. I think it’s wildly romantic of you to come to Helsinki to see me, but it’s just not right. It won’t work out. It’s the wrong thing to do.”

“Well, sit down,” Stephen said. “At least sit down for a while.” He smiled at me. He had a gorgeous smile.

I sat down, on the edge of the bed. Stephen pulled a chair from the desk and turned it so that he sat facing me. Our knees did not quite touch.

“Zelda,” he said, “I’m not trying to get you to do anything wrong. I want to marry
you, you know, not just have a quick affair. Though God knows I’d love that, too.”

“Oh, Stephen. I can’t have an affair with you or marry you. I just can’t. You’ve come all this way, clear across the Atlantic Ocean—”

“—and the Baltic Sea,” Stephen said, smiling, being charming.

“—and it makes me feel I’m obligated to have an affair with you. And you are the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my life, and you know, you can tell how I feel when I’m near you, in a way I do want you—”

Stephen’s eyes grew serious as I spoke, and when I said that I did want him he put down his champagne glass and took mine from my hand, and I was so startled by that that I sloshed champagne over both of us, and that didn’t matter; Stephen was next to me, on top of me, and pushing me back down on the bed.

Oh, how pleasurable it was. Everything seemed so mysteriously attractive hidden behind the layers of clothing, and as we rolled and kissed and fondled and pressed against each other I had the same frightened, exhilarating feelings I had had when I was in high school and going steady with my first real boyfriend. We spent so many hours of our lives, Dave and I, in the front seat of his ’56 Chevrolet, kissing, touching, pressing, moaning, longing, and never quite completing the act. We were both Methodists from Kansas. Perhaps it is because of that that I have always found temptation much more exciting than completion. My mother had told me that if I had sex before I married I would go to hell. When I finally did sleep with Charlie, before marriage, it was the most exotic and grandiose gesture of my life, I felt I was giving up all the world, and more than that, all my hope of afterlife. How splendid it was! How doomed I felt, and how proud I was of my love, my love that meant more to me than heaven or eternal damnation. Strange, funny, that I didn’t believe in hell anymore. Or even in the integrity of marriage. Surely, surely, I thought, I have gone this far in deceiving Charlie, surely the act itself does not matter, is not a way of deceiving him more. And yet, of course, to me, the act itself, the completion, did matter, did mean something.

I pushed Stephen away. In doing so I half slid, half fell off the bed. I scrambled to my feet, panting heavily, and backed up against the wall.

“Stephen, please,” I said. “Please let me talk to you. Let me say what I have to say. Just give me a few minutes to talk. Then, I promise, if you still want to sleep with
me, I will. But I need to settle some things first.”

Stephen twisted away from me and sat on the edge of the bed, hiding his face in his hands, propping his elbows on his knees. His back was beautiful, heaving still as he tried to control his breath.

“Talk,” he said to me, still not looking at me, still hiding his head in his hands.

“Stephen,” I said, and thought, What am I going to say? What is it that is so important that I have to say? “Stephen, I’m all confused. I’m sorry. I want you physically; God, who wouldn’t want you physically? But all that means something to me, it means more than just screwing around—”

“It means more than that to me, too.”

“Let me finish. Please. Look, maybe I’ve been giving off some signals I wasn’t aware of. Or maybe I was aware of them but didn’t know what they’d lead to. Or whatever. Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I want to say exactly. Look, I’m over thirty. I have two little children whom I love but who bore me to tears sometimes. I want to teach and I can’t, and that frustrates me unbelievably. I love Charlie and I love our marriage and I want to stay married to Charlie, and I want to do right by him. If I were in my own home, working somewhere, teaching, I wouldn’t even be interested in you at all. Oh, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that my life has gotten so far out of control, and things mean so much to me, and if I sleep with you, then I’ll have all that burden of meaning to deal with. And then there’s Ellen. She’s my friend. She’s beautiful. I know you love her, I know you love your children. It’s been fun flirting, I love flirting, but I don’t want to do anything more than that. I’m so flattered that you came all the way to Helsinki, I’m so absolutely delighted that you want me. It’s wonderful, it’s a fantastic ego trip. I’ll live off of it for years and years. But I’m greedy and selfish and bad; I just want the good part, the fun of flirting and the sweet knowledge that you want me. I don’t want the rest of it, the guilt and the hurting of others and the mess. Oh, I don’t know. I can’t even think straight. Am I making any sense to you at all?”

“Zelda,” Stephen said, and turned and stood and looked at me across the bed, “if you could wish for anything right now in your life, what would you wish for?”

“A job,” I said. I smiled. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”

Stephen looked at me a moment. “I have a job for you,” he said.

“You what? You have a job for me?”

“Not in my department. Not at the university. A local community college is looking for a full-time English instructor. Freshman English and some basic literature courses. I’ve already told them about you. If you finished your PhD, and if they liked you, you could get tenure and teach the upper-level courses. It’s made for you. It’s perfect. The only problem is that they need someone starting in January and you and Charlie are supposed to be here till May. Also, the college is located a good thirty-minute drive from your farm.”

“Oh, Stephen,” I said. “Oh, Stephen. Oh, oh, I can’t believe it. You talked to them about me?”

“I gave them a copy of your résumé. I recommended you highly.”

“Maybe they’ve hired someone else by now.”

“No. I know Jim Steele, who’s the chairman there. He’s waiting to hear from me. I told them I’d contact you about the job. I know how much you’ve been wanting one.”

“Well, well, what can we do? I mean, I’ll take the job. I will. Oh, God, it’s like a miracle. Can we call them now and tell them I’ll take the job?”

“Don’t you want to talk it over with Charlie first? Don’t you want to know what the salary is?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I do want to know what the salary is, but that won’t make any difference. And no, no, I don’t want to talk it over with Charlie. I want the job. I’ve followed him around long enough; it’s time I went someplace myself.”

“Then we’ll send them a cable. And as soon as I return to the States I’ll call Jim Steele and reaffirm the cable. And you can do the rest yourself.”

“Can we send the cable now?”

We went to the telephone and sent the cable. Stephen pulled the desk chair out and sat at the desk while he talked on the phone. I paced the room, making plans. I would have to make plane reservations, I would have to pack, I would have to make preschool arrangements for the children, I would have to— Oh, God, I would have to tell Charlie.

When the cable was sent, Stephen turned back to me and looked at me awhile, smiling. Then he said, “You’re really a crazy lady, Zelda, do you know that?”

“But I’m a hell of an English teacher,” I said. I felt high. I hadn’t even finished
my glass of champagne, and I felt high, drunk, euphoric.

“That’s what I told the people in Jim Steele’s department,” Stephen said.

“Now I really should sleep with you,” I said, suddenly sobered. “Out of gratitude, if nothing else.”

Stephen stood up, and crossed the room, and took me in his arms. He looked at me for a long time, and then he kissed me and held me against him. “Zelda,” he said, “I don’t want you to sleep with me out of gratitude. Or out of boredom, or out of confusion, or out of anything else than love. I want you to sleep with me because you love me. That’s the only way it will be good for you, so it’s the only way it will be good for me. Listen: I love you. So I’m going to go back home. I’m going to leave you alone. If you want me, you’ll know where to find me.”

“But Stephen,” I said, “you’ve come all the way across the Atlantic Ocean!”

“And the Baltic Sea,” Stephen smiled. “But it was worth it just to see the look on your face when I told you about the job.”

I looked up at Stephen and saw that there were tears in his eyes, and I looked away quickly, but not before the tears came into my eyes.