The Edge of Sleep (18 page)

They seemed to kiss for hours. Karen knew that later the kisses would become hard, fierce, demanding, but not until they were both ready and could no longer restrain themselves. That was lust, this was love. Or at least it felt that way, she thought. For the moment it felt that way and for the moment that was more than enough.

Finally his hands began to move, stirring as if awakened from slumber. Slowly they traversed her back in opposite directions. One hand reached her neck, caressed her there, then moved upwards into her hair. Karen felt her whole scalp tingle with his touch. As earlier with her hands and feet, she became aware of a source of sensory pleasure she had long forgotten. She wanted it never to stop and, as if sensing her desire, Becker ran his fingertips to the top of her head, across her temples, gently down over her ears, then started back up again from the neck. Karen groaned against his lips. Once more she had the feeling that her mind was being released and tumbling languorously backwards. A swoon must feel like this, she thought.

Only when his fingers had stopped moving on her head and returned to her back did his other hand begin to explore. It slid slowly downwards, into the small of her back where it paused, as if seeking permission, before slipping onto the swell of her buttocks. It followed the curve of the buttock to where it met the leg, then came up again until it reached the hip. His fingers spread across the hipbone and stretched until they stopped just short of the pubes.

Karen pulled his shirt from his belt and ran her hands up his back. He leaned away from her just far enough to insinuate one hand into the neck of her blouse. His fingers began the slow and tantalizing descent to the rising mound of her breasts. Again he lingered for a long time, just beyond the breast, as if uncertain or not daring to continue. By the time his hand lowered still farther, Karen’s body was screaming for him to continue.

Later, when his lips replaced his fingers on her nipple and she emitted a shuddering sigh, Karen admitted to herself that she was overmatched. Becker seemed capable of giving her more pleasure and more excitement than she could stand. Certainly more than she could give in return.

And much later, when he had finally removed all of her clothes and she had torn away the last of his and he eased her to the bed, she decided she was just a greedy bitch who was going to have to take all of this magnificent love-making and quit worrying about what she brought to it. It was not a hard decision.

They lay breathless for some time, as if stunned by what had happened. At the end they had both been howling, and Karen had bitten into her pillow to stifle some of her loudest roars. The howls had turned to astounded laughter as they drifted down together, and then subsided altogether as they lay in each other’s arms and panted against each other’s skin.

“I’d forgotten what you were like,” Karen said at last.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I mean that as a compliment. I don’t think you used to make love this way, did you? How can you possibly do it that way all the time?”

“I don’t, normally,” Becker said. “I happen to like you.”

“I got that impression.”

“Actually. I don’t do it at all, lately. It’s been a long time.”

“I know.”

“Is that in my file, too?”

“The Bureau isn’t that interested in you, John ... It’s been a long time for me, too ... Do you think that accounts for it?”

“For what?”

Karen buried her face in his chest and willed herself to shut up. There was a difference between complimenting him on his sexual performance—a blandishment she knew men required—and gushing like a schoolgirl who’s just had her first orgasm.

After a pause, Becker said, “It is being duly noted that you didn’t immediately say, ‘I like you, too.’ ”

“Do you want me to say that?”

“I’m just noting that you didn’t.”

Like you, Karen thought. Like you? I want to chain you to the bed and feed you oysters and clams. I want to have your magnificent knowing hands surgically implanted onto my flesh.

“I don’t know if I like you or not,” Karen said aloud. “But I obviously respond to you. Well, that’s a bit of an understatement. I responded like a bitch in heat—and proud of it, let me add. As for liking you, I guess I don’t not like you. But you’re a hard man. John. Can we just live with that ambiguity for a while?”

“It would be very adult of us,” he said.

“Do you want to take back saying that you liked me?” Becker paused.

“You don’t really get to take it back, you bastard,” Karen said hurriedly. “It was a bogus offer.”

“Oh, I don’t want to take it back,” he said. “I was thinking of clarifying the statement.”

“Don’t,” Karen said, and immediately regretted it. “You’re right. It speaks for itself. I was just going to gush for a while.”

Gush! Karen thought. Rave on about my charms! But instead of saying it to him, she slid her hand from his chest to his abdomen and felt him react involuntarily to the tickle response.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked after the silence had lengthened.

“Granted.”

“Do you still see your ex-wife?”

“Cindi? Sometimes.”

“I mean, do you see her?”

“We’re divorced.”

“I know. Still, it’s not unheard of. You made no effort to get away from her, after all. You’re still living in the same little town.”

“Clamden’s my home.”

“I know. I’m just asking. Sometimes husbands think their rights continue after divorce, you know. Sometimes they keep coming around and try to resume relations.”

“What did you do?” Becker asked.

“I didn’t say it happened to me,” she said.

“How did you handle it?”

“With aplomb and diplomacy. I kicked him in the nuts. He didn’t try again.”

“The man’s a quitter.”

“I call him a fast learner. I only had to explain to him once.”

“Amicable divorce, was it?” Becker asked.

“Do we have to talk about it in bed? Couldn’t we discuss politics or something else cheerful?”

Becker spoke in a serious tone.

“What did he do. Karen?” He felt her body tense against his.

“Let’s drop it.”

“I mean during the marriage.” he said.

“I know what you mean.” She rolled away, turning her back to him. “Let’s not spoil the night, John.”

“It would have made your life easier if you had given him more frequent visits. You could have had more free time without Jack, but you didn’t. What went on?”

He put a hand on her shoulders in the dark and felt her tense against his touch.

“Was it something he did to you?”

“You’ve just ruined a great fuck,” she said coldly.

“Or was it something he did to Jack?”

Karen started to get out of the bed but Becker held her. He put his arm across her belly and pulled her back so she spooned against him. Her body was stiff but she did not struggle.

“Let go of me, Becker.”

Becker held on to her and pressed his body against hers from behind. Karen grunted once and tried to jerk away but stopped when he tightened his grip. They both knew she was trained and skilled and could make a good battle of it if she chose to fight.

“What did he do to Jack, Karen?”

For a moment Becker thought she really was going to make a battle of it. Her muscles tightened as if she were going to spring. He would let her go if she really wanted to get away, of course, but he did not think she wanted to.

She was quiet for a moment and both of them were coiled and poised, but then she slowly relaxed. Becker continued to hold her tightly for both self-defense and support. If she was going to kick back into him, it would be when he eased up in response to her; but he sensed that she had given in and was releasing something from inside and his grip helped to show her he was there for her.

“He beat him,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “The son of a bitch beat my sweet little boy. I should have killed him. John, I should have killed him.”

“No.”

“I should have, I should have.”

“When did it start?”

“When Jack was about four. Suddenly Carl seemed to blame Jack for everything that went wrong. Not just around the house, anything that went wrong in his life. And there were a lot of things going wrong in his life. Me, for one. I should never have gotten married in the first place. I’m too selfish.”

“We’re all too selfish,” said Becker. “But we all do it.”

“First it was just spankings, then worse. He started to hit him with things—belts, a hair brush—usually when I wasn’t around. I’d be at work and I’d come home and Jack would have a bruise and Carl would tell me he fell off his trike or tripped while running or ... And Jack wouldn’t deny it. He was so afraid of Carl he wouldn’t even tell his own mother. What kind of mother does that make me?”

“Don’t blame yourself. You weren’t the one who was doing it.”

“But I didn’t stop it. I figured it out eventually, but even then I didn’t stop it right away. Not as soon as I should have. Carl called it discipline and I just, somehow, I just couldn’t believe he was doing it in the way he was doing it. I tried not to look it right in the face, John; I even told Jack to be careful and not enrage his father. I blamed Jack.”

Karen stopped. She heard Becker’s hard breathing behind her. He sounded as if he was engaged in a fight with himself that he would not win; but he made no comment.

“I’m not fit to have a son,” Karen said. “I just could not admit to myself that it was happening. Even in court, even when we were fighting for custody, I couldn’t bring myself to come right out and say it. I just couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I don’t deserve that wonderful little boy, John, but I’d die before I’d let him go live with his father. Nothing happens now on their weekends together. I check Jack as soon as he gets home. I’ve told Carl what I’ll do to him if I even suspect anything. He knows I will.”

“You said you couldn’t believe it was happening to you, but you meant you couldn’t believe it was happening to you again,” said Becker. “Isn’t that it?”

This time Karen was silent.

“Because it happened to you as a kid, didn’t it, Karen?” She did not answer.

“I know it did. You told me about it ten years ago.”

“I never said a word ...”

“No, you didn’t talk about it, but you told me. I could tell by the way you reacted to my touch, the things you didn’t feel comfortable with, all the things you didn’t say when I told you about myself... You don’t have to admit it if that comforts you, but don’t bother to deny it.” Karen continued to lie very still in his arms and the silence seemed to balloon around them and envelop the room. They could hear noises from outside—the wind against windows, the far distant cough of a car engine starting—but within the room it seemed to Karen that all sounds had ceased to exist. She could no longer hear Becker’s breathing and was aware of her own only by the measureless rise and fall of her bosom. When she shifted her weight slightly, the groan of the mattress and the rustle of the sheets against her body seemed incredibly loud. In the new position, Becker’s arm had ridden up from her abdomen so that it crossed her chest just below the first swelling of her breast. He still held her firmly and she was grateful now for the pressure and the sense of comfort it gave her. She wanted someone close if she had to confront the monsters of her past.

When Becker spoke his voice seemed so loud in the stillness that had come over them that Karen was momentarily startled.

“What else?” he asked.

“What?”

“Was there more? With Carl.”

Her ex-husband’s name sounded odd on Becker’s lips, and she realized she had not heard him speak it before. He had referred to him only as “her husband,” not by name, and the change seemed too abrupt, overly familiar. For a moment she resisted it, as if allowing someone else to use Carl’s name was in itself a revelation of family secrets. Her reaction was swiftly past, but it left her feeling slightly soiled.

“No,” she said. “What do you mean?”

“Did he do anything else?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s too much, but it usually doesn’t stop there. Violence creates its own appetite.”

Karen wanted him to stop asking, she wanted to demand what made him such an expert. But she knew he was, she knew he understood it all better than anyone.

“He hit me, too,” she said. Her throat was constricted and her voice so low she had to repeat herself. Even as she said it, she still found it hard to believe.

Becker grunted noncommittally, as if he had expected her statement and was waiting for the rest. There was a quality to his silences that Karen found compelling, as if she had to fill them. He seemed to know what came next but required the formalities to be observed by having her say it.

“It didn’t happen that often,” she said. “Any is too many, but it wasn’t that often. The first time I couldn’t believe it had happened. I couldn’t believe he would dare to do it, that he would want to do it. It was still early in our marriage. I had convinced myself I was in love, we were in love, hell, I wanted so much to be in love ...”

“To have someone love you,” Becker interjected.

“Yes, I suppose, but to love someone else, too; I knew you were supposed to love someone else, that’s what everyone said, so I convinced myself I loved Carl ... And then he was so repentant afterwards. He cried, he said he loved me, he adored me, he would never, never do it again ...”

“And you believed him.”

“I wanted to. I made myself believe him. I was in a marriage, I had to give that every chance, every effort. I couldn’t just walk away because of one mistake.”

Again Becker was silent and Karen felt she had to continue, had to find the explanation that would justify herself, that would win his approval.

“The second time was months later. He had been fine until then. We had had quarrels but he had controlled himself. I assumed that it really was only a one-time thing. But then he snapped. We weren’t fighting about anything special, nothing particularly sensitive. He’d been drinking, not much, just a little. There seemed to be no provocation, then all of a sudden he was hitting me, hitting me and hitting me ... I wore pancake makeup the next day to hide the bruises at work, I was so ashamed. If anyone had asked what happened—no one asked.”