Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough (20 page)

  Shit, and hot damn and hot flashes that had nothing to do with perimenopause. He was going to kiss her. His lips touched hers, and before she could decide if she was going to back away or give in, sound and movement at the window intruded.

  "J
esus."
She reacted on instinct, jumped to her feet, and threw herself downstairs. Taking pictures through her bedroom window! She was going to catch the bastard before he got back to the ground, yank his camera away, and stuff it so far up his ass, he'd never be able to crap on people's lives again.

  Two feet from the front door, she reached out, caught the knob, and stood there, panting with fury.

  And stood there. Still panting, but not as hard anymore.

  Something was wrong with this picture. Something was very wrong.

  She let go of the door and turned to find Mike halfway down the stairs, watching her, arms folded across his broad chest.

  He didn't stop her.

  He wasn't going to race down the rest of the stairs and grab her while she struggled and swore at him. Wasn't going to stop her from going out there and making a huge ridiculous mistake she knew damn well she shouldn't be making.

  She'd actually been waiting for him to rescue her from herself.

  Christ.

  She moved stiffly to the yellow -and-blue furniture shoved into the dining room and sank on an unforgiving wing -back, feeling like she'd just swallowed lead.

  How often had she depended on Ed like this, to keep her from self -destruction? Now it was Mike's turn? One man to the next to save her from taking responsibility for her actions and herself? And what had she been thinking about Rosemary depending on Big Mike for every breath?

  Mike came down the stairs, stood in the middle of the living room, and watched her until she felt like an art exhibit. "What are you staring at?"

  "Smart not to go out there."

  "What are you, my father? I made a good choice today? Wanna check my homework?"

  His jaw tightened and she could practically hear him telling her to shut the fuck up.

  She mumbled an apology. God knew why he put up with her. Unless he loved damsels in distress.

  "Did Rosemary need you to—"

  "Are we back to Rosemary?" He tipped his head to the side, eyeing the wall as if he'd like to put his fist through it. "Okay. Go. Get her out of your system."

  "
My
system? Like you've gotten her out of—"

  "The clothes are gone. Pictures. All that stuff. You were right, it was time I got over it."

  Holy shit. Vivian traced a small stain on the chair; her fi ngers looked short and plain and weak without their talon nails. "Did she need rescuing a lot?"

  "Constantly."

  "And you loved that about her?"

  "No. I didn't."

  Vivian slid out of her chair. She wanted to see his eyes up close when he spoke. "You're not into the knight -in-shiningarmor thing?"

  "No." He answered in the usual wooden syllables he used when talking about Rosemary, his face frozen and robotic. Only this time it occurred to Vivian his paralysis might not stem from the pain of missing her, but maybe from something less noble. Which made wild hope rise in Vivian's chest even though she didn't want it there.

  "But she wanted you to be Sir Galahad?"

  "Yes."

  She should back off this topic. She should back away from this man. She should pack up her house, sell it, and go somewhere the reporters couldn't fi nd her. Like Antarctica.

  But when the hell did she do anything she should? "So why am I starting to think the perfect love thing was bullshit?"

  Mike shifted his weight, and she had a sudden strong intuition that he wanted to run away as much as she did, and probably as far.

  His jaw tightened further; he looked away. "Because, Vivian, it was."

Seventeen

E - mail from Tom Martin to Sarah Gilchrist

Sarah, I read your note at least seven times. You've really had feelings for me for that long? After all these years wanting you and getting only occasional smiles to feed me, my hunger is enormous.

  
I remember every dance recital you gave in grade school, every speech, every part you had in the school shows. You're the brightest, most talented woman Kettle has ever seen. You have so much to offer. I wish I was the man taking it from you.

  
Write soon. Time seems to stop between your e - mails.

E - mail from Sarah Gilchrist to Tom Martin

Tom. I remember everything about you, too. How talented you were on the trombone. How smart you were at everything, and how ambitious. Do you think our lives would have been different if I'd said yes the night of the dance?

  
The road not taken. How it will always haunt us. Must go, though I'd rather write to you than anything in the world.

  Sarah pushed the vacuum in short, jerky strokes over the upstairs hall rug her parents bought from a Turkish man in Chicago. Usually she enjoyed vacuuming, the way rugs and floors came free of dust and bits of paper and threads, and enjoyed the fresh, clean look of the house afterward. Today, vacuuming felt like slave labor. She wanted to be in her bedroom checking e -mail, to see if Tom had written in the last half hour.

  She was obsessed; it was so unlike her. But since she and Tom had been e -mailing, she felt as if she were coming alive again, as if for the last four years of her marriage, after moving back to Kettle, she'd been in a mere coma of existence, a continuous suppression of her sexuality, her vitality, her talent,
herself
.

  How had she allowed this to happen?

  Ben had brought her back to Kettle from their thriving, thrilling existence in New York and buried her under a stupefying pile of housewife responsibilities, so he could sit in his study, every need anticipated and satisfied before he was even aware he had it, and write a novel that, if he ever fi nished, she'd bet would repel any editor misfortunate enough to encounter it.

  Tom understood her. Tom wouldn't have insisted she move away from her friends and a career in dance. He would have stayed in the city with her and found a job for himself. She could have inspired him to go to law school as he'd one day dreamed of doing. He could have become a prominent New York lawyer, and she would have been his dancer wife. They would have been an exciting and interesting couple people would have admired and wanted to get to know.

  Not to mention if she'd married Tom she undoubtedly would have been having orgasms from day one. Maybe if she hadn't been so stupidly infatuated with the idea of giving her virginity to the so -called love of her life, she would have slept with Tom in high school and had her first orgasm right there in his car. Maybe then she would have known not to marry Ben. Maybe she would have discovered, as could easily turn out to be the case, that Tom was the love of her life, and that she'd saved her virginity for the wrong man.

  Which made a horribly poignancy out of the night in Tom's parents' Volvo, with his hands and mouth all over her, his erection thrusting against her graduation dress through his khakis. She'd said no and felt like virtue personified. It could have been the biggest mistake of her life.

  Maybe if she'd tasted even part of the deep passion that still, after all these years, simmered between them, she'd have had the sense to foresee the barren existence ahead of her with Ben, where her only use was finding misplaced clothes and cooking his food and providing her body for him to mas turbate on. Because she might as well face it, that's what sex between them boiled down to.

  Life with Tom would have been full of ardent and interesting discussions, he would have respected and encouraged her point of view, instead of fi nding a way to bash it down as her husband did every time she ventured an opinion. Why hadn't she seen all this when she was so smitten with Ben at Cornell?

  Hindsight was twenty -twenty. Love was blind. The expressions existed for a reason. She'd been so sure the calm feelings she had for Ben were proof of their depth. That other people might be swayed by wild agonies of longing and lust, but those people would be in divorce court within the decade. Not Sarah. Hindsight would be her validating ally. What she had with Ben would last and last.

  Why hadn't she noticed the passion was missing? The true soul connection she had with Tom?

  She shouldn't be so hard on herself; she
had
noticed. But everyone said passion wasn't important, everyone said passion faded, everyone said what lasted was a strong, healthy friendship and respect. And so she'd climbed onto the soapbox and trumpeted The Truth along with everyone else,
Oh, what I feel for Ben is so much deeper and quieter than anything I've ever felt
. And therefore it was True Love.

  Not boredom and suffocation waiting to happen.

  What were you left with when you found out everyone had lied? When you found out friendship and respect
could
fade? And what were you left with when you didn't even have memories of passion to rekindle?

  Not even hope.

  So Sarah had buried herself in a sensory deprivation chamber. See no problem, hear no problem, speak no problem. She'd martyred herself to her child and husband, denied everything she wanted and needed for so long, she could barely remember how to want and how to need. Until Tom.

  Want and need didn't begin to describe the dam -bursting flood of emotion, starting with the Night of the Vibrator, when she'd written to him inviting anything he had in mind, and he'd written back three minutes later with everything he had in mind, as if his dam had burst, too, as if he'd been sitting at his computer all day, all week, for nearly a generation, waiting for her. For her, for his Sarah.

  "Honey?"

  She barely heard Ben over the hum of the vacuum cleaner, the red Samsung they'd bought online for much less than they would have spent at Channing Vacuum on Highway J. Barely, but she did hear him. And decided she had dropped whatever she was doing and run to him probably a thousand times. This afternoon he could jolly well come upstairs himself to get her attention.

  "
Honey?
"

  She kicked the machine to more power and therefore more noise, vacuumed the same spot furiously, over and over. He would stand there at the bottom of the stairs for three hours if that's what it took.
Honey? Honey? Honey?
It would never enter his mind that she'd be anything but at his beck and call.

  And look at her, trembling over how hard it was to deny him. How deeply she'd conditioned herself to serve.

  "
Sarah?
"

  If she managed to hold out against the need to turn off the vacuum and run downstairs calling out, Y
es, Ben?
he'd be irritated, as if it was her fault she hadn't heard him.

  "
Honey? Sarah?
"

  
Damn it, Ben.
Sarah stomped the power switch off. "
What?
"

  She never yelled. Ever. Occasionally if she raised her voice the teeniest bit, Ben would get an aggrieved look on his face and answer with exaggerated calm, as if he needed every bit of patience he was born with to deal with his child of a wife.

  "Well, Sarah . . ." Gentle, gentle voice, like Fred Rogers about to fall asleep. "I'm going out, and I wondered if you needed me to pick anything up for you."

  It was a ridiculous ritual they'd perfected. He'd ask. She'd refuse and thank him for his thoughtfulness. Today she was not going to refuse.

  "Yes. Would you pick me up a gallon of skim milk from Stenkel's?"

  No response. Her heart rocketed into an erratic beat; her face grew hot. He was undoubtedly letting the shock settle. She wanted him to
what
?

  She thought of Tom, scouring the Internet for cards and poems she might like, for pictures of just the right jewelry to suit her, and pictures of the perfect color fl owers whose beauty reminded him of hers, since of course he couldn't risk sending the real thing.

  "I wasn't planning to go past Stenkel's."

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five—she couldn't make it to ten. Was she
planning
to spend all Monday morning last week trying to get the chili stains out of his Packers sweat pants?

  "Well plan to now." Adrenaline burned, the fear-excitement of a child deliberately displeasing its parent.

  "Sarah?" His footsteps coming upstairs, the shuffl e -shuffl e of the slippers she bought him. "Are you okay? You seem . . . angry recently."

  She gripped the vacuum. Yes, Ben, she was angry recently. She was angry recently and retroactively for all the lost and wasted years of her life.

  "Oh." She gentled her tone into regret. "It's probably hormonal. I'm sorry. I'll get the milk later."

  She flinched at her words.
Why
couldn't she point out, even diplomatically, that she went out of her way for Ben every day of their marriage, and buying milk wouldn't be more than a ten -minute bite out of his twenty -four hours? And ten minutes of his day spent making her life easier would make her feel happy and cared for. The way she felt with Tom, even just on e -mail.

  Ben frowned; she looked him full in the eye with a hopeful, loving look, and it hit her right then that everything hung in the balance. Everything.

  If he said no, no, it was fi ne,
he'
d get the milk. If he'd do that one thing for her, she'd tell Tom she was sorry, very sorry, but she was married and nothing good could come of this. She'd call Dr. Dodson and make an appointment for marital counseling and who cared if Joan found out, working as she did next door at Dr. Marlowe's.

  
No, sweetheart, you work so hard. I'd be happy to get the milk, it's only a small detour. And why don't we go out tonight, you and me, so you don't have to cook, maybe catch a movie after dinner, it's been so long since we went out on our own . . .

If only he'd get it. The milk and the bigger picture.

  "Maybe you should ask Dr. Swanson for some female pills or something. I worry about you, sweetheart. You're not usually like this." He leaned in and kissed her forehead, walked past her into their bedroom.

  "I can't remember where I left my shoes. Have you seen them?" A deep chuckle. "Oh here they are, in front of my face."

  Sarah started the red Samsung Quiet Storm 9069G, tears trying so hard to rise up in her eyes and sobs in her throat that her body shook with the effort of keeping them down. She vacuumed over to Amber's room, took one look inside at the mess strewn everywhere, on the bed, on the desk, on the floor, her coat, her books, shoes, pens, clothing.

  How was Sarah supposed to vacuum with all this crap on the floor? Had anyone given one second's thought to
her
? Anyone, anywhere except Tom?

  She heard her husband thud past behind her, fi nally able to part with the slippers she bought him that he hated, calling out a hearty "Bye, Sarah" that made her want to scream.

  One step forward, one powerful kick from her dancer's right leg, and Amber's bright red down Christmas parka from L. L. Bean, warm and stylish, which Amber nearly always refused to wear, sailed into the air and onto the bed.

  And a two -pack of condoms fell on the floor, between an ugly orange blouse Amber had worn the day before and a copy of
A Wrinkle in Time
from Sarah's childhood that she and Amber had both read so many times, the pages were falling out.

  Sarah turned off the red Samsung Quiet Storm vacuum cleaner.

Amber was having sex. Or planning to.

  She couldn't be having it yet, could she? Wouldn't Sarah have noticed? Wouldn't something have changed in her baby girl and wouldn't Sarah be able to tell?

  Just two condoms, not a pack. Nothing she'd bought herself . . . unless the rest of the box was here somewhere?

  Half an hour later, the last inch of the room examined and carefully put back, she could conclude they weren't part of a box Amber was hiding.

  So where
did
they come from? A friend maybe, sharing her stash? Tanya? Beverly? When had Amber last worn the coat?

  Early in the week it had been chilly enough that Sarah worried her pumpkins could succumb to frost. That day, Monday she thought, she'd overruled the usual objections and insisted Amber wear her coat. And then what? Had she gone somewhere after school?

  Aerobics at Vivian's.

  Now that Sarah thought about it, Amber had come home looking defiant and guilty, but Sarah assumed it was because Amber knew Mom wasn't thrilled about her daughter's association with that . . . person.

  Who else was there taking the class?

  Trampy Tanya, as Sarah called her privately. In two steps she was at the hot -pink and silver phone they bought Amber for her birthday last year, dialing Tanya's number with shaky fi ngers.