Something Is Out There (8 page)

This upset her. She lifted herself slightly and looked at him. “You shouldn’t talk like that. You’re a wonderful person.”

“Yeah. Well. I think sometimes maybe it’s me, you know. Maybe I just don’t stir her drink.”

“Does she get any pleasure—I’m sorry. We’ve been through this.”

He looked at her. “I gave you pleasure. I saw it and felt it.”

“Oh, yes.”

A moment later, he said, “This isn’t where you sleep.”

“No.”

“Let’s do it in there.”

“Okay.”

“One minute,” he said, and he went into the bathroom and closed the door. She got up, put her robe back on, then stepped to the window and looked out through the little slit in the blinds. No one on the street. The dog was still sending its two-note complaint into the sunny air.

In the kitchen she put the water on for coffee, and then she went back down the hall to the bathroom door. “I’m making coffee.”

“I don’t ever drink it. Remember?”

“Do you mind if I have some?”

He opened the door. He still had the blanket wrapped around him. “Let’s go back to bed.”

“Let’s have something to eat and then go back,” she said.

“We don’t have that much time, baby.”

She turned the burner off and let him lead her into the master bedroom. But then she hesitated, pulled back, so that he stopped and his hand tightened on her wrist.

“I don’t know,” she said. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I sleep here every night.”

He looked at the room, still holding her wrist. “That makes it especially good.”

“Please,” she said. “I know it’s silly. But I just can’t.”

He let go, and walked by her, across to the other room. She closed the door and paused there for a few seconds. She would never have believed that her life could become as strange as this. Her heart was thudding against her breastbone. She had never felt more alive. Except that there was also a kind of macabre sense that she had opened a little crevice in a fortification on the other side of which something awful awaited—there did seem to be an element of morbidness about all this. She could not decide if it was something she remembered from her upbringing or if it was real. She was not a bad person. She was gentle and loving to her husband, the children, her parents, his, the whole family, everyone she knew. Yet the whole of her previous existence seemed unreal, now, distant, a faint rumor.

She put her hand on the wall and steadied herself.

He was waiting for her. There was a curve to his eyebrows that she had liked from the first glance at his picture online. He patted the bed by his side. And she went to him.

She said his name, and kissed along his collarbone. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “It’s just a silly superstition, and I’m more comfortable here. You want me to be comfortable, don’t you?” He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a sound, moving against her.

“Nathan?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. And he put his face down in the pillow at her ear. “Sweet, oh, so sweet. I don’t care, I don’t
care.”

She nuzzled his neck and moved herself, taking him deeper, and feeling the thrill. “Oh, let’s just keep
on
, baby. Let’s just keep on.” She moaned into the hollow of his shoulder.

Later, showering alone, she thought the rest of their time together might be long. It troubled her, and she hummed aloud, listening to the echo of her voice and knowing he could hear it, too. He was making coffee for her. (Getting her cup and setting out the French press and showing him how it worked provided a pleasant diversion about which they could tease—he had never heard of French press coffee. “French press,” he said. “Sounds like a sex act.” She smiled at him and stood quite still while he kissed the side of her neck.)

Now, drying off, she saw mental images of the children, and of Warren—unwanted reminders. She brushed them away, felt it as a mental exercise akin to this motion of drying herself with the towel. She put her robe on and walked out and made her way to the kitchen. There he sat, naked, turning the pages of the newspaper. She went and perched on his knee, kissing him. “Let’s go back to bed.”

“Oh,” he said. “Let’s.”

The phone rang this time, just as she straddled him, and they paused. He moved once inside her and then held her by the arms.

“Don’t answer it.”

“No.”

They waited. It rang and rang. Finally she disengaged herself and went to answer it. He said nothing. It was Warren, calling from work.

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“You okay?” he asked. “You sound breathless. It rang and rang. I was about to hang up.”

“I was in the other room. I ran to answer the phone.”

“Should’ve let the machine get it.”

“I don’t have it on.”

He breathed into the line.

“Warren, what is it?” she said.

“I’m going to take off early—so I’ll pick up the kids from school.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah—you relax a little.”

“That’s sweet,” she said.

“See you in a little while.”

“Okay.”

She put the receiver down and turned to find Nathan getting into his clothes. “Oh,” she said. “We’ve got an hour, still.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

But the lovemaking this time felt rushed and faintly mechanical; they finished and got dressed, and then went into the kitchen, to the breakfast nook, where she drank cold coffee, and he had a glass of orange juice. The sunlight through the leaves at the window gave a soft green cast to the room, and she had the thought that this was something she would not notice normally.

She told him about it.

“I think women get all the credit for noticing things. I think it makes them feel like they’ve got to.”

“No,” she said. “I honestly don’t notice that sort of thing. Small things, I mean.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

She looked out at all the shades of green on the back lawn, and felt the day closing too fast, the time slipping.

A moment later, he said, “I never believed I’d do a thing like this.”

“I know. God! I know.”

“I’ve got to go soon.”

She touched his hand. “I miss you already.”

“Are we terrible people?” he said, and he looked like he might cry.

She smiled, through what she realized now was her own weeping. He was waiting for her answer.

Then: “Are we?”

“Yes,” she told him.

When he left, he walked with his briefcase held up under his left arm, striding quickly away, without looking back. She watched him for part of it, but then worried about crazy Phyllis across the street, and closed the door. She went to the bedroom window and watched him from there. He hurried along, looking a little funny, a man with an appointment for which he was late, his coat lifting in the breeze.

She moved through the house putting things back to normal. She could feel the ghost-pressure of him between her legs, and she took another shower, washing carefully, taking extra care of her neck, her breasts, her inner thighs. She cleaned her teeth again, and looked at her mouth.

Finally she got into her jeans, blouse, flats, pinned her hair
back, and went into the bedroom to stare out the window. She saw Phyllis come out and look over. Phyllis walked across the street and knocked on her door.

Diana took her time going to answer it. When she did, Phyllis went by her into the living room. “I’m sleepy. I just had a nap, and I’m exhausted and the baby’s asleep. I can’t stay. Tell me who he is.”

“He’s—he wanted to sell me a direct TV network plan.”

Phyllis stared. “Come on—it’s not your Internet friend?”

“No,” Diana said through a tightening at her chest. “Nothing so exciting.”

“I wish it was—I’d tell you to send him over to me. I’m going batshit over there.”

“Can’t help you. Next time I have a Jehovah’s Witness, you’re first on the list.”

“Don’t be so high and mighty.”

“I’m just kidding.” She held the door for her friend, realizing that she wished to extricate herself, not just for the moment, but for good. Phyllis could find some other woman to be her neighborhood sounding board. In the next instant, as Phyllis stepped by her out onto the little stoop, the realization arrived that this feeling was an aspect of something else: everything was changing. She had wanted so badly only to taste fully the passion that she believed was in her nature.

“I’m going to reserve a bed on the psychiatric ward,” Phyllis said. “If
you’re
not going to provide any excitement. I thought there might be something to do this afternoon other than watching the fucking idiot box and cable.”

At last, alone, she lay on the sofa and tried to drift off. It would be all right to be asleep when Warren and the children arrived. But sleep eluded her.

The children came in first, a welter of noise and argument. Warren was still out at the car, collecting their book bags, and a raincoat that Lauren had left at school, last week. He came up to the door with it draped over his arm, carrying their bags.

“You should make them carry their own,” she told him.

“I don’t mind.” He put the bags down on the bench in the hall, and embraced her. His arms were thick, and she let her hands roam over the broad shoulders of her husband, breathing the familiar bay rum and talcum odor of him. The girls were already in their room, going on about something. Even when they were agreeable these days, it sounded anyway like an argument—the voices rising, competing for attention.

“You have a good day?” he said.

“Ordinary,” she said. “Nothing new.”

He walked into the living room, removing his sport coat. She went into the kitchen and started dinner—baked chicken and a salad, and creamed corn. She worked quietly, hearing the sounds of her house. The girls knew they were to do their homework as soon as they got home; in the evenings he was always there to help them if they’d run into any problems; he would check on them, taking small breaks from reading his paper. He read the paper front to back every day, and indeed one of the pleasures they had always enjoyed as a couple was reading the Sunday paper together, and sipping coffee, talking over the articles they read.

He came into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water.

She wanted to make love to him. She looked at the fine creases of the muscles in his forearm and thought of taking hold of it, pulling him toward her. But she could never be that forward with him. She had always to make him believe it was his idea. She crossed behind him and patted his upper back, then leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Long day?”

“Not too bad,” he said, heading into the living room with his water.

Dinner was quiet, unusually so. The girls whispered to each other, the terms of some game they were engaged in. They had more homework after dinner—work that required them to be on the Internet. They excused themselves and went into their room, to their computer. Later, with the TV on, Diana heard them giggling. Warren, who had gone to check on them, said they were doing something with some other friends on MySpace. It was harmless. He liked to watch the comedy channel and ESPN. He flicked back and forth between them while she read, and then for a little while she was in her own room, a covey off the dining room, what must have been a sewing room for the previous owners of the house. She went online, expecting a message from Nathan, but there was nothing, and probably he had been as busy as she had been, after the long drive home.

She started to write him, and couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally she wrote,
Things normal here
. And as she pushed
SEND
, something toppled over inside her. The room seemed to spread out away from her, and then it was as if she were shrinking in it, falling away from herself, and she put her hands to her face, holding on, using what felt like her last strength to close the computer down with its secret passwords and its dummy sites leading to other sites, leading to the one site.

She made her way into the living room, this room of her home, that was no longer home, and she found him asleep in his chair, and on television there was a comedian talking about President Bush. The first President Bush, because the jokes were about the Gulf War and General Powell. Warren could
look at the same bit over and over, and laugh at it every time as if it were new. She remembered that she used to admire that about him. Turning the TV off, she took his hand and pulled gently. “Honey,” she said, realizing with terror that it was rote, that it didn’t come from anything anymore. He opened his eyes and looked at her, a blank expression of half-sleep. “I didn’t know I was gone,” he said. “I was dreaming I was eating something and not being able to swallow it.”

“Can you go back to sleep?” Her own voice surprised her.

He stood, and took her arm, and they went into the bedroom together. In the little open space at the end of the hallway, they crossed the opening to the guest room, the dark rectangle of the open door, the faint shapes of the furniture in there, the dressing table and the cedar chest and the bed.

In their room, she got quickly into her nightgown, brushed her teeth, and crawled into bed, while he hung his clothes neatly in the closet, and then cleaned his own teeth. She lay listening to the electric toothbrush, which he used exactly according to directions, thirty seconds for each quadrant of the mouth, upper teeth and lowers, adding up to the two minutes. Then the flossing, and the rinsing. She still wanted him, not out of any appetite now, but hoping to recover something, to make up for it all, in some way, for herself. He came into the room and seemed surprised to find her awake.

“Hey,” he said.

She smiled. “Hey.”

He got into the bed, and came close, and kissed her, and then moved against her, reaching to pull her panties down.

“Darling,” she said to him, trying to mean it, and feeling Time open out, the long prospect of hours, days, weeks, months, years—all of it suddenly far past her, undoable, gone.
Beyond any hope or solace. “Oh, God,” she said, from the weight of it on her heart. He held her close. He was going to come over on top of her now. She took his face in her hands and said his name, and felt her own mind like a broken wall.