Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  Marco spun back to cowboy, getting close. “I’m gonna come,” he said.

  “I want you to,” said Kyle, who was stroking himself, and then Marco came hard, harder than he had in a long time and definitely harder than when Todd sucked him off on Sunday nights after True Blood. Todd had told him a story of a gay couple in the entertainment industry, friends of a friend, who had a baby by surrogate. To be sure their sex life didn’t suffer post-fatherhood, they started scheduling sex: every Sunday night at nine. Then one partner produced a film that got nominated for an award, and all the ceremonies were on Sunday nights. Their sex life fell apart, a peril of Hollywood success.

  Kyle was shooting on his own hand and arching that skinny back. Marco held him by the chest so he was close to him. After he left, Marco rinsed himself off in the kitchen sink and opened the cabinet. He poured Todd’s Grey Goose in a cup, filling it halfway, put the cap on the bottle and the bottle back in the cabinet. He drank it down in two gulps, the warm alcohol in his chest merging with his memory of Kyle’s cum. He walked into the bathroom and brushed his teeth.

  He waited for the old guilt to set in, the guilt he had felt during his affair with Jason, the guilt he had felt drinking so much when Enrique was a baby. But there wasn’t any. He took the iPhone into the bedroom and fell asleep with it in his hand.

  Karen

  Ashley Kessler, the divorce lawyer, had been recommended by a woman on Park Slope Single Parents who described her as smart, tough, and empathetic. The office, on Park Avenue, was sleek and quiet, with maroon wallpaper. On the coffee table in the waiting area, there was a stack of magazines, including Parents, People, and Crain’s.

  Ashley turned out to be well dressed but not lavish in her style. She looked like an all-girls’ private-school principal. Her office was spacious and beige, with certificates on the walls and bookshelves filled with law texts. If Kessler had gotten rich off other people’s divorces, she had made an effort not to show it.

  “Karen?” she said. “So nice to meet you. Why don’t you tell me a little about why you’re here today?” On the phone Ashley had said a consultation was free, after that, she would take a retainer of ten thousand dollars and bill against it at five hundred an hour.

  “My husband and I have been separated a little over a year. He met someone on the Internet, and he—lives with her.”

  Ashley nodded, and Karen felt that it was stupid to lie. You could lie to a lot of people in your life, but it didn’t make sense to lie to your divorce lawyer. “Actually,” she added, “the person he lives with is not a she. It’s a he. A he-she. Do you know about them?”

  Ashley nodded. “I’ve actually had several cases involving transsexuals,” she said.

  Karen was relieved. There was probably very little she could say that would shock this woman. “So until now,” she said, “I was hoping we could work it out, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. We don’t have any joint accounts except for our retirement. When he left, we split our savings, and he’s been wiring me five thousand dollars every month for expenses. He pays the mortgage on our apartment. Last week I went to the ATM and there wasn’t enough money, and he said from now on, he can only do four grand. He says it’s because of some pay cut at work. But I think it’s the girl. She’s already had four breast surgeries, he told me. She probably wants to get something else done, and that’s why he’s taking money away from Darby and me. She’s addicted to plastic surgery! It’s called—um—”

  “Body dysmorphia.”

  “Yeah! I’m afraid he’s going to cut me off completely. I never thought I would say this, but I think it’s time for me to get a divorce.” As she said it, she began to cry. She could see the vision of her future with Matty dissolving. Though she’d known it was over for a long time, it felt real now, sitting in a lawyer’s office.

  Ashley handed her a tissue from a box on her desk. “I’m glad you came to see me,” she said. “You want to take care of yourself, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. I can help you, Karen.”

  “I don’t want anything ugly. I just want things to be clear.”

  “Of course. No one wants to go to court if they don’t have to. Now, let me explain a little about how this would work. If you decide to retain me, I’ll send a letter to Mr. Shapiro letting him know. The letter will suggest that he get his own attorney. With you, I would create something called a net-worth statement. It’s a long form in which you list all of your assets, including any vehicles, the home you live in, any second homes, boats, any individual or joint property, and your liabilities. Mr. Shapiro would draw up his own with his attorney, and then we would exchange them. This ensures that nothing gets left off the table when we begin alimony discussions. Are you with me so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “After we have the statements, the four of us can get together and try to work out how you’re going to divide your assets and resolve custody and visitation. What is your current visitation arrangement?”

  “My son lives with me, and he sees my husband five or six times a month, in my apartment.”

  “He may want more visitation once we get into that. The opposing lawyer and I would attempt to come to a resolution. If we can’t, a judge will decide after a trial. But ninety-eight percent of divorces settle out of court. Because this can be a very long process, I would seek a temporary arrangement with his attorney so that Mr. Shapiro would provide you with a fair amount each month until we work out a final settlement. It would protect you.”

  “So he couldn’t do this again?”

  “Right.”

  “Do you work?”

  “I have a master’s in social work, but I haven’t practiced since my son was born six years ago.”

  “Okay, once he retains a lawyer, they’re going to argue that spousal support should be for a finite period, until you go back to work. Is your license up to date?”

  “No, I have to get recertified.”

  “I would argue that because you’ve been out of the workforce, you need time to get licensed again.”

  “So I shouldn’t rush back to work?”

  “On the contrary. It’s better if you don’t.” It seemed counterintuitive. To get the best deal, she had to gamble on being poor. She wasn’t sure she was going to listen to this advice. To work was to set herself free from Matty. “The alimony will not last longer than the years of the marriage,” Ashley continued. “And that’s on the generous side. How long have you been married?”

  “Eight years.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Ashley asked. Karen wondered if Ashley Kessler, like her, was a non-Jew who’d married a Jew. Ashley wasn’t a Jewish name.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to be married to him?”

  “I thought I did. Now I don’t know. But divorce seems so final.”

  “I understand. It can be a very painful process. Divorce proceedings are so attached to our feelings about the marriage. I hope you’ll forgive my bluntness, but there are only two ways a marriage can end. Do you know what they are?”

  “Divorce and death?”

  “That’s right. Right now you’re living in a middle territory. Your marriage is over, it sounds like, but you’re not divorced. It’s not good to keep living in this gray area—emotionally or financially. You love your son. You want him to be provided for. Right now you’re not protected. I recommend that you begin this process, for your son’s sake and your own.”

  “Thank you,” Karen said.

  In the waiting area on her way out, Karen saw another woman, an Uptown type, thin, Botox, great legs, flipping through a magazine. She looked elegant but sad. Karen smiled at her weightily, hoping for a moment of bonding. Divorce had brought them together—Manhattan and Brooklyn, Upper East Side and Park Slope, big money and medium. Karen never would have felt connected to someone like that before. The woman looked up at Karen and glared.

  Gottlieb

  Gottlieb had been going down on CC for wha
t felt like half an hour, but she seemed no closer to orgasm. They had not made love in a week and a half, ever since Harry wandered into Dyer Pond. Gottlieb had said nothing about it, but tonight, after they returned from their double date at Blackfish in Truro with Theo and Rebecca and paid the teenage sitter, CC led Gottlieb swiftly to the bedroom. He figured she was doing it only because she was buzzed, but he wasn’t going to reject her.

  In the bedroom they had made out for their quotidian five minutes: kissing, breast massage, mutual nipple grabs, the obligatory half a dozen shaft strokes. He was about to ride her when CC stopped and said, “I want you to go down on me.”

  Usually, it was something he suggested, not her. He wondered if she was asking him to perform sexual penance for what had happened with Harry, even though, as he kept reminding her, what had happened with Harry was nothing.

  He had met CC at a bar in Red Hook. He was with some friends and spotted her right away with a girlfriend, tall and freckled. He hadn’t dated any Asian girls at Princeton, even though there were tons of them. They tended to be petite, and he wasn’t into little girls, “spinners,” as Andy called them. But CC was five-ten, taller than he was. They went back to the bar, Sonny’s, for their first date and walked on the Louis Valentino Pier to look at the Statue of Liberty. He held it against her only a little bit that she had a corporate job, in magazine ad sales. She was interested in his filmmaking and was well versed in indie and foreign films. She had taken a class on Rohmer at Amherst, and they talked about Claire’s Knee. They kissed on a bench overlooking the water, and when he pulled away to look at her, he felt lucky.

  Now he wanted to go back to the old days, when her eyes were foreign and her pussy strange, like in the Kris Kristofferson song. They made love about once a week, which she said was “a lot for Park Slope,” but despite the frequency, her attitude about sex had changed. She seemed to view it as something to be done for the benefit of the relationship instead of for its own pleasure. When she sucked him off, she did it from the side, as if doing surgery, not the way she used to: crouched between his legs, both hands on his cock, bobbing up and down with enthusiasm.

  Sometimes she didn’t want to be bothered with the old in-and-out, instead preferring to jerk him off. “I already showered this morning,” she would say, “and I don’t want to have to do it twice.”

  In the early days, their sex had been phenomenal and frequent. He loved her high, firm breasts and small dark nipples and the freckles she got across her nose and cheeks in summer. When he went down on her, he would marvel at the scant pubic hair on her mons, so different from the jungle pussy of the bipolar Jewish girl he had dated at NYU.

  On their second date, at Saul on Smith Street, she asked, “Are you one of those white guys who only dates Asian chicks?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve dated a lot of those guys, and it really bothers me.” He laughed. “What is it?”

  “It’s just—‘I’ve dated a lot of those guys,’ ” he said. “You mean you date white guys who like Asian women, but you want to find a white guy who doesn’t. You’re like the Groucho Marx of Koreans.”

  He thought she would laugh, but she said, “That’s not funny. I don’t only date white guys.”

  “How many Korean boyfriends have you had?”

  “Like three. If you include junior high. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You mean am I a rice burner? Paddy whacker? Do I have yellow fever? Is my favorite movie The World of Suzie Wong?” There was a flicker of amusement behind her open mouth. “No. You’re the first Asian girl I’ve dated. How does that make you feel?”

  “Better.” He had entered a world of strange logic, but he was charmed by her insecurity. Like anyone, she wanted to believe that she could be loved for who she was inside.

  CC’s pussy clenched and tightened, and she moaned into the pillow that she insisted on putting over her head whenever he did this. Moments later, she got silent and loose. His neck was getting sore, and his right hand, too, which he was using to pull up the hood of her clitoris while he fingered her with his left hand.

  He thought of a bad comedian who did a cunnilingus routine that ended with the punch line “Is this bitch ever going to come?”

  Gottlieb thought he might suggest fucking. He wanted to come himself, because if she let him come, it would mean that she had forgiven him. But he was afraid that if he got on top of her, she would get angry. His original plan was to make her come from eating her and then ease into sex when she was pliable and wet—pushing her legs over her head instead of the way she liked it, which was legs flat. He wanted to have Wellfleet sex. If they had Wellfleet sex, then things weren’t weird between them. This no longer seemed like a possibility. Her anger seemed barely submerged, and whatever alcohol buzz she had from dinner was most likely fading. She was probably thinking about how difficult it was going to be when he was gone, already blaming him. They were driving back to New York on Sunday, and he would fly to L.A. just over a week later.

  Maybe if he willed her to come, she would. He gave her a nice twisting come-hither motion to stimulate the G-spot, even though CC had told him that she didn’t believe it existed. She moaned—a good sign—but soon after, she removed the pillow from her face, scooted her ass down, and said, “I think I’m just too tired.”

  He was relieved but had to save face. “Really? I thought you wanted me to do that for you.”

  “I did. I mean, want you to. I can’t relax. And I’m tired. All that wine.”

  He lay down carefully next to her. She pulled the sheets to her armpits and fluffed the pillow under her head.

  He put his hand on her belly, figuring this was not as aggressive as putting it on her pussy and yet not as chaste as putting it on her cheek or neck. She clasped her fingers with his belly hand and said, “The mussels were good, huh?”

  That was it. As soon as the restaurant review started, sex was off the menu. He let her go on for a few minutes until she trailed off in a sentence and fell asleep. He waited until he was sure she was breathing deeply, took out his laptop, and jerked off to a blindfolded, tattooed white pregnant woman getting fucked from behind by her heavy, goateed boyfriend.

  Rebecca

  Rebecca was buzzed from dinner and excited to have her husband back. As long as Theo wasn’t in New York, nothing could get between them. They’d had fun with the Gottliebs at Blackfish, drinking too much, talking about Gottlieb’s upcoming trip, mocking the blue hairs at the next table. Stuart had called her a dozen times since square-dancing, leaving messages about missing her, needing her, having to see her. She listened to each one all the way through, some more than once. They made her feel like she was doing drugs. Then she deleted them.

  At the cottage, everyone said good night quickly. Rebecca showered in the bathroom adjoining their bedroom, changed into a tank top and new panties, and climbed into bed next to Theo. He was finishing a phone call, and when she came in, he said, “I have to go,” and clicked off quickly.

  She didn’t like his furtive look. “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Jim. Work.”

  “You can call him back. I don’t mind.”

  “I was finished.”

  Theo looked thin, as if he had lost a few pounds. Was he slimming down because he was having an affair? The thrill of keeping it secret, the constant sex? She wanted to ask him.

  “You look thin,” she said.

  “It’s stress.”

  “What are you stressed about?”

  “The Meier project. We’re understaffed. Jim is riding me. Sometimes I wonder why I stay there.”

  “I’ve been telling you for years to go out on your own.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think a recession is a great time to start my own practice.”

  Maybe it really was stress. She was probably paranoid. It took a cheater to know a cheater, and he didn’t know about her affair with Stuart. At least she didn’t think so. It had been the TV in the background on the
phone the other night.

  “Do you want me to give you a massage?” she asked.

  “You don’t have to,” he said. She took that as a “yes.” He was sensual, he loved touch, and she never touched him enough. This was a common complaint of his. Touching didn’t come as naturally to her as it did to him; she came from a family of nerds.

  She turned him over, climbed onto his back, and massaged his shoulders. He had said before their sex drought that he would prefer a good massage to sex any day. Horrified, she had remembered it later that year, certain he had been warning her about what would happen even before it did.

  She lifted off his shirt. It was a slim-fitting crew-neck sweater with a patch pocket and ribbed cuffs. She had asked him about it at the restaurant, and he said it was from Rag & Bone. Theo’s casual wear for the past ten years had consisted of graphic tees, chinos, and surf shorts from J. Crew, most of which he bought online. He had never been a bad dresser, but he never seemed to care much about clothes.

  “Since when have you shopped at Rag and Bone?” she asked as she lifted it off. It had a reverse seam down the center of the back.

  “I’ve always admired their work.”

  “What is this made of?” she asked, fingering the material.

  “It’s a wool/cotton blend, I think.” For a man to care suddenly about textiles was dangerous.

  She rubbed her elbow against his shoulders. He moaned with pleasure. She was encouraged by this and dug harder. If she had sex with Theo, she could forget about running into Stuart, and Theo could forget about whoever was making him want shirts from Rag & Bone.

  Theo turned onto his back. After she came, he pulled out.