by Sue Miller
When Nathan came in, he looked for a moment like a tall, pretty stranger. She hadn't seen him outside of the house for weeks, she realized. He was new to her suddenly in this place. New, and attractive. She waved.
He took long strides over to her, his briefcase, which hung by a strap from his shoulder, bouncing against his side. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Jerry caught me just as I was closing my office door to leave.” He kissed her, bringing a pocket of warm air down around her—he'd ridden his bike here—and then he slid into the booth opposite her.
“He had pressing world news, no doubt.”
“Yep, more about Sarajevo. It's as if he doesn't believe anyone else knows how to read the paper. He has to catch you up on everything. I was rude.”
He waved to Tony, behind the bar, and pointed to Meri's glass. Then he turned to Meri and sat back. “So,” he said. “Asa's settled in with the surrogate grandparents?”
“It seems so.”
“This is a milestone, Meri.” He leaned forward and took her hands.
“Believe me, I know.”
“And you look beautiful.”
She shrugged.
“I mean it.”
“Thank you,” she said. She slipped her hand out from under his and lifted her beer mug. “This is a milestone too.” She held it up. “My first.”
He congratulated her. Tony came over with Nathan's beer and took their pizza order while he was there—sausage and onion.
“How was the writing today?” she asked after Tony had left.
“Good, I think. I've started on Mayleen's kids, the way things fell apart for them.” Mayleen was one of the people he'd interviewed many times over for his book. She was a single mother who'd been part of several federal poverty projects in Chicago in the sixties, none of which had been able to improve her life in any lasting way.
They talked about the chapter, what he hoped to show with it, what details he would need to include. DeShawn's conviction for assault, Aaron's slide into addiction and his hope for the methadone program he was in.
“It's such a sad story,” she said. “Doesn't it depress you?”
“Well, sure.” He shrugged. “But it's odd. Writing about it is so interesting to me that, in another way, it doesn't. When I think of it humanly, of course, God, I feel horrible. For her. For them. For this country. But when I'm writing about it, I feel like I'm making use of it somehow. Do you know what I mean? Redeeming their lives, a little.”
“I think I do, yes.”
“So it's pleasurable.” He shrugged. “That's a rotten thing to say, but true.”
“No, I understand.” They sat for a moment.
He reached over and cupped her elbow where it sat on the table. “And your day? How?”
“More of the same. Eat. Sleep. Cry. Poop. Throw up. Oh! But I expressed milk for the first time today—that was exciting. Kind of like being a Holstein, I suppose.”
He laughed. “That was for our esteemed sitters to use?”
“If they have to, yep. I nursed him right before I left, too, so I'm not sure they will.” Even talking about it, Meri could feel her breasts get heavy, and she thought, abruptly, of the night when Nathan hadn't wanted her, the last time she'd nursed Asa in front of him.
“Was Tom there when you dropped him off?” They'd seen Tom only briefly, as he came and went with the driver Delia had hired to take him to the rehab center. Nathan had tried to talk to him once. He'd been shocked at Tom's limitations.
“Yes.”
“How did he seem?”
“No different.” She thought about it. “Well, that's not true. He was interested in the baby. That was sweet, really.” He had gotten up when she brought Asa in, and bent over his bassinet to look at him.
They sat for a moment. Nathan turned to watch the game. Tony came with the pizza and their plates, and each of them took a piece and started to eat.
“Do you think Delia should have taken him in?” Meri asked when her mouth was a little less full.
“Who? Asa?”
“No.” She made a face: don't be silly. “Tom.”
“Tom? How could she not?”
“Oh, I don't know. Maybe just what the daughter said. What's-hername. Nancy. That it wasn't her duty to. Her obligation.”
“But Delia feels it was, so that's that.” He took another bite.
“But maybe it's more insidious than that,” she said.
“How ‘insidious’?”
She set her pizza down. “Do I mean invidious?”
“I don't know. Do you?”
She thought a moment, and shrugged. She said, “What I mean is just, maybe there's something Delia likes about having him in her clutches. Weakened, as he is.”
“Christ, Meri. What an ugly thought.”
“But perhaps true. The truth is ugly sometimes.”
“And sometimes not.” He took another slice of pizza, the mozzarella pulling into long threads as he picked it up. Just before he bit into it, he said, “You're just jealous.”
“Jealous! Of what?”
She had to wait for a moment until he swallowed. “You wanted her all to yourself,” he said.
Could that be true? She had wanted something from Delia, she knew that, but she wasn't sure Nathan was right. He was nodding his head emphatically, though.
Meri chose to ignore him. “Anyway, I don't mean she wanted this consciously,” Meri said. “But look.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Look: he leaves her, years ago, for another woman. Other women. She still loves him. Throughout.”
“According to you.”
Meri sat back, silent for a few seconds, feeling the pinch of shame, of anxiety she always felt when she thought of how she'd learned the elements of Delia and Tom's story. Then she said, “No, remember? That's what Nancy thought too.”
He waved his hand. Okay.
“Anyway, now she has him back, under her wing, in her house, in her charge, and he can go no more a roving.”
“This would be, I think, so unconscious as to be irrelevant.”
“I don't know.” Meri picked up her pizza slice again. “Haven't you read Jane Eyre?”
“Nope. I saw the movie though. But I don't remember much. Just, George C. Scott seemed like he was playing Patton all over again.”
“This is a pathetic answer from a supposedly educated person.”
Nathan chewed and lifted his eyebrows.
“See, in Jane Eyre, the book,” she said, “our heroine, madly in love with the difficult, the inaccessible—because, in this case, married—Rochester, is finally able to live happily ever after with him once he's maimed. Once he's brought low. In the same fire which conveniently kills his wife.”
“So?”
“So, it's a theme, in literature about women.”
“That they like their men maimed?”
“Well, I think it's about equality, actually. That is to say,” she raised her finger, “in an era when women's lives were terribly constricted, maybe a man whose life was constricted too was more a soul mate, or something like that.”
“So I should be watching my back, is that the message?”
“Nah. It's different times for us. We have different ways of being a couple. We're more on an equal footing. We're pals.” This was true, she thought. “I suppose that's the good news and the bad news. The ‘for better or worse.’ ”
“How could it be bad? How could it be ‘worse’?”
“Well, it's not bad, I guess. But it is different.”
“Different from . . . ?”
“Well, from Delia, and Tom, for instance. Their sort of old-fashioned and kind of unequal romance of a marriage.”
“Is that how you see it?” he asked. He seemed genuinely curious.
“Yes. That's their good news and bad news.”
“Bad because unequal?”
“Right. And good, or maybe good, because more romantic. I don't know.” She looked at Nathan. “Though to be quite old-fashioned myself,
I do feel the odd pang now when you walk out the door to go to real life. The wish to maim.” She grinned.
He snorted. “It's not very real, holed up in my office all day every day.”
“You bump into people. You bump into Jerry. I even envy you that. You talk about the world.”
“I have to get this done this summer, hon.” There was apology in his voice, but a little edginess too.
“I know. But we need to figure things out for the fall better. Because I need to go back to work then or a) I'll lose this job, this job that I really, really like, and b) I'll go crazy. And then you really will need to watch your back.”
And so they started to speak again of Asa, and of his care and Nathan's fall schedule and their options, something they'd danced around before. This time, though, they divided up chores. Nathan would call the day-care office at the college and see if faculty kids had any preference. If so, she would do the research on day-care places by phone and schedule a visit to each.
They finished the pizza. Nathan turned around again to watch the game for a few minutes. “Shit,” he said, and turned back.
Meri had another infinitesimal sip of her beer and set her mug down. “It's the ruination of a perfectly good love affair,” she announced.
“What? Asa?”
“No!” She stared at him. “No. Delia, Tom. You thought I meant us?” “I thought maybe you were teasing about us.”
“No. We're still having our affair. Sort of.” She looked at him. “Aren't we?”
“I'd like to resume it, anyway.”
“Would you?” she said.
“I've been thinking about you all day.” His face had changed, sobered.
“Between thinking about Mayleen and the boys. And Sarajevo.”
“All day.” He smiled. “Dirty thoughts.”
“Because we were going out for pizza tonight?”
“Because I miss you. I miss us. I miss making love to you.”
She looked away. This was fraught for her. It made her sad.
After a few seconds he reached over and took her hands again. “I'm sorry for whatever was hurtful to you when I didn't want to.”
She didn't answer for a moment. For a moment she didn't know how she wanted to answer. Then she looked up at him and said, “So how did you get over that?”
He visibly relaxed. He grinned. “I got just a little more desperate.”
“Ah, I like a desperate man,” she said, smiling back.
“I'll get the check.”
They came out together into the dark parking lot. Nathan had his arm around Meri's shoulders. His body pressed against her side. They walked back to the car, and he let her in—he would come home on his bike. He tossed his briefcase into the backseat.
Leaning over the open window as she started the engine, he said, “This was fun. May I call you?”
“I'll think about it,” she said as haughtily as she could, and drove away, out of the lot.
The streets in this part of town were hardly lighted at all, so she could barely see Nathan when he appeared in the rearview mirror. He was only a vague shape on his bicycle.
He pulled up beside her at the second light, breathing hard. “Hey,” he said. “Hey baby. Hey mama.”
She pretended disdain. The light turned green and she gunned the car. She could see him in the mirror better now, his white shirt rocking back and forth as his body moved, standing on the pedals. Nathan.
He caught up to her at the next light just as it turned green. “I'm coming for you,” he called. Meri felt as excited, as free as she had when she and Nathan were first sleeping together, in Coleman.
She laughed and hit the gas so hard the tires squealed as she pulled away.
They teased each other this way through three more traffic lights. And then there was a long stretch of road that didn't have any. She watched the white shirt grow smaller in the mirror.
She had to go slowly again on Main Street, stopping at the signs and the one long light, and as she turned onto the dark of Dumbarton Street, she thought she saw Nathan a block or two back, catching up. She turned into their driveway and cut the engine by the house. She got out of the car and leaned against it, waiting for him. And after a moment there he was, turning into the driveway too.
He pedaled up next to the car and stopped. He stepped away from the bike, letting it fall. He came toward her. He was panting. He pinned her against the car and she felt the entire length of his strong body push against her, damp, hot. His mouth tasted of beer and of his own sweet saliva. He grabbed her buttocks and lifted her, pressed into her.
“Natey,” she whispered to him. She put her fingers into his hair and pulled his head back. “Nate, we have to get Asa.”
“No. No, we don't. We can get him after,” he said. She let go of him and he bent to her neck again.
“You think?” she said.
He moved his mouth up her neck to her cheek, her ear. “We've only been gone an hour and a half or so,” he whispered. “Come on, come on, let's go in.”
He was right behind her on the kitchen steps, his hand between her legs. They stumbled across the dark kitchen together and into the main room. He pulled her by the hand over to the hulking shape that was the couch. They fell onto it and he pushed her skirt up, even as she was fumbling at his belt, then at the multiple steel buttons of his fly. Together they pulled his jeans below his hips. Meri got her panties off one of her legs. He lay on top of her, kissing her neck, settling himself, and then he pushed into her.
She cried out in pain, and he froze.
“What?” he breathed. He rose up on his elbows above her. “What, what is it, Meri?”
“Oh, Jesus, it's the scar!” she whispered. “The tear, where the stitches were.” It had felt like a knife cutting her again.
He cocked his hips and pulled slowly out of her.
“God, God,” she whispered, and curled slightly away from him, pulling her legs up.
“I'm so sorry,” he said. His head was buried in her hair.
She could feel his wet penis, getting soft against her thigh. “Oh, I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm sorry.” She turned and lifted his head. She held his face. Her eyes were used to the dark now and she could see him, but his expression was unreadable. He lay down again, wedged against the back of the couch. They lay spooned together for a few minutes, his arm around her.
He whispered, “If I licked you? If I made you wetter?”
“But I am wet, Nate. Feel.”
Their hands met, his fingers slid slightly in her, and she inhaled sharply again, flinching away.
“Jesus,” he said.
After a moment, Meri said, “She said it might hurt a little.”
He was silent. Then he said, “This seems like more than a little.”
“It is. Yes.”
They weren't touching now. After a long moment, he said, “I can't stand this, Meri. I can't stand how hard this has all been.” His voice was hoarse, anguished. “How awful the labor was, and now, to hurt you with sex . . . I can't. I just can't. I can't stand it.”
“I know,” she said.
They lay next to each other on the couch for a while, not speaking. Then Meri sat up and pulled her skirt down.
Nathan was still lying with his jeans around his shins, his arm thrown up over his face. She could see the white length of his body, his penis a dark shadow across his thigh.
“I'd better get Asa,” she said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Delia, July 5, 1994
SO TOM HAS just been asleep the whole time?” Delia asked. She and Meri had just sat down at the kitchen table to have some iced tea. It was Meri's third time sitting with Tom while Delia was at the Apthorp house.
“So far as I know,” Meri said. She had the sleeping baby perched on one curved arm, his head turned sideways on her shoulder. Delia could see the bottoms of his feet, smooth flat little pads, silky and unused. “At any rate, he went into his room and shut the door, and I've heard not
hing since. Just like last time.”
“Well, they work him hard at rehab,” Delia said. “It exhausts him.”
“He's walking so much better though,” Meri said.
“He is.” He was. Everything seemed better to Delia, even just these few weeks along. He could almost completely dress himself—though it was true that she still had to help him with buttons and zippers. He'd graduated from the walker to a cane, one of those peculiar metal canes with multiple prongs fanning out at the tip. His right leg dragged, his right arm dangled and flopped, but they could be made to work when he concentrated on them. Even his pronunciation was clearer.
It was only the sentence structure that wasn't there. The nouns came, and the verbs, but no pronouns, no prepositions, few adverbs, few adjectives. It was like the speech of a two-year-old. Go hospital. Eat supper. Want radio. They had told her this was one form the aphasia could take, and that it was one of the more difficult to work with.
And yet he got her jokes, he got her stories if she went slowly enough and more or less acted things out as she spoke. He was himself, responding, thinking—yet still unable to convey any complexity to her, except through his eyes, his gestures. But when she looked at him, everything seemed to be there, in his face. Everything she loved.
“It must be strange to have him home all the time after all these years of living apart.”
Delia looked at the younger woman. Her eyes were steady, looking back. This moment had happened before, a moment when Meri seemed to be probing, trying to get Delia to be more open, more explicit about Tom or the history of her marriage. Delia wasn't sure what that impulse was, what it was that Meri wanted to know, exactly, but she didn't welcome it.
But Delia was good—she felt she was good anyway—at the honest answer that still didn't reveal much. “Do you know,” she said confidentially, smiling, “it truly feels as though he'd always been here.”
“Really?” Meri said. The baby stirred now, turning his little face against her neck.
“Oh, he's changed, of course, and then he's not changed. In some ways he's still the same old charming, imperious Tom. While being the complete Democrat, of course.” She smiled.
