Menage

by Alix Kates Shulman

  Mack interrupted: “He’d been barely eating, just picking at his food. He’s thin as a rail to start with, so you can understand that I didn’t want him wasting away on my watch.”

  “So I took him to Organic Eden, the best market in our area,” continued Heather. “He pushed the cart through the aisles like it was some big novelty, picking out an item here or there, just like the children, until we reach the fruit section. Now he gets all excited. (Remember, he’s just come from California.) Oh, what gorgeous strawberries! he says. How he loves them! He can’t believe we have such big luscious strawberries on the East Coast when it’s nearly winter.

  “Of course, they were way overpriced, but since he made such a fuss about them I bought two boxes and for dessert I arranged them on a platter with some other fruit. He took some of everything—except strawberries. Take some strawberries, Zoltan, I said, I bought them specially for you. No thank you, he says, I’m allergic to strawberries. I couldn’t believe it. But you told me you love them, I said, that’s why I bought them. And he smiles his naughty-boy smile—show them, Mack—and says, yes, I do love them very much, but I cannot eat them, they give me hives and headaches.”

  Rabin slapped the table and laughed loudly. “Classic passive-aggressive behavior. If he wasn’t famous he couldn’t get away with that shit.”

  “See?” cried Heather. “Didn’t I say he’s trying to drive me crazy?”

  Barbara pushed her glasses up onto her head where they rested securely in her thick black Afro. “So then what?”

  “Then,” said Mack, “our tough-broad Heather burst into tears right at the table.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Barbara. “That’s not Heather.”

  Heather shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “I know it’s not. But it may be soon. Because that is what I did. And probably not for the last time, either.”

  For a while the conversation turned to the Rabins’ recent trip to Mexico. This mole, the Rabins agreed, though better than usual for New York, was not nearly as complex as the moles they’d regularly had in Oaxaca, which prides itself on having eight different classic mole sauces. Which somehow led Mack to speak of Zoltan’s adventure with the starlet in Mexico, which led in turn to the subject of Maja’s suicide, until once again Zoltan was in their midst, dominating the conversation.

  “I’d be curious to meet him,” said Rabin. “Interesting-sounding case. I’ll also be curious to see how long you two can put up with him. It’s not a good sign when someone’s lover kills herself.”

  “I actually knew her fairly well,” boasted Mack. “It was through her I met Zoltan. That suicide—I’m not sure it’s fair to pin it on him. First of all, he wasn’t her only lover by any means.”

  Heather could hardly believe what she was hearing. She put down her fork and stared at Mack.

  “And remember my friend Terry?” continued Mack. “When he left her she tried to kill herself, too. In my opinion she was never all that stable. Complicated family, immigrant, troubled relationships with men.”

  While Mack paraded his expertise, Heather was quietly appalled that her husband had just admitted his own involvement with Maja—in front of not only his wife but also their closest friends.

  “Of course suicide is never someone else’s ‘fault,’ ” said Rabin.

  “As for our being able ‘to put up with’ Zoltan, as you say,” continued Mack, “you’re wrong, there, Rabin. True, he can be unpredictable, but he is also incredibly stimulating. He’s like no one I’ve ever met. He’s also been through a lot of bad stuff in his life—prison, exile, no money. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and chalk up his strangeness to cultural differences. Right now he needs us, and we’re delighted to have him. Aren’t we, Heather? Let him put us in his book if he wants to, I for one would be honored.”

  “All the same,” said Rabin, “I’d advise you both to develop some defenses pretty soon. Especially Heather, since he seems to go after the ladies.”

  “Are there some pills you can prescribe for me, Rabin? No, don’t laugh.”

  “Maybe an antistimulant?” quipped Barbara.

  “You want to try some Xanax?” offered Rabin. “If you can wait, I’ve got a drawerful of samples of this and that in the office. Meanwhile …” He took a pen and prescription pad out of his pocket and began to write.

  15 HEATHER HAD JUST RETURNED home after dropping the children at school when she was confronted by the ring of the phone. She flung her coat on the hall bench and dashed to get it.

  A woman! A self-assured, husky-voiced woman asking for Zoltan.

  Heather stiffened. “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Just say a friend.”

  She had a strong urge to tell that woman that Zoltan was writing now and could not be disturbed, but she didn’t dare. She knocked on Zoltan’s door and opened it. “Sorry to interrupt you, but you’ve got a phone call.” Seeing him seated at the desk in his kimono, with the mussed, open bed behind him, she wondered if he had been in bed until hearing her drive up and only then, in order to deceive her, had rushed to the desk.

  Zoltan followed Heather to the hall telephone. While he held the receiver to his ear, she busied herself straightening up in the vicinity. Ashamed to be hovering but too curious not to.

  With his back to her he conducted the conversation in a low voice, then bent to write something on the blue notepad kept there for the purpose. As he tore off the note and thrust it into his pocket, she realized that in all the weeks she’d had him to herself, she had done little to secure her position. She had failed to see that it was only a matter of time until rivals would begin turning up. Without warning, time had turned against her. She imagined her advantage dissolving in a stream of phone calls from hopeful women: the artists and writers he’d known at the colony; aspiring students from the New School; editors, critics, literary groupies. Why hadn’t she thought of them? One phone call and he was already acting like a cheating husband; if she didn’t do something, he could start disappearing, like Mack.

  “You’re rather popular for a monk, aren’t you?” she tossed at him.

  “One phone call hardly makes one popular. Anyway, my darling, you are already taken.”

  “Be careful. I can be very jealous,” she teased, pretending to be merely playing at jealousy. She offered to take messages for him instead of calling him to the phone, but he declined.

  As she watched his tall frame recede toward his room she felt her hold on him—and on herself—slipping away with each step. If she didn’t act quickly he would be lost to her.

  Impulsively, with the nerve that had once prompted her, alone of all the girls in her entire high school class, to apply to Yale, coupled with the decisiveness Mack had modeled as a man of action, she stripped the band from her ponytail, shook out her hair, stepped out of her shoes, and followed him to his room.

  When her knock drew no response, she turned the knob and opened the door.

  Back in bed, a startled Zoltan clutched at the covers.

  She took his return to bed for an invitation—what else could it mean? Hadn’t he flirted with her shamelessly from the day he arrived, calling her my dearest and my darling, kissing her hands and cheeks at every opportunity, ravishing her with his eyes?

  “I’m freezing,” she said, sidling toward the bed. “May I?”

  Before he could answer, she slipped in beside him and nestled her cheek against his naked chest.

  Zoltan tensed. What was he to do? Here in his room that was really hers, she had every advantage.

  She could hardly believe what she was doing. She was not herself. Or she was two selves at once. One of her, the cautious, cunning one, was appalled by the risk she was taking—to her dignity, her pride, her marriage—while the impetuous, infatuated one grabbed the opportunity and charged recklessly ahead. “Hold me,” she whispered.

  On his back, trapped, he lay awkwardly with one arm at his side squeezed between her thigh and his; when he f
inally extricated it, there was no place to put it but behind her neck, which forced him to turn toward her and accept her kiss. And how could he not return her kisses, stroke her perfumed hair, take her nipples between his lips when she opened her blouse? How could he not oblige?

  She heaved and sighed. The long angular body of this mysterious man, with its black fur even on his thighs, was the antithesis of Mack’s, a contrast that only intensified her desire. Whereas Mack’s penis fit comfortably against her pelvis when they kissed, Zotan was so tall that his pressed exotically into her thigh. She wriggled down the length of him to take it into her mouth and possess him. Like his body, it was longer and thinner than Mack’s. And shockingly uncircumsized.

  He abandoned all resistance. Though this pleasure was surely forbidden, he remembered the loophole whereby in North America fellatio was not universally considered having sex. Yet when he closed his eyes in sweet submission, Mack’s enormous leering face suddenly loomed overhead, like a Woody Allen mother, until Zoltan abandoned the distinction and went limp.

  Heather redoubled her efforts, using advanced techniques, but to no avail.

  He pushed her away and left the bed. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  She abruptly became herself again—the sensible one who could calculate consequences, make titillating small talk, maintain some self-control, for god’s sake. She buttoned her blouse. However awkward or tense the situation, they were back to handling it with words. “Don’t worry about it,” she said encouragingly. “These things happen.”

  “Ah, my dearest Heather,” he said, as he pulled on his kimono and sat down beside her. “You do not know me. I tried to make you understand, now I will try again.” He took her hand in his and stroked it gently. “I went through very much turmoil in L.A., as Mack knows. It’s why I left. If I am better now, it is because I am a monk.”

  There it was again. Monk. She thought of Thomas Merton, Savonarola. Neither image fit. What monk flirts so blatantly, or drives a woman to suicide? From the first moment he’d bent to kiss her hand and each time he’d fixed her in his powerful gaze it had been clear that he was no monk. Often she had seen his skin flush when she approached him, had felt him bristle when they touched, had recognized in him the same desire for her that she felt for him. Now too—his hand generated electricity. It couldn’t be all pose.

  “Are you saying,” she ventured, “that you don’t want me?”

  He nodded.

  What did he want, then? A woman like Maja? How had she behaved with him? Too bad she couldn’t consult Mack. Of course, she and Maja were incommensurable, incomparable, every person was unique, just as Zoltan was nothing like any other man she’d ever encountered: he didn’t sound like the others, with his strange accent and stilted speech; he didn’t look like them, with his scarecrow frame on which absurd costumes hung awkwardly; and, helpless as a child in the face of necessities, least of all did he act like them. She couldn’t imagine him wrestling with food or laundry, technology or taxes, though he was already middle-aged. What did he do when he had to find a doctor, buy a ticket, sew a button, play a video? He needed the help of someone like her. As he walked away from her toward the window fussing with his sash, pulling it ever tighter, she searched for a reason he would refuse her offer of so much that he needed. “Is it that you don’t find me attractive?” she forced herself to ask.

  He tossed his black lock off his forehead and scanned her with glittering eyes. “Certainly not! You are a devilishly attractive woman. It is not you, I assure you. It is I. I am … unable.” He spread his hands imploringly. “You understand?”

  Heather wondered if Zoltan’s inability was a matter of will, like a monk’s, or some problem beyond his control. “Do you mean it’s something physical?”

  He wished he could tell her exactly how physical his problem was: as physical as room and board. “Let us say … psychological. Where there is woman there is also conflict.”

  “But you were able with Maja, right?”

  He raised a hand. “Please do not bring up Maja. You cannot understand. That relationship was very complicated.”

  “But that’s just it,” said Heather, assuming the voice of reason. “With us, it wouldn’t be complicated at all. It would be simple. We’re alone together here every day and we find each other ‘devilishly attractive.’ What could be simpler than that?”

  “Your husband,” he chided her. “It is he who invited me here.”

  “Let’s leave Mack out of it, too, then,” she returned. She wondered why, if the two men had no problem sharing Maja, Zoltan was making such a fuss about sharing her. “He doesn’t have to know anything about it.”

  Zoltan looked out the window to conceal his dismay. A wind was whipping the trees, sending leaves whirling into the air. Heather was like a high wind, a tornado, blowing in to make him homeless. He stopped to compose himself. “Now, let me try to understand. You propose that we, that I, that you and I—” He shook his head. The situation was completely untenable. Not that he cared that much about violating the so-called sacred bonds of matrimony, but hospitality and loyalty among comrades were, if not sacred, at least deserving of respect. He cleared his throat and started over. “Let me understand. You are proposing we have an adulterous affair right under your husband’s roof?”

  “Actually,” she said, smiling wryly, “it’s my roof, if you want to get technical. The house is in my name.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Pardon me, I had an impression that you and Mack were happily married.” Even as he said it he knew how fatuous it sounded. The myth of the happily married. But then, how should he, happily single, be expected to know about married life?

  “If we were, do you think Mack would have invited you to live with us?”

  “Perhaps I am … naive. Mack did say … He gave me an impression this marriage was … well … different.”

  Heather bit back Maja’s name. Did Zoltan believe that a happily married man would take, to use his word, a mistress? Everyone thought their own marriage was different. She’d thought so too. Now she wondered how to overcome the handicap of difference.

  “Why did he invite me?”

  Heather smiled. “Maybe he invited you for me.”

  Zoltan shook his head in disbelief. “For you?”

  “Well, for himself, then. In case you haven’t noticed, Mack likes power. Having you here gives him a chance to parade as a powerful, generous man. He is a powerful, generous man. And he likes to make me happy.”

  Zoltan could not decide which Mack deserved more: pity or contempt. “Then your wanting someone to talk to was only—”

  “No. It’s absolutely true. Until you arrived I’d practically forgotten what it was like to have a genuinely interesting conversation. I treasure our talks. They’re so stimulating that they’ve stimulated me to want more.”

  “More than this?” he asked, sweeping the room with his arm.

  She followed his glance to the beams, the hillside, the woods. “Oh, yes, it is beautiful here, and much more peaceful than in the city, plus all the advantages for the children. But it doesn’t talk.”

  Everything Heather said plunged Zoltan deeper into confusion. He feared that her eyes, bright with passion, would fill up and overflow again. The tears he had found charming his first night in this house now seemed as dangerous as Maja’s. Were all women the same? What he needed was solitude; what she needed was company: irreconcilable differences. She was daily becoming less fascinating and more terrifying, like a North American Madame Bovary: self-destructive, incapable of foresight, in love with danger, willing, like their legislators, governors, and presidents, their Kennedys, Spitzers, and Clintons, to spoil everything for a foolish affair. “What exactly is it you want?” he asked gloomily.

  It was the other Heather, the impulsive, besotted one, who met his eyes. Exhilarated by her own daring she answered recklessly, “I want you.”

  16 JAMIE WAS ON HIS way to the bathroom from the playroom, where he and his sist
er had been cutting construction paper into scary shapes while Carmela cleaned around them, when he heard the hall phone ring. As instructed, he waited till the third ring before picking up. “McKay residence. Who’s this?” he said.

  “Hi Jamie. It’s Daddy.”

  “Hi Daddy! It’s Jamie! Where are you, anyway?”

  “Right now I’m in the middle of Manhattan driving in vicious traffic. What are you doing?”

  “I’m talking on the cordless phone.”

  “You certainly are, James my boy,” said Mack, charmed. “Is Mommy there?”

  “I think so.”

  “Could you give her the phone please?”

  “I’ll try—but I can’t if she’s with Zoltan.”

  Mack’s curiosity stirred. “Why not? Is she in his room?” When Jamie didn’t answer, he said, “Do me a favor, buddy, okay? Go see if she’s in his room. Could you please do that for me? I’ll wait.”

  Jamie bounded up the stairs toward the study carrying the phone, then tiptoed to the door of Zoltan’s room. Unable to knock for fear of Zoltan’s stern staring eyes and incomprehensible speech, he stood there bravely for a while listening at the door. No sound emerged. “Daddy?” he whispered into the phone. “I don’t think anybody’s in there.”

  “Did you knock?”

  “No.”

  “Try.”

  After a silence, he said, close to tears, “I can’t, Daddy.”

  “Okay, never mind. Try Mommy’s office. Or the kitchen. I’ll wait.”

  Released from his burden, Jamie tore down the stairs, calling “Mommy! Mommy!” When he reached the room that now served as her office the door was closed, and again he hesitated to knock, not because he was afraid of his mother as he was of Zoltan but because he wasn’t supposed to interrupt her when she was working unless it was important. He considered. What could be more important than his father’s command? Nothing, he decided, and knocked.

  Dressed in turquoise sweats and a matching fleece jacket, Heather sat on the outside deck of the room she had taken as her office, leaning against the house, with laptop in lap, while Tina watched her regally from atop the railing, tracking her every movement with her unblinking eyes. Since Zoltan’s arrival, Heather’s fantasies had so pressed against reality, and the days had tumbled by so quickly, that without her noticing, the deadline for her column was looming, and she had barely begun it. Now she was furiously trying to catch up.