by Nancy Thayer
“Do you want to sleep with me?” I asked, because his flaccid courtship was so transparent. He responded exactly as I had expected—he withdrew his ardor and his hand and scuttled back to the safety of his profession. Ministers are just as macho as the next man; they can’t stand to have a woman make the advance, and they don’t like to have the truth spoken clearly. Peter Taylor would gladly have screwed me in the backseat of his car—as long as I never said aloud, “Do you want to screw me in the backseat of your car?” But I spoke.
Oh, it’s a shame that he was such a coward, because I would have liked to make love to that man. He is vain, and has kept his body trim and muscular. His profession would have brought guilt and naïveté to heighten the excitement—guilt is such a strong aphrodisiac. The skin of his body would have slid sucking against mine. Once at a picnic I saw a woman slice a ripe watermelon in half, and her son, intrigued by the exposed pink fruit, immediately stabbed his forefinger into the fruit’s juicy depths. Juice and seeds spurted out. His mother scolded him, but the boy looked so pleased, and withdrew his finger in the manner of one who has achieved an unexpected triumph. Just so would Peter Taylor have entered me, with fears of all kinds—jealous wives, outraged parishioners—making his blood pound all the harder. All his knowledge and beliefs would have caused him to taste my body like a good man biting into sinner’s fruit; and it would have been the most savory feast of his life. But instead he drew his hand away from mine.
Now he stands in the pulpit looking as pious as a saint, but he seldom looks my way. He is afraid, I know, that if his eyes meet mine, a recognition of lust will ignite for all the world to see. The coward. He does not really interest me. I don’t want to fan his skittish flames.
No, I don’t want a tepid, timid, ministerial lust. Even if I were able to involve Peter Taylor in a flirtation, it would be a bore: he is so well known and loved that people would forgive him instantly, or not believe their eyes and ears. I am not sorry that I didn’t screw Peter Taylor, though it would have been amusing; I’ve never been to bed with a minister. But I am quite content with Johnny, for our lust swells daily, like a music beating in our blood, He makes me weak, dazed, damp, ecstatic. He gives me fever. He makes me flame.
And he is my antidote to this town. People here are so boring, so settled, so safe—zombies. Just look at the women in this church, how they dress. Count how many have plaid fabric stretched across their bottoms. Fat or lean, the women in this town wear plaids. Is it because the harsh bars and blocks in the fabric mirror the workings of their minds and hearts? Certainly there is no pattern more perfectly designed to deny desire. People here want to be seen as sexless, as emotion-free as furniture. Perhaps that is one reason why they’ve always hated me. I flow in silk. I reek of sex. The patterns of my life are soft and coiling. My hair is long and thick; I brush it constantly, and I know just how to put it up in a twist so that at a crucial moment before making love I can release it and let it fall about my naked shoulders. I have walls of mirrors, and I know just which angle of my body is the most alluring—and just which positions to avoid. I am thirty-five now, but I can look innocent, with the aid of practice and knowledge. And I am beautiful and wealthy; I have learned to wear my jewelry like skin and my skin like a jewel.
This may be why they hate me. When Mitchell was still alive, when he brought me to this town, I sensed the coolness of the women. But I thought: Well, what can one expect from women who wear plaids and hide their breasts? Mitchell had warned me that New Englanders keep aloof, so I was prepared for it, and while he was alive there was enough socializing. The people of this town courted him as they would court any wealthy man, but I did not figure out soon enough just how jealously they guarded him for themselves. They hovered around me in those early days, trying with their self-serving smiles to pry secrets from me. They were hoping to discover some great unforgivable error in my past which would let them bar me with a righteous flourish from their lives—and which would win Mitchell away from me and back to them. Because I am beautiful and love luxury, they labeled me as bad. They only had to look at me to decide that.
Back in the Midwest, they judge people just as harshly, but there they say so. Finally, there, some indignant soul puts her hands on her hips and says, “Liza, I think you ought to know we just don’t approve of the way you dress. To be honest, there’s something cheap about you and we think you ought to do something about it.” In their most cruel criticisms is a kind of frank friendliness, and after all, that flat frontier land has had too many outcasts tame it for anyone to be called a stranger there. But here in New England, people judge you once, then turn their backs. Or if they must face you, it is with averted eyes. That’s how they faced me when Mitchell was alive. They held me off with remote courtesy, but because Mitchell was my husband, they had to let me into their midst.
But when Mitchell died, so did every bit of their pretense to friendship. The whole town came to his funeral, expressing frigid sympathy to me, and then turning away, stood in groups as far away from me as possible, staring at me with accusatory eyes.
“Your husband died of a heart attack, and you caused that heart attack.” Everyone was longing to say that, but no one did.
What do they think I did? Do they think I fucked him to death? Perhaps they think I’m a witch, these old New Englanders; perhaps they think I put a curse on him. For they do think I’m responsible.
They are right to suspect that I have powers, but they are all directed toward exciting the human heart, not toward stopping it. And though not one person in this town would believe it, I loved Mitchell and wanted him to live forever. I’ve been married to a richer man, and I could have married richer men the day I married Mitchell. I did not marry him for his money, although that is what everyone here thinks.
It’s called projection. The whole town wooed Mitchell because he was wealthy, and so it never occurred to them that anyone could love Mitchell for any other reason.
It was in Bermuda that we met. I was there with friends—well, with what passed for friends in that time of my life—and I wanted nothing more than to get a good tan and lots of sleep. In the past twenty-five months I had gone through a divorce, an abortion, and a screwed-up love affair, and the only thing that kept me from committing suicide was the absence of energy for such an event. I spent that early October day lying on the beach, then went to my room in the late afternoon, drugged by the sun into one of those wonderful helpless sleeps. I showered, oiled my skin, and slid naked between cool sheets. When I awoke it was nine o’clock at night, and someone was knocking at my door.
“Go away,” I said, furious at having been awakened.
“Darling, it’s me!” It was Bea Dolton, an acquaintance of mine who functioned in our group as a sort of anorexic, Waspish Dolly Levi. “I have someone I want you to meet.”
“I don’t want to meet anyone,” I said. “I’m tired. Go away.”
There was a murmuring, then silence, and I drifted back into my stupor. But before I was completely asleep, I heard another noise at my door. Clever Bea, she had managed to weasel the room key from the desk clerk. In she swept, all svelte and fragrant, pulling poor old frowning Mitchell with her.
“Wake up, Liza, don’t be rude,” she said. “This is Mitchell Howard. He’s been wanting to meet you. We’ve been waiting for hours for you to come down for a drink. And he’s leaving tomorrow. Liza, sit up.”
Bea had owed me a favor for a long time and I could tell by the tone of her voice that this was it. This was something—someone—important. So I sat up, trying to struggle up away from the tug of sleep, holding the sheet against my breasts. And I stared at Mitchell Howard.
I liked him that second. I thought he looked like Napoleon—short, stocky, powerful, bold. He had blue eyes, and they were judging me. Any other night I would have reached for my dressing gown in such a way that a slide of hip or a bit of breast would be accidentally, invitingly revealed. I’m not a whore, but neither am I a prude, and I find
there’s usually nothing as pleasurable as sex. But that night I was just so tired, from the sun and from my whole life, and so I only sat there, and didn’t even smile.
“Hello, Mitchell,” I said.
“Hello, Liza,” said Mitchell.
“I’ll leave you two,” Bea said, and disappeared as gracefully as she had come, closing the door behind her gently but firmly so that the lock clicked.
I lay back down, pulled the sheet up over my shoulder, and went instantly back to sleep.
Later I was to wonder at what I had done: who goes back to sleep when a strange man has just come into her room? But the need for sleep had sucked my eyelids tight against my eyes. I had no energy and no desire to stay awake. And Mitchell’s presence in my room meant nothing to me one way or the other.
When I awoke, it was seven-thirty the next morning. I stretched, feeling wonderfully hungry, and rolled over and stretched again, and saw a strange man in a gray suit asleep on the double bed next to mine. For just a moment I was perplexed, and then I remembered Bea’s late-evening introduction, and then I laughed. Mitchell opened his eyes, yawned, looked at me, and smiled.
“Good morning,” he said.
God, he was a gentleman. He said, “Would you like to use the bathroom first?” And he closed his eyes while I got up and put on my robe.
I’ve made love with enough men to fill this church. What fun it would be to have them sitting here, all lined up in pews. I could stand at the pulpit and judge them: the schoolboys, the professors, the pilot, the banker, the sailor, the dentist, the carpenter, the Boy Scout leader, the tennis coaches, the congressman, the scientist, the businessmen. My good parents provided me with almost more money and good looks than I can use in one lifetime, so I’ve never needed to use sex to pay my mortgage or to buy me the company of men. And the company of men has been the greatest pleasure in my life. Many times I’ve sat here in this very church, trying not to topple off the pew with boredom, entertaining myself with the age-old question: which is most enjoyable, the courtship or the act? I love those early moments, when both people are breathless with lust and anxiety and indecision, when a man gently helps me into my coat and lets his hands linger just a few seconds too long on my shoulders, so that his fingers seem to touch accidentally the rise of my breasts. I love the dance of it all. I love seeing a man’s face when I walk into the room for the evening, and it dawns on him that under my silky dress my breasts are free. On the other hand, that sort of pleasure, while perhaps the more exquisite, is also the more delicate and subtle—and rather precious. I suppose I do prefer the actual act. In spite of the number of lovers I’ve had, I find each penetration a great physical surprise: my mind and the rest of my body goes numb and quiet, and all my senses become focused on that one sweet intrusion, as if my nerves were a crowd who rushed to gather around a dramatic scene. I love all the vulgar thrashing, the groaning barnyard sounds. I love the focused, tense, desperate climb to orgasm, and then the helpless arch of release, when the fork of the body pumps like a machine. I love it when I come, and when a man comes, pulsing. After making love, the feeling flows back again from my crotch into my limbs and extremities, and I feel like a tree must feel when in the spring the sap forces itself up and out through tight veinlike channels so that each twig pushes out a leaf.
Am I depraved? Perhaps. Or perhaps only honest. There was a time when I thought it would be best to give all that up. I decided that I should settle down, get married, be monogamous, have children, and run charities—that’s what people do with their lives. I had a friend named Grady whose father owned a local insurance company. Grady was as pretty a man as I am a woman, and he was bored, too, and we thought what fun it would be to have a big lovely wedding. Sexually we were beautifully matched; we’d both had our share of experiences, and knew what we liked. Our making love was a form of eating on the order of starved rats with Swiss cheese: we bit and burrowed. And as the months went by, after the wedding, we constructed ourselves the most lovely maze: a large sun-filled modern house with blond parquet floors and dhurrie rugs and silver cigarette cases on the glass-topped table. For four months we played this game called marriage: Grady went off to work at his father’s business, and I stayed in that lovely house that curled about me as aromatically and luxuriously as a fresh wood shaving. I unpacked wedding presents and tried to decide in just which perfect spot to place them. I hollowed out cherry tomatoes and stuffed them with crabmeat and mayonnaise and capers. I left the house each Monday to swim at the country club, or just drink, so that I wouldn’t inhibit the maid while she cleaned the house. Some nights we entertained envious friends; other nights, Grady and I took our wineglasses to bed and screwed our minds out, then watched television, like any other normal American couple.
But one morning, four months after our wedding, Grady came down to breakfast looking strange. I thought perhaps he was sick to his stomach. His expression was that of a man who has food poisoning but hasn’t figured that out yet. He sat down across from me at our blond butcher-block kitchen table, which I had set with quilted place mats and Wedgwood china, and at first he just drank his coffee. I waited.
Finally he said, “Liza, I think I’m going mad.”
“Grady. What’s wrong?” I asked, only slightly alarmed. Grady liked his theatrics as much as I.
“All this—stuff—makes me feel—trapped,” he said. “I can’t explain it. But every day when I come home from work, and every morning when I wake up in this house, I feel scared. I feel like I’m walking into some kind of cage.”
“My God, Grady,” I said, “that’s just the way I feel. I mean, you at least get to leave. I’m here all alone to dust and rearrange these things. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me how demanding appliances are? Just look at that kitchen counter! There they stand, all in a line, and they inspire in me the most awful sense of duty. Sometimes I think I hear tiny metallic voices, whining, ‘Use us, use us! Blend something, toast something, fry something, open a can, sharpen a knife, crush some ice, slice an onion, grate some cheese! What do you think we’re here for?’ It’s like having a stable of electric avocado-colored dwarves! Do you realize that it’s possible to fill a house with appliances and furniture and objects, and then to think that’s what life is about? Most people feel protected, assisted, by the objects in their homes, but I feel imprisoned.”
I realized then that I had shoved my chair back from the breakfast table and was clutching my knife and fork in my hands. I dropped them on the table and leaned back in my chair.
“Oh, Grady,” I said.
“Oh, Liza,” he said. “No wonder we love each other so much.”
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
Grady grinned. Then he reached out one long arm and snatched the toaster cord from its socket, then sent the toaster flying across the room. It slammed into the refrigerator and crashed to the floor.
“Grady!” I said.
“Where’s the blender?” Grady asked.
I got up and got it from its shelf, and meant to hand it to him, but instead I threw it past him, and it thudded into the window seat.
“Let’s get ’em,” Grady said, and he laughed, and his laugh was full of lust.
We rampaged through the kitchen then, ripping electric cords out of sockets, smashing the ice crusher into the Cuisinart. The room filled with metallic shrieks and snaps. We could feel the angry energy from those dying machines come oscillating out of their plastic shells into the air around us. Many of the instruments we had to throw several times, because they had been so sturdily built, those insidious jailer-robots. Grady finally took a porcelain-handled ladle and banged savagely at the can opener, but though the plastic can opener body split open, it was the porcelain ladle that broke first—it cracked in half. And that was too bad, because the ladle was pretty and delicate and had asked nothing of us but admiration.
“I think we killed them,” Grady said at last. By then we were standing together in the kitchen, panting from exertion
, surrounded by shattered appliances. They lay all about us on the Eternal Shine vinyl kitchen floor, their plastic cases cracked open, exposing their metallic innards, wheels, and chunks and shards, and their cords trailed away from them like broken tails. The room was silent, except for the self-defrosting freezer, which let a trickle of water slip down its back, with a sound like a sigh of relief.
I looked at Grady and he looked at me, and we hugged. I don’t know when we were ever more delighted with each other. We went back to bed and made love, growling and rolling about and biting, still full of that eerie triumphant energy that had been released down in the kitchen. Afterward, we lay in bed, sweating and holding hands.
“Do you want me to destroy the dresser?” Grady asked.
I looked at the dresser. It was an old mahogany thing that had been in my grandparents’ house, and the burled boards looked more like fabric than wood. It just sat there, not doing anything.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Actually, it’s not the furniture that bothers me. It’s just those appliances. And the houseplants. When you’re gone and I’m alone in the house, they rub their leaves together and whisper, ‘Water us, water us. Get me out of the sun, I can’t take this heat. Feed me, feed me, pluck me!’ ”
“We’ll kill them tonight,” Grady said. “I’d better get to work. I’m late.”
So Grady showered and put on his gray pin-striped three-piece suit, and I showered and put on slacks and a shirt and got out of the house as fast as I could. I wasn’t going to sit in there all day with a kitchen full of dead appliances and a bunch of pleading plants. I went to the country club that has the good golf course and played a few holes of golf with a friend who was hanging around there waiting for someone to drink with. The kid who caddied for us was so cute I regretted being married. Whatever else marriage means to me, it means monogamy. I ate lunch and had a few drinks with my friend, and watched TV in the club lounge all afternoon, thinking: This is no way to live a life.
