“I bought tequila and a blender,” he said. “Or, I have an excellent bottle of champagne. What will it be?”
He was dressed neatly in slacks and a sweater, and the familiar lime scent drifted to her nostrils. She felt smelly and disgusting, like she’d been living on the streets, like a homeless person. “Maybe a bath or a shower?”
“Sure. No problem. Here’s the plan. You take a shower and I’ll start dinner.”
Lily let the hot water cascade over her head. She washed her hair with Richard’s shampoo and dried herself with Richard’s towel. She sprayed her underarms with Richard’s deodorant. Then she saw the bottle of lime cologne and poured some onto her hands and touched her body with it. She was safe here among Richard’s possessions, in his home. Here no one could touch her. Wrapping herself in his big, fluffy bathrobe, she padded barefoot into the living room.
They sat side by side on the sofa facing the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and looked at the city lights stretching out beneath them. He started a small fire in the fireplace. Lily asked to use his phone and left his number at the house where Shana was spending the night. He wanted to know how the girl was doing.
“It’s funny, but she’s doing fine. She saw the psychologist again yesterday, and the doctor feels she’s handling everything remarkably well—on the surface, anyway.”
“Kids are survivors, Lily. They’re much stronger than we think.”
“But she’s different, Rich. She’s quieter, neater, more helpful around the house. I don’t know. Something so terrible can’t have a positive effect. I keep thinking these are all indicators that she’s more deeply disturbed than anyone thinks.” As Lily took a sip of the champagne, concern etched itself in her face, causing her brows to knit.
“Sometimes when a tragedy occurs, in anyone’s life, at any age, it makes them more aware of the value of life. Maybe she just matured.”
Lily didn’t respond but got lost in her thoughts. What if Shana thought this terrible thing had happened because she was a bad person, and by trying so hard now to be good, she was trying to protect herself, redeem herself, so to speak? Lily decided to discuss this with the psychologist next week. Then she realized Richard had just been sitting there, and she felt a flush of appreciation for his silence.
“Why don’t I serve dinner while you relax by the fire? Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” she said. “You didn’t make it yourself, did you?” She didn’t want Richard to have any domestic skills at all, not like John. That she couldn’t handle.
“No, but I know how to reheat it. The restaurant even wrote it down on a little card.” He smiled and left the room.
After a candlelight dinner of roast duck in orange sauce, which was excellent and prepared by Monique’s, one of the better French restaurants in town, he put a Nat King Cole record on the stereo and they danced by the fire, their feet barely moving, his arms loose around her waist.
“Did I tell you that you look absolutely gorgeous tonight? I’ve never seen you like this,” he said.
Lily was embarrassed, knowing he was lying, trying to make her feel good. Without makeup she felt naked, exposed, homely. He placed his large hands on her back, letting them slide down to her ass, pressing her tightly against him. Lily pulled back, seeing where it was heading. She took his hand and led him to the sofa.
“Tell me about yourself,” Lily said. “You know, the real stuff, not the stuff I already know.”
“Let’s see. I grew up here in Santa Barbara, a spoiled rich kid. My parents owned a house right across from the beach, but we seldom went on it. Funny, when you live so close it becomes old hat. My father was a surgeon, and his father was a surgeon, but I didn’t have the inclination or the aptitude to follow in their footsteps.”
“Was it a disappointment to him?” she asked, comparing her own past to his, wondering what it would be like to have no greater trauma buried there than simply not having an aptitude for surgery.
“No doubt. But he handled it well. I was on the swim team and made decent grades. He wasn’t unhappy when I went into law. He viewed it as a respectable profession.” He stopped and a glint of moisture appeared in his eyes. “He died two years ago. My mother moved to Florida. I have a brother in Pasadena, also a surgeon. That’s about it.”
“How’s your son? Greg, right?”
“Still surfing. His hair’s so long now that he looks like a girl, but we’re getting along pretty good. We see each other several times a week. I might eventually get him to move in with me. Who knows? He’s a good kid.”
They were sitting close now, staring at the fire. He suddenly stood and took her hand. “I’d like to take you in the bedroom and hold you. I don’t expect you to have sex with me, but I’d like to hold you in my arms.”
In the bedroom, Lily slipped off the robe and let it fall to the floor. He removed his clothes and tossed them onto a chair. They got under the covers and held each other, pressing their naked bodies together, not saying a word. The warmth of his body, his strong arms around her, made her want to stay there forever.
After a while he began stroking her lightly with a feather touch, using the soft, padded tips of his fingers. Soon his hands were between her legs, but only so softly, barely touching her. She moved his hand away. “Don’t do that, Richard,” she said. He was breathing heavily and reached for her breasts. Leaping from the bed, she grabbed his robe and placed it in front of her. She backed to the wall, standing next to his chest of drawers.
“Lily,” he said, sitting up. “What’s wrong?”
Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, and she couldn’t speak. Her skin felt cold and clammy.
He got up and came to her, wrapping her in his arms.
“Don’t,” she said, pushing him away from her with both hands. “I’m sorry.”
His shoulders drooped and he sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “It’s all my fault,” he said. “I just wanted to hold you, but I got carried away.”
Lily slipped on the robe and tied it around her. She left the bedroom and headed for the living room. Richard followed, wearing only his pants. She sat on the sofa, her legs pulled underneath her, and stared at the fire. He sat down next to her and put his hands on her shoulders, gently turning her to face him.
“I was wrong. I pushed you. Please forgive me.”
She looked into his eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Lily, I can wait. Do you hear me? I can wait. However long it takes you, I’ll wait. I want it to be like it was before.”
“It may never be like it was before.” As she said the words, tears began falling down her cheeks.
He took her head and placed it on his shoulder. “Yes, it will, Lily. We found each other after half a lifetime. There was something wonderful there, beyond the sex. It’s just too soon. I should have known.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know you enough that I want to marry you. I’ve watched you for years. Possibly I was even a little in love with you for years.”
She broke away and stood, walking to stand in front of the fireplace, her back turned. “Do you know what it means to be sexually dysfunctional?”
“Certainly I know what that means. But you’re not sexually dysfunctional. My wife might fit that description, but you’re a perfectly normal woman with normal desires. You’ve just suffered through a rape and it’s too soon. That’s all.”
She turned and faced him. “Maybe there was more than just the rape, Richard.” Now, an inner voice screamed. Tell him now. He’s not weak like John. Tell him. But the words were locked inside, the key lost.
“What are you trying to tell me? Just tell me one thing. Do you care about me?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s all that matters. I’m going to marry you. And you’re going to be happier than you’ve ever been in your life.”
If she could only believe him, delude herself into thinking it could actually happen. Maybe the
y would never find out, and she could suppress it all like the incest. She had to get back to the place she had been before, had to find the road back. She told him, in a voice so low it was almost inaudible, “I want you.”
She turned and walked back into the bedroom. No one was going to take this away from her. She untied her robe and let it fall to the floor. There was no past, no memories, no fears. There was only this moment. Tomorrow or the next day they might come and arrest her. She wanted to live first, wanted to taste his love one last time. She was a condemned prisoner sitting down to her last meal.
Under the covers again with Richard beside her, she moved against his body. He didn’t reach for her or stroke her, but he became aroused. They turned on their sides, facing each other, and he entered her. Only their connected hips moved back and forth in a slow, unhurried motion, more like a dance than the hungry sex they had experienced before. Lily felt the pleasure begin somewhere in her toes and creep up to her genitals and then her breasts, hitting her brain like a shot of heroin and washing away the pain. She moaned, but he did not stop and did not speed up. Then, with his hands on her ass, he pushed into her deeply for the first time and his body trembled. He did not cry out.
His lips next to her, he whispered, “I love you, Lily.”
And she knew it was the truth, for she felt the same. “I’m in love with you too, Richard,” she said, the words bringing tears to her eyes and profound sadness. It was all just an illusion, a mirage.
“I’m going to love you for the rest of your life. Nothing you can do can stop me. However long it takes, and whatever it takes, we’re going to make it work.”
She took the words, the smells, the feelings, and tried to enlarge them inside her mind. She saw a photo album, the pages all empty, and saw herself carefully inserting these images underneath the plastic, filling the album. Then she saw the last page. On the last page was a bloody, disfigured corpse, but it wasn’t Hernandez, it was her. He rolled onto his back, and Lily sat up on the bed. Then she ran to the bathroom and closed the door, falling to her knees and vomiting into the commode.
Richard tapped at the closed door. “Let me in. Let me help you.” It sounded as if he was leaning against the door, his voice only inches away.
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t come in.” She flushed the toilet and washed her mouth in the sink. Finding her clothes on the floor, she dressed and opened the door to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, still naked. He stood and she started backing out of the room. Each step he took forward, she moved backward. “Don’t love me, Richard. There’s nothing to love. Nothing. Do you hear me?”
“Lily, please,” he pleaded.
She turned and ran out of the front door, down the steps to her car, looking back at the house as she drove off. Heading down the steep, winding roads, she floored the Honda and drove as though the hounds of Hell were yapping at her feet. The road in front of her was a blur as tears filled her eyes and spilled onto her face. She had no right to happiness, she told herself. No right to pleasure.
After thirty minutes, she found herself on 3rd Street in Oxnard, slamming on her brakes in front of Hernandez’s house. She stared at the front of it, watched as the curtains billowed out and were sucked back in by the breeze in the broken window. She saw herself walking in the door and entering the house, finding his bed and sleeping in it, waking to search his room until she found the red sweatshirt and pulling it over her head. Then she would walk out the front door and spread her arms while bullets tore her flesh and her blood pumped on the pavement.
They were locked in an eternal dance, she thought, a bride and groom. When she’d pulled the trigger that morning, the vows had been sealed, the books inscribed. His soul was free, his sins washed clean in blood. She had been left to stand forever at the altar.
With the back of her hand, she wiped her wet face and runny nose, slowly pulling the car away from the curb. Her head fell back and a great hacking noise rose from her chest and echoed off the windows and steel of the car. Laughter. She was laughing. A shotgun wedding, she thought, spewing forth another burst of the hawking. It had been a shotgun wedding.
CHAPTER 18
The phone rang in the darkened bedroom, and at first Lily thought it was the alarm clock. She had been in a deep sleep, the black-out drapes blocking the morning sun. It was Shana.
“Can you come and get me, Mom? I’m ready to come home,” she said.
Lily sat up in bed and looked around the room for John, but he was not there and his side of the bed looked undisturbed. Somehow she had forgotten that they no longer slept together, and everything that had happened seemed like a dream. He was probably on the sofa and had not heard the phone. “What time is it?” she asked.
“It’s only seven-thirty, but I’m ready to come home. Sorry I woke you. Where’s Dad? Did he feed Di today?”
“I don’t know…maybe he went out for breakfast. Give me the address and directions, and I’ll be there as soon as I get dressed.” Once she hung up, concern began to rise. Slumber parties almost always lasted until ten or eleven in the morning, the girls staying up late and sleeping late, waking to donuts and milk provided by the parents. In the past Shana had been the last to leave, since the girl who had hosted the party always begged her to stay over far into the day.
As Lily dug in the bottom of her closet and pulled out a pair of rumpled jeans, which she shook to make them somewhat presentable, it dawned on her that her closet was now in worse shape than her daughter’s. Looking for some type of top and seeing nothing but dirty laundry, she decided to try Shana’s closet.
She walked into the room wearing jeans and her bra. John was asleep in Shana’s small bed, his suit, shirt, and tie from the night before flung over a chair. Shana’s little puppy was curled up at the foot of her bed. So, this is how it’s going to be, she thought. Even John was going forward with his life—while she was sinking deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit. She resisted the urge to kick him, pull the few strands of hair on his head, do anything to inflict pain. Picking up his shirt, she held it to her nose and sniffed it, trying to catch a whiff of perfume, thinking she could then picture the woman he’d been with. She let it fall to the floor, realizing that it didn’t matter. As she grabbed a sweatshirt from a stack of freshly washed and folded clothes Shana had stacked on top of her dresser, the thought crossed her mind that she’d probably seen John sleeping more than she’d ever seen him awake during the course of their marriage. When he was awake, he wasn’t much different from when he was sleeping anyway.
She saw Shana sitting on the front step of the girl’s house as soon as she drove up. She hurried to the car, carrying her sleeping bag, and tossed it in the backseat before getting in the front. Her hair was uncombed and she looked tired.
“Is something wrong?” Lily asked. “Why did you want to come home so early?”
Shana reached into her purse and, taking out her brush, started brushing her hair in the visor mirror. “It’s just a bunch of baby stuff. All they do is giggle and act like monkeys.” Shana then pulled out a tube of lipstick, tangerine pink, and carefully applied it to her lips. Satisfied, she pulled the visor down and looked at her mother.
“I want to change schools. I’m sick of this school and the same kids. I’ve known them all since the first grade.”
“Shana, there’s only one junior high in Camarillo and you know that. If you tough it out one more year, you’ll be in high school and several junior highs feed into that school, so there’ll be a lot of new faces.”
Lily suddenly wondered if someone had heard about the rape, a fact she’d feared all along. “Shana, has anyone said anything to you…you know…about what happened?”
“No,” her daughter said and her eyes clouded over.
They were stopped at a light and Lily faced her. “Are you telling me the truth?” she asked.
“Of course I am, Mom. No one has said anything and I haven’t told anyone either.” She wasn’t angry that Lily h
ad doubted her, which was out of character. “I’ve been thinking a lot, and I know you are going to move out again.” Lily started to reassure her that she wouldn’t leave, but Shana stopped her as her mouth opened. “Just listen, okay. I want to move out with you. We could get a place in Ventura, not that place for sure, but another place, and then I could go to Ventura High School. They start in the ninth grade and I would go to high school next year. That would be rad.”
Lily took a deep breath, not believing her ears. It was all she had ever hoped for and could solve everything. “What about your dad? I thought you didn’t want to leave him.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine. He has a girlfriend, you know.” She caught herself for a moment, putting a hand over her mouth. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I promised him I wouldn’t.”
They arrived at the house. Lily opened the garage door and saw that John’s white Jeep was gone. “I knew anyway. He went on a date last night.” She thought of herself and Richard, wondering how she could face him at the office after last night, knowing she had no right to criticize John’s behavior. “He has every right to go out. We were separated and planning to divorce, so…”
Tossing her sleeping bag in a corner in the garage with a sense of finality, as if she would never go to another slumber party in her life, Shana followed her mother into the kitchen. She grabbed a banana, peeled it, and with her other hand started picking food particles out of the cracks in the brown kitchen counter tile. Then she went to her room and came back with her puppy Di in her hands and held her while they talked.
“He’s had this girlfriend for a long time, Mom. I know, I’ve heard him talking to her a lot of nights when you worked late. Sometimes a woman would even call the house and I picked up the phone. Then he up and told me the other day.” She started eating the banana, her sapphire eyes bright and wide. “Just can’t imagine ol’ Dad making out with some woman. If you move out and I stay, this lady will be over here all the time. It makes me sick.” She set the puppy on the floor and watched as it scurried off.
Mitigating Circumstances Page 17
