Women in Bed

by Jessica Keener

  She flattens herself on the floor, folding her hands beneath her neck. “I understand completely. I do. I really do.”

  I push a chicken wing in a circle around my plate. I’m not sure what to say next; maybe nothing.

  “Wait!” she says. She goes to the kitchen and brings back a long, slim candle. Its quiet flame moves like honey. We watch it for a while.

  “Go on,” she says. “Talk. I’m listening.”

  “He said he wanted to take me to a beach house he owned. He said he wanted to take me to a lot of places. We made love right there on the seat. He was married too. I saw him for two, three months.”

  “Listen,” she says. “Why don’t you stay? You can take a cool bath. I’ve got something you can sleep in. Tomorrow we can spend the day together. You’re not in a rush, are you?”

  During the night, the dark air filters through our bodies. We lie on opposite sides of the double bed. She faces the wall and sleeps. I face her back, keeping an arm’s length distance between us. What is this weakening resistance I feel? Her legs jutting from her tee shirt are white and immobile and unappealing even. There are two moles on the inner crease of her knee. Her shirt is the same color as her thighs.

  I listen. Sounds from the street whisper to me through the windows as if to explain. But the windows are like radio speakers turned down too low. I strain and cannot decipher what I hear. I shift onto my back. At odd intervals, water from the pipes rushes through the plumbing above and into the wall to somewhere beyond. Maybe I have said too much. I turn on my hip and place my palms under my eyes, not wanting morning to come. Time passes. I watch her body slowly change with the light.

  She makes coffee in the morning. I act as though I have done this before. It’s not as if anything has happened, I remind myself. Relax. Sit on the floor. Lean back against the cool refrigerator.

  Her old lover’s shirt hangs over my knees. She stands at the sink comically exposed in her underwear, her excess bosom vibrating as she sponges the dirty plates. She’s proud of her large breasts, a pride I’ve never cared about; mine are small.

  “Want me to do that?” I ask. She is scrubbing the sink, jerking her elbow in the air with each stroke.

  “I need to get out of here,” she says, dropping the sponge.

  The haze coming through the window casts shadows that blur on the floor, a light that looks cold; yet the hairs on my skin are flattened by a sticky, warm glaze.

  “You never said why it ended,” she adds, wiping her forehead. “You never did.”

  “It’s not important.”

  She nods and says nothing. Perhaps she is judging me, or bored, or both.

  “It’s important,” she says. “Come on. What’s the secret?”

  “There was another woman. I saw them in a car in the parking lot, okay?”

  “I’m not surprised,” she answers, leaving the room.

  She dresses, wearing the dungaree skirt she often wears to work and a green bikini top, its green hues seeping into her eyes. I get dressed too and wait for more; I can feel it.

  “What’s your father like?” she practically shouts.

  “Problematic. Why?”

  “You fell in love with your father.”

  “I don’t know.” I slide back down against the wall to the floor. “What are you saying?”

  “He didn’t take you seriously. Did he?” She stands over me. “Did he?”

  I look up at the shadow in her face. “Who?”

  “I bet you felt used. You felt used, didn’t you? You wanted to marry him.”

  She stares at me. I turn away. The wooden planks on the floor fly out in a pattern that reminds me of the gym my mother used to go to when I was a child.

  “Hey, don’t turn your head. Look at me. He took the soul out of you. I can see it. You have no idea who you—”

  “You’re no different,” I murmur, squeezing my eyelids to make her stop.

  She stoops in front of me. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.

  We look at each other. For a moment, I let her finger my braid; then I get up and walk back to the kitchen for some water. She follows me.

  “Are you going to forgive me?”

  I wait for the water to cool down and fill the glass that has been left in the sink.

  “You’re miserable, but you don’t want to get out of it,” she says. “Don’t you see? I care. That’s why I’m telling you.”

  “We need to get out of here,” I say.

  She looks at me and touches my shoulder, relieved. She’s happy that I have asserted myself. Her smile is terrible and sweet. I go outside and wait by the curb while she double-locks her door. Half the day has passed.

  “Here. You take this,” she says, handing me a chocolate cone. She orders strawberry. We adjust our napkins and walk to the river, toward the clouds overhanging it. She points to the shapes in the sky. “Round bottoms waiting to be fucked,” she says.

  At the riverbank, we find a tree to sit under. I watch a group of scullers approach. They skim the water the way birds migrate north in the sky, forming a V. Rows of men thrust backward and forward. I feel their movement in my head.

  Slowly she too, once again, pulls and pushes, more carefully this time. What about my mother, she asks. Do I have any sisters? Did I do well in school?

  “My mother is fine,” I answer. “I have one older sister. I don’t have any brothers. I did well in school. Why so many questions?” I ask.

  “No more. Tell me one dream, a good one and I won’t ask any more.” She laughs, childlike. “Or a fantasy, it doesn’t matter which.” Her eyes spin and she flops back on the grass.

  “I’ve always wanted to travel.” I say this with a question in my voice, sitting with my back as straight as I can manage.

  “Everyone travels,” she says. “What’s stopping you?” She looks at the horizon. “Never mind. We’ll talk about that the next time. I forgot. I’ve got to get home. I told this person I would meet him tonight. It’s late. I didn’t realize how late; look at the sky. I should have known.”

  She stands up and holds out her hand. “All right? You don’t mind? We’re friends?”

  I take her hand but I know as she grips my palm it is another insane game.

  “You’ve got that tense look on your face,” she says. “Let go of my hand. Let go. Goodbye.”

  She starts to skip away toward the crowded square. This time I want to chase after her, walk her home, make plans for another day. But she quickens her pace, running now, as if she has heard my feelings. So I stay seated, hugging my knees. She grows smaller, blurred, and when she reaches the opposite end of the field, I lose sight of her in a shimmer of human beings.

  Monday, the following day, she doesn’t come in. On Tuesday, when I get home from work, I call her. Her line rings and rings all night. Wednesday, it’s the same. Twice, I stop at the graphics shop where she works and leave a note. Each day, according to the receptionist, she isn’t there. Finally, Thursday, determined to gain some control, I leave early to catch her.

  At the customer service window a man directs me to a door that leads to the basement. The stairs are dusty and as I walk around the bend in the steps, I see her on a stool next to a counter littered with strips of film.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” I call out.

  She holds one of the strips to the light. She doesn’t look at me.

  “So I hear. Here I am,” she replies. Her head turns slowly and her eyes, once they are focused, are flat as photographs.

  “Why haven’t you come to see me?” I ask. My voice is a frayed rope, weak and unsafe.

  “We’re not lovers, you know. I’ve been busy. What do you want? Well?”

  I turn back into the shadow of the staircase and retrace my steps.

  For weeks after I drift through the lunch hours. My flesh, sucke
d of its blood, is dry as paper. I imagine if these two glasses of water, which I am balancing on my tray, were to spill against me, my skin would disappear. I’ve learned not to expect her and she never comes.

  I think I will feel unburdened when she has left this town, moved to Minnesota to begin a new job. Three days ago when I passed her on the street, she said we would have to get together before she leaves. She asked how I was. In that October light, I glimpsed a sketch of something I knew and continued on.

  Having arrived at the booth with the couple in it, I carefully set their glasses to the right of their plates. They turn and smile at me. I blink, raising the pencil, which I have sharpened, to my lips and wait for their order. I hear secret voices in my head: men and women wanting from me; me wanting from them. I nod like the waitress that I am, obliging their requests. Why don’t you do this or that? Fulfill so we can love.

  I look up at the clock. “It’ll only take a few minutes. That’s it,” I say to the couple who want sandwiches. I start for the grill. This is temporary. All of this is. I stop to lift a chair out of the aisle and accelerate, clearing the way for myself in this crowd.

  Papier-mâché

  If they try to intimidate you, Leah thought, picture them naked. She stared at Professor Steiler’s breasts. The professor turned and walked to the opposite end of the table to where Elaine Tyson sat. Elaine was the pathologically shy one in the class.

  “Art should excite the emotions,” Steiler explained. “Particularly emotions of fear. Ms. Tyson would you comment—”

  “Why is that?” Leah said, interrupting.

  “Fear is the source of the sublime.” The older woman crossed the room and stood by Jim Cancela. “Mr. Cancela?” What is your idea of the sublime?”

  “Not this place,” Leah muttered.

  Jim Cancela puckered his lips. He was Steiler’s favorite, the blameless class pet. Naturally, Leah disliked him.

  “What about the apples?” Leah called out. “The way they make you want to curl your fingers around them? Feel them.” She thrust her hand toward the center of the conference table.

  Steiler walked over to the window and looked out. The other eleven students, except Leah, concentrated on their fingernails. Even Michael Ford, who typically sat next to Leah, and in addition felt it his duty to affirm anything that Leah said during class, usually by nodding or saying, “right,” remained mum.

  “Feeling, Ms. Fineburg,” Steiler said to the windowpane, “is an obscure word. Space and color are specific elements that help us define it.” She turned back and faced the class. Leah noticed that the rouge on Steiler’s face did not blend with the jawbone and that the shade of lipstick made the woman’s skin look tired and green.

  “Let’s return to our painting here,” Steiler said.

  At the front of the room a poster mounted on a tripod showed a portrait of a young woman reading. Next to her, a bowl of apples shone in a halo of light from a window behind the young woman’s head. Leah imagined changing places with the woman in the painting, sitting in the scarlet oversized chair, the varnish on the wooden table gleaming beside her. It was a wonderful place to get away from it all until the picture fell from the tripod and slid to the floor. Naturally, Jim Cancela, a dark-skinned, quiet boy, was the one to pick it up. Leah watched him disappear under the table. Steiler smiled and thanked him. Michael elbowed Leah.

  After class, Leah bolted down the stairs and started for home, a one bedroom in Allston, but changed her mind and walked instead to the nicer section of Coolidge Corner in Brookline. It was aberrantly hot for April. Four o’clock in the afternoon and she was sweating from the heat. It was unnatural for New England unless one considered that Boston natives, including Leah, thrived on the city’s erratic weather patterns. It was a cultural sickness, a geographical neurosis she decided as she passed a group of elderly women on a bench in front of the bus stop, their sweaters pushed up to their elbows. She stopped to look at a pinstriped suit in a window display, then went into the store to try it on. She wore pants every day of her college life.

  The two-piece outfit didn’t fit: too snug at the shoulders, too ungainly at the hips. So, I’m a fool, she said to herself in the dressing room mirror, tugging at the material. Dress-you-down-rooms she called them. The carpet was always the same grey, trapping fallen straight pins, which stung her feet. The rooms lacked for hooks, a place to hang unwanted clothes. She put her uniform back on, army pants and tee shirt, and left.

  Everyone was out: mothers with babies, college students, bizarro types. Up ahead, a woman in a white fur hooded jacket, pink tights and ballet shoes lunged forward. Leah walked faster for a closer look while others coming in the opposite direction slowed down as they passed the displaced ballerina. The dancer veered into the street, and several cars honked as she tiptoed across during a green light. Leah worried suddenly that the ballerina would catch an ungainly leg on a car fender and end up in a sponge of blood and fur. But nothing happened. The ballerina made it across and miraculously disappeared into a cross-town bus waiting at the corner stop. People like that had a way of avoiding the obvious dangers in life; but not the harm of tyrannical parents, rapes, incest, bigotry, fear, deceit.

  She patted her damp forehead with the bottom of her shirt and walked in to her first floor apartment. Not wanting to waste her stipend on rent, she had converted the former living room into a second bedroom and asked Tilly, also a scholarship student, to share the expense.

  “I got a ninety-eight in biology today,” Tilly announced from the kitchen. Tilly gained weight like a man—in the midriff and under her chin. She could control her grades but not her eating habits. Leah didn’t have weight issues but had peculiar tastes. She liked mixing bran cereal into a quart of chocolate ice cream. She could live on that for days.

  “Fascinating. I’ll be in the shower. Don’t get me out if anyone calls.”

  “Your mother?” Tilly called back.

  Leah closed the bathroom door and didn’t respond. Tilly knew damn well she’d rather not talk to her mother.

  The following week in class, several students failed to show up due to heavy rain, which made the dark room gloomy and desolate.

  “I have your papers,” Steiler announced. The professor sat at the head of the table and folded her hands. “Overall, you didn’t do too badly. I’ve seen worse. I always enjoy getting to know you. Certainly, I learn a great deal about you from the initial assignment.” Steiler lifted herself out of her chair and handed back the papers.

  Leah took hers and was aghast at the abundant mass of pen marks that culminated in a mediocre grade at the bottom of the page. She couldn’t remember ever getting a C and felt nauseous. Listening to Steiler talk about good writing made her feel worse. Jim Cancela, at Steiler’s request, read a passage from his paper. Michael tried to get Leah to tell him what she got but she refused.

  “Let’s continue with our presentations,” Steiler said. “Why don’t you begin, Ms. Tyson?”

  The others waited for Elaine, who struggled miserably to talk.

  “Rough Sea,” Elaine whispered.

  “Who? Please speak up,” Steiler said.

  The woman’s a sadist, Leah thought.

  “I’ve chosen Rough Sea by Monet.” Elaine coughed. “Rough Sea, as you can see,” she said, raising the color-plated book for the class. “Uh, you will notice that,” she turned to look at the page; “You will notice. I noticed that the two men looked out of proportion sort of like a Japanese print.”

  “We’re not discussing Japanese art,” Steiler said.

  “She’s making a connection,” Leah said.

  “Fabrication,” Steiler replied. “Learn the difference. Continue please, Ms. Tyson.”

  “Well, you see,” Elaine said. “I was visualizing the sea as a cloud on top of a canyon even though the boats show we are really viewing the tide. But for the moment I imagined being
on top of the canyon looking down at the clouds and also that the cliffs on the upper left side—”

  “Ms. Tyson, focus on the color and form that already exist in the painting rather than conjuring up some imagined object.”

  “Why separate them?” Leah asked. “Imagination has everything to do with forms that already exist.”

  “You’re a show,” Michael whispered beside her. Leah ignored him. Steiler pressed her fingers in prayer formation and raised her chin.

  “It’s not whether we are separating these things, Ms. Fineburg. The question is whether we are able to perceive the particular elements which made up this whole.”

  Leah nodded and wondered if Steiler used unscented soap. She hoped so because the famous professor was wearing the same skirt again. Obviously the woman imagined herself differently than how she appeared. Leah decided not to say anything for the remainder of the class. But afterward, she followed Steiler to her office one floor below.

  “I knew you would be upset with the grade,” Steiler said sitting down at her desk. “The problem, Ms. Fineburg, is your lack of order. Clear writing reflects clear thinking.”

  Leah scowled and leaned against the doorframe. Sure thing, Leah thought. She scanned the walls. They were covered with photographs of famous artists’ faces, their names signed in pen near the frame. Art books filled every bookshelf. Stacks of books rose like chimneys at each corner of the floor. Steiler hunkered over the old wooden desktop. The desk had enough space on it for a phone, an empty cookie wrapper beside the phone, more books, and a tiny-framed picture of a young man.

  “I normally do better than this, much better,” Leah said. “I’ve been away. My brother died.” She hadn’t meant to say this but there it was. Her brother committed suicide.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Steiler said. “But your problems are not unlike most of the students’ work I see presently. I can recommend two books to assist you.”

  “As I said, this isn’t typical of me. Who’s that?” She pointed to the picture on the desk.