“You don’t like me,” Leah said, “But it would be difficult to change courses at this point.”
“You say unpleasant things, even if I were mistaken.”
The professor handed Leah the newly graded essay; not her best grade, but certainly not her worst.
Leah nodded. She looked at Steiler’s face. The mouth stripped of lipstick was pale and the eyes behind the near-sighted glasses hinted at a softer, more delicate light. Seeing that, Leah wanted to say she knew what it was like to lose somebody. They had that in common didn’t they? Instead she nodded again and spared them both by walking out.
Boarders
Jennifer was gaunt and rangy looking when she dropped out of a tiny women’s college in Vermont to figure out what she wanted from life and to be with Kevin in Boston. Things with Kevin were cresting hazardously and she couldn’t see beyond the narrow stall of four more months sharing a room in a dorm filled with dozens of lonely, single women.
Only one semester into it, her action surprised everyone including herself—a break from the safety zone—a swan dive into deeper space, her darker core. But going back home to her parents’ in Brighton, a dense, mixed housing section of Boston, had been a mistake. Her father prodded incessantly. “Get a job like everyone else.” The second week home, she started waitressing at a local steak house. Still, he kept after her. Did she think she had special privileges? Did she think she was going to get a free ride? There was no relief until she saw Mr. Ledger’s room for rent in the local paper.
Just blocks away, Ledger’s Victorian had everything she needed. A brass bed, two wall sconces adorned with crystal bracelets, and wallpaper with large pink flowers, pink as her lipstick except where the radiator had turned the flowers brown—as if the room had been waiting for her. Mr. Ledger himself seemed nice enough. He was an elderly man, skinny and tall, who kept his pants hiked up with a belt.
Now the room was hers. No badgering father. Just silence. She touched the furnishings to be sure, pulling open the wide, curved bureau drawers, checking the hotplate atop the half refrigerator. Her books she piled on the floor. She would organize the rest of her things later, clothes and toiletries mashed into one frayed orange suitcase lined with silken material that paled decades ago, the kind of luggage that shut with a gold-plated latch. She went to the window beside the bed and watched a branch shake in the January chill before going down to get something to eat in town.
On the way downstairs she looked for signs of the other two boarders, two older men who, according to Ledger, lived down the hall from her. But the house appeared empty, except for Mr. Ledger who sat in a wing chair by the living room window, reading.
“Where did you say you were working?” Mr. Ledger called to her.
“The Steak House, not far from here.”
“You wish to pursue a career as a waitress?”
“No, no,” she said, smiling. “Pretty room,” she said, in a friendly attempt to divert him from her personal life. Reflection was not on her agenda right now. The room had large bay windows, a grand piano and a space heater that had been carefully positioned near his chair.
“Yes, the light is good for reading. But I don’t want anyone sitting there,” he said, pointing. “That was my wife’s sewing room.”
She turned to the room on the opposite side of the downstairs hall. Two chairs and a divan had been strung up with kite string. “Of course not,” she said. She tossed her overgrown blond bangs out of her eyes and started for the door but he hadn’t finished.
“Did you study Latin in school?” he asked. “I used to teach Latin at the high school.”
“I did for two years. Laudo, laudas,” she began. “Laudat, laudatis.”
“Laudamus,” he corrected her.
“Laudamus,” she laughed, hoping he would let her go now.
“One more thing,” he said. “I don’t allow men upstairs in your room.”
“What about downstairs?”
“In the hallway is fine,” he said, and went back to reading.
She hadn’t expected this but said nothing. She walked the short distance to town and bought bread and cheese and milk.
Upon her return an hour later, she passed the empty wing chair, the bathroom and the phone table at the top of the stairs. Then she headed toward the opposite end of the hall to her room. Still, no sign of the two boarders. She closed her door.
From her toiletry bag she uncapped a vial of sleeping pills leftover from her ailing grandfather before he died of heart failure. She took one and spilled the rest into the night table drawer by the bed. Next she leafed through a biology text, memorizing organs—her latest interest. She took another pill after reading about adrenal glands and soon a pleasant, woozy feeling of trees swayed in her head. Kevin came to mind but she decided not to call him. He had been too preoccupied lately, bent over the piano like a man tending to his dying lover. The conservatory took up the rest of his time. She got into bed and let the pills massage her to sleep.
All week she reported to the restaurant. She went to Kevin’s over the weekend. She liked him best naked, murmuring pianissimo into her neck—his word of course. But more and more she lay alone on his bed listening as his hands fluttered across the baby grand his rich aunt had given him. He played for hours. After a year of seeing him in high school, she expected more from him since she had returned to live in the same city. “Remember me?” she called to him.
He came into the bedroom and she shifted on the mattress to make room for him. His bed was narrow and old but his hazel eyes drew her to him like invisible strings.
“I’ve got to practice, you know that,” he said.
“I know. You don’t have to say it.” He told her this at least once a day and this, too, began to sound like an admonition, another person urging her to find something better to do than what she had chosen for herself. She pulled on his shirt and they kissed. He rolled over her and soon they had shed what was in the way of their skin, rocking against the headboard; the wind in her head clearing out doubting thoughts. They rolled apart and Kevin lit a cigarette. They lay side by side, smoking.
“Kev! Buddy boy! Open up!”
Jay and Alan, Kevin’s friends from school, beat on the front door in rhythmic thumps. They had come to take them to Michele’s party. Michele played the flute and practiced duets with Kevin. She was a small woman, deceptively demure and one of the reasons Jennifer felt compelled to return to Boston. Michele had a talent for creating reasons to be with Kevin, usually to practice. She had unearthed more piano flute duets in the last month than Jennifer believed existed. Now this party to lure Kevin over again.
“I’ll get the door,” she said. She rose from the bed and put on his terrycloth robe, the one he used after showers. It smelled of cigarettes and deodorant.
She walked down a short hall to the front door. He lived on the second floor of an apartment building near Symphony Hall. The neighborhood was a musician’s nesting ground. Jazz guitarists from nearby Berklee music school paced the sidewalks late at night like adrenaline-loaded police in search of roving gigs. Classical pianists, like Kevin, took over the day shift clocking in six, ten hours of practice in order to play the notes exactly right.
“We were sleeping,” she said nudging open the door. Dank air swept across her bare knees and toes. “God, it’s cold,” she said.
“You’re looking good, Jen,” Alan said, smiling at her.
“Looking madly,” she said, smiling back provocatively. She was attracted to Alan. He had an athletic air about him and treated her as if she were the end zone and he were carrying the winning ball.
“Beer’s in the kitchen,” Kevin said, stepping out fully clothed.
She sauntered back to the bedroom, aroused by Alan’s arrival, and shimmied into her pantyhose, black skirt, black bra, black button down sweater. She liked Alan’s carelessness, his weathered comp
lexion. Kevin avoided the outdoors. Only after sex or a concert did his face, angular, white as sheet music, flush with renewed blood.
“I’ll have one too,” she said, entering the small kitchen where the threesome stood in a small circle guzzling. Alan opened the refrigerator and handed her one.
“Especially for you,” he said. He took another for himself.
“Especially thank you.” She turned sideways to give him a fuller silhouette, her breasts still tingling from Kevin’s mouth. When she first met Alan she guessed that he played drums, but she was wrong. He told her that the Clarinet had its own power and could snake its way across any jungle of sounds.
She shifted toward Kevin again but he started for the front door. Jay, the most docile of the group followed.
“Are we in a rush?” she called to Kevin.
But he didn’t answer her. By the time she and Alan reached the street downstairs, Kevin had already seized the front seat of Jay’s car: a bronze Jetta with two shoe-size dents on the driver’s side. She gave Kevin an inquisitive look but he continued to ignore her as she slipped behind him to the back seat, next to Alan.
With everyone in the car, Jay started the motor. “Party time,” he said, turning out of the parking space.
“Have another sip of beer. Relax,” Alan told her. He handed her his can.
She took it, licking the icy drops from the aluminum sides and drank thirstily. Outside, the sky amassed into a brown, blood-colored night. The trees bare and isolated from each other were silent as the back of Kevin’s head.
She took another sip then drank ravenously, tapping the last tinny drops onto her lips, making sure all was gone. Jay turned on the radio and for a short while they all listened to the evening news: the governor wanted to raise taxes. Picketers against same sex marriage had caused a traffic hold-up outside the State house. A famous actress had died.
“Same old shit,” Alan said.
Jay put his demo CD into the player. His blues-driven guitar backed by years of classical training, including flamenco, came through the strings with clarity and warmth. The effect settled the edginess mounting in the car as they drove west down Commonwealth Ave. to Kenmore Square past burger joints and curbsides garnished with litter. Alan pointed to a billboard looming over the Square: a photo of a naked woman riding bareback on a white horse.
“My kind of girl,” Alan said. He flicked his tongue and grinned.
“Funny, I had a different impression,” Kevin said.
“Kevin,” she said, touching his arm. “He’s joking.”
“I don’t think so.” He leaned away from her and turned up Jay’s demo.
It was a pattern between Kevin and her. The jealousy. The silence. The passion. The return of jealousy. She was tiring of it. In her frustration, she looked at Alan and wondered what it would be like to sleep with him. Maybe he could set her free.
They headed toward Coolidge Corner, Brookline’s urban nexus of retail stores, a movie theater, single family houses with lawns, wide streets; trees.
“Did I mention that I’m thinking of pre-med,” she said, suddenly.
“I’m impressed,” Alan said, staring at her. He surveyed her face, and she saw him imagining what it would be like to see her naked too.
“Depends on what day you talk to her,” Kevin said. “What hour.” His head turned to her now. “Finishing school would help.”
“What?” she said, disbelieving.
“Let her figure out what she wants,” Alan said.
“Yes, she needs to do that,” Kevin said.
She sat back and thought carelessly of slipping her fingers down Alan’s pants.
Oak trees thick as elephants lined the front walk of Michele’s sorority house, a four-story mansion for music students. Inside, a clatter of shouting college kids and the stinging smell of beer greeted them. One blond boy with shoulder-length hair handed newcomers beer as they walked in.
“More to drink in the kitchen,” the blond said.
Kevin went for the piano in the living room and lo and behold, there was Michele transfigured into a ravishing creature on the piano bench. Jennifer detoured in the opposite direction. The kitchen was swarming with loud-talking students. She slipped a pill into her mouth and finished her beer in two long swigs. What next? She spotted an open wine bottle next to the sink.
“Come outside with me,” Alan said, pinching her waist with his hand.
She turned and he handed her a Styrofoam cup.
“Gin. It works faster,” he said.
She smelled the rim of his cup and tested the liquid. He had mixed it with a dash of orange juice and it went down easily, refreshingly. She laughed, sustaining a wild, intemperate look in her eyes. On an empty stomach it didn’t take long for her thoughts to jangle nonsensically.
“Come on,” she said, pulling his hand toward the back door. “Let’s go outside.”
She took a few more steps and crossed into that timeless room where she could do anything she wanted without consequence. He followed.
In the shadows of the backyard, pine trees lacing the property appeared more distant than they actually were. The lawn, stiffened with frost, bent like thin, wire mesh under her feet. She headed for the small swing set and began to swing under a big, leafless oak. She knew it was cold but felt nothing.
“Here’s to figuring out what you want,” he said lifting his cup. He drank the rest and stood in front of her, catching her knees when she swung back toward him. He held her in mid-air and leaned closer to her.
She liked it, so close to his face.
“You’ll be back,” he said, releasing her.
The night swooned up and down, tipping and curving around a bend. She looped toward him again, then slipped off the swing and knocked against him. He caught her before she fell.
“Hello there,” she said, kissing him quickly. She heard the beginning of Madonna’s “Get into The Groove” playing, and beyond that, Kevin’s piano and Michele’s flute from inside the house.
“Let’s go in,” she said. She pushed toward the lighted kitchen, taking the porch steps two at a time with her long legs. The sudden heat from inside caused her to list and break into a sweat. She heard them clearly now: the intensity of the piano and flute joining, tensile and intertwining between the crowded walls.
She threaded her way to the front of the house. The largest crowd gathered in the grand foyer. She looked over and saw him hunched over the keyboard like a large bird of prey. Michele undulated to the music; her elbows spread open, lips pursed to the silver tip.
Jennifer crossed over to a vacant window seat in the hall, falling into its flowering cushion.
“Talk to me,” Alan said.
She was sinking into a trash heap of bad behavior, yet the window seat felt soft as rose petals. Why leave except for the thought that Ledger’s brass bed offered something even softer and otherworldly, the gentle arms of an old-fashioned room.
“Can you take me home?”
Alan returned with Jay’s car keys and she went with him to the car. Outside Kevin’s musical phrases dissolved behind the car glass, entered her mind and played on and on. As soon as she sat back against the seat and closed her eyes, she fell into a pool of darkness, bigger than the universe.
“Jen, we’re here.”
He feathered her lips with his, wakening her in front of Ledger’s house. He pressed harder, then he lifted her head up and she opened her eyes. All the windows were dark. Not even the front light had been left on.
Where was Kevin? She looked at Alan and thought it would be ideal if she could have them both: Kevin’s intellectual delicacy combined with Alan’s muscular attitude. She felt his tongue and this put her in a sensual dream of wanting Kevin, yet aching for a thrill, daring to take what she knew she shouldn’t have. She twisted into the back seat until he lay with her, his trou
sers snagged down where his warm legs pressed against hers, and quickly he let go inside her, collapsing against her, hunkering onto his side. She felt hot-wired, crackling before an implosion.
“I’ve got to go.” She yanked her pantyhose up over her hips.
“Wait.”
“Can’t.” She felt for the door handle and opened it.
“Jen—wait, please.”
“I can’t. Not now.”
He let her go and somehow she found the key in her pocket. Ledger’s door opened and she leaned into the banister in the dark, climbing away from the party confusion, pausing in front of the bathroom and sliding against the hall wall toward her room at the end.
“Who’s there?” Ledger called down from the third floor.
She swayed in the dry, silent air. She had complied with his rules. No men had come in. He ought to leave her alone. She stood still and waited, not answering, until the hall phone startled her and she tiptoed back to make it stop.
“Hello?”
‘It’s me,” Alan said. “I called your cell but you didn’t pick up. We need to talk.”
“Wait.” She pulled the phone into the bathroom and squeezed the door shut against the cord. “I can’t talk. He’s listening. How did you get this number? Don’t call back. I’ll call you.”
She hung up and put the phone back on the hall table.
In her room, low clouds covered her in a dream. Alone on a prairie she watched a horse feed on spare grasses. She walked closer. A man appeared with a gun. He turned and smiled at her as a line of flame ignited across the horse’s back.
“Shoot it,” she screamed to the man. He looked at her and smiled again. “Shoot it! Can’t you hear me?”
She turned onto her back and watched the burning horse evaporate into one of the flowers on the wall. The muscle over her eyebrow ached, her tongue so dry it caught in her teeth. It was too bright to see. She reached into the drawer of the nightstand and scratched the bottom for the capsules rolling to the back. A stale glass of water half-disappeared in the light.
Women in Bed Page 4
