Four: Stories of Marriage

by Nia Forrester

  “Don’t worry about the time. We’ve got nowhere to be.”

  They stared at each other for a few moments, and Tracy felt heat rise to the surface of her skin. It was one thing to be looked at with desire. She had experienced that countless times in her life, and it meant almost nothing to her. But to be looked at with love, and at the same time desire; there was nothing quite like it. Brendan was the only man who had ever given her that.

  “Layla’s had a little something to eat. I put her back in bed and she’s playing by herself.”

  “So quietly?” Tracy almost sat up in alarm, until Brendan indicated the baby monitor.

  Without changing his position, he reached for it and turned it up a little so Tracy could hear Layla cooing and singing nonsense words, probably to her stuffed animals.

  “Listen to that,” Brendan said. “She’s taking care of her ‘babies’.”

  Tracy smiled.

  “You know when psychologists are assessing kids? One of the tests they do is give them baby dolls to play with.”

  “Is that so?” Tracy asked musingly.

  Brendan was running his fingertips over her forearm now, making tiny goosebumps rise on the surface of her skin.

  “Yup. And when they see a kid being gentle and nurturing with the dolls, they know that it generally means someone’s been really gentle and really nurturing with that kid,” he continued.

  Tracy felt blinked away the familiar-of-late sensation of impending tears. It was almost as though he intuited something of the conversation she’d had with her mother a week ago. The memory of it still stung and that made her impatient with herself. One would think she would have by now grown a thicker skin where her mother was concerned.

  “You’re such a good mother to our daughter. I see it. Every day. Just in the way she is.”

  “The way she is with her baby dolls?” Tracy teased.

  “The way she is with everything,” Brendan kissed her lightly on her shoulder. “Anyway, she does that now,” he said. “Plays by herself without fussing. We do it every Saturday that I have her. She gets her quiet time, and I take a quick shower.”

  Tracy propped herself up on one elbow. “Really? You can leave her alone, and she’s fine with it?”

  “Yeah. She can go almost two hours before she comes looking for one of us. You’re usually sleeping, so I head her off in the hallway, then we get her bathed, get dressed and go hang out in the neighborhood a little.”

  Tracy resisted the urge to ask how he could shower if he knew Layla was awake. How could he hear her? How did he know what she was doing when the sound of the water drowned out the sound of the baby monitor? But he wasn’t as anxiety-ridden as she was about Layla, and she didn’t want to ruin the mood with her neurotic-mom questions.

  On the weekends when Brendan didn’t play basketball, and she slept in, Tracy hadn’t given much thought to what he and Layla might be getting up to while she rested. She knew her daughter was safe, so she got the deepest sleep she ever got—deeper even than when she and Brendan were both sleeping because if they both slept, something could still go wrong with their baby. If only Tracy slept, Layla was in the hands of the only other person on earth who loved her as much as Tracy herself did.

  “You want to get up and hang out with us?” Brendan asked. “To see what we do when you’re still out like a light?”

  “Okay.” Her voice was a croak. She cleared her throat.

  “We have a whole routine,” Brendan said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. It could probably be improved though. At least for me.” His eyes ran over her face, like he was drinking each feature in, one by one.

  “How so?”

  Rather than answer with words, Brendan kissed her. She tasted toothpaste on his tongue and wondered how she tasted by comparison. But all self-consciousness disappeared when he moved from her lips to her jaw, behind her ear, and then to her neck.

  His kisses were as light as the wings of butterflies, and Tracy exhaled a heavy breath. She had been holding it, from the moment his lips first touched her. After their disagreement a few nights ago, she had been holding low-level dread in her muscles, tension without knowing she was tense.

  Turning her onto her back, Brendan pulled her nightshirt over her head and lowered his mouth to her breasts. Her skin tingled, sensitive to each swipe of his tongue, and to the pull and tug of his lips on her nipples.

  As he moved from her chest to her abdomen, her stomach trembled, and each breath came faster than the last. She strained to lift her head and managed it just as he lowered his head between her thighs. He sighed just before his tongue touched her, as though he was saying, this is what I’ve been waiting for. This is what I wanted most of all.

  Turning herself over to it, Tracy relaxed her limbs, not fighting the pleasure, as she often did. With no other man in the past had her release come so soon, so often and with such awesome power. When Brendan made her come, it wracked her entire body, arching her off the bed, her legs extended in a pose of erotic rigor, her neck muscles strained and extended, her head thrown back and face drawn into a tight grimace.

  But that was only sometimes. Sometimes she became limp and boneless as a jellyfish, weak and helpless, but still filled with desire. It was like that now, as she felt the silken smoothness of the strokes against her clitoris, the greedy eagerness of Brendan’s head, thrashing back and forth.

  Gasping, Tracy grabbed his head, alternately holding him in place, and then poised to shove him aside. Before she could decide, her orgasm caught up with her, and she heaved a single deep, tremulous breath, and was still.

  Brendan slowed, but did not stop until she sat up, and held his shoulders, trying to pull him up to her.

  Sitting completely upright, she strained to bow her head, reaching for him.

  “It’s okay,” Brendan said. “Next time.”

  He gently shoved her back once again, and kissing her damp neck and shoulder, lowered himself between her legs. Tracy cupped his face in her hands and their eyes became locked in a fixed gaze as he slid deep inside her.

  Moaning softly at how easily they joined, and at how good it felt, Brendan ceased looking at her only when his eyes fluttered shut. He moved so slowly that Tracy could feel it mostly by what was happening inside her—the slick, subtle slide of his body into hers. His firm back tensed and released, his buttocks clenched and unclenched. He did not thrust, he rolled, and he rocked and in a few short minutes, she was coming again.

  Brendan paused through her coming, waiting it out, and leisurely tasting her neck —which was now wet with perspiration—and then her mouth. He sucked on her lower lip, and on her tongue, and then again on her neck. Tracy pushed her pelvis upward, eager for him to reach his finish as well, but Brendan seemed unconcerned about that, and received her energetic efforts by putting a hand on her hip to still her.

  “I’m good, baby,” he said in her ear.

  “No. You didn’t …”

  She didn’t enjoy feeling as though he hadn’t been fully satisfied. It would bother her all day.

  “I know,” he said, smiling against her neck. “But I’m good.”

  Undeterred, Tracy clutched his ass with both hands, lifting her legs and hooking them around his, and Brendan raised his torso, weight on his extended arms. While he maintained that position, she strained against him, lifting her head to lick his chest, nip at his nipples and bite his neck where it met his shoulder.

  After just a few moments of this, Brendan was grimacing and biting his lower lip, rocking into her once again. Watching his face contort, and feeling the eventual subtle burst deep inside her, Tracy finally allowed herself to collapse against the sheets, exhausted.

  When she opened her eyes again, Brendan’s gaze had just begun to clear from a cloudy, sightless post-orgasmic look. He grinned down at her, shaking his head in exasperation.

  “Always gotta have your way, huh?”

  The famers’ market was crowded with young cou
ples, some without children, but most with at least one. They seemed so much younger, and hipper with each passing year. Brooklyn had changed since Tracy had first bought her townhouse here. Now, it was less Black and brown, less affordable, and more like Manhattan.

  All but gone were some of the small West Indian stores that she used to depend on for spices and hot take-out meals prepared in out-of-code kitchens. Gone too, were many of the makeshift community centers, storefronts that would have remained unused but for a few enterprising community activists who thought to make use of the space for neighborhood kids, or the elderly, who had nowhere else to go.

  So much of Brooklyn today was slick, and almost sleek. There were as many Starbucks per capita as befitted any upscale community in America, and a Whole Foods and Target nearby to round things out. True, the streets were cleaner and many of them safer, but it still rankled that there were now wine bars, and stores for artisan cheeses—or “formagers” as many of them were beginning to call themselves—that many native Brooklynites could not afford.

  She and Brendan didn’t have that problem though, because after all, here they were, strolling alongside their neighbors, filling an earth-friendly canvas bag with eight-dollar jars of homemade preserves, gooseberry pies that they would probably never eat, and small trinkets that would be forgotten long before they even returned home.

  Riley would roar with laughter if she knew that Tracy of all people was pining for the rustic past of Brooklyn Heights. That she was missing the time when there were actual homeboys on the corner, shouting out their ‘good mornings’ as she made her way to the subway, managing to sound impertinent and suggestive just with a simple greeting.

  “So, this is what you and Layla do when I’m sleeping?” Tracy asked.

  She looked up at Brendan who was carrying their daughter on his shoulders while she dug into a hunk of blueberry cornbread. Crumbs fell onto his shoulders, but he didn’t bother brushing them off; neither did he protest when Layla used the top of his head to wipe her buttery hands.

  “Sometimes. Or we go to the coffee shop and grab some coffee for me, and warm milk with cinnamon for her. Buy a couple things at the deli, muffins and stuff at the market for you.”

  “You two have this whole other life without me.” She sounded wistful, even hurt, though that hadn’t been her intent.

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” Brendan stopped for a few moments, just so he could look directly at her. He must have heard that note in her voice as well. “Without you, we’d only last a week.”

  “You think you’d make it an entire week?” Tracy teased.

  Brendan shrugged. “Fine. Three days, tops. But I was trying to sound optimistic.”

  “Here.” Tracy extended her hand. “Well then we’d better make sure you don’t lose me in the crowd.”

  For the rest of their time at the market, they walked that way, hand-in-hand, and only letting go when they stopped to browse at stalls. People noticed them and smiled. Women especially, took notice.

  Tracy knew they looked good together and tried not to take undue pride in it all—that Brendan was handsome, Layla as cute as kids come, and that even she was without question much more attractive than the average woman. But she did take pride in it, and almost disliked herself for thinking how much more rounded out their perfect family would look if she were pushing a baby carriage and nestled inside was a baby boy.

  Shallow thoughts like these she never shared with Brendan. He would only have given her a flat stare, shaken his head and changed the subject.

  When they were finally back at the house, Tracy unloaded their purchases in the kitchen, and listened to Brendan and Layla in the front room as they carried on what sounded like a very convoluted conversation about puppies. Layla still had an adorable babyish voice. Listening to her made Tracy smile.

  With her father, her voice was chirpy and over-excited. Because she didn’t spend as much time with him as she did with her mother, when she did, she stumbled over her words in an exuberant hurry to get things out. It was as though she had stored it all up, waiting for a time when she could release it all.

  Brendan was patient. He never corrected her, nor did he finish her sentences to rush a thought he knew she was struggling to express. He was a good father. And a fun one, too.

  Tracy knew she was many things with Layla, but she was rarely fun. Occasionally, she heard herself speak to her daughter in a tone that was scarily similar to what Tracy remembered hearing from her own mother. And the last thing she wanted to be to Layla was the kind of mother her mother had been.

  She wondered about what Brendan said at the farmer’s market; that they wouldn’t last long without her. She didn’t really believe it. They would do just fine without her. Brendan would shred all her painstakingly arranged schedules and routines.

  He would let Layla skip her soccer and dance classes. In fact, he’d probably forget she had them at all. He would let her eat sugary cereals and wander around the house in her pajamas well past noon on weekends. He would allow her to crawl into bed with him, and there, she would sleep sideways, or upside down, with her little feet on the pillow next to his face. Every bath-time would become playtime.

  That kind of disorder would drive Tracy nuts. But Layla would love it.

  They would do just fine, but Tracy would not.

  Though she had considered it, she could never bring herself to go away for any significant length of time without either, or god forbid, both of them. A night here and there in New Jersey when Robyn invited her over for an in-home spa weekend was all she had ever been able to manage. Robyn and Riley were always suggesting girls-only trips, of one kind or another—to a retreat in Arizona, to a mountain lake for a meditation retreat, to a beach house in the Carolinas—but Tracy could never take the plunge. She made excuses that she was sure her friends saw through, all the while promising herself that she would do it next year. Or maybe the year after that.

  But she would have gone to see her mother though. If she had been welcomed, she would have gone.

  “How d’you like that new sitter?”

  Tracy turned at the sound of Brendan’s voice. He, and Layla were standing at the fridge and he was handing their daughter a carton of organic juice, removing the plastic covering from the straw. Tracy hadn’t even noticed them join her in the kitchen.

  “What new … Oh, Trish?”

  “Trishie,” Layla said, taking the straw from her father. “Her name is Trishie.”

  “Yeah, her,” Brendan said. He reached down and ruffled Layla’s hair. “I called the other day and she was here while you were out. So, I guess you like her?”

  “She’s fine,” Tracy said. “No better, no worse than the others.”

  “You think she might be available tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “I want to go to the club. You should come with me.”

  Tracy shook her head. “If you just need to check in, I don’t have to go with you,” she said. “I mean, I know you’ll only be there a couple of hours, so …”

  “No,” Brendan said. “I meant, I want you to come with me. Like a date.”

  “A date?”

  “Yeah. We could use one of those.”

  He came closer. Close enough that Tracy had to let her head fall back to look him in the eye.

  “Yes, we could.”

  “Good. So, see what’s up with Trish, and we’ll do that. Then let’s see how we can wear out you-know-who’s butt for the rest of the afternoon.” Brendan inclined his head in the direction where Layla was fidgeting to get the straw back into her box of juice.

  Tracy laughed. “Okay. Sounds like a plan.”

  Brendan dropped a quick kiss on her forehead then turned to their daughter.

  “C’mon, baby, Momma’s got some calls. Let’s go see if we can make a fort out of sofa cushions or something.”

  The club was still doing well, even now, several years after its launch. Opening night of Lounge Two-Twelve had been a t
urning point in Tracy and Brendan’s relationship. She had come as Shawn’s date because Riley was close to having their first baby, and Brendan was hosting. Things between them had been complicated, because Tracy was terrified of admitting her feelings, and he had a girlfriend. Or at least a woman in his life who he wasn’t admitting was a girlfriend.

  And Tracy had been sick with jealousy. Sick with jealousy, and sick of how emotionally stuck she was that she couldn’t even admit her feelings. That night, just as a salve to her wounded ego, she had gone home with a man she was barely attracted to, if at all.

  After a near-disastrous evening during which she thought she wouldn’t be able to get the creep out of her bed, let alone out of her house, she had called Brendan to come to her rescue, and he had. He had been her rescuer, her savior, ever since.

  Tonight, Tracy had worn a white asymmetrical halter dress, scooped low in front and at the back, with high-heeled sandals. And though she still couldn’t manage the thought of more than a ponytail, this time she had positioned it at the crown of her head and released it into a cascade of waves, instead of braiding it. If she had any doubt about her choice of hairstyle and outfit, it was dispelled when she exited her dressing room and saw the look on Brendan’s face.

  They got to the club around eleven, which was primetime or even early by Manhattan nightlife standards; but Lounge Two-Twelve was already wall-to-wall with patrons. Brendan kept a hand at the small of her back as he ushered her in and toward the VIP area and waited for her to get settled before heading back out onto the floor to greet the staff. Shawn was already there and stood to greet Tracy with a brief hug and kiss on the cheek.

  “Oh shoot. I should have called Riley and told her I would be here,” Tracy said, just thinking of it.

  “She couldn’t have made it, anyway,” Shawn said, shrugging. “Had something downtown she needed to go to.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll see her tomorrow at brunch, I guess.”

  “Is that what she’s up to, tomorrow?” Shawn asked, his voice flat.

  Tracy looked at him, trying to read his face, but failing, in the dim light of the club.