Because Bonnie had liked it. She’d said so. Said she’d liked fucking him. The word she used. What Jane was doing this very minute, and it was quite extraordinary to think this was really her, it was really happening. It went on and on. It was her, Jane, but it was also Bonnie, this confusion of bodies the strangest thing, but how else would she have come here? How else allow herself this cresting pleasure? She had come close to such feeling a time or two but for once it was in reach and she let go, let go, let it shake her all the way loose.
“How you doing?” he said from somewhere next to her ear, because he had collapsed on top of her. He balanced his weight on his elbows and raised up. “You OK? Huh?”
She couldn’t talk yet so she nodded. She was still wearing her shirt; it was all wadded and crumpled around her. When she could speak, she said, “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see his face, big and pale and too close up, as if the moon had come in through the window and fixed itself on her chest. The angel on his right bicep fluttered as he moved.
“What we just did,” she said weakly. There was a slick of sweat all along her stomach, turning chill.
He gave her a smacking kiss on the mouth. “It all comes natural, darlin’. Scuse me.”
He hoisted himself up and took off down the hall to the bathroom. Jane got up too, shivering, and put on the sweatshirt hanging on the doorknob. She searched the floor and found her panties and put them on too. She was wet between her legs and that felt strange, soiled, and what she wanted most now was to leave and find some quiet space to be alone and put the pieces of herself back together again.
But she couldn’t leave yet, you had to go through the awkward part first. She heard Patrick come out of the bathroom and then he must have been in the bedroom, opening and closing things. “All right if I turn on the lights?” he asked, when he came back in.
Jane said yes. The light came on and she saw that he was wearing a pair of basketball shorts, the silky kind, blue with gold striped up the side. “You checking out my fat belly?” Patrick asked, striking a pose that made his stomach stick out. Jane shook her head and dropped her eyes. She thought the shorts were ridiculous.
She didn’t want to get dressed with him watching so she took all her clothes into the bathroom. She’d seen cleaner toilets in gas stations. When she went back out, he had the television on again.
“Relax, it’s just SportsCenter,” he said. “Come here.”
Jane sat down next to him and he patted her knee. “You OK?” Jane nodded. “You sure? You’re not going to get weird on me, are you? Sometimes girls do that.”
“What do you mean, weird.” She guessed she knew what he meant.
“They act like this is some kind of sad occasion. Like we just murdered somebody.”
Jane started to tell him it had to do with insecurity and anxiety and whatever cocktail of sensations the body served up before, during, and after. Then thought and words and everything else left her and she floated free in blissful white space and here was Patrick calling her name and shaking her.
“You all right? Hey!” He was standing over her, so that she opened her eyes to the ridiculous shorts, the cheap synthetic fabric with the perforations for ventilation and the elastic stitching at the waistband and the piece of white net lining working its way loose, and she had an impulse to pull the shorts aside so she could examine his penis with the same degree of intensity and wonder, but that would be a different kind of weird or else taken as an invitation for some new carnal activity and she didn’t mean it that way. And so even though she felt extraordinarily fine, clear-headed and refreshed, she made a show of fluttering her eyes and breathing small sips of air as if she were coming out of a swoon.
“Wow,” she said. “I guess you really did a number on me.”
Which was the truth, but not in the way he would imagine.
“You OK? Really? How about I get you some water.”
Jane allowed that water would be nice. She closed her eyes. She heard him in the kitchen, running the tap and opening cupboards. Lord save her from having to look at the kitchen. She tried to recapture the feel and the memory of that floating white space but it got confused with the feel and memory of the recent sexual climax, which was not a bad thing at all.
Patrick came back in and she opened her eyes to find him carrying a bowl and a tall glass of ice water. He set them down next to her. “Chocolate ice cream,” he said, indicating the bowl. “Actually it’s frozen yogurt, it’s better for you.”
“Thanks.” Jane drank the water and started in on the frozen yogurt. She didn’t think she was hungry but it tasted better than she expected and she liked that he was fussing over her. “This is good,” she told him, waving the spoon in the air.
“Yeah, it’s not bad for healthy. So what happened, did you pass out or something?”
“What did it look like?” She had a dread of making weird noises or crossing her eyes or worse.
“You went kind of limp. Your eyes were still open. Like you were having an attack. I’m glad you came to, I wouldn’t know what to do if you were dead. Does that happen a lot to you? Do you have some condition or something?”
Jane guessed she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to end a date with body disposal. “It’s nothing dangerous. Sometimes I zone out. It’s like I was talking about, living in my head. It’s like . . .” She hesitated. “Like an orgasm in my brain.”
“You’re kidding.” His eyes grew round, trying to fathom this. “Wow, you should teach people how to do that. Can you do it whenever you want?”
“No, it sneaks up on me.” She wasn’t used to talking about her episodes—orgasm in the brain, how had she come up with that?—and she hurried to change the subject. “Anyway I’m fine now. Better than fine. You’re . . .” She searched for a compliment. “. . . I think you have superpowers too.”
“Yeah?” He was pleased. “Yeah, the Amazing Dick Man!”
Jane shook her head. “Eww. Too much.”
“Sorry.” He took the empty bowl from her and set it on the floor. “Come here,” he said, pulling her onto his lap.
“I have to go home.”
“One for the road.”
“Patrick, I’m already dressed and everything.”
“And I bet you can do it all over again.”
This time she was on top of him while he put his hands on her hips and bounced her up and down. It took him longer this time and she started to get sore and chafed and she didn’t think she could manage to come again but he had her turn around so that she was still on top but with her back to him, and he reached around with one hand to tickle it out of her. This one was different, almost painful, her insides clenching and unclenching, and there was no rest because now she had to hold on while he took his turn, a hard ride to the end.
They rolled apart and let their hearts and breathing calm, and Patrick got up and fetched a blanket from the bedroom and they wrapped up in it, and in each other, and slept.
Jane woke suddenly, not knowing what time it was but judging from the quiet of the street outside that it was late, probably very late. She rolled away from Patrick, who was on his back, snoring lightly, made her way to the bathroom, and tried not to think any hard thoughts.
Back in the living room Jane found her purse and pulled out her phone. It was twenty after two. She’d turned the phone off at the start of the evening and now she saw that she had two texts from Eric: Where are you?, and, Are you all right? Call me. There were also three missed calls and two voice mails, the last one an hour ago. Her first guilty thought was that something had happened to the children, but she recognized this as something she had fabricated, and anyway, Daddy Doctor could handle a crisis on his own for once.
Jane got dressed, all except for her shoes, which she carried to keep from making noise. She crouche
d down next to him. “Patrick?” she said, but softly, since she didn’t really want to wake him, only wanted to admire him, lying there as if he were dead, this beautiful dead thing she had killed. She let herself out the door, managed the stairs as best she could. Her legs felt weak, as if she was a puppet come unstrung. Her car was where she’d left it, and there was no one on the street to waylay or distress her. She was glad when she got as far as sitting in the driver’s seat, the doors locked, the engine starting up like a champ; she thought that after this achievement, everything else might be managed. She was a mess indeed, but she was beginning to get used to being a mess.
The radio news station played the same ads it always did, the GPS announced the route in miles and hundreds of yards, everything was the same except herself. Her skin seemed to be dissolving into molecules, her head was full of clouds and ache, and every so often her secret parts sent out a tremor. Maybe she should have called Eric at some strategic point, made up some story he’d have to believe; well, too late for that.
Too late also to have any hope of slipping inside and climbing the stairs to her own bed, because the lights were on downstairs. She pulled the car into its space in the garage and came in through the back door. Then opened the refrigerator, took out the orange juice, poured herself a glass and drank. She heard Eric coming down the stairs and then he was in the doorway, trying to decide what sort of unpleasant face to make. “What happened to you?” he demanded.
“Nothing.” Which was not really true, but was true in the sense he meant. “I’m fine.”
“Where have you been all this time? Don’t tell me the play went on this late.”
He was wearing one of his sleep costumes, plaid flannel pants and a gray T-shirt printed with the Beer Nuts logo, something he’d thought was funny back in med school. Jane allowed herself a detached thought about the clothes men wore for lounging. As Eric’s hair receded in front he’d taken to growing it longer in back, which seemed like the entirely wrong sort of vanity. Jane was aware that she was comparing him to Patrick and for a moment she felt sorry for him, then all that went away. She said, “Since when did you care what I do?”
“I care that you said you’d be home at a reasonable hour, not three in the morning.”
Jane finished her orange juice, rinsed the glass, and put it in the sink. “I believe I said that I might be late.”
“The play got out at ten thirty. I checked. What did you do, close a bar?”
He’d folded his arms, an absurd posture given the plaid pajama pants, the shelf of belly he’d developed over the last year or two, his untidy hair, everything she no longer loved about him.
“I didn’t go to the play. I went to see my boyfriend.”
Jane waited but it was taking him some extra effort to speak, to choose among his options, anger or disbelief or scorn, and she took advantage of this to leave the kitchen through the other door and so not have to pass by him. “His name is Patrick,” she said, on her way out of the room.
Here is the poem Jane wrote a week later:
The angel on his arm
rising from her scrolls of purple ink
her wings her twirly hair her angel gown all drawn
in curves, said:
Darlin’, sweetie-o
pretty pretty pretty
oh honey babe
you two, you and him, should go for a ride
without a car. All alone
except for of course, me.
Because I go everywhere with him.
I am the angel of taverns and bottles and dollars left on the bar.
I am the angel of last call
in charge of sobering up and good intentions and bad days
when my name is Screw It All To Hell
or Who Cares.
But remember, skin is where I live
and sometimes
sugar bear, sis, ladyface,
I can make you fly.
true confessions
She said Patrick? Patrick Doyle?”
“Just Patrick, that’s all.”
“And you’re sure about that.”
“It’s the one thing I’m sure about,” Eric said, irritated and glum. It was Monday night, almost nine, which was late for them to be meeting, and ordinarily they would be in bed together instead of sitting at Bonnie’s kitchen table. He’d called and said he needed to talk to her. He needed to talk to her about Jane. Jane told Eric she was going into the city to see a play and instead had come home looking like something the cat dragged in and announced that she had a boyfriend. Whose name was Patrick.
Bonnie said, “I doubt if . . .” and then stopped herself. She didn’t want to get into the saga of herself and Patrick. Specifically the part where she’d had sex with him not so very long ago. Or the part where she’d called him two days earlier. Which had been a mistake she didn’t want to be reminded of. Anyway, for Eric, the important part was “boyfriend.”
He said, “I mean, Jane? Where would she even find somebody? It’s not like she has some big social life. And when? She’s almost always with the kids.”
Bonnie did not point out that even busy surgeons were able to find such opportunities. She said, “I guess she wants to get even with you. With me.” Patrick? No way. It was Jane making things up, throwing out the name for a reason. Though she didn’t care to think what that reason might be.
She didn’t want to think about Patrick either, and now she had to. She’d called him because she was still angry, and because she never could get over things, and always wanted the last, or at least the loudest, word. She didn’t want to sleep with him anymore, she really didn’t (unless perhaps, immediately afterwards they could both be hit in the head hard enough to forget all about it), but maybe she had wanted him to want to so she could tell him to drop dead.
The conversation had not begun well and then had gotten worse. He’d answered, at least. Bonnie had not been sure he would. “Hey, listen, it’s not a good time for me to talk, I’m trying to get someplace.”
“Oh. Work?”
“No, just out.” He wasn’t going to tell her where. Bonnie heard street noise. He’d be walking since he no longer had a car. His not having a car now seemed like one more thing to hold against him.
“Well, I won’t keep you. Just wanted to know how you’ve been.”
“Fine.” After a moment, he said, “How about you?”
“Great. Well, normal. I guess nobody says they’re normal, huh? It’s always ‘great.’ I wonder how come?” Bonnie waited but he didn’t register any opinion. “How’s work going?”
“Yeah, it’s busy. Real busy. Nuts.”
“Lots of job stress in those executive positions,” Bonnie said. It came out sounding meaner than she’d intended.
“What? Listen, I can’t talk now, I’ve got too much going on.”
“Uh huh. Being busy sure comes in handy when you owe people money.” She had not meant to bring up the money. But he wasn’t paying any attention to her.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Look, I’ll pay you back. I tried to. I had the money but I couldn’t find you.”
“I’m sure you looked real hard.” It wasn’t all that much money. But she didn’t want to feel used, ripped off, although that was exactly how she felt.
“If I get you your money, would you leave me alone? Because I don’t think this is such a good idea, you and me seeing each other.”
The hurt part of that didn’t reach her right away, like stubbing your toe and the nerve taking a moment to twinge. She said, “We’re not ‘seeing each other.’ This is a phone call.”
“Whatever you say.”
It infuriated her that he didn’t care enough to fight with her. “I know it’s not a good idea. You were never a good idea, I hate to break it to you. Just a really available bad idea. Have fun with whatever luck
y girl’s buying your drinks tonight, I’m sure you found one.”
“Yeah? I hear you’ve been keeping pretty busy yourself.”
In the space of silence before she could come up with a response, he said he had to go and hung up.
Why had he said that? She’d raged and wept, thinking too late of all the hateful things she might have said. It served her right; calling him was the kind of thing the old crazy Bonnie would have done, the addicted-to-drama Bonnie she’d been trying to leave behind. Calling had been backsliding, falling off the wagon. How many different, tangled ways could she feel guilty? Now, trying to navigate between explanations and lies, she told Eric, “I know a Patrick but Jane’s never met him. I can’t imagine it’s the same guy.”
Eric had not been listening, she realized to her relief. He was still preoccupied with Jane’s declaration. But now she had at least inoculated herself against possible accusations. Eric said, “I can’t get over it. I know it seems kind of hypocritical of me—”
Here Bonnie made her face of polite disbelief: Come on. “OK, really, really hypocritical of me, but this is going to take some getting used to. If Jane has somebody too. Go ahead, tell me I’m a pig and a jerk.”
“You can’t really blame her. That’s not fair.”
“It’s not about fairness. It’s not really rational. But it changes things.”
“How, exactly.” She didn’t have much patience for whatever male prerogative he was attempting to access. Though you had to admit, it wasn’t anything you could have seen coming from Jane. Maybe Jane was really through with Eric, and the two of them would go their separate ways.
Maybe Bonnie and Eric could then have a life together: patched together, imperfect, happy. So her mind raced ahead with devious, hopeful plans, when she ought not assume any such thing. Because everything between them was balanced as if on the edge of a blade. “How does it change things?” she repeated.
Eric didn’t answer right away. Bonnie waited him out, sick with foreboding. Then he said, “It’s one more fault line. One more piece of instability my kids shouldn’t have to put up with. She’s their mother, I know it’s not fair to expect more of a mother, but that’s the breaks. Kids may not know exactly what’s going on but they’re intuitive, they know when something’s not right.”
She Poured Out Her Heart Page 39
