Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed

by Judith Arnold

  “And you don’t want to be a doctor?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” she said, then took another sip of bourbon. She didn’t wince this time. “My advisor wanted to get me into a special program that would lead directly into Brown Medical School. He said I had the grades for it. I just don’t have…” She considered her words, then shook her head. “I was going to say I don’t have the ambition. But I am ambitious. I want to be a nurse. I want to be a terrific nurse. I just don’t want to be a doctor.”

  “Any particular reason?” Curt asked. “They’re both healing professions. Either way, you’d work in a hospital and have one of those stethoscope things looped around your neck. So what’s the difference—besides a lot more years of schooling?”

  “Doctors treat diseases. I want to treat people.” She drank a little more, sank deeper into the sofa and propped her legs up on the porch railing. Her hair spilled around her shoulders. Light from a street lamp below them painted intriguing shadows over her face. “I’ve been doing volunteer work at Women & Infants’ Hospital downtown, and I just…I don’t know. I feel such an affinity for the nurses. The doctors sweep in, examine a patient, make a few pronouncements and sweep out. The nurses stick around and make the patients feel better, and bolster their spirits. That’s what I want to do. I want to make patients feel better.”

  Curt twisted to look at her. Her expression was earnest, intense. “That sounds great. I don’t see how anyone could call you a loser for wanting that.”

  “I’m not going to be Dr. Brennan. That’s breaking my parents’ hearts. I’m going to wind up being a lowly nurse. As far as they’re concerned, it’s a disaster. I’m a disaster.”

  “There’s nothing lowly about becoming a nurse. And for God’s sake, Ellie, you aren’t a disaster. Anyone who says you’re a disaster is an idiot.”

  “Even my advisor?”

  “No. He’s an asshole.” Curt tucked his thumb under her chin and tilted her face so they were looking directly at each other. He’d never before realized how large her eyes were. They seemed as big as Oreo cookies, and every bit as dark and deliciously sweet. “Listen to me, Ellie. If becoming a nurse is your calling, you should become a nurse.”

  She took a moment to absorb his words. “You’re right, Curt. It’s my calling.” She drank a little more. “Anna says you’re going to law school.”

  “Assuming I get accepted into one, yeah.”

  “Is that your calling? Or do you just want to be a lawyer to get rich?”

  He grinned. He was already rich, at least by birth. Unlike Ellie, he was not the first person from his family to go to college. At least six other Frosts had graduated from Brown over the past century, and several—including his father—had become lawyers. But Curt didn’t want to attend law school to follow in his father’s footsteps. It was more in spite of his father that he wanted to go. His father worked in corporate law. Curt was more interested in the drama, the arguments, the challenges of litigation. Figuring out how the law worked was like solving riddles and brainteasers and intense puzzles. Whenever he read law cases or followed a local trial, his mind sang.

  “Rich is nice,” he conceded, “but yeah, I think it’s my calling.”

  “Have you sent your applications out yet?”

  “Back in September.”

  “You seem so calm. Aren’t you nervous about it?”

  “I’ll get in somewhere,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too cocky. He wouldn’t even need his alumni connections to get into a good law school. His grades were solid and he’d gotten a stratospherically high score on the LSAT exam. He’d also done volunteer work at a legal-aid clinic. Surely at least one law school out of the six he’d applied to would consider him worthy.

  “You’re so confident,” she said, a simple observation. “If I were you, I’d be a basket case by now.”

  “If you were me, you’d have my personality,” Curt pointed out. “I’m never a basket case. Look at me—nerves of steel.” He held one hand out in front of him so she could see how steady his fingers were.

  She laughed again. “I’m glad you found me over at Faunce House,” she said. “I’m feeling a lot better already.”

  “Must be the bourbon,” he said, adding a little more to their glasses. He wasn’t sure what her tolerance for liquor was, but his purpose wasn’t to get her drunk. Just to improve her spirits. Tonight, improving her spirits was his calling.

  Not that he was responsible for her or anything. They were two people tossing back a few. Two friends, nothing more. She wasn’t available.

  Except that Stringy-Hair—Martin—thought she was a loser. “So…what’s the deal with your boyfriend? He thinks you should be a doctor?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Ellie muttered, her smile vanishing and her face receding into the shadows again. “But, yes, he thinks I should be a doctor.”

  “Not to judge a book by its cover, but he doesn’t really seem the type who would care.” Curt wasn’t the most clean-cut guy around—like Ellie, he was wearing jeans that featured fraying hems and a few patches, and his hair was long enough to cause his parents to sentence him to hard time in a barber’s chair whenever he went home—but compared with Martin, Curt could pass for a Republican. “I don’t know the guy, but he looks like the sort of person who’d think becoming a doctor was selling out.”

  “Martin is an artist,” Ellie said dryly. “He makes video installments. Vidiot installments, I call them. But anyway, okay, they’re artistic. He was figuring I’d become a doctor and make lots of money so he could afford to make his vidiot installments and still enjoy the finer things in life.”

  “He was expecting you to support him?”

  “Hey, I’m a proud feminist. I have no problem with supporting a man.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Curt joked.

  She plowed ahead, undeterred. “What I do have a problem with is some artist who expects me to pursue a career I don’t want just so he can do what he wants. I keep telling him to take some education courses so he can be an art teacher while he does vidiot stuff. Or at the very least learn how to type so he can work in an office. It’s one thing to support an artist, and another to support a freeloader. And you know, nurses make decent money. I could support him as a nurse, but that’s not good enough for him. He wants me to be a doctor and rake in tons of money.”

  “He sounds like a schmuck,” Curt said. “Nothing personal, of course.”

  “You’re right. He is a schmuck. And he’s not my boyfriend. Not anymore.”

  She’s available. Curt wasn’t sure where Steve was—probably balling his brains out with Anna somewhere—but the next time he saw his roommate, he’d break the news that Ellie Brennan was now fair game. That Stringy-Hair was out of the picture gave Curt an entirely new perspective on things. Not just on Ellie but on everything: the mellow burn of the bourbon sliding down his throat, the crisp October air embracing the third-floor porch, the whisper and occasional rattle of cars cruising down Hope Street below them, the prospect of law school and pursuing his calling and the entire future spreading before him.

  That future could include someone like Ellie. A proud feminist, the first in her family to get a college education, a woman who wanted to make people feel better. He’d never met a girl who had that dream. It was a damn terrific dream.

  She was slouching lower in the sofa, consuming her drink one dainty sip at a time but definitely working her way through it. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t given her any bourbon. With her long, slim legs and her long, long hair and those big, expressive eyes…A guy couldn’t help but get ideas. And the ideas he was getting weren’t what he ought to be thinking about a woman who was slowly but surely getting drunk.

  Too late. She held her glass out for another refill, and he obliged. “This stuff’ll smack you in the skull later,” he cautioned her. “You may not be feeling it now, but you might have trouble standing up.”

  “I’m Boston Irish,” she argued. �
�I’m genetically programmed to handle booze.”

  “Boston Irish, huh,” he repeated, and for the next hour, as they polished off a significant amount of Wild Turkey, they talked about themselves. She told him about growing up in the Boston suburb of Pinebrook, about playing stickball and hopscotch in the street outside her house and riding the T into the city to visit the Museum of Science or cheer herself hoarse at a Red Sox game or, every Independence Day, hear the Boston Pops perform free at the Esplanade, a park adjacent to the Charles River. She told him about her pesky younger brothers, one of them a senior in high school and the other a freshman, each of them convinced that he would be the next Carl Yastrzemski, leading the Red Sox to glory and triumph. She told him that even though her brothers were obnoxious, she loved kids. She wanted to be a pediatrics nurse so she could work with kids forever. She wanted kids of her own. At least two, maybe three. Probably not more than three, because growing up as one of three children had taught her that the more kids a family had, the more they had to compete for their parents’ attention, and she didn’t want her kids to be competing all the time for her attention.

  Curt told her he was an only child, but he thought he’d like to have kids, plural, someday. He told her about growing up in a spacious apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and attending an exclusive private school, and viewing the city as his own backyard. He told her about his father’s esteemed career as a corporate lawyer—an area of law that he found painfully boring—and his mother’s numerous charitable activities. He hadn’t had to compete with siblings for his parents’ attention, but they were to obusy—his father with his career and his mother with her fund-raising drives for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Arthritis Foundation—to smother him, for which he was grateful.

  Eventually, Ellie emptied her glass, and shook her head when he lifted the bottle to refill it. “So you think I’m going to have trouble standing up?” she asked.

  “You’re Boston Irish. You tell me,” he goaded her.

  She pushed herself to her feet, swayed slightly but remained upright. “Well, I mastered that. Walking back to campus should be a piece of cake.”

  Curt glanced at his watch. After midnight. And she lived all the way north on the Pembroke campus. He couldn’t let her walk back alone, not this late at night. But he wasn’t too keen on making that long walk round-trip himself. “You could spend the night here,” he said, trying to keep his voice light.

  “Where? On the living-room couch?”

  He scowled. She wouldn’t want to know how much crap had been spilled on that couch, how much trash had gotten lodged between its cushions. “I’ll take the couch,” he said chivalrously. “You can have my bed.”

  “Look, Curt—” she swayed again, and he clasped her elbow to steady her “—I trust you. I mean, I’m not getting undressed, anyway. So why don’t we just share the bed.”

  He gazed at her in the diffuse light from the street lamps and the harvest moon. She was no longer swaying, but…hell, she was beautiful. Lying next to her all night and not touching her was going to be some kind of torture, even if they were both fully clothed.

  Yet if he rejected her suggestion, he’d be admitting that he wasn’t trustworthy. She’d told him she trusted him. He had no choice but to live up to her faith in him.

  “Sure,” he said, opening the door back into the apartment.

  He directed her to the bathroom, which he wished was cleaner than its usual dingy, moldy state. He didn’t have a spare toothbrush, but she told him she didn’t mind; she’d use some toothpaste on her finger to clean her teeth. While she washed, he raced around his bedroom, tidying it as best he could, tossing his sneakers into the closet, hanging up the flannel shirt he’d dumped on his chair two days ago, arranging the textbooks on his desk into a neat pile. He fluffed the pillows and thanked God that he’d laundered his sheets that past weekend. The bed, pushed up against the wall, was a twin—large enough to fit two people, but nowhere near large enough for him to sleep next to Ellie without going half-crazy.

  Big deal. He’d go half-crazy. Given how much bourbon he’d put away, he wouldn’t be at his best even if she was receptive to an overture. And somehow he knew that if he ever had sex with Ellie Brennan, he’d have to be at his best.

  She returned from the bathroom, and he took his turn washing up. The tiny, windowless room smelled of toothpaste and Ivory soap and something unfamiliar, something feminine. Anna had slept at their apartment lots of times, but this wasn’t her scent. It was Ellie’s, and despite the hour, his exhaustion and the Wild Turkey pumping through his veins, Curt got a world-class boner just from the smell and from the thought of her in his bed. Christ. Why the hell did she have to say she trusted him?

  When he got back to his room, he found her seated on the bed, her shoes—a pair of ankle-high work boots—standing side by side against the wall. Her socks were garishly striped in rainbow colors. They made him laugh, and that helped to relax him.

  He could see her clearly in the glaring light from the goose-neck lamp beside his bed. Her eyes were still uncannily big and dark, her complexion smooth and pale. He’d never really noticed her cheekbones before, not in any conscious way. Now…Now he wished he’d never noticed them.

  “I don’t know what side of the bed you prefer,” she said. Her voice was soft but certain. She had no doubts about his integrity. He wondered if he should be insulted.

  “This side,” he said, pointing to the night table with the lamp on it. “You get the wall. I hope you don’t mind.”

  She eyed the wall and smiled. “I won’t have to worry about falling out,” she said.

  I won’t let you fall, he almost blurted, but he clamped his mouth shut, holding the words inside. Why should he feel protective of her? Her parents and her ex-boyfriend and even her advisor might be asses, but she didn’t need Curt’s protection. A little ranting, a little bourbon and she could handle anything.

  She climbed into bed, snuggled down under the covers and looked up at him. He swallowed and turned away so she wouldn’t notice the erection bulging beneath the fly of his jeans. He yanked off his shoes and flung them toward the closet, where they landed in two thumps, and then pulled off his sweater and draped it over the back of his chair. Ellie’s scarf lay coiled like a cobra on the seat. He smoothed his gray T-shirt into the waistband of his jeans, removed his belt for comfort’s sake and, inhaling for courage and praying for willpower, slid under the covers beside her and snapped off the lamp.

  To his surprise, sleeping next to Ellie Brennan was easy. After a murmured good-night, she drifted into a deep slumber. He could tell by the steady rhythm of her respiration, the gentle stillness of her body, that she was out cold. With a yawn, he closed his eyes and quickly joined her in oblivion.

  When he woke up, a milky predawn light was seeping through the flimsy curtains covering his window. He glanced at the clock on his night table: six-seventeen. Much too early to get out of bed.

  Ellie was cuddled up next to him, her head on his shoulder and her hair spilled over his arm, cool and slippery. The blanket had skidded down to their waists and her body exuded warmth.

  His groin stirred—that particular part of him couldn’t help but be excited to have this beautiful, sweet-smelling woman so close—but he felt more than standard college-boy lust. He felt peaceful. He felt relaxed. Having Ellie in his bed seemed right.

  Then she opened her eyes.

  They stared at each other in the pale light for several silent, potent seconds. He ought to say something. Good morning would do, or How did you sleep? or Any aftereffects from the bourbon? But she just kept gazing at him, searching his face with those profoundly dark eyes of hers…and instead of speaking, he kissed her.

  She could have recoiled. Could have said no. Could have slapped him, slammed her pillow into his face, sprung from the bed and fled to the safety of the living room. What she did was kiss him back.

  Man, how she kissed. Lips, tongue, taste, breath—s
he poured herself into the kiss, hurled herself into it, kissed him as if she’d spent the entire night dreaming about this kiss and was determined to make her dream come true.

  Maybe he was the one dreaming. Maybe this wasn’t actually happening. Maybe she wasn’t skimming her hand along his bristly cheek and threading her fingers into his hair, and her breasts weren’t pressing against his chest through her sweater and his T-shirt, and her legs weren’t shifting restlessly under the blanket, tangling with his. He recalled her multicolored socks and almost laughed, but how could he laugh with Ellie’s mouth open on his and her body half on top of his?

  Maybe he’d dreamed her socks, too. Maybe last night he’d said hi to her on his way across the green, and then he’d come home alone to his empty apartment and drunk Wild Turkey on the porch by himself, and now, in some bourbon-induced stupor, he was imagining this entire episode.

  No. His imagination wasn’t that creative. This was real.

  He pulled back and stared at her again, another prolonged moment of weighty silence. Finally he cleared his throat and asked, “Are you drunk?”

  She laughed.

  He saw nothing funny in his question. “Because I don’t want to—I mean, if you’re drunk and I’m taking advantage here—”

  “I’m not drunk,” she said. “Not the least bit.”

  “Hungover?”

  Smiling, she shook her head, causing her hair to ripple.

  “Because if we’re both sober, both cognizant—”

  “I’m very cognizant, Curt.”

  Now what? Should he resume kissing her, or should he keep talking? Should he discuss what he wanted to do or just do it? If he just did it, would she think he was presumptuous? Last night she’d boasted she was a proud feminist, after all. She might think he was some pushy, macho pig or something.

  “I want you,” he said. Honest, blunt—possibly presumptuous, but he didn’t care. “I know this is crazy, but—”