Games to Play After Dark

by Sarah Gardner Borden

  Kate let her inside and gave her a thumbs-up. “Have a boy over if you want,” she said. “My lips are sealed.”

  Bella regarded her dispassionately. “I would never do that.” She looked around the entryway and sucked in her ribs. “I’m super-responsible.”

  Lila and Robin ran from the den where Kate had installed them and accosted Bella’s voluptuous person. Lila took hold of the pink T-shirt and pulled Bella toward the den while Robin pushed her by the rear, a hand on each cheek.

  They vanished. Bella’s voice rang over the television: “I love, love, love Hannah Montana!”

  Kate returned to the bedroom and finished blow-drying her hair. She put on black lace panties and a matching bra. Colin would see the evening as an occasion for sex. As he should. Her defect, this impulse toward evasion, and its significance evaded her in turn. But the other morning had gone all right. Maybe things would get better. And Mave felt apathy too. Maybe sex mattered less than Kate suspected—maybe she could fake desire for Colin and that would be enough. She wanted the girls to thrive. She wanted her dream: a happy family.

  She put on high-heeled boots, dark blue jeans, a gauzy top printed with pink roses, and a pink velvet scarf Colin had given her. She attached rhinestone chandelier earrings and applied lipstick. She negotiated the stairs in her heels and stuck her head into the den. The three girls huddled on the couch, Robin’s hand below Bella’s T-shirt, Lila’s head on Bella’s lap.

  “Will you give them a bath?” Kate asked. “Will you unload the dishwasher?”

  “No prob.”

  Colin’s headlights flashed in back and the engine shut off.

  “Who is it!” Lila shrieked.

  “Just Daddy. He’s picking me up.”

  Colin appeared in the door. His eyes registered them all, then concentrated not on Kate, or Lila, or Robin, but on Bella: specifically, on Bella’s jaunty breasts below the glittering Gs and Os, then her abdomen, against which Robin’s small hand roamed, under the thin soft cotton. The girls laughed over Hannah Montana. Bella flipped her hair. She licked her lips. She crossed her legs up on the couch, and her breasts—a life of their own!—shimmied and settled.

  “Have I met her before?” Colin asked in the car.

  “Bella. From the pool.”

  “The Hertzbergs’ kid?”

  “Yup.” Kate reached forward and fiddled with the radio.

  “She’s developed a lot,” he said earnestly.

  “Yes. I saw you noticing her developments.”

  “Well, that shirt …”

  “Guess what? I have the same shirt.”

  “So wear it!”

  “I wear it all the time.”

  “You’re too skinny.”

  “Oh, I don’t care.”

  They parked outside the restaurant. They sat across from each other and shared a bottle of Chianti. He ordered spaghetti Bolognese and she ordered angel-hair pasta with basil and tomato sauce. They stuck to safe topics at first: a potential kitchen renovation, holiday plans. He seemed tired, pouring her Chianti and winding pasta around his fork—his blue eyes flat, his skin dull. She took inventory of his best features: nice nose, strong chin, high cheekbones. He really was a good-looking man—why couldn’t she appreciate this, or anything about him?

  He took his glasses off and rubbed them on his shirt to clean them. He sighed over his spaghetti.

  “What?”

  “Just this account I’m working on.”

  “You’ll win ’em over, I’m sure.”

  “And Sheila might quit.” Sheila was his assistant. “She’s getting married. She’s twenty-eight. She wants to have kids; I know because I’ve heard all about it. Her fiancé just got promoted. He’s at Merrill. She’s right in that sweet spot.”

  “Well … so if she quits, so what? You hire someone else.”

  “A hassle, though. To train a whole new person.”

  She tried to amuse him. “I heard the cutest thing the other day.”

  “What?”

  “At Wintergreen. These two little twin boys were walking with their nanny, not old enough for kindergarten … they must have been picking up a sibling. One of the boys says to the other little boy, ‘When we were a baby …’ ”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t you get it? As if they were, had been the same baby.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I get it.”

  “Are you grudging me my moment of whimsy?”

  “That is cute,” he said. “I get it. ‘When we were a baby.’ ”

  “Just trying to cheer you up.”

  “Cheer me up at home.” He took her hand across the table. She attempted a smile. Something unpleasant nagged at her, something besides fear of her own sexual indifference.

  She ate little of her angel hair and got the leftovers wrapped to go. She put the container in the backseat. She flipped through radio stations and came across a Miley Cyrus song. “Oh, God,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Miley. Hannah Montana.”

  The unpleasant thing took shape. She changed the station, then turned the radio off and frowned at the dark road ahead. “So. Bella,” she said.

  “Bella?”

  “Hertzberg. From the pool.”

  “Right. The sitter.”

  “The thing is, it’s just inappropriate to stare like that in front of your daughters.”

  “Robin’s with me. She had her hand up the kid’s shirt.”

  “I mean, what kind of a message are you sending … how are they going to feel about their developing bodies if their dad tromps around drooling over the teenage sitter?”

  “I don’t know. How will they feel?”

  “It’s hard enough as it is. Developing girls are self-conscious enough as it is. If they see you staring at her they’re going to worry about you staring at them.”

  “I cannot even begin to tell you how effed-up that is.”

  “Well, it is!”

  “That you said that, is what I mean.”

  “I’m not saying you would be! Of course not!”

  “But to even put that out there—”

  “I wouldn’t say it to them. I said it to you.”

  “Yeah, well, you shouldn’t even say it to me. You shouldn’t even have that thought.”

  “Oh, Colin. Are you really such a shrinking violet?”

  “Of all the messed-up, offensive … Look, I’m driving, here.”

  “I’m just going to call you Violet from now on.”

  “I admit it. I was looking at the kid’s rack. I’m a man; that’s what we’re wired to do.”

  “Oh, yuck!”

  “But that’s obviously completely different from looking at my very own daughter.”

  “Bella is an underage girl. A child.”

  “As a matter of fact, if anyone, you know, down the road, ever looks at Lila or Robin like that I’ll crack his skull.”

  He was hateful, hurtful on so many levels, too many to understand all at once!

  “As if they need to be protected or something.”

  “And why? What is the problem with that?”

  “So many things …”

  “Tell me one.”

  “If they were boys you wouldn’t worry, right, about women or girls checking them out.”

  “Christ, no!”

  “… but with girls, you do, you worry, you see them as so vulnerable.…”

  “Well, they are vulnerable. Women are more vulnerable.”

  “We’re not! We live longer! We survive infancy at a higher ratio … rate … whatever!”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sexually vulnerable.”

  “Sexually vulnerable how? How?”

  “Like, I don’t know, some kid could …”

  “Have sex with them?”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Are you going to freak out when they get their periods?”

  “Of course not …”


  “Yes, you are! I know you are!”

  “I have no intention of freaking out.”

  “They aren’t property!”

  “They’re my little girls, okay? So just leave them out of it.”

  “I wish I could. I would love to leave them out of it.”

  “They’re going to be fine. We’re providing them with a wholesome environment. Fairfield is a good place to raise kids.”

  She rolled down the window. Papers blew about the interior of the car.

  “Kate …”

  “I need the air.”

  They pulled up in front of the house. He shut off the engine and sat silently behind the wheel, hands by his sides.

  How sad he looked—how she tormented him!

  “I just don’t understand what you’re so angry about,” he said eventually.

  “I’m not sure I do either. It’s hard to explain. But I am.”

  “I’m going inside,” he said. He got out of the car and retrieved her leftovers from the backseat.

  She sat up and pushed her hair from her face. “Can’t we just figure this out?”

  “No. Not now. I have to end this conversation.”

  “Oh, fine! Go on, end it!”

  He walked around the front and leaned into her window, one hand on the roof of the car, the other holding the takeout container. “Thanks for a lovely evening.”

  “Fuck off! Go drool on your girlfriend’s tits!”

  He thrust the take-out container through the window and opened it over her head. Then he shouted incoherently and hurled the empty Styrofoam to the ground and thundered into the house.

  Angel hair sat on her shoulders and lap. It dangled from her ears. She watched Bella leave and bike up the street. She hoped that Colin had paid her the correct amount, because if not and Bella had been too shy to tell him, Kate would need to amend the discrepancy, a nuisance. She sat in the car until the lights went out downstairs and on in their bedroom window. She began to shiver. The angel hair chilled and coagulated on her scalp and skin. Kate looked at herself in the rearview mirror and laughed. She pulled pasta from her head and shoulders and from the steering wheel, where it hung in long sauce-flecked strands. She gathered it and dropped it out the window. She got out of the car, moving slowly in the grip of what felt like pain but was probably just the cold.

  She walked toward the house, a capsule of warmth in the chilly night—illuminated in spots, the kitchen and master bedroom windows sweetly radiant. She stopped midway up the walk and looked at where she lived. The yellow light filled her with obscure longing. As a teenager, returning home late from the Andersons, she might pause outside 123 Livingston Street with a similar longing, and a similar yen for combat. Her lips sore from kissing. The altercation yet to occur.

  Her bedroom light went out. The Valeries pulled their knees to their chests and moaned.

  KATE AND COLIN DIDN’T SPEAK until the following Tuesday. Then, after putting the kids to bed, Colin approached her with the Royal Garden menu: a conciliatory gesture. “Chinese?” She took the menu from his outstretched hand. The decorative photos of featured dishes resembled double homicides. She read quickly through anyway. Peking Duck. Baby Ginger Chicken. Szechuan Triple. Crispy Walnut Shrimp. Red-Hot Spicy Shrimp. Velvet Triple. Happy Family.

  Even Royal Garden was mocking her!

  She handed back the menu. “Just order me whatever. Please.”

  “We could share the duck.”

  “Okay. Great. The duck.” She giggled.

  “What?”

  “ ‘Duck’ is a funny word.”

  The food came and they ate. They leaned into each other on the couch, watching ER. The hospital was decorated for Halloween and some of the doctors and nurses wore costumes.

  “Are we going to tell Levy about the date night?” Colin asked.

  “Do you want to?”

  “Not really.”

  “He won’t approve.”

  “No. He won’t like it.”

  “What do you think he’d say?”

  “I don’t know.” Colin put his arm around her. “Should we keep seeing him? If we do and we don’t tell him it’s weird.”

  “We have to tell him, then.”

  “What if he wants us to separate? He’s all into that.”

  “He was just asking.”

  “Right,” Colin said.

  “You don’t want that, do you?”

  “Me? No, I don’t want that.”

  “Me neither. The girls. I’m afraid they’d miss it. The family. Miss us.”

  “I’m afraid of that too.”

  “They’re our biggest fans.” She put her head on his shoulder. “And we love each other.”

  “We do,” he said, with some regret. He rubbed her forearm. They watched the show.

  “Abby’s drinking again, huh?” Colin said.

  “For a while now.”

  The remains of the Peking duck sat on the coffee table. “I’ll put this stuff away,” Colin said. He dislodged himself and got up.

  “You want help?”

  “No. I’m good.”

  “You want me to pause it?” she called after him.

  “S’okay,” he called back.

  She paused the show anyway. It wasn’t the same without him.

  12

  HE ROSE CENTER, where Kate ran workshops on developing and maintaining a budget, provided shelter for women “in transition,” which meant battered women running from their husbands or boyfriends and homes. The shelter housed these women and attempted to orient them. Some ended up moving in with their relatives. Some found jobs and apartments or rooms in a house of employment. Some returned to their husbands or boyfriends.

  On Tuesday, Kate gathered toys to bring to work with her, as Colin had suggested. Toys in general, though, weren’t needed as much as other items: warm plus-size clothing, gently worn shoes, toasters, microwaves, pots and pans, towels, bedding, clean mattresses, sofas, kitchen or dining tables, chairs, household supplies, spare tires, life skills, jobs, child care, health insurance.

  On Wednesday, Kate delivered the toys to the shelter. She pulled up into the parking lot and opened the back of the station wagon. A toddler with rotting teeth ran up to the car and tried to climb in amid the bags of toys. Kate carried the bags into the office. She’d made cinnamon rolls and picked up a thermos of coffee, and these she carried to the radiator- and foot-scented provisional classroom. The women clustered around the snack table.

  On the brown faces, the bruises showed up dark purple and black. On the white faces, the bruises came out blue when fresh, or a lighter but still lurid purple. They became yellow as they aged, or puce, or brown.

  The funny thing was, the women would remark on Kate’s bruises.

  “You have lot of black and blue.”

  “Fuckin’ A!”

  “That’s some ugly shit.”

  “Jee—zus!”

  Today pale faces outnumbered dark faces. One woman wore a cast on her right wrist. Another sported burn marks up and down her arms, another a half smile of stitches from the corner of her actual mouth.

  It was the kind of group that made Kate feel as if, by associating herself with a man, by participating in the socioeconomic template of cohabiting opposite-sex partners, she was perpetuating a terrible conspiracy. It was the kind of group that made her feel like moving back in with Darcy—or, like the elephant mother in Ella the Elegant Elephant, relocating to a sparsely populated, mountainous island and opening a pastry shop. On the other hand, there to Kate’s right sat Cherry, one half of a lesbian couple. Cherry’s girlfriend had killed Cherry’s cat by trapping him in the dryer and turning it on. When Cherry confronted her, the girlfriend punched her in the face and broke her nose. Then she threw Cherry down on the ground and kicked her repeatedly in the teeth. The girlfriend, Cherry told Kate, lispingly, had flipped out last spring after her abusive father died. She’d never knocked Cherry around before, but now beatings were routinely admini
stered, as if the girlfriend, Louise, were in some fashion honoring her father’s legacy. Cherry was working toward a master’s in psychology at Fairfield University, and, employing her own life in an empirical manner, she deconstructed Louise’s behavior in the common room over Full House reruns.

  And once, rumor had it, a man whose wife had beaten him with a tire iron had knocked on the door of the office, bleeding from his head. Ruby, the director, had driven him to the emergency room and directed him to the Christian Service Center.

  They settled into the chairs with their sweets. A new girl sat by herself in the otherwise empty front row. She had pushed her hands into her lap and passed on the rolls when Kate set them out. One side of her face was white and European-looking. The other looked as though someone had dragged her across gravel by her ankles.

  She resembled a Picasso, or a yin and a yang, or maybe a black-and-white cookie.

  As usual, Kate went around the room with names. The girl gave hers: Eva. When she said her name, her hand went to the damaged side of her face and hovered about it.

  Many of the women were ten years younger than Kate but looked ten years older. Rough living, poor diet—many smoked; many under- or overate. Alcohol was not allowed on the premises, though like boarding school kids, sometimes the women sneaked it in. The age range spread from the teen years to very late middle age, with the highest percentage in the twenties and thirties. Several were pregnant. When Kate looked at the pregnant ones, she wanted to shake them or slap them, or maybe shake and slap herself—she wanted to do something, but she had no idea what, so she just continued to lecture and write on a dry-erase board in primary colors. Some of the women were taking notes. Others sat sullenly with arms crossed, snapping gum, as if waiting for Kate to deliver the information directly to their brains. Children wandered in and out of the room, distracting their mothers from the task at hand and their own possible financial security.