by Susan Rieger
At Union Station, the dean and Rupert caught a cab to the law school. The dean asked his assistant to show Rupert around the school. “Come back to see me, when you’ve seen the place,” he said.
Rostow’s assistant gave Rupert the nickel tour; his nose was out of joint at having to babysit an applicant, even a Cambridge grad. After twenty minutes, he told Rupert he should walk around the campus. “At first, everything looks the same,” he said. “The dean will see you at two.” Yale was, Rupert thought, Errol Flynn gothic, with gargoyles, carillons, central heating, and most blessed hot showers. He felt almost giddy.
He was back at the law school at two. “We’re set then,” the dean said. He handed Rupert a copy of the application. “Send it to me, in this envelope. Yale is the best law school in the country and we’re only going to get better.”
Rupert hated to thank anyone, almost as much as he hated to apologize. The dean made it easy. As Rupert started to speak, Rostow waved him away. “No. You’ll give back. I know that. See you next September.”
Rupert walked to the train station. He wished he had someone in his life he could tell about his phenomenal luck. He’d have to settle for Vera in his bed. He had pushed her out of his thoughts until then. She was too arousing, too distracting. On the ride home, he thought about what he’d do to her that night, what she’d do for him. He wondered if he owed God a word of thanks, more grateful, more intentional, than the Psalmist’s spontaneous intercession on the train. Prayer had never been easy for Rupert. God would have to judge him by his works.
—
Rupert liked a fight after a strike of exceptional luck, to appease the envious evil spirit who, like Sleeping Beauty’s bad fairy, had cursed him in the cradle. The day he heard he’d been admitted to the Prebendal School, he spit at an older, bigger boy, who duly thrashed him. The bloody nose was expiating. The day he was admitted to Longleat, he threw himself into the riling waters off Hayling Island. He didn’t know how to swim. A passing fishing boat saved him. The fisherman asked him why he’d done it. “A dare,” Rupert said. The fisherman took a liking to him. “I’m going to teach you to swim,” he said. “Come see me Sunday, at one p.m., after church.” Rupert knew how to swim and sail by the time he started at Longleat. The day he heard he was admitted to King’s, Rupert crawled out of his house window after hours and took himself to the local pub, where he drank up all his spending money and got so drunk he pissed himself before passing out on the front steps. When he woke at four a.m., he walked back to school. His classmates snuck him back in. “Jesus,” one said to him, “what are you, some kind of kamikaze?” He had a black eye from the fall. When a master asked him about it, Rupert answered simply, “Too embarrassing to talk about, sir.” The master let it go.
At the Wolinskis’ dinner table that evening, still high from his New Haven triumph, Rupert eyed Vera, spilling out of her white blouse, a gold cross between her breasts. She had lifted the look from the Hollywood starlet playbook, the teenage temptress, bent on driving him and his ancient Polish tablemate mad with desire. It worked. He could tell the old Pole was rubbing himself under the table. Worried he’d betray himself to her mother, Rupert struggled to tamp down his erection. He pushed the sodden vegetables around his plate. Ruta, sensing his unease, watched him closely. “Don’t you like my dinner?” she said. “I think I may have caught a chill today,” he said. He took a Brussels sprout into his mouth; bile rose up in his throat. Forcing the sprout down, he thought about the ways he might punish himself for getting into Yale Law School. The stakes were higher than they’d ever been, but he was no longer willing to pay with a punctured lung or a black eye or a bloody nose. The evil spirit must be assuaged, but not by violence. No brawling, no life-threatening stunts, no alcoholic binges: the fight would have to be against himself. He stabbed a second sprout with his fork and looked again at Vera. I won’t have her for a week, he vowed. He choked down the second sprout, as if sealing his pledge. Seven days, he told himself. A week has at least the odor of penance, if not the bite. As soon as he made his pledge, he was awash with doubt and regret. Under the table, she put her hand on his thigh. He couldn’t stand up.
Sitting in his room after dinner, trying to read The Bramble Bush, his thoughts occupied and preoccupied by Vera, he worried that the evil spirit would not understand his suffering. The evil spirit was a creature of the Grimm Brothers, not the Bible; it had little respect for resisting temptation; it preferred payment in the body. I shall have to give my body over entirely to self-abnegation, he thought. He revised his plan. For seven days, he would not only deny himself Vera, he would subdue and mortify his flesh. He would fast during the day; he would take cold baths; he would sleep naked on the floor, without bedclothes; he would not touch himself; he would scourge his body with ropes. Throughout Rupert’s childhood, Father Falkes had flagellated himself with a cat-o’-nine-tails, leaving huge bloody welts on his back. At the time, Rupert had thought the practice was homage to his crypto-Catholicism. Years later, he came to believe the beatings were meant to suppress his longings for young men. Growing up in the British boys’ cloistered world of boarding schools, Rupert had thought all men were heterosexual, all boys homosexual. Homosexuality was a phase, like acne or involuntary erections, outgrown if not entirely forgotten, once a man was lucky enough to find a woman who would let him in.
A little after one a.m., Vera slipped into Rupert’s room. He hadn’t locked the door, a slipup in his plan. He was asleep on his back, lying on the hard floor, naked and exposed, the window open, the room cold and damp. She lay down beside him and started stroking him. He awoke with a start and sat up. “Please go away,” he said. “I can’t tonight. I’m doing penance.” He thought she would understand, being Catholic. She continued stroking him. “I want to stay,” she said. “Are you playing games with me?” She looked down. “He doesn’t want to do penance.” Vera slipped off her nightie and went down on him. Rupert was in agony. “Not that, please,” he said. She looked up at him. “You don’t really mean that,” she said, and went down again.
“Oh, God,” he said, his pleasure gaining on his agony. He made one last brave try to save himself. “Please, stop. We need to talk.” Vera lifted her head. “You can stay,” he said, “only if you let me come in behind.” Vera had refused to let him sodomize her, her one act of resistance. She got on her hands and knees in front of him. “Do it, do it now. I’m yours,” she said.
Satan had offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; he had not offered him Vera. That night, Rupert did everything with Vera he had ever imagined doing. He did it with her standing, sitting, lying under him, lying on top of him, backward, forward, on the floor, on the bed, in a chair, against the wall. He never used a condom. “You don’t need a rubber,” she said to him. “It’s much better without, for both of us.” At five, she left the room, barely able to stand. “What a night,” she said to him. “You were a tiger.” Lying on the bed, after she’d left, he cursed the evil spirit. “Do your worst,” he said out loud. “I’m done with you.”
The next afternoon, Rupert took Vera to Forty-Second Street, to a porn movie. “Watch carefully,” he said. “I want us to do everything they do.” Looking around the darkened theater, Vera was nervous and excited. She was the only female in the place. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t let any of them touch you.” She took his hand and placed it under her blouse. “I hope you’ll touch me,” she said. “I’ll touch you.” Afterward, he bought her an éclair at Toffenetti’s. She had brought a camera with her, a Brownie. She asked a man on the street to take their picture. Vera smiled into the lens; Rupert looked down and sideways.
—
Vera was pregnant. She’d been to a clinic. “The rabbit died,” she told Rupert. “Early Valentine’s present.” He had noticed that Vera’s breasts had gotten larger, more sensitive. He had loved them only more. The news threw him into a tailspin. The evil spirit had done his worst.
“Who’s the father?” h
e said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said.
“How can this be?” he asked. “We’ve only had sex for a couple of months.”
She looked at him with disbelief. Was he an idiot? “Don’t you know how babies are made?”
“Why didn’t you use something?” he said.
“I always relied on you,” she said.
“You must have known you’d get pregnant if I didn’t use a condom.”
“We got carried away.”
Vera sat on his bed. She started undressing. “We can still have sex, and we won’t need condoms.” She took off her blouse and bra. Her breasts were the most beautiful things Rupert had ever seen. She slipped off her skirt and panties and lay down on the bed. “Come lie on top of me,” she said.
Afterward, as they lay on the bed, Vera started planning their future.
“We should get married soon,” she said. “Before I show. We can live here until you find a job. I’ll work to put you through college. You’re very smart, Robbie. You could be successful. Would your parents be able to come to the wedding? Where do they live in Scotland?”
Rupert sat up. “I can’t marry you,” he said. He was sweating. He pulled the blanket up. He thought he might throw up. He could feel his heart pulsing in his ears.
“What are you saying?” she said. “You have to marry me.”
“No, I can’t,” he said.
“You just made love to me again,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“What do I do?” she said. She started to cry.
Rupert took her hand. It was cool and dry. “Don’t cry,” he said. “I’ll think of something.” They sat without speaking. Rupert’s mind raced.
“I’ll be a good wife,” Vera said.
Rupert took a large breath. “We’ll talk tonight. I’ll do what’s best for us. Don’t say anything to anyone yet. Go to bed now. Get some sleep.” Vera smiled at him.
“Don’t you want to do it again?” she said.
“I need to think,” he said. “You should go.”
“I want you,” she said. She began stroking him.
“Don’t, don’t,” he said, “I need to think.”
“Think later,” she said.
She left his room at four a.m. At five, he went off to the bar, slipping out of the house while everyone was still asleep. He took his suitcase with him. The owner was getting ready to open. “You’re twelve hours early, Robert,” he said.
“I think I’ll take the back room tonight,” he said.
The owner nodded. “Don’t forget linens. And locks. You’ll need two, one for inside when you’re inside, one for outside when you’re outside. Get sturdy ones. Drunks break into rooms for the hell of it. Don’t leave the suitcase until you’ve got the locks. I don’t want to be responsible. Too many sinners here.” Robert handed the owner a five-dollar bill to cover his first week’s rent.
Rupert got breakfast around the corner, at Spanky’s Diner. He ordered pancakes with real maple syrup and bacon. It was the best meal he’d eaten in America. At nine, he went to his bank in Fort Greene and bought a four-hundred-dollar certified check, made out to Vera. I’ve squandered my inheritance, thrown it away on a woman, he thought. Then he remembered her breasts. She had been worth it; the whole experience had been worth it. He’d have paid double. He wondered what Father Falkes would think. He thought he’d understand. Around the corner from the bank, at Sammy’s Discount, he bought sheets, a blanket, a towel, and two locks. Back at the bar at ten, he stashed his suitcase and linens in the back room and fastened the lock to the outside hinge. He pulled on it several times. It held.
He was back in Greenpoint by eleven. Ruta and Vera were not home. They were probably at Daria’s. They usually spent their weekday mornings with her and her children, smoking, cooking, ironing, and gossiping. Rupert wrote Ruta a note, using his left hand, paranoia creeping in. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say good-bye. A family emergency has made it necessary for me to leave. Thank you for your hospitality. I will always remember the months on Leonard Street. Yours, Robert Fairchild.” Rupert was not unaware of the ironies in his letter, the family emergency, the necessary departure, Ruta’s hospitality, the memories. Molière would make it a comedy, Chekhov a tragedy. Rupert had paid his rent to Ruta through the month. She’d think she got the better of him, even if Vera got the worse. He wrote Vera a left-handed note as well. “I cannot marry you. I cannot say more. I’m leaving New York. Here is $400, all I have. I’ll never forget you. Robert.”
Rupert made the bed and straightened the room, making sure no trace of him remained. He put the check and note for Vera under her pillow, the note for Ruta on the kitchen table. He left the house and slipped the key through the mail slot. He walked around the corner to the subway. He didn’t look back.
Four years later, with Eleanor sitting beside him at the Thalia, he watched, in a state of arousal and self-disgust, the movie version of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger.
“I’m Jimmy,” he said to Eleanor as they walked out of the movie house. “With a posh education.”
“Yes and no,” she said.
“The ‘yes’ part, you don’t mind,” he said.
“No. It’s all right.”
“Where shall we go for dinner?” he said.
“Let’s buy sandwiches and go to your rooms,” she said. “I’m not wearing underwear.”
He had not expected her to say that. “I thought you were a good girl,” he said.
“I am,” she said. “Very good.”
Rupert pulled her to him and kissed her, one hand gripping her lower back, the other, in front, reaching under her skirt and snaking between her legs. He proposed that night and she accepted. Am I marrying him because of a movie? she wondered as they lay tired and almost happy on his bed. I went to Vassar because of Women in Love. She remembered then that Lawrence’s hero was named Rupert. “Do you like D. H. Lawrence?” she asked Rupert. “He wants to have his cake and eat it too,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her. “You are my cake,” he said.
—
Vera haunted Rupert for months after he left Greenpoint. He missed her breasts, her thighs, her mouth on him, her submissiveness. He wondered if she’d had the baby or an abortion. He wondered if his father had left his mother pregnant like that. Was that their story, his story? He didn’t want to think about it. They had been well matched, he and Vera, a pair of young brutes, using each other for their own purposes. He had been better at it. He had been longer at it. He couldn’t get pregnant. Would she know where to get an abortion? He wouldn’t think about it.
At the bar, he took to having sex with married women, older young women in their late twenties and early thirties. He’d take them into his little back room at closing. Afterward, they’d go home to their husbands, who worked the late shift. He never had sex with any of them more than three or four times. He didn’t want an angry husband pounding on his door. He didn’t want a relationship. “I don’t have much conversation,” he’d say. They taught him things he couldn’t learn from porn movies.
At Yale, he slept mostly with graduate English students, bluestockings in black tights. They were competent, obliging, undemanding. He used condoms, not willing to find himself cornered again. He talked books with them and read what they recommended, American authors he didn’t know, Melville, Hawthorne, Cather. They rounded some of his edges. His vanity made him a decent lover; he liked being good at the things he did. He learned by doing.
Eleanor was the only woman he had sex with who made him please her. “I like that,” she’d say. “Would you do it again?” In her desire and her pleasure seeking, she brought a level of wantonness that made him, to his surprise, wild with wanting. It was almost as enthralling as Vera’s surrender.
Sex was an important part of the Falkeses’ marriage, as important as the boys. Even in their last year, they had stirring encounters. Eleanor’s voice, husky and intimate, with a sly hint of laughter at its
edges, filled him with desire, from the first day to the last. Her phone calls could give him erections, even when she didn’t talk dirty, which she often did in the early years. It took him years not to mind going to cocktail parties with her. Other men were always seeking her out; he knew they wanted her, as he did. She was a MILF before there was a word for it. In the late ’80s, at a Maynard, Tandy Christmas party, a drunk, thirty-year-old associate took Eleanor’s hand as they were talking and pressed it against his crotch. Quietly, she removed her hand and poured her glass of red wine on his pants front. He stood moaning as she walked away, “Come back. I’m sorry. Come back.” Rupert fired him the next day. The associate didn’t protest. All he said was “How did you get to be such a lucky son of a bitch?”
A month after their wedding, Eleanor dropped by his office, late in the afternoon. “Do you mind?” she said as she locked the door behind her. She opened her coat. She was wearing her mother’s pearls, a wedding gift, red high heels, and nothing else. He could barely stand up. She lay down on the floor by his chair. Afterward, she said, “We’ve baptized it.” “Baptism” became one of their sexual tropes. They had sex in every room in their apartment, except the boys’ rooms and Rupert’s private bathroom. They had sex in every office he ever had. They had sex in his hospital rooms. In hotels, before they unpacked, they had sex. “Quick and Dirty” was another trope. “I want sex with you every way,” Eleanor whispered to him at their engagement party. “Let’s try quick and dirty.” After the toasts, when most of the guests were drunk, she took him into a powder room. “Don’t let’s waste this occasion.” She opened his fly. He kissed her neck and pulled down her underpants. At parties, when the attention she was receiving from other men became too exciting to him, he’d signal to her. They’d meet in the powder room. Afterward, she’d say to other guests who made inquiries, “I needed his help. No. Nothing’s wrong.” At home, they often had sex half-dressed. She liked to come up behind him unawares and reach into his pants in front, whispering all the things she wanted to do with him; he would sink to the ground, pulling her with him. She would try anything he wanted at least once, and nothing disgusted her, though he always felt she held herself back, just a little, adding, perversely, to his pleasure. She was a sexual adventurer. He would never tire of her. In all their thousands of couplings, she failed him only in failing to be submissive.
