Admission (46 page)

“Portia,” said John, “you’re being very obscure. I can’t tell if this is a traumatic childhood experience or something you
just like to joke about.”

She frowned. “You know, I can’t tell, either. I haven’t thought about this in years.”

Slowly, she extricated herself and sat up. There was, miraculously, ample room for this maneuver on the couch. Quite uncharacteristically,
she found herself sort of willing to talk about this. But only if he really wanted to hear it.

“Do you really want to hear this?”

“Do you want me to hear it?”

“All right,” she said, reluctantly, as if she did not. But she found that she did.

“The story of you?” he said, reaching up to touch… his hand lingered, uncommitted, for a moment, and then landed: the hollow
between her breasts. It began, lightly, to move.

“Yes. The magical story of how egg met sperm, and my perfect self was launched in the womb of my mother, on the Amtrak
Montrealer
.”

He burst into laughter. His thin body shook, ribs and muscles and the hair that lay flat on his chest, like grass in a riverbed.
He laughed and shook, and then, quite suddenly, he stopped and looked at her. “Oh shit,” he said. “You’re not kidding.”

“No, not kidding. Why would I kid about such an important detail? And details are all I have, so if you’re going to keep interrupting
my flow…”

“All right,” he told her. His hand, momentarily immobilized by the laughter and then the shock, was mobile again. “I’ll do
my best not to interrupt.”

“Good. And now a deep, cleansing breath.”

“Okay,” he said gamely.

“Well,” said Portia. “Thirty-nine years ago, my mother, Susannah Nathan of Northampton, Massachusetts, via Long Island, Barnard,
Berkeley, and cooperative living situations too numerous to list, was a divorced activist in need of a baby. The divorce isn’t
really relevant, actually. He was a gay man from Chile. Chile was not a great place to be a gay man in the mid-sixties, apparently,
so he came to the States, but they were going to deport him, so my mother married him at the Springfield courthouse. They
never lived together, and by the time my mother was looking to get with child, he’d moved out to San Francisco. He died there,
actually.”

“Let me guess. In the late 1980s.”

“Yes, unfortunately. I did meet him once. He was a sweet guy. A musician. He probably would have made a great biological father.
I might have gotten a little musical aptitude, which wouldn’t have been bad, and the exotic skin tone. But he was on the other
side of the country by the time my mother needed his genetic material, so that put him out of the running. My mom had another
gay friend closer to home, so they tried for a couple of months, and she tried a sperm bank in Boston. Like I told you,” Portia
said ruefully, “she spared me none of the details.”

“It’s okay. I’m not eight years old.”

“No. So, anyway, a couple of years went by, maybe half a dozen attempts, and nothing. But she had this fatalistic attitude.
It was going to happen. She was going to be a mother, you know? And then, one day…”

“One perfect day!”

“On the
Montrealer
.”

“Not the
Empire Builder
or the
Heartland Flyer
!”

“She was coming back from visiting her mother in New York, and there was a man in the seat across from her, reading a copy
of
I’m OK—You’re OK
.”

“Oh, my God,” John said, laughing again. “Please tell me you’re making that part up.”

“Sadly, no. If I were making it up, I’d have him reading Dostoyevsky. Though I guess Dostoyevsky wouldn’t have been as much
of a conversation starter. By New Haven they’re rehashing their childhood angst. By Hartford, he’s moved into the seat next
to her.”

“He’d better hurry up. Springfield is the next stop.”

“Well, he did hurry up. I mean, he must have. Actually, I don’t doubt my mother would happily have shared with me exactly
how long he took. Like I said, she believed in total openness, but I begged her to stop. Anyway, it was truly a brief encounter.”

“Well, no.
Brief Encounter
was a love story. This is more like
Strangers on a Train
.”

“Which ended with murder, I seem to recall.”

“Portia,” said John, “are you as angry as you sound?”

She looked at him in surprise. “Do I really sound angry?”

“Vastly.” His hand had now colonized her breasts and moved on to her abdomen.

“But I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t. If they hadn’t.”

“No.” He waited.

“I don’t think I ever wished there’d been roses and dancing, let alone a wedding. I guess I’m not much of a romantic.”

“Hey,” he said, smiling, “you were conceived on a train! You have to be a romantic!”

“Well, but it wasn’t romantic at all. That’s sort of the key to the whole thing. There were never any violins, for her. She
was thinking sperm from the very beginning. She was thinking, Well, why not give this way a try? He was tall and appeared
to be free of physical deformities. He looked prosperous. He could read, obviously. She probably knew more about him than
she knew about the sperm donor she’d tried. Anyway, she got off pregnant at Springfield and never wanted to see him again.
Not even if it worked and she did have a baby. And she never thought that this baby she wanted so badly might want to know
who its father was. I don’t even have a name. Or a destination. You know, he might have gotten off at St. Albans or gone as
far as Montreal. Maybe he was even French-Canadian, though I suppose Susannah would have picked up the accent. I struggled
horribly in French, so probably not. Maybe he got off at White River Junction. Maybe he was a professor at Dartmouth. Maybe
he was
my
professor!”

“Not if he was reading
I’m OK—You’re OK,
” said John.

“Oh, don’t be a snob. Lots of people read that book.”

“I know. I read it.”

She laughed. “Well, there you go.”

“In my defense,” he said, moving to her thigh, “it was in Kampala. There was a copy in the clinic library. I was a little
desperate for reading material.”

“She ought to have given me ‘I’m OK’ as a middle name,” said Portia, shifting for him. She closed her eyes.

“Portia I’m OK Nathan,” he said dubiously. “Aren’t you glad she didn’t?”

Portia, who was now trying to concentrate on his hand, said nothing.

“What is your middle name, actually?”

“Mm? I don’t have one. Susannah had this idea I would name myself. I don’t know, there was some tribe somewhere she’d read
about, where the girls name themselves when they reach puberty. She was all fired up to do it. Big party, candle lighting,
all her women friends in a circle, beating crescent-shaped tambourines.” She opened her eyes.

He was frowning at her.

“Crescent?” she said. “Because of the moon?”

“The moon?” He seemed still more lost.

“It’s a menstrual thing,” she said flatly.

“Ah.”

“But I wouldn’t let her do it.”

“No?”

“I was embarrassed! I’d just gotten my period! I was supposed to kneel in the middle of the circle and stick a finger inside
myself and show everyone the blood. Then give myself my special, secret name of womanhood.”

He looked appalled. She had never told anyone about this particular idiosyncrasy, she realized. And clearly with good reason.

“I didn’t want all those people looking at me. It was the most disgusting idea I’d ever heard. Besides, I didn’t have a secret
magical name I’d been burning to give myself. I was already Portia Nathan. That was enough of a burden. Being Susannah’s daughter?
Trust me. Enough of a burden.”

“It certainly sounds like it.”

Portia closed her eyes, the better to feel that hand, light like a feather, parting her thighs.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if I’d known you had this weakness for WASP men, I would have made my move in college,
instead of just ogling you in Sanborn Library.”

Portia wanted to laugh, but she found she didn’t have the breath.

“I may not be a
Mayflower
descendant, but I did grow up on the Main Line. My family ate dinner off trays in the den, some nights.”

“Well, that’s… something.” She smiled. “Not enough for a snob like me, of course. But you must be very proud.”

“There are hunting prints on the staircase. We’re short on emotion. Everyone knows who the alcoholics in the family are, but
no one ever says anything. They just go on pouring the booze.”

“Nice try,” she said, sighing.

“I was hoping not to have to mention this,” John said, “but I once owned a belt with whales on it.”

“Oh, now you’re getting me excited. If I’d known that at the time…”

“We have a family crest. My sister bought it from a mail-order company when she was twelve.”

She opened her legs. His fingers, right away, were deep inside her.

“You’re so wet,” said John. All frivolity was gone; he was urgent and serious. He pulled her down beside him and kissed her
closed eyelids. “Is it old wet or new wet?”

She couldn’t answer right away, and when she did, the voice that emerged was far from steady. “Does it matter?”

“Not if it feels good. Does it feel good?”

“It feels…” She couldn’t get the rest of it out.

He lifted himself up and smiled down at her. He had covered the length of her with his body: breast to breast, hip to hip,
then hip to inner thigh. She was now only nominally in control of herself. His fingers, still inside her, were maddeningly
controlled, regular, slick. They, and he, seemed not to care that she was moving—actually, thrashing—against him, and also,
now that she could hear it, moaning some inarticulate thing. She felt the skin between them grow warm, then slippery with
sweat, and a kind of ribbon of pleasure ascended inside her, circling her spine like a serpent coiling a staff. If it went
on much longer, Portia thought, she would be forced to say something crude. Instead, she pulled him roughly into her and nearly
cried with how sweet it was. She felt uncommonly wanton, greedy for exactly this, and now that she had it, she didn’t want
him to move. Luckily, he moved anyway.

It hadn’t been like this with Mark at all. Mark had once joked that sexual ineptitude was his birthright as an Englishman,
but, like any diligent scholar, he had set about learning her body as if she were material he knew he’d be tested on. Without
doubt he’d become a technically alert and capable partner, adept at eliciting response, comforting, encouraging, safe. She
had never complained about him, even to herself, but she had never thought of him as a lover, either. Partner, boyfriend,
spouse in all but the fine print. Not a lover. This—above her, inside her, unalterably
with
her—was a lover, with a lover’s smells and a lover’s sounds, sending lover’s sensations everywhere to the edges of her body.
She couldn’t bear to think what that made of her past.

He said, “Portia,” just before he came, and then after, repeatedly, like a litany, until the word disassembled into breath
and he slipped out of her with a shudder. They curled together and held fast, slowing from a run to a walk, and then a stop.
When she opened her eyes, he was right there.

“Dear John.” She smiled.

“Ouch.”

“Your name is John. What’s the problem? You used to leer at me in Sanborn.”

“I didn’t leer. I looked furtively. There’s a difference. I wanted you. How was I to know I’d have to be a middle-aged man
with thinning hair and a teenage son before you’d even look at me? When you stepped out of that car, I couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t believe I might get another chance.”

“You act like I’m some kind of catch,” said Portia, trying not to sound as if she were trawling for more compliments. “I’m
just as middle-aged as you are. More, actually.”

“You’re lovely.”

“I’m complicated.”

“Your life may be complicated, but you’re not. You’re complex. That’s not a bad thing at all.”

“I’m a spinster.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous.”

“I live in New Jersey.”

“That is a complication, but not fatal. And not a character flaw. I’m sure there are plenty of fascinating people who live
in New Jersey. At least… a dozen.”

“I’m a spinster who lives in New Jersey. I spend my days passing judgment on young people who are a whole lot more together
than I was at their age, and probably am now. I have no children. I’ve obviously never had a successful relationship with
a man, witness the fact that I am probably going to have to turn this house over to my partner of sixteen years, and his pregnant
girlfriend. I can count my close friends on one finger. I barely tolerate having a relationship with my mother, who by the
way is about to start taking care of a baby at the age of sixty-eight. I don’t even have a dog.”

John, who had endured this monologue with his head propped up on his hand, said, “Would you like a dog?”

Mark had been allergic. She hadn’t thought about this in ages. “Yes, actually.”

“Well, that takes care of that. Now you can be a childless New Jersey spinster with failed relationships, one friend, a strange
mother, an unsatisfying job, a new house, and a dog. And me. If,” he said, suddenly amiably, “you want me.”

She touched his mouth. In the moonlight from the living room window, it had a greenish cast. After a moment, she realized
that he was waiting for her, and with growing discomfort. “I didn’t mean that my job was unsatisfying,” she said, because
she couldn’t say what he wanted her to say. “I just meant, sometimes I feel as if it isn’t fair that it’s me making those
decisions.”

“Right. So the—how many years have you been doing this?”

“Sixteen.”

“The sixteen years you’ve spent in this field, they don’t count for anything. Sixteen years, hundreds of thousands of applications
at two different Ivy League colleges, years of visiting schools, meeting with students, talking to counselors, administrators,
alumni, colleagues, faculty… this is all bullshit, yes? I mean, anybody else could just jump in and do a better job.”