Authors: Nancy Thayer
She lay a long time just holding on to Madeline before she opened her eyes.
“That was lovely,” Madeline said softly, looking at Suzanna with fond love, kissing her forehead and cheeks, smoothing her damp hair.
“Yes, oh, yes, thank you,” Suzanna said.
“My pleasure,” Madeline replied, and meant it. It was true. For when they made love to each other the pleasure was doubled; it echoed, as now, when Suzanna rose above Madeline’s body, and felt her own body fill again with pleasure at the sight and thought of her hands and mouth on Madeline’s breasts and stomach. She loved Madeline, loved giving her pleasure—and she knew just how sweet a particular dabbing at this moist spot felt; the sensation flickered in her own skin. The joy was twinned.
They let it build. Madeline’s body was already eager, wet, and rosy, from loving Suzanna, and as Suzanna loved Madeline, her own body reawakened and in its greed attained a new level of awareness. They were caught up in a private cove of sexual sensation, and now Madeline rippled sleekly in the shallows of pleasure, smiling, eyes open, as she trailed her fingers in Suzanna’s hair. And now she was sucked down into a violent whirlpool, tugged relentlessly under. Her fingernails dug into Suzanna’s back as she grasped for something to hold on to, and the slight stinging of Madeline’s nails sank into Suzanna’s skin and, sinking, became pleasure, became a greed, so that Suzanna was
soon caught up in her own wet search, plunging over Madeline’s hands down toward a finer, deeper, more intense level of ecstasy. Finally they were so soaked and slippery with sweat and saliva and other juices, so shaken from their explorations, that as Suzanna lay spread-eagled against the silver sheets, gasping for breath, Madeline had only to ease her body down over Suzanna’s, so that breast touched breast, mouth touched mouth, thigh slid against thigh, and the damp matted pubic mounds touched, pressed, pushed, and they arched against each other shuddering. Pleasure ran through and over them in an exquisite tense line; they were caught on each other.
They drew the covers up over them and lay together. Suzanna scooted on her stomach over to the edge of the bed to get a good look at the clock: three hours had gone by.
“Umm,” she sighed. “We should get up. Get dressed. Want to talk now?”
“I don’t think I’m capable of anything else,” Madeline said, smiling. She stretched out a bare arm and pulled Suzanna to her. “Dear thing,” she said, nuzzling her hair. “I do love you.”
“I do love you,” Suzanna said. They lay there a few minutes more, then rose, showered, dressed, and carried the champagne and food downstairs to the living room. Finally they were seated, just like two friends having a chat, in case the children walked in, across the coffee table from each other.
“Now,” Madeline said, “what do you want to talk about?”
“I want to live with you,” Suzanna said. “I want you to move in with me. I don’t want to wait any longer.”
“Suzanna—”
“No, Madeline, listen. Today at church, I was praying, oh, God, please give me some kind of sign. Well, and of course nothing seemed to happen. But as I was leaving church, when the service was over, an older man, Wilbur Wilson, had a heart attack. One moment he was walking along, smiling, and the next minute he fell to the floor, clutched his chest, and nearly died. Maybe he will die. I suppose he would have died right there if Liza Howard hadn’t give him artificial resuscitation. It caused quite a commotion. Poor old man—he’s awfully nice. I called the hospital a little while ago—he’s alive, he’s resting comfortably, his condition is good. But, Madeline, as I stood there watching him, I realized how short life is. How fragile life is. Madeline, I don’t want to wait any longer to live with you. Who knows how much longer we have to live, and why should we wait
till the children are gone and we are old and cranky to share our lives? Madeline, I don’t want to wait any longer. I want you to move in now, this week.”
“My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love,” Madeline said. She rose, crossed the room to get a cigarette, lit it while still standing.
“What?” Suzanna said.
“It’s a poem by Thomas Campion. I came across it the other day; you made me think of it. Or it made me think of us.
“My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love
,
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove
,
Let us not weigh them. Heaven’s great lamps do dive
Into their west and straight again revive
,
But soon as once set is our little light
,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.”
“Oh,” Suzanna said. “That’s lovely. That’s just what I was saying. Madeline—”
“All right,” Madeline said, and came back to the sofa, sank down onto it, flicked her cigarette at the ashtray. “Let’s take all this step by step. We agree on the fact that we love each other, that we want to live together. Forget for a moment your children, the community, our jobs, your ex-husband—which is a lot to forget. Think about us living together: where would I sleep?”
Suzanna laughed, surprised. “Why, in my bedroom, of course.”
“Where would I put my clothes?”
“In my closet, silly. Oh, I know it’s crowded, but I can easily weed things out. Hang some of my things in the guest bedroom—”
“My records? My furniture? My
books
?”
Suzanna stared at Madeline. Her face fell. “Oh,” she said, “I see.”
Madeline came up from the sofa, moved to Suzanna, knelt by her legs, and looked up, hugging her. “Suzanna, don’t look that way.
I want to live with you
. But if we do such a major thing, we can’t do it halfway. We’ve been doing it halfway for two years now. If you really want me to live with you, then we have to talk about it seriously. We have to talk about anything that could be a potential problem. You can’t just squeeze me into this house, a bit here, a piece there. I’d go crazy. I’m a grown woman. I’m used to living alone, to arranging my things, the things I’ve collected and loved for years, all around
me, the way I want them. I have to have a study to work in, to keep my books in, to grade papers and make lessons, and I have to have more room for my clothes than a corner of your closet. I don’t even know if we could work it out in this house.”
Suzanna looked at Madeline, stunned. “But—” she said, and waved her arm slowly outward, looking about her. Madeline knew exactly what Suzanna meant by this; she meant: But
my house
. This house that I’ve made so beautiful. The hours I’ve spent choosing the right wallpaper, the perfect shade of paint, decorating the children’s rooms, painting the woodwork—how could I give up my beautiful house?
“I see,” Suzanna said at last. “I’m asking you to give up your beautiful apartment, and it’s just as difficult for you as if I were to give up my house.”
“Well, perhaps not quite so difficult,” Madeline said, and leaned forward to kiss Suzanna on the cheeks, the forehead, the mouth. She smiled, then rose and settled back again on the sofa facing Suzanna. “I’m used to moving around, after all. I’ve lived in six towns in the past ten years. But now I’ve got tenure at the college, and though I’ll admit I never thought I’d end up staying at Southmark, I’m beginning to see the charms of the area. Mainly—you. I’d like to settle here. I like the college and my colleagues and the students. And I love you. I want to live with you. I don’t mind moving from my apartment. But if we are going to live together, Suzanna,
I
can’t live in
your
house.
We
will have to live in
our
house. Don’t look so dismayed. I don’t envision us fussing over whether to put chintz or Haitian cotton in the living room. I’ll be delighted to leave all that to you. I love the way you’ve made this house look. I’d sell my furniture gladly. But I have to have my own study, a place for my books, my desk, my papers. I have to feel free to light a fire or move a chair or buy a lamp …”
“We’d have fun in the kitchen.” Suzanna grinned. “I mean, if we combined my Cuisinart with your escargot set and my wine with your wine rack—”
“We’d have a lot of fun in the kitchen,” Madeline agreed. “And in the bedroom. But there’s something else. If you’re really serious about living together.”
“God, let me pour some more champagne,” Suzanna said. “Okay, go ahead. What else?”
“The children,” Madeline said. “We’d have to have some rules or agreement about my relationship to the children. If I move in with you, Suzanna, that means I move in with your children, and if I do move in, I want it to be for good—”
“Oh,” Suzanna interrupted, “so do I!”
“For keeps. So we’d have to talk seriously about the children. The decision about just what and how much to tell them is entirely yours, of course. I’ll abide by whatever you decide. I like Priscilla and Seth and I think they like me. I can imagine all of us living together quite happily. But if we do live together, I can’t just play sweet auntie to them. Let’s say, for example, that I want to take a bath and they’ve just bathed and dropped their towels all over and left their toys in the tub. They do that, I know. I’ve seen you go in and straighten up after them. My instinct is to march the little munchkins into the bathroom and say, ‘
You
made the mess,
you
clean it up. Hang up the towels. Put the soap in the bowl—’ ”
Suzanna laughed. “Their soap
is
disgusting, isn’t it? They’re supposed to be able to color on their skin with it, and on the tub and the walls, then wash it right off. Instead, it dissolves and settles in the tub in little black or brown or red hunks—”
“Well, you see, Suzanna, what I’m saying. I’d want to make them clean it up.”
“I know, and you’re probably right. It’s just that usually, at the end of the day, it’s easier to do it myself than to make them do it.”
“I’m not criticizing your way of raising the children. I’m just saying I’d do it differently sometimes. So we’d have to make it clear to each other and to the children just what kind of jurisdiction I’d have.”
“My God,” Suzanna said. “It’s complicated.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Madeline said. “About six years ago I—went with—a man who had a little boy. The boy’s mother was dead, and the man, who was completely reasonable and intelligent in every other way, was crazy where this kid was concerned. He was so determined never to let his son suffer again that he refused to spank the boy, or punish him, or yell at him, or threaten him—God, that child was a holy monster. Lincoln was handsome, charming, wealthy. He asked me to marry him. If it hadn’t been for little Lincoln, Jr., I might have. But I couldn’t
stand
the thought of living with that kid.”
“I didn’t know you had almost married—”
“Suzanna! I’m not trying to make you jealous. Stop it. My God,
you
have been married. You have two children. And I want to live with you. I’m telling you, I love you, and I love your children. But I want to do it right.”
“Money,” Suzanna said.
“What?”
“Well, if we’re talking about everything, we’ll have to talk about money. I mean,
about sharing the mortgage and the groceries—there’s three of us and just one of you, of course. We’ll have to sort all that out.”
“Yes. These are all touchy issues.”
“Are you sure you want to get into all of this?”
“Yes. I’m completely sure. Are you?”
“Yes, I’m completely sure, too.”
“Well,” Madeline said, and raised her champagne glass. “I think we should drink to that.”
They toasted each other, and kissed.
“I think we’re quite wonderful,” Madeline said. “We’ve drunk almost an entire bottle of champagne and yet look how intelligent we’re being.”
“We
are
wonderful,” Suzanna said. She rose, left the room, came back with a pad of paper and a pencil. “It will be like a maze,” she said, settling down, curling up against the arm of the sofa. “We’ll have to wend our way through the perils of Money, Children, Society, House & Furniture—”
“To get to the prize—Living Together,” Madeline said.
“Well,” Suzanna said, licking the pencil tip. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
“We’re already way past the beginning,” Madeline said. She rose and kissed the top of Suzanna’s head. “And the nicest thing about this game is that we can get little rewards every step of the way.”
Behind the brass andirons a bright fire was flaming in the Bennetts’ family room. The cats, Rags and Flapper, lay stretched on the hearth, warming their tummies, and Bruce, the black Lab, lay in the middle of the braided rug, gnawing on a rawhide bone. Ron had changed into the clothes Judy had laid out for him: gray wool slacks and a white cotton shirt for Sunday-afternoon comfort and a wine-colored Ralph Lauren sweater for the company that would be arriving any moment now. He sat at one end of the kitchen reading the Sunday
Times
. Judy was at the other end of the room, wearing red-and-yellow plaid slacks and a yellow turtleneck sweater. She was slicing radishes rose-style and arranging them attractively on the canapé platter. From time to time Ron would read her something he found particularly interesting in the
Times
, and she would comment or laugh. When the phone rang, she said, “Don’t get up, darling, I’ll get it,” and wiped her hands on a dishcloth. Ron vaguely overheard her conversation. Judy sounded friendly,
normal, so he didn’t pay much attention to what was said. He was surprised when she hung up the phone and came over to him, sitting down across from him on the edge of the rocker.
“Ron,” she said, “I’m worried. I’m really worried.”
Ron put the paper down. “What’s the matter?”
“That was Sarah. She was calling for John. I had to tell her that he’d gone off on an errand for us and wasn’t back yet. Now if he isn’t with Sarah—”
“Judy, I’ve said it before: John is twenty-three years old now. He’s a grown man. He’s only living here until he and Sarah get married. You can’t expect him to check in with you every hour like a little boy. This is still his home, but we can’t keep tabs on him all the time.”
“But this isn’t like him. You know it isn’t. It’s almost four o’clock. He knows the Talbotts are coming for dinner. They’ll be here any minute.”