Love in Mid Air (20 page)

It’s funny, these little ways we’re interconnected. Belinda often uses the phrase “all in the same boat,” and the rest of
us exchange glances when she says this. We don’t really think of ourselves as being in the same leaky rowboat as Belinda.
But she does have a point. Any change in me seems to make the others feel unstable. I slide a couple of inches to the left,
and suddenly the world shifts beneath their feet too. At some level I’m sure they were all sick of my whining. It’s like I’ve
had this disease for so long that by now I should either have recovered or had the decency to die. That’s one level. On another,
they counted on my bad marriage to make them feel better about their own. If I agree to be the angry one, then the rest of
them don’t have to feel it. But if I’m happy, where does that leave them?

I say, when they ask, that thanks to the counseling I’m learning how to make small gestures that I know will please Phil.
I brew decaf in the morning in my new cappuccino machine because he prefers it that way. (And, for the record, he was quite
right—the reason it wasn’t frothing was that I was using too much milk.) I wear blue because he likes that color. I lay his
robe out on the bed while he’s taking a shower and I leave the paper beside his cereal bowl in the morning, already turned
to the sports section. We have sex once a week. As Jeff has repeatedly pointed out, all Phil really ever wanted from me was
kindness, and ever since I got back from New York, I have suddenly found that I can give it to him. The coffee… the paper…
the robe… the sex. I can give him all those little things that add up to kindness. It turns out it’s quite easy to save a
marriage. All you have to do is stop caring about it.

But the fact that I’m no longer bitching has thrown the rest of the women for a total loop. Kelly has begun to admit how harsh
Mark can be in his criticisms, how he’s never there, and when he does come home he drinks too much. Nancy has begun to say,
“Well, you all know how he can be…” when she talks about Jeff. But it is Belinda who surprises me most, Belinda who seems
to be heir apparent for my title of the Discontented Wife.

“Phil and I are getting along,” I tell the women and it’s like waving a red flag at a bunch of bulls.

Immediately Belinda blurts out, “Why does Michael act like he’s doing me a favor when he keeps the kids? They’re his kids
as much as mine, but whenever I walk out the door for five minutes he acts like he’s doing me this big favor.”

“At least he comes home,” says Kelly.

Belinda says that maybe she should get a job, but she barely got through two years of college and the only job she’d be able
to get would be a crap job. Nancy has started tutoring high school kids in math, and maybe Belinda could do something like
that. Not math, of course, because Belinda stinks in math, but something like that, part-time. She doesn’t want to end up
like her mother. You know, bitter. Kelly says maybe we can list all the things Belinda is good at while we walk, but I suspect
this will be no help at all. Women like Belinda never get jobs that have anything to do with what they’re good at. Belinda
is very close to that most dangerous of questions—“But what about me?”—and I dread this for her. It’s the potato chip of thoughts.
You’re better off not opening the bag.

“It’s not like I’m asking for the world,” Belinda says.

“The key is to have balance,” Nancy says. “Time for the kids and your husband and volunteer work and maybe a job, and you
need to keep a little bit of time for yourself.”

Belinda doesn’t even bother responding to such a ridiculous statement. “I need to join that gym you guys go to,” she says.
“I’m fat. I weigh thirty pounds more than I did the day I got married and I was pregnant the day I got married.”

“We’ve all gained weight,” says Kelly, who clearly hasn’t. “You’re being way too hard on yourself.”

But Belinda is having none of it. She starts telling us how one night she wasn’t in the mood for sex but Michael was, and
you know how it is. Sometimes it’s easier to have sex than it is to sit up and turn on all the lights and talk about why you
don’t want to have sex, so she says fine, just make it fast. But in the middle of it she starts crying.

“And he didn’t stop,” she says. “He could tell I was crying and he didn’t stop.”

“Let’s list all the things you’re good at,” says Kelly. Her voice is a little desperate. She doesn’t like it when Belinda’s
unhappy.

Belinda wipes her face on her sleeve like a child. “Maybe Lynn had the right idea.”

“At least try,” Kelly says. “You’re great with children and dogs. And don’t you know some Spanish?”

Nancy and I have dropped a few steps behind. “This little party’s turning sour,” she says.

I shake my head. “She’s not going anywhere.” And she’s not. When a woman’s ready to leave she’s not talking about crying during
sex. She’s not talking about feelings at all. Suddenly it’s all about getting passports out of safety deposit boxes, buying
new lamps, making sure the apartment you’re looking at is located within the kids’ school district. When a woman is ready
to leave there’s no anger in her voice, no hurt. Belinda is still rising and falling in the rhythms of a wife—she’ll probably
go home and make up with Michael tonight.

But there’s no way to explain all this to a woman like Nancy. There’s no way to make her understand that Belinda’s anger means
there’s still hope for her marriage or that my calmness means I’ve completely given up on mine. If you’re screaming at the
man at least you still see the man. But once your voice goes flat, picks up speed, and turns matter-of-fact, then your husband,
for all practical purposes, has already begun to dematerialize. He’s fading out of the picture, vaporizing like raindrops
on a hot highway. He’s nothing but a town you’ve got to drive through on your way to somewhere else.

“What’s a man thinking,” Belinda says, “when he looks down at a woman and she’s crying and he just keeps doing it?”

“They don’t think,” says Kelly.

“Maybe you should try counseling,” Nancy says. “Look how much it’s helping Elyse.”

Belinda suddenly stops, stops so abruptly that Nancy runs right into the back of her. “Is it just me,” she says, “or does
it seem like we’re always walking in circles?”

L
ater that afternoon Pascal comes into the studio with a live bird in his mouth. I scream and he runs. He likes to do this,
to show off what a great hunter he is, and in the past I’ve sometimes been able to catch him and pry his mouth open with my
index finger. But the release of the wounded is a gray area. It’s hard to tell how badly they’re hurt—sometimes the animal
is able to get away, sometimes not, and if they aren’t strong and fast enough he is soon back on them, more businesslike this
time. I’ve never been able to decide if it’s kinder to let Pascal finish them off in the first attack or if I should take
them outside, leaving them alone in the grass to die their small deaths.

Just as Pascal enters with the bird, Garcia lunges out of nowhere, causing Pascal to snarl. The bird escapes. It makes an
unsteady arc toward the ceiling and I realize one of its wings is broken. I manage to use a drop cloth to herd it out of the
studio and get the cats shut into the laundry room, but it’s hard to say if my decision is the right one. The bird flaps frantically
around the house for more than an hour, repeatedly striking walls and leaving behind small explosions of blood and shit. I
open every door and window and it finally flies out to God knows what kind of fate. When Phil comes home I’m walking around
the house trying to clean the walls with a sponge and a bottle of Fantastik.

“They’ve gone completely wild,” I say.

“That’s what cats do,” he says, reasonable in that way that only people who’ve been gone all day can be reasonable. “They
kill birds. If it bothers you that much, keep them inside.”

“Damn you two,” I say to Pascal and Garcia, who are curled on the ottoman, as innocent as a calendar picture, looking just
like the sweet kittens I adopted three years ago from the Humane Society. “I feed you all the time. Why are you always hungry?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with being hungry,” Phil says. “It’s just their nature.”

M
iami is hot, even in December. I am dozing out on the hotel room balcony in the afternoon sunlight with a newspaper spread
over my lap. Gerry comes out and sits down beside me on the chaise lounge. He presses his hip against my thigh and I move
over a little.

“It’s hot,” I say.

He fishes an ice cube from a clear highball glass and rubs it over my wrists, as if he is a medieval doctor trying to cool
the humours in my blood. I love this. There is no greater pleasure than to be hot all over except for one small place, and
he uses the ice cube as a brush, stroking coolness across my palm, painting over the heat. I stretch my hands above my head
to remind him, but it’s not necessary. A pair of neckties has already been threaded between the slats of my lounge chair and
this startles me. I didn’t see him do it—I must have actually slept. It takes only a second for him to bind my wrists and
he does it very loosely. He slips down to his knees beside me, knocking the paper aside with one flat swipe of his arm, and
I startle with the movement, as if he’s hit me. He takes a second ice cube and places it in his mouth so that it extends between
his lips like a small transparent tongue.

This is the moment I find the most unbearably erotic, the intensity with which he stares at me, the lowering of the head.
He circles my navel, traverses my belly. He is slow. He knows that it’s important that I feel we have all day. He slips the
ice cube lower, running it along the waistband of my shorts, and I mumble something.

His mouth is strong. I noticed this the first time we kissed, that his tongue was muscular and he has no trouble forcing it
beneath the elastic leg of my shorts. No trouble forcing the remains of the ice cube, thinner and more pliable now, between
the folds of my skin. I make a noise to let him know that this is right, he’s right, that this is what I want, this slow winding
approach, this focus.

As the ice cube grows smaller his tongue grows larger. It’s just as cold but the texture is different, flatter and broader
with more nuance, a few bumps, the ability to curl or flutter. Even though he has not yet centered his attention, even though
he is deliberately stalling the moment when the high tight climb to my orgasm begins, even though he is not doing what we
both know he will eventually do, even so my fingertips begin tingling and my face is hot. The ice is gone and I am surprised
by the sudden feeling of hands upon my breasts.

I sit up. Or rather I try to sit up because as I struggle to rise, my hands do not come with me. They remember that they are
fastened behind my head, trussed with a pair of eighty-dollar Gucci neckties. I am in this strange position, neither sitting
nor lying, but somehow suspended, with my back awkwardly arched, and I am suddenly awash with panic.

“Stop,” I say. He pushes his tongue into me and begins to lick slowly, systematically, as if he is sweeping.

“No, stop,” I say, “really stop. I have to sit up. My back hurts.”

He can’t seem to hear me. He’s focused now. It’s good in spite of itself, good and bad, good-bad. He is rough with my breasts.
He pulls on the nipples and then twists them as they’re being pulled and no one has ever done this, both the pulling and the
twisting at the same time. I hear myself make a noise halfway between a moan and a scream, even though we are outside, possibly
within earshot of the other balconies, even though part of me likes it.

“I lied,” I say. “I lied to you, I lied, I’m lying.”

I can’t take this. I don’t know why I told him I could. I pull on the neckties and dig my heels into the lounge, trying to
push myself back to a sitting position. But he follows me, butting his forehead into my pubic bone and the orgasm and the
panic are running beside each other now, like horses neck and neck, and my face is so hot that when I lick my lips my tongue
feels cool.

And then suddenly I see it coming toward me and there’s absolutely no doubt. He’s carrying me toward the field in St. Kitts.
I know this field. I’ve been there before. Out from Basseterre about forty minutes with a sweating Coke in your hand, the
Crayola-blue ocean on one side and on the other there’s yellow wheat blowing in the breeze, turning back into itself, folding
into gold. A narrow road, a bumpy road, a rental car with mushy brakes. It’s like being dropped into the middle of a Van Gogh
painting, like being dropped into heaven, and I remembered it the first time I saw it. It’s the orgasm field, the one I sometimes
glimpse, just for a moment, before I come. Not every time, just sometimes. But when I see the orgasm field, I know it’s inevitable
and it’s going to be a good one.

I say help and I say no but it’s all rising, that blue water, that yellow wheat, coming toward me in a wave. You can’t ride
it, it’s going to engulf you and I try to scream and just at that moment when it hits I say, “Apple.” Apple finally comes
to me, apple. The next thing I see is Gerry holding his arms out to me. I reach for him, my hands trailing neckties. I don’t
know when he untied me or if I was ever tied at all.