Private Lies (6 page)

One night, he admitted to her his clandestine spying.

"That's awful," she said.

"Awful?"

"You're seeing me klutzy, with all those
imperfections. Now you'll only make me more nervous and unsure."

"Imperfections? That's not what I saw."

"Besides, I'm the tallest and it's not an advantage.
On pointe we can't look taller than our partners."

"I did notice that. The men looked small."

"Too small," she muttered. "That can
hurt."

"Well, I thought you were great."

"You don't understand. You only see form and style.
Whipping and willing the body to move against nature is a terrible struggle.
That's the battle a ballet dancer must win to be truly great. The teacher sees
the tiniest imperfection as a defeat."

"Well, I don't see that," he protested.

"You wouldn't. You're not a dancer."

Of course he saw it, saw it then, saw it now. The artist's
struggle was universal. But so was the struggle of the lover for the loved one.
Not that he had gone from the future immortal of the pen to a smitten Romeo.
His creative zeal was still furious, more furious than ever now that he was
resisting the distraction of her. He pounded away at his story, the novel that
would launch him to the world.

Yet this obsession for Carol was a test of his capacity for
accepting anxiety. Unrequited love enabled him but did not empower him.
Inspiration came in fits and starts. Sometimes it did not come at all. When
that happened, he tried to empty his mind of her, force forgetfulness,
obliterate all images of her likeness, her sounds, the erotic pull of her. His entire
being yearned for her. Desire plagued him, mocked him. It was like he was a
swimmer fighting against a powerful riptide.

He knew exactly what she felt, this need to protect her
single-mindedness, to husband her obsession. Of course he worried that sooner
or later these powerful feelings would completely inhibit his concentration,
torpedo his creativity, dampen his imagination. At times it became, in his
overheated and youthful mind, a matter of life or death.

At the same time, he was besieged by the idea that Carol
could never love him, certainly never love him more than ballet, more than her
ambition to excel, more than her thirst for immortality or notoriety or
celebrity, all those secret compulsions that he, too, knew so well.

None of this stopped him from pursuing her. Others had both
love and fulfillment. Why not he? She would enhance his creativity, wouldn't
she? Wasn't there stability in satisfying desire?

Yet he still feared pressing her, appearing on her doorstep
without notice. His pursuit could not be without calculation. Most of all, he
feared that heavy-handedness would turn her off completely. Above all, he told
himself, he must keep hope alive. At times, when it was impossible to write his
novel, he would write to her instead, long agonizing letters of longing,
pouring out his love, his needs, his fears, the terrible pain of separation. Of
course, he never mailed them. She'd think he had gone mad.

But there was still the telephone. He called it his weapon
of necessity. It was the era before answering machines and it was frustrating
to hear its ring without a response. Sometimes he would spend ten minutes just
listening to it ring. When she did answer, the conversation was always polite,
predictable, and noncommittal. He had the impression that even his phone calls
were an intrusion on her time.

"Let me come up," he would say.

"No. Please."

"You've got to rest, Carol, stand back,
contemplate."

"I'm not improving, Ken," she admitted.

"You're trying too hard."

"There's no other way."

More and more she seemed anguished, depressed. He, too, had
come to a crossroads. New snags had developed. The burst of inspiration had
faltered. The muse was being stubborn. His characters were exhibiting a crisis
of non-action, were bored with interacting. He knew why. She was dominating his
life.

"Let me comfort you, Carol. Please." And myself,
he thought.

"It won't help."

"Yes, it will."

She seemed overwrought and fearful. By then he had learned
that nervous breakdowns were common to ballet dancers.

One night she called him. "Come quick, Ken.
Please."

He was surprised by her appearance. Her complexion was
ashen, and her eyes seemed to have sunken behind her cheeks. She looked
unhealthy. When she saw him, she burst into tears. Was it for love or solace?
At twenty-one the distinctions were blurry. It was enough that she was in his
arms.

"I wasn't picked," she sobbed, blurting out the
travails of her rejection. For her it was a catastrophe. And yet, when she
finally explained it, it seemed only a small setback. One out of a dozen in the
student ballet corps had been picked for a solo.

"There's always a next time," he said, hoping to
be comforting.

"Don't you understand, Ken? I can't catch up."

He saw in this sudden revelation a glimpse of her
vulnerability. He felt her pain and disappointment but also saw it as an
opening for him, a way into her heart. She needed his love, he decided. His
love would comfort her, inspire her. It was time to act.

Up to then, out of fear, he had hidden his true feelings.
Hadn't she made it clear that there was no room in her life for anything but
dance? Such a position had its logic and its truth. But so did love.

She was in his arms and he was caressing her, brotherly at
first. And then he kissed her deeply and she responded.

"Let me love you," he whispered.

"Love me?"

She had stiffened for a moment, then continued to cling to
him.

"You need me to love you," he said. "Let me
love you."

They kissed again, deeper than before. Her body seemed to
melt against him.

"Everything will happen the way you want it," he
told her. "I promise you."

She sighed but said nothing. His body's reaction was
unmistakable and he felt her hips rotating against his erection. It surprised
him and he began to caress her tight buttocks. Then she stopped suddenly and
tried to sit up. He continued to hold her.

"Be human, Carol," he whispered. "We're not
machines. You can't just live in one dimension."

"I'm afraid," she told him, yielding again,
bringing her body beside him. He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her
fingers.

"Of me?" he asked.

"Of me," she whispered. But her response seemed
to trigger something inside her. She became more ardent, more aggressive,
reaching for him, exploring. Her breath came in tiny gasps.

"Maybe I need to know I'm a woman, Ken," she
said.

He remembered his surprise. And elation. He had carried the
details of that moment for more than twenty years, the sights and sounds, the
emotion. In his memory, it had always defined the meaning of joy.

She wanted to see and be seen, insisting on light. To reach
her apartment, he had run through rain. It had stopped and an orange setting
sun had appeared like a giant pumpkin peeking over the skyscrapers. Walking to
the windows, slowly removing her clothes as she moved, she had raised the
shades to ceiling height and a golden glow had filled the room.

Her tight dancer's body approached him, her skin like
burnished velvet. Getting off the bed, he stepped toward her, exhibiting
himself. Her eyes lingered, studying him. They circled each other before
touching again and she stood on her toes when they embraced. It seemed like a
ritual, a dance.

"We mustn't forget this," she told him.

"Never."

She was made unlike any woman he had seen before or since.
That spot was like a pink tea rose embedded in the center of her. Around it was
the same smooth marble of her flesh. Yet the petals opened to moisture like
rain on the flesh of any blooming flower.

Even the difficulty of penetration did not destroy the
poetry. At first he had thought that the fit was not possible, but she had
urged him on as if it were absolutely necessary. Fitting, she had said,
half-joking. It was fitting.

"I'll hurt you," he protested, holding back.

"Of course you will," she told him, grasping him,
guiding him, bringing herself forward to the force of her upward thrust.

Miraculously, the petals had opened and he had entered her.
He supposed she had experienced pain, but she did not cry out. He remembered
that their eyes had met and hers had filled with tears and he had licked them
off her cheeks.

"Am I a woman now?" she had asked.

"The woman I love."

"Is it lovely, really lovely?"

"It is now."

It was odd to this day, how preserved in his mind was this
romantic intensity, the melding of body and soul. What surprised him most was
the way she took pleasure in it. He had fantasized about this moment for
months, and having achieved it had surpassed his wildest expectations.

What he had not expected was its ferocity.

Their world became totally circumscribed. Had it been
gradual, a slow peeling away of other interests, other obsessions? Or had it
come about like an instant explosion, an all-enveloping eruption, obliterating
everything, destroying all extraneous distractions except themselves?

Things outside their orbit became blurred, incomprehensible
details. It was bottomless between them, insatiable, an onslaught of nature.

Everything surrendered to its power. In his memory, he
could not find a single detail during that period of the banality of survival.
Did they shop for food, cook, clean? Did they wash their clothes? Did they
perform even the most routine ablutions? Did they shower or brush their teeth?
There was simply no record of any of that in his brain.

In memory, they made love. Made love around the clock,
against every available surface of his basement room or her apartment, or
anyplace else that was convenient, and in every configuration capable by the
limited bendings and foldings of the human body. It was an endless orgasm, a
continuous shudder of ecstasy, an eruption of limitless desire.

And yet, they rationalized this fury by referring to it as
"a time out." Perhaps he had tried to go back to his novel. He
couldn't remember. Did she return to her ballet classes?

He recalled walks down city streets, lying in the sun in Washington Square Park, trips to the zoo, lazy meanderings on sunny spring days. In his
memory it was merely background, props. The real interaction was between them.

The bar in her room would have been a constant reminder of
her neglected responsibilities. His typewriter, too, would provide physical
evidence of his own banishment of ambition.

Naturally, there were flurries of guilt, triggering an
attempt to get back on the old track. Once he awoke to find her working out on
the bar. His reaction was surprising. He felt jealousy.

"I've got to get back to it," she told him when
she realized he was watching.

"You will," he muttered.

She had stopped suddenly and turned toward him.

"And your writing."

"First things first," he said, getting out of
bed, moving toward her. They had learned how to deflect obsessions.

Her mother's calls, sporadic at first, grew more intense
and pleading. So far, she had placated her mother with a battery of evasions
and outright lies.

"She's called the school," Carol told him one
day.

"It was bound to come."

"I feel awful about it. Like I've betrayed them."

"It's a matter of priorities," he had told her,
trying to appear reasonable, knowing there was no reason in it at all.

They did make attempts at rationality.

"All right, we love each other," she would tell
him on occasion. "But does that mean that everything has to stop?"

"Of course not," he agreed.

"Not everything is the present. There has got to be a
future."

"I agree."

But rational attempts went nowhere. No sooner had they
talked reason than they were rutting again, making love always, everywhere, all
motivation concentrated on themselves.

Weeks went by. Joyous weeks. Time had lost all meaning. He
gave up his job, which forced him into another reality. He had saved some
money, but not much, and when that ran out he'd have to find a job out of
necessity. Carol was still able to rely on her parents' monthly check to
supplement her scholarship. There was guilt over that as well. More and more
she would burst into tears without warning.

They both seemed to be waiting for reality to assert
itself. They began to argue.

"I thought you said we could have both," Carol
told him. "Why must I give up my dreams?"

"Who told you to do that?"

"Well, I have. So have you."

"We'll both get back to it."

"When?"

"Soon."

"It's not fair. Not fair to my folks. Not fair to
me."

"Have I stopped you?"

"Yes."

Reality exploded one day. Carol's mother showed up at her
apartment, her finger on the buzzer, insistent. Perhaps it was her timing. They
were, as they say, in flagrante delicto, at the very height of passion on the
far edge of orgasm.

"I know you're there, Carol," she cried.
"Don't try to fool me."

They were beyond stopping, letting it happen as her
mother's voice offered a grating background of unwanted noise.

"And I know what you're doing in there," Mrs.
Stein cried.

"She does?" Ken said, trying to force humor. It
didn't fly. Carol was panicked. The blood drained from her face. She cowered
naked in a corner of the bed, unable to act.

"Open up this minute," the woman screamed.

"What shall I do?" Carol pleaded.

"Open the door," Ken advised. "Tell her the
truth."

"I can't."

She started to cry.

"I know you're there, darling. Please. If you're in
some kind of trouble, I'm here for you."