Sacred Time (11 page)

Leonora knew what that was like, because she, too, had that tight, cold space inside her. Ever since she was a child. Except within her it had grown tighter by and by, while for Anthony it had happened all at once the moment of Bianca's fall; and he hadn't learned yet to use that space to protect himself the way she used to whenever her father had raised his fists.
Fifty-four days of my life. Spaced far apart. Over four years. Then not so far apart. You count them. Mark them in the back of your photo album. One flat line for each. Fifty-four days of fists without warning. And the fear that waits for you every dawn—“If you tell, you'll really get it”—until your father dies.

Not now.
She kissed the top of her son's hair.
Don't think of it now.
“Guess what?” she said. “Kevin's mom says you can stay over.”

Anthony crossed his skinny arms.

“Hey…you like Kevin. You're his best friend.”

He nodded.

If she'd known a way to blast his cold, tight space open without injuring the rest of him, Leonora would have. Instead, she gently coaxed him. “Take your school things along.”

He slipped his pencil into his Davy Crockett pencil box, slid the wooden top closed.

“Pajamas. Clothes for the morning. Do you want to eat something before you go?”

He blinked as if incapable of deciding.

Lately she'd been waiting him out till he had to make a choice for himself; but today she rushed him. “I'll make you a salami sandwich while you pack your things.”

He grimaced as if food were repulsive, an obligation that kept him prisoner at family dinners. To think how he used to enjoy eating, but now even sweets no longer interested him. Sweets and words.

“You don't eat enough. See, now I'm sounding like your Aunt Floria.”

Still, he didn't eat, and when he was gone—reluctant he was in leaving, so reluctant—Leonora filled the bathtub. Washed her hair and dried it, letting it fall over her shoulders. While all along her heart—slow and cold—beat inside her chest. She drew a narrow line of black along her eyelids as if she were getting ready to go downtown for a show. She darkened her lashes, painted her lips deep red, buttoned the silk dress Floria had sewn for her; and when she sat down in the living room, facing the entrance hall, she saw herself as if on stage—this woman waiting for her unfaithful husband—and she was able to appreciate the drama, as well as the potential of even greater drama. That's what she looked for the instant the curtain rose: drama in setting and costume; drama within the first words. She wanted drama to sweep her onto the stage until she was so much part of it that she forgot she was sitting in a darkened row.

She wanted it to be that real.

As real as Victor's surprised expression when he came in and saw her dressed up and quiet.

“Hello,” he said heartily, acting as if there were nothing unusual about her waiting for him like this.

She looked at his naked face—looked steadily, solemnly—and felt articulate without words.

“How was your day,
mia cara?”
Victor asked.

“Where's Anthony?” Victor asked.

“Probably at Kevin's. Right?” Victor asked, still playing his part.

She wondered if not speaking was like that for Anthony. To have all of them dance around him with words? Not all bad. A certain power, pleasure even, in letting others do the words for you.

“I get it. You didn't feel like cooking tonight?” Victor asked.

“Are we going out to eat?” Victor asked.

“Tell me about Elaine,” she said quietly.

His face arched up. Ashen. Startled. “What do you mean?”

That moment, Leonora learned how to wait. Learned all a woman as fidgety as she would need to learn about waiting in a lifetime. While her husband unbuttoned his left cuff. While he folded it up twice. While he started on the other. While she noticed a speck of lint on the carpet.

Slowly, Victor lowered himself into the chair farthest away from her.

She counted the frames that hung on the wall behind him: five.

Counted the faces of family in Anthony's first-communion photo: ten.

Counted the nails in the string picture of the sailboat: seventy-four.

Said: “I know, Vic.” And felt him struggling. Resisting. But she pulled him in. Felt strong and beautiful and cold as she pulled him in. “I know about you and Elaine.” She was both—on stage and in the audience—being and watching this woman who looked extraordinarily calm; this woman whose black hair framed her thin neck; who didn't look at him directly, just let her eyes follow the vines and leaves in the carpet, follow the vines out to the fire escape, along the washlines and back in, along the walls and to the frames above him. Five. “But I want to hear about her from you, Victor.”

She pulled him in closer yet, until his words slopped on the floor between them and froze into ice thick enough to keep him from reaching for her, ice fragile enough to make any crossing treacherous. She let him talk. The habit of confession. Of trading sins for absolution. Sitting as still as a priest in the confessional, she concealed all shock, all sadness, all rage, and whenever Victor hesitated, she said, “I know,” and bludgeoned him with her brutal silence till he said Elaine had seduced him.

“Oh, please,” Leonora said.

“I swear I didn't intend for it to turn into sex.”

“What did you think it would turn into? A cartwheel? A Ferris wheel? A—”

“It's the truth. She seduced me.”

“And you held still while she seduced you. Of course. What else could you have done? Now that was the first time, right? Tell me, how many times did she manage to seduce you over the months?”

“I'm ending it with her.”

“Don't do it for me.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you're on your own. That you've already left me,” she said, and felt stunned by utter loneliness. “At least have the decency to admit your part in that affair. Not that decency has anything to do with it.”

“I'm sorry. I am. I want us. You and me and Anthony.”

“And Elaine. And Elaine's sister.”

“She doesn't have a sister.”

“Right.” Leonora was reminded of a documentary she'd once seen about one afternoon in a marriage. The conversations between the woman and man were bizarre—their incessant probing of each other's thoughts; their fussy competition for the affection of their five dogs; their inept cooperation in tidying their grimy kitchen—but once Leonora got beyond wondering why they'd let any filmmaker into that private mess of their lives, she realized that for them all this was normal and that, if a filmmaker were to follow any two people who were close to each other—follow Victor and herself—just for a few hours, they, too, would come across as bizarre: the things they did in private; the way they talked private-talk; the words and the gestures and the habits. Except that most people knew not to expose all this to a filmmaker. Still, the impact of the film on Leonora was her amazement at what people took for ordinary, because, for this woman and this man, what they revealed about themselves was not bizarre at all. At least not half as bizarre as this conversation with Victor.

Not even ten percent as bizarre as hearing Victor ask: “You want me to call Elaine now? Tell her I won't see her again? I will. If that's what you want me to do. I'll call her in front of you. To prove to you that I'm ending it with her.”

“You expect me to take one phone call as proof? After you've been lying to me for one year and one month?”

His lips moved as if he were doing the math.

“How many seductions were you exposed to in one year and one month?”

He reached for the phone. “You can listen to what I tell her.”

“You would do that to her? Have your wife listen in while you break up with your lover? Don't you think she deserves more?”

Victor stared at her.

“At least have the balls to tell her in person. You can't just fuck someone—”

“I hate it when you use that word.”

“And I hate it when you
do
that word with someone else.”

“I am sorry. I said I was sorry.”

“You can't just fuck someone for one year and one month and then end it over the phone.”

“You're sending me back to her?”

“Are you afraid she'll seduce you again?”

Leonora runs her hand through James' hair—hair so curly and lush it snags her fingers—then down his spine, across his buttocks, flatter than Victor's. As she tightens her fingers, she feels him squirm with pleasure. Away from James, she barely thinks of him.

“What happened between you and Mr. Amedeo?”

For an instant, she thinks he means Victor's father, then realizes he's talking about Victor. “What name do I have when you think of me?” she teases him. “Mrs. Amedeo?”

“Leonora. I thought of you as Leonora whenever I thought of doing this with you.”

“Good answer…I'll tell you what happened between me and Mr. Amedeo. Another woman got involved in my marriage.”

James laughed.

“It's not intended to be funny.”

“Just how you said it. Like you invited her into your marriage.”

“Most definitely not.”

“You know what's nice?”

“Tell me.”

“That we're using each other without pretending that it's something else.”

“I'm not using you. I don't believe in using anyone. And I'm—”

“‘Using' is the wrong word. What I mean is—”

“Fucking?”

“Yeah…fucking.”

“Fucking each other without pretending for it to be love…I like that.”

They did try, she and Victor. Tried with their marriage after he left Elaine. Tried to be together more. Tried to talk and tried to listen. But Leonora made the mistake of wanting to understand—not only why Victor had been unfaithful, but also what her own decision would be. That's why she encouraged him to take her inside his dreams, his fantasies. “No secrets between us, Victor. No lies.”

And he made the mistake of making her his confidante. All for the sake of honesty. Also because she was the only one he could talk to about Elaine.

She barricaded her jealousy inside her cold calm heart; didn't flinch when he confided how often he thought of Elaine; witnessed his exquisite pain at saying the name of his beloved aloud:
Elaine;
understood that he needed to feel that charge at hearing himself say:
Elaine.
Because it had been like that for her, too, when she had started loving Victor: tasting the sound of his name,
Victor;
needing someone to witness that sound:
Victor.

He offered her more than she wanted: how he envisioned Elaine thinking of him at the exact moment he was thinking of her—