“I’m going to run down to the store,” he said. “Can I get anybody anything?”
Angela ignored the question, and Cliff said, “No, we’ll be leaving in a minute or two. Thanks for taking care of the laundry.”
“No problemo. Nice meeting you,” Joey said with a nod in Angela’s direction, and he went out, closing the front door a bit more forcefully than might have been necessary.
“The houseboy?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Not exactly,” he said, but he did not offer any explanation as to what “not exactly” meant.
“Cliff,” she began and he said, at the exact same moment, “Angela.” They both paused, and he laughed, nervously.
“Yes?” she said, not laughing.
“Angela, I’m not coming back to Chicago.”
“Surely you’re not thinking I would come here?” She waved a hand to indicate the apartment—the entirely unsuitable apartment, her gesture made clear.
“No,” he said, looking directly at her for almost the first time. “No, I wasn’t thinking that, either.”
The pause this time was a long one. “I see,” she said finally. She gave her head a toss. “No, no, actually I don’t see. Are you saying our marriage is over? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”
He had the good grace, at least, to look embarrassed. “I guess I am,” he said. “Angela, it isn’t that I’m not fond of you, I am, but…”
“Fond of me? Husbands don’t tell their wives, ‘I’m fond of you,’ surely. We’ve been married twenty-two years. Is that all you can say? I’m fond of you? What about the children?”
“Ralph is twenty-one, and Theresa twenty. I think they will probably manage.”
“What about our home? Doesn’t that matter either?”
“I don’t think it does, much, to be honest.”
“We have a Jackson Pollack,” she said, which even to her own ears sounded silly.
“Do you know, I never really liked that,” he said.
“And us?” she asked finally.
His face reddened and his eyes slid away from hers. “I think you were always too much a lady for me,” he said finally. “And, me, well, I’m not the man you thought I was. Not the man I thought I was, even.”
“Cliff, if there’s someone else, another woman,” she began, but he shook his head emphatically.
“No, I swear to you, there is no other woman,” he said, so emphatically that she could not doubt his sincerity.
She sighed. “I don’t understand this, any of it. What has changed you so? You’re certainly not the man I married, that’s true enough. You’re not the husband I lived with all those years. You’re like a stranger.”
“I think I’m….” He hesitated.
“Go on.”
“I think I’m finally me,” he said. She thought he had meant to say something else, and changed his mind.
“Well, then, what were you before?”
“A fake. An act I put on because I thought I had to. Oh, it’s hard to explain. When I first came here, the first few weeks, I was still acting that part. But then, well, people here are different.”
“I can’t imagine people in San Francisco are so very different from people in Chicago.”
“They are—or, maybe it’s just living here, in this neighborhood….”
“What did you say they call it, this neighborhood?”
“The Castro. Anyway, I began to make friends….”
“You have friends, in Chicago,” she said. “What about Robert? And Charles? They’re your friends.”
“No. They were
our
friends but, well, that’s sort of what I was trying to say. Here, Robert would probably be Bob, or Bobbie. Or, more likely, he just wouldn’t be here at all. He probably wouldn’t like it. San Francisco, I mean. The Castro. The people I know here, that I began to meet, they weren’t like the fellows I knew back in Chicago, they were more, oh, I don’t know how to say it….”
“Like that young man with the laundry?” she asked sharply.
To her dismay, he smiled again, that smile of secret amusement. “Some of them, yes, like Joey.”
She glanced toward the kitchen, as if Joey might be there watching them, but of course, he was not. “He cooks,” she said.
“Yes,” Cliff said, sounding oddly wary. At least that solved the mystery of the onions, she thought.
“Look,” Cliff said, “maybe we should just go have dinner, and maybe I can explain it a little better after a martini or two.”
“I don’t think I want any dinner,” she said. “I don’t think I want to stay here, either.”
“I’ll get you a hotel room,” he said. “If you’ll be more comfortable.”
She collected her purse from the table and her coat from the chair where he had put it when they came in. “No, don’t bother. I’ll get a taxi.” She hesitated, and finally managed to ask the question that had been hovering in her head. “I suppose you want a divorce?”
“It isn’t necessary,” he said, and added, with that maddening grin again, “I’m not planning on getting remarried. If it will be less awkward for you, our remaining married, I mean, that’s fine with me. Some of those women, your society friends, well, they do like to sniff.”
She studied him for a moment, trying to understand, but it was all too incredible for her. She supposed she should be crying, perhaps begging him to reconsider—but reconsider what, exactly? He said there was no other woman. He said he did not want a divorce. Surely he could not mean that he simply wanted to live here, in this tacky little apartment, instead of their beautiful flat in Chicago. Why on earth would anyone want to do that? Or, might he be coming back to her, in time, when he got it out of his system—whatever
it
was.
Anyway, though she was certainly angry, she did not exactly feel like crying. In a way, she felt that she was less surprised than she ought to be. But she didn’t know what that meant, either.
She put a hand to her head. She could feel one of her headaches coming on. How could he do that to her? He knew what her headaches were like, how she suffered.
“We’ll discuss it tomorrow,” she said. “This is all too sudden. I can’t seem to make head nor tails of it.”
“Tomorrow, then,” he said. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“No, I don’t think I do. I think I want to be alone.” She started for the door, but she paused to look back at him. “Really, Cliff,” she said, “I have to tell you, this has been a bitter disappointment.”
Neighbors
Linda hated having to pretend, to fake something she didn’t feel, but she knew how he was—he’d just go on and on and on, till she wanted to scream, really, and not from any orgasm, either. So far as she could say, he was utterly tireless. Sometime, maybe, she’d wait him out, see how long he really could keep it up. All night wouldn’t surprise her. A month wouldn’t surprise her, actually.
She began to grunt and to groan, softly at first, and as if it were his cue, he picked up his tempo, driving harder and faster now. Usually, she would drag it out a little, she knew it made him happy when it lasted, but tonight she was tired and her back ached from stocking shelves at the 7-Eleven. She thrashed her legs and moaned, louder, and tightened her grip on his shoulders, and, finally, stiffened her body like an ironing board.
It worked. It always did. She didn’t know how he did it, holding himself at the ready the way he did, and then able to let go just like that. She thought there were probably a lot of men who would envy him. She knew he was proud of it. Probably, if you were a man, it was something to be proud of. Maybe there were women who would appreciate it more than she did. Her sister was proud of the way her Schnauzer would roll over or stand up on his hind legs when she told him to. It was just a matter of training, wasn’t it?
Maybe you’re just a bitch,
she told herself, and did not have to fake a sigh of relief when he rolled himself off of her.
After a minute, he got up and went to the bathroom. He left the door open. He always did. Before they had fucked you, men closed the door. After, they always left it open.
Why was that?
She’d always wondered, and couldn’t think who to ask. Once, she’d almost asked the minister, and had to stifle a giggle at the thought of his reaction. But, really, how were you supposed to find these things out? They sure didn’t mention that in
Ladies Home Journal
.
She listened to him pee noisily, and couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t wash his hands before he came back to bed, slipping in beside her, bending down to give her a quick kiss.
“How was that?” he asked.
“It was great,” she said, as enthusiastic as she could make it. Which wasn’t very, but he never noticed. The question was rhetorical. He thought it was great. That was all that mattered. He lay back beside her and gave her thigh a pat.
“Have to keep my baby happy,” he said.
“You sure know how to do that, Ray,” she said. Once, she had made the mistake of telling him she hadn’t had an orgasm. Not like she was complaining, or anything, it was just, he asked, and she had said, no, but it was okay, it didn’t have to be every single time for a woman.
“It has to be for my woman,” he said, half pouting, and he went and got himself a beer, and drank it lying in bed, not saying anything, and then, just about the time she was drifting off to sleep, he rolled her on her back and climbed on, and started all over again.
That was the night she started faking it. A year and a half ago. Almost two years, actually. A long time without, she supposed. She didn’t miss it as much as you would think she would. Sometimes, but mostly not.
Once, she’d run across one of his girlie magazines. Stuffed at the back of his sock drawer. Curious, she’d looked through it, wondered how the women could do that, let their pictures be taken that way. She hated those times, luckily not often, when he decided he wanted to do it with the lights on.
“I like to see what I’m getting,” he said, but even he could not fail to notice that it made her uncomfortable, and he had given that up.
She had looked at the ads, though, some of them she wasn’t sure she even understood, but it was fairly easy to understand the vibrators. She’d looked long and hard at a full-page ad of them, and wondered what it would be like, if she could give herself an orgasm with one of them—but he would never go along with that, and she couldn’t have one without his knowing about it. It was hard to keep secrets in a small trailer. Anyway—maybe if it didn’t look like something attached to a man. She’d had her fill of man things, thank you very much, and no pun intended.
“I saw the lezzie,” he said, startling her out of her thoughts.
“Amy?” she said without thinking.
“That her name?” He sounded surprised. “Say, you two ain’t getting all chummy, are you?”
“Just neighbors,” she said. “You know, she’s right next door, we see one another coming in and out, you have to say hi.”
“Maybe she’s comin’ on to you,” he said.
“Don’t be silly.” She knew Amy wasn’t. Knew, because Amy had told her that. She’d asked Linda if she wanted to come in for some coffee, and Linda had acted like some stupid schoolgirl, all flustered and blushing, and Amy had said, “Hey, don’t get excited, I wasn’t coming on to you. Just being a neighbor.”
“I’m just teasing you,” Ray said. He gave her thigh another pat. She held her breath, hoping this wasn’t going to be one of
those
nights. “Hell, no reason for you to want a woman, when you got a man to take care of you. Reckon I do that, all right.”
“That’s for sure,” she said into the darkness, thinking about that time Amy had asked her in, wishing—not for the first time—that she had gone. Not for that. Just for, well, she didn’t know what exactly, something. Something maybe a woman could get from another woman, something she thought certain was unknown and unknowable to a man.
“That’s probably all she needs, too,” he said. “Maybe I ought to stop over and see her some night.”
“Ray,” she said, like she was shocked. Frightened was more like it, though, frightened of the way Amy would look at her differently if he did something like that, of the difference it would make in the way she smiled at her, like she really wanted to be friends. Well, you couldn’t be after that, could you, after a man had brought man stuff into it.
“Maybe we ought to have her over here,” he said. “Let her have a taste of what I get regular, and then show her what I can do. Give her the old double whammy. What do you think?”
“I think you’re letting your imagination run away with you,” she said. She rolled on her side, turning her back to him. After a minute, he rolled on his side, too, away from her.
“Might be kind of fun, though,” he said, chuckling softly.
* * *
She waited until he was asleep, snoring noisily. When she was sure he wouldn’t wake up, she got out of bed, found her bathrobe on the doorknob, and walked barefoot out to the kitchen. She left the lights out. Even with the door closed, the light still spilled into the bedroom, and anyway, the door squeaked and she might wake him up closing it.
She got herself a Bud from the fridge, opening the door just enough to reach it out, and twisted off the cap and took a sip. It helped rinse the taste from her mouth that she didn’t know where it came from.
She went to stand by the sink and look out the window. Amy’s trailer was right there, not even eight feet away. Her blinds were only half closed. She could see Amy moving around inside, doing something, it looked like stretches of some sort. She had her music on, the same girl singer she mostly listened to, black, Linda thought, sweet voiced and vinegary all at the same time. “
Embrace me…
”
Amy wore this oversized tee shirt, so big it was almost a dress. It was what she usually wore when she was home alone. Linda knew that from other nights, standing at the window, watching, and when she bent over, you could catch just a glimpse of jockeys—not panties, but jockeys, like a man wore. Linda thought it was cute. She wondered what Ray would say if she tried wearing a pair. Probably he’d say she had turned lezzie on him. Or maybe it would turn him on. That thought discouraged her. Whatever that man needed, it wasn’t anything to whet his sexual appetites.
Amy finished her stretches, walked to the kitchen area of her trailer, did something at the sink. They were only a few feet apart, facing one another. If Linda’s lights were on, they could wave, maybe open their windows and talk. Only, not with Ray there. He’d think it was sex. He thought everything was sex. What Linda wanted was something different, something she didn’t have any words for, and she knew he wouldn’t understand them if she found them. Amy would, though. Somehow, she felt sure of that. Which was silly. How could you know something like that about somebody you didn’t even know? She thought it was true, though.