The Family Unit and Other Fantasies (25 page)

That he was acting for himself
and
for her—that he was aware of what effect each push was having, that
her
pleasure caused
his
—was something new. She thought of someone rowing and how the digging of his oar into the ocean moved his boat, rippled the water, and built the muscle in the rower’s arm, a seamless situation. Now
she
was the water, or merely made of water, and when he pushed into her, he was, well, not like the oar exactly, but like an entire man disappearing into a wave, which was her. She now knew what “so excited” meant, and it was different from what she had pretended it meant with Martin, when it had meant nothing, when it had been something from a porn film and bullshit.

“Oh, my God,” she said helplessly as he pushed particularly hard and pressed the front of his abdomen (which she noticed was flatter than Martin’s, despite his being so much older—fifteen or forty-five years—though she had only briefly glimpsed Martin’s soft stomach through his unzipped and partly pulled down pants) against her clitoris. She thought of a dolphin, as if she was still in an ocean, and how it butted against you or something when it liked you and you swam with it. He (or maybe just his erection) was like a strong and slippery dolphin, rock hard but really responsive, and making that little chirping radar sound, which she now realized was coming from her own open mouth.

“It’s good, it’s good,” she said, and again she hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

Then, suddenly, he stopped moving, obviously could move no more without ending everything, which meant that she was on, it was up to her. Instinctively she wrapped around him, inside and outside: outside with her arms—and inside she had never known she had such flexibility, like when you realize you can bend a finger back all the way without breaking it, only this was better. She had never known that she could be tender with a grown man, not just her baby sister or her old kitty cat Monkey, kissing and kissing them—she was
passionate
, that’s what she was, and why had it been embarrassing to say before now?

Coming with him felt like (she could not stop comparing things; it made her feel safer to do it, put things in perspective so she wouldn’t feel she had entered an environment alien and disorienting—it was still her own life, she had not gone insane, you know?) that trick where the magician pulls out a tablecloth and all the plates stay put: she was the tablecloth, the table,
and
the plates. And he came, too, immediately after, or actually during, though she suspected he’d started a little ahead of her, could feel him doing that pulsing that of course came from his heart and had been weaker in her hand when it came from Martin. And Owen’s sound was bigger: Martin’s was like air going out of a balloon and Owen’s was like one bursting, like a whole float in, say, the Puerto Rican Day Parade, or he was a terrorist exploding himself along with everything else, and she had made him into one. That was so exciting that it made her come again, or maybe it was just the end of her first orgasm, an aftershock, like they say there are in earthquakes.

“I can’t stop,” she said, and perhaps that was another trick, because she wanted it to continue and thought saying that might be the spell to make it so.

Then he placed his lips against her temple, where her hair was wet and slightly stuck to the area above her ear. Would he say he loved her? She didn’t think he did; she didn’t love
him
—she didn’t fool herself, she wasn’t a baby. Maybe she wanted him to say it so she could feel superior, could feel less than he and so more in control. (She had read once that the young are more powerful in young-old affairs, because, well, they live longer. But what about her uncle’s second wife who was twenty years younger and who died first? Who was more powerful then? Her uncle, obviously, who was still alive.) Soon she didn’t care about creating distance. She found herself kissing him, too, his cheek, which was not unshaven but getting there with the night coming on; things were changing, growing all the time, and now she knew it, this was proof.

Her boss had wanted to work for
her
, and that was what he had done; he had not been lying, been, what was the word, rhetorical, and that made her want to serve him—not serve, that was subordinate and not what she meant—to give to him, to know what he knew, to get pleasure by giving pleasure, to feel the connection or current, the wet finger in the spilled liquid that was then stuck into a socket, only good and shocking, not bad.

She took him into her mouth even though he protested, weakly, that this was not for him but only for her, tried to insist and sincerely, not coyly, not to get what he pretended not to want. But she wouldn’t listen and soon, her breasts intentionally squashed against his leg, she kissed at the grey pubic hairs she had not noticed on him before (and which, for reasons she could not articulate, excited her in a new and discombobulating way). It was only seconds after she started, sort of forced him to experience it, had hardly moved her mouth on him, was just getting ready to do her stuff, or figure out what stuff would do the trick for him, that he came. More than melting in her mouth (as crass girls in college called it), he seemed to completely disappear, his head tilting back, his eyes closing, his arms laid flat, his hands opening as if going under in that ocean again—or better, being pushed off a cliff by coming. It almost scared her. She suddenly knew how lonely he had been and yet he hadn’t used it against her but
for
her, had wanted to deny himself until she wouldn’t let him anymore (or was the denial his way of getting over the guilt of sleeping with a young girl who was his employee? If he got nothing, in other words, what had he done wrong? He would be a kind of sex saint).

But then she didn’t care what was his way to explain it to himself, was just glad that she had given him this, given him
something
—God knows she gave him nothing at the job—and soon he seemed to reappear, to float up to the surface again and exist, and she moved to lie against him. He buried his face in her sweaty neck, maybe ashamed of how much he had shown of himself, uneasy about how much she knew him now, though she liked knowing him—he knew
her
, so why not?—secretly wanted to know him more, to know everything, even though she suspected that it would be impossible, would probably never happen, that this was as close as they would ever get, this instant, this afternoon.

Isabel didn’t see Owen often after this. Only once did they meet in his house, when his wife was away. While Isabel was there, the door to the bedroom stayed closed, and she could imagine how its dark (was it oak?) wood might have to him a vexing and mysterious power—intergalactic or timeless or whatever it had been in the film—if always in that position. They used a den but mostly stayed in the bathroom, where he washed her slowly in the shower, aroused as he always was by fulfilling a function, being employed, even if the need was one he had created in her. She did
need
him now, just wanted him, had had trouble waiting for him from the time they entered his home. Otherwise, they met in his office whenever they could, for he had obligations, and—without saying so, without saying much of anything—they both regarded their time together as a gift, could not be greedy for more, just had to be grateful.

Isabel barely spoke to Martin now. Her duties seemed less stultifying, filled as they were with subtext, the numbers on her screen changed into symbols of longing found on another planet or formed in the future. But Martin seemed even more frustrated. Isabel could hear him sighing from where he sat, and she believed it was both for her benefit and a genuine expression of dismay. She was sorry for him but not guilty, no matter how much she thought she ought to be.

One dusk, both were alone in the elevator going down, though she usually avoided exiting the building with him. They rode in silence until, a few floors from the lobby, Martin spoke a rare, completed sentence.

“I know that you go with him,” he said.

Isabel started, and the little bell rang as they hit the ground floor, seeming to underline his remark. She didn’t respond, only walked quickly ahead and away from him, but she knew that things were different, had entered a new phase; she could feel it, and he had made it happen.

The next day in the office, Martin kept on talking to her in the same clear voice he had either always had or acquired for the occasion, feeling he had no alternative.

“Why don’t you tell me about doing it with him?” he said.

Isabel didn’t answer, just kept looking as if interested at her screen, though she knew it was absurd to try and fool him in this way.

“I want to hear about you and him,” he said, and his voice conveyed at once the sincere need to please himself and punish her, which was new; before he may have been selfish but not unkind.

Isabel turned to see him and he didn’t avoid her, kept staring at her as he had been the whole time. Her response was reflexive, though this reflex was also new.

“I won’t,” she said, and saw him appear shocked, not because she had officially ended something between them, she didn’t think, but because he was being denied something obviously available: brand-new information that would no doubt be exciting and could have been given to him easily, as if newspapers were being thrown from a boy’s bike onto everybody’s lawn but his.

As Isabel pushed by him to leave early (being privileged by her association with Owen, she did not need to explain herself), she realized that Martin had always thought her stories were true, and this made her feel differently about him, though in what way she wasn’t sure.

For a few days, to Isabel’s relief, they sat in virtual silence. Finally, Martin addressed her on their way into a meeting, among a crowd in which it would be hard for her to reply.

“I told her,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she whispered back. “Who?”

“His wife. About you and him. I left a message on their machine.”

Isabel stopped, bumped by another employee trying to get past. Waiting to be alone with him in the hall, she reached out and grabbed Martin, got hold of his shirt, which she nearly ripped and which he yanked back, annoyed, so she wouldn’t. They stood there staring at each other, Isabel nearly shaking with rage both at him and her own inarticulateness; it was as if, with a few words, he had taken
everything
away.

Martin didn’t look triumphant; he seemed shaken, even shocked by her reaction. He then grew apologetic and stammered, reverting to his old, un-socialized self.

“I-I-I had to do something,” he said at last.

This was right before the weekend. On Monday, Isabel arrived late and Martin was already there. He sat faced away, his complexion pale, his chin in his palm, the computer screen before him blank. Was he sick again, she wondered? Or just afraid to acknowledge her?

Soon she noticed a general absence of people around. When she looked out in the hall, many doors were shut, others open to reveal no one but a briefcase or bag hastily, even indifferently tossed in a corner or on a chair. It was like a science fiction film in which a plague breaks out—or a bomb drops—that kills people but not things. She wondered if a meeting had been called without her knowing, but now that she knew Owen, she was always in the loop.