Asking, in a tone of mild inquiry, “What was Yardman’s first name, Val? — I don’t think you ever mentioned it,” and Valerie said, with an impatient little laugh, having taken up a steak knife to cut the meat horizontally, “What does it matter what the name is?” Leonard noted that, though he’d said was, Valerie had said is. The first husband was present to her, no time had passed. Leonard recalled an ominous remark of Freud’s that, in the unconscious, all time is present-tense and so what has come to dwell most powerfully in the unconscious is felt to be immortal, unkillable. Valerie added, as if in rebuke, “Of course I’ve mentioned his name, Leonard. Only just not in a long time.” She was having difficulty with the flank steak, skidding about on the wooden block, so Leonard quickly set down his drink and held it secure, while Valerie, biting her lower lip, pursing her face like Caravaggio’s Judith sawing off the head of the wicked king Holofernes, managed to insert the sharp blade, make the necessary incisions, complete the cut so that the meat could now be opened like the pages of a book. As Leonard watched, fascinated, yet with a sensation of revulsion, Valerie then covered the meat with a strip of plastic wrap and pounded at it with a meat mallet, short deft blows to reduce it to a uniform quarter-inch thickness. Leonard winced a little with the blows. He said, “Did he — I mean Yardman — ever re-marry?” and Valerie made an impatient gesture to signal that she didn’t want to be distracted, not just now. This was important! This was to be their dinner! Carefully she slid the butterflied steak into a large, shallow dish and poured the marinade (sherry vinegar, olive oil, fresh sage, cumin, garlic, salt, and fresh-ground black pepper) over it. Leonard saw that Valerie’s face had thickened, since she’d been Oliver Yardman’s lover; her body had thickened, gravity was tugging at her breasts, thighs. At the corners of her eyes and mouth were fine white lines and the coppery-red hair had faded, yet still Valerie was a striking woman, a rich man’s daughter whose sense of her self-worth shone in her eyes, in her lustrous teeth, in her sharp dismissive laughter like the sheen of the expensive kitchen utensils hanging overhead. There was something sensual and languorous in Valerie’s face when she concentrated on food, an almost childlike bliss, an air of happy expectation. Leonard thought, Food is Eros without the risk of heartbreak. Unlike a lover, food will never reject you.
Leonard asked another time if Yardman had remarried and Valerie said, “How would I know, darling?” in a tone of faint exasperation. Leonard said, “From mutual friends, you might have heard.” Valerie carried the steak in a covered dish to the refrigerator, where it would marinate for two hours. They never ate before 8:30 P.M., and sometimes later; it was the custom of their lives together for they’d never had children to necessitate early meals, the routines of a perfunctory American life. Valerie said, “‘Mutual friends.’” She laughed sharply. “We don’t have any.” Again Leonard noted the present tense: Don’t. “And you’ve never kept in touch,” he said, and Valerie said, “You know we didn’t.” She was frowning, uneasy. Or maybe she was annoyed. To flare up in anger was a sign of weakness; Valerie hid such weaknesses. A sign of vulnerability and Valerie was not vulnerable. Not any longer.
Leonard said, “Well. That seems rather sad, in a way.”
At the sink, which was designed to resemble a deep, old-fashioned kitchen sink of another era, Valerie vigorously washed her hands, stained with watery blood. She washed the ten-inch gleaming knife with the surgically sharpened blade, each of the utensils she’d been using. It was something of a fetish for Valerie, to keep her beautiful kitchen as spotless as she could while working in it. As she took care to remove her beautiful jewelry to set aside as she worked.
On her left hand, Valerie wore the diamond engagement ring and the matching wedding band Leonard had given her. On her right hand, Valerie wore a square-cut emerald in an antique setting, she’d said she’d inherited from her grandmother. Only now did Leonard wonder if the emerald ring wasn’t the engagement ring her first husband had given her, which she’d shifted to her right hand after their marriage had ended.
“Sad for who, Leonard? Sad for me? For you?”
That night, in their bed. A vast tundra of a bed. As if she’d sensed something in his manner, a subtle shift of tone, a quaver in his voice of withheld hurt, or anger, Valerie turned to him with a smile: “I’ve been missing you, darling.” Her meaning might have been literal, for Leonard had been traveling for his firm lately, working with Atlanta lawyers in preparation for an appeal in the federal court there, but there was another meaning, too. He thought, She wants to make amends. Their lovemaking was calm, measured, methodical, lasting perhaps eight minutes. It was their custom to make love at night, before sleep, the high-ceilinged bedroom lighted by just a single lamp. There was a fragrance here of the lavender sachets Valerie kept in her bureau drawers. Except for the November wind overhead in the trees, it was very quiet. Still as the grave, Leonard thought. He sought his wife’s smiling mouth with his mouth but could not find it. Shut his eyes and there suddenly was the brazen coppery-haired girl in the red bikini top waiting for him. Squirming in the darkly handsome young man’s arms but glancing at him. Oh! she was a bad girl, look at the bad girl! Her mouth was hungry and sucking as a pike’s mouth seeking the young man’s mouth, her hand dropped beneath the table top, to burrow in his lap. In his groin. Oh the bad girl!
Leonard had the idea that Valerie’s eyes were shut tight, too. Valerie was seeing the young couple, too.
“I found your passport, Valerie. I found these Polaroids, too. Recognize them?”
Spreading them on the table. Better yet, across the bed.
“Only just curious, Val. Why you lied about him.”
She would stare, her smile fading. Her fleshy lips would go slack as if, taken wholly unaware, she’d been slapped.
“...why you continue to lie. All these years.”
Of course, Leonard would be laughing. To indicate that he didn’t take any of this seriously, why should he? It had happened so long ago, it was past.
Except: Maybe “lie” was too strong a word. The rich man’s daughter wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in such a way, any more than Leonard was. “Lie” would have the force of a physical blow. “Lie” would cause Valerie to flinch as if she’d been struck and the rich man’s daughter would file for divorce at once if she were struck.
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea, then. To confront her.
A litigator is a strategist plotting moves. A skilled litigator always knows how his opponent will respond to a move. Like chess, you must foresee the opponent’s moves. Each blow can provoke a counter-blow. Valerie was a woman who disliked weakness in men. A woman with a steely will, yet she presented herself as uncertain, even hesitant, socially; she knew the value of seeming vulnerable. Her sexuality had become a matter of will, she delighted in exerting her will, even as she held herself apart, detached. In all public places as in her beautifully furnished home she was perfectly groomed, not a hair of her sleek razor-cut hair out of place. Her voice was calm, modulated. It was a voice that could provoke others to be cutting but was never less than calm itself. Leonard had witnessed Valerie riling her sister, her mother. She had a way of laughing with her eyes, mocking laughter not uttered aloud. She was a shrewd judge of others. If Leonard confronted her with the Polaroids, the gesture might backfire on him. She might detect in his voice a quaver of hurt, she might detect in his eyes a pang of male anguish. He was sometimes impotent, to his chagrin. He blamed distractions: the pressure of his work, which remained, even for those of his generation who had not been winnowed out by competition, competitive. The pressure of a man’s expectations to “perform.” The (literal) pressure of his blood, for which he took blood-pressure pills twice daily. And his back, that ached sometimes mysteriously, he’d attribute to tennis, golf. In fact, out of nowhere such phantom aches emerged. And so, in the vigorous act of love, Leonard might begin to lose his concentration, his erection. Like his life’s blood leaking out of his veins. And Valerie knew, of course she knew, the terrible intimacy of the act precluded any secrets, yet she never commented, never said a word only just held him, her husband of only nine years, her middle-aged flabby-waisted panting and sweating second husband, held him as if to comfort him, as a mother might hold a stricken child, with sympathy, unless it was with pity.