Never mind all that, Jessie; those are things you can consider anotherday. Right now the only important thing is getting him to let you loose.
Yes. Because this wasn’t their game; this game was all his. She had gone on playing it simply because Gerald wanted her to. And that was no longer good enough.
The loon voiced its lonely cry out on the lake again. Gerald’s dopey grin of anticipation had been replaced by a look of sulky displeasure. You broke my toy, you bitch, that look said.
Jessie found herself remembering the last time she’d gotten a good look at that expression. In August Gerald had come to her with a glossy brochure, had pointed out what he wanted, and she had said yes, of course he could buy a Porsche if he wanted a Porsche, they could certainly afford a Porsche, but she thought he might do better to buy a membership in the Forest Avenue Health Club, as he had been threatening to do for the past two years. “You don’t have a Porsche body just now,” she had said, knowing she wasn’t being very diplomatic but feeling that this really wasn’t the time for diplomacy. Also, he had exasperated her to the point where she hadn’t cared a whole hell of a lot for his feelings. This had been happening more and more frequently to her lately, and it dismayed her, but she didn’t know what to do about it.
“Just what is that supposed to mean?” he had asked stiffly. She didn’t bother to answer; she had learned that when Gerald asked such questions, they were almost always rhetorical. The important message lay in the simple subtext: You’re upsetting me, Jessie. You’renot playing the game.
But on that occasion-perhaps in an unknowing tune-up for this one-she had elected to ignore the subtext and answer the question.
“It means that you’re still going to be forty-six this winter whether you own a Porsche or not, Gerald… and you’re still going to be thirty pounds overweight.” Cruel, yes, but she could have been downright gratuitous; could have passed on the image which had flashed before her eyes when she had looked at the photograph of the sports car on the front of the glossy brochure Gerald had handed her. In that blink of an instant she had seen a chubby little kid with a pink face and a widow’s peak stuck in the innertube he’d brought to the old swimming hole.
Gerald had snatched the brochure out of her hand and had stalked away without another word. The subject of the Porsche had not been raised since… but she had often seen it in his resentful We Are Not Amused stare.
She was seeing an even hotter version of that stare right now.
“You said it sounded like fun. Those were your exact words: “It sounds like fun."”
Had she said that? She supposed she had. But it had been a mistake. A little goof, that was all, a little slip on the old banana peel. Sure. But how did you tell your husband that when he had his lower lip pooched out like Baby Huey getting ready to do a tantrum?
She didn’t know, so she dropped her gaze… and saw something she didn’t like at all. Gerald’s version of Mr Happy hadn’t wilted a bit. Apparently Mr Happy hadn’t heard about the change of plans.
“Gerald, I just don’t-”
“… feel like it? Well, that’s a hell of a note, isn’t it? I took the whole day off work. And if we spend the night, that means tomorrow morning off, as well.” He brooded over this for a moment, and then repeated: “You said it sounded like fun.”
She began to fan out her excuses like a tired old poker-hand (Yes, but now I have a headache; Yes, but I’m having these really shittypre-menstrual cramps; Yes, but I’m a woman and therefore entitled tochange my mind; Yes, but now that we’re actually out here in the BigLonely you frighten me, you had beautiful brute of a man, you), the lies that fed either his misconceptions or his ego (the two were frequently interchangeable), but before she could pick a card, any card, the new voice spoke up. It was the first time it had spoken out loud, and Jessie was fascinated to find that it sounded the same in the air as it did inside her head: strong, dry, decisive, in control.
It also sounded curiously familiar.
“You’re right-I guess I did say that, but what really sounded like fun was breaking away with you the way we used to before you got your name up on the door with the rest of the type-A’s. I thought maybe we could bounce the bedsprings a little, then sit on the deck and dig the quiet. Maybe play some Scrabble after the sun went down. Is that an actionable offense, Gerald? What do you think? Tell me, because I really want to know.” “But you said-”
For the last five minutes she had been telling him in various ways that she wanted out of these goddam handcuffs, and he still hadn’t let her out of them. Her impatience boiled over into fury. “My God, Gerald, this stopped being fun for me almost as soon as we started, and if you weren’t as thick as a brick, you would have realized it!”
“Your mouth. Your smart, sarcastic mouth. Sometimes I get so tired of-”
“Gerald, when you get your head really set on something, sweet and low doesn’t come close to reaching you. And whose fault is that?”
“I don’t like you when you’re like this, Jessie. When you’re like this I don’t like you a bit.”
This was going from bad to worse to horrible, and the scariest part was how fast it was happening. Suddenly she felt very tired, and a line from an old Paul Simon song occurred to her: “I don’t want no part of this crazy love.” Right on, Paul. You may be short, but you ain’t dumb.
“I know you don’t. And it’s okay that you don’t, because right now the subject is these handcuffs, not how much you do or don’t like me when I tell you I’ve changed my mind about something. I want out of these cuffs. Are you hearing me?”
No, she realized with dawning dismay. He really wasn’t. Gerald was still one turn back.
“You are just so goddamned inconsistent, so goddamned sarcastic. I love you, Jess, but I hate the goddam lip on you. I always have.” He wiped the palm of his left hand across his pouting rosebud of a mouth and then looked sadly at her-poor, put-upon Gerald, saddled with a woman who had gotten him out here in the forest primeval and then reneged on her sexual obligations. Poor, put upon Gerald, who showed no sign whatever of getting the handcuff keys off the bureau by the bathroom door.
Her unease had changed into something else-while her back was turned, as it were. It had become a mixture of anger and fear she could remember feeling only once before. When she was twelve or so, her brother Will had goosed her at a birthday party. All her friends had seen, and they had all laughed. Har-har, preety fonny, senhorra, I theenk. It hadn’t been funny to her, though.
Will had been laughing hardest of all, so hard he was actually doubled over with one hand planted above each knee, his hair hanging in his face. This had been a year or so after the advent of the Beatles and the Stones and the Searchers and all the rest, and Will had had a lot of hair to hang. It had apparently blocked his view of Jessie, because he had no idea of how angry she was… and he was, under ordinary circumstances, very much aware of her turns of mood and temper. He’d gone on laughing until that froth of emotion so filled her that she understood she would have to do something with it or simply explode. So she had doubled up one small fist and had punched her well-loved brother in the mouth when he finally raised his head to look at her. The blow had knocked him over like a bowling pin and he had cried really hard.