“It is and it isn’t,” I said.
“That’s exactly right, it is and it isn’t. It is for other people, but it isn’t for me. I mean, not that it isn’t a big deal — it’s huge, just not—” He stopped himself and exhaled with a long schooooo sound. Then he lowered his head and became very still. “I… have fallen in love… with a woman who is my equal in every way, who challenges me, who makes me feel, who humbles me. She is sixteen. Her name is Kirsten.”
My first thought was of Clee, as if she were in the room, watching my face collapse. Her head thrown back, a husky heh, heh, heh. I pressed my fingernail into a paper-thin slice of ginger.
“How did you”—I tried to swallow but my throat was completely locked—“meet Kristen?”
“Kir—like ear”—he touched his ear, a pendulous lobe with a tuft of gray hair sprouting from the hole—“sten. Kirsten. We met in my craniosacral certification class.”
Heh, heh, heh.
I nodded.
“Amazing, right? At sixteen? She’s so ahead of the game. She’s this very wise, very advanced being — and she comes from the most unlikely background, her mom is totally out to lunch and involved in drugs. But Kirsten just”—he gasped with pained eyes—“transcends.”
I pretended to take a sip of wine but actually deposited the spit that was collecting in my mouth.
“Does she feel the same way?”
He nodded. “She’s actually the one pushing for consummation.”
“Oh, so you haven’t…?”
“No. Until recently she was seeing someone. Our teacher, actually. He’s a young man, much closer to her age. A really neat guy — in some ways I think she should have stayed with him.”
“Maybe he’ll take her back,” I offered.
“Cheryl.” He suddenly put his hand on my hand. “We want your blessing.”
His hand had a heat and weight that only real hands do. A hundred imaginary hands would never be this warm. I kept my eyes on his blocky, primitive fingernails.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, I want to, and she wants to — but the attraction is so powerful that we almost don’t trust it. Is it real or is it just the power of the taboo? I’ve told her all about you and our relationship. I explained how strong you are, how you’re a feminist and you live alone, and she agreed we should wait until we got your take on it.”
I spit into the wine again. “When you were explaining our relationship, what did you say?”
“I said you were…”—he looked down at my red knuckles—“someone I had a lot to learn from.” With a firm push he pressed his fingers between my fingers. “And I told her how perfectly balanced you are in terms of your masculine and feminine energies.” We began making a small undulating wave, threading and rethreading our hands. “So you can see things from a man’s point of view, but without being clouded by yang.”
Now we were doing it with both hands and looking each other square in the eyes. Our history was bearing down on us, a hundred thousand lifetimes of making love. We rose and stood with just a hot inch between us, our palms pressed together.
“Cheryl,” he whispered.
“Phillip.”
“I can’t sleep, I can’t think. I’m going crazy.”
The inch was half an inch now. I was throbbing.
“We have no elders,” he moaned. “No one to guide us. Will you guide us?”
“But I’m younger than you.”
“Perhaps.”
“No, I am. I’m twenty-two years younger than you.”
“I’m forty-nine years older than her,” he breathed. “Just tell me if it’s okay. I don’t want someone like you to think I’m — I can’t even say it. It has nothing to do with her age — you can see that, right?”
Each time I inhaled, the soft dome of my stomach pressed against his groin, and each time I exhaled it gently pulled away. In, out, in, out. My breathing grew sharper and faster, a thrusting kind of breath, and Phillip was gripping my hands. In another second I would use my innocent, fingerless paunch to grope and explore him, shimmying up and down. I stepped away.
“It’s a tough decision.” I picked my dinner napkin off the floor and placed it carefully over the row of uneaten pink fish meats. “And one I take seriously.”
“Okay,” said Phillip, straightening up and blinking as if I had suddenly turned the lights on. He followed me to the closet, where I found my purse and jacket. “And?”
“And I’ll let you know when I know. Please take me home now.”
CLEE WAS HALF-ASLEEP WATCHING TV. When I came in she looked up, surprised, as if it wasn’t my house. Just the sight of her pretty face and big chin made me furious. I threw my purse down on the coffee table, which was where I used to put it before she moved in.
“You need to get your act together and start looking for a job,” I said, straightening the chair. “Or maybe I should call your parents and tell them what’s been going on here.”
She smiled slowly at me, her eyes narrowing.
“What’s been going on here?” she said.
I opened my mouth. The simple facts of her violence slid out of reach. Suddenly I felt uncertain, as if she knew something about me, as if, in a court of law, I would be the one to blame.
“And anyways,” she said, picking up the remote, “I have a job.”
This seemed unlikely.
“Great. Where?”
“The supermarket, the one we went to.”
“You went to Ralphs and filled out an application and had an interview?”
“No, they just asked me — last time I was there. I start tomorrow.”
I could see a man’s trembling hands pinning a name tag to her bosom and I remembered what Phillip said about her fat store. Just a couple of hours ago we were sitting in his car and I was thinking, Let’s not waste our time talking about her when we have so much else to say to each other. I lifted the end of her sleeping bag and yanked out one of the couch cushions.
“This couch isn’t meant to be used as a bed. You need to flip the cushions so they don’t get permanently misshapen.” I flipped it over and started pulling at the other one — the one she was sitting on. My muscles were tensed; I knew this was a bad idea but I kept tugging at the cushion. Tug. Tug.
I didn’t even see her get up. The crook of her arm caught my neck and jerked me backward. I slammed into the couch — the wind knocked out of me. Before I could get my balance she shoved my hip down with her knee. I grabbed at the air stupidly. She pinned my shoulders down, intently watching what the panic was doing to my face. Then she suddenly let go and walked away. I lay there shaking uncontrollably. She locked the bathroom door with a click.
PHILLIP CALLED FIRST THING IN the morning.
“Kirsten and I were wondering if you’d had you a chance to think it over.”
“Can I ask one question?” I said, pressing a bruise on the back of my upper calf.
“Anything,” said Phillip.
“Is she gorgeous?”
“Will that impact your decision?”
“No.”
“Stunning.”
“What color hair?”
“Blond.”
I spit into a hanky. My globus had swollen in the night — I couldn’t swallow at all anymore.
“No, I haven’t decided.”
For the next three hours I lay in bed, my head where my feet should be. He was in love with a sixteen-year-old. I had spent years training myself to be my own servant so that when a situation involving extreme wretchedness arose, I would be taken care of. But the house didn’t function as it once had; Clee had undone years of careful maintenance. All the dishes were out and the general disarray was beyond carpooling — there was nothing between me and filthy animal living. So I peed in cups and knocked over one of the cups and didn’t clean it up. I chewed bread into a puree, moistening it with sips of water until I could slurp it down as a horse would. Only liquids could slip past the globus, and only with a swallowing scenario. The Black Stallion for bready water. For plain water I was Heidi, dipping a metal ladle into a well. It’s from the end, when she’s living in the Alps. For orange juice I was Sarge from the Beetle Bailey comic, where Sarge and Beetle Bailey go to Florida and drink all-you-can-drink orange juice. Glug, glug, glug. It worked because it wasn’t me, it was the character swallowing, offhandedly — just a brief moment in a larger story. There’s a scenario for every beverage except beer and wine because I was too young for alcohol when I invented this technique. I let my mouth hang open so the spit could roll out easily. Not just a sixteen-year-old, a stunning blond sixteen-year-old. She was driving him crazy. Someone came in the back door. Rick. The TV blasted on. Not Rick.