Joanna gave her young friend a smirk. She wasn’t exactly a whiz in the kitchen, largely because she regarded cooking as one more symbol of female servitude. But she said, “Okay, I’ll help you.”
She actually wasn’t much help, and mostly she just watched Vanessa efficiently prepare a fine meal of spaghetti with meat sauce, a salad, and garlic bread. Jack peeked into the kitchen every so often, experiencing a kind of cognitive dissonance as he watched his ex-wife and his current lover becoming fast friends–or, at least, tolerating each other.
Almost immediately after dinner was over, however, Jack abruptly got up from the table and said, “I have to do some studying,” and locked himself in his den, on the other side of the hallway from the living room.
Vanessa gave Joanna a little sigh of apology on behalf of her lover. The two women quietly cleaned up after dinner, then realized that some further discussion was needed. They poured out some drinks–the very same Amaretto that Jack had served her on that memorable night of her deflowering–and sat down on the sofa.
“What did he mean by ‘studying’?” Joanna said. “What does he need to study?”
Vanessa went into a very brief description of how the two of them had met at that class on Hemingway.
Joanna chortled. “Jack the college boy! That’s just too funny.”
“He’s taking the course very seriously,” Vanessa said. “He wants to get that degree.”
“I’m sure he does. It’s a matter of pride, I imagine. But you know, dear–”
“I know what you’re going to say,” Vanessa interrupted. “I’m too young, or Jack’s too old. It’s one of those May-December things, we’ll never have a long-term relationship, and on and on and on.”
“Yes, that’s just what I was about to say. Maybe you’ll scoff, but I do think you’re a little too young to understand how these things work. Think of it: when you’re forty, Jack will be sixty-five. Is that what you want?”
“That’s way far in the future! I’m not thinking about that. Right now, we’re doing great. He–he loves me, and I love him.” Vanessa said that last sentence with a kind of mulish certainty.
Joanna knew she had to tread carefully. “That’s wonderful, my dear, but it’s all a matter of whether it will last. Let’s hope so.”
In an effort to change the subject, Vanessa said, “I still don’t understand why you and Jack split up. He’s said so little about it.”
“I don’t think I understand it either,” Joanna said wearily. “Was he just tired of me? Something happened in the last few years of our marriage. We started arguing over little things–nothing at all, really. It was so frustrating! And once that kind of thing starts, you develop a lot of scar tissue that makes it really hard for you to remember how much you love each other.”
“I hope it wasn’t . . . something in the bedroom.”
“Actually no. We were always pretty compatible in that way. In fact, Jack taught me a lot of things, and got me to like things that I didn’t think I’d like.”
Vanessa gave her characteristic blush. “Do you mean–rear entry?”
“That’s one of them. He certainly has a taste for that.” She extended a hand and placed it on Vanessa’s arm. “I hope Jack didn’t . . . force you in any way?”
“Good Lord, no! He’d never do that. He’s always been the perfect gentleman.”
“You’re probably right about that.” Whatever deficiencies Jack had, lack of respect for women wasn’t one of them. “It’s funny,” she went on. “I imagine Jack has more, um, potency than even the randy boys you’ve no doubt had to fend off on campus. Have you found that to be the case?”
Vanessa fell into an embarrassed silence. It didn’t take Joanna long to figure out why.
“Don’t tell me,” she said in a low, almost awed voice, “you were a virgin.”
Vanessa nodded rapidly.
“Omigod,” Joanna breathed. “Was it okay–that first time?”
“It was heavenly!” Vanessa cried. “I mean, of course it hurt, both front and back–I expected that. But–”
“He did it both ways that first night?” Joanna exploded, outraged on behalf of the inexperienced young woman. “That’s way above and beyond the call of duty! You really oughtn’t to have let him do that.”
“It was fine–in fact, it was great. He’s really good at, you know, making a girl happy.”
“Yes, I’ll give him that much credit. But still–”
Once again Vanessa wanted to change the subject. “Joanna, I have to ask you something, and I hope you don’t get offended. And I also hope you can level with me.”
“What is it?” Joanna said, suddenly suspicious.
“Did you come here . . . with the expectation of getting back together with him?”
Joanna looked long and hard at the other woman. For all her naïveté, she seemed to have a quick intuitive understanding of human relationships. Maybe it’s just a natural instinct in women.
“Well, okay, I may have had a fleeting thought–really a fantasy–of something along those lines. But even before I knew about you, I realized that was almost certainly not going to happen. There’s just too much bad blood between me and him.”
“Maybe he feels differently now.”
“I doubt it. He couldn’t wait to get out of my sight tonight.”
“Oh, he was just startled by your being here. I’m sure he’ll come around.”
“I don’t think so, dear. And I don’t expect it.”
They left it at that. Some hours later, as Joanna trudged upstairs and, after a wistful glance at the master bedroom, went into the guest bedroom to settle down for the night, Vanessa came to bed herself, finding Jack there reading a book.
She wasn’t going to let him off easy. Glaring at him, she snapped, “You could have been a little more civil to the woman you were married to for twenty years!”
“Jesus, Vanessa!” he pleaded. “I almost jumped out of my skin when I saw her! I literally haven’t laid eyes on her for almost three years. How do you expect me to react?”
“She’s hurting, Jack! Her boyfriend mistreated her, and now her ex-husband acts as if she has the plague. I hope you’re a little nicer to her over the coming days.”
“I’ll try–but I swear to you, Vanessa, she can’t stay more than a few days. I think I’ll go crazy if she does.”
“We’ll see about that,” Vanessa said sharply, flouncing into bed and giving Jack only a token kiss before turning her back to him and going to sleep.
The next morning, as the three of them were having breakfast, there was more discussion of logistical details.
“You don’t have any stuff with you?” Vanessa asked. “Not even a change of clothes?”
“No,” Joanna said. “I didn’t think of it–I just wanted to get the hell out of there.”
“I don’t think my clothes will fit you, but I could lend you some clean underwear. You’ll want to get your things from your boyfriend’s apartment, won’t you?”
Joanna sighed. “Yes, I suppose so. I dread the thought of confronting him, though.”
Jack grudgingly put in a word. “I could help you, Joanna. I wouldn’t feel good about letting you go back to that place if that bastard is around.”
Joanna, still on edge, glared at him. “Oh, you think I’m some sort of weak, helpless female that needs a big, strong man to protect her? I can take care of myself, buster!”
“I was only trying to help,” Jack muttered.
Vanessa made a pacifying gesture. “Joanna, dear, maybe he’s right. Men are good for some things, you know–like being pack mules!”
The two women laughed nervously while Jack sulked. “I guess you have a point,” Joanna said.
“You can put your stuff in the garage,” Vanessa offered.
“Can’t we just rent a storage unit?” Jack whined.
The young woman gave him an exasperated look. “Jack, darling, it’ll be ever so much more convenient for her to have her things right here on the spot. There’s plenty of room in the garage–you never park your car there anyway.”
So that’s how it went. Joanna got her no-good boyfriend to agree to vacate the premises while she gathered up her belongings. It took several trips to bring them all over to the house, and with each load Jack developed a sense of foreboding that his ex-wife was preparing for a lengthy stay, regardless of her earlier promises.
And, as the days extended to a full week with Joanna seemingly making little effort to find a new place of her own, Jack’s agitation increased. He tried to give Joanna some slack, since she was obviously depressed and traumatized by what had happened to her; but with each passing hour he sensed her presence causing complications with his relationship with Vanessa.
It was on a Friday night that Jack tried to make love to Vanessa–but she came close to rebuffing him.
“Jack!” she cried as he tugged at her nightgown in a fruitless effort to get it off. “Joanna’s right in the next room!”
“I know that!” he spat back in a low whisper. “But, Jesus, Vanessa, we haven’t been intimate for the whole time she’s been here. I can’t take it anymore!”
“Well,” she said, finally allowing him to strip her, “we’ll have to be quiet. It’ll upset her if she hears us. Can you do that?”
“I suppose,” Jack said with very bad grace, since he enjoyed bellowing like an ox when he came.
When they got down to action, they weren’t quite as silent as they’d hoped, and there were a fair number of moans and groans as Jack in particular worked off his week-long celibacy with several forays into Vanessa’s various orifices.
The next morning, Vanessa came down to find Jack busily preparing breakfast in the kitchen, with Joanna sitting at the small kitchen table. Jack was fond of whipping up bacon, eggs, and toast on weekends–it was just about the only thing he was good at preparing, and he took an exaggerated pride in it. But as Vanessa sat down next to Joanna at the table, she noticed that the older woman was in distress: her eyes were staring right at Jack’s back and a look of anguish covered her face.
“Are you all right, dear?” Vanessa asked.
Joanna looked up and gave her young friend the most pathetic grimace imaginable.
She heard us, Vanessa said to herself.
Her heart ached for Jack’s ex. She tried to imagine herself in Joanna’s shoes: forced to take lodging as a guest in the house she’d lived in for well over a decade, and now compelled to visualize her former spouse getting it on with the woman who had taken her place. How horrible she must be feeling!
“Joanna, come here,” Vanessa ordered, practically dragging the other woman into the living room and setting her on the sofa.
“You still love him, don’t you?” Vanessa said softly.