They were waiting for their mother, his wife. After . . . after they, after he, had raped her — there could be no other word, surely — Nessa had shooed them out, remaining with her mother, the victim, awake but crying, breathless, shocked. Two minutes later his daughter had joined them, saying Sherry was in the bathroom, that she sounded like she was sick. Vanessa had remained at the door until she heard the noise of the shower, the sounds of her mother climbing into it. That was ten minutes ago.
Ten minutes, eleven now, for Neal to drag his soul through hell. Eleven minutes, twelve, to conclude that there were no excuses, that he had sold them all for one mindless fuck.
Yes, no matter what happened, no matter how much they fought to remain a family, to realize their mutual destinies together, this would always be between them. There would be no escaping it, no explaining it. There it would be, ever present. He cursed for the umpteenth time, and stubbed out the cigarette.
A sound, and they all sat up. Neal’s heart quickened, his breath came short. Their eyes all met, for half-a-second only. Footsteps. On the stairs. In the hall.
Sherry Ford came into the room, the dark cold room still hazy with cigarette smoke. Her walk was slow, but steady. The bath robe she wore — not the old mouse one but a bright yellow terrycloth — came to her knees and hung open, its ties dangling. She paused in the doorway and exhaled a weary sigh, lifting her arms to secure the towel that wrapped her hair, and the motion, and the posture, filled Neal’s head with a thousand conflicting thoughts. As she moved into the room — seemingly in slow motion, still tucking away the towel, her arms spreading the robe so that he could see, so they could all see, the heavy breasts beneath, the pale stomach, the dark triangle beneath — she seemed not one woman but many, a cubist nude in motion.
In her freshness, her just-washed cleanliness, she was the girl he married. The shy but wonderfully sexy girl, with no children yet, no ties, only her husband. She was youth and spring and adventure, long, exciting nights, warm, sleepy days.
With her tired eyes, her pained movements, her deep sigh, she was an old and experienced whore, a professional, a knowing hand. A woman who had seen all and done all, and merely needed a place to rinse afterward.
Her shamelessness, the middle-aged, less-than-perfect body she exposed to them made her trashy and wicked, yet also a victim, a sufferer. More sinned against than sinning, for all her uncaring nakedness. Modesty was gone, destroyed, shattered.
But most of all, so powerfully he could not explain it, she seemed like Sherry — the woman he married, the mother of his children. Uncannily, everything about her — her beauty, her haggardness, her exposure, the droplets of water on her legs, the bloodshot eyes — indicated that she was the victor, that she had somehow won over them all. Neal realized with a start that this woman, this middle-aged woman, a woman he had nearly left, had engaged them all. Had centered all their attention, had focused all their lusts. She had taken them all on, pleasured them, satisfied them, and walked away from it. In the insanity of the moment he had argued that all his slow, steady fucking, all his restraint was somehow for her benefit — that she was lost and needed to be rescued, retrieved. But there was nothing pathetic about this figure, nothing to be pitied. She was up, she was able, and she was theirs. Even more palpably: they were hers. Her walk, though slow and weary, was confident nevertheless.
She stopped in the middle of the room, massaging her hair through the towel, her large breasts shaking and swaying with the motion. He studied the two jostling curves and the valley between and realized, incredibly, that he wanted her again.
“I hope you won’t argue,” she said, her voice small but strong, and steadier than it had been for days, “when I say I need a drink.”
He was on his feet in an instant and holding her.
“I think we could all use one.”
***
Then there was the old joke about Chinese fortune cookies. How you could add “in bed” to each fortune to find new significance, how it never failed.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES ARE WAITING FOR YOU . . . IN BED
DO NOT FEAR TO TRY NEW THINGS . . . IN BED
SLOW AND STEADY DETERMINATION WILL BRING YOU GREAT REWARDS . . . IN BED
Neal turned the possibilities over in his mind while he studied his wife, his shaken and weary but still beautiful, oh so beautiful, wife.
Sherry was a wonderful wife and a caring mother, in bed.
Sherry provided for them, nursed them, fed them all, in bed.
Sherry loved her husband and her children better than anyone ever could, in bed.
In spite of himself, he smiled. It fit. It made sense.
She sat in his chair, lazily, but alert. Her legs were crossed, her feet muffled in ridiculously fuzzy slippers. She rocked one foot absently in thought, held her bell-shaped glass carelessly in a slightly shaking hand.
One glass of wine, she had wanted. Just one, to “steady her nerves.” Neal had fixed it for her, the best Cabernet in his closet. He had then downed a double of gin himself, and poured another. Vanessa (allowed only one drink by her mother) had taken a brandy, Josh a beer. Three beers, in fact. He had brought them two-fisted from the refrigerator. But his wife had only that one glass of red wine, and had only taken a sip or two. She popped no pills, she smoked no cigarettes. Her eyes were sharp in the dimness.
Neal’s own eyes, he was sure, were glazed by now, his features blank and stupid. Thirty minutes of questions, of details dredged up from years before, and from two hours ago. Through it all he had watched his wife, waiting for her to flinch, to crack, to break down. There was none of the lying, the evasion, the intermixing of anger with shame that had accompanied his confession about Melanie, and none of the accusatory looks and rending tones from his wife. So calm was she, so obviously in control, that he began to fear for her reason. Surely they had all pushed her too far; she could not possibly cope with it all.
But there she sat, almost motionless, seemingly serene. She took a sip of wine with unfeasible casualness.
“So,” she said, her round, clear voice filling the room, “you’ve been partners, you’ve been having sex for four years?”
Both Josh and Vanessa nodded mutely.
“Four years?”
“Yes,” said Vanessa. She looked as though she were going to choke, and Josh looked worse.
“When, for God’s sake? Where? No, don’t answer that.”
Sherry’s eyes fell on Neal.
“And you and your father, you’ve been partners for two days,” she said to Vanessa.
Again her daughter nodded silently.
“That’s all,” Neal offered.
“That’s more than enough, Neal,” she replied.
He shut up.
“So . . . the baby isn’t Brad’s, it’s Josh’s,” Sherry said next, smashing new bulwarks in Neal’s already flooded mind.
He hadn’t thought of it. He hadn’t had time to think of it, really. But here he was, worrying about his wife’s sanity when she was sharper than he was, thinking more clearly. My God, his daughter was pregnant with his son’s child — the mind boggled, rebelled, refused to accept.
The guilty pair nodded next to him — they made no excuses, asked for no mercy. There was something in their mother’s tone that forbade guile or subterfuge, even delay.
“Mmm-hmm. So, what is Brad, then?”
They looked at each other, Neal’s daughter and her lover, his son. Vanessa spoke up:
“He’s just . . . someone who liked me enough to marry me — well, to say he would marry me, even though the baby isn’t his. I’ve known him since the tenth grade, he always liked me.”
“Mmm-hmm. Does he know whose baby it is? Please tell me he doesn’t –”
“No, he doesn’t.”
Sherry sighed.
“Well, that’s something anyway. So you’re going to marry him ’cause he’s a pushover, ’cause he likes you a lot. Do you like him? I know you don’t love him. I know you’d cheat on him, you told me so. Well –” She laughed, actually laughed. “Obviously you will.”
Both kids laughed, the laughter of the condemned.
“Um . . . he’s okay,” said Vanessa, making a pained face. “He’s steady, he’s nice, he’s reliable. He’ll do what I tell him to. No, I don’t really like him.”
“But you’re gonna marry him. And what happens in two or three years? What happens when you’re twenty-one, twenty-two, with a toddler on your hands? No more clubs, no more partying, just the guy you married to look at?”