Tell No Lies (31 page)

"I think I've fallen in love with you."

She tensed visibly and turned her head back to the album. "Jack—"

"Don't say anything. There's something else." He grinned slightly. "I want to do it my way now."

She turned on her side and looked relieved that he hadn't mentioned love again.

"Really? And what's your way?"

He closed the album, carefully set it on the floor, and then gave her a lazy kiss. "Slow. Slow and easy. Like the Mississippi."

She seemed to like that answer. She closed her eyes and let him roll her over onto her back. When he climbed on top of her, she opened her eyes to him and he felt that he had fallen in, that he was sinking into the swirling eddy of their blackness. It startled him at first, the speed and the depths to which he fell. But he went willingly; he didn't even make an effort to save himself.

When he woke the second time, daylight had arrived. But it was still raining, thundering. He heard the water hitting the pavement on the street outside her windows; every once in a while a car drove slowly past. They were under the covers, snuggled as if in a cocoon.

"Jenny?" Jack whispered. She lay with her back to him. He wondered if she was awake yet.

"What?" She spoke softly, but he sensed impatience in her voice.

"Do you believe in soul mates? You know, that everyone has a soul mate somewhere?"

She was quiet and he waited for her to answer. When several moments had passed and she still hadn't responded, he brushed the hair from her back and traced his finger between her shoulder blades. He saw red marks on her back and for a moment felt ashamed, remembering how furious, almost violent, their lovemaking had been the first time.

"Jenny?" Had she drifted off? He caressed her arm and felt the muscles tense.

"Don't make this into more than what it was." Her voice was cold, unrecognizable. He removed his hand from her arm and leaned over, trying to see her face. "Yeah, I believe in soul mates—and yours is home right now wondering where you are while you're here fucking me."

Her expression matched her voice. Her eyes pierced the wall across from her, refusing to meet his. Was she playing some sort of sick joke on him?

"I'm not your soul mate, Jack," she continued. "We're just two people who have been dying to get into each other's pants since the day we met and we finally broke down and did it. It's as simple as that. Like two animals in heat." She finally turned to him, and he looked into her eyes, but nothing was there. He tried to gulp air, but it was as if every life-supporting mechanism in his body had shut down. "A couple fucks do not a soul mate make," she said.

The oxygen in the room continued to compress, and he felt as if he was about to pass out. He wanted her to stop talking, to let him catch his breath, but her cruelty seemed relentless. She sat up, and the sheet that had draped her body fell to her waist, exposing her breasts. He wanted to lean over and cover her nakedness, it seemed vulgar now, but she had rendered him incapable of movement, incapable of speech. He wished that she had rendered him deaf, too.
 

She reached up and held his chin in her hand, roughly, as if to guarantee he wouldn't look away. "You're a hopeless romantic, Jack Hilliard. You're the type of guy who thinks there has to be some cosmic purpose for everything." She released him and lay back down, rolling onto her stomach with her sinewy arms stretched out above her head, as if she were going to take a long nap. "The woman who loves you isn't here right now—so if that's who you're looking for, I'd suggest you get dressed and go home."

He stared at her bare back, and for a moment he thought of the raw intoxication he'd felt when he was inside her. And then he was outside himself, above them both, watching as they writhed on the mattress, twisting and pushing the sheet at their feet until it had fallen off the end of the bed.
Like animals in heat
. He shivered and his stomach began to spasm violently. He sprang up and into the bathroom across the hall, where he fell in front of the toilet and began to vomit. At first it was only the sandwiches she'd made for them, and the wine, but as he knelt there, groaning with each spasm—not from the contractions of his stomach muscles but from the pain of her words—he began to lose it all. All the lunches, all the late-night dinners at Newman, every cup of coffee, erupted from him. And like a volcano finally erupting after resting dormant for many years, it wouldn't stop. With each convulsion, he felt as if something were reaching into the depths of his stomach. He continued to lose everything else, too. Every meal that Claire had lovingly prepared for him: the fried eggs and bacon that she made him every Sunday morning, the carrot cake—his favorite—that she baked from scratch every November for his birthday. The pretzels and popcorn he and Michael devoured together in the bleachers at Busch Stadium; the burnt Toll House cookies the kids baked for him; the chocolate-covered ants Michael made at camp one year and dared him to eat; the watery Kool-Aid on the deck; the cotton candy that Jamie insisted on sharing with him at the carnival each summer. It all came up against his will, burning his esophagus with contempt as it made its journey. He was helpless to stop it. When it finally ebbed, when he thought at last it was over, he vomited one last time and imagined that he had expelled his heart, that it floated there in the bowl below him, red and withered, amidst the debris of his life.
 

He didn't know how long he crouched there, how much time had passed before he heard the creak of the bedsprings and assumed that Jenny had stood up. He lifted his heavy head to listen, but he didn't hear footsteps. Summoning the energy to pull his heavy body off the tiled floor, he stood up and flushed the toilet. His vision blacked out briefly, and he steadied himself against the sink until he could see again. He turned on the cold water and hovered over the sink, taking care not to look at his reflection in the mirror. He rinsed his mouth, splashed some water on his face, and after only a second of contemplation grabbed her toothbrush, squeezed some paste onto it, and brushed his teeth. When he was finished he almost tossed it into the wastebasket, but a touch of orneriness caused him to replace it in its holder.

Gathering strength, he returned to the bedroom. She was in the same position on the bed as he'd left her, but she lay uncovered this time, the sheet and comforter underneath her. One of her cats, the Siamese one, was curled up in the crook of her arm, as if it had been lying in wait, ready to take Jack's place. He leaned against the doorway.

"Did you write that speech ahead of time?" he asked. His throat was raw, his voice barely audible.

When she didn't respond, didn't even move, he went to her side of the bed and sat on the edge. His hip brushed against hers. He grabbed her shoulder and rolled her over; the cat, disturbed, pounced onto the floor. She didn't resist but she didn't help him, either. Her body was limp and spiritless, but the intensity of her eyes almost punctured his resolve.
 

"I said, did you write that speech ahead of time?" His voice was stronger.

She shook her head slightly.

He knew then he could place his palm on her skin and run it gently along the contours of her body while he began to kiss her, and she would let him. He knew he could climb on top of her and split her open. And he knew this would probably be the last chance he would have to lie down with her again and feel her nakedness against him. But something in him had changed; rather, something in him had returned during the time he'd spent bent in the bathroom, retching until there was nothing left except the acrid taste of bile and grief.

So instead, he took her chin in his hand, as she had done to him, but more gently, and said, "Well, I don't believe it. I will never believe what you said."

The rain was still falling steadily when he stepped outside. He didn't bother to button his coat; at this point it didn't matter to him if he got wet. He walked in the rain to the stoop adjacent to her place. He sat on the top step and raised his face to the sky. He wished the rain could wash away everything he'd done wrong. It didn't take long for the cold water streaming down his cheeks and neck to soak under the collar of his coat and through to his clothes. He looked down at his feet. The rain had drenched his shoes and socks, too, and the exposed bottom of his pant legs. Chilled, he began to shiver. He gazed out into the street and watched the morning's increasing traffic. He thought about his next step. Not his next step with Jenny, or his next step with Claire, or even how to get to Jefferson City in dry clothes so that he wouldn't arrive late for the seminar. He thought only about how he would get from the stoop to his car in the garage downtown. Whatever happened after that struck him as beyond his ability to comprehend. He tried not to, but he couldn't help but think of her again, of both of them, as they struggled on her bed, desperately trying to satiate the hunger that all their willpower over the past years couldn't make go away.
 

As if she knew what he'd been thinking, and she'd been assigned the task of reminding him of what she'd done to him, how she'd broken him, she appeared at her front door. She didn't see him at first. She opened her umbrella as she stepped out. She had on a raincoat, but he could tell from her pumps and her styled hair that she was heading to Newman. She had a small overnight bag slung over her shoulder. He realized that he'd been sitting there in the rain for quite some time, long enough, at least, for her to have showered and dressed for work.

She spotted him when she turned around to lock the deadbolt on her door. She stood motionless, her right hand still holding the key in the lock. He could tell from the startled expression on her face that she hadn't prepared herself for the possibility of seeing him again just then. They stared at each other silently.

A loud clap of thunder interrupted their standoff and she jumped. She looked down at her hand holding the key as if she didn't understand that it belonged to her. She slipped the key from the door and dropped her key chain into her purse. Without looking at him again, she walked down the steps and crossed the street to her car, taking care to avoid puddles. He waited for her to look at him one last time, to offer him a ride downtown, even though he knew he would refuse. But she didn't do either.

After she had driven off, he began the long walk in the rain to his car. Calling a cab just wasn't an option.

The clock on the dash read 11:52 A.M. when he exited the interstate onto Route 54. He'd reach Jeff City in a half hour, but he worried that he wouldn't be able to concentrate on what anyone was saying or, worse, that he'd get sick again. Before he'd left St. Louis, he'd called from his car and left a message that he'd be later than he thought, using the car and the rain as an excuse. He knew it really didn't matter if he made it on time, but he was afraid that if he didn't call ahead, they'd notice his absence and call his office looking for him. On his way out of the city, after he'd made certain Claire was gone, he'd stopped by the house to change clothes. He knew it was foolish because there was a good chance a neighbor might see him, and it would most certainly get back to Claire. But he wasn't thinking clearly enough to cover his tracks adequately.

When he arrived at the seminar, he sat in the comfort of the small, dry space of his car and tried to compose himself. He thought that maybe he should wait until they took their lunch break before joining them; maybe then his entrance wouldn't be so noticeable. Even better, maybe he should just turn around and go home. The thought of sleep seduced him, and he wanted nothing more than to be in his own bed, alone in the quiet house, where he could slip into a dream, where everything made sense.

He leaned back against the headrest and waited until the windows had completely fogged up. And then, when he could no longer see out and he knew no one could see in, he started to cry, releasing the surging grief that had built up on the long drive. When he closed his eyes, he kept seeing Claire, the first time they'd ever made love, on a blanket under the stars in the middle of a high school football field near the university. He thought of her fair skin, damp from their mingled sweat, how it glistened in the blue light of the moon.

He had an overwhelming desire to just tell her what he'd done, just skip all the pain they'd both have to go through and get immediately to the forgiveness. He longed so badly just to have that forgiveness, to tell her it had nothing to do with her, and have her know that, believe that. But he knew it wouldn't be like that. He couldn't skip the pain, and he knew she'd never grant him the forgiveness he so desperately needed. He was certain that if she ever found out, their marriage would be over.
 

"It's the ultimate intimate act, to let a man actually enter your body, become one with you, and to let him watch you, with all your inhibitions down," she had explained years ago, when she'd been questioning the casual sex lives of her friends. "How could you even want to do that with someone you didn't love deeply?"

"I guess you just get horny sometimes," Jack had answered then. Now the words seemed so flippant; she'd been trying to tell him something important to her. She hadn't been offended, but she had remained serious. She told Jack that adultery was the one thing she could never forgive, even if she wanted to.

"I couldn't bear the thought of you experiencing that connection with another woman."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THERE WERE NO messages from Jenny when he returned to his empty office at eight that evening, as there had been that Friday morning in the spring. There were no attempts to reach him, no entreaties to pretend that nothing had happened. He'd probably never hear from Jenny Dodson again, despite her pleas for him not to treat her differently. She wouldn't even give him the chance.

The call came at ten on Sunday night. He'd been struck low with a fever most of the weekend. When the phone rang, he knew it was her. Maybe she'd gone away for the weekend. Maybe she'd finally come to her senses.  He didn't even stop to consider that his house was the last place she'd try to reach him, if she tried to reach him at all.