Forbidden Fruit (10 page)

“I really enjoy the womanly warmth of you, Annie,” he enthused. “Inside you ‘tis incredible.”

He didn’t just grunt and roll over. He verbalized the things he enjoyed.

He also encouraged me to say what I liked. I told him that when I was sexually aroused as now and failed to climax, I got
a sharp headache, which was often the prelude to a panic attack. I reached for my nightdress just in case.

“How can I help you, Annie? Like this?”

“Yes, the nipples can be very sexy, but here below”—I took his hand—“is the most sensitive spot in my entire body.”

He was anxious to do for me what I had done for him. He went on patiently, stroking my breast with one hand, searching for
the sensitive spot in my vagina with the other.

The minutes went by and, “Still nothing?”

I smiled. “If you want a rest.”

But he was a competitor. An hour passed. He varied his approach, going all over my body from head to toe, with his hands,
lips, tongue, fingertips, kissing me and enjoying me while I told him stories about my life and my family.

In the long soothing silences, I had the courage to remember horrendous things.

My husband resented me. He was a prowler and very handsome, like a black-haired Steve McQueen. When we started going out together,
he treated me so courteously I didn’t realize what a stud he was. His ego hung on his ability to perform sexually. He was
so attractive to beautiful women I often asked myself, “Why did he choose me?”

The answer when it came almost destroyed me.

One night of our courtship, we drove to a lonely beach. When I went to kiss him, he became enraged.

“Don’t be a slut.”

That was the first sign that we had problems.

“Are you crazy?” I said to him.

“Don’t do
that
, you hear?” he yelled, brushing me aside.

I had simply kissed him without his permission. Must men always be in charge? He had the Madonna-Whore complex. I was meant
to be unlike all other females: the one clean woman in his life.

That was not my idea of love. He was wanting to punish me for my own sexuality.

Eamonn interrupted my thoughts. “How are you feeling?”

This kind, considerate companion was wondering why women bothered to go to bed with men if sexual ecstasy was this hard. It
had never occurred to his clerical mind that a woman’s rhythms could be so different from a man’s.

“Never felt better,” I answered.

In the next hour, as I lay contentedly on my back and he stroked me all over, I felt safe to return to painful memories. I
needed to bring them into consciousness to be healed of them.

I found out that Steven had run his father’s candy store in Brooklyn from age nine. The store was full of girlie magazines.
It wasn’t Steven’s fault, but this did him no good at all. I had to be the one pure snowy thing in his life to make up for
the guilt he felt for all that smut. That was why if I showed the least sign of sensuousness, he raged at me.

He spent hours in the bathroom with glossy magazines, cutting up the women in them like a doctor doing surgery. Out of the
prize pieces he created his perfect woman—flawless eyes, nose, breasts, legs, thighs…

I was unworthy because my skin was not silky enough, my nose not perfectly shaped, I had freckles. When I examined myself
in the mirror, a pimple seemed bigger than my chin. This was another reason why I like dim soft lights and why I have to shower
in the dark.

Why didn’t I leave him? As well ask why a victim is transfixed by the rearing face of a cobra? The pious will never understand
that evil is more fascinating than good, that some people sin in order to go to hell. And with the same single-minded fervor
as the virtuous strive to get to heaven.

Often I thought murder was the holiest of deeds: my only defense against Steven would be to stab him in his sleep. But when
he saw that I might leave him, he rekindled the old romance with passionate sex. Soon, of course, he was back to withdrawing,
titillating while deliberately not fulfilling me. He was a torturer.

Eamonn, my dear kind Eamonn, was asking me whether I was any nearer to fulfillment, and to encourage him, I nodded yes. Was
not this true fulfillment, to be loved and not tormented?

After Steven’s baby was stillborn and I was suffering from panic attacks—I was down to eighty-nine pounds—he was once
more very sweet. He could afford to be because I was broken. I would not disgrace him or rebel against him.

Why did I not pour out my heart to Daddy? Because I was ashamed of my husband’s behavior. Because when you’re exposed to such
behavior you yourself become a special kind of victim; the high you get nearly blows your head off. And then the guilt, real
guilt, not the sort that Catholics mumble in confession, made me cringe in the dark of my shower to try to get clean.

Thus was sex associated with wickedness. I was well prepared for such a connection by my Catholic childhood. The sisters did
their best to convince me that I was evil, and that everything, especially the sexual, was a sin. This only made me fall head-over-heels
in love with the bad.

When Steven saw I was beginning to enjoy myself, he was even more horrific.

I had to move out. The only question was when and how? The answer: At a time and in a way that hurt him most.

I must have smiled involuntarily at the thought of hurting Steven, for Eamonn said, “Is it working, Annie?” and I said, lying,
but without malice, “Yes,” and that made him happy, which, in turn, made me happy.

One day, Steven slapped my face five times. The shame of being beaten is more humiliating in some ways than anything. You
feel more a thing, or, rather, a nothing. I knew that if I didn’t leave then, I would die.

That night, having made myself look pretty to deceive, I said, “What would you like for breakfast tomorrow, darling?” Sitting
on the end of the bed, he said, “I promise you I’ll never hurt you again.” I said, “That’s good. Now about breakfast?” “I’ll
change, darling.” I put my hand on his. “I know you’d like to, Steven.” “I can, Annie. Without you I’d die,” and I said, “I’m
so pleased you feel like that. Breakfast will be a celebration of our reunion.” He happily gave his order. Never have I enjoyed
deceiving anyone so much. As soon as he went to sleep, I packed. I spent half the night packing. In the early hours, I called
him a motherfucker for luck, laughed silently, and crept out of the house.

My sister Mary got me a job in Greenwich, in a boathouse by the sea. I looked after a darling kid called Joshua. I could just
jump off our dock to swim. I had the use of a boat and a bike, so I got really fit. Mary lived nearby with her little boy,
Bobby. We became really close, since she, like me, was in a busted marriage. I also went into therapy. It helped me choose
never to marry again or have a child but to develop myself as a human being.

After nine months, Steven tracked me down through a private eye. By then I was booked for Ireland. One reason I fell in love
with Eamonn straightaway was I hoped he would protect me from Steven if he appeared. Another was that I knew I could never
marry him.

Now I was in bed, naked with my defender, the man who saved me from utter worthlessness.

Eamonn was finally sensing success and I could not believe it myself. He stroked the nipples and they were hardening. He saw
the glazed look come into my eyes and the pool of perspiration in my navel. He felt the initial ripple of my belly and the
shudder and the final huge fleshquake; and he heard my strangled consummation-cry and was overwhelmed with wonder. He derived
more satisfaction from my pleasure than from his own. I had finally found, I thought gratefully, an unselfish lover.

When we had both recovered our breath, we nestled up to one another.

“When you started to react, Annie, I was scared that if you didn’t climax, you would claw me to death.”

“You are too valuable,” I said.

“If I can do that with my hands,” he said, in admiration of his own performance, “what’ll it be like when I get my act together?”

We both looked forward to a fantastic future.

In his hours-long apprenticeship, he had grasped that a woman might be slower to have an orgasm than a man but when it came
it was longer, of a greater intensity, and not so localized. A woman in love might prove to be a she-devil.

Exhausted, he dropped off to sleep in my arms about four while I was left with a puzzle. The men in my life who took sex lightly
and thought it no sin had nearly destroyed me. Eamonn, who, in his heart, believed it to be a grievous sin, was, through his
generosity, in the process of healing me.

In time, I, too, went to sleep and awoke through my inner alarm clock. If ever Mary found us together I would have to leave
Inch. It was six o’clock.

I woke Eamonn and watched him search for his pajama pants in the bottom of the bed. Bleary-eyed and dazed, he left me.

“Hey,” I called after him, “you’ve forgotten something.”

I put on my nightdress before gathering up the rest of his belongings. His pajama top was on the coverlet, his robe and slippers
were on the floor.

I opened his door and threw them in, taking aim so his slippers hit him on the head.

“
Next time
be more careful,” I said.

I was irritated that he was so irresponsible. He was, literally, leaving it to the woman to pick up the pieces. But for me,
he would have stayed in my bed till eight o’clock before walking out of my room half naked to give Mary a heart attack. He
would then have complained that she didn’t have his breakfast ready. He was a selfish sex-sodden brute.

“It’s fine for you,” he said. “You can sleep on, I have to go to work.”

“Good-
bye
,” I said, resisting the temptation to slam his door. One of us had to be sensible.

I went back to my room and there, on my bedside table, was the brandy glass. My trophy.

I flung open the windows so I could breathe more easily and washed out the glass. After showering and putting on eau de cologne,
I went back to bed.

What stage were we at?

The world was no more a stranger to me. I was kin to everything from pebble to star. I could die in an instant without one
regret, without feeling anything unfulfilled in me. I was in love.

And he? Could what he felt for me be love when it was based so much on self-deception? Maybe not, but it was a beginning.
Earlier, he had learned how good sex feels; tonight, he had tasted the inestimable joy of giving satisfaction to a woman.
That, I told myself, is a form of power, bed-power, that his Lordship will not easily renounce.

In sum: was he mine now once and for all?

I had learned that my Eamonn of today was not the Eamonn of tomorrow. My jazzman seldom played the same tune twice.

But a woman in love can still hope, can’t she?

W
E ESTABLISHED A PATTERN for our nights.

After dinner, we chatted by the fire; he said the long prayers he was so fond of as a kind of aphrodisiac before coming to
my room with his glass of brandy. We made love as part of my therapy. He had such a tender way of looking into my eyes, of
embracing and fondling me, he made me feel valued as I had never felt before. He always left well before breakfast, never
again forgetting his clothes.

One night, he said, “I’m not doing this just for carnal pleasure, Annie.” He thought deeply before adding, “You’re funny,
you’re playful and tempt me to do bad things, yet you can be very loving.”

I proved it there and then until:

“Annie, a terrible thing is happening to me.”

“Not a heart attack?”

“In a way. I think I’m falling in love with you.”

By day, I often went to Killarney where I helped Pat Gilbride and spoke a lot with Father John O’Keeffe, whom I grew to admire
more and more. Mostly, I stayed at Inch with Mary.

She loved cooking but hated domestic work. When I helped her clean the house, she was really grateful.

Mary, I learned, was a thorn in Eamonn’s side but so good at entertaining he could not bring himself to dismiss her.

Once, she told me, she had disgraced him badly.

She had been to Castleisland, north of Killarney, to visit Eamonn’s elderly cousin, Joan Browne, and got drunk. On leaving
at 2:00
A.M
., she crashed her Volkswagen through the gates of the police barracks, damaging the front door. The Guards rang the Bishop
to ask him to fetch her home.

I told Mary she sounded as if she enjoyed the incident.

“Indeed I did. Himself had to pay for all the damages, including my new car, and it did his reputation no good.” She winked at me. “He hates scandal, let me tell you.”

“I know,” I said, not sure if Mary was hinting or not.

“Oh,” she laughed, “the expression on his face next morning when he brought me coffee! He said, ‘You ought not to drink and
drive,’ and I said, ‘You neither.’ “

Dinner that night was something special. In view of Mary’s story (I learned later that she was also on Valium, prescribed
by her physician for a back problem—the combination was inflammable), Eamonn’s rewarding her with a huge cocktail was surprising.

After his prayers, he came with a glass of hot milk fortified by brandy. To relax him, I ribbed him about Mary’s escapade
at the Guards station.

“Drunk she was, fluthered out of her mind.”

“Drunk as a bishop,” I said, realizing that Eamonn, who could not stand boredom, needed to be entertained.

“I had drunk quite a bit, true, but I wasn’t legless.”

He had been in bed that night. He ate something before he picked her up in case the Guards smelled liquor on his breath.

Propped up on a pillow, with his body swaying and his hands going up-up-up, he said:

“When I reached Castleisland, there was Mary with a bloodied head, stretched out and vomiting all over herself. Joan Browne
and all my dear relatives were there to cheer me on, but really to gloat at my predicament.”

He shook his head and ran nervy hands through his hair before swigging brandied milk to erase the memory.