Keeping Secrets (2 page)

For Emma, who had been hungry for a multitude of things for most of her life, had discovered that more than anything what she wanted to do was cook, not just cook but
cook
. Her dream was to leave her junior-college English post forever, to do more than her part-time catering, to do it right: apprentice in restaurants in Italy and France and return home a chef. And now she was standing on the edge of her dream. She had finished summer school. In a few weeks she’d be cooking in a kitchen in Rome, then Provence.

“No,” he said, “I have to stay here. Then we’ll talk about traveling, before I go back to furniture again.”

“It’s not that easy to go back,” she had answered.

“No,” he had said, giving her a long look, “not for some things.”

* * *

Jesse stirred again, murmured, groaned. He smiled, still asleep, dreaming as the rain raged.

Emma watched his face. And about whom, my good man, my dear husband, are you dreaming? Who makes you stiffen and grow erect? Your ever-loving wife, Emma Fine Tree? Or Caroline, your lover, that bitch?

I’m getting out of here, she said to herself then, easing up and reaching for her robe. Lying here lonely but not alone is no way to spend a perfectly good rainy morning.

As Emma shut the bedroom door behind her, Jesse Tree opened one brown eye and grinned. He wore a very amused expression for a man whose wife had just left him in bed with a magnificent erection.

* * *

Emma reached out of the tub to tune the bright-red radio. Her favorite country-and-western station was fading. She couldn’t make out which it was, his busted tires, busted wallet or busted heart, that was causing the singer such pain.

She wondered: If the portable radio fell into the tub, would she fry? Would her silver fillings bounce radio waves off the mountains over to the Pacific thirty miles away? Would her lover, for, yes, she too had one, though Jesse didn’t know it, would her lover on his sailboat bouncing on the waves read her last electric gasps on his radio:
Mayday, Mayday
?

Suddenly the bathroom door flew open and in strode Jesse wrapped in the paisley silk robe she’d given him for Christmas. Circling around his head as he whistled were the tinkling notes of a Vivaldi melody.

Jesse loved baroque music. It wound Emma up tighter than a tick.

She splashed one hand in the water and waited for the question he would ask in his ever-so-polite classical-radio-announcer voice, his tones plummy and full as if the words Neville
Marriner and St. Martin-in-the-Fields
wouldn’t melt in his mouth: “You don’t mind if I turn this down, do you?”

But this time he didn’t say that. Instead his full lips, pursed into a sweet brownness like a fig, changed their tune, segueing neatly into the lament of being busted flat in New Orleans that was playing on the radio.

Emma narrowed her eyes at his wide silken back, the interlocking figures of the paisley fitting together like pieces of a puzzle or gourds making love. What was up with him this morning? Jesse, who was whistling harmony now, hated country music.

“Excuse me,” he said, lifting the toilet seat and relieving himself in a hot, splashing stream. He dropped the seat again before running cold water in the sink. One thing for which she was grateful—growing up with two sisters, Jesse did know that the proper position of the toilet seat was
down
.

He brushed his perfect teeth, then patted hot water on his cheeks and neck, on the parts where he shaved around and under his beard.

Emma stared at his reflection in the mirror.

She loved the ritual of shaving; it was a peek behind the door marked
MEN
. That intense act with a deadly sharp razor on the face, so close to the jugular, how did it feel, that singular act reeking of soap and testosterone? How did it feel, pitching instead of catching? Flexing muscles, slapping towels in locker rooms, all that bullshit and bravado, how did it feel?

Then his brown eyes caught her blue ones on the shiny face of the mirror. Her gaze could run, slipping off the edges, but it was already too late to hide. She knew that he knew what she was thinking.

Suddenly she was aware of her nakedness—covered only with a thin blanket of iridescent and now cooling bubbles. It reminded her of her other nakednesses, stolen embraces, things she didn’t want Jesse to look into her eyes and know.

Play busy, she thought, falling back on the posturing that came naturally to a Southern girl. A study in nonchalance, she turned on the hot water and switched on the Jacuzzi.

“So, how were Clifton and Maria?”

Emma’s answer, just as she’d practiced it, was cool as lemonade on a summer afternoon. “Just great. Maria and I took a drive up into the hills, found a little vineyard we’d never seen before.”

“Do some tasting? Anything good?”

Emma nodded. “A dessert wine I loved.”

“Since when do you like sweet wines?” He paused a beat. “But your tastes have changed so, I don’t know what you like anymore.”

Emma opened her mouth and closed it again. Be careful, she warned herself. This bathroom is laced with mines. Watch where you step.

Jesse turned back to the mirror now. He was letting the moment go. She couldn’t believe that—Jesse retreating, Jesse who was so clever at closing in for the kill. What did he suspect about the weekend she told him she’d spent in Berkeley? What did he know? But he was concentrating now on his neck, the silvery razor flashing. Then once again he caught her reflected eye. He grinned and touched his nose.

“Wanna trade?”

It was an old joke.

Jesse’s nose was almost as broad as it was long, with a rounded Santa Claus tip. Hers, like her father Jake’s, was long and thin with a little hump. Night and day, black and white, they had chosen their noses to joke about.

“Sure, I’ll trade.” She kept it light. What did he have on his mind or up his gold-and-red-paisleyed sleeve?

She watched her husband pat himself dry, and then he turned to face her. He leaned back on the redwood vanity of his creation; in its doors graceful irises supported milk-glass dragonflies. She escaped his gaze and fiddled for a moment, letting a little of the water out of the tub. Yes, two could play this game. In fact, two were. Except that Jesse’s affair with Caroline had been on the table for a while. She was still holding her lover hidden in her hand, a trump card whose value she was unsure of. She reached for a can of shaving cream, shook it and pressed the button, releasing a cloud of foam onto her fingertips. Then she lifted her long right leg and began to paint it soft white.

Jesse was leaning over her. “Here,” he said, taking the razor from her, “let me do that.”

Emma looked up at her husband standing over her. The sharp steel glittered. A shadow crossed her clear blue eyes.

“I’m not going to cut you, woman.” He chuckled and reached for her calf. “Now give me that long pretty leg.”

Her grin looked silly as she did as she was told.

Jesse pulled his robe around his middle and settled on the edge of the tub. Then in slow careful strokes he pulled the razor up and up again, pausing to dunk it now and then, leaving little foam islands in the warm bubbles.

He stroked gingerly over the dead-white scar on her left shin, a testament to the first time she had locked herself in the bathroom to scrape away her adolescent fuzz. “Emma, you open this door this minute, do you hear?” Rosalie Fine had cried. When she finally did, she’d left behind a bathtub full of bloody water and a six-inch piece of shin skin curled up just like a potato peel.

“Would you relax?” Jesse goosed her in the ribs beneath the water.

Gradually she did. She leaned back against the end of the tub and closed her eyes. She listened to the man on the radio sing of old love and new tricks and wondered what Jesse was up to.

When he finished with her legs, he started on her toes, lathering them with soap and kneading, massaging, finding tender places he hadn’t explored in ages.

She wondered, as she stretched even longer, her limbs liquid like warm maple syrup, what had happened to the times when they used to play like this before making love.

Now he was sucking her toes. Nibbling. Tickling. Licking in between. A hotline of electricity zapped straight up her legs, making her damp in a way that the tubful of water couldn’t.

The next thing she knew, he had lifted her up and out and had wrapped a blue bath sheet around her. He was rubbing softly through the nubby cotton, drying and warming her at the same time. But gently, judiciously, thinking about what he was doing. He concentrated on the hollow just above the flare of her hips, the tender spots behind her knees. Now he was rubbing her temples, the top of her head as if she were a pup. She tried to fight it, wanting to stay in that distant place from Jesse where she’d been so long, that place which neither gave her pleasure nor caused her pain, but the momentum had already carried her too far to catch herself. She was falling. She was done for. She was gone.

Emma turned and pressed herself full against him. She smelled the minty fragrance the shaving cream had left on his warm neck. She nuzzled there, her tongue tracing the contours of the little scoop beneath his Adam’s apple.

“Jesse,” she breathed.

“Yes, babe,” he answered and lifted her once more. He carried her quickly past the bright-blue lacquered stairs, through the long living room, back into their bedroom, where he gently lowered her to the now-cold bed.

Outside, the rain had revved up, gathered force and speed. This was a storm now, banking against the tall windows that looked out across the valley to the tops of the mountains on the other side. But the mountains were invisible as gray sheets of rain filled the air. Naked, Emma shivered.

Heat was only a touch away. Jesse threw aside his robe and pulled her to him. He gently stretched her out full length. Nose to nose, her feet atop his, their toes pumped up/down, up/down, in a love calisthenic from the good old days, now almost forgotten.

He nibbled at her bottom lip, then let her suck his in. How long had it been, she couldn’t remember, since he had moved over and let her do what she did so well? Best kisser in her class, even when she’d been caught by Rosalie practicing her technique in a church park the summer after the sixth grade. Kissing was an art, she thought, a talent. It could be developed, but you had to have a God-given gift for it, like painting, or sculpting, or writing, or music, to understand all its shades and nuances and do it well.

Which she did, but Jesse hardly ever let her. In that, as in all things, he wanted to direct. It was his mouth over hers setting the rhythm, his tongue pushing hers back. Why could she never convince him that the appeal was in the play:
Your turn, kiss, mine, I’ll raise you, suck, I’ll see you, rub, ours.

But this time his mouth was listening, attentive. He let her lead, and then he answered. Once again, his mouth received. Then as she began to rock her full length against his, slowly looking for the places that felt the best, he followed. He was letting her dance.

Around and around they whirled, twirling in tandem, the rhythm and the posture ever changing. The motion and the heat grew and grew and grew, and then he found her center, and he nuzzled there, suckled there, drew it all out of her, pulled as if he were a magician, pulled all the vibrating light right out from between her legs. He dangled everything she’d ever been or wanted to be on the tip of his tongue. Then he raised his head for a moment and lowered his wet mouth on hers. She could smell her heat and taste it. He whispered, teased as his fingers replaced his mouth, then the insinuating question, “Now? Now?”

When finally she could resist no longer, she grasped him, pulled him down into her, and answered, “Yes, damnit, now!”

It was good, oh God, it was
so
good. She couldn’t remember when it had last been like this.

She was soaring, lights and colors flashing behind her lids. The rain outside was pummeling, falling so hard she couldn’t hear Jesse. She knew he was speaking, but she couldn’t make out his meaning.

And then she did.

“Is this how he does it to you? Huh? Is this the way you like it with him?”

Her blue gaze snapped open into his brown one. His face was contorted with rage.

“Jesse?” She heard her voice, soft and small, coming from the far-off place where she’d been. She sounded like a little girl.

“Yes, bitch?”

He wasn’t kidding. Something had gone very wrong. She tried to turn, to lift herself out from under him, but his big hands, strong, beautifully articulated sculptor’s hands, grabbed her by the shoulders and pinned her down.

The long slow stroking had become a whole different thing. He pumped raggedly into her now. Their pelvic bones clashed and pounded. Her pale skin was going to be marked black, purple and blue.

“Jesse, you’re hurting me!” she yelled right into his face.

“I know.” An ugly grin pulled his lips tight, showing his ever-so-perfect teeth. “Like you hurt me, babe, fucking with that son-of-a-bitch.”

She twisted, but he followed. She pushed with her hips, but his determination was too strong.

“Oh, no, you’re not getting away. I’m having you this time, Miss High and Mighty, my way.” He drove again and again and again inside her. “Isn’t this the way you like it, you and your boyfriend?”

“Jesse,” she gasped, “what the hell are you talking about?”