The Edge of Sleep (17 page)

Becker laughed aloud in appreciation, then looked up to see Karen standing in the living room, glowering at them like naughty children. Jack saw her, too, and continued to laugh. Becker took the tube from Jack and put it to his ear and pointed it at Karen. Jack laughed harder.

“Cute,” said Karen.

Becker looked at Jack, shrugged as if he couldn’t hear anything, then handed the tube to the boy. Jack imitated

Becker, leaning to listen to his mother.

“Nice influence, John.”

“It’s a magic trick,” Becker said. He pulled from the center of the tube and transformed the newspaper into a five-foot length of fringed pillar. “It’s a eucalyptus tree,” he said. “Or whatever suits your fancy.”

“Real talent. Bedtime, Jack.”

The boy exited promptly but returned after a moment and took the tube from Becker’s hand.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night,” said Becker. “Nice talking to you.”

“Nice talking to you,” the boy said. He paused for a fraction, seemed to consider saying more, then hurried out.

“Nice with the shit jokes,” Karen said when she returned from putting her son to bed.

“I did my best.”

“He thinks you’re a scream. He was aiming that damned newspaper thing at me the whole time I was reading to him.”

“He’s a funny kid once he loosens up.”

“He’d probably say the same about you.”

“He doesn’t see many adults, does he?”

“Adults? Or men?”

“Men, I guess.”

“Well, his father, of course. I don’t entertain much, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“I’m not driving at anything,” Becker said. “I just meant that he seems very, very shy, and I supposed it was because he isn’t exposed to people like me very often. I mean friends of the family, social friends, that kind of thing. Uncles. Cousins.”

“No uncles, no cousins. When you get home at seven and have to cook and feed your child and get him into bed by nine, you don’t entertain a whole lot.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“The baby-sitter is here by eight in the morning and I have to get to work by nine. Every other weekend, when Jack is with his father. I’m working, trying to catch up on what I would have done if I didn’t have to be home by seven. On the weekends when Jack is with me, I devote myself to him.”

“Um.”

“What does that mean?”

“It sounds rather grim having someone devote herself to you.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Becker, is there anything about me you do like? You criticize the way I raise my son, you make fun of my cooking ... ”

“Your cooking?”

“I heard what you said about the ragout. ‘That stew thing with the chicken and tomatoes.’ ”

“That wasn’t criticism,” Becker protested. “I liked the stew.”

“Then you mock me in front of Jack with all that farting business. I hate that word.”

“We weren’t mocking you ...”

“Farting in the soup is your idea of showing respect?”

“I was just trying to befriend him. I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“Why would I want that?”

“I’m not sure, but you certainly set us up that way. You were hiding in the kitchen for half an hour.”

“I was doing the dishes, then I was cleaning up. I happen not to like a messy kitchen, if that’s all right with you, although I gather it isn’t. Apparently nothing about me is all right with you. I’m sorry if you were subjected to such an ordeal.”

“It wasn’t an ordeal ... What are you so mad about?”

“I’m sorry if you think I’ve deprived my son of an adult male role model, which I happen to think he can get along without very well, thank you, especially considering the kind of role models that seem to be available.”

“What are we talking about?”

“I don’t know ... Oh, it’s just too hard, it’s too damned hard.”

“What?” Becker asked.

“Getting along.”

“With me?”

“Who else are we talking about?”

“Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t look so woebegone. It’s not just you, it’s men. They’re such a waste. I mean, really, John, you’re all such a waste. You never say anything supportive, you don’t seem to have a clue how hard I work or how difficult it is to raise a child by yourself and still hold down a full-time job and all I hear is criticism ...”

“I think you’re doing a terrific job at everything.”

“I know what you think of me as a parent. You’ve made it equally clear you don’t think I’m much of an agent, either ... ”

“You’re a very good agent ...”

“You think I’m a soup farter in everything I do. Maybe I am ...”

“I think you seem to have lost your sense of humor a little bit ...”

“Not funny enough for you either,” she said. “You see, everything I do falls short.”

“I think ...”

She dropped heavily onto the sofa.

“Who gives a shit what you think, Becker? Why don’t you just go home.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You drove me here. I don’t have a car.”

Karen slumped into the cushions, all the fight gone. “Oh, why don’t you stay then,” she said. “I just don’t have the energy to fight you.”

“You were doing a pretty good job.”

She dropped her head to the back of the sofa. Her face stared at the ceiling.

“I am such a bitch sometimes.”

Becker sat beside her on the sofa, but she continued to stare upward.

“The hardest part is right at the end. The last fifteen, twenty minutes before I say good night to him. I’ve had the whole day’s work, the commute both ways, the hassle with the couple dozen agents who think they’re a better man for the job than I am, fixing dinner, doing the dishes, cleaning up. I’m so damned tired, all I want to do is sit in front of the television and glaze over for an hour, then collapse on my bed, but instead I have to sit with him and read a story, then go through this ritual of saying good night in just the right way. If I’m impatient, he knows it. If I try to cut it short, he jumps on me for that. I’ve got to do it all just right or else do it over again, and he’s watching me every step of the way to make sure I’m not faking it. Kids are so superstitious. Putting him to bed is absolutely the toughest part of the day—and yet it’s my favorite part, too. I see so little of him and then for these few minutes we’re completely alone together with no distractions, and I love him so much and he needs me like I’m his next breath. If I do say everything just right, he’ll feel safe and secure and he’ll be able to sleep through the night. God, how can I ever be impatient about that? I am such a bitch. I’m not fit to be a mother.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’re a great mother.”

“Do you really think so?”

“He’s a nice kid, Karen. You’re doing a good job.”

“He’s a great kid ... And I’m doing a terrible job.” She turned and looked directly at Becker. “John, he doesn’t sleep. He’s so afraid.”

“Of what?”

“He can’t tell me, or he won’t tell me. Sometimes he talks about robbers getting into the house, but that’s not it; it can’t be that simple. Some nights he won’t let me go. He grabs hold of me and just won’t let me leave the room. He says he’s afraid I’m going to die.”

“What do you say to him?”

“I tell him I’m not going to die, what else can you say? Oh, I word it a little better than that. I tell him everyone dies eventually, but it will be so long from now that he’ll have his own grandchildren by then, blah-blah, but what can you really say? How can you promise anyone you won’t die?”

“Is he worried because of your work?”

“My work? I’m not in any danger because of my work. Most of the time I’m in an office.”

“Except for this case.”

“Except for this case. But that doesn’t mean I’m in danger.”

“Does he know that?”

“I don’t know what he knows. He won’t tell me. But I’ve seen him. John. I’ve looked in and he’s just lying there, my baby’s just lying there in the dark with his eyes wide open. It kills me.”

Becker took her hand. She allowed it but did not respond. Her hand lay in his palm as if it were dead.

“Why don’t you leave the light on?” Becker asked.

“He has a night light.”

“I mean the overhead light, the bedside light, the light in the hallway, every damned light in the house if that’s what it takes.”

“He’s got to learn to sleep in the dark sometime. He can’t grow up and keep the lights on ...”

“Why not?”

”... I’m not sure.”

His thumb rode slowly back and forth across the top of her hand.

“I don’t know anything about kids,” he said. “Nothing at all. But I know something about fear. If he’s afraid of the dark, get rid of the dark. Maybe you’ll figure out eventually what he’s really afraid of—or maybe you won’t. Maybe he’ll learn to deal with it himself—or maybe he won’t. But in the meantime ...”

“Turn on the lights.”

“Right.”

He took her hand in both of his and gently worked his thumbs into the muscles on each side of the palm. Karen sighed and closed her eyes. Becker worked on each of her fingers individually, lightly but insistently pulling one at a time, then insinuating his fingers between two of hers, letting them fall to the valleys, then all the way out to the tips. Karen’s lips parted and she moaned with a sound as light as her breath. When Becker finished one hand she gave him the other without opening her eyes.

“You have no idea how good that feels,” she said.

“Yes, I do.”

Her head lay all the way back on the sofa, her lips were still open and smiling now.

“Nobody just touches me anymore,” she said.

When Becker stopped massaging her hand, Karen slid all the way down on the sofa and lifted her feet into his lap.

“Please,” she said, her eyes still closed. But Becker had already started massaging her feet.

Karen abandoned any pretense at decorum and moaned aloud. Becker ran a finger between her toes and she shivered.

“How can I ever repay you,” she asked.

“It’s my payment for dinner,” he said.

“Dinner was never this good,” she said. “I feel like I’m purring.”

He pressed his thumb into the muscles of her foot and she stiffened, then relaxed.

“A lot of tension in your feet,” he said.

“Who would ever have thought there was so much pleasure down there? Ohhhhh ... How did you learn how to do this?”

“I’ve had a varied life.” Becker said. He ran his fingernails lightly across the smooth skin atop her foot. Karen gasped and tensed and relaxed and gasped again.

“That feels so good it almost hurts,” she said.

“It does get confusing.”

He worked on her feet for a long time, and after a while they stopped talking. Karen simply lay back, eyes closed, and moaned openly while Becker massaged and caressed in turn, patiently and thoroughly.

Eventually he relinquished her feet and ran his hand slowly up the underside of her calf.

“I didn’t shave my legs today,” she said.

Becker didn’t bother to answer. At the tender skin under her knee joint he smoothed his fingers like feathers and she gasped with pleasure.

He ran both hands halfway up her thigh, gripped firmly, then slowly and with some pressure pulled his hands down the length of her thigh, her calf, across the foot and all the way off the toes.

“My God.” Karen said. “Do you know what that feels like?”

“Yes,” Becker said. He did the same with the other leg.

“I feel that everywhere.” she said. “It may be better than sex.”

“It is sex,” Becker said.

He repeated the procedure, this time using his fingernails instead of the palms of his hands and going even slower. Karen groaned every inch of the way and arched her back.

“All this for dinner? I didn’t even offer you dessert.”

“I’m sure you will. You’re too good a hostess not to.”

“And you are a presumptuous male swine,” she said lightly. She pressed her foot into his groin.

“You seem to be a little tense in spots yourself, John.”

“It comes upon me at times.”

“I’ll let that one pass,” she said. ‘Too easy.”

Becker slid his hands all the way up her legs until his thumbs came to rest at the top of her inner thighs. He left his hands there, resting lightly with just a hint of pressure.

She opened her eyes and looked at him for the first time in minutes.

“When did you know we were going to do this?”

“Right about when you did,” Becker said.

“I didn’t,” she said.

Becker grinned at her.

“I didn’t!... I did not,” she insisted. Becker continued to grin. “All right, I did.”

“When?”

“Not until I saw you hanging from the mountain,” she said. “Not a moment before that, I swear.”

She slid her legs around his back and pulled him onto her. After a moment she stopped him with a touch and slipped out from under his body.

“Pray he’s asleep,” she said.

Karen tiptoed to her son’s room and peeked silently at his recumbent form. His eyes were closed and his breath came slowly and easily. She said a quick and indifferently directed prayer of thanks for small favors and returned to the living room.

Becker was not in the room, but her bedroom door was ajar. She entered expecting to find him naked under the covers, but when she saw him standing in the middle of the room with only his shoes off, she realized how much she had forgotten about the man. He was a deliciously slow and lingering lover, accomplishing in an hour what more energetic men would fail to achieve in ten minutes, and he relished every step of the process. So did she.

“He’s asleep,” she said. “We’re in luck.”

“I’m the lucky one.”

He took her in his arms and kissed her, pressing against her from foot to face as if no amount of contact could be enough. The kiss was a form of seduction in itself. His lips explored hers languidly, almost shyly, but at the same time with a certainty of purpose. They seemed to Karen to be seeking out the proper join of his flesh and hers, and when they found it, his lips rested there on hers, pressing just firmly enough. She felt herself weaken and behind her closed eyes she had the sensation of a long, slow, very safe tumble through space. She loved to kiss, and Becker was one of the few men she’d ever known who loved it as much as she did.