Wasted Beauty (24 page)

RICK SENSES HER BEFORE HE SEES HER WALKING A FEW
feet in front of him on the crowded sidewalk. Her scent has become the trigger of the hypnotic mechanism. It’s part of her and it is her. It sets things in motion. Rick hurries forward and touches her neck and she turns with a smile, knowing it’s him. She knows because she knows.

Rena thinks, I’ve come this far, why not throw everything I have into it? He’s married. So what, he was unhappy, everyone is unhappy in this world. A person has the right to get as happy as they can get. I love him, I feel it from my heart down to my toes. Because he’s not trying to prove anything. Because he’ll take care of me. Because I can see in his eyes how he adores me. Because he knows how to touch me. Because he isn’t coming at me like a dog, like a con man, like a stud. He’s just who he is. Lovable Rick. Beautiful Rick. Sweet Rick.

They are meeting for the third time this week. The night before he’d gone to her apartment for the first time. Agitated, because he had lied to Laura, told her he was working at the clinic. How could she know, she’s three hundred miles away. Whatever he tells Laura, once Rena and Rick are in each other’s proximity, thoughts of others leave their minds.

Rena has surprised Rick. She’s passionate and her skin tastes like dark heaven. He gets drunk on her sublimity. And he doesn’t hold back, he comes into her like he’s hemorrhaging his soul and heart. As he does, he thinks of Laura. He is ecstatic and horrified at the same time.

They lie next to each other, still and connected, and she gazes at him. My god, he thinks, has anyone ever looked at me like this? He grows hard again within minutes. This is the dominion of the impossible, passion with no boundaries.

The second time they make love she whispers in his ear, “Fuck me” and he moans when he comes. They pass out, dream for a while, wake up and begin again.

Exhausted from the anxious expectation he slides in and out of her for what seems like hours, watching her perfect face morph into a million faces—all hers. He pins her arms over her head, cleaving her, flattening her breasts. Her mascara smudges around her eyes and they kiss slowly and longingly as if they have gone beyond fucking.

They fall in and out of sleep, still fucking. Finally, Rick comes to and finds himself asleep in her arms. There’s blood on the sheets.

He tries to sneak away at dawn, but when he kisses her she wakes and without a word watches him get dressed.

Rick phones Rena on his cell phone as he drives home. Once he gets there he sits in his driveway murmuring to her, engine idling, for twenty minutes. What if a neighbor saw me from a window? Would someone report this to Laura when she got back? “Your husband sits in the driveway at six in the morning, talking on the phone.” “Who were you talking to, Rick?”

The house is still when he enters the back door. It smells of fresh paint and absent children. He flips on the bathroom light, and sees a lunatic staring back at him. An incredibly handsome lunatic. He goes to bed as the sun tints the bedroom walls rose, stinking of his lover, and he falls away, dreaming of her.

When he wakes a surge of excitement wells in his chest and his first thought is, I did it. I did it. I wasn’t a coward. I did it. I am alive.

Does it make any difference I was with Rena and not at the ER? Does any of it make a difference? In a hundred years all this will be the forgotten random acts of some dead, forgotten people. All that counts is what I’m feeling right now. She said, “Fuck me.” She did.

She had said more. Before they finally fell asleep, Rena told Rick she loved him again. Isn’t it obvious? I said I loved her, too, but that statement means nothing if I’m not going to leave Laura. Right? Rena didn’t ask me to do that. She simply said that she loved me.

So now, here they are again, in the city, going for coffee again, swimming in the current again. Forgetting everything else, letting everything else drop away. There are only two states of being now—with Rena or away from Rena. She puts her arm around me and I let her. Let the world see. I’m in love.

NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY HAVING A BABY BOY WOULDN’T
be so bad. Always thought little boys were a curse. Mom always said so. But a little boy, a boy before he becomes a man, a boy who belongs to you in every way, predictable, dependent, that would be so sweet. I could comb his hair, give him a bath, dress him in short pants, teach him how to tie his shoe. A boy before the man. A boy just like Rick.

Rick never stays the night. Every time we’re together the whole next day he’s jumpy and full of guilt. I don’t mind his mood swings even though he’s made me cry more than once. I don’t mind because it’s honest. I would be more suspicious if he were all easy about it, because that would mean that he wasn’t really in love with me or that he’s the kind of man who can just walk away from his family. And what kind of man is that? We’re falling in love more and more every day and our love is a lifeline for both of us. So it’s understandable that with such a huge thing as love entering his life, Rick is overwhelmed. I understand. I’m overwhelmed, too.

He’s always so chatty right after sex, like he’s so happy. Blabbing about a dozen things at once, like it all has to be said right now. His voice so soothing. I don’t even have to listen to what he’s saying, just let it flow over me like music. The sweetest music. And I love to watch the way his lips move, the way the darkness shades just under his eyes like he’s never really gotten enough sleep. I love the curve of his chest, the fullness of his arms. Rick isn’t just any man, he is my man and I’m going to see him every morning for the rest of my life.

And that night when he had trouble. Has there ever been a man so vulnerable? So afraid! I whispered in his ear and licked his belly and sang him a lullaby and when he fell asleep I made it all right and then he was finally inside of me, what did he say? “Please don’t kill me.” That’s when I knew how much he loves me.

It’s like we’re all covered in scars and when we touch each other, we have to be so careful not to touch the scars. So gentle. I told him I want to have a baby with him and he smiled and said, “Only one?” And I said, “No. Dozens.”

We confess to each other. He’s always so guilty. Like he’s done a million wrong things. Told me when he was little that he played doctor with the girl from across the street. Said he wanted to kiss her bare pussy. And I said, “So what?” He told me that he had cheated on an exam in med school and that he was on pep pills the first day we had coffee. I didn’t tell him about the drugs. About Barry. He doesn’t need to know that.

I’m going to do whatever it takes. Stay away from Barry and the drugs. Simplify my life, drink gallons of water and go to work. Even stop smoking eventually. I count the hours until we can be together again, see him, touch him, feel him inside me.

RICK FLIES TO HYANNIS AND PICKS UP LAURA AND THE
kids. During the ride back to the city, while he and Laura discuss Henry’s need for new sneakers and the paint job in the house, Rick daydreams about Rena.

Rena and I have had sex seven times. What does that mean? Does that mean we’re lovers? Having an affair? Do I even want to see her again? Can I afford to? Can I afford not to? Vacation’s over, big guy.

Laura doesn’t notice. She’s in her domestic zone of mentality, plotting timetables in her head for the piles of laundry she’ll have to do when we get home, shopping, setting up play dates. She’s hoping the painters haven’t splattered paint all over her things. She’s wondering if the cleaning girl has been able to keep up with me. Thinking how nice it will be to be in her own bed, with me, her husband, tonight.

They arrive like homeless bag people, struggling with sacks of gear and damp clothing, luggage crammed with half-empty bottles of sunblock and bits of seashell. With the turn of a front door key, Rick’s bachelor lifestyle is expelled like a grain of sand from a bivalve. No more joint smoking on the back lawn. No more undisturbed, somnolent TV baseball while stretched out on the couch. No more gorging on onion-slathered meat sandwiches over the sink while the blood and hot fat drip down onto piles of encrusted dishes.

But how do I end the all-night chats with Rena? The late afternoon leisure in the city parks and coffee shops with my new girlfriend? The flirting. The sex. How do I go back to being a married man?

It takes a few days to get into a normal cycle, to cook a meal at home, to get all the clothes washed. Laura and the kids are a multifarious mechanism, noisy and time-consuming, retaking the house like an occupying army of three. Armies have to be fed and clothed, armies will not be denied.

First day of school looms. The family takes a trip to Old Navy. Rick posts himself outside and smokes, checking out trampy-looking high school girls. They notice him, give him the eye, because somehow they know he’s with Rena. Rick isn’t sure how they know it, but he knows that they know. At the sneaker store, the Israeli cash register girl flirts with Rick while Laura deals with Henry’s cargo pants. The Israeli girl knows, too. They all know.

Back home, everything gets sorted out and the kids, exhausted by the newness of their familiar toys and furnishings, finally go to bed on time. Rick and Laura lie stretched out on the couch, passing a half carton of Ben & Jerry’s between them. They watch
Sex and the City
. Rick swallows the last dollop, licks the spoon, and adjusts himself into Laura’s bulky warmth. He tells her how tanned and rested she looks. “You look great, babe.”

“So do you. We should spend more time away from each other.”

“I don’t look good. I’ve been drinking too much, smoking, eating shit.”

“I thought I smelled cigarettes.”

“Only one or two a day.”

“I started running in the morning. About two weeks before we were going to come back, I thought, if I don’t do this, I’ll never do this. Ran most mornings on the beach.”

“Wow.”

“Hey, if I don’t do it, I’m just gonna get fatter and fatter.”

“You’re not fat.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I like you just the way you are.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to get used to the new me. Tan and skinny. I lost seven pounds.”

“Yeah?” Rick slides a hand under her. She may be lighter but compared to Rena Laura feels as heavy as a small pony. It doesn’t matter. I want to touch my wife. I want to be with her. If for no reason than to think she might forgive me. I love her. That’s the problem. If I didn’t love Laura, I’d just walk out the door. It happens. But I do love her. Rick nuzzles his wife’s shoulder. She turns and gives him a matter-of-fact sideways glance. “Are we turning off the TV?”

“Depends on whether you want to watch Chris Noth while we fuck.”

“Can you take the competition?” Laura gets up, gathers the quilt and heads upstairs. Listening to the water running, Rick flips channels before flicking off the TV. The dead screen presents him with a witness. What am I doing? What do I want? I don’t know what I want. If I love Laura, how can I be doing this?

He follows Laura up. As usual she takes forever in the bathroom. Making herself nice for me. Because she loves me. Because she’s devoted to me. And how do I pay her back?

“Do you like it?” Laura appears in a new nightgown.

“It’s great. Now take it off.” She picked that out for me. To look good for me. This is my wife, thinks Rick.

The sex is edgy and eager. Laura grabs at Rick like someone in a hurry. Rick feels unusually robust and they howl and shout in unison before collapsing onto the bed like prizefighters after fifteen rounds. Rick thinks, When a man has nothing else, at least he has this.

Afterward, he lies on his back with eyes open and contentment rolls in like spring fog. He thinks, we’re in such different worlds, and she doesn’t know it. She’s asleep because she feels so secure with me.

For a moment Rick imagines Laura in coma. Imagines her dead. How would you like that, Rick? That would solve things, wouldn’t it? But it wouldn’t. Because then I would wake up from this daydream. If I could do what I want, really do what I want, would I want to?

He sniffs the air. It’s diffused with their respiration and pheromones. The stink of our living selves, nothing more than biology. Except when the excretions belong to us they become us. Become what we are. This is how I know Laura. If I couldn’t see her, couldn’t smell her, how would I know it was her? All of this is us, isn’t it? So delicate, a so-called “relationship.” Bump into it too roughly and it breaks. This is ours, only ours. Our children. Our life. Rick thinks, you got what you wanted. Here it is. Now choose.

That morning over breakfast, Laura had told Rick that the neighbors, Ed and June, were divorcing and had gone their separate ways. It’s like death, thinks Rick, isn’t it? Inevitable. Laura and I are not going to survive as a couple forever. The cards are stacked against us. We can try, but it’s futile. I’m all hung up on this girl, why? Because I’m a fucking asshole, crazy asshole. But if this thing with Rena weren’t happening, where would Laura and I be? In a way, don’t I love Laura more now that Rena’s in the picture? How fucking sick is that?

Laura breathes softly. She and I have everything together. We struggled. We did this, despite the obstacles, we made this life. Here it is. It is real. Unless I make it not real. Unless I say, I’m walking out. Then, from that moment on, it’s like it never happened. All that we have will become nothing, mortally wounded. Not even a pleasant memory. Except that all the people will still be here.