“Oh my God, Larissa,” he whispered. “Come on the bed.”
Kai, I have to go, she mouthed back, her eyes shut in shame and desire. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. What time is it?
“Please. Just for a sec.”
Time was the damper—the worry that her belated appearance at her child’s school might ring off a bell into the world, a warning signal she needed desperately to tamp down. Damper: a device to control vibration. His hands were trying to be dampers, pressing down on her legs. But her body was not cooperating. She was vibrating.
“You don’t want to go, do you?” he whispered, on the floor next to her, his mouth in her neck, on her shoulder.
It’s two o’clock.
He glanced at his watch. “Two fifteen.”
“Kai!” Scrambling up, her knees liquid, her insides molten, she didn’t look at him, couldn’t look at him as she gathered herself together, straightened her dress, got her purse and keys that had fallen, her lipstick.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” he said. It was Thursday.
“I know.” She held onto his forearm, his bare arm that had just been unfathomably wrapped around her.
He drew her back inside, into his arms. “What are we going to do?” he groaned. “I can’t…I need…”
“I know. But I have to go. Please…”
“Larissa…” Kai murmured in daylight, like a song, as he kissed her.
The aching nerves like twitching live wire, the aching insides full of fire and longing, the intemperate blinding desire to stay—nothing but the smallness of a waiting child could have made any woman take a step away from a man that inflamed, with lips that impassioned, his whole body begging her to stay.
“Tomorrow I’m supposed to work in Chatham till noon at the masonry yard, and then be at Jag by two.”
“And I’m casting through lunch.”
“I’ll call in sick,” he said, his hands squeezing tight her waist. “Come in the morning. Come,” he whispered. “Promise?”
She was out the door and down the stairs. Down thirteen wooden steps, into her two-seater, reversing out of the drive, trying not to glance up at him standing at his open door.
2
A Dance to Lighten the Heart
In movies, Larissa knew, right after this moment—there was nothing. She walked down the stairs, drove off, and the film director cut to—
Cut to what? The next day, the next breath, the hands on her bare body, lying on his white bed, cut to the following afternoon. But this wasn’t a movie. This was her life. There was nothing to cut to.
Gripping the wheel with both hands, afraid she would get into an accident, Larissa drove extra carefully five miles to her son’s school, parking just as the first grade teachers were escorting their backpacked charges outside. She ruffled her son’s hair, said hello to three other moms, including Donna, whom she forced herself to talk to for ten minutes even though her swollen mouth couldn’t remember English and her ears certainly didn’t understand a word of Donna’s. But inside a forethought was forming: I may need her. I might be late one day, I may need her…And just as she was thinking this, and willing herself to smile, to nod, Michelangelo, standing somberly nearby, eating his fruit snack, pulled on her hand and said, “Mom, don’t think I didn’t notice you were almost late again today.”
“Son, but I wasn’t late. Almost late means not late.”
“I know. But you almost were,” said an unperturbed and disapproving Michelangelo. “You’ve been coming almost late a lot lately.”
Donna, pleasant and without makeup, smiled knowingly, lifted her eyebrows, and made some kind of joke—wittily, or so she thought—insinuating possible reasons for Larissa’s tardiness, and Larissa right then and there knew she wouldn’t be able to use Donna again to look after her way too precocious son. They didn’t stay at the playground but came home instead, where they had an hour before Emily’s bus. In that hour, Larissa put Michelangelo in front of her TV in the master bedroom and reluctantly took a shower. She didn’t want to take a shower, she knew a shower would wash off the scent of her fevered trembling, and yet she had to take a shower.
When she came out, Michelangelo, splayed on her bed, paused Cartoon Network. “Mom,” he said, “why did you just have a shower in the middle of the day?”
“Because I needed one.” That was the truth.
“Why did you need one? What did you do?”
“Nothing. I was running around and got sweaty. What did you do?” She toweled off her hair.
“Weird, Mom. Freaky.” He turned to the TV, pressing PLAY.
Larissa glanced at her watch: 3:15. What in the world was she going to do? How was the day ever going to pass? She couldn’t imagine the next sixty seconds passing without collapsing, convulsing.
At 3:35 Emily arrived, inhaled a handful of grapes and a yogurt, ran upstairs, changed her clothes, ran downstairs, grabbed her cello and said let’s go. Michelangelo reluctantly had to come with them. He was enjoying lying on his parents’ bed. That was a treat he didn’t usually get after school. After she dropped off Emily for her New Jersey State School Music Evaluation rehearsals, Larissa waited for Asher to come to the parking lot from track and tell her he was running ten miles in a row today and to pick him up not a second after 5:00 p.m.
She and Michelangelo came home, Maggie called. Larissa talked to her for five seconds. “What’s the matter with you?” said Maggie. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Sorry, Michelangelo is pulling on me. I gotta go, Mags, gotta do homework.”
After she hung up, she called into the den. “Hey, bud, let’s go, let’s do some spelling, turn off the TV.”
At 4:30, they drove to pick up Emily, and then whiled time away in the car, listening to music, until Asher came out all wet and sweaty from the field behind the school promptly at five. “Mommy was sweaty today too, Ash,” said Michelangelo after his brother got into the car. “She had to have a shower.”
“Thanks, bud, for telling everyone about my day,” said Larissa. She was sure Jared would hear about her impromptu shower.
By the time they got back home it was 5:20, and she started dinner: steak and French fries. At 6:20 p.m. Jared walked through the door. “You smell clean,” he said after he kissed her.
“That’s ‘cause Mommy had a shower today.” Michelangelo jumped into his father’s arms.
“Did she?” Jared studied her bemusedly, moving his head away from his son’s face.
“So I can be nice and clean for you, darling,” said Larissa with a twinkle in her eye, prompting Jared to set down Michelangelo and usher him out of the kitchen.
“Come here, you naughty girl,” he said, motioning to her.
But the steaks were grilling and had to be turned over, and the ill-timed fries were starting to burn, and the broccoli was soggy and unboiling. Impromptu sex after an impromptu shower was barely averted.
They ate, noisily, talked about track, cello, the spelling test, Spanish vocabulary, the meaning of alternating current, the plans for a new mall only twenty miles away in Orange County, the possibility of taking an adult theater class at Drew, and then Larissa looked at her watch, and it was 7:15 p.m. and there was still an evening and a night and a morning.
She offered to clean up without Jared. “Go, change your clothes, get yourself comfortable. You’ve had a long day. Go on.”
He kissed her in gratitude and left her alone in the messy kitchen. The kids played their instruments, did their homework, there was a fight over TV viewing privileges, and Stephen Marley on the kitchen stereo singing, Hey Baby, hey, baby… Bo called to invite them out to dinner Saturday night.
After Jared came downstairs he said they were going out Saturday night with visiting clients of his, here from California, and couldn’t. “This is tax time, and we’re having people from all over. Sorry. Reschedule with Bo, will you? Wait, let me call her. I have to make your birthday plans anyway. Is dinner in the city at the
end of April okay? You know how crushed I am right now. It’s tax time.”
“Of course, darling. Whatever works best for you. We’ll go out when you’re less busy.”
He left the kitchen to confirm birthday plans with Bo at the Union Square Cafe, and when he returned he said, looking puzzled at the counter, “Lar, did you…did you just wash all the dishes from dinner?”
Larissa hadn’t realized she had. Instead of just rinsing them and putting them in the dishwasher, she had washed them by hand, polished and dried them.
“I’m feeling nostalgic for the old days,” she explained with a light smile. “In Hoboken. When we didn’t have a dishwasher. It’s nice actually. Relaxing.”
“Now suddenly it’s nice and relaxing,” said Jared. “Back then you called it hell.”
“What did I know then of heaven and hell, Jared?” said Larissa, looking for something to dry her wet hands.
“I told you Mom was weird,” said Michelangelo, hanging on to his dad. “Come, I want to show you my new karate chop.” Jared said he couldn’t wait and they left.
Larissa finished spraying the countertops, making a shopping list for tomorrow. After all the work was done, she looked at her watch: 8:01!
Another excruciating, slow-ticking hour inched by while she gave Michelangelo a purple-colored bath with bubbles. Somehow, by 9:30 the children were in their rooms, the little one asleep, the big ones reading. Larissa made herself a cup of tea, slowly walked from the kitchen to the den and perched down on the arm of the sofa. When would this day be over? When would the next day begin?
Jared came out of his office. “Sorry. I have so much work to do.”
“It’s okay, honey,” she said. “I know it’s tax season.”
“Do you want to do something?”
They settled into the couch. The lights were dimmed through the house, the shades were drawn. Riot was chewing on what Larissa hoped was one of her toys and not Larissa’s leather sandal. They watched The Mexican. Larissa didn’t register a frame of it. Jared fell asleep twenty minutes in. She didn’t wake him, but covered him, and as he slept, she sat next to him watching the TV screen, the eyes of her soul watching her being pinned over and over and over again against the wall, and then collapsing on the hardwood floor.
11:15.
11:32.
12:09.
Kai had forgotten his wallet. Larissa had to pay for the sushi, not that she minded. After they had finished eating he asked if she would mind giving him a lift to his place so he could get his wallet and his bike.
Oh, sure. No prob. No problem at all.
One turn off Main onto Cross, a left on Kings, a right on a road called Samson, and then into a rectangular loop residential road called Albright Circle, one of the oldest streets in the neighborhood, a block away from the train tracks that ran through Madison. He asked her to pull into a courtyard-sized driveway at the back of an old three-story clapboard house painted yellow. The driveway was like a parking lot, gravel-lined with enough room for a Mafia wedding. It had a detached garage, where she guessed he must keep his bike. She was right because he slid open the garage door and pulled the Ducati out. On the grass nearby Larissa spotted two cars on cinderblocks and a truck with its cab burned out. “I think the landlady’s son does something with them,” Kai told her, replacing the kickstand and grabbing his helmet. “He either fixes them up and sells them, or else he’s the one doing the damaging. To this day I can’t tell.”
“Have you met him?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kai grinned. “I’m telling you, it can go either way.” He started walking to the back of the yellow house to a long white wooden staircase that led to a white deck on stilts.
“It’s nice here,” Larissa said, slowly walking across the gravel, following him. “Quiet.” He was wearing light jeans, a black shirt and a dark gray sports jacket today. He had such a long-gaited, assured step, yet he bounced a little as he walked, like an adolescent.
“Yeah, quiet, except every twelve minutes the entire house rumbles as the New Jersey Transit train rolls past, blows its horn. Every twelve minutes. It’s enough to drive you mad.” He threw his helmet in the air, caught it like a basketball. “Come up for a sec,” he said. “I’m on the top floor. You want a glass of water?”
“Um, sure.”
They walked up the steps. “I do like it here, though,” Kai said. “The old lady doesn’t bother me; her rooms are in the front. There was a tenant downstairs but he left; that could’ve been her son, so either he left, or…”—Kai raised his eyebrows as he turned around to glance at her—”he was taken.”
“You should be a writer, Kai,” she said. “Your imagination keeps running away with you.”
“Don’t it just?” They reached the deck. “Anyway, she lets me play my music, doesn’t complain too much. It could be because she’s deaf. Every time I speak to her, all she says in reply, is ‘Yes, dearie.’ I’ll be a week late with my rent, Mrs. Sinesco. ‘Yes, dearie.’ I’m going to hold a Satanic Mass in your backyard, Mrs. Sinesco. ‘Yes, dearie.’
Larissa laughed.
He unlocked his door. “Come in,” he said. “Hope it’s clean.” Tentatively she stepped in behind him.
“It’s such a beautiful day,” he said, taking his wallet from a small table in the front hall. “Hey, you want to go for a ride?” He smiled. “I’ll take you to Glenside. Come on, what do you say? For, like, fifteen minutes. I’ll find you another helmet. I’ve got a spare in my closet.”
“For what, a spare head?” she muttered. “You know what I mean? If you lose the one helmet you’ve got, I’m thinking, chances are you’re probably not going to be in any position to rummage around your closet for the spare.”
He laughed, striding across the studio to the fridge. “So is that a yes or a no?”
She stood at the open door in a short entryway that led to a large light room on the top floor where he lived. It looked like an attic conversion with vaulted ceilings and the exposed whitewashed truss beams. With her hand still on the doorknob, she could see three walls of the studio, the fourth hidden from her view. He didn’t have much furniture but his books were neatly stacked on the floor around his one overfilled bookcase. He had a soft-looking couch across from the TV and an efficiency kitchen with a small round table next to the window near the fridge. She imagined him eating his Corn Flakes in the morning looking outside. He had two blue guitars perched near the couch, an acoustic and an electric. He had two ukuleles next to them, and two amps by the wall. She saw a stereo but no computer.
The bed had white sheets and a gray quilt and two pillows plus one large square one for leaning against the wall if he wanted to sit up since there was no headboard. He had one nightstand, on it four books and a lamp, and another ukulele propped up against the bed. His plankwood floors looked swept and clean with one small area rug underneath the coffee table. There were four tall windows, two flanking the bed and two near the kitchen area. The room was filled with sun. The white walls were bare except for two posters near the T V, both of Jim Morrison.
“So? About that ride…” He was in front of her, handing her a glass of water.
She had to will her hand to release the doorknob. Taking the drink from him, she pointed to her flouncy summer dress. “I really don’t think a motorcycle ride would be appropriate today,” she said.
He looked down at the hem of her dress, at her legs. Having handed her the water, he was still standing close. “Now why do you say that? A dress on a woman is perfect for a ride.” Raising his eyes to her, he smiled.
“From a man’s perspective, maybe.”
“Well, exactly. Look, you just take the dress”—slowly he lowered his hand for a handful of it—”and then, hitch it up a little, and then…kind of tuck it…” His hand still down, holding a fistful of thin floral cotton, the knuckles of his fist grazed against her bare thighs. He lifted his dilated gaze from the dress to her eyes, to her mouth. “Tuck it…between your legs,” he said very lo
w. The water glass in her hand started to shake. He took it from her, set it down. They were still by the open door! Pulling her away, he pushed the door shut behind her, the hem of her spring frock still in his fervid clutches, and wrapped his free arm around her back.
“Oh my God,” she breathed out right before he kissed her.
Oh my God, she groaned now, in bed, under covers, day done, everybody’s but hers, Jared having awakened long enough to climb upstairs and throw himself into bed.
12:30.
She held the script for Much Ado About Nothing in her empty hands, pretending words could get in.
BEATRICE: I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
BENEDICK: Come: bid me do anything for thee.
12:49.
She tried to read. To concentrate. The house was quiet. Jared was snoring. Larissa even mouthed the words on the page to herself, to focus better.
How did it happen? One minute she was in her car, the next, she was parked in front of the stairs to the porch to his apartment, the next, pressed against the wall of his studio, her palms flat on the wall as if staving off execution. Blind me. Blind me. Turn me around. Get behind me so I don’t see. Press my face against the wall and hold my wrists before you kiss me before you kill me.
1:01.
What was she going to do?
How was she going to go to sleep, to make the night pass faster?
2:04.
The eyes were bleary. Twenty minutes earlier she had turned off the light, thinking she was sleepy, but lying awake in the dark was worse than sitting up pretending to read, and she jumped up and turned the lights back on. Her hands clenched around the book.
At 3:16 a.m. it occurred to Larissa as she was nearly unconscious and blessedly close to morning, that the whole afternoon, evening, sleepless night, the one thought that hadn’t crossed her mind or clouded her judgement was: what am I going to do?