Before My Life Began (64 page)

She smiles at him.

“I do love you,” he says. “It's only-—”

“Do you see what my smile does? God! Do you see its power over you?” She taps on a front tooth with a fingernail. “It's only a set of thirty-two small oblongs of calcium and enamel and nerve tissues, well aligned by thirty-four months of excellent orthodontia, the set ringed by a few square inches of skin, yet this smile changed your life, didn't it? What won't men do for the smile of a beautiful woman!”

She shakes her head sideways, as if pitying him. He feels as if he is a child being scolded by a teacher. He has never imagined her talking to him in quite this way. Control is everything, Abe said. To imagine one's future is to try to control it, Aaron thinks. What happens, then, if you suddenly find yourself living inside a future you haven't imagined?

“I wish you could have seen your eyes out there,” Susan says. “Rage like that doesn't come from a moment's anger, and it doesn't go away in a moment either. What in heaven's name did you think was going on in the woods? So Jennifer took a few tokes—so what? She's eighteen years old now and at least she did whatever she did with her mother nearby and her father's best friend there too. Lucius innocent? Listen. I have a question for you that I probably should have asked years ago. But better late than never. Here goes: in all the years of our marriage haven't
you
ever been tempted to make love with another woman?” “No.”

“No.”

She laughs. “No? That's
all?
I didn't ask if you ever made a genuine pass or did have an affair with a woman—just if you ever felt
tempted?
And you say you never did. Not even once?”

“No. I
notice
women, but—”

“Oh dear sweet Lord,” she says, her head against the headboard. “All those lonesome ladies you've been building houses for. All those pretty young faculty wives sending out their forlorn signals. All those years!
Never?
All those days and months with young long-haired college students bound to save the souls of black men. Come on, sweetheart—like Lucius says, ‘fess up, huh? Let's have a real truth session. You tell me your worst secret—which is really your best secret, right?—and I'll tell you mine. No one will ever know except us. Come on. Don't you think we know each other well enough for that?”

“Stop,” he says. “I think you're hurting me. I think you're trying to. I think you're being very mean, only I—”

“No. Just talk to me, all right. Talk to
me
. Come on, sweetheart. Look into that noble heart of yours and tell me what it really wants, what it did once-upon-a-time that it never told pretty Susan. We're friends, after all. We're best friends, aren't we?”

“Yes.”

“Nicky. Nicky then. Weren't you tempted with her? Anyone with eyes could tell how much in love with you she was. In Mississippi, didn't you—?

“I'm telling the truth. Why should I ever have wanted another woman when I had you? Why should I have risked
hurting
you—?”

“Oh God, Aaron, but you're a prince.”

“I suppose.”

“I suppose. Listen: sex exists, honey, and Lord knows but you are a very sexy man. I mean right now, even while my mouth patters along verbalizing all the stuff that drives you nuts, I look at you and I want you. I
desire
you, sweetheart.”

She leaves the bed, comes to him. She kisses him, unbuttons his shirt, whispers to him. He feels numb. But why? He smells her. Lilacs and fish, he thinks, and he realizes that he inhaled the same familiar fragrance in the car when they were coming home, while Jennifer was going on about Malcolm X having gone underground. Susan kisses his breastbone, slides her hands downward, continues to unbutton his shirt, to stroke him. She begins to talk again, in a low, even voice. She tells him that she is going to say things, tell him things. She hopes he won't be frightened. She hopes he won't leave or become too angry to enjoy himself. She wants him to know
everything
—to clear the air, to set them both free of the past, to tell him whatever comes to mind. He wants to be close to her? She'll let him be as close as any human being can. He wants them to have some kind of inviolable independence? Once he knows everything, what choice will he have but to love her, not for some dream he has of her, but for who she truly is?

She tells him that Paul used to make her do all kinds of things—wild things that other people might think were perversions. She was so young when she married him, and she had never had much sexual experience before him. Will Aaron be angry with her if she talks about the things she and Paul did together? About the things they tried with some of Paul's friends? Would he like an illustrated catalogue? The truth is that she was afraid
not
to do them, afraid Paul wouldn't love her if she didn't do what he said. She was against group sex and held out for a while, but it was either join in or leave Paul. And there she would be, pregnant, her husband taking his pleasures elsewhere. Full womb and empty arms, right? She was only twenty years old. How could she be a beautiful young actress gliding across a stage if she had to drag a full womb with her? So she overcame her hang-up. She joined in. Jennifer arrived in the world, and afterwards Paul showed her more games. Anything one could imagine—all possible combinations—they tried. Possibilities. Paul believed in possibilities, in a world of endless possibilities. With a vengeance, Paul quoted Aristotle: character may determine men's qualities, he said, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse, and Paul was determined to be happy by his actions. Who would be hurt? Weren't we born with free will? Then she bore Benjamin into the world, and between nursing and diapering and sleeping and walking and cooking and cleaning and Paul's inventions, how was she to have time for herself, for decisions? Free
will?
Don't make me laugh, she would say, one infant at the breast, the other with diarrhea running down its leg. The two of them bawling, colicky. Still, Paul
was
exciting when she was alert enough to notice. She never did know what to expect from him. He did know how to be tender to her, how to take the children at precisely the moment when she believed she could not go on with life a moment longer. Well. He had a way with the children too. Could quiet them, soothe them. No perversion there. She and Paul did laugh and have fun. She did try out enough in the way of sex and drugs so that by the time she left him she knew what it was she did and didn't want in life.

But she left Paul before she met Aaron, and she met Aaron before she had the chance—or desire, or energy—to know other men. Did he know that? Does he believe it? Between the time she walked out on Paul and met Aaron, she had no other men. Does that please Aaron? If she'd had lots of men and adventures between marriages, would Aaron be less jealous
now?
Jealousy? Sure. To see one you love give affection of the same kind to another is surely cause for pain and anger and hurt. But is it actually possible to be jealous of another human being's
past?

From Paul to Aaron to heaven, she says. That will be the story of her life. And the children. They'll be in that story too. Children, one after the other, arriving just before exhaustion could depart. Was she happy? Was she sad? Who could tell? She used to hope each time she began to swell that the child within would heal her unhappiness—that enormous emptiness in which, within her, she began to dwell—but the child never did. Not Jennifer or Benjamin. Not Larry or Carl. Aaron
began
to heal her. Love began to heal….

She strokes his thighs gently, cups his balls in the palm of her hand. He realizes that he has not moved, has not touched her with his hands. He is astonished at how enormous he is below, and if she continues to touch him and stroke him he is afraid that, within a minute, he will explode. She is telling him that she
is
sorry if she hurt his feelings. Can he forgive her? Can he
ever
forget? She chose him, after all. She knows that men look at her all the time, that she is a beautiful woman, as beautiful as most of those who fill the screens and fantasies of millions of Americans. She can't help having been born with the features she was born with. Slav cheekbones, flaxen hair, full Russian mouth. Blood shows. Passion shows through, drives the life. She does love Aaron more than any other man on the face of the earth. She knows that now. She knows that she can be happy with him. She doesn't need to have children anymore. That ache has not been there for years. He is the father of her children. He is her lover. He is her man.

It
excites
her when he becomes jealous. She is not at all sorry that he followed her and found her at the house, with Lucius. She likes the idea of him pursuing her still, as he did when they first met. She wants him to look long and hard at his rage and jealousy, but not quite yet. Not until she is finished with him. It has been a long time since she has gone completely wild and she wants to. She wants to go wild with him the way she went wild with him in her mind before they ever made love the first time. Is there any desire like the desire for sex? Any hunger that is as fierce? She wonders: if she is vulgar and truthful with him, will he reject her? Or, his suspicions covering his jealousy, has he already decided to do that? Preemptive rejection. Same old Aaron. Same old Susan. She has often feared—can he believe her?—that she will never be able to satisfy him, that she is going to fail him. Why? He has never really judged her or controlled her, and yet… Well. She is going to try to satisfy him now in a way that he will never forget. If she expresses her doubts and desires, she believes they will lose the power to make her afraid. Who knows? Maybe Paul is right. Why not a life of possibility? Why not endless surprises? She rubs her cheek against his chest. She takes her hair and brushes his chest with it, as if painting him. She pushes her forehead against his chin. She licks his nipples, sucks on them. She wonders if it turned him on as much as she thought it did, to see her giving her smile to Lucius? Does it excite him now—she rings his penis with thumb and forefinger, applies pressure—to hear her tell him about her life with Paul? What does he want more—to hurt her or to be gentle with her? Does he want to be kind, or violent? To control, or be controlled? She tells him to feel free to tell her what he really wants to do, what wonderful small attentions she can pay to him.

She slips his shirt backwards, turns him around. She removes the shirt, unbuckles his belt. She is on her knees, untying each of his shoes, taking off each sock, pulling his pants down. She folds the pants, sets them across the back of a chair, over his shirt.
We can do anything we want
. She locks the bedroom door, takes his hand, leads him to the bed, puts a finger to her lips. She reaches backwards, unzips, lets her summer dress fall around her feet. She climbs onto the bed, turns her back to him, lies on her stomach, arches her rear-end and begins to roll from one side to the other. She urges him to come on, to come on and give her whatever he wants.

He shivers, but is afraid that if he says anything to her she will begin to talk the way she was talking to him before. To his surprise, his fear makes her seem, despite her words, more beautiful than ever. Is she right, then, about how much he idealizes her? That the more distant and pure she becomes the more he desires her; that the more he desires her and fears he can't have her, the more he comes to fear her rejection; that the more he fears her rejection, the more he needs to suspect that she has already betrayed and rejected him…? What scares him most of all is to find himself thinking this way at the very moment in which she is ready to tell him everything, to give him anything he may want. Is this what he has feared all along? For if, in his mind, he can find reason to reject Susan, then he can be free
in
his mind to hold onto the wish that he and Gail might someday be reunited, that there is still some way to retrieve his other life.

He thinks of leaving. He is as frightened of hurting her as he is of being hurt. How, if he tells her about David Voloshin—about Gail and Emilie—can life with her ever be the same again? And yet he does not want to be fooled, or to play the fool. He needs time, he tells himself. Time and distance. He needs to see his life more clearly, to figure out how much of his confusion—his lack of trust—comes from within, and how much from the world. Susan reaches across, blindly, finds his hand, takes his fingers into her mouth, sucks on them one at a time, chews on knuckles. She moans, rolls from one side to the other, reaches below, sticks a finger into herself, then offers it to him, under his nose, wipes it on his lips. She moves onto her side, presses against him, the backs of her legs tight against his bent knees. He starts to enter her but she pushes him back, laughs, blocks the passage with her hand, whispers to him that she wants him in her other hole this time. She bites down on one of his good fingers until it hurts. She tells him that Paul liked it better in there—that he would usually have to get high on something, or be angry, or have just had another woman, but that when he was most sexed up, when his desire for power and control were at their height—that was where he most wanted to be, and that she wants Aaron there now too, where things are dark and dirty and secret. Danger from within and danger from without, right? She laughs. From
going
without? He shouldn't worry. She can control her muscles. Bearing four children has given her that power. Power and control is what it's all about, she says. The idea of power made into flesh. Come on, she urges. Come on.

She intones his name into the pillow. She arches her neck, forcing her ear back to his mouth, begins chanting his name—then Paul's name, then Lucius's name—and he finds that he has grabbed her hair in his hand, has rolled a gold hank of it around his fist and that he is pulling on it. She groans. Her smell is stronger than before, the lilac scent mixing now with something rank and familiar. She grinds her hips in slow circles, talks to him, keeps telling him to do anything he wants, anything at all. He is such a good, sweet man. She knows he wouldn't want to hurt his pretty Susan. There is nothing to fear. She tells him not to be jealous of Paul or Lucius any more than is absolutely necessary. She chose him, after all. He shouldn't worry about Jennifer or the boys. Hasn't he ever read Norman Mailer? Don't all nice Jewish boys want to be mean to the mothers whose smiles they want to win? He should be as mean to her as he can.