Sacred Time (10 page)

“Then where do I go from here?”

“To Elaine.
Father-says
gave you his blessing to fuck her.”

“Wine or hot chocolate?” she asks James.

“Hot chocolate.”

“That's what I guessed. Still the tastes of a boy.”

“Really.” He looks sullen.

“In bed you have the tastes of a man.”

“Tell me more.”

When she returns from the kitchen with his cup of hot chocolate and her glass of wine—a fine bottle of white Bordeaux she's bought for today, not the wholesale Chianti Victor shleps from work—James has fluffed her pillows against the maple headboard so she can sit next to him in bed. He has moved the ashtray—Anthony's first-grade project, seashells from Bermuda glued to a saucer—and he has tilted her reading light so that his flat hand makes a shadow across the wall. His thumb is up, his index finger bent, and when he slants his little finger down and up again, the shadow becomes a barking dog.

“Don't,” Leonora says sharply.

“Just something my grandma showed me.”

“To you and to Anthony.”

“So?”

“It makes you seem like…” She lights a cigarette, holds the smoke as long as she can to keep from saying what she knows she'll say anyhow. “It reminds me that you're closer in age to my son than to me.”

“Want me to make a shadow cat instead?”

“You don't get it.”

“It's because I get it.” He drinks from her glass. “Tastes of a boy, my ass.”

“Does that mean I'm stuck with your hot chocolate?”

“It means I get both.” He laughs. Settles himself against the pillows, tells her about a restaurant he plans to open in Southampton: “French cuisine. One of my friends from work, a chef from Paris, is coming in on it with me.”

Grandiose plans. As always.
It's impossible to keep track of where James has lived while doing what, and Leonora no longer tries to separate the things James has done from the things James would like to do. Most of Anthony's little friends have made that distinction between fantasy and reality, but for James they still fuse. Yet it's exactly this quality that makes James safe. Because she will never lose herself loving him. One of the best things about their affair is that it is temporary.

James starts rubbing his feet against her hardened soles.

“Now what are you doing?”

“You have calluses.”

“You bet.” She crouches next to him. Dips her tongue into the hollow of his collarbone. Tastes the salt of new sweat.

He skips a breath. Mumbles, “Calluses…” without the earlier conviction.

“Plus, I am a thousand years older than you.”

“Good.”

She follows his scent down his belly but bypasses his groin, teases him, though he heaves himself toward her. When she inspects his feet, they're soft and narrow with long toes. Hairless. Victor has stubby toes with thick hair, chafed soles he massages with Vaseline and covers with baggy socks he wears to bed so he won't stain the sheets.

“You have the feet of an infant,” she informs James. “You
are
an infant.”

“My grandmother always bought me expensive shoes…never too tight.”

After Victor moved out, she found one of his socks under the bed, still shaped by his foot, and she felt his loss abruptly as if it were happening that instant. Even though she'd been done with him ever since that afternoon last February when Anthony was doing his homework at his desk, and she left his room to answer the phone in the kitchen.

A woman's voice, deep, like a man's almost. “I wouldn't be calling you if I weren't so worried about my sister.”

“Your sister? Who—”

“Elaine. You don't know her. But your husband does. And I can't bear to see her like this. Waiting for you to let him go.”

Leonora's face felt cold. The phone felt cold. And around it, her hands felt cold. It was the familiar cold that was hers in emergencies, slowing everything and freezing it so that panic had no way in. Leonora loved that cold. Loved its insulation. Its clarity. Loved being able to count on its dignity to be there for her. And within that cold she knew the woman was telling the truth. Not because Leonora didn't trust Victor—it was more complicated than that, had to do with punishment. So much had felt like punishment since Bianca's death. Punishment of the parent who had not lost a child.
At least not an already-born child. After you have been spared that, you are willing to give up almost anything, even your belief in your son. And live instead with a measure of suspicion.

Not that anyone blamed Anthony.

“Poor boy…” they'd whisper.

“That girl wanted to be Superman.”

“Talk to me, Anthony.”

“There's nothing you could have done to stop Bianca.”

“To witness her fall…”

“She was always trying to fly.”

“You must eat something.”

“…so terrifying for him.”

Even Floria, disoriented by grief, said, “Let him be. Don't make him relive it.”

After you have been spared that loss of your already-born child, you are even willing to give up your husband. Insurance against losing still more.

“Mrs. Amedeo?” Deep voice. Hesitant voice. “I'm sorry to be the one to—”

“Tell me about your sister,” Leonora's cold, slow voice said.

“They love each other. They've been wanting to be together. Except Vic says you won't give him a divorce.”

“How long have…Vic and your sister been lovers?”

“A little over a year.”

“What month?” Leonora had to know if it started before or after Bianca's death.

“Why do you—”

“What month did it start?”

“January.”

A year and one month ago…just after we bury Bianca. Victor goes to the funeral alone, stands in for the three of us, because we don't want Anthony to see the coffin. I keep him with me that day, take him to the Museum of Natural History. The weeks after that, trying to do other things with him that are normal. A movie at the Paradise:
Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.
Reading together in the library on Bainbridge Avenue. Inviting Kevin and Mustache Sheila along to Jahn's and sitting beneath a stained-glass lamp eating banana splits. And then—late one evening—laughing, suddenly laughing, because Victor comes home with his beard shaved off. Feeling ashamed for laughing because of Bianca, and yet making it last because laughing makes me feel alive. Telling Victor I wouldn't have recognized him if I'd seen him on the street. Where before his jaw was squared off by the edge of beard, he now has a round chin, pale. But at least no sloping jawline for him, though I baited him once, “Is that why you have a beard?” A valley between his upper lip and nose, quite defined. I rub my cheek against his, tease him. “Like having a different man. How safe…having an affair within our marriage.” His sleek face against mine reminds me of my first kiss—Stevie Klein in high school—and I feel vaguely unfaithful. But it's a degree of unfaithfulness I can handle. Enjoy, even. But Victor dodges my embrace, gets skittish when I try to seduce him. I take my distance, figure I'll wait till he grows a new beard, because that's the man I know. Not this stranger whose sleek face makes him elusive, evasive. Makes him Vic.

Whose reluctance had nothing to do with Leonora's eagerness, but rather with this Elaine, who either had a sister or was pretending to be her own sister on the phone. If so, Elaine's willingness to fight for Victor impressed Leonora, who was not willing to fight for him at all. “You don't like beards, do you?” Leonora asked her.

“…No. But what does that have to do—”

“When do they see each other, your…sister and Vic?”

“Thursdays. Thursday evenings.”

Thursdays. Those evenings that separate Victor's weeks. Evenings when he prepares lists for his busiest days—Saturdays and Sundays.

“And usually Mondays. For lunch.”

“Of course.”
Monday. His one day off. A day to do errands.
“And what is it you want from me?”

“Just to tell you.”

“Yes.”

“So you can be aware.”

“Yes.”

“And to find out if you're willing to let Vic go. Or if he's lying.”

“Vic never lies. Believe me.”

“He wants to be with her.”

“With your…sister, yes. So you're telling me. And you? What do you want for yourself?”

“I'm her sister.” The voice, higher now. “And I want what's best for her, but I'm worried—”

“My soul bleeds for you.”

“I'm worried about—”

“Worried about Elaine. Frantic about Elaine. Distraught. Anxious. Shaken—”

“He hates it when you get that way with the words.”

“He said that to you? Or to your sister?”

“I have to go.”

“You have asked your questions. Now grant me the courtesy to answer mine. How did you and Victor meet?”

A pause. Longer than a minute. But she was still there. “A dinner he catered at…at the place where Elaine works.”

“How did it begin between you?”

“I can't.”

“How did it begin?”

“Ask him.” And she was gone, Elaine or Elaine's sister.

Leonora hung up the cold receiver. Tucked her hands beneath her armpits to warm them. Picked up the phone again and called Mustache Sheila. “Can Anthony stay with Kevin overnight?”

“Sure. What's the matter?”

“Just something Victor and I have to take care of.”

“You don't sound good. Are you—”

“I can't talk about it, Sheila.”

“Send Anthony over. Anytime. You hear that?”

Thin neck curved over his marbled notebook, Anthony was sitting on his bed next to his favorite toy, Robert the Robot, silvery gray, with wheels and arms that could move.

“You should be at your desk,” Leonora reminded him. “Otherwise you'll ruin your spine and your eyes.”

Without looking at her, he slid off his bed.

“It's not that important,” she said, hating his obedience. “You can stay on your bed.”

He stopped moving. His eyes darted from the bed to Leonora, then back to the bed, and when she touched his cheek—his triangle of gaunt cheek—he flinched but didn't say anything. He'd been trying to get by with shrugs and nods. In school he did well enough with his written work. That's why the nuns didn't try too hard to make him talk. “We have other children who are shy like your Anthony,” they would assure Leonora.

“But he wasn't like that before,” she'd say. What she couldn't explain to the nuns was how he'd been wrapping himself around the memory of Bianca falling, wrapping that memory into a space so tight and small that the rest of him was left pulpy, easily smashed.