Stepping (7 page)

I argued a bit, but could see Charlie’s point. It had been a boring, wasted evening. Still, I felt a little bit of rancor rise inside. How many nights had I spent being pleasant to Charlie’s not always pleasant colleagues? Was I not to get equal help until I became a full professor?

Stephen and I took Samuel Levin to a small restaurant only a few blocks from Levin’s hotel. His lecture had been, to our surprise and relief, lucid and dense and memorable. He had really pulled himself together for the public appearance, and the applause was deafening. I felt proud being seen leaving with him; me, a part-time
freshman comp instructor, next to him, a fine old man of letters.

Levin’s successful talk seemed to mellow him; at dinner he was again talkative, but this time he dwelled on pleasant subjects. He reminisced. He told tales on Eliot and Stein and Pound, and drank and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed himself. Stephen and I could have been anyone else in the world; we could have been mannequins; Levin needed an audience only because it was not socially acceptable to talk out loud to oneself in public. Stephen and I had fabulous meals, courtesy of the Visiting Lecturer Fund, and we drank enough wine so Levin wouldn’t feel alone, enough wine to make us wiggle our eyebrows at each other each time Levin belched out his insane laughter.

After the dinner we both escorted Levin to his hotel room. By that time we thought we’d better see with our own eyes that he got safely there.

“Dr. Smith will be by to take you to the airport at ten tomorrow,” Stephen said. “Thank you again for coming to lecture for us, Mr. Levin. You were magnificent.”

Levin swayed in his doorway, looking up at Stephen. “Don’t suppose you’d like to come in for a little nightcap, would you? I’ve got a bottle of the best in my briefcase. Never travel without it. No, I can tell you two aren’t interested in me and my booze and my old raggy tales. You’ve been making eyes at each other all night. I’m no dummy. You two can’t wait to get rid of the old fart and run somewhere and fuck like rabbits. Well, go on, you two, and bless you. Enjoy it. I’d be doing it too if I had anyone to do it with. I can get it up now as well as I ever could—”

Stephen gently pushed Levin into his room, said good night, and closed the door.

I leaned against the wall opposite the door and began to laugh quietly. “Oh, Stephen!” I said, shaking my head.

Stephen took two steps across the narrow hall, pressed himself against me, and began kissing me. The effect of his lips touching mine was like a match held to kerosene-soaked rags: we went
whoosh
. We were ablaze. We stood together there in the hotel hallway, not six feet away from where poor lonely Levin was undoubtedly pouring himself another drink, and we kissed and pushed each other crazily.

When a sensible thought could get through to me—most of my mind was crying, “Get these clothes out of the way! … Where’s the bed? … More, more, more!”—it was: “Why, he’s made us horny, that horny old man, he and all that booze.” Yet another voice
was screeching, “Zelda! Hey! Stop! What about Charlie?” But I pushed the sensible thoughts away. Kissing Stephen was
fun
.

“I’m going to get us a room,” Stephen said suddenly, pulling away. His mouth was swollen, and I knew mine was, too.

“What for?” I asked stupidly. Then, catching on, “No!” I grabbed Stephen again, frantic. “No, Stephen,
we can’t
.”

Stephen stared at me in disbelief, and seeing that I meant what I said, suddenly grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me through an open door into room number 256. He slammed the door shut behind us. My wits were with me enough to quickly survey the room; it was neat and impersonal, untouched. No coats on the hangers or flung over a chair, no sheets turned down expectantly.

“Zelda,” Stephen said, pinning me against the door. “I’ve been waiting months for an opportunity like this. I want you. I want to make love to you.”

He began kissing me, pummeling me again. He was so eager, so desperate, so excited—so different from Charlie, who now of course took our lovemaking for granted and moved slowly and assuredly through it all. All my instincts were aroused, in a wild rich mixture: sexual and maternal desires surged together. Stephen seemed both a full-grown man who could take me and a young animal, pushing demandingly at a mother’s breast for food and affection.

Early in our relationship Charlie and I had agreed that we wouldn’t sleep with anyone else until we told each other that we were going to do it first. It had seemed a fair and logical agreement at the time, especially since I was sure I would never want to sleep with anyone else, and I had never felt any need to test the agreement in the thirteen years we had been married. Now I saw how absurd it was, and a chuckle started deep in my throat. I imagined me wrestling on the bed with Stephen, dialing the phone, pulling down my hose, and pulling up my skirt, saying, “Charlie? This is Zelda.” (Puff, puff, pant, pant, heavy breathing, loss of control.) “I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to make love with someone else now. Goodbye!” And then hanging up the phone, and turning to Stephen …

But I pushed him away. Too weak to stand without a wall at my back, shaking all over, I found strength to push him away. I wanted him, but not really. I wanted the sense
of romance, the sense of danger, the fun, the acknowledgment that I was desirable, but not the serious final commitment of joining my body to his.

“Stephen,” I gasped as I stood holding him off with my hands, as we stood there panting and shaking and sweating and glaring at each other like two combatants in a battle, “Stephen, I
can’t. I can
’
t
.”

“Zelda,” Stephen said, his voice aching and low, “you don’t understand.
I love you
.”

Well, I was drunk. I had had too much wine. I drew my arm back and slapped Stephen as hard as I could on the cheek. We both staggered sideways in surprise.

“You wiseass sleek New England phony!” I hissed. “You vain egotistical fraud. Don’t you ever use words like that so lightly. I’m from Kansas; words like that mean something to me. You don’t
love
me, don’t tell me you
love
me. You just want to
screw
me, that’s all. You’ve ruined everything by saying that.”

I burst into tears. I fell back against the wall and sobbed, both my hands hanging at my side.

After a few moments Stephen said, “I’ll take you home now.”

I went into the bathroom and washed my face in cold water and dried myself on the nice crisp hotel towels. I put lipstick and eyeliner on and smiled at myself in the mirror, trying to look normal, wondering if anything showed, just as I had done so many years ago after dates when I went home to be inspected by my parents’ eagle eyes. But it was Charlie who would be seeing me now. I knew I would tell him nothing. So far I still felt virtuous, only slightly drunk and embarrassed.

Stephen went into the bathroom then, while I sat on the end of a double bed and tried to breathe naturally. When we left the room I couldn’t resist smiling. To think of all the passion that had gone on there, and we hadn’t even paid for the room. We passed Levin’s door, half expecting him to open it and leer out at us, but all was silent. No one looked at us twice, and we went down the elevator and through the lobby and out to the car.

The ride home was absolutely quiet. We said nothing. I rehearsed scenes in my mind to tell Charlie: “Levin’s Hall lecture was wonderful, you should have been there, but he got soaked again at dinner. At least the food was good. I had escargots for
appetizer, and—”

Stephen pulled into our driveway, and without turning off the engine, leaned over and opened my door from the inside.

I put my hand on the door and said, “Good night, Stephen.”

And Stephen said, “I love you, Zelda. I’ve loved you for a long time.”

I stared at him for one long moment in dismay, then jumped out of the car and called in my best old sorority voice, “Thanks again, Stephen. Tell Ellen hi. Hope Carrie’s better.”

Then I walked to the house, slowly, normally, when I really wanted to run and hide, as if something would get me if I didn’t hurry.

That was in March. The next day, on my desk, there was a typed copy of a tenderly coercive love poem waiting for me.

I put my head down on my desk and cried. For ten minutes. Then I got up, fixed up my face, and went off to do a slam-bang, cork-popping class for my cute little freshmen.

And I haven’t slept with Stephen yet. I’m not sure why. Probably because the perfect opportunity hasn’t presented itself again. No more hotel bedroom doors have fallen open for us. We have seen each other several times—six times, exactly, and I could quote every word we said to each other. We have lingered together over coffee and papers in the lounge after the other professors and instructors discussed this text or that student and then, one by one, left. We have had tea together in the school cafeteria. Each time I’ve been with Stephen I’ve felt guilty, ashamed, knowing that what I was doing was not as bad or immoral as it was false and hypocritical. I do not love Stephen. But I have loved being loved. Nothing is as entrancing as hearing all of one’s best qualities named by someone who has never seen one’s stretch marks or heard one screech at the children. Each session with Stephen left me feeling as punch-drunk and gay as the first time I practiced control breathing in Lamaze class and hyperventilated.

Once we stayed after hours in his office and began to embrace. I don’t know if I would have said no again or not. I didn’t especially want to make love with Stephen, but it was so delightful to have him right there, wanting to make love with me. Fortunately a student, the stupid fool, came wandering right in, without knocking, opening the closed
door, looking for the psychology department. He didn’t seem to know who we were, in spite of the fact that the door he had just opened read, “Stephen Hunter, Chairman.”

Another time when Charlie was out of town lecturing, Stephen came by, and we stood in the back hall, wrestling between the freezer and the basement steps.

“Not
here
,” I cried. “Not
here
. This is
Charlie’s home
. You can’t come in.”

Perhaps Stephen took heart because I said “Not here” instead of “I won’t.”

At the beginning of the summer, when I was sure we were going to Helsinki, I went to the English department to clean out my desk for someone else to use the next year. I took down my posters, clippings, cartoons, and signs from the board behind my desk. I threw most of the stuff in the wastebasket and put the rest of it into a small briefcase I had borrowed from Charlie. I was sad; very, very sad. I didn’t want to go to Helsinki, to live on the 60th parallel. I wanted to stay on our New Hampshire farm, I wanted to teach.
I wanted to teach
. I was thirty-four. I was tired of following Charlie around the world. Stephen came in, and because it was a Saturday morning no one was around, and he simply walked into my office and stood there looking at me until I stopped shuffling papers and looked at him.

“I don’t want you to go to Finland,” he said. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for weeks. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I want you to marry me.”

I didn’t blink. I didn’t skip a beat. “If I marry you, will you let me teach?” I asked.

“Let me check the nepotism rules here,” he said, and turned to go down the hall to his office.

I threw everything else in my desk—rubber bands, paper clips, little pink broken stubs of eraser, into my—Charlie’s—briefcase, and I ran. I was as frightened as I had ever been in my life. I didn’t think Stephen would hear me, but he did. He ran out of his inner office, through the secretary’s room, and down the hall after me. Perhaps I wasn’t running as fast as I could have—I should have taken my light summer sandals off—but he caught me. And shoved me into a classroom and shut the door.

I was already shaky enough emotionally, I was secretly furious at Charlie for getting the Fulbright and dragging me off just when I was starting my own career again. I was feeling very sorry for myself. And here was the man with all the answers in his hands, trying to give them to me. Except that I knew he didn’t really have all the answers.

We went into each other’s arms. We were on the second floor of the building, and no one could see us through the windows. It was Saturday, before the start of summer classes; the campus was bare. The classroom was as good as a motel room, with the one notable exception of a nice big bed. I was being thoroughly unrealistic. Perhaps everyone gets to be that way every thirteen years, just once. I encouraged Stephen when he kissed me—probably because I knew he’d never risk getting caught screwing another professor’s wife in a campus classroom. He was still, after all, ambitious. I encouraged him when he talked to me; I needed to hear his words. He sounded like a fairy godfather, offering me the dress and the coach and the ball. I did not say I loved him. I did say I’d go to bed with him, the first opportunity we had. “No one gets married anymore without sleeping together first,” I laughed. I asked him to please keep things normal, for a while, for my sake. I suppose I thought we were playing a game, one I needed to play, something light and refreshing, something without scorecards or goals. I suppose I wasn’t in my right mind. I didn’t realize how serious Stephen was. I didn’t want to think he was serious.

For the sake of normality he and Ellen and the kids went back to Nantucket for the summer and came home just a week before we left for Helsinki. There was never, in the rush of our packing and his gearing up for a new semester, an opportunity for us to make love. At a farewell dinner that Ellen cooked for us, we risked one drunken kiss in the kitchen; it made me feel nearly sick with guilt. Even so, it was quite a kiss. All I have to do now, sitting at my orange-and-white checked tablecloth in my dreary Helsinki kitchen, is to place my fingertips lightly to my lips and I feel that kiss again, with all its eagerness and promise, and tears spring to my eyes, and I jump up and pace the room.

Now he says he’s coming here.