The Fainting Room (24 page)

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Authors: Sarah Pemberton Strong

BOOK: The Fainting Room
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Then Ray’s voice broke over them. “What in God’s name are you two doing?”
Evelyn looked up from the veil of delicious girl laughter and there was her husband, suddenly materialized in the kitchen, staring at them from under one of his old-fashioned hats. She felt her chest contract. He looked too clean standing there, and stupid—she had never thought of that word in connection with him, but there it was, it was obvious, suddenly: he didn’t know anything. That was the problem. He didn’t know. If she could just get him to enjoy what she was enjoying, he would understand in a way that he didn’t and never had.
“Hey, Ray,” said Ingrid. “Cool fedora you’re wearing. Siddown, have some chicken.”
Ray didn’t move, trying to make sense of the scene. He had heard their laughter from the front door and moved toward it, moth-like, as if toward light. But what
was
this? Their faces were covered with tomato sauce. Evelyn’s hair was disheveled, her stockings torn, and her toes poking out were filthy with dirt. She looked drunk. Ingrid was sitting with one leg up on the table and looked drunker. And there was a bottle of Veuve Cliquot—Veuve Cliquot!—on the table.
He’d seen how Evelyn’s face closed up when he came into the room. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who made people’s faces tighten. He wanted to be the kind of person who could be laughing drunk and happy at a kitchen table with his face all greasy. He felt at once censorious and jealous, utterly left out.
“Have we run out of napkins?” he said. It didn’t come out as humorously as he’d hoped.
“Oh, shush, Ray,” said Evelyn, “don’t be so fucking proper.”
He turned to Ingrid. “What are you two doing?”
“Jes settin’,” said Ingrid in a fake southern accent. “Eatin’ and drinkin’ and settin’. Evelyn, give your husband some chicken.”
Evelyn picked out a bit of chicken and offered it, dubiously, on the tips of her fingers.
What the hell, Ray thought, and bent forward, took the chicken carefully between his teeth.
Evelyn felt a wave of happiness wash through her. Maybe Ray wasn’t a complete stick in the mud after all. Maybe there was hope. She scooped up a dripping chunk of meat and Ray let her push it into his mouth. His lips closed over her fingers. She smiled at him, kept her fingers in his mouth until he blushed and pulled his head away, darted his eyes sideways to remind her that Ingrid was right there watching.
“Fine,” she said, “let’s go upstairs.”
“Yes, it’s very late.” Ray tried to cover. “We should all go to bed.”
“Except,” Evelyn said, and then fell silent. She didn’t really want to go upstairs with Ray if it meant leaving Ingrid; what she wanted was to be two places at once, to be both making love with Ray and continuing to sit beside this beautiful crazy laughing girl. If she could take the part of her that Ingrid was making laugh into the bedroom with Ray, it would all be all right. But if she left this table, left Ingrid behind, something would close up in her again.
Ray was standing up now and pulling her up as well. Evelyn grasped Ingrid’s arm with her free hand, not wanting to leave.
Ingrid looked at Ray. “Where’d you get such an nifty fedora at this time of night?”
“I left it at work ages ago, and just found it. Come on, Evelyn, it’s bedtime.”
“Well it’s excellent,” Ingrid said. “Very noirish.”
“It’s yours,” said Ray, taking off the hat and plopping it on Ingrid’s head; Ingrid, delighted, shook her hand free of Evelyn’s, and reached up to adjust the brim. Ray seized his opportunity and pulled Evelyn toward the hall.
“But I like it down here,” Evelyn said loudly.
Ray looked over his wife’s shoulder at Ingrid. “You should go to bed, now too,” he said. “You’re both drunk.”
“Yes, come on, Ingrid,” said Evelyn, “It’s way past your bedtime.” She held out her hand and Ingrid took it again.
“Sweetheart, enough,” Ray said in Evelyn’s ear, “Come on.”
Evelyn sighed. Suddenly she felt exhausted. She didn’t want to make love: it was too late, the moment was over.
“Good night, Ingrid,” said Ray. “Evelyn, come on.”
“Good night Ingrid,” Evelyn repeated. She leaned forward and solemnly kissed the splotch of tomato sauce on Ingrid’s forehead. “Thank you,” she said, and drew back, meaning to go. But a look had come over Ingrid’s face—a stricken look that made Evelyn want to say,
Don’t cry, it’s all right
, though no one was crying.
“Kiss her good night, Ray,” she said. There was no reason to cry, they were all here.
“Evelyn, come on, let’s just get you to bed.”
“Just kiss her good night, Ray,” Evelyn said stubbornly, “don’t be rude.” And she kissed Ingrid again, on the mouth this time.
“Fine,” Ray said, and leaned in toward Ingrid’s cheek, intending an air kiss there; then maybe his drunk wife would go upstairs.
But Ingrid’s mouth had just been kissed.
Kissed
. By Evelyn. Ingrid’s mouth, just kissed, had sprung to life independent of the rest of her, which was in shock; Ingrid’s mouth,just kissed by Evelyn, wanted to be kissed again. Not knowing she was going to do it, Ingrid turned her mouth toward Ray and then as if by magic his lips, too, were on hers. And then gone.
Ray stepped backward, pulled Evelyn’s arm hard. “Good night now,” he said desperately, “Evelyn, come on.” And he pulled her toward the stairs, then pushed her up the first step in front of him.
He had kissed Ingrid, her lips had moved tentatively against his before she had thank God pulled away—Ingrid was drunk, and he felt suddenly drunk himself, dislocated and full of desire for something. He looked at his wife on the stairs ahead of him. He wanted to take his wife to bed, that was all. The alcohol had made her silly, loose in a way she rarely was, and though she was being annoying, she was also being sexy. He wanted to get her in bed, but the drunken glow on Ingrid’s face, the taste of expensive wine and stale cigarettes on her smooth lips, what did it mean that Ingrid had made him kiss her there, on her mouth, he’d been aiming for her cheek and she’d deliberately turned her mouth toward him?
Stop thinking about it
, he told himself; in a moment they would be in the bedroom, soon he would be holding his wife. Ingrid had moved her lips against his for a moment and he had enjoyed it; but who wouldn’t, who wouldn’t enjoy being kissed by someone they were fond of, just fond of, nothing more? He hadn’t done anything wrong. Nothing except kiss her. “Evelyn, will you
go
,” he said angrily, and his wife lurched away from him down the hall toward the bedroom.
I stole a kiss
, he thought, and followed, inadvertent thief.
Behind their bedroom door, Ray undressed rapidly, anxiety mounting and mixing with his desire so that being on the verge of making love to his wife felt strangely dangerous, as if it were brand new. But Evelyn was too drunk; she flopped down on the bed in her clothes and lay there for a moment, then sighed and rolled over, asleep.
Ray sat on the edge of the bed, his hand resting heavily on his erection. Why had Ingrid kissed him? What had she wanted? Oh, Ingrid was sixteen, for God’s sake, it didn’t matter what she thought she wanted. He shuddered and focused his eyes on his wife. Evelyn’s skirt had ridden up to expose a band of tattoos peeking out of the runs in her stockings, which had laddered all the way up her legs. What in God’s name had those two been doing? He ran a hand over Evelyn’s thigh. She didn’t stir. He threw himself down beside her, inhaled the scent of her, willing her toward the center of his pleasure, this was the woman he loved, wanted, this was his wife, he was forcing his mind to think of her and forcing himself toward an orgasm that when it came gave him only a single spasm of pleasure before changing to a heaviness that lay over him like a lead apron, through which another thought of Ingrid still managed to penetrate.
 
Evelyn slept the dreamless sleep of the happily drunken; Ray dozed, uneasy, in the suburbs of guilt. Down the hall, Ingrid sat in bed awake, naked except for the fedora. Something she had never felt before tonight had slid across the pale shine of her shoulders, crossed her collarbone, touched her untouched breasts. Something had stroked her dropped jaw, slipped inside her lips and down her throat, only to discover that her heart had come open. Like the zipper on a dress. Like a lock being picked. How? Evelyn’s mouth, pressed against Ingrid’s astonished own.
14.
 
Ray woke in the morning to find the sun too far up in the sky. He rolled over and looked at the clock: was it really eight-thirty? He should have been walking into work an hour ago. This very minute he was supposed to be walking up the steps to Boston City Hall for a presentation to the zoning board. He hurried into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. At the edge of his awareness he knew that in addition to being late something else was wrong too, but he was not yet conscious of what it was. He hastily brushed his teeth and when he spit, he met his own eyes in the mirror and his mind awoke to the real problem.
Ingrid, her hair smelling of stale cigarette, girl sweat; her flutey metallic voice, her sideways smiles; Ingrid, her dirty-fingered hands pounding typewriter keys, her soft bony body leaning against him while piano music unfolded through the summer air. Last night he’d kissed her.
Kiss her
, his drunken wife had said, and he, fully sober, had done it.
Kiss her goodnight, Ray
. Oh, what had Evelyn been thinking?
He was going to be horribly late for the zoning board appearance. He dressed and ran out the door without showering, without breakfast. Sat in traffic on 128, fingers drumming the wheel.
Kiss her goodnight.
He would never have done it if his wife hadn’t told him to. Not that that was an excuse. He was going to miss the zoning meeting entirely; they would have to present without him. And Ingrid had kissed him back; what did that mean? It didn’t mean anything; she was a drunken sixteen-year-old. Perhaps she had a little crush on him? If Dunlap found out he’d missed the meeting, there would be serious hell. There was no excuse for Evelyn’s getting drunk with Ingrid, none at all. He would have to talk to Evelyn tonight.
It was going to be a difficult day; he could feel it in the heat of the sun on his windshield as he sat on the freeway, not moving.
 
Ingrid woke next.
Her head ached and her stomach was jumping, twitching in bright, regular beats. She rolled over and saw hanging on the bedpost the fedora Ray had given her the night before. She reached up and settled it on her head.
Whoever had sapped me knew his job. My head felt like it had spent the night in a vise. I poured myself a double rye and after I drank it I began to feel halfway human again and that half of me wanted breakfast and a shave and lots and lots of scaldingly hot coffee.
She got out of bed and took Ray’s old trench coat from her closet and slid into it, stuck a cigarette in her mouth, and studied herself in the mirror. She was pleased with what she saw: the hat helped a lot. Then she went into the fainting room and sat down at the typewriter.
The guy in Emily Roseine’s living room was tall, with a fedora pulled down low. I couldn’t see his face from my hiding place in the shrubbery, but Emily Roseine could, and she seemed to be liking it. She showed him the rock, the one that had come flying through the window with the note wrapped around it. The note asking for the secret formula, X-onium, in exchange for her husband’s safe return.
And then a weird thing happened. He kissed her. The kissing meant I couldn’t see her face anymore, but what her hands were doing on his back made me think she liked kissing him too. I didn’t like it much at all, but nobody was asking me. So I just knelt there and watched them kiss on the other side of that big broken picture window, and then they both went up the staircase.
I walked back to my car with gravel stuck to my knees.
Ingrid pushed the chair back from the desk. Her heart was beating so hard her hands were shaking. Evelyn’s kiss had turned her stomach into a Geiger counter, the needle jumping wildly all over the gauge of her insides. What radioactive hell was this? There was no science for it, no mapping. She stood in the door of the fainting room and looked down the hall toward the master bedroom. She could feel Evelyn’s presence in there, asleep but pulling at her like a magnet. Urging,
Go toward her. Get closer.
But how? Ingrid went back to her bedroom, removed the hat and coat, pulled on a pair of cutoffs and a tee shirt. Gave Melvin his mealworms.
Don’t think about kissing her.
She went downstairs.
Coffee, think about getting coffee
, but once in the kitchen, she grabbed her sneakers and kept going, out the back door and around the side of the house to her bike. Hopped on and pedaled hard down Old Adams Road and out toward the Post Road, heading east. Making distance between herself and the scene of the crime.
 
Evelyn woke at noon. Still dressed, face greasy. She had fallen asleep with her contact lenses in, and her eyes hurt. She wiped her cheek and smelled tomatoes and the night came back to her, that crazy stuff with the chicken. She sat up, pulled off her ruined stockings. She hadn’t been drunk like that in years. Around Joe she had always stayed sober, keeping sharp to field whatever he threw at her. But last night—the drunken walk with Ingrid, the champagne, the laughing—it was lovely. She and Ingrid laughing together was lovely. How long had it been since she’d had that kind of girlfriend fun?

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