The Housewife Blues Read online

  "I was a little high," she interrupted.

  "I know.... "He could not continue. He was clearly embarrassed, and a red flush had settled around his neck.

  "Would you like a cup of coffee?" It seemed to Jenny a logical question to break the tension. As if to facilitate the offer, she put the pot on the kitchen island behind her. He looked at his watch.

  "I ... I don't think so."

  He took a step toward her, closer, but still more than arm's length distance. Her urge was to respond by stepping backward, but her movement was constrained by the fact that she was leaning against the kitchen island.

  "It's not what you think," he said, his voice halting as if he had decided on what he was to say but couldn't bring himself to speak the words. She knew exactly what he meant. I am an instrument of his desire, she told herself, feeling foolish, the voice in her mind a kind of student declamation. Yet she did not feel the same level of desire for him that she had felt last night.

  "May I kiss you?" he mumbled.

  "I'm sorry, I don't think..." she began. It had crossed her mind that his being turned on might have had its effect, moving him and Terry to make love. This was the moment in her cycle, Terry had explained. From the gloomy look in Godfrey's eyes, she could tell that nothing had happened between them last night. It saddened her, and she sensed something growing deep inside of her, an attitude of militancy against life's injustice and unfairness.

  "Just hold you, then," Godfrey said, coming still closer until his face was barely in focus. She could smell his after-shave, different from Larry's.

  "Please," she said. It was neither an entreaty to desist nor a sign of consent. Nevertheless, she did not make any attempt to resist after he put his arms around her and settled his body against hers. His breath was warm against her ears as he spoke.

  "I don't understand it, and I'm not going to question it, either," he whispered, holding her, his pelvis grinding into hers. "It's something about you. Natural involuntary selection. If only you knew. I'm sorry, but..."

  She let herself be kissed; then, as he moved his head away, he was about to say something, and she put a finger on his lips.

  "No need," she whispered, fearful that if she revealed Terry's confession, it would have an adverse effect on ... She did not allow herself to extend the thought. Men, she decided, were far more fragile than women. Things like this, she supposed, could be talked away.

  "Believe me," he said, "just this once. I'll ... I'll never bother you again." She did not ask: Why her? Things like this were nature's mysteries. She had fallen in his path at exactly the right moment of his greatest need, an accident of nature.

  She wondered if he and Terry had talked it over, debated this action, deciding finally to pursue it on the basis of desperation. Where was the harm? Call it an act of charity. Certainly not betrayal or revenge.

  Such thoughts roared through her mind as Godfrey held her, rubbing himself against her. His arousal was unmistakable.

  "Please," he pleaded. "Just this once."

  She reached down with one hand, surprised to discover that his pants were open and his penis erect. She touched it, caressed it. She felt no arousal herself, nor did he press himself on her, apparently content to be manipulated by her hand, a process that harked back to her early teenage days.

  "Faster," he whispered, his breath coming in short gasps.

  Applying more movement, she wondered with clinical interest how he was going to preserve the ejaculate.

  "Yes," he said. "Oh, God, thank you."

  His breath came in convulsive gusts, and his body tightened. Then suddenly he grasped her wrist and moved her hand away, turning his back, groping in his pocket, removing an object that appeared to be a small cup. It was obvious that he was finishing the process by himself. His body lurched in a long, twitching response. She noted that he had bent his head, watching what was happening below. When he turned again to face her, he held one hand behind his back. She tried to assemble her features in an expression of neutrality.

  "Someday I'll explain," he said with obvious gratitude.

  "No need," Jenny said.

  "I've got to go," he said, bending toward her. He kissed her forehead. "You don't know how wonderful you are."

  "Never mind," she said.

  He turned and rushed out the door, leaving her to debate the question of her culpability. In a technical sense, she had not been unfaithful. For that she was thankful, although it did take a giant leap of faith to reach that conclusion.

  She had, after all, deliberately masturbated a man other than her husband. Means, she had been taught, could never justify ends. On the other hand, she might have been the instrument for bringing happiness to a neighbor. There was some solace in such a possibility, although she wasn't completely convinced of her innocence. Nor of her guilt. She hadn't, after all, well ... fucked a stranger. That, never, she told herself. A hot blush rose in her face.

  In an effort to mollify her feelings, she began to perform the household chores that she had postponed. Her energy level soared, and for the next few hours she moved around the apartment in a fury. Not a square inch of the place was spared, whether it needed attending to or not. She polished the silver, oiled the furniture, buffed the exposed portions of the floors, washed the windows, and generally eliminated any morsel of dust that might have lingered even in the remotest corners.

  It occurred to her during this housecleaning frenzy that maybe all this activity was designed to physically remove any witnesses to what she now referred to her as semitransgression. Now, that isn't fair, she rebuked herself. By mid-afternoon she seemed to have smoothed the outer edges of any guilt feelings and come to terms with the reality of her deed.

  Later, when she soaked in the warm water of her bath, her sense of well-being accelerated. It was purely mechanical, she decided finally. Neither an act of personal indulgence nor one of spitefulness. Something about her, an aura, a suggestiveness, a mysterious attraction, made him react. She was purely a catalytic agent, and as a result she had simply helped him produce sperm for a fertility procedure. Nothing more. The bonus to Godfrey might be that he was also cured of his impotence. At least she hoped so.

  Just as she stepped out of the bathtub, she heard a strange sound coming from the living room. Wrapping a towel around herself, she came out of the bathroom to check on the source of the sound. It was Peter hungrily lapping away at the milk in the saucer. Hearing her approach, the cat looked up for a moment to study Jenny's intentions. Obviously judging them benign, he returned to his meal.

  Jenny, talking in soothing tones, moved toward the cat, then carefully closed the casement window, trapping Peter inside the apartment. Checking all potential points of escape, she went back to her room and dressed hurriedly. Her intention was to somehow get the cat downstairs into Bob and Jerry's apartment before Larry returned from work.

  It annoyed her to worry over Larry's reaction, but she had no stomach for inciting his wrath. Especially not today. She wanted tension to subside between them, to reconcile their differences.

  When she went back into the living room, the cat was nowhere to be seen.

  "Peter," she called as she roamed the apartment. "Here, kitty-kitty." She looked under furniture, inside closets, in whatever nook and cranny seemed a logical hiding place.

  After a half hour of searching, there was still no sign of the cat. It was getting late, nearly four, and she hadn't even begun to think about dinner. No dinner and Peter lost in their apartment considerably dimmed prospects of an evening of marital reconciliation.

  It was then that she thought of Teddy. Surely Teddy's knowledge of Peter would save the day. She rushed out of her apartment, went downstairs, and pressed Bob and Jerry's buzzer. No one answered. Then she ran up the front stairs and pressed the outside buzzer of the Stern apartment. No answer there, either.

  Frustrated, she turned the problem over in her mind again. Perhaps Peter had found some hidden opening through which he had escaped. S
uch a prospect offered little solace at that moment. Time was running out. Larry would be home shortly. The self-confidence of the evening before had wilted.

  She stood at the entrance to the apartment house, her mind on the razor's edge of indecision, resenting the anxiety induced by Larry's litany of caveats. But before she could work up a good head of anger, she saw Teddy heading toward the building from Third Avenue.

  He looked somber, crestfallen, self-absorbed, as if he were contemplating some weighty and gloomy problem. She waited for him to reach the building.

  "Thank goodness," she said. "I've been looking for you."

  "Me?" he asked, puzzled by the question. She quickly explained her dilemma, watching his face light up with optimism as she spoke.

  "I've been looking everywhere," he said. "Cut school, too." He lowered his voice. "The boys chewed me out plenty. They blamed me at first. I never let him out. Never. When I come in, I always make sure he's okay."

  "I put milk out," Jenny said as they moved quickly to her apartment. "Then I closed all possible escape routes. I think—"

  "He's one smart guy, that tomcat."

  It was nearing the time when Larry would be coming home, which increased her anxiety. Inside the apartment, Teddy began his search.

  "Peter," he called in a kind of specially contrived falsetto.

  Jenny followed him around the apartment. At one point he got down on his hands and knees but still couldn't lure Peter out of his hiding place.

  "Could be he's found some exit to the outside," Jenny suggested.

  "Oh, he's good at that." Teddy shrugged and continued his falsetto summons.

  "Tell me," Jenny muttered, feeling the accelerating pressure of time. A salad, she decided. She'd make one of those California-style everything-in-it salads. And broiled chicken. She'd call up a nearby grilled chicken place that was always stuffing their mailbox with fliers. The Grillery, it was called. If she was clever, it might pass for her own. It struck her that this was yet another violation of Larry's rules.

  "If you can't find him, just forget it," Jenny said, growing still more edgy. She picked up the phone and got the Grillery's number from information. "No longer than ten minutes," she told the man at the chicken place. "Otherwise forget it." Her own aggressive tone surprised her. Am I getting just like them? she asked herself.

  "No sweat," the man at the other end said as he took her order. "One quartered chicken."

  As she hung up she heard Teddy's shout from the bathroom, then an unhappy screeching cat sound. When she got to him he was on his hands and knees, groping under the bathtub. He pulled out a reluctant Peter by one leg. After a brief struggle, Peter rested comfortably in Teddy's arms. Teddy stroked the fur behind his ear, and Peter purred contentedly.

  "Well then, the crisis is over," Jenny said.

  "For now," Teddy said. He was obviously overjoyed. "I can't wait to tell them."

  "They'll be happy, I'm sure," Jenny said.

  Suddenly the image of Mr. Stern with his head in the oven rose in her mind. She studied the boy for a long moment, and he seemed to sense her evaluation.

  "You and your dad..." she began.

  "That's over," he said, blushing. "Thanks to—"

  "Please don't," she interrupted.

  "I didn't tell him, Mrs. Burns. I kept my promise."

  "I never questioned that, Teddy."

  "Dad and I have had some long talks." He lowered his eyes and continued to stroke the cat. "About ... things."

  "That's great," Jenny said.

  "It's been a real turnaround for us," Teddy said. "Like it was a miracle."

  Despite a feeling of satisfaction, she felt uncomfortable about her own curiosity, reminded suddenly of Larry and his prohibitions.

  "Anyway, Peter is back." He turned to Jenny and smiled. "Because of you."

  "I'm just a cornucopia of good deeds," Jenny said, laughing with a touch of self-mockery. At that point the outside buzzer rang, recalling her earlier anxiety.

  "The chicken man," she muttered, relieved, guiding Teddy with Peter in his arms toward the door. As she let them out she pressed the buzzer to open the entrance to the building.

  "I'm sure Bob and Jerry will be calling to thank you," Teddy said in the hallway.

  "Please tell them not to."

  "Mr. Burns?"

  "More or less." She shrugged, not wanting Larry to know of her cat-finding activities. More secrets piling up, she thought, not without a tremor of fear. Teddy waved good-bye just as the delivery boy from the Grillery entered the building.

  "Burns?" the boy asked in Hispanic-accented English.

  "In a minute," she said, rushing into the apartment to find her pocketbook. As always, it was never where she thought she had put it. She combed through the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom. Then she entered the living room, where she found it lying behind one of the family pictures on the spinet. Just as she extracted a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet, her peripheral vision caught sight of Larry coming down the street toward the house.

  Rushing to the open door, she gave the boy the twenty-dollar bill and he handed her the package of chicken and a bill for fifteen dollars.

  "Keep the change," she said, briefly noting the startled look on the boy's face as she closed the door and moved quickly to the kitchen. She took the chicken out of the bag, put the pieces on a plate, and stuck it in the microwave, ready to be reheated for dinner.

  Moments later she heard Larry let himself into the apartment. She felt tense, fearful, and a growing agitation as she heard his footsteps approach. It annoyed her to have to deal with such oppressive emotions. Why do I feel this way? she asked herself, deliberately repressing a note of protest.

  "Anybody home?" he called cheerily, poking his face into the kitchen. She had busied herself with cutting cucumbers for the salad on the kitchen island. He approached her from behind, embraced her, and kissed the back of her neck.

  "Got it," he said.

  "Got what?" she asked.

  "The loan, silly. Terry called late this afternoon. See? Business is based upon relationships. Just as I explained."

  He dipped his fingers in the salad bowl and popped a cucumber round into his mouth.

  "Sounds good," Jenny replied, making an effort to appear enthusiastic. Shouldn't she be? she wondered, feeling oddly distant and unaffected by his sense of victory.

  "Good? It's great. Especially in this environment. Not to mention that we've had five turndowns by other banks. There's still some open questions and, of course, the paperwork, but Terry says it looks in the bag."

  She resisted facing him, fearing that he would see the distance and lack of enthusiasm in her eyes.

  "And don't let it be said that I didn't fill you in on the details," he said. "I couldn't wait to get home to tell you."

  What details? she wondered, remembering the night with Vince and Connie. There had been talk of signatures, her signature, being required. A note of malevolence crept into her thoughts, which she quickly dismissed.

  "So when do you actually open the doors?" she felt obliged to ask, as if she were really part of it.

  "Soon as the loan is closed, Jenny. But why trouble your pretty little head about such things? The broad strokes are we're in business."

  "I'm very happy for you, Larry."

  The statement was flat, mechanical. Surely it was the wifely thing to say.

  "For us, Jenny. For us."

  She took that to be the proper husbandly response. The dialogue seemed performed, as in a stage play, with each actor playing a clichéd role.

  "We should open the claret now," Larry said, moving away from her. "It will go great with the meat loaf." He started to fiddle with the bottles in the wine rack, looking for the claret.

  "I wouldn't," she said, turning finally, irritated by a sudden onslaught of panic. "I made chicken instead."

  "No meat loaf?"

  His smile dissipated for a moment, then quickly returned, as if it were a gesture of
forgiveness. For what?

  "Okay, then. Have we a white on ice?"

  A tremor of nervousness washed over her, and she felt an internal trembling. "I forgot, Larry," she croaked, clearing her throat.

  Again his smile faded, but for a longer time. Finally, obviously forgiving her again, he smiled. "No sweat. I'll ice one. It's celebration time."

  She turned back to the process of making the salad, listening as he extracted a white from the wine rack, then filled a bucket with ice cubes and jammed the bottle into it. That chore done, he embraced her again from the rear, squeezing her breasts and rubbing his pelvis against her buttocks.

  "I'm going to shower," he whispered in her ear, his implication clear. Another thing gone awry, she thought, sensing the absence of desire.

  When he was gone, she busied herself with finishing the salad, setting the table, putting out candles, knowing that all this was merely the props for his version of a reconciliation ritual. Although she tried to work up some genuine enthusiasm for the process, she felt a hollowness and disinterest that worried her. It isn't right to feel this way, she told herself. Not wifely. Not dutiful.

  He came to the table wearing a new yellow silk kimono and smelling of after-shave. The dampness made his curly black hair seem more curled, more jet black.

  "You look nice," she said, knowing he was expecting the compliment.

  "For you, Jenny."

  On another occasion, wearing a kimono that revealed his hairs to midsternum would have been a turn-on. Not tonight. Inside of herself, she felt a mass of contradictions.

  "To us," he said. "Up and away." They clinked glasses and drank. The wine was tasteless on her palate.

  "Great chicken," he said, eating with his hands. "Good idea." He looked at her as he denuded a chicken bone. "You're something. What a great girl I have. Tell you the truth, I don't deserve you."

  She shrugged, remaining silent.

  Considering what she was feeling, she didn't want to hear this avalanche of compliments. Suddenly he pointed the now meatless bone in her direction. "This I promise." He raised his other hand. "Word of honor. I'm going to make sure you're clued in on everything. Business. Everything. And once we get things going, we're going to make a baby. Maybe two or three. Would you like that?"