Their house is on a street that climbs one of the steepest hills in the city and from her third-floor bedroom she can see out over the abundant trees (it is a city known for its green), to the office towers of the downtown and beyond that, a sliver of the great lake it sits on. She turns to look at her husband, Thompson, or Sonny, as he is occasionally called, a childhood nickname. He is sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, yawning. “Still not awake?” she laughs. She goes over and ruffles his fine, dark hair. He is a long, lean man, but soft, untoned with a little bulge above his pantline. Both of them are naked, having just made love.
It was hurried, more sensation than passion. She had, as usual, awakened early. Only this morning, lying there, instead of trying to return to sleep, she had curled herself around Thompson’s back and reached over and cupped his soft genitals. He groaned; didn’t respond. Mornings were his low point, the first few moments at waking grim.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Up for it?”
“Not sure,” he answered, not opening his eyes, not moving.
“Want me to try?”
“If you want. Some people like necrophilia.”
She laughed and pulled him over and lowered her head to his groin. This was as much for her as it was for him. She loved doing this, even with his disinterest. She loved his penis, ready or not. She loved the transformation from squishy, helpless thing in its nest of hair to solid, satiny tower. She loved to run her tongue around the precise rim of the glans, immerse the strong shaft into the wet warmth of her mouth. She felt power and pleasure with the possession of him.
His reaction, or its, was as she had expected and she reached into the drawer of the bedside table for the tube of K-Y jelly and lubricated them both and then she sat astride him and slid onto him. He still hadn’t opened his eyes.
“You know I hate this,” he said, with a sleepy grin.
“That’s okay,” she said, with a laugh. “It’s for me. It will soon be over.” And it was, she having reached orgasm by touching herself while she was on him, he quickly following her. She always loved sex, even when it was hurried like this. She loved its raw upheaval, the thrill of its temporary exposure. She lay on his lanky body, her own roundness filling his angles while he stroked her back.
“I do love you, you know.”
“Terrific,” he said, motioning for her to get off. They were both sweaty, more from the humidity than the exertion and she wasn’t a lingerer, in any case.
“Okay,” she said, sliding off him. “Up and at ’em. Time to get a wiggle on. No dilly-dallying,” which is what she says almost every day.
She heads for the bathroom and looks guiltily at the stationary bicycle in the corner. Her nemesis. Her struggle. Her weight. Tomorrow.
Thompson falls back onto the bed and puts the pillow over his head. In the shower, she lathers her curly, coppery hair and pale freckled body. She is beautiful, but not in the ordinary sense. She is more striking, with round, wide eyes, a small nose with a tilt, and a full mouth. Her face is always animated; her expressions pliant.
She thinks of the reliability of their sex, that it is not so much ardent (not after almost fourteen years of marriage), as loving and easy. Familiar. It isn’t boring or perfunctory. She doesn’t think that. What she feels is a small gladness for the surety of it; that Thompson would always be available and willing for it to happen.
She wonders if the girls have heard them. Not that they made much noise. She, a little, when she came, maybe, a stifled gasp. Besides they are on the spacious, remade third floor of their Victorian house. It has a large bedroom with a fireplace and bathroom and an office for both of them for their business, Artful Sustenance. He is a photographer, she a food stylist, and they’ve worked together successfully for six years since Meredith returned to work when Darcy was a year old. Before that, she was in advertising. Thompson has always been a sought-after photographer.
Lizbett, who is eleven, and Darcy, seven, are on the second floor, each in their own bedroom with a shared bath. There are two other bedrooms and another bathroom on the same level for guests.
Still, Meredith is always concerned about having sex when the girls are up. It’s better to wait until they are asleep. Thompson prefers that. Inventive, prolonged sex at bedtime. But Meredith is usually tired at night and not up to Thompson’s desires. Their best times are afternoons, with a bottle of white wine, when the girls are away or if they can escape somewhere for a weekend or a holiday, but none of these happens as often as they would like. So they compromise, taking turns with each other’s preferences and it has worked.
Or at least it is starting to again. Meredith is recovering from a recent six-month affair with a young mystery novelist, a swaggery extrovert who nonplussed her with his overtures and eventually she succumbed. And eventually she was hurt. He was probably a little in love with her, and she more than a little with him, but he wanted marriage and children and even if she were to divorce Thompson, she has had her tubes tied. Besides, she is forty. And she has Lizbett and Darcy, her beloved girls for whom she would do anything, even stay in a marriage that has felt less than full. But she still feels aftershocks from the affair, which was vigorous and inventive.
She had not thought she was unhappy, but she realized after being with Allan, who was a vital, spontaneous man, that Thompson’s quiet reticence, his understated responses, if he responded to her at all, have created in her a kind of hunger. Thompson is slow-paced, laconic. Allan was spirited, responsive, both loquacious and an enthusiastic listener. When she talked, he talked back.
Once she said, “I’m not sure why I’m doing this terrible thing.”
“Terrible thing?”
“This … being with you. I’m forty years old, married with two children I love … a husband I love.”
“Why are you, then?”
“Because you came after me. I was flattered. And intrigued. And it’s an added dimension to my life. It’s like parentheses filled with ignition and pleasure. Everything in my life has always felt so exposed. It just spills over onto everything. I like the secrecy of this … there’s a precariousness that’s sustaining … like being abandoned somewhere unknown. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But that’s the thrill. The unexpected. The dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“Well, in the sense that I am very vulnerable. I rarely feel vulnerable. I mostly feel safe. I organize my life so that it is. No surprises.”
“So this is not about me? It’s about the risk.”
“You’re inseparable from it. You invite defiance. You’re cocky and assured. You strut.”
“Strut! Jesus!”
“Yes. As if you have no match.”
“Maybe you’re just bad.” He’d laughed. She hadn’t.
“I hope I don’t get punished.”
Mostly the affair had puzzled her because she and Thompson had regular sex. Good sex. Sex wasn’t the issue. Nor was connectedness. They thought alike. It was really Meredith’s need for reaction.
Meredith is an extrovert, a demanding one. Some might call her brash. And her spiritedness needs fuel. When Thompson fell in love with that vivacity, he suspected it might come at a price. She’d offset his emotional timidity with an impetuous, almost ravenous devotion. But when she went after him, though he responded willingly, he did so with deliberate caution, fearing he’d