The Wood of Suicides (25 page)

I
COULD
not find the words to express to him the idiocy of a grown man divorcing his wife of sixteen years for the sake of young flesh: flesh that had already been his, countless times, yet that he felt the need to ascribe permanency to; to make his own before the eyes of God, the government, and all the other invisible jurors who he’d defied by touching me in the first place. I could not, did not want to find the words, and so went along with all that he had told me, sparing hardly a thought for its idiocy.

My mother was already home by the time that I returned, barelegged and befouled, from the motel that he had taken me to, and where he had taken pains to pleasure me, as if believing that a single, bodily shudder would be enough to cure me of my existential woes. She looked at me critically when I came in, putting aside her book. “Are you going to bathe before church?” I nodded and tramped upstairs, taking the smell of my sins with me.

On Easter Saturday, the two of us drove into the city as planned for a day of shopping at Union Square. In department-store dressing rooms, I tried on gown after gown, before settling on a floaty number in green chiffon. It had a high neckline, though left most of my back quite bare, emphasizing the fragile sharpness of my shoulder blades, the incurve of my young spine; I had shed those three pounds, and some. Without batting an eyelash, my mother put the purchase on her credit card and told me that I would need a bag and shoes to go with it. I wondered whether she was hoping to buy my confidence; to inspire me to tell her about my “nice boy” by helping me be more desirable to him.

I had informed Steadman in passing of my plans for that afternoon. He paid me an unexpected phone call while I was strapping on some stilettos at Neiman Marcus, half an hour later. “Where are you?” His voice was hushed, excited.

“NM’s, women’s accessories. Why?”

“No reason. What are you doing?”

“Looking at shoes.” I saw that my mother was approaching. “Listen, I have to go. Can we talk later?”

“Of course, my love,” he said smoothly and dialed off.

“How are those?” my mother asked of the high heels, standing before me with her purse in hand.

“Too tight. I think I need the nine and a half.”

“What did I tell you?” She allowed herself a smug tap of her own size sevens.

We had just paid for the shoes and were strolling toward the handbag section, when I caught sight of a lone, male shopper, out of place in the gynocentric surroundings. I felt a thrill of humiliation and arousal. I wondered whether it would be possible to pass him by without my mother seeing him. With the instincts of a stalker, perfectly attuned to his prey, however, my lover turned from the display of handbags that he had been pretending to inspect and dazzled us both with a charmingly uneven smile. He was wearing his chino pants and a cheerful, check shirt that was reserved for weekends. “Laurel! Mrs. Marks! What a pleasant surprise.”

I felt my mother stiffen beside me. It seemed that she had become less receptive to strangers, in the last few months. He continued, oblivious to her frigidity.

“Perhaps you don’t remember me. I’m Catherine’s father. Laurel stayed with us over Thanksgiving.”

“I remember,” my mother responded coolly.

“Your daughter really is a delight!” He placed a firm hand on my shoulder—a bold move, even for him. “We would love to have her again sometime. In fact, what about tonight? I’m sure Catherine would be thrilled . . .”

“I don’t think that would be appropriate. We have plans as a family tomorrow for Easter. Besides,” she narrowed her pale eyes at him, “it’s about time we had
your
daughter come to stay. I’ve been dying to meet her.”

“Oh, no, Mom,” I was quick to object. “We can’t have people over. The house is a mess.”

This was true enough. Since settling on a price for Arcady, my mother had been busy sorting through the contents of the townhouse, deciding the fate of each item. Mr. Steadman concealed his disappointment with a strained smile. “That’s a pity. Maybe in the summer . . . Laurel, don’t be a stranger . . . Mrs. Marks . . .” He offered her his hand.

“Mr. Stratton, isn’t it?” my mother posed, accepting the handshake.

“Steadman,” he corrected her, not understanding the cautionary glance that I shot him. “Hugh Steadman.”

A
S
SOON
as my suitor had skulked away, I sought to change the subject, drawing my mother’s attention to the beading on a nearby evening bag. It was some time before I was able to calm the thudding of my heart, the fluttering of my nerves. At the checkout, forking out for the final purchase of the day, my mother complained of a headache and suggested that we take afternoon tea at the Rotunda before making the drive home. When I was younger, she had often treated me to tea there after a long day of shopping, and this memory made me sick at heart. I agreed, tensely; if she were going to confront me about what she had seen, I supposed that it would be safer if she did so in public.

We ascended to the fourth floor and were seated at a table for two overlooking the lobby, beneath the golden, stained-glass dome ceiling. I pursed my lips as a starched serviette was spread out over my lap. My mother ordered for the both of us. There was a chill, water-sipping silence. In my handbag, my cell phone began to buzz. Our eyes locked. I excused myself.

I pushed my way out of the restaurant. He wanted me to meet him in the lobby. I told him that I could not. He persisted, arguing that it would only take a few minutes. I was weak and seeking any excuse to escape her; I took the next elevator down. I spied him among the smattering of people on the ground floor and, my heavy Mary Janes clip-clopping, hastened to meet him. I was white-socked and pinafore-dressed. He was check-shirted and carrying a shiny new shopping bag. I thought it best not to embrace him.

“I bought you something,” he said a little sheepishly.

“How nice.”

“Here.” He extended the shopping bag toward me. “Take it.”

I didn’t doubt that it was lingerie, and felt almost as embarrassed for him as I did for myself. I accepted the bag. Without inspecting its contents, I sequestered it inside my purse. “Thank you.”

Having smiled and curtsied, I was about to turn on my heel and go. “Wait!” He caught my arm. Undoing all my discretion, he pulled me close to him and ensnared me in a deep, long, roving kiss, right there in the department-store lobby. When, at last, he loosed his hold, I wiped my lips and backed away, nodding a speechless farewell. I crossed back to the elevator, hot-faced and down-headed and, only when I was inside, looked into the bag that he had given me. I saw sheer fabric and lace edging, as expected. I touched my burning lips.

In my absence, the tea and tiered-cake stand had been set down. My hands trembled as I retrieved my serviette from the table and smoothed it over my lap. “I waited for you before starting.” My mother’s voice was strained and thin. “Thank you. It looks very good,” I said of the scones, sandwiches, and
petits fours.
As she poured her tea and milk and spooned sugar into the rust-colored mixture, I saw that her hands were trembling even more furiously than my own.

H
AD
SHE
asked me, I would have confessed to everything that night. As it was, the woman had been stunned into silence and didn’t dare to accuse me, either over our barely touched afternoon tea or in the northbound traffic home. Even the most venomous word, I felt, would have been better than that silence, in which I saw my shadowy deeds looming, assuming uglier forms. The man between the daughter’s thighs wore checks and chino pants. The man was old enough to be her father. What could this knowledge mean to the widow behind the wheel, shading her eyes against the late sun?

Passing her bedroom door that evening on my way back from the bathroom, I thought that I heard sobbing. The Caravaggio was still in the hall: prim young Judith beheading the bearded chief. I couldn’t bring myself to breach that threshold, to enter the room where it had all begun. I locked myself in my own chamber and wept into my stale pillowcase.

“I suppose I won’t see you until your graduation.” This was the last thing that my mother said to me, dropping me off at school on Tuesday. She presented me her cool cheek to brush and I got a whiff of her perfume: first love, fragrance on throat.

There were no classes that day. Steadman met me in his SUV and we made love among the live oak and madrone.

I
KNEW
in my heart that there was nothing left for us to do but separate before any more damage was done. I knew this, yet I was prevented from doing anything about it because I was weak, greedy, sensuous; because I couldn’t stand to go without the sins that he had accustomed me to until all the pleasure I reaped from them ran dry. His love was the only stimulus that I was capable of responding to, any longer. I sought it out as frequently and forcefully as I could get it.

A carelessness had come over us with the sense of how little time we had left. He had handed in his letter of resignation, effective mid-June. With this, he considered himself released from his teacherly duties in all but the official sense. As an instructor, he showed none of the inspiration, the enthusiasm for his work that he had when we fell in love. He was often grim. His mind wandered. He checked his brown-and-gold wristwatch and glanced outside the window, thrumming his fingers on the desk. He eyed my lips, my throat, my legs.

When we resumed our Friday lessons outdoors, I took my rightful place by his side in the shade of the willows, looking over his shoulder as he droned on and the minds of my coevals strayed. Afterward, I would help him carry the books upstairs, in defiance of the looks that were cast our way. Better still, I would wander off to our laurel arbor to await him in a vain attempt to relive the loss of my virginity.

It was April then and my world was shrinking, flourishing with spring green and flowers of hysteria. I had read somewhere that suicides multiply during fine weather and this made sense to me: whereas fall had sympathized with my melancholy, spring made a mockery of it. Only the truly forlorn could have seen the ugliness of birds in rape-flight, of wasps haunting the school trashcans, and the excruciating paleness of newly shaved legs. Only the truly forlorn could have smelled all the death in the air.

I chased the smell of death. I was careless. I took to meeting him every day after school, and Saturdays, too, whenever we could both get away from our respective jailers. One afternoon, waiting for him in his empty classroom, I didn’t even bother to close the door completely, but sat on his desk swinging my legs, for anyone to see. People did see, not the least of whom was Mrs. Faherty, whose lynx eye remarked me from behind gold-rimmed glasses. She strode into the doorway, hands on hip replacement. “Excuse me! What do you think you’re doing in there?”

“I’m just . . . waiting for Mr. Steadman. He said that I could see him about my English essay.”

“Well, wait outside!” She shooed me out of the room. “Really, it’s unthinkable for you to be here after school hours. This is private property!”

I had never seen Mrs. Faherty so close up and was surprised by how oddly straight and white her teeth were. I wondered if they were false. With an effort, I looked her in the face. “I’m sorry. He told me his door would be open . . .”