Waltzing at Midnight (17 page)

I nodded. Since we were standing outside, my departure was awkward, but safe. I didn’t want to go back in the house now that I had managed to get this far. I knew that if I went back in, I wouldn’t be leaving soon. The attraction between us was too strong. I was overwhelmed, feeling detached from my body. I had to get away.

“Thanks for taking care of the place,” Rosie said, kicking gravel with one foot.

“Oh, sure.” I sounded nonchalant, breezy even. It seemed like I was in some bizarre, badly written movie. “See you soon,” I called, sliding behind the wheel.

Rosie didn’t look happy about this development, but she didn’t say anything more. A moment later I was driving away.

On the drive home, I didn’t see or hear anything. I was in a trance, a disembodied spirit, my body still with Rosie, still feeling her insistent lips on mine. I almost had a wreck in town when I nearly missed seeing a red light and shot out partway into the intersection. No one was home when I arrived. I was glad. I needed some time alone to adjust to my surroundings, which were familiar, but odd, somehow. I felt as though I’d been sleepwalking for eons and had just now awakened to a strange, alien universe where no one spoke my language.

I unpacked, then wandered out to the backyard and looked at the mums. One of them was hopelessly wilted, but the others looked perky enough. Most of the leaves had fallen from the peach and cherry trees. Their branches stood out bare against a crisp blue sky sporting a few wispy clouds.

“Hi,” called a voice. I looked up, startled. My neighbor, Abby, was on tiptoes looking over the fence.

“Oh, hi,” I said.

“Want to come over for a visit?”

“Not right now, Abby. I’ll have to start dinner soon. Maybe tomorrow.” After I’d returned to the house, I realized that Abby no longer knew who I was. I didn’t even know who I was. Maneuvering the evening with Jerry and Amy was uncomfortable. They were 125

glad to have me home, glad to have things back to normal. But things weren’t normal at all. I was aching to be somewhere else.

I did my best to be who they expected me to be.

At dinner we talked about Christmas trees. “I think we should get an artificial one,” Jerry said. “They’re getting too expensive. Last year we paid sixty dollars for the tree, and that was a bargain.”

“But artificial trees are so…” Amy began, “artificial.” They both looked at me.

“Well?” Jerry asked.

“Does it matter?”

Amy frowned. “Of course it matters, Mom. A Christmas tree is like the focal point of your home’s holiday decor. It’s where the presents go. It’s what people see through the window when they drive by.”

I was irritated that I was being called upon to participate in this discussion. “They
are
very expensive,” I said.

“Yes,” Jerry said. “And a fire hazard. And they shed. Besides, princess, they make the artificial ones so lifelike nowadays, you probably wouldn’t know the difference. They even have a pine scent.” So the subject was closed. We would buy an artificial tree this year. Jerry was making an investment in our future, in our future Christmases together, and my mind was questioning the practicality of that. The thought that our future together could be called into question terrified me.

Monday I stayed in bed until long after Jerry and Amy had gone. I wasn’t asleep. I was reliving my few intimate moments with Rosie in my mind, the evening before she left for Phoenix, the frantic minutes in her kitchen when she returned. When I finally got up, I called her house. Voice mail answered. I made some coffee and then called her cell phone. Voice mail there too.

Was she screening me? I decided not to leave a message because I didn’t know what to say. Thank you for the orgasm? Sorry I had to leave so soon?

By the time afternoon descended, I had gotten dressed.

When I checked my e-mail, I found a note from Rosie, sent out 126

to the Vision Partnership members, reminding us of December’s monthly meeting tomorrow night. The agenda was attached. I printed it, wondering how I was going to deal with this.

I thought Rosie might call me, but she didn’t. Maybe she was disappointed at the way I’d left. Maybe she was angry at me for seducing her. Or maybe she hadn’t noticed so much. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal to her. Happened all the time.

Somehow I managed to make dinner so that, by six o’clock, the three of us were sitting at the dining room table eating.

“How was school, princess?” Jerry asked Amy.

“Okay. I got out of psychology today because we were doing our experiments. It’s cool. We drive around town and whenever we’re in the front of the line, like at a stoplight, when it turns green, we just sit there. Then we wait until something happens.”

“Something like what?” Jerry asked, alarmed. “Like you get shot?”

“No, like somebody honks. We keep track with a stopwatch to see how long it takes, and we write down the sex, age and car model of the person who honks.”

“So what’d you find out?” I asked, forcing myself to pay attention.

“Pretty much what you’d expect. Young people are impatient, boys are more aggressive than girls, people in red cars get pissed off faster, that kind of stuff.”

“Sounds like a lame excuse for a psychology experiment,”

Jerry said.

Amy shrugged. “We had to think of our own.”

Our evening proceeded like any other evening with Amy on the phone, Jerry in front of the television. I sat in my chair with the newspaper crossword puzzle on my lap, pen in hand, all of the little squares staring blankly up at me. Periodically I shut my eyes and tasted her mouth again in my mind while the crossword remained untouched.

Tuesday I tried to distract myself with work. I looked over the agenda for the meeting. They were going to discuss the office rental—my office, and my position. I suddenly had a frightening 12

thought. Maybe Rosie was going to fire me tonight. Had I blown this opportunity by forcing myself into her private sphere and blurring the lines between the professional and personal?

I sent her an e-mail, asking if she wanted me to attend the meeting.

“Yes, Jean,” she wrote me back. “Please attend.”

That was all. She wasn’t giving me any help to determine her state of mind or her intentions. If she did fire me, I couldn’t blame her. As the day wore on, I was convinced that was exactly what she was going to do. She would come up with some excuse for the rest of the members. No doubt she could find plenty, including my lack of qualifications. I was to come to the meeting so she could hand me a check and thank me for my services.

When I arrived at the meeting room, Rosie and Ken Sturtevant were already there, comfortably conversing about Calder mobiles, which meant nothing to me. I realized again how little I had to offer someone like Rosie, even if I’d been an unattached gay woman. I knew almost nothing about the things she was interested in.

“They appear simple,” Ken was saying. “But if you stop and look more carefully at the distribution of elements, the structure is not the least bit symmetrical. Still, it’s perfectly balanced. That’s what I like about them, the precise engineering.”

“Exactly,” said Rosie. “That’s no accident, of course. Calder was a mechanical engineer before he became a sculptor.” Rosie looked up to see me. “Hi, Jean,” she said as naturally as could be. I greeted them both as the rest of the members wandered in. The meeting began at seven, on time. I was so nervous that I could barely look at anyone. The subject of my office was the first item on the agenda. Terry reported that a space had been selected, and the figure of the rent was discussed. I took notes on my laptop as the members approved the office space.

“I thought we should talk about the roles and responsibilities of this new position,” Rosie said. “We can’t just throw Jean out there to figure out for herself what her job is.”

12

She wasn’t going to fire me, then? I looked up and caught Rosie’s eye. The look of gratitude and relief on my face must have been obvious because she looked briefly confused and then smiled reassuringly at me. I listened, captivated, as they debated over my job duties, and this went on for quite a while with no real consensus reached.

“Well,” said Rosie at last, “perhaps we should revisit this subject later on, after Jean has had an opportunity to get more involved and she can contribute her opinion. Sometimes these things determine themselves, and since this is a new role, a lot will depend on the individual. In my experience, Jean tends to go well beyond expectations anyway.”

Rosie was speaking as though she still thought the world of me, as an employee, anyway. This ability of hers, to compartmentalize her life, still impressed and astonished me.

“Let’s go on to the next topic,” Rosie said. “The delegation from Beijing will be arriving on February fifth and departing on February eighth. There will be four businessmen and their interpreter. We need to draw up a plan for their tour and provide them an escort. Since we’ve been talking about our administrator’s responsibilities, I’d like to propose that we assign these tasks to Jean.”

“Great!” said Gordon. “Jean, you’re going to get all of the dirty work. I love it!”

“I think I’m going to love it, too,” I said, genuinely excited.

The meeting ended at eight thirty and everybody left except Rosie, who would be locking the room and returning the key.

I waited until we were alone to approach her. I handed her my signed employment contract.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess you didn’t find anything to object to?”“No, not at all.”

“Salary is acceptable?” Her voice and manner were a little cool, I noticed with dismay.

“More than acceptable,” I said. “Very generous. I’ll do my best to earn it.”

12

“I have no doubt you will.” She slid the papers into her briefcase.

“Rosie,” I said, “I just want to say I’m sorry about last Sunday, about how I ran off like that. As my daughter would say, I freaked.”

She looked at me more kindly. “It’s okay, Jean. I know how confused you must be right now. I’m sorry too. I’m sorry that I let you get to me. I underestimated your determination. Let’s just forget it, okay?”

I hesitated, looking at her mouth and wanting so much to kiss her. “I don’t want to forget it,” I said, realizing that I was about to put my job in jeopardy again. “There’s no way I can forget it.

What I meant was that I’m sorry I didn’t stay.”

“I don’t see any point in pursuing this,” she said quietly.

“What do you think can come of it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice breaking with despair. “I just know that I love you and I don’t see how something like that can be ignored.”

I saw her glance at the closed curtains across the window.

She moved toward me and held me close. I put my head on her shoulder, choking back sobs. She stroked my head maternally and said nothing, and we stood like that for a few moments.

When I lifted my head and looked into her eyes, I saw that there was nothing maternal about her gaze. She wiped a tear from my cheek and then kissed my mouth, gently. I closed my eyes and returned her kiss.

Her mouth became more insistent as she pulled my body tightly against her. We stood inside the meeting room kissing in a close embrace. She was ardent, but very much in control of herself tonight. She hadn’t been taken off guard this time. I, on the other hand, allowed myself to go liquid in her arms. Her kisses alternated between tenderness and hard desire. I felt the heat rise between us and imagined myself turning into a molten puddle at her feet.

After a few moments, Rosie pulled away slightly. I opened my eyes, wondering why she had stopped kissing me. As far as I was 130

concerned, I was prepared to spend the rest of my life standing here in this room with my mouth linked to hers.

She was breathing deeply and her eyes were dark and intense. “Come home with me,” she said. It was a command, not a request.

Oh, yes! I thought, calculating how many minutes it would be before I was lying beside her in her bed. And then a horribly unwelcome reminder of who I was swept over me. My mind struggled. Rosie released me, seeing that I wasn’t going to assent.

“I can’t,” I said, hating my life. “I’m expected home any minute.”

Rosie nodded, clearly disappointed. “Yes,” she said, turning away. “That’s exactly my point.”

She went to the table and packed her things into her briefcase.

I did the same and stepped into the hallway, feeling defeated.

Rosie turned off the light, locked the door and pulled it shut behind us. As she turned to look at me, I said, “I wish—”

“I know,” she said. “Me too.”

As the week continued, all I could think about was Rosie, all day long, no matter what I was doing. I resisted the urge to call her. I had nothing new to offer. But my preoccupation with her did not diminish. Washing my car in the driveway Thursday afternoon, I was overcome with daylight fantasies and found myself lying across the hood, my face in a wet rag, completely oblivious to what I was doing. I kept telling myself to resist my desire. Giving in to this thing, whatever it was—lust, love, insanity—would topple too many truths. Like a tsunami, it would come slamming into people’s lives, laying waste.

Friday afternoon Amy coerced me into helping her rehearse her part in a school play, Sheridan’s
The Rivals
. She was Mrs.

Malaprop, a character, she explained, who gave us the term

“malapropism.” I had to ask what a malapropism was. “A word that’s misused, used in an improper context,” she said, handing me the book. “This is my first scene, Mom. You play Lydia, a young woman in love with a man I don’t approve of.”