Between Here and April Read online

  “That’s just the point!” I said, keeping one eye on the girls, the other on the homeless woman digging through a nearby trash can. “We did notice. And we asked questions. But no one ever answered, and they didn’t have grief counselors like they do today, and everyone was too busy with Watergate and Vietnam and the elections, and so the whole thing gets swept under the rug and repressed to the point where I go to see Medea last week with Mark, and poof, there she is. Like Beatrice in The Inferno.”

  “Who?”

  “Beatrice? The girl who leads Dante through purgatory to divine love? You know, his childhood friend. The one who died.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Just trust me on this one. Look, even my mother, when I called her last week from the hospital? She couldn’t remember anything about it. ‘Do you remember April Cassidy?’ I asked her. ‘My best friend whose mother killed her?’ You know what she said? ‘Boy, Lizzie, you have an active fantasy life.’”

  Lucy paused for a moment before speaking, which was unusual. “Wait a minute, Elizabeth,” she finally sputtered. “There was actually a girl named April, she was your friend, and her mother did kill her, right?” I could hear her gum crackling, impatiently, in the receiver. “This would be reality-based, right? With stuff that actually happened?”

  “Jesus, Luce. Yes.”

  “Because otherwise we have no show. I’m not even sure we can sell historical documentaries anymore, unless they have sex in them, like a Profumo Affair—type thing, or they’re docudramas about rich people dying. Everyone’s still looking for the next Titanic. You wouldn’t happen to have anything like that up your sleeve, would you?”

  I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “No,” I said, now feeling Daisy’s fingers tugging at my shirt. “Daisy, what is it?” The verb burst forth with more ferocity than I liked. Even the homeless woman stopped her rummaging to stare.

  Daisy looked stunned. Then hurt. “Tessie tried to go against the tree like a boy again,” she said, all pout. “And now her pants are starting to freeze.” Then she crossed her arms over her chest and marched away in a huff.

  “Oh, Jesus, not again. Look, Lucy, I’m sorry to bother you. I’ll call you later.” The homeless woman was now shaking her head in disapproval. “Oh, like you could do it any better,” I said, running off to where Tess now sat in a patch of yellowed snow, crying.

  “Childcare, Elizabeth,” Lucy was saying, as I fumbled with the tiny buttons to hang up the phone. “Chi-yeld-care.”

  CHAPTER 6

  LATER THAT EVENING, when Mark came tiptoeing into our bedroom just after midnight, I flipped on the bedside light and showed him the photocopies of the articles as well as the Montgomery County police report that had just arrived in the mail. He sat on the edge of the bed, skimming the pages. “So you’d never found out what happened to her?” he said.

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m sure on some subconscious level I’d figured it out, but without any details, you know? The car, the woods, the fact that April’s mom was around my age when she did it, that her kids were the same ages as ours.”

  Mark was staring at the tiny bandage that had replaced the white tape and gauze on my forehead from my latest fall. “How’s the head?”

  “Fine,” I said. Physically, I thought.

  I watched Mark remove his undershirt, the tips of his shoulder blades rising up and down as he yanked it over his head. Once upon a time, he would undress facing me, the rise and fall of his chest a prelude instead of a punctuation mark. “You’re built like an oak,” I’d blurted, idiotically, when I first saw him do it, first saw the angular clavicles stretching from shoulder to chest, the long arms reaching up, the lean trunk of a torso branching out at the rib cage, the mop of auburn hair atop his head and under his arms. In every way, even physically, he was the opposite of the man who’d come before him: broad and linear where Renzo had been wiry, light of skin and of spirit, able to mine the humor and absurdity from under even the darkest of rocks. “An oak, huh?” he’d said, blushing. Then he molded his arms into craggy limbs. “So climb me.”

  But now, a decade later, he was mumbling good night from across the gulf of our king-sized bed, his back a Jersey barrier blocking the entrance.

  “Good night,” I said. A few minutes later, I called out in the dark. “Mark?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I know it’s late, but . . . You wouldn’t by any chance feel like taking a quick stab at sex, would you?”

  He turned to face me. “Well, that depends. What kind of sex are we talking about?”

  A NUMBER OF months after Daisy was born, after the episiotomy had healed and my libido was back, in spirit if not precisely in strength, Mark pulled a pair of shiny metal handcuffs out of his bedside table drawer and dangled them over my head. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I’d said at the time, trying to make light of the gesture. He seemed serious though, and a little embarrassed by my reaction. I felt guilty for having taken his prelude in jest. He’d toyed with the idea before—on our honeymoon he’d tied me to the bed with the terry sash from the hotel robe, and I’d giggled, slightly mortified, through the whole thing—but it had never gone beyond playacting, a hyper self-aware metabondage. But ever since Daisy’s birth, after the mandated six weeks of postpartum celibacy, followed by several tentative trysts which felt not unlike penetration by a large dowel wrapped with sandpaper, we were both growing frustrated, restless.

  “Ow!” I’d said, as the metal dug into my skin. I maneuvered my wrists around, trying to find a comfortable position, realizing I’d never find one. “Actually, I don’t like these. Can you take them off?”

  “Aw, come on, Liza. Just try them. Just once.”

  “No.”

  “Please?”

  “Mark . . .”

  “Please?”

  “Can’t you at least loosen them a bit?”

  “Sure.”

  And so he loosened them. And I tried them. Just once. And then just once again. And then just once another time, and then another time on top of that for good measure. But with each successive effort, I kept arriving at the same conclusion: not only did I not like being restrained, I was starting to hate it. Nevertheless Mark, ever the optimist, refused to give up hope that one day the intersection on our Venn diagrams of desire would somehow enlarge to include this. Every third sexual congress or so, he would ask, politely, to restrain me. And, feeling guilty about not being able to satisfy his needs, craving intimacy, I would give it another try. “Just please make sure it doesn’t hurt this time,” I’d say, which is how metal handcuffs gave way to red fuzzy ones, red fuzzy ones to leather restraints, leather restraints to rope, rope to scarves, and scarves to the softest white satin sashes by which one could ever hope to be bound, but still it hurt. Not on the outside anymore, but someplace deeper.

  I tried discussing it with him, attacking the issue from a psychological angle. Why did he like bondage? What was it about control—having it, ceding it—that turned him on, and could he find a different manner in which to explore it? What was it about Daisy’s birth that had perhaps intensified these needs? Was it in any way related to some childhood loss, his early sexual awakening, easy access to online porn? Could he ever imagine foregoing it all for the sake of marital accord? Was there any explanation he could offer to help me understand it, please, really, really, pretty please?

  “I just like it,” he’d say. “Always have.”

  I tried to put it in Aristotelian terms, to appeal to his mathematical, logical side, inventing a syllogism that went something like this:

  Major premise: Socrates enjoys bondage.

  Minor premise: Bondage makes Socrates’ wife feel bad.

  Conclusion: Socrates enjoys making his wife feel bad.

  “You keep looking at this through your own prism,” he’d say. “But I can turn it right back on you.” What was it, he asked, about being tied up that I didn’t like? Why was my react
ion to simple role-playing in bed so negative, when all he was asking me to do was to relinquish control? Why couldn’t I just pretend to like it, at least once, once!

  “I just don’t like it,” I’d say. “It turns me off. Isn’t that enough?”

  Some nights I’d simply resort to tired polemic, going off on a diatribe against the objectification of women, the dangers of pornography, the dehumanization of the body. But what I felt was less militant, more specific, and far more elusive than that.

  “I just don’t like it,” I’d say, once again.

  And Mark would reply, “Well I do.”

  “WHAT KIND OF sex do you think I’d be talking about?” I now said, my eyes skimming, for perhaps the twentieth time that day, the newspaper article on my bedside table: “Maryland Mother, Children, Found Dead . . . a vacuum cleaner hose had been retrofitted with duct tape . . . the couple had been having marital difficulties . . . one arm wrapped around each of her daughters . . .”

  “Um, vanilla?”

  “I told you,” I said. “I hate that word.” One time, when Mark was working late as usual, and I was trying to understand his newfound fervor for bondage, I set out on a virtual tour of the S&M world: Listservs, Web sites, scientific papers, chat rooms, blogs, anything I could find that might shed some light on my husband and his new obsessions. It was no different, in many ways, than trips I’d once taken to Amazon tribal areas, or to rural Mozambique, for as little as I understood the culture, costumes, or language upon arrival. There were women on leashes, women as stools; there were men in leather masks, men in pink robes; there were whips and chains and ball gags and harnesses; there were shorthand descriptions, acronyms, names—sub, dom, slave, master, BDSM, Krafft-Ebing, Sacher-Masoch, and always, always that word: vanilla.

  “Why do you hate it?” he said. “It’s an apt description.”

  “No, it’s a judgment, implying inferiority, banality.”

  “It does not. A lot of people like vanilla ice cream.”

  “Yes, and some people prefer hamburgers to steak. You know what I mean. Anyway, if I’m so ‘vanilla’ these days, what does that make you? Pistachio? You used to like normal sex. For years you were okay with it. God, sometimes I feel like I bought a car without looking under the hood.”

  “A lemon,” he said, turning away.

  “Yes, that’s the flavor.” I pulled the covers tightly over my shoulder.

  Five minutes later, Mark sat up in bed and flipped on his bedside light. “I have an idea,” he said.

  “It better not involve handcuffs.” I yawned.

  “It doesn’t,” he said, his voice tinged with injury.

  “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. What’s your idea?” Now I sat up and faced him.

  He jumped off the bed and from the depths of his sock drawer produced a small package wrapped in pink tissue paper. “Here,” he said, smiling, handing it to me. “I bought it last week, but I was waiting for the right moment to give it to you.”

  “What is it?” The sticker holding the package together was marked with the name of a store and an address on West Twentieth Street. “Mod Sade?” I read, tearing the tissue paper slowly, dreading its contents.

  “It’s a new store. In Chelsea.” Mark was smiling, hopeful, as if he’d actually convinced himself that the object within, which I’d finally unearthed, was the solution to all of our problems. “What do you think?” he said.

  What I thought, staring at the black leather corset studded with tiny silver spikes, was: Why me? What I said, when I found my voice, was, “Did you really think I would like this?”

  “No, but I knew I would like seeing you in it, and I was hoping you could maybe tolerate it.” He was holding my hands now, rubbing them tenderly. “Please try it on, Lizzie-bean. It would mean a lot to me.”

  “There are a lot of things you could do that would mean a lot to me,” I said, thinking, And none of them involves leather.

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, come on!” I yanked my hands out of his. “Do I really have to list them?”

  Mark sighed. “Don’t confuse the drudgery of domestic chores with sex. You can pay someone to help you with that stuff.”

  Now I was furious. “Jesus Christ, Mark, I’m not talking about housework! And as far as paying someone to help us with ‘stuff’ . . .”—I made air quotes with my fingers—“. . . why don’t you just go ahead and pay someone to help you with yours? I give you full permission. Go find yourself a willing sub who’s STD-free and takes Visa.”

  “So you are comparing sex and housework.”

  Only insofar as both of them feel like drudgery these days. “No! I’m just saying, if you want me to relinquish a piece of myself, you have to be willing to do the same. I can’t just keep giving. You’re already way into overdraft at this point.”

  “What exactly do you want, Elizabeth? Tell me.”

  “I just want . . . you.”

  “And I want you, too!” He was practically shouting.

  “But I want the old you. The one who wasn’t obsessed with this . . .”—I ran my fingers along the spikes of the corset—“. . . stuff.”

  “And I don’t want to ‘do’ my so-called ‘stuff’ with anyone else. I want to do it with you.” He took my hands back in his, as serious as I’ve ever seen him. “Please.”

  “No.”

  “Please!” he said, and an edge of desperation had now crept into his voice.

  I considered my options. If I turned away from him now, we’d be one step further down the road to separate lives. If I gave in, Mark would perhaps one day see his way clear to doing the same for me. It’s just a corset, I thought, no big deal, but only because It’s just a marriage was too loaded. “Fine,” I said, wearily. Hating myself for giving in, but also granting myself the clemency to move forward. “Just don’t cut off my circulation, okay?”

  “Really?” Mark had the face of a kid whose mother had just told him to pick out any cupcake in the glass case.

  “Yeah. really,” I said.

  Mark tied the corset around my rib cage and yanked it hard. “Okay?” he said.

  I could hardly breathe. “Fine.”

  “Now the bottoms,” he said. I stepped out of my pajama bottoms and let them fall into a puddle by the side of the bed. “No,” he said. “Wait.” He went to the dresser and pulled out the red lace thong he’d bought me for Valentine’s Day the previous year. “Here, put this on. I’ll help you.” I stepped into the underwear, feeling the uncomfortable tug of Lycra and lace in that furrow where such materials have no business tugging. Several years earlier, I’d noticed that many of my friends, smart women with high-pressure jobs, childcare responsibilities, and better-than-passing exposure to feminist theory, had started wearing similar types of underwear, claiming it felt fine, not like dental floss or cheese wire or a knife. You get used to it, they’d say. Husbands love it. And I’d think, What Kool-Aid are these people drinking?

  Mark lit a candle for better illumination and went back to the dresser to fetch a garter belt. Then a blindfold. “Now let me look at you,” he said finally, stepping back from his Galatea.

  “Now kneel,” said Mark. “Here.” He tapped the bed and led me to the desired spot.

  I did as I was told.

  The tops of my breasts were nearly at my chin, thrust outward, shelflike, from the squeeze of the corset. I had to take short, shallow breaths just to suck in enough air not to pass out. Just get through this, I thought, and you’ll never have to do it again. Think of it as a necessary mortification, like standing in line at the DMV.

  I could feel Mark kneeling now across from me. He kissed my neck, then the tops of my breasts. “Now put your hands behind your back, as if you were tied up.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Put your hands behind your back. As if you were tied up.”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “Oh, come on, Lize. Just play along. Pretend.”

  I felt the room star
t to spin. Put my hands behind my back, as if I were tied up? “That’s it,” I said. I yanked off my blindfold, untied the corset, and removed the garter belt and scratchy thong in a manic flurry. “I can’t do this anymore. I hate it.” I threw open my drawer and found the pair of sweatpants I’d kept around since summer camp, 1979, hearing Mark, as if he were under water, muttering, But it doesn’t work if your arms aren’t tied. I found a long-sleeved T-shirt and a sweatshirt, and I put them both on, hyperventilating now, scanning the room for a tissue, feeling not unlike the inside of a food processor. “I HATE IT!” I screamed, now crying, now grabbing a pillow under my arm, now slamming the door to our bedroom behind me.

  “Mommy?” It was tiny Tess, outlined by moonlight, standing at the door of the bedroom she shared with Daisy. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

  I sat down on the floor next to her. “Nothing, sweetheart. I was just having a bad dream. You know how you sometimes have bad dreams?”

  “Was there monsters in it?”

  “Only little ones, but they’re gone now . . .” He’s still in there! What the hell am I going to do? Leave him? Where does that leave you?“. . . and I’m okay, see? I just needed to get a glass of water.”

  “You slammed the door.”

  “I know, peanut. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. Sometimes I forget how strong I am. Here, let’s get back into bed.” I scooped her up in my arms and set her down into the still-warm indentation on the bottom bunk. I lay next to her and stroked the strands of hair out of her face, ran my fingertips along the contours of her nose (Mark’s) then lips (mine), marveling at her porcelain dollness, the odd miracle of her existence. What would happen if I told her I was leaving her father? Into how many shards would she break?

  “Spoon, Mommy, spoon,” said Tess, turning away from me, thrusting her back into the empty space where once she floated in oblivion. And because she was still buoyant, and nothing else was, I pulled her toward me.

  CHAPTER 7

  “DON’T QUOTE ME on this, but I think Adele was seeing someone else, and things got messy,” said the Cassidys’ former neighbor, Mavis Traub. “Wait. You’re not shooting yet, are you?”