David Wiltse - Bone Deep

Tovah watched Becker approach with the same look of disdain she had showered on her husband.

"You'll hate me," Tovah announced.

"Why would I do that?"

"I can't play," she said.

"Doesn't look to me as if you've had much opportunity yet," Becker said.

"I'll just stay out of your way," she said.

"And I'll try to stay out of yours."

"Karen is such a good player. I can't play like that."

"She's a tiger," Becker agreed. He looked across the court at his wife, already in position at net, swaying lightly on her toes, eager to get on with the game. She looked every inch an athlete, and was. It was hard to say just what Tovah looked like other than a model in a tennis outfit. She sported a wide red headband but had not yet moved enough to break a sweat, despite the heat. Becker wondered what she got out of a game like this, it certainly was not the exercise. Not that she appeared to need any. Tall and lean, she looked beautiful in whatever she wore, transforming even the worst of fashions into raiments of adornment with a mannequin's air of indifference. He realized that he was getting used to the jewelry-although it appeared that she was wearing fewer bracelets than at dinner-and the face paint, which today was an unnatural shade of pink.

"But it's a team game," Becker continued. "One strategy we might try is to avoid the stronger player and concentrate on the weaker. What do you think?":,How?" 'Hit every ball to your husband," he said.

Tovah burst into laughter, the first genuine expression of amusement he had ever seen from her.

"Wonderful," she said with relish. "Let's kill him."

Kom took Karen to see the gardens, enthusing over his flower beds and vegetables with a verve that seemed to equal his zest for tennis.

"As if he does the gardening," Tovah said, as the others moved out of earshot. "He thinks memorizing the Latin name of things makes him a gardener."

"You do the actual work, do you?" Becker asked. "We have a man who does the gardening," she said dismissively. "Stanley does the appreciating.

To me, one zucchini looks just like another."

"Well, it's good to have enthusiasms, I suppose," Becker said, feeling platitudinous.

"Oh, Stanley has his enthusiasms," she said, chuckling bitterly. "He does have his enthusiasms."

She stretched her long legs straight in front of her until she was almost sliding out of her chair.

"You think I'm awful, don't you?" she asked.

"You just need practice."

"I don't mean tennis. I couldn't care less about tennis. I mean as a person. You think I'm awful and you think Stanley is great. You think he's so open and so much fun."

"No," said Becker.

"Why not? Everyone else does."

"I mean I don't think you're awful. Stanley's fine-but so are you. You just seem-a little hard on yourself"

"She thinks I'm awful," Tovah said, tilting her head toward Stanley and Karen.

"No she doesn't. Not at all. Karen likes you."

Tovah's chest heaved in a mirthless laugh. "No she doesn't, I can tell.

A woman can tell. Your wife thinks Stanley is just so wonderful, so vulnerable, so damned all courant. He's the goddamned sensitive man they're always talking about."

Becker looked at Karen and Kom and wished they would hurry back. He was pointing out a flourishing bed of blue and purple and burgundy blossoms, kneeling in front of particular plants, cupping the floral heads with one hand, gesticulating with the other. Karen was nodding, looking interested. Becker could not tell from this distance if she was sincere or not. He watched them turn the corner and disappear around the side of the house like a man on a lifeboat regarding a ship sailing over the horizon.

"If she only knew," Tovah was saying.

"Knew what?" As so often with Tovah, Becker felt as if he was missing the most important part of the conversation, the part that would tell him what she was really talking about.

"What he's really like."

"What is he really like?"

"He's a toad," she said. "Not that you would think so. A man wouldn't think so. A man would probably think he's great, just the way you do."

"What makes him a toad?" Becker asked.

She sighed with a puff, like a tire losing air. "What makes any man a toad?"

Becker was not sure he knew the answer, but he felt a fool for asking.

As Karen and Kom stepped around the corner of the house, Kom stopped abruptly and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial level.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"About what?"

"How are they getting on?"

Karen looked at him in some bewilderment. "Who?"

Kom paused, a range of emotions crossing his features. His face settled into an expression of sadness and resignation.

"You know, don't you?" he asked. "John told you?… About Tovah?"

"He-uh-he said you had a good talk."

Kom smiled, but his eyes remained sad. "He did tell you. God, that's terrific that you talk like that. That he feels he can tell you something like that. I envy him. I'd give anything to be able to talk to someone as freely as that. I sometimes I feel like I'm dying with all the things I want to say, all the feelings I want to share… We're not meant to live our lives alone, are we? Isn't sharing what makes it all worth-I'm sorry." He broke off, with emotion cracking his voice.

Kom turned away from her, hiding his face. Karen touched his shoulder and his head sagged.

"You're here to play tennis," he said, his back still turned to her.

"What is it?" she asked softly. "I don't really know what's going on."

"I didn't invite you here to burden you with my problems," he muttered, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Karen stepped around him and took his chin in her fingers as if he were a child. Slowly she raised his face until he was looking at her. His eyes were moist and he avoided her gaze in embarrassment.

"Now what is it?" she asked. She felt as if she were talking to her son, Jack, but she knew that the problem could not be so easily solved as it could with a child. "Tell me."

"Tovah has been-unfaithful. Several times, with different men. I should leave her. If I had any courage, any self-respect, I would just walk away from her… but I can't."

"No," said Karen softly, without meaning.

"You don't know what it's like," he said, lifting his eyes to hers for the first time. "I can't describe the pain. It kills me, it kills me every time. Do you know who she has her affairs with? My friends. Only my friends. So that it will ruin the friendship, I think… What else can I think? Does she do it to kill me, is that what she wants to do?"

"No, I'm sure not," said Karen, but she was sure of nothing. She had been taken completely by surprise by his sudden candid outpouring.

"Why else would she be doing it with my friends? My friendly! A woman wouldn't understand how hard it is for a man to make any real friends.

You do it so easily."

"I know it's hard for men."

"Do you? Not for John, He's the kind of man other men m like. The kind they want to be. But me-look at me. I'm not the kind of man other men want to go have a beer with. There's something about me, I've never known what it is exactly. I talk too much, maybe. I'm too emotional, I don't know, but there's something, they know it, men sense it. Do you know Yiddish? I'm a nebbish, I'm a softy. The way John plays tennis, my God, like he's made out of spring steel. That's what men want to be around, that's who they want to be. Me, I'm, well, I'm what their fathers prayed they wouldn't grow up to be. I'm not gay, I don't mean that, but I'm the kid you never chose to be on your team…"

"Stanley, you're a very successful man, you're bright you're doing extremely well, you've got a beautiful home. Professionally…"

Kom put his hand on her arm to silence her, smiling wanly. "Thank you, Karen. That's sweet, but you know what I mean. There are some things from your youth you never get over completely. I've certainly tried, I've had the therapy, I've had more therapy than Freud, I've made myself over as much as possible, but hell, you saw me on the tennis court. I'm ridiculous."