Jill Emerson - The Trouble With Eden

He broke the kiss. He stared at her and saw himself reflected in her eyes. Her eyes bored into his for a long moment during which he was conscious of nothing else. Then, without breaking the stare, she nodded her head.

He could not move.

“Yes,” she said.

He could not close his eyes. He could not move.

“Yes.”

It was very like a dream. He had the sort of awareness one has in dreams when one wants to change his course but is powerless to do so. He took her clothes off piece by piece. He kissed her and stroked her body. He removed his own clothing and lay full length on the couch with her and felt her flesh against his own.

He seemed to know her body. His hands knew how and where to touch her, and he sensed what her responses would be before she could make them. As if this were not merely a dream but one he had dreamed before.

When he entered her, she reached orgasm immediately. Her parts rippled in climax before he was fully inside of her. Her eyes were closed at that moment, but then she opened them and did not close them again.

He moved in and out of her slowly, lazily, entering her and leaving her in long liquid strokes, as if to make this last forever as he had wished to make the night last forever. He was lost, lost, drowned in her eyes, her mouth, her young warmth.

Until at last he came, and all his being spurted into all of hers.

Walking, pacing, his hand a vise on his forehead, pacing back and forth.

How? How?

“Daddy!”

How could this have happened? How could he have allowed this to happen?

“Daddy—”

How could he have done this to her?

“Daddy, look at me. Daddy, please, look at me.”

But he couldn’t. He felt her hands on his arm and he stopped but could not make himself look down at her. She put her arms around his waist and hugged him and his body went cold and stiff.

“Daddy, don’t hate me.”

He stared at her.

“Please,” she said.

“Hate you?”

“Please don’t.”

He stood there.

“I was the one who wanted it. I said yes.”

“Karen—”

“I knew what I was saying. I said it twice. Don’t you understand? I wanted it to happen.”

A wave of dizziness struck him. He got to a chair and collapsed into it. She stood at the side of the chair looking down at him and all he could think of was how beautiful she was. He had never seen her look so beautiful. He had never seen anyone look so beautiful.

“Daddy, I wanted this to happen. Oh, God. Not just tonight. I’ve always wanted it. I didn’t know it. I swear I didn’t know it. It was in my mind and I didn’t know it was there. It was out there on—” her voice broke — “on the edge of thought.”

Out on the edge of thought. And had he wanted it all along as well? And was that what the book was about? Had he written into it yearnings for her that he had not known he possessed?

God.

She said, “I’m going to have some coffee. Do you want some?”

“Coffee?”

“Don’t you want any?”

“All right.”

While she made the coffee he did not move from the chair. He thought of putting his clothes on but it did not seem worth the effort.

She had wanted him and he had wanted her. He could try to blame the liquor, the marijuana, the mad exhilaration of the mood they had shared. He could blame all these things, but none of them could alter the simple fact that both of them had wanted this to happen. She brought two cups of coffee. They sat in separate chairs and drank it.

“Can I say something?”

He nodded.

“Look, it happened. But what did we do? I mean it, what did we do? We love each other, and we made love. We didn’t hurt anybody. We didn’t do anything to anybody. We just made love.”

He tried a smile. “It’s supposed to be a sin.”

“Why?”

“Sins don’t have reasons. I don’t know why it’s a sin. I know I’m ashamed of myself.”

“I’m not.”

“There’s no reason for you to be. But I—”

“You keep acting as though you’re the one who did it. We both did it, and I was the one who—”

“I was the one who should have been able not to do it, kitten.”

She thought it over, shrugged. “Well, the thing is, I don’t think we have to put out our eyes and break our legs or anything.”

“‘Put out our—’ Oh, Oedipus. It was ankles, not legs.”

“Whatever it was. It happened. That’s all.”

He looked at her sharply. “Are you still—”

“Taking the pill? Is that what you were going to ask? Yes, I am.” She walked across the room and stood in front of him. “And do you want to know something? Do you really want to know something? I wish I stopped taking the pills. I really wish that. I wish I was pregnant, that’s how I feel about what we did.”

He drew her down to him. She sat in his lap with her arms around his neck and she wept, and he held her as he had held her before and stroked her hair and told her that it was all right, that everything was going to be all right. They both were still naked, and she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, but he held her now with no passion whatsoever. He laughed, and she asked why.

“The glass in the fireplace. I was just looking at it. Once again Mrs. Kleinschmidt wouldn’t approve.”

“Screw Mrs. Kleinschmidt.”

He held her close as they laughed together, held her now with no passion at all, but with all the love he had in the world.

There had been passion, but there would not be passion between them again. Mrs. Kleinschmidt would not approve, but Mrs. Kleinschmidt would not know, nor would anyone else. He did not have to put out his eyes.

On the ninth day following his admission, Clement McIntyre was discharged from Doylestown General. Olive wrote a check while he sat in a wheelchair grumbling that he could walk as well as the next man.

“It’s a regulation,” the nurse’s aide said.

“Silly damned regulation,” he said. “She was a patient, too. Paid full rates for the privilege of lying in one of your lumpy beds and listening to me use a bedpan. Doesn’t she rate a wheelchair ride?”

“Don’t mind him,” Olive advised. “He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s sad to be leaving and this is his way of masking his sentiment.”

“Who would have guessed years ago that you’d turn out to be such a sarcastic bitch?”

“You see? That’s his way of telling me he loves me. You sit back and enjoy your ride, Clem. Enjoy the luxury. You won’t be pampered this way at home.”

She drove home and parked the car in the driveway. He got out unassisted and walked into the house and up the stairs without her help. He was short of breath by the time he reached their bedroom, and his face was pale.

“Sit down,” she said. “You’ll be more comfortable in bed, darling. Do you want help with your clothes?”

“Don’t need it.”

“I’ll get your pajamas.”

He sat up in bed, propped up with three pillows. He said, “It’s a hell of a thing. A man’s a man all his life and then he’s barely got enough of himself to walk a flight of stairs.”

“Climbing is hard exercise. I understand it’s more tiring than sawing wood.”

“What a mine of information you are.”

“Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“It truly is. But what I was saying. It’s a hell of a life when a man can’t live the way he’s used to living. You hear about these people they keep alive in hospitals for months or years, machines hooked up to them and tubes running in and out of them. Can’t make ’em better and won’t let ’em die, and what sense is there in that?”