Jill Emerson - I Am Curious (Thirty)

“Go ahead.”

“Right where the angels fear to tread. All right. I get the impression that you and what’s-his-name are running out of each other. That it’s all turning sour.”

“That could be an exaggeration.”

“Is it?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. But the thing is that it’s more than your marriage. It’s you. Do you know that it shows in your face?”

“What does?”

“The fact that you’re bored all the time. That you’re all drawn out, strained.”

“I know. I can’t stand to look in mirrors.”

“Well, they ought to pass a law against mirrors. That’s something else again.”

“But I find myself looking into them all the time.”

“Because you’ve forgotten who you are.”

“Oh, come on —”

“A little trite, I grant you—”

“More than a little. Pure soap opera.”

“—but no less true for a’ that. Jan? Have you ever?”

“Ever what?”

“Had an affair?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You...?”

She smiled at a happy memory.

“You’re not having one now?”

“Be serious. The way I look?”

We sidestepped into the Oh, you don’t look so bad/Oh, I’m so damn fat and what I wouldn’t give for your figure routine. But I was so taken with all of this that I almost forgot my lines. And she wouldn’t say anything much about her affair, just that it had happened a couple of years ago, lasted a couple of months, and left her very happy about the whole thing.

“Was it with someone I know?”

“Now don’t ask, Jan.”

“That means it was. Did Edgar know the man?”

“Cut it out.”

“Well, did Edgar ever find out about it?”

“No.”

“What if he had?”

“Do you really think he would have minded all that much?” I must have stared incredulously, because she reacted to my expression. “Let’s face it, honey. Edgar plays around.”

“I didn’t know that.” This is not exactly true.

“Oh, of course. He’s like a little boy, for God’s sake. I think all men are. I’m positive he started fooling around before we were married two years.”

“Well, who does he—”

“Girls at the office, tramps he picks up. There was a time, in my younger days, when I made scenes and threatened to leave. I laugh to think of it. I mean, where would I go?”

“But—”

“But what it amounts to is that something inside him makes him want that variety, and I can understand it most of the time, except when I start thinking that he wouldn’t do it if I took off thirty pounds or got the ironing done or compensated for one or another of my many faults. But actually I don’t think that would make any difference at all. I think he’s simply the way he is. You know, he even makes passes at my friends. Has he ever made a play for you?”

“No.” This wasn’t exactly true, either. I can remember a couple of boozy kisses at a backyard barbecue, a tentative Grope for the Boobies while collecting the coats at another party. The bit at the barbecue had been merely annoying, but the other pass had come at a time when I felt myself slightly less attractive than Miss Hippopotamus, and while I might not welcome the grab, I welcomed the reassurance in the knowledge that Edgar Hillman thought I was still worth grabbing, an opinion that Howard Kurland had not at the moment appeared to share.

“You know,” she said, a little later, “if you think Howard takes his marital vows so seriously, you’re only kidding yourself.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Nothing specific, no.”

“Do you know something that I don’t know?”

“Just that he’s a man.”

“And all men run around? I’m not positive I believe that. I’ve heard it often enough, but I’m not sure I believe it.”

“Maybe not. But things haven’t been going too well lately, have they?”

“Things have been going badly on and off for probably six out of the last seven years. Our marriage is like the country’s foreign policy. We somehow muddle through.”

“The country’s foreign policy before Vietnam, you mean. Now we muddle, but not through.”

“Fair enough. I don’t see—”

“Okay.” She pointed a finger at me. “Not all men run around. Some men have perfect marriages. Other men are profoundly unattractive, and other men lack the opportunity for an affair. Farmers who never get off the farm, for instance. But if a man’s marriage is not the ranking love affair since Heloise and what’s-his-name, and if he’s got a certain amount of poise and looks and intelligence, and if he’s got room to operate—”

“Uh-huh.”

“And if, like most men, he tends to think with his penis—”

“You are describing Howard.”

There was more, but that will do. My hand hurts. He called around dinner to say he was catching a late train. I had trouble not laughing until I put the phone down, and then for no particular reason I started crying instead. Real tears. My goodness, I hadn’t cried in, oh, perhaps a day and a half.

The funny thing is that I have to admit I don’t care if he’s fucking Elizabeth Taylor, as far as that goes. I really don’t care, and I suppose that was part of Marcie’s point.

I don’t know.

What do I want with an affair?

More snow.

The kid who carried the groceries out to the car at Pathmark yesterday said something fresh. I can’t remember exactly how it went, just some inane sort of double entendre which gave me the impression he wouldn’t mind taking me to bed.

I’m sure I am at least ten years older than him. Than he.

Last night was an odd, disjointed evening. Howie came home on his usual train. If he’s having an affair it can’t be a very intense one because he’s usually home on time. Maybe he’s screwing away his lunch hours.

If nothing else, I suppose that’s probably healthy. Good for the muscle tone and all.

During and after dinner, we talked more than usual. He talked mostly about the office. There’s some sort of minor crisis coming up and different people are positioning themselves on different sides and some of them may find themselves fired if things don’t go right. Not Howie, however. Or if his situation is risky, he’s not saying so.

Frankly, I had trouble following the whole thing. I didn’t even try very hard. But at least we were talking to each other. I talked about something I had read and some household things, and he nodded at the right times.

Now that I think about it, it was our first togetherness evening in a while, and neither of us was listening to a word the other was saying.

Are all marriages like that?

At eleven-thirty we went to bed and started necking. At first I was just going through the motions (Pardon, m’sieu, I thought she was English!) but all at once I was turned on as suddenly and completely as if someone had thrown a switch. It was like a rebirth. I was alive in all my more interesting organs. More than alive.

He spent some time nuzzling my breasts while he worked a finger into me and diddled me. (It is frighteningly embarrassing just putting the words down. I’ve enjoyed putting down occasional conversations here. I wanted to be a writer in college, and there is a certain pleasure in structuring scenes, and all without the need to invent. But sex writing!)

Does it matter who did what and with which and to whom? I don’t know. I got sopping wet immediately, hot and wet, and he went from breast to breast like a bee from flower to flower, which I do not suppose is an original image, but I couldn’t get it out of my head at the time, so it must have meant something to me. He buzzed from nipple to nipple while he fingered me very diligently, and I thrashed and panted and did other ladylike things until he took his finger back and climbed aboard and stuck it right on in. Look, Ma, no hands! He got the target on the first try and sank it all the way home, and he was hard as a bar of steel. I couldn’t remember the last time he had been so firm.