—Oh, Joan! I can’t explain it well enough, I fear. The reasons for everything come to me in those moments of hyper-clarity. I can understand the lives of those housekeepers. I never thought of them enough. But somewhere I ingested their souls. I wouldn’t be human if I hadn’t. Perhaps a better way to tell it is the smell of grass. You know, of course, the smell of cut grass. But when was the last time you truly smelled it? I believe the smell of grass exists more as a trope after the age of twelve. Between twelve and thirty, I’d venture you never smell it. Then suddenly you are thirty, forty, and you think, Ah, cut grass!
I was bored. He was an old racist who thought he was progressive. But I wanted what he had. I wondered if he would leave it to me. His money. His plates. His watch. Even if he would, I couldn’t wait that long. The easiest thing would be to take it when he was out of his gourd and I was Lenore. But he would know it was me when he came out of it. I was sure of it. In any case, that was the last night I would feel sorry for the old man. After that evening, I would want to kill him.
—And that’s the thing I want to tell you, Joan. That’s the thing that became clear to me early this morning. One of the visions. I am, in fact, worse than damaged.
He began to tremble.
—I’ve told you, he said, about Sandstone?
—Yes, the swinger mansion.
—Just down the road. Now it’s nothing, all boarded up, but then it was something.
—I thought you didn’t go.
—I did. We did.
—You and Lenore.
—You must understand, and few people your age can, but those days it was—Everything was changing. We didn’t know. We thought we were being swept in a wave to a new world. In a way it didn’t feel like there was a choice. The first time we went, it was after a soiree at the Getty. A couple we were talking to, the husband was an important producer and his wife was this gorgeous thing. I’ll never forget it, she wore a silver dress, just two strips of material going down either side of her chest, meeting at the waist, so there was just bare skin all down through here—Leonard elevatored his hand in the air an inch away from my breastbone—they told us they were going to an after-event at Sandstone. They invited us along. We’d heard of it, of course. I was intrigued, I’m a man, but Lenore was, too. She was curious about all life. She wasn’t afraid of anything. We took our champagne flutes along and followed their car. The first thing that happened when we pulled into the drive was we watched the other couple emerge from their car completely nude. We sat there for a minute, turned our headlights off. Lenore looked at me and rubbed my shoulder. Come on, Len, she said. We’re bound in all the right ways. Then she kissed me deeply, lifted her white sundress over her body—very much like the one you never seem to take off—and she opened the car door and walked to meet the other couple. They both put an arm around her, the man’s touched her rear. Something happened inside of me. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to kill all three of them. More accurately, I wanted to fuck the other woman until I came and then pull it out and jam it down Lenore’s throat until she gagged.
I had to hold the vomit back with my palm. At that point I didn’t even know the half of it.
—Joan, he said, I’m sorry. The skin may crease but the blood is the same. I was always a jealous man. Protective, I used to say. Ha! Protective of my own ego is more like it.
—But you went inside, I said.
—I did. Women in braids with their small, tight bodies. Men fawning over them. In the living room where the largest clump was gathered a bearded man played a guitar and around him couples kissed, all naked, in each other’s laps, stroking each other’s legs. Every part of me wanted to jump into it, to just fuck and suck and become wet with those women, and with Lenore, but the idea of something being done to Lenore by someone else, I couldn’t manage the rage. Until that night I don’t think Lenore knew that part of me. I’d hid it all along. But that night there was no more denying it. She’d thought we could enter together, as a couple, into this new land. The idea was that if you truly loved each other, if your love was deep and your heart was pure, that you would want your partner to experience the bliss of other bodies, you would respect the animal tendencies, you could fuck and let fuck and call it making love and yet after making love was over, you would go home with your wife and eat ice cream and wash yourselves and go to bed.
—What happened?
—Nothing much happened that night. We observed. The couple we’d followed there, they’d been leading us around. At one point, the woman tugged on Lenore’s hand, she tried to bring her into an embrace, tried to coax her back to her husband. Like Lenore was a fresh catch she was bringing her master. She winked at me, like she would be my prize if I let Lenore go. I wanted to kill her for it. I wanted to fuck her first. I had my underwear on. I was one of the only ones in that room of snakes.
—Briefs?
—Yes, there were no boxers.
—Why did you keep them on?
—I hope you’re not insinuating something. I never wanted for in that department. All the same, I felt discarded. I felt the whole room could sense my jealousy. Lenore stayed tucked in to me. She politely turned down all the looks. She squeezed my hand, we walked back to our car, put our clothes on, and drove home. We didn’t speak of it for some time. But something had been lit inside me. A profound rage. Lenore and I had been trying to have children. We’d been married by then for four years and trying almost all that time. Each month that she bled she would try to hide her sadness from me. That same week we first went to Sandstone coincided with Lenore seeing a fertility doctor who told her everything in her system looked fine. He wanted me to go in and get checked, my count. I refused. She didn’t nag me, she wasn’t one of those. She was one of the last fine women. A European sensibility.
Leonard was tearing up. His grief was a lie. I knew when grief was a lie. It was one of my superpowers. Even though his voice had become odious to me, I was curious. Curiosity is something that has always driven me. I am depraved and curious.
—I went back, he said, groaning.
—Well of course you did.
—There was a night, Lenore lit candles all over the house, the one you’re in now. She walked the rafters at the top and set red votives down. Pillar candles on the floor. The whole room was glowing like a church. We made love on the bed, it was the best lovemaking of our relationship. It felt like the best lovemaking in the history of the world. That was the night, she ordained it, that was the night she was going to conceive our child.
I shuddered to think of the heat in the house and the candles on top of it and this poor wife of his, spreading her legs for this insolent asshole. Once again I’d trusted a man. Once again I’d felt sympathy for a man who was not good.
—I don’t know what kind of woman you are, Joan. Some women are not built for babies. I don’t think that’s bad. Biology is enigmatic but deliberate, it selects some for procreation and others it marks for a different path. Women like you are necessary to let off the steam. To depressurize the cabin.
—Women like me are good for men to fuck when they’re not ready for babymaking with good Midwestern girls like Lenore.
—That’s not how I meant it.
—Fuck you.