For a long time I watch the different digits materialize on the face of the clock beside the bed. I wait until it says 1:23, and then I stand up and walk around this borrowed bedroom. There’s no moon tonight, so there is no natural light. It is only through the practice of several nights that I do not bump into the dresser, the post of the bed, the rocking chair, as I make my way out the door.
I hold my breath as I walk down the hall. When I pass Rebecca’s bedroom, I press my ear against the door and I listen to her steady, even breathing. Satisfied by this small thing, I amass enough courage to walk seven steps further down the hallway, to his room.
Having practiced for twenty minutes on the doorknob of my own bedroom, I find it easy to let myself inside without making a sound. When I open the door, a slice of light from the hall spills onto the floor of his room, illuminating a runway that leads to the foot of the bed. From where I stand, I can see the tangled sheets and blankets.
I take a deep breath and I sit on the edge of the mattress but all I hear is the sound of my own throat pounding. “I know you’re awake,” I say. “I know you can’t sleep either.” Jane, I tell myself, you are not leaving until you say what you’ve planned to say. “I’ve never been with anyone but Oliver, my whole life,” I say, turning the words over and over in my mouth. “I’ve never even kissed anyone but him. Really kissed. Well, you know, except for this afternoon.” I spread my fingers out in front of me, wondering if there is something there for me to touch. “I’m not saying that today was your fault. I’m not saying there’s anyone to blame. I’m just telling you I don’t know if I’m any good at this.” I wonder why there is no response. What if he hasn’t been thinking these things at all? “Are you awake?” I ask, leaning into the night, and then the air closes in from behind me.
It envelopes me and wraps itself so tight that I start to scream, until I feel the hand press against my lips and I try to bite it but that’s no use, and it pushes me down against the bed, rolling me onto my back and pinning me by my shoulders and this entire time I am trying to scream, and then my eyes clear and inches away from me is Sam.
He relaxes his hold on my mouth. “What are you doing?” I whisper, hoarse. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I was in the bathroom. I stopped there on the way to your room.”
“You did?” I sit up on the edge of the bed, and he is still holding my hands. Our fingers rest, entwined, on top of my leg.
“And by the way,” Sam says, “I think you are very good at this.”
I look down at my lap. “Oh, how much did you hear?”
“All of it. I was waiting at the door, listening. You can’t get mad at me for eavesdropping, either, because you thought I was over there.” He points to the lump of blankets and pillows that have been balled into the center of the bed. Then he takes one of my hands and turns it over in his own, rubbing the warm skin of my palm with his thumb. “So what are you doing in my room?” He leans close.
I sink down into his pillows. “I’m waiting for the guilt. I figure if the guilt comes, then I can punish myself and feel better. I keep waiting, you know, and I think about you, but no matter what I don’t feel guilty. So then I start to believe that I’m not the person I thought I was at all. And then I figure if I’m awful, I don’t deserve to be thinking about you.” I sigh. “You must think I’m crazy.”
Sam laughs. “Want to know why I was headed to your room? To talk about marriage. Honest to God, I was. I wanted you to know that you were driving me nuts, because here I was thinking about things that I shouldn’t be, knowing you’ve got a family and all. And the worst part of it is: I believe in marriage. I haven’t gotten married because I haven’t found the right woman. My whole life I’ve been waiting for something to just click, you know. And tonight I was lying here, thinking about what you might have looked like the day you got hitched to Oliver Jones, and it all just connected for me. Don’t you get it? He’s taken the woman that I’m supposed to marry.”
“When I got married, you were the same age as Rebecca. You were just a kid.”
Sam lies down on his side so that he is facing me. He is wearing a T-shirt and polka-dotted boxer shorts, and when he sees me looking at them he reaches for a sheet and wraps it around his hips. “I’m not a kid now,” he says.
He reaches his hand towards my face, and traces the length of my cheek and chin with his finger. Then he grabs my hand and holds it to his own cheek. He runs it over the coarse field of stubble, over the break of his jawbone and the soft, dry line of his lips. Then he lets go.
But I don’t pull my hand away. I keep my fingers against his mouth as it opens to kiss them. I run them lightly over Sam’s eyelids, feeling his eyes moving wild behind. I comb over his lashes and down the bridge of his nose. I explore him as if I have never seen anything of the kind.
He doesn’t move as I slide the palms of my hands over his shoulders and his arms, over the indentation where his muscles join, into the hollow of his elbow. He lets me trace the sinews of his strong forearms, turns his hands over in my own, feel for the callouses and cuts. He helps me pull his shirt over his head and when I throw it, it lands on the night table.
If I keep it like this, like an exploration, then I have nothing to be afraid of. It is only if I move to a different level, to intimacy, that I will have to worry. Sex has never been mystical for me. The earth doesn’t move, and I don’t hear angels, or bells, or all those other things. I am always a little too self-conscious. With skeletons such as mine in the closet, I never expected making love to be magic. The way I saw it, I had done something extraordinary: I had pushed the worst memories out of my mind. The first time was the hardest for me, and having hurdled that with Oliver, I never expected to have to face that problem again.
But when I feel Sam wrap his arms around my waist, and gently run his fingers over my ribs; when I feel him already hard, pushing against my thigh, I start to cry.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Sam pulls me against him. “Did I do something?”
“No.” I try to catch my breath. I cannot tell him. I haven’t told anyone. But suddenly I don’t want to carry it around anymore, like Atlas’s weight. “When I was little,” I hear myself murmur against his skin. My voice sounds foreign, like I am listening, again, from that far corner, but as I speak I seem to be coming closer.
Sam holds me at arm’s distance then, and I witness the most amazing thing. He is staring at me, puzzled, waiting for me to tell him about my father. But all I have to do is raise my eyes to his, and look at him, really look at him. And I realize from his gaze that he isn’t waiting for an explanation anymore. “I know,” he says then, sounding surprised at his own words. “I know about your father. I don’t know why, but just then I could tell what you were going to say.” He swallows hard.
“How?” My mouth forms the word but there is no sound.
“I-I don’t know how to explain it,” Sam says. “I can see it in you.” Then he winces, and draws back, as if he has been stricken. “You were just a kid,” he whispers.
He holds me tight, and I hold him back. He is shivering, having found pieces of me that have been missing, having found parts of himself he didn’t know existed. The whole time, I cry like I have never cried before; tears I did not cry when I was nine and Daddy came into my room, tears I did not cry at my father’s funeral. Sam unbuttons the silk nightgown I am wearing, and slides it off my shoulders. He guides my hands to inch off his shorts. Our skin is iridescent in the dark. Sam reaches his hand between my legs. I cover his hand with my own; I urge him. He slips one finger inside me, moist and blossoming, and all the while he is watching my face. Is this all right? Just like that, he has found my center. Sam kisses away my tears, and then he kisses me. Like salt, I can taste my pain, my shame, on his lips.