Virgin and Other Stories Read online

  He thought, he felt, that she couldn’t wait to lose her virginity to him.

  She seemed to communicate this through her long legs, bared by short skirts—she wore short skirts constantly now that she’d graduated from the school, except when they visited her parents, for whom she dressed like an elementary school librarian—and through the way she would press her breasts up against him when they kissed. When his hands became too insistent, she’d pull her face from his, her long red hair falling into his mouth, and say, in a sweet, apologetic voice, “We need to stop now.” Disentangle herself from his arms. It was almost as if he were with a high school girl.

  He didn’t mind. Their future together had soon taken shape in his fantasies. She was pure and smart and talented—she played first viola in the county orchestra—and passionate. One evening, over the phone, she told him that when, after having just slid her bow across the strings for the first measure of the second piece in a concert, she felt the vibrations of all the other instruments in the air around her, she shivered with what she believed was orgasmic energy. The formality of her concerts became for him—from his seat among strangers in the dim auditorium, gazing up at Sheila in her black dress, in the circle of light she shared with the other players—a sort of erotic tease.

  * * *

  The first evening, in the hotel room, Sheila wore black-lace lingerie and kissed him enthusiastically; but as his hands and lips descended past her belly, she began to tense. She pushed his hand down, against her thigh. He tried again, and she finally pulled away from him, drawing the slightly stiff hotel sheets around her, complaining she felt sick from the plane. He knew she was scared—so much had happened: the ceremony, the flight, her first trip to London. (She’d wanted to hear the London Symphony.) They spent the rest of the night cuddling in the hotel bed and watching European movies that seemed to suggest people could never really comprehend their true realities; the tone of these was charmingly whimsical. He felt better. Warm. The frustration that came from her body pressed up against his was only temporarily problematic. It was sweet to him, really, that she knew so little about men.

  * * *

  The next day she seemed cheerful and energetic, delighting in the view from their window of the busy street—the pavement slicked with rain, and the storefronts, the Londoners with their spectrum of umbrellas. The air was blustery, the gray of the city tinged toward silver. For breakfast they had beans and toast at a café, both of them drinking too much of the strong coffee, musing about what to do and see first.

  But in the street, Sheila noticed some of the British girls’ outfits—they wore tall boots and short plaid kilts—and complained that she didn’t have anything that was in style here to wear. Did he mind shopping for a while? she asked. Inside one of the shops, she tried on a pair of black boots like the ones she’d admired, with several different skirts. After each change she stood in front of the dressing room, modeling for him. The last thing she tried on was a pink cocktail dress that had caught her eye on the way in. It was skintight, more daringly cut than what she usually wore. She frowned at her image in the mirror hanging against the wall and in the reflection met his eye. Did he like it? Yes, very much, he told her. He reached out and took the edge of the silky hem between his fingertips.

  “You would.”

  A whisper; hostile. He quickly withdrew his hand. Though he was sitting in a chair beside the dressing room door, he felt as if he were about to lose his balance, his vision of her back and reflection in the mirror momentarily blurred into one pale, many-limbed mass. But then in a casual tone she said she looked weird in pink, laughed; disappeared inside the dressing room. He wondered if he’d imagined the tone from before. They bought the clothes and shoes, and went back to the hotel to drop off the bags. She changed into the boots and a red-and-black kilt and took his hand as they stepped back out into the street. They spent the rest of the morning at the Tate.

  When, in the afternoon, they returned to the hotel for a nap, he tried again. This time he was both more controlled and aggressive, coaxing her with more strategized kissing and massaging, trying to both ease and hurry her through it, thinking once they worked their way past the beginning she’d be fine. He had expected the first time would hurt her, but he hadn’t yet gone inside her when her face changed. At first, he didn’t see it as hate. He saw her screaming, her mouth gaping strangely open, before he heard the sound. Then she slapped his face. He did not move off her quickly enough, was too stunned, and just as he began to lean back she struck him again, this time catching his left temple, almost knocking him off balance. Before he could climb off of her she’d wriggled out from beneath him. He was shocked and ashamed. He’d never before tried to make a woman do something she didn’t want to do sexually. But here was his wife, his wife, making him feel like a rapist. She scooted away from him—moving backward, her eyes all the while trained on his body—until she had her back against the headboard of the king-size bed. There, she looked down at him across an expanse of white sheets and hugged her knees. Tears ran down her face. “I’m sorry, but I can’t,” she said. “Sorry,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.” She looked, impossibly, as if she wanted to be held and also as if she might never want to be held again. He trembled as he made his way from the bed to the desk chair. There, naked, cold in the draft from the vent, he’d put his head in his hands and listened to her cry. He understood that while she didn’t want him near her, he couldn’t leave her alone in the room. He got up and switched on the TV and both of them stared at the flickering screen.

  * * *

  The man was the uncle who’d been sent away from the wedding, whom Jake had, because he was getting dressed, not actually seen. When, wanting some form to which to attach his rage, he asked what the man looked like, she said he was tall and thin, with dark hair. That these adjectives might also have described Jake bothered him a little; but then that was silly, lots of men fit that description. She added that the man had had a damaged eye, that he’d been in an accident, had had reconstruction work, which caused the place where iris met pupil to look jagged, “like a starburst,” she said. The abuse had consisted mostly of heavy petting, no actual penetration, but because Sheila had been raised in such a conservative household, the psychological damage was profound, insinuated the therapist. It was about contrast, Jake gathered.

  She’d been twelve. The uncle and his wife didn’t have children and had invited her to stay with them in the summer at their home in North Carolina, while her parents went on a mission trip to Lugansk. Apparently he’d worked from the home. His wife worked in some office, and during her absence he’d let Sheila watch movies and listen to music her parents prohibited. He had also let her drink. The wife had come home early one day and found Sheila walking through the living room in her panties.

  “We’d been listening to music in the bedroom,” she said. “I’d never heard Bob Dylan before, and he thought he was amazing, and I was laughing at him because back then Bob Dylan’s voice seemed so bad to me. He said we were going to listen until I understood.”

  She had been crying intermittently as she spoke, but now her lips turned into something near a smile. The therapist uncrossed her legs. Sheila’s smile faded.

  “And I’d gone out to the kitchen to get a drink. Aunt Mira looked like she was about to say hi to me, but then she didn’t say anything. She just stared at my legs, like she was confused. Finally she said, ‘What are you doing?’ in a normal voice, and I said, ‘Listening to music.’ And she said, ‘Where is your uncle?’ And I knew we were going to get in trouble, but I couldn’t think of what to say. I took too long and I guess she saw it in my face, and you could hear it coming from the bedroom—the stereo, I mean. She went after him then. Then she came back out to me, where I was still standing in the living room, not knowing what to do. I felt frozen. She looked like she wanted to say something to me, but instead she threw up. She was standing on a nice rug, and I remember how she leaned over to throw up on the hardwood floor inst
ead of the rug.

  “My parents came the next day, and my dad went back there into the room after my aunt told them what had happened—I thought he was going to kill him—but when he came back into the kitchen where we were, just a few minutes later, he said my uncle was in a ball on the floor and wouldn’t get up. I remember him saying that. My mother wanted to know if I’d asked my uncle a lot of questions. She said to my aunt that she had noticed I had a habit of being interested. In other people. And I thought, What does that even mean? Who’s not interested in other people? Even my aunt looked at her funny. She was so tired. By then she just wanted my mom to shut up.”

  In the car, riding home, her mother asked if she’d let her uncle touch her, and she said no. “That was exactly how she said it. Let,” Sheila said. “He only used his hands, he always had his clothes on, but I told her not at all. My dad didn’t talk the whole time. At home he walked around with this blank look on his face. For days. And for a while he wouldn’t really look at me when we talked. We never saw them again. My dad talked to my aunt on the phone every once in a while, at Christmas.”

  After that her mother never treated her the same. “She tried to make sure my dad and I were never alone together in the house. She thought I didn’t notice, but I did. I noticed all the time. Once, I came back from a sleepover and a pair of my underwear must have fallen out of my bag in the hall, and an hour later she was in my bedroom, waving it in my face. She was almost screaming at me. It was like she thought I left it out on purpose.”

  She again broke into tears. He was baffled. He hadn’t picked up on any animosity between her and her mother.

  “He was so unhappy. He acted bored around my aunt, around everyone else, but when we were alone together he got happy. He said Aunt Mira hated him because they couldn’t have children, even though the reason they couldn’t have them had to do with her. Because of how she’d gotten hurt in the car accident they were in. He said just seeing me made him happy. He said I was so pretty.

  “My mom hated the word. Pretty. When I was little, if I asked her if I was pretty, she’d say, ‘It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re pretty. Beauty comes from being pure of heart.’ She was right. She was trying to be a good mother. I understood that. I don’t understand why I liked to hear it from him so much. I guess until then I thought I wasn’t. But he said I was. He said it was too early for most people to see but that they would.”

  Her arms had been folded across her chest. Now she drew her legs onto the chair, clasped her hands around them. “That night, at my aunt and uncle’s, after my aunt saw me, I woke up and he was sitting on the floor, staring at me. I didn’t know if it was for real or a dream. I was sleeping on the couch in the living room and Aunt Mira was over in the kitchen. The dining room was between them and I couldn’t see her, but I could see the light from the kitchen shining into it. She’d been in there most of the night. It was weird but it smelled to me like she was cooking stuff. I didn’t go in there. So she was awake. I felt so bad for her. And when I opened my eyes and saw him sitting there watching me I just shut them again and pretended to be asleep because I didn’t know what else to do. He sniffed. Then he was quiet. But I could feel him watching me. He was there for so long. I wanted him to go away. But also I didn’t. Nobody looked at me the way he did. I hate being looked at.”

  “By everyone?” the therapist said. “Or just by men?”

  Now Sheila turned to Jake. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her lips were paler. She turned to the therapist. He thought that the therapist was excited. It had something to do with the way she leaned forward ever so slightly and seemed to be trying to keep, rather than actually feeling, the patient, attentive expression. She said that Sheila was doing a wonderful “job,” that both of them were doing “wonderful jobs,” but that for now they needed to alter the dynamic in order to get the best results.

  After that Sheila attended the sessions alone.

  * * *

  Time passed. He considered annulment but not seriously. He still loved her and thought that with time, through standing by her, he could show her that his love had to do with much more than sex. He couldn’t stay married to a woman who wouldn’t have sex with him forever. But he could wait.

  He tried to throw himself into his new job—which consisted of writing speeches and press releases—and spent a lot of time in his office, a generous space in a wing of the hospital that had once been used for patients. Because of this, the office included a bathroom, which meant he could in the afternoons, after meetings, work for extensive periods of time without having to go into the hall. He’d long ago learned to control his emotions in order to work, and here, in his solitude, she’d be reduced to a mood, to a gray film through which he saw the important matters at hand. But occasionally the mood would grow too thick to see through; then he’d get light-headed, sweaty. If it was already dark he’d go out and find a place to smoke about the grounds. If it was day, since the hospital had a new no-smoking policy that he himself had formally promoted, he’d have to retreat into the white-tiled emptiness of the little bathroom to sit on the floor, back pressed against the wall, and wait for calm.

  He would always be waiting for something, it seemed. In certain moods the thought of it was beautiful, but more frequently he wondered if his ideals were ridiculous. There, in the little bathroom, trying not to think of Sheila, who often couldn’t quite mask her disappointment when he came home, he began to fantasize about female coworkers: a gamine intern; an older woman in marketing who’d brushed up against him; Rachel Delaney, whom he’d met at a hospital-wide meeting, who with her husband donated huge amounts of money to the system, who had almost died of cancer but now appeared so well to him. Rachel Delaney especially.

  * * *

  She hadn’t looked to him at all like the other wealthy donors, with their tailored suits and designer shoes. Her ash-colored hair was pulled up messily, in a big plastic clip, and she wore a cheap black T-shirt with her skirt. The skirt was actually elegant, silk and embroidered, but the flip-flops worn ragged. At first, when his supervisor introduced them, during a break in the meeting, he hadn’t noticed she was pretty. He listened and nodded as she spoke, struggling to focus after what had been his fifth meeting that day. Then she suddenly fell silent and rummaged around in her purse. She brought out a square of dark chocolate and popped it in her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “Chocolate’s the only thing I can take to keep me from smoking. Did you ever smoke?”

  He quit before he got married, he explained.

  “I know it’s not the healthiest way, but nothing else works. The only problem is that now I’m overweight. But when you’ve gone through what I’ve been through you pretty much have to surrender your vanity.”

  “You don’t look overweight to me.”

  “Too little muscle mass and too much fat. You wouldn’t be able to tell unless you saw me naked.”

  Her figure was lovely, and he blushed at the thought of her nudity. When she noticed she looked momentarily pleased, almost smiled.

  “I identify with fat people,” she went on. “I identify with the dying, because I had cancer once and will probably get it again. I was also addicted to painkillers, and so I identify with addicts. I’ve been poor, and believe me when I say I can fathom murder; murder unfortunately is no mystery to me,” she rambled on, her eyes darting all over him before briefly meeting his own, only to again make their nervous cycles. “My ability to sympathize is so overwhelming that I find it more and more difficult to walk down the street, to have simple human interactions. But because I’ve got this ability—this ability to sympathize—I feel guilty for shutting it down. Which in itself becomes another, near-unbearable type of tension. Even now I’m trying to resist what I see when I look in your eyes. Sometimes I fantasize about bashing out my brains against a brick wall.”

  At this Jake started. Looked to see if anyone else was listening. Nobody was. Then a VP interrupted them, and she moved away to talk to som
eone else. He was glad. She seemed to him mildly insane. But then, the next day, at a coffee shop, he’d had an unusual craving for dark chocolate—he didn’t even really like chocolate—and bought a bar, thinking of her and, yes, picturing her naked. Now he couldn’t help but think of her when he smoked.

  * * *

  At home, his wife began to lock herself in the bedroom to do special exercises recommended by the therapist. She was, as he understood it, learning to masturbate without shame. She seemed cheerful, even playful, when she came back downstairs. With the exception of hugging and light kissing, they’d hardly touched since their honeymoon, and moved about the house so politely that he felt relieved by unexpected noise: the hum of the air conditioner switching on, her flushing the toilet upstairs, the neighbors slamming the door to their car. And though they slept in the same bed their bodies remained apart. But now she began to come up behind him and run her fingers through his hair, the way she used to, before, and she no longer stiffened when he held her. He felt relieved. When he intercepted a call about two missed therapy appointments, he felt confused, but not worried. Her explanations for missing them—stuck in roadwork, an orchestra practice running over—were plausible.

  One January afternoon, during the first flurry of a light snow, she called him at work, saying she needed him to come home, and surprised him at the door in the same black lingerie she had worn during their honeymoon. In bed, when he tentatively put his mouth between her legs—hopeful, but still a little afraid he might at any moment be slapped—she let him. Things were normal. Or, they were wonderful: the warm house and bed and the snow falling outside the upstairs window.