The Post-Birthday World. Lionel Shriver
it. Forget I said anything.”
“Well—what did you want to do?”
“I was only wondering if maybe, say, we could try it—facing each other for once.” The whole point was to be able to look him in the eye, but now she was so embarrassed that she was looking anywhere but, and they weren’t even fucking yet.
“What, you mean like, missionary?” he asked incredulously.
“If you want to call it that. I guess.” Irina’s commonly throaty voice had gone squeaky.
“But you said, ages ago, that missionary was lousy for women, that it didn’t work, and you thought that was one reason a lot of women went off fucking altogether. There’s no friction, you said, in the right place. Remember?”
“It doesn’t, ah—no, it doesn’t work without a little help.”
“It’s easier for me to give you—a little help—from, you know, behind.”
“True. Oh, let’s just—it’s fine. Let’s just—the way we’ve been doing it is fine.”
“But is there something bothering you? About the way we do it?”
Obviously there was something bothering her, like the fact that she had not seen his face while they made love for at least eight years, but she couldn’t bring herself to say so aloud. She could see that she was upsetting him, the last thing she’d intended. She wanted to make him feel welcome and warm and loved, and not suddenly anxious that all this time she’d been dissatisfied with their sex life but had been keeping her mouth shut. This was all wrong-headed and backfiring like crazy.
“Not a thing,” she said softly, kissing his forehead and turning on her right side to snuggle her back against his chest. “I’ve missed you, and you feel wonderful.”
“… Is it all right if I turn out the light?”
A slight collapsing sensation, in her chest. “Sure. That’s fine. Turn out the light.”
In the soundest of relationships, it is not always possible to organize epiphanies in concert. Lawrence could hardly be blamed if he failed to experience a burning desire to assault Bethany Anders the exact same evening on which Irina had fixated on Ramsey Acton’s finely articulated mouth, that they might both turn tail in simultaneous panic and rush headlong into each other’s arms. This was probably not the best of nights to upset the sexual apple-cart, and any fine-tuning of their proven method could wait for another time. Besides, this felt good. It did. Looking at the wall. In the dark.
One thing The Usual had to recommend it was that, with her face unobserved, her mind could more readily roam its most disgraceful corridors. She was not opposed, in the privacy of her head, to smut. Yet when Lawrence reached around to graze his fingers lightly between her legs, her mind remained static, and refused to generate any nasty little pictures. She couldn’t get anywhere. Indeed, she visualized herself in a small, enclosed room, standing still. There was a door. There was a door that she could open if she were willing to. But it was not a good idea. Proceeding through this one doorway was forbidden. Slammed in her own face, the door recalled the expression gaining such favour in the States that it was becoming a pestilence: Don’t go there. As time went on and Irina stood helplessly in the same desolate place—it was all dull clinical white, the walls, the linoleum, like some austere coital waiting room where no receptionist ever called her name—she began to realize that only by passing through that forbidden portal would she be able to come.
Lawrence’s dedicated ministrations had grown so protracted that Irina was abashed. She felt fairly sure that he didn’t mind giving her a helping hand, but it was taking too long, and she hated the idea of the procedure becoming tedious, in which case he might even lose his erection. Irina’s fretting that her excitement was becoming a chore for him didn’t heighten it any. This wasn’t working. It was so weird. She’d never had any real trouble with Lawrence, but then she had never told herself, either, that she couldn’t think about something she wanted to think about. The problem was that door, that closed door, and since she refused to defy her own prohibition and push through it, Irina could contrive no means of bringing this dutiful stimulation to a graceful conclusion besides fakery.
She didn’t overdo it. She didn’t light into a reprise of the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally. In fact, with a soft, shuddering groan, she tried to imply that this was one of the quieter ones—and wasn’t it. She worried that she had underplayed the performance to such a degree that it had gone right past him, until Lawrence moved a few times and pulsed; he must have been taken in, because he always waited.
To have got away with the sham was discouraging. After all these years he should know the difference. Now sexual fraud joined the list of other little white lies, like claiming to have forgotten about Ramsey’s birthday, or pretending that it had been early in the evening when the bill arrived at Omen. And she had ruined a perfect record. Never again could she say to herself that she had come when having sex with Lawrence every single time. Now she knew how a pinball player felt on an unprecedented winning streak, when abruptly the ball drops, clunk, into the machine.
The deception was minor. If she had effectively passed a counterfeit note in bed, the denomination was low—at most, a fiver. Doubtless some women faked climaxes for years with their partners; one bogus orgasm over nine years of the real thing could hardly matter. So why did she feel so sorrowful? She should be jubilant. Lawrence was home. Moreover, she had been tested last night, and her fidelity had not proved wanting. But drifting uneasily to sleep, Irina couldn’t be entirely sure if she had passed the test, or failed it.
Spurning her few minutes’ lie-in, Irina was first out of bed the next morning. The rev and horn blare of bumper-to-bumper traffic on Trinity Street had been driving her insane. The relief of being on her own while buying a Daily Telegraph up the street was all too brief. As she ground beans and waited for the milk steamer to spit, the monotony of their morning routine grated. For a moment it had been touch-and-go as to whether she would top up the steamer with bottled water one more time, or shoot herself. At least while she ran through these paces it was unnecessary to look at Lawrence, or talk to Lawrence. Over the Telegraph at the dining table, her eyes glazed once more; sexual intoxication had turned her into an overnight illiterate. An illiterate who never ate and couldn’t work and slept little, so what did you do when you were smitten? You fucked. And that was the one thing she could not do, would not do. Even for a changeling, there were limits.
Lawrence the up-and-at-’em was dawdling. That toast was taking him forever. His coffee was getting cold. For pity’s sake, if he wanted to read The End of Welfare he would concentrate better in his office. It was nearly nine o’clock! As she turned the pages of the paper, it was hard not to slam them. When the minute hand on her watch passed twelve, her chest burst with ludicrous, hurtful, and patently unjustifiable fury. It was Lawrence’s right, was it not, to linger with his “wife” a few minutes before soldiering to an office where he laboured long hours? Had Lawrence ever sat at table enraged by her mere presence, crazed with a desperation to get her out of her own flat, she would die. She would just die.
Still, she couldn’t contain herself. “After having been gone for ten days, I guess you have a lot of work piled up at Blue Sky.” The sentiment might have come off as seminormal, save for the angry quaver in her voice.
“Some,” he allowed. Since rising, she had been convincing herself that Lawrence didn’t know her at all. A sudden vigilance suggested otherwise.
“I wonder if I feel like having another piece of toast,” he supposed.
“Well, do or don’t!” she exploded. “Have a piece, or don’t have one, but don’t faff about deciding!