He had to resolve the question before the actual marriage. Not have s.e.x with her-you don"t jump off the cliff the first time you go rappelling. He just had to try something. Make a move.
From Dulles Airport he drove down the toll road to the Reston Parkway and found a plentiful selection of books about s.e.x in the self-help section of the Little Professor Bookstore just before it closed. He went home and was already reading, trying to imagine himself and Madeleine doing these things, when she called.
"Weren"t you going to phone me?" she asked.
"I meant to," he said. "I"m just wiped out. I didn"t think you wanted to talk to somebody as stupid as I am right now."
"Does this mean you don"t want me to come over?"
That was how things went-she always came over to his apartment because she was moving around from place to place, camping on couches in friends" tiny apartments. Her phone was a cellular so the number was the same wherever she was staying. He had offered to put her up at a hotel but she laughed at him. "I don"t want you spending money on something as stupid as that when I can stay with my friends for free. They all owe me, so don"t worry about it." He never met any of the friends. Was she ashamed of him? Or of them? No matter-it was her he wanted, not her friends.
So if they were to get together, it meant she would come to his place.
"It"s after ten," he said lamely.
"I have two tubs of Ben and Jerry"s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream."
"I have dishes and spoons."
"Then we belong together. See you in a minute, Tin."
Not even during exam weeks in college had he ever read so fervently and rapidly and intensely as he did during the twenty minutes he waited for her to arrive.
By the time she got there he had already decided against most of the things the books suggested. Maybe people who had been married for ten years might be comfortable enough to do stuff like that with another person, but no way could he imagine trying it with Mad. All he wanted to do was see if he could, as the books suggested, give her any kind of pleasure during mild foreplay; and, of course, by so doing a.s.sure her that he was in fact straight, if inept.
And maybe he was also hoping to see if she, in turn, was at all interested in him him as a s.e.xual partner. That would be, all in all, a great deal of very useful information for them to gain from what would be quite a minor event, taken in its proper perspective. Besides, skimming the books, however rapidly and urgently, had left him in a state of dazed arousal. Or, to use the more technical term, rampant horniness. as a s.e.xual partner. That would be, all in all, a great deal of very useful information for them to gain from what would be quite a minor event, taken in its proper perspective. Besides, skimming the books, however rapidly and urgently, had left him in a state of dazed arousal. Or, to use the more technical term, rampant horniness.
They talked, they ate ice cream, they laughed, they sat down to watch the news and then maybe catch Letterman before she went home, and there on the couch with the weatherman occluding his fronts and alofting his lows, Quentin touched her cheek and turned her face toward him and kissed her and realized for the first time how chaste all their kisses had been, and so he tried the thing where you slide the tip of your tongue along your partner"s lip during the kiss and- And that was the end of the kiss. She looked rather startled and laughed nervously and put her arms around him and hugged him with her face against his shoulder.
Did he do it wrong? Even pimply teenagers used their tongues when they kissed, for heaven"s sake-couldn"t he manage even that that much? much?
No, no, it just startled her, that"s all.
He ran his hands up and down her back. She giggled.
"What?"
"That tickles. What are you doing?"
"I"m trying to, uh, introduce a new level of physical closeness in our relationship."
She looked at him like he was crazy.
"Look, I"m just-I just thought it was maybe time we-"
We what? The only image that could come to his mind was the most weird of the suggestions the s.e.x manuals offered. That wasn"t at all what he wanted to do, at least not today, but still there was that picture in his head and it pretty much drove out of his mind the words he had meant to say.
But apparently she interpreted his silence in the worst possible way. She shuddered with revulsion and leapt up from the couch. "No!" she shouted. "Do you want to make me puke?"
This reaction was way beyond anything his dread had conjured up.
"All I did was-"
"If you think I"m ever going to do anything so disgusting with you for love or money-"
What did she think he meant? Since he had said nothing-did she mean she didn"t want to have s.e.x at all? "We"re getting married," he said. "Married people generally touch each other without one of them puking. Most people a.s.sume that getting married means that somewhere along the line you-"
"I hate you!" she screamed at him.
He had never seen her like this, as she frantically picked up her purse and put on her flats-or rather, halfway put them on-and hobbled to the door as she finally settled her heels into her shoes. She slammed it on the way out, or at least an attempted slam, since the weather seal around the door kept it from making a satisfying noise. By the time Quentin could get to the door, she was already pulling away from the curb in her Escort.
He tried to call her that night and all the next day but only got the voice mail on her cellular service. All the time, he kept trying to think what he had done wrong. What had she thought he meant to do? They were engaged, weren"t they? It wasn"t as if he meant to have s.e.x with her that very night-he intended to wait till they were married. He had been raised that way. But couldn"t he touch her? Or was he so bad at it that it physically revolted her?
Or was it him at all? Maybe she was-what, frigid? Was there such a thing really? He thought that feminism had declared frigidity to be a myth that men made up to explain why women didn"t want to have s.e.x with sweating ignorant louts. Admittedly, he was ignorant and probably had been sweating. But-a lout? That was harsh. Had something happened in her childhood that made her interpret all s.e.xual advances as something vile? By afternoon he had a couple more books, this time about s.e.xual dysfunction, and read intently until he fell asleep by the still unringing phone, the fifth of his abject apologies and pleadings still unanswered on her voice mail.
The next morning he awoke to the doorbell ringing. Insistently, ring, ring, ring. Groggily he tried answering the phone, which was not ringing, and then got up, slipped on a robe, and went to the door.
It was Madeleine, carrying a bunch of daisies and looking as if she hadn"t slept much the night before. "You must hate me," she said.
"I thought you hated me," he said.
"Can I come in?"
"Yes, of course, come in."
"You have to understand that I-I know I overreacted the other night. I thought you were-oh, who cares what I thought? I do want to marry you, you know, and of course marriage means physical intimacy and I just-I"ve never been with a man that way, you know, and so I-I"m just so sorry."
"Mad, it"s all right, you don"t have anything to apologize for, I was insensitive I guess, I just-"
"No, it was my fault, I-"
"Didn"t you get my messages?"
"I listened to them over and over. I couldn"t believe you still loved me after the way I acted. I just-I couldn"t call you because I didn"t know what to say, I-"
"At least let me put these flowers in water. And your coat, is it that cold this morning?"
He pulled a gla.s.s pitcher out of the cupboard and put in the daisies. He meant to fill it with water but first he turned around to speak to her and saw that she had unb.u.t.toned the coat and under it she was wearing nothing.
The coat was sliding off her shoulders but then she saw the look on his face. It must have seemed like a look of horror-not that she wasn"t beautiful, her body was perfect, but from the way she acted two nights before this, it was too much, and besides, Quentin was terrified, he didn"t know what to do. He dropped the pitcher onto the counter, just a couple of inches" drop so it didn"t break, and the handle kept it from rolling off.
Her face changed from a smile to embarra.s.sment, consternation. She shrugged the coat back on and wrapped it around herself and sank down onto the couch into a near fetal position and began to moan. "I"ve blown it again. I"m so stupid! I can"t believe I-"
"No, no, Mad, it"s all right, I just-I mean it was sweet of you, but that isn"t what I wanted the other night, I just-"
"But that was supposed to be a real turn-on or whatever, that"s what the article said-"
He laughed out loud.
"Don"t laugh at me," she said miserably. "I"m sitting here naked in a coat with a polyester lining and polyester gives me a rash."
"No, come here, come with me." He got her up from the couch, trying not to notice how the coat fell open and she couldn"t really close it efficiently with him holding one of her hands. "Come here."
He led her into his bedroom. "You have to see this," he said. He bent down and picked up the whole stack of s.e.x manuals he had been studying. "Were you reading, perhaps, one of these?"
She looked at the sides and it dawned on her what they meant. She laughed, too. "Oh, you"re kidding. You, too? There"s another person on this planet as naive as me?"
"Maybe most people are like us," said Quentin. "They"re just ashamed to admit it."
"No, n.o.body gets to their thirties as ignorant as we are. How did two freaks like us ever get lucky enough to find each other?"
"Listen, Mad, let me tell you something. I"m glad to know you have such a beautiful body. Such a... terrific body. Such a..."
"I get the idea."
"But I don"t need to see you like that again until we"re married, OK? Pressure"s off for now. We can sort of work up to this. Pretend we"re teenagers or something. Put off the dreadful day."
"That"s fine. That"s good," she said.
"And when you remove the startlement factor, whatever it was you read-I have to tell you, it really wasn"t a bad suggestion."
"It was an article in Cosmo Cosmo. A bunch of ways to please your man."
"b.u.mmer. If only I"d bought that issue when I saw it in the airport in San Francisco. I would have known my part of the script."
"They don"t give the man"s part in Cosmo Cosmo. They just sort of take it for granted that you already know your lines and stuff."
"Well, I don"t," said Quentin. "I"m just winging it."
"So am I."
"The blind will lead the blind."
"Until we fall into a pit."
They laughed. He kissed her. She went home to get some clothing. Later, at lunch, they laughed about it all over again. "That"s going to be such a great story to never tell our kids," said Quentin.
She rolled her eyes. "Of course we"ll tell our kids. Just not in front of each other, that"s all."
"Do parents tell kids things like this?"
"This is the nineties, Quentin," she said. "Isn"t it?"
"Next time I fly to the coast, Mad, come with me."
"I"m unemployed and homeless. I think I can fit a trip to the coast into my schedule."
"I want you to meet my parents."
"Won"t they hate the girl who"s going to take away their little boy?"
"Are you kidding? They"ll kiss the ground you walk on. They gave up hope of having grandchildren years ago. And the bonus is, with any luck the kids will look like you."
"I"d love to meet your parents," she said.
"And when do I make the trek to the Hudson River Valley to meet your folks?"
Her face darkened and she looked away. "My family isn"t like yours, Quentin. I think I want us to be married before before I take you home." I take you home."
"Are you kidding?"
She shook her head. "Let"s not talk about it, OK? Not today."
"You don"t want me to meet your family and you don"t want to talk about it?"
"Just picture me naked in that stupid coat and it will take your mind right off my family."
"Not true. It just makes me imagine your father holding a shotgun."
She giggled. "My father holding a shotgun. Now there"s there"s a picture. He"d never a picture. He"d never touch touch a weapon." a weapon."
"A pacifist?"
"No, a klutz. He"d shoot off his own leg." She laughed again, but in a moment that dark, distant look was back on her face. It wasn"t until Quentin moved the conversation far away from parents and families that the mood cleared and she was happy again.
5. Bliss Bliss
Was it possible that his parents liked Madeleine too too much? Quentin expected them to be delighted that he had a fiancee at all and that he had brought her home to meet them, and he expected her to charm them because she was, after all, charming. But within hours they seemed to have lost all sense of proportion. Everything she said, they laughed or oohed or tsk-tsked or whatever the appropriate response was. Their attention toward her never flagged. They offered her drinks, food, their own bed-it was way beyond hospitality. much? Quentin expected them to be delighted that he had a fiancee at all and that he had brought her home to meet them, and he expected her to charm them because she was, after all, charming. But within hours they seemed to have lost all sense of proportion. Everything she said, they laughed or oohed or tsk-tsked or whatever the appropriate response was. Their attention toward her never flagged. They offered her drinks, food, their own bed-it was way beyond hospitality.
They were obsequious. It was as if they were servants and Madeleine was the mistress of the house. It embarra.s.sed him, but he couldn"t seem to get either of his parents alone to tell them to lay off a little; nor could he seem to find a moment alone with Mad to explain that they didn"t always act like this, that they must be compensating for all those years that they had given up on the idea of his marrying.
Poor Mad must be going crazy with them fawning on her all the time, but she was a trouper, she didn"t show a sign of irritation. Just acted as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Quentin tried to take her out to dinner.
"The four of us?" asked Mad.