Chapter Nine #2
Her eyebrows rise. “Why did you have separate bedrooms?”
“It was what she wanted. She liked to go to bed early, but I was never tired until after midnight. She hated being disturbed when she was asleep. And she liked her own space. She was very independent. It suited me well enough.”
Marama’s gaze settles on me. “Really?” She looks genuinely puzzled. “I have to say, I don’t understand that. Part of being in a relationship is cuddling up at night and finding comfort in one another, don’t you think?”
“I don’t need someone else to complete me. I’m self-sufficient, and I prefer it that way.”
“You’ve never had a relationship like that, have you?” she asks softly. “Loving and caring?”
“I’m not a child. I don’t need mollycoddling.
When I was married, it was my job to provide for my wife and family, to make sure they had somewhere to live, food on the table, to give the kids a good education, and ensure they had everything they wanted.
Eleanor provided me with two children. She was a good hostess and did her wifely duty. I have no complaints.”
She turns on her stool to face me, looking exasperated. “‘Did her wifely duty’? Are you talking about having sex?”
“I… just meant generally.”
“I bet she booked it in, right? Come to my room on Tuesdays and Saturdays at eight p.m. when the kids are in bed? You’re glaring at me, so I presume that means I’m close to the mark.”
I stiffen in the chair, resentful and angry that she’s right.
It was a point of contention throughout our marriage.
I did my best to make sure that Eleanor enjoyed sex.
But the truth was that I truly believe she could have lived without it.
She had regular sex with me because she thought that being a good wife meant fulfilling certain roles, and making sure your husband was satisfied in bed was one of them.
But she was not a passionate woman. I never felt wanted. Never needed.
And now I sound like a millennial, which pisses me off.
I can either get annoyed at Marama, or make a joke of it. I don’t want to sour the mood, so I choose the latter. “It was Wednesdays and Sundays,” I reply, “and ten p.m. so she could go to sleep afterward.”
She laughs, because she was meant to. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m honestly not mocking you. It’s tough when your libidos don’t match. Was she never into sex, not even in the beginning?”
“Maybe the first few years, although she suffered from endometriosis, and that made it uncomfortable for her. I tried to be considerate, but I think it was a big factor in why she just didn’t enjoy it much. Maybe. I don’t know. It could have been me.” My lips twist.
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” she says softly. “I’m surprised you never had an affair.”
I frown. “Of course not. I would never be unfaithful.”
“Many men would, if they weren’t getting what they needed at home.”
Does that mean she blames herself for the fact that Connor cheated on her? I open my mouth to ask her, but before I can form the words, she says, “She was a very lucky woman.”
“We were well matched.”
She surveys me calmly. “You’ve said that before.
I think that’s what you tell yourself, because you don’t like to think that you spent…
what? Twenty-two years? With a woman who was emotionally distant, and who withheld affection.
You’ve molded yourself into someone who likes clear rules, predictable responses, and who’s in charge.
I think playing at being dominant makes you feel emotionally shielded. ”
Astonished, I can only stare at her, as she tips her head to the side and continues, “But I don’t think you’re emotionally distant or cold. I don’t feel that when you look at me. I feel heat, desire, and passion.”
She leans forward a little, her eyes shining in the sunlight.
“Can you imagine what it might be like to be with someone who is emotionally open, and sex positive? Who doesn’t just want sex when it’s appropriate and timely, but who thinks about you all the time, and wants you every minute of every day?
And who wants to be with you because she likes you, and wants to spend time with you? ”
My pulse races. Her words strike at my heart, because buried deep inside me is the thought that my wife didn’t really like me at all.
I thought it was because I was unlikeable.
I know my relationship with my children isn’t great.
My business associates deal with me because I get the job done, and I know how to make them money.
But I don’t have many close friends. Rangi and I have met up socially in the past because that’s what you do when you’re married—you attend dinner parties at each other’s houses and talk business while your wives discuss which charities they’re on the board for and discuss the antics of their nannies.
Rangi and I understand each other and we work well together.
But I haven’t seen him much socially since Eleanor died.
It’s true that I’ve refused many invitations, but deep down I don’t know that I’ve ever thought of him as a true friend, and we’re certainly not close.
I tell myself I don’t need friends. And I certainly don’t need kindness, tenderness, or devotion. And yet Marama’s words open up a crack in my steely heart and fill it with a deep longing I haven’t felt since I was a child.
“You deserve love and affection,” Marama murmurs, “just the same as everyone else.”
“I don’t need it.” My voice sounds odd, hoarse with held-in emotion.
“I don’t believe that,” she says. “I think you want it, and need it, more than any man I’ve ever met.” Then she straightens, picks up her pencil, and continues drawing.
I sit there, silently fuming, because it’s as if she’s shown me a beautiful gem hidden in the depths of a chest at the back of an attic.
I’d forgotten this feeling, this unbelievable yearning.
I had it all through my childhood, desperate for my parents to love me.
By the time I met my foster parents, I’d grown an exoskeleton to protect myself.
They loved me, and I loved them back, but I was never able to show it the way I wanted.
I was too afraid of being hurt. That fear of rejection was only exacerbated when Amiria left me for Blake.
So in a way, Eleanor suited me perfectly.
I understood why she got herself pregnant.
In a strange way I admired her for it. She knew what she wanted and she wasn’t afraid to do whatever she had to do to get it.
I knew where I stood with her. She fitted nicely into my carefully constructed palace of control.
She wasn’t a great mother, in the traditional sense of the word—baking cakes and running three-legged races with the kids—but then I wasn’t a great father either.
The children were fed, clothed, sheltered, and cared for, and they received an excellent education, and although I’m sure Freud would find something to criticize about our parenting methods, I think both of us tried hard to the best of our abilities.
And I learned to live in that structured world with her restricted, regulated love.
Now, though, listening to Marama’s little speech, I feel a deep resentment at the thought that I’ve somehow missed out. It’s too late now. I’m too withdrawn, too shielded, to ever love again.
“You’re glaring at me,” Marama says.
“Because you unsettle me.”
“In what way?”
I shift, irritated, and the words burst out of me, “Because you make me want things I’ve buried so deep I forgot they were there.”
Her eyes meet mine, and it’s there again—that electricity, zapping through my system as if I’m Frankenstein’s monster, and she’s shocking me alive.
Dammit. This girl. She probes me and teases things out of me as if I’m a whelk in a shell.
“I’d rather not talk,” I snap.
A smile touches the corners of her lips. “Whatever the customer wants. Would you like me to put some music on?”
“No, silence is fine.”
She nods and continues to draw.
We don’t talk for about ten minutes. She works studiously, sometimes leaning back and making long, free lines with her pencil, at other times leaning forward and taking time to fill in minute detail.
I sit in the peace and quiet, and watch her.
She doesn’t tell me off for not looking ahead, but allows me to observe her.
I note the way the sunlight turns her dark-brown hair a coppery red.
How it warms her light-brown skin, giving it a golden glow.
I study her moko kauae and wonder what it would be like to kiss her mouth, then her chin, whether the power of it would make my lips tingle.
Growing sleepy in the warm room, I let my gaze slide down her curves beneath the dungarees—the swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the roundness of her hips, and all the way down her legs to her pretty feet with their sparkling blue nails.
She looks young, healthy, and stunning, filled with life, a true spiritual being, an atua wāhine made real.
I don’t even realize I’ve closed my eyes until a shadow falls across me. Something brushes across my lips like a feather. Opening my eyes, I see her moving back, smiling. My lips tingle, just as I anticipated. I think she kissed me. It was such a light touch that I’m not sure if I dreamed it.
“You dozed off,” she says.
“No I didn’t. I was meditating.”
She laughs. “Anyone less likely to meditate I can’t imagine. Come on, I’ve finished this one. Do you want to have a look?”
A little stiff where I’ve been sitting for a long time, I rise from the chair and follow her to the easel.
I don’t know what I expected. I’d hoped that she’d catch my likeness in some way, at least. But I’m astonished to see myself staring back at me from the paper.
It’s a life-size portrait from the shoulders up, the planes and angles of my face formed from free, loose strokes, with just the eyes, nose and mouth defined.
“It’s amazing. It’s like looking in a mirror. Except I’m smiling.” I’m looking at the viewer with quiet amusement, as if we’re sharing a private joke.
“You smile more than you think,” she says. “When you look at me, anyway.”
She’s standing right next to me, with our upper arms just a half inch away. I look down at her, and her eyes capture me, imprisoning me in their amber depths.
My gaze slides to her mouth. Her lips look soft, and I can imagine how they would feel pressed against mine. Would she open her mouth to me willingly? Allow me access, let me stroke her tongue with my own? Would she lift her arms around my neck, lean against me, slide her hands into my hair?
Can you imagine what it might be like to be with someone who is emotionally open, and sex positive? Who doesn’t just want sex when it’s appropriate and timely, but who thinks about you all the time, and wants you every minute of every day?
A deep ache fills me, my heart thuds, and my cock hardens.
She obviously sees something of my desire in my eyes, because her eyes flare, and her lips part.
I want her badly. It would be so easy to kiss her.
To lose myself in her. To let myself believe it could lead to something more.
I crave what she’s offering—youth, beauty, sex, affection, maybe even love.
But it’s only going to lead to heartache.
I can’t use her for one night and then discard her, and we can never be a couple because our friends and family would never condone it.
Part of me thinks fuck them all, nobody has ever stopped me from having what I wanted.
I once told Orson that our family motto was ‘See, want, take,’ and I believe it.
But even if we ignored everyone else, it’s unlikely it would ever work.
She’s going to want children, and I’ve had my family.
And she’s too young for me. When she’s forty, I’ll be fifty-six; when she’s fifty, I’ll be sixty-six, heading for seventy. Jesus.
We’re like two binary stars, caught up in each other’s orbit, but destined never to meet. And the sooner I come to terms with that, the better.