Chapter 120
Paul hadn’t looked at me once since we’d left the wardroom, and at the bar he threw back several drinks in short order. On the walk back to our car, he finally said something. “You know, it wouldn’t have killed you to say, The water’s fine.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t fine.”
“You said it was contaminated.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“There is no fucking evidence that either cobalt-60 or manganese-54 causes cranioschisis. So I don’t know why—in a room that included several of my superiors—you couldn’t have said as much.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Because there’s no evidence that cobalt-60 and manganese-54 don’t cause cranioschisis.”
Paul shook his head as if what I’d said disgusted him, then pulled the car keys from his pocket and dropped them—not once but twice—on the pavement.
“You can’t drive,” I said.
“I’m fine.”
I nodded in the direction of Shore Patrol. “Want me to go knock on their door and ask if they think you’re fine?”
“You don’t have to be such a bitch,” he said, and the tone, not to mention his word choice, surprised me.
“That’s not very nice.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled as he handed me the keys.
To defuse the tension on the drive home, I told him that Beverly had called him attractive. He knew he was, but I figured he’d like hearing it from someone else.
“She said that? Attractive?”
“Yeah.”
I got us home and was hanging my coat on a hook by the front door when Paul came up behind me, rubbing his erection against my backside.
“Oh, hey,” I said a little playfully.
He ran his hands over my hips, his mouth hot on my neck, and for a moment I leaned into him, thinking, Okay, I can get into this. But then he was pulling my skirt up over my thighs, and it started to bunch around my waist.
“Let me get out of these clothes,” I whispered, but it was like he wasn’t hearing me. He pressed his body against mine and started yanking at the waist of my pantyhose.
“Baby,” I said, “I’m serious.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, and I felt him reach for his belt buckle. “Me, too.”
I wanted to be as straightforward as possible with him, to tell him that I needed to get my diaphragm, but after the fight we’d had on the pier, I was certain that the suggestion was going to go over like a ton of bricks. “Can you just give me a minute?”
He shifted his weight, and I ducked out from under him.
“Don’t even think about putting that thing in,” he said as he followed me back to the bedroom.
“What thing?” I said, playing dumb.
“Every American woman on this island is pregnant or trying to get pregnant. And you won’t even let me fuck you without shoving a piece of rubber up your pussy.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Paul use the word pussy, and certainly not in the pejorative. I was overcome with a sense of cold dread.
He had followed me to the bedroom and was fumbling with his shirt buttons, but his coordination was so bad, it was going to take him forever to get the thing off.
I unzipped my skirt as fast as I could, trying to get my stockings off at the same time.
To anyone else, it might have looked like I was ready to hurl myself at my husband, but the truth was that I just wanted to stay one step ahead of him.
I knew where my diaphragm was—in the top drawer of my bedside table—but I was less sure where I’d last put the tube of spermicide.
I thought it was maybe in the bathroom, so while Paul stood in the middle of the room, trying to get out of his pants, I said I had to pee and slipped down the hall to the bathroom, where I ransacked the medicine cabinet and then the little basket I kept beside the toilet. I couldn’t find the stuff anywhere.
Paul called to me from the bedroom, and I sat down on the toilet and peed, hoping I could buy myself a little time. There was a chance I had an extra tube of spermicide in my underwear drawer.
“I’m serious,” he called to me, “no diaphragm.”
“Jesus, I’m peeing,” I said, then yanked at the flusher chain with more force than necessary.
When I emerged from the bathroom wearing only my blouse and underwear, Paul was standing buck naked in the middle of the room, stroking himself.
There was no way I was getting past him, so I abandoned the underwear-drawer idea and climbed across the bed, eyes on my bedside table.
Paul was on me in a flash. He grabbed me from behind and pushed me onto the mattress, using his body weight to hold me in place.
“This isn’t funny,” I said.
“I’m not laughing.”
I extended my arm as far as it would go, but I couldn’t reach the drawer. “Paul,” I said, “please.”
“You begging for it?”
He was dragging his penis back and forth across my backside.
“I’m begging you to let me get my diaphragm.”
“What’s the real reason you don’t want to have a baby?” he asked, his mouth millimeters from my ear.
If I were being honest, I’d have told him that I didn’t want a baby because a baby would tie me to him in a way that no marriage license or military ID card ever could. But I didn’t think honesty was going to do me much good at the moment. “I just don’t want one right now,” I whispered.
This infuriated Paul. “You sure none of this has anything to do with that jerk-off journalist?”
Maybe I should have said no. But I couldn’t do it. So I said nothing, which made what happened next so much worse.