“What are you doing to me? Does Pam swallow it?” Marie had asked him afterward, challenging him.
He became furious with her, pushing her away from him. “My wife doesn’t do it, period! What the hell do you think she is?”
Marie was completely confused after that conversation. As a teen spying on them having sex, she had seen him go down on Pam with her own eyes.
It wasn’t reciprocal? He was lying
. But she let it go. Now, all of these years later, Marie was dying to ask her sister if she performed oral sex on her husband. How would that start out the weekend? She made the decision to save it for another time.
“What do you think he expected of you, not to get your feet sandy?” Marie asked. “Do you think he had you up on a pedestal?” Maybe she could get the answers she sought another, indirect way.
Pam was thoughtful, looking out to the sea while they walked. “I am not sure what his problem was. There were things that were said and done, or not done, that have me question a lot of what I had believed our relationship to be.” Pam had tried to forget something that had occurred when they hadn’t been married very long, but it popped into her mind as she walked with her sister.
One night, Jack seemed to forget who she was when they were making love. He went wild, banging into her and screaming with no words, tears running down his face. When he finally came, he fell on top of her and immediately went right to sleep. The next morning, when he woke up, he didn’t mention it or seem to remember it at all. There were other things about their sex life that may have been abnormal, but at the time, she was so inexperienced that she had nothing to compare it to. How would she know?
There was so much that was good about it that she finally decided that what had happened between Marie and Sandra and whomever else he was sleeping with didn’t really impact her at all. She would accept it at face value. All of the betrayal was hearsay. She had never caught him with another woman or in a lie. There was no concrete evidence until her diagnosis of AIDS was made, and he could have acquired it before they were even married. He said he had loved her, and he showed her by giving her a life to be envied, and by making love to her. At the end of his life, he didn’t initiate it, but he never turned her down. The only thing she had left of Jack was their private time together, and she wasn’t sharing that with Marie.
I
t is expected that Saturday morning traffic to Long Island on one of the last days of the summer will be horrendous. Smart Manhattanites avoid it; those with a house to go to brave it. Tom Adams seemed to have developed advanced road rage since their last trip to Babylon.
In spite of being a police officer, or maybe because of it
, Sandra thought. It had given her some insight into his personality. She was immediately sorry she didn’t sit in the backseat. She spent most of the ride staring out of the left corner of her eyes to be prepared in case he did anything really stupid. Would she be able to protect the baby if a quick exodus was necessary? With her arms wrapped around her belly, she could jump from the car to save herself.
Silly
, she thought,
you are being silly
. But her hand was on the door handle, just to be sure. When they finally pulled in front of Pam’s house three hours later, Sandra couldn’t get out of the car fast enough.
“Hey, wait for me!” Tom yelled with a laugh. His behavior of a driver possessed seemed long forgotten.
Perhaps he isn’t aware of the way he acted
. She’d make excuses for him as long as she had to. Waiting by the door for him, she reached out for his hand. When Pam opened the door, it would be to these two attractive young people.
“Hello!” Pam said with a big smile. She reached out for Sandra and embraced her. “I am so glad to see you.
Thank you both for rescuing me the other day. Tom, I have to apologize to you for being dragged into my drama!”
He shook his head no. “It was no problem at all! I was happy to do it.” They walked into the entrance with the veranda ahead and the ocean beyond. “Oh boy, what a view.” Tom went right out the back door, leaving Sandra and Pam alone.
“He knows about the HIV and is fine with it,” she said. “I’m not so sure I even know what’s happening. It is all coming at me so quickly.”
“You didn’t tell him about me?” Pam asked, concern written all over her face.
“No.” Sandra said, but thought,
He’ll figure it out because he knows we were both sleeping with Jack
.
“Let’s go walk out to the water,” Tom suggested.
“We just came in from a walk. Go ahead,” Pam replied. “We’ll fix lunch together.” Marie walked out of her bedroom just as the happy couple left for the water’s edge. Pam thought,
What a happy group, considering the news we have just all gotten. How fake can you get?
“I didn’t know he was coming,” Marie said, a frown on her face. “The last thing I want right now is a strange cop knowing all my business.” She thought,
Sandra gets the hunky cop, while I get the aging homosexual
. “Maybe if I keep this damn smile on my face long enough, it will become real.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Pam said. “Hopefully, his presence will keep things light. I mean, Jeff is coming, too. How much of your business do you want him to know?” Pam asked, standing at the counter tossing a salad.
“Only the facts. He doesn’t need to know much. I told him what he needs to have an honest friendship with me and nothing more. My fear is that someone will connect the dots. Why did she have to bring him?” Marie whined. “We should be alone today, not entertaining a room full of strangers.”
Pam could see that Marie’s craziness was beginning to escalate, and to diffuse it, she went to her and put her arms around her sister as she used to when they were kids. “You’ll be fine. Just relax, okay? We don’t want to start anything today.” Pam patted her back and could hear Marie’s breathing slow down. “There you go.”
Sandra chose that second to walk in. She had a smirk on her face and tried to make eye contact with Pam, but Pam diverted her eyes. She was not ganging up on her sister today to bond with anyone, let alone Sandra. Marie saw Sandra standing there alone. Tom must have stayed on the beach.
“Group hug!” Marie commanded.
Sandra laughed and walked over to join them.
“We will have fun today! I am going to make it an act of my will! Fun!” Marie said.
They moved apart, laughing.
“So what’s on the agenda?” Sandra asked.
Marie wanted to say,
Nothing, now that lover boy is here
, but kept her mouth shut.
They looked to Pam.
“Simply relaxation. We can’t talk about anything deep because of Tom and Jeff. I definitely don’t want neighbors trying to put the puzzle together. It’s just too lurid.”
Pam thought,
This is my house, my life. Those two can do whatever they want in the city. But Babylon is my jurisdiction
.
“So what is going on with Andy?” Sandra asked. “He seems like such a nice guy. He was very concerned when you were in the hospital.”
Pam remembered her anger when she woke up with him standing over her sickbed.
“I sort of hoped he would be here tonight,” Sandra said.
“I had to ask him to give me some space. I want to grieve my husband in peace.” She said it with the thought in mind,
That’s right, ladies, he was
my
husband
.
“You deserve to be happy, Pam. He seemed like such a nice, considerate guy,” Marie said. “I hope you’ll be able to let him in someday.”
“Well, if it’s meant to be, he’ll be around when I am ready. But for now, I have too much to process, and I don’t want my thinking to be cluttered up with worrying about another human being. I still have my kids to think of. Try to remember that if you think I am being dramatic.” Assertiveness was not new to Pam, but doing so at the expense of someone else’s happiness was not easy for her. She was fighting guilt and trying to explain her reasoning for ditching Andy Andrews at the same time.
“I don’t think you’re being dramatic at all,” Marie said. “You probably know what’s best for yourself. Hey, did I tell you about my new stalker at work?”
They got their drinks and went out to the veranda as Marie told them about Steve Marks. Tom was back and listening.
“He sounds like a troublemaker. If you have any issues with him again, call me.” Tom pulled out a business card.
Marie thanked him and said she would definitely take him up on it.
“I always said everyone needs a dentist, a lawyer, and a cop in the family, and now we do!” Pam said.
They sat down, all facing toward the water. It was a great beach day, prime spaces occupied by chairs and towels, the whistle of the lifeguard warning bathers not to go too far out clearly heard over the call of the seagulls. The surf was wild, crashing waves on the shore, an indication of a storm out to sea. The sun was bright, but it was slightly cooler than usual because of the wind. Pam shivered, and seeing it, Marie got up to go to Jack’s office to get a shawl for her. Once again, Pam was reminded of the approaching fall and her thoughts about moving to the city.
“So may I tell you about my plan?” Pam asked Sandra. Marie came in and put the shawl around her sister’s shoulders.
“Okay,” Sandra said. “Go ahead.”
“I’m thinking about moving into the mansion for the winter. Bernice is defaulting on the loan, so I can let her stay there to live while I pay the taxes and the upkeep and call it a loss, or move in there myself.”
Sandra didn’t say anything.
Pam in the city? What’s bringing this on?
“Would you be able to leave this house?” Marie asked. “You have loved it so much. I don’t remember you liking the mansion, either.” She took a big drink of her wine, noticing Sandra glaring at her. She willed her to
say something about AIDS and drinking, but Sandra was wisely keeping her mouth shut.
“I think I might like being in the city when the bad weather comes. I can always come back here anytime. It would just be for the winter. Somehow I have to decide what to do about that house. Mother would probably love it, too.” Pam didn’t think her mother would handle an oceanfront winter. “I can’t see my mother liking the nor’easters we get.”
“Mother. I keep forgetting about her,” Marie said.
Sandra thought about the apartment but decided not to bring it up. And then, surprisingly, because it was so unlike her to bring up personal stuff in front of a stranger, Pam asked Sandra about the business.
“I thought I would have gotten the quarterly statement by now.” She looked directly at Sandra. “With the expenses now for all of these Manhattan properties, I would like to make sure Peter isn’t driving the business into the ground.” She made light of it, her pleasant laugh making everyone smile, but Sandra knew that she was serious.
“I’ll look into it on Monday. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I saw one, either. Peter Romney has never said a word to me until yesterday, when I told him he was being a dick,” Sandra confessed.
Everyone started laughing, although only Pam knew how true the name fit Peter.
“How appalling! It was when I was giving him the file you so graciously brought downtown for me. Thank you, Marie,” Sandra said.
“How long are you going to work?” Marie asked her. “I mean, you hear that women stay at work until their due dates, but isn’t that pushing it?” She realized how uninformed she was.
How could I have lived a woman’s life, helped my sisters through their pregnancies, and not know?
Sandra didn’t seem fazed by it. “I’ll work as long as I can. Something in my health insurance policy says I have to work until the doctor says I can’t any longer. So they have all the control. I may be canceled once they find out the horrible truth. Anyway, I would like to tell you all about my lovely experience as a kidnap victim of Bill Smith yesterday.”
The women gasped, disbelieving that Sandra could be relating something so awful so calmly.
The sun slowly moved over the house, and one by one, the sunbathers packed up their towels and left the beach, and the day-trippers went back to their homes west as Sandra related the scary details of her encounter with a madman. She left out the story of Jack and Bill being lovers. That would be a tale that she would tell when she was alone with Pam. She understood how something like that could happen—the father forcing it and then the two brothers finding solace in each other. But she had to admit to herself that something of what she felt for Jack shifted when Bill repeated the story. It could have been a lie, for all she knew, but something told her it was the truth. Another layer of the man Jack had been was exposed.
She caught herself staring at Tom, wondering if his childhood had anything tainted in it, anything that could compare to the depravity of the Smith family. She hoped not. What happened in secret would always be revealed.
People thought that their sexual sins didn’t harm them as long they weren’t exposed. But look at what had happened to Jack. The fruit of his father’s sin had grown until they couldn’t fathom its boundaries. More and more would be exposed over time. Sandra thought of Bill and Anne.
Did Jack infect Bill? How did Jack manage to die in a big city emergency room without his HIV status being revealed?
She wanted to dig deeper into it, but wondered at the wisdom of it.
Would it generate scandal?
She imagined the children being hurt. She didn’t want her child to have that stigma. He may have his own health issues to battle. And what about Anne? If Bill had it, she most likely did as well.