Doreen had always guessed that was the story, though she had never gotten to know his wife well enough to ask. The contact didn't seem prudent. There is always a certain intimacy between two people sleeping together that can't be concealed when they encounter each other in any other environment. What is it? The look that is more penetrating than would be comfortable between two complete strangers? Yeah. That could be it. Or part of it, at least. She hadn't taken the time to really look at it and develop a profile. It was enough knowing that it was. It existed.
When they were together it had been a certain sort of forbidden magic and when things were getting difficult for her, she'd find herself dreaming a little bit about how things might have been. Dangerous territory, to be sure. The facts were the facts and Doreen lived in the world. There wasn't any other way to cut into it. When the lights went off it was dark. When the checks got cashed the money was gone. These things were real and not to be argued with.
So too, her relationship with Walt, this thing they shared, came with its own limitations built right in. There had never been a whole lot of room to analyze or ponder. She guessed that wanting more from him would've had exactly the opposite effect and so she never allowed it. That is discipline, by god. That's the stuff that kept her alive when two husbands slowly dwindled away, finally disappearing in a cake walk of one to another. She was the constant. The music that kept the men in her life moving.
If she'd been born in another time who knows what she would have accomplished? She had all the qualities she longed for but never quite found in a man; she was strong but more importantly she was resilient. It wasn't enough to be able to take one on the chin. Her life, like the lives of most women, required her to be able to keep walking forward after the blow had come. She didn't get to flinch. She couldn't fade, hoping that she'd be taken care of while she faltered, falling by the wayside.
There was no wayside. There was just her life and she'd lived it in a long straight line. Now, being older, she was inclined to spend more time looking back than she hand in the past.
"Makes sense," she thought, laughing to herself as she weighed the thought. There was so much more of her past to be taking a look at now. SO much more of it and so little waiting up ahead. As she moved across the room she caught site of herself in the big mirror over the dining table.
She didn't look too bad. The men her age were all falling apart, in various stages of disrepair or despair. Not her. She made a point of living her life as if there was still as much ahead, even though she knew perfectly well this was not the truth. Not having anybody around to compare the notes on aging made it easier.
Abby, her friend's daughter, stopped by occasionally. She was a sweet kid and had a heart as big as the Lincoln sitting out in Doreen's garage. Funny comparison because, like the car, the girl had seen a bit of world. Working her job on the ambulance opened an interesting little window on a part of life most people never saw. There was no telling what she might run into in the course of a day. Doreen looked forward to her visits and the odd little stories or parts of stories she'd show up.
She was still standing in the middle of the room looking at her reflection. There was quite a bit to be pleased with, which might sound funny to somebody young and impatient. Let them think what they liked. It wasn't a problem for her and there was going to be a point where they were looking into their own mirrors. If they were lucky they'd find the same inventory of tings she'd managed to hold on to. Her hair, for one. It was still thick and full, something most of her friends had lost first. They had slowly gone to thin, straggled little scratchy patches, like grass on a hill without water. Not her though. She was still full-headed, though it was all a beautiful thick shiny silver.
Black. Her hair had been black. Not brunette. She'd heard it called that quite a bit but the facts were otherwise. She knew her hair was black. It was something her men had always loved.
"God almighty, woman!"
Walter had said that as she was climbing over him to get out of bed and fetch an ashtray. They'd been making love for most of the afternoon and she knew he'd be ready for a smoke. Even as heavily as he smoked, he wouldn't let her out of bed that day. His hands went back to tracing her soft curves and he punctuated each excursion with a kiss as his fingers explored. She loved the way he kissed. One of the best she'd ever known. Sure as hell better than her husband, who seemed to think you had to kiss to get something but there wasn't much point beyond that. He kissed the way he unlocked the front door - a quick, smooth stab and withdrawal. It was a function.
Walter approached it as an art. Funny thing to think, when she'd always believed there wasn't a whole hell of romance anywhere in the man. Now, being older and wiser, she realized he was an individual; not subject to the way things looked on the movie screen or was supposed to be in the books. He had things he loved and relished, like kissing her skin and smelling her. Both romantic as hell and neither really detracting from the fact that he didn't appreciate his own wife or love the kids she's given him.
Hey, nobody was perfect. She knew that even then. Now she was beginning to see how each person, no matter where they'd come from or where they were going, had an element they elevated to perfection. Or near perfection.
Walter's just happened to be in bed. That was the one place where he was at home. A spot he might risk any number of perils to arrive at, then linger regardless of risk or reality. She had watched him, more than once, slid out from inside her, slip out of her bed and walk out the front door to go home and see his wife at the end of a day. The damnedest thing.
Men, huh?
@#
"you aren't going to believe this one. Lord!", Abigail said, launching into the story she'd come to tell Doreen.
"Like a ridgepole pine, standing straight and tall!"
Doreen laughed when Abby said it, the sort of laugh that was as much delighted by being delighted at the topic as she was at the story itself. A man's penis was fair game, she thought. Especially an erect penis hard enough to take a man to the hospital. Who would pass a chance to see something like that?
"He was old, Dor! Good lord but you'd never know it by what was going on down there between his legs."
"Old enough to share with a friend," Doreen asked joking. Only sort of joking, really. There were thoughts running through her mind that belonged there as much as any other, even if the young people around her might be shocked and think she was too ancient for that.
"You dirty girl," Abigail said. It was part of what she liked most about Doreen; one of the details of her personality that kept Abby stopping by to see her. A bonding on the real things, the gritty things that her mother never had time for. She was a little too nervous to think about sex herself, much less discuss it with her own daughter. She'd died without ever speaking frankly and honestly with Abby about the things on most women's minds. Sure as hell on hers, at least.
Which made visiting here so much more fun. There was nothing they'd covered so far that had proven off limits. No topic Doreen had given her reason to think she might want to stay away from.
"Maybe we could fix a little get well package to take to him, honey? You think he might like a little something to help him recover?"
"Get over, you mean?" Abigail asked, already laughing when she said it. " I could. I've got his name and I know where to find him."
"Now whose being bad?", Doreen asked, without meaning it. There was a curiosity here that wouldn't be satisfied without hearing his name and gathering a few details. Of course, she'd never
"You think we should go see him, do you? What would we want to fix for Noah Bunch?"
And everything sort of stopped there, dangling in the air for a moment before crashing to the floor. The look on Doreen's looked as if Abigail had just slapped her and there was no getting around noticing.
"Who?"
"Noah," Abby said.
"Bunch," Doreen said, finishing the sentence before Abby got a chance.
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