child, a little boy who can’t catch his breath and is out of control and won’t be consoled. But I did console him, I said, “Sh-sh-shhh,” and “That’s it, let it out,” and each of these seemed to be exactly right, they allowed him to cry harder. I really felt a part of it, like I was helping him get somewhere he’d always wanted to go and he was crying with gratitude and astonishment. It was pretty incredible, when you thought about it, which, as the minutes wore on, I had time to do. I looked at the curtains of my own house and hoped Clee wasn’t breaking things in there. I doubted if any man had ever cried this much, or even any adult woman. We would probably switch roles at some point, down the road, and he would guide me through my big cry. I could see him gently coaxing me into wet tears; the relief would be overwhelming. “You look beautiful,” he’d say, touching my tearstained cheek and bringing my hand to the front of his pants. With a little fiddling the car seat went almost flat; as his wail renewed itself I quietly unclasped my pants and slid my hand down. We’d blow our noses and take off our clothes, but only the clothes we needed to. For example, I would leave my blouse and socks and maybe even shoes on and Phillip would do the same. We’d take our pants and underpants off completely but wouldn’t fold them up because we’d just have to unfold them to put them back on. We’d lay them out on the floor in a way that would make them easy to put on again later. We’d get side by side in the bed and hug and kiss a lot, Phillip would get on top of me and insert his penis between my legs and then, in a low, commanding voice, he would whisper, “Think about your thing.” I’d smile, grateful for the permission to go within, and shut my eyes—transporting myself to a very similar room where our pants were laid out on the floor and Phillip was on top of and inside me. In a low, commanding voice he said, “Think about your thing,” and I was flooded with gratitude and relief, even more than last time. I shut my eyes and was again transported to a similar room, a fantasy within a fantasy within a fantasy, and it continued like this, building in intensity until I was so far inside myself that I could go no further. That’s it. That’s my thing, the thing I like to think about during intercourse or masturbation. It ends with a sudden knotting in my groin followed by a very relaxing fatigue.
As I reclasped my pants he began to slow down, to try to catch his breath. He blew his nose a few times. I said, “That’s it, there you go,” which made him cry a little more, perhaps just politely to acknowledge my words. Finally it was all quiet.
“That felt really, really good.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It was incredible.”
“I’m surprised. I usually don’t cry well in front of other people. It’s different with you.”
“Does it feel like we’ve known each other for longer than we really have?”
“Kind of.”
I could tell him or I could not tell him. I decided to tell him.
“Maybe there’s a reason for that,” I ventured.
“Okay.” He blew his nose again.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Give me a hint.”
“A hint. Let’s see . . . actually, I can’t. There are no little parts to it, it’s all big.”
I took a deep breath and shut my eyes.
“I see a rocky tundra and a crouched figure with apelike features who resembles me. She’s fashioned a pouch out of animal gut and now she’s giving it to her mate, a strong, hairy pre-man who looks a lot like you. He moves his thick finger around in the pouch and fishes out a colorful rock. Her gift to him. Do you see where I’m going?”
“Kind of? In that I see you’re talking about cavemen who look like us.”
“Who are us.”
“Right, I wasn’t sure—okay. Reincarnation?”
“I don’t relate to that word.”
“No, right, me either.”
“But sure. I see us in medieval times, huddling together in long coats. I see us both with crowns on. I see us in the forties.”
“The 1940s?”
“Yes.”
“I was born in ’48.”
“That makes sense because I was seeing us as a very old couple in the forties. That was probably the lifetime right before this one.” I paused. I had said a lot. Too much? That depended on what he said next. He cleared his throat, then was silent. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything, which is the worst thing men do.
“What keeps us coming back?” he said quietly.
I smiled into the phone. What an amazing thing to be asked. Right now, tucked into the warmth of my car with this unanswerable question before me—this might have been my favorite moment of all the lifetimes.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. I quietly leaned my head against the steering wheel and we swam in time, silent and together.
“What are you doing for dinner on Friday, Cheryl? I’m ready to confess.”
THE REST OF THE WEEK glided by. Everything was fantastic and I forgave everyone, even Clee, not to her face. She was young! Over a standing-up lunch in the staff kitchen Jim assured me that young people these days were a lot more physically demonstrative than we had been; his niece, for example: very physical girl.
“They’re rough,” I said.
“They aren’t afraid to show their feelings,” he said.
“Which is maybe not such a good thing?” I suggested.
“Which is very healthy,” he said.
“In the long run, yes,” I said. “Perhaps.”
“They hug more,” he said. “More than we did.”
“Hug,” I said.
“Boys and girls hug, unromantically.”
The conclusion I came to—and it was important to come to a conclusion because you didn’t want these kinds of thoughts to just go on and on with no category and no conclusion—was that girls these days, when they weren’t hugging boys unromantically, were busy being generally aggressive. Whereas girls in my youth felt angry but directed it inward and cut themselves and became depressed, girls nowadays just went arrrrgh and pushed someone into a wall. Who could say which way was better? In the past the girl herself got hurt; now another unsuspecting, innocent person was hurt and the girl herself seemed to feel just fine. In terms of fairness maybe the past was a better time.
On Friday night I put on the pin-striped dress shirt again and a very small amount of taupe eye shadow. My hair looked great—a little Julie Andrews, a little Geraldine Ferraro. When Phillip honked I scooted through the living room, hoping to bypass Clee.
“C’mere,” she said. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, eating a piece of white toast.
I pointed at the door.
“Come here.”
I went to her.
“What’s that noise?”
“My bracelets?” I said, shaking my wrist. I had put on a pair of clangy bracelets in case the men’s shirt made me look unfeminine. Her big hand closed around my arm and she slowly began squeezing it.
“You’re dressed up,” she said. “You wanted to look good and this”—she squeezed harder—“is what you came up with.”
He honked again, twice.
She took another bite of toast. “Who is it?”
“His name’s Phillip.”
“Is it a date?”
“No.”
I focused on the ceiling. Maybe she did this all the time and so she knew something