“God,” Ava said. She turned to look at Jay as he stood in the entrance watching her. “You live in a mansion. What the hell?” Ava had pictured Jay many times over the years usually in an apartment or a run-down rental home, chain-link fences holding back vicious unhappy dogs in patchy yards. Jay all by himself making his own simple meals from cans, walking around in dingy underwear. She almost laughed aloud at the thought, the movie image of the lonely bachelor. Why she had not assumed that Jay could do at least as well as she had felt like vanity and embarrassed her, but she had never once pictured him successful or happy in a clean bright room.
“I didn’t think anything was possible,” Jay said and took Ava’s hand and looked around at what Ava saw. The house Jay grew up in was a rented one with jaundice-colored walls and an ugly dog bed of a sofa slammed against the wall. Jay remembered his mother’s slight back at the sink, the circle movement of her arms as she washed dishes while she stared out the window. In the evenings after dinner, he’d rest his head on her skinny hip, the smell of her dish soap and grease in his nose, the television the only light.
Jay reached for Ava’s hand. “Have we ever held hands?”
Ava laughed at him with an “are you kidding?” expression on her face.
“I know, I know, but I don’t ever remember us holding hands.”
Jay led Ava to his bedroom. A new mattress and box spring were on the floor dressed like spring in cheap floral sheets. Ava sat on the bed and ran her hand along the buttercups.
“Nothing has to happen here. I just don’t have any chairs.” Jay smiled at her.
“You are so full of shit.”
Jay laughed and sat by her. “I’m serious. Nothing has to happen that you don’t want. I just want to be here with you.”
Ava nodded and looked around the bedroom in the fading light. “This is a big room.”
Jay leaned back on the bed and searched the ceiling for something to count. He closed his eyes. The two of them danced at a party in a dingy basement apartment in Raleigh twenty years before. The well-worn furniture had been moved out to the yard, the music so loud it rumbled through their chests and their hips while a couple dozen of them, young, young people moved together like a throbbing living thing. She had wanted to go outside from the smothering heat and into the backyard. A few people smoked, others whispered and laughed together, but one couple talked quietly, she seated on a picnic table and he facing her between her legs. Ava and JJ couldn’t stop watching them. Their conversation too low to make out any but a few words in between their groping and devouring each other in the relative public of the backyard. The sight of the couple, their desire for just that feeling. Consumption—that was the feeling. More than anything else that had happened to them before that night that had made them go to Ava’s dorm room to attempt that same passion for themselves.
Jay rolled over to his side. “I don’t have television. I’ll get one if you want it.”
Ava stood up and unzipped the back of her dress and let it puddle on the floor. She stepped out of its ring. She felt slightly erotic, slightly disgusted like she stuck her finger in the muddy soil of a potted plant. She had never cheated on Henry, not once. Ava would have told Jay that fact, but she didn’t want to ruin the moment by saying Henry’s name.
Jay reached for Ava’s hand. “Don’t worry. Please. Let’s talk.”
“Talk dirty?”
“No.” Jay laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Ava said. “You talk. I want to hear you.”
Jay hesitated not sure what to say. “I hate sleeping by myself. Did I ever tell you that? All this time by myself and I’ve never got used to it. Is that not manly? I shouldn’t tell you that, right?” Jay chuckled. “You’re supposed to say no, no, Jay you’re very manly.”
Ava smiled at him but said nothing.
Jay unbuckled his belt and took off his pants with his back to Ava. When he turned he hoped her eyes were closed. “Are you okay?” Jay asked. He hoped he looked less afraid than he felt. “Baby, no,” he said when Ava started to cry.
Ava let the wash of guilt and sadness flood over her. Lying in this bed, mostly naked on a sheet about as flexible as a piece of cardboard, she knew without question her marriage was over. She was not sad for the fact, but for the knowledge of the fact. She leaned back to look into Jay’s eyes. She wanted to tell him something important but she wasn’t sure what it could be. Jay’s bed was much bigger than the dorm room bed they had squeezed into so many years before. The first time they slept together she willed the ancient condom he had carried in his wallet to break as he unrolled it, but it hadn’t. She’d wanted a life, her life, but she’d had a small but palpable, unreasonable hope that she would get pregnant and the hard work of planning and focusing would be taken from her, out of her hands, and bound up in a baby with this sad sweet boy.
Jay put his hand on her thigh. She wrestled her bra off her body and tossed it on the floor.
“Turn off the light, Jay.”
“I don’t want to move from here,” Jay said, but he got up and turned off the light. He put his arms around Ava and let her rest her face on his shoulder.
“This is my first affair.” Ava said. Jay held her tighter.
“Nothing has to happen right now. Okay, baby. Everything I want is here right now.”
Ava reached to the end of the bed and pulled the cheap new sheet up between them and wiped her face on the scratchy material. She rested her chin on Jay’s shoulder. “In a little bit, okay?
Jay held her tightly like she might fall off the side of the bed, his arms around her back, his fingers pressed into the hollow curves of her sides, the only sounds in the room their exhalations escaping their bodies, rising to the ceiling, winding around the thumping blades of the ceiling fan.
22
Sylvia waited in the driveway outside of Lana’s house. She tooted the horn for the second time in five minutes. Lana stuck her head out the door. “Stop blowing the horn, fool. This ain’t the getaway car.”
“Hurry up,” Sylvia yelled. “I’ve got things to do today.” Sylvia leaned the back of her head against the headrest. She would have to remember to smooth down her hair so she wouldn’t have a dent before she went anywhere in public. Black women are always thinking about their hair. She closed her eyes. Maybe Lana wouldn’t come out and she could sleep in the sun like an old dog.