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It’s not the expected she misses; she was prepared for that. It’s not having him there to change the oil in the car, or to take care of the taxes. For simple chores like that there is Jim the mechanic, fond of good beer and bad movies. H & R Block sufficed to do the taxes come springtime, for in all things she had been well taken care of. How well, she didn’t know until now. Because as the song says, you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. Shoo. Bop, bop, bop, bop. Shoo. Shit. It wasn’t having Eric around to do the gutters, shaking his stubborn way up the ladder, cursing at an autumn’s worth of dead leaves. It wasn’t needing him to make her decisions, they hadn’t been like that. It was waking in the night, from sleep once effortless, now shallow and fragmented, as easily broken as a grandmother’s china?waking, and not knowing if she were still in a dream or in their bedroom. After a trip to the bathroom?there was no need to fumble her way in the darkness now, careful not to turn on a light -- it was returning to bed alone. Alone in that ghastly three a.m. silence that all the AM radio in the world couldn’t fill. It was the things Gwen hadn’t been expecting. It was shaving her legs out of habit, and remembering what his hand felt like sliding up her skin, newly bare and smooth for him. Knowing his hand would inevitably travel higher, and touch her the way she liked. Because he knew what she liked. There was much to be said for familiarity, for thirty-two years of learning each other’s landscapes and responses. Familiarity bred adeptness along with affection; a dance long-practised became natural. They could take pleasure with each other as easily as breathe or sing. It was not shaving her underarms one morning, because Eric wasn’t there to care. And then not doing it a few more times. Only her daughter was shocked, her eyes narrowing in assessment, as if such a middle-aged transgression in hygiene was evidence of early dementia. Not dementia, Gwen had assured her, gratified to see Jennifer blush. Just sheer laziness. She had said it with confidence, and risen from her daughter’s kitchen table. Time to go, before more was said, things they’d both regret. Life was too brief to bicker, and she loved her daughter. A peck on the cheek for her grandson Jacob, briefly distracted from his Legos, scattered across the kitchen floor. A matronly coo for the newborn granddaughter, sleeping, puckered and oblivious. Grateful that her daughter lived in the same city, and resigned that they’d still clash and be suspicious of each other forever. Love mixing with worry, prickly, twisting over and over like -- well, like a bag of hedgehogs. And she’d pulled over to cry for Eric. Eric and his funny phrases, borrowed from an English father and an Irish mother. Then Gwen had put on her sunglasses?no one, not even the rear-view mirror?would see her eyes, red from weeping, in public. She drove to their home and its wrapping of silence, slowly becoming familiar. Gin or whiskey? Gin. Outside or in? In. Nothing but drivel on the television, but it was wallpaper for her ears. A book. There was no hurry. No need to get dinner on the table. Cheese and crackers would do. She could even get a cat now, if she wanted to. One gin too many. I don’t want a cat, Gwen said out loud to a Clorox bleach commercial. Booze always did that to her. Inhibitions fell away, and appetite, soft as velvet, arrived. She knew it. I have a cat already. A soft, sweet pussy. Her hand was creeping down there. But no one to… And she shut up fast, despairing of becoming a maudlin drunk, with smeared lipstick and Rorschach mascara, a walking, revolting embarrassment. Not her. Not Gwen Forrest. Wife of Eric, mother of Jennifer and Thomas. Grandmother. Once she’d been a bookkeeper, and good at her job, too. She’d been young. Pretty. Somebody’s lover. And now lying across the master bed -- flat on her back, the way Eric liked her -- touching her stomach, still relatively flat and fairly smooth, bearing its tracing of silver marks with pride. He’d kissed those marks in the newly blooming purple of her pregnancy, as she swelled with one, then another baby. He’d rubbed oil into them as her belly stretched taut to hold safe each new pink being as it formed. Then he’d slipped lower, goofy and endearing in his shorts, and kissed her inner thighs. And he kissed his way to the centre of her, his mouth brushing her curls until they were damp. Kissed her, and did much more, until soft stars fell behind her closed eyes. She’d been so lucky. So, yes, it was having no one to share the newspaper with in the morning, even if that had meant waiting for the front pages, having been automatically given the Home section. She didn’t have to listen to the stock market report or the eight o’clock news or wait until the steam cleared from the bathroom to fix her hair. She didn’t have to check the seat position anymore, either. Even morning was new these days. It was waking before she remembered that things had changed. Waking, drowsy and soft, with a need born from a dream or abstinence. From absence. A dream where she’d been openly caressing a man that could have been Eric or could be someone else entirely, a stranger. She’d touched that man, warm and throbbing with desire -- desire for her, oh, yes, because it was her dream -- and then she had felt him slide into… It was waking with her hand between her legs, pressing against herself with all her might, coming out of a dream where she was coming. It was a sullen little hunger in the afternoon, a teary ache that never receded. She could finger her nipples, touching herself as she’d done since she lay in her bed in a pink and white Seventeen-magazine bedroom. Touch like a novice musician hearing the miracle of melody for the first time, finally understanding how to put it together. Touch in changing tempos: quickly and furtively, or carefully and slowly, testing pleasure in the palette of its debut. It all had felt so good. Nothing had really changed; pleasure remained as tempting as ever. But she had a taste for it now, had learned to live with it as her due. But she couldn’t suckle. She couldn’t feel that warm tug of his knowing mouth, pulling her nipple first to proud erection, then deeper in -- and pulling the wetness right out of her. Her fingers were no substitute. At night, it was not hearing the sound of his breathing, so long known that it was part of the tapestry of darkness. Clock-tick, house-creak, and Eric-snore. A quick intake, a pause, and then a slow release. As he drifted deeper into sleep, the snore grew louder and deeper too. Not troubled much by insomnia, Gwen had never really minded the noise, for he hadn’t kept her from rest. And if she did wake, from turning over or the need to pee, she liked hearing his steady, soft breathing. On the occasional wrong side of the clock when she couldn’t fall asleep again, she’d pad downstairs and into the kitchen, oddly glossy and bright in the black hours. She’d make herself a hot toddy with whiskey, milk and brown sugar. Cinnamon one time, nutmeg the next. It was good -- worth having insomnia for, she used to say cheerfully. And creep back upstairs to her man, warm and sleepy and horny from the booze. Under the sheets again, she’d nudge his boxers down, and use her hand to persuade him up. Then she’d slide onto him, slick, hot and relaxed, and rock herself to slow climax, his sleepy grin urging her on. Eric let her go on top. That’s one of the things she liked best about him in bed, that he let her take command, straddle him and wrest her pleasure from his body. He gave up the control that most men relish. His eyes would cloud with desire as he lay beneath her, surrendered to her will, watching her rock and grind herself upon him, becoming his dancing girl, geisha, maidservant. Queen. And he’d watch her lose that control, her pleasure become his, her hair unravelling, breasts bouncing, dark colours shimmering behind her eyes. Maybe that had been her cure for insomnia all along. Now she knew that loss was in the little things. An absence, a lack of comfort. There was a triad of mourning: head, heart and hole, the secret place he used to fill so sweetly. Emptiness had bloomed, and consumed her with nothingness. She was all hole now, a cavern of grief. Longing for what had been, what she’d held so lightly. And yearning for touch. Even casual contact, long taken for granted -- a hand on her shoulder as he passed her to get another cup of coffee. A leg companionably nestled against hers in bed, warm, hairy and male. A kiss good-night, and good morning. How lucky she’d been, that she still received those kisses, automatic as they were. Half the women she knew had received divorce papers instead. Gin fuelled desire, and desire provoked memory. Memory wouldn’t leave, and it brought along its dread companions, absence and grief. What time was it? She may as well sleep. Gwen was exhausted, and day had somehow slipped away again, for the light outside was dimming. The dimming of the day. Who had sung that? It had been on one of Eric’s cherished old LPs, now relegated to the basement along with his other treasures. But she could never bear to throw away things he loved. She never would. Gwen sat up, looking around the bedroom. Happy times had been spent sheltered in those old walls. A few sleepless nights too, along with some tears and the occasional shouting matches common to any couple. Their marriage had not been perfect. But it had been good. And would their children be shocked to know that she and Eric had still made love in this old room, and done it well, with enthusiasm and skill? They’d managed quiet acrobatics between the bed and the bureaus, and later, alone again, their nestlings having flown, toyed with silk scarves and lingerie, becoming bolder. Gwen dressed to be undressed in stockings and garters, and once or twice in a frivolous piece of costuming called a Merry Widow. Now she knew that there was nothing merry about it. Widow. What a horrible word, Gwen thought, undressing. Like something black and shrivelled, like a spider. She was too young to be a widow. Garbed in black, dour and unsmiling. Queen Victoria, dethroned from matrimony. In widow’s weeds. And what were widow’s weeds, anyway? She and Eric had smoked the other kind of weed. That was something else that would probably shock the kids. They’d plucked weeds in the front yard like all the other suburban couples, and occasionally smoked it on the back deck when the kids were small and safely tucked into bed. Summer nights, long ago, marked by cheap wine, weed, and the weekend -- it could have been a song. The back screens were kept open to the breezes, and to hear the kids if they called. Quiet laughter in the summer darkness, and the glowing ember passing between them. Smoke chased by fruity bubbles in a plastic glass. It hadn’t been any worse, Gwen thought, than the beer or wine that accompanied it. Then she and Eric would go upstairs, afire in the August night, strip the covers off the bed, and… Hell. She shrugged the rest of her clothes off, left them on the floor, and stepped gingerly into the waiting tub. She took a bath some nights now, instead of a quick shower before bed. She used to come to her husband, already settled with Tom Clancy or John Grisham, ready to please him too, fresh with soap and sure of getting her way. Confident she could distract him from the pages and into her arms. Now Gwen bathed, drawn to the tub like a child’s bath before bed. But sleep was absent, too. It lingered just out of reach, despite her care to invite it in. She’d almost pass through, and slip into lovely, distracting dreams, but then become aware that the other side of the bed stayed empty. Aware of the sound of the radio. She couldn’t sleep. Wouldn’t sleep. Bothered and bewildered, oh, yes, if not bewitched. Should she get up and have something? Would another drink help? Suddenly she could see a future where she turned to the comfort of a bottle once or twice too many times, and it became a habit, then a need. She wouldn’t do that. Not to Eric’s memory. But sleep -- and forgetting -- was so appealing, and so hard to find. Gwen closed her eyes again, and imagined someplace she’d never been, where there was no yesterday and no tomorrow. Where nothing hurt. A place taken from some sensual dream, or more likely, a travel brochure she’d once seen. She’d decorate it with azure skies and tanned skin if she wanted. Crisp white linen sheets. And a man easing between those clean sheets with her, someone faceless. Young. Muscled. Erect and taut, his body sculpted for a woman’s pleasure. Yet tender and skilled, leisurely ardent. She saw it all in soft focus, but saw him, hard, with smooth, sun-touched skin, and then she could almost feel a perfumed breeze, the kind that stirred the body. She slid the night table drawer open and reached in. The vibrator was smooth and cool, a long-familiar instrument. Eric had never minded it, as long as she was still receptive to his advances. But for his business trips, or those long, indolent afternoons when the kids had been at school and her husband at the office, Gwen had preferred a time out that didn’t involve General Hospital. She never imagined that it alone would calm her body when it simmered. Cool, but warming to her skin, she pressed it to her vulva, closing her eyes, remembering Eric despite herself. No fantasy man, no diverting dream, but the man she missed. There was no place she’d rather be but here, and with him. But it wasn’t to be, and she couldn’t change that. Dreams were all that was left, until she joined him again. There was an absence in this kind of pleasure, too. There was no sound of his breathing, no embrace of his arms, no kiss, as familiar as her own voice. No murmured I love you, and no laughter. Loveless joy -- as grief was joyless love. But hunger remained, a surprise when it returned. She had thought it would die with him too, but it hadn’t. Gwen pressed harder, working her body, dancing with herself, the old responses surfacing, stil strong. Rising, that lovely old fever, demanding: soon. Gwen remembered the first time she came after he died. The first pleasure without him, though she hadn’t sought such pleasure?only the killing of unwanted desire. The urge tugging at her had to be quelled, or it would overwhelm her, and she would scream and scream, until she was mute with it. But it had felt like a betrayal. It had felt like reality, finally admitting that yes, life would go on, and without him. Gwen had cried as she came, sorrow and grief mixing with the throbbing release of old gratification. Afterward, she’d lain back on the bed, and cried again for her husband, cried until the ceiling blurred and the tears dried on her cheeks. Then she’d slept, exhausted. And woken much later, disoriented by how the sun had moved around the room. She rose to go downstairs and start dinner before Eric got home. But he wasn’t coming home. She’d forgotten that, and stood on the stairs, the silence of the house pounding in her ears. She laughed like a crazy woman, but there was no one to hear. Something as simple as my husband is dead -- and she’d forgotten. How could she forget that? She’d been to his funeral. After the endless tea, coffee, dainty sandwiches that didn’t satisfy hunger, and the soft ceaseless chatter, the talk, talk, talk. They’d always made love after stiff -- no pun intended, she thought -- social events. Been made stiff and willing themselves by anything with conservative formality. It always threatened to make Gwen giggle. The kind of event that made Eric’s dry humour come to the fore, provoking that laughter. They had felt like kids at company dinners or black tie affairs, with silly sly whispers in each other’s ears. No matter their ages, they’d always felt younger than anyone else, and rebellious, as if they’d found a secret in each other. And now she’d buried her husband -- evidence that she was no kid. Not any more. They’d always made love after stiff social events. And they always made love after funerals. It was their ritual, as important as prayer. Death and desire, mingling like smoke. Something that seemed blasphemous, yet was too strong to resist. Primal and shocking, both wrong and right. Rite. They’d made love, even after their parents’ funerals. Four good-byes right there. Fuck you, death. Silent lovemaking. Maybe it was life-making. Whatever it was, it had been necessary. Done without needless words, only the sounds of physical want: a grunt, a muffled moan, an escaping sigh. Her black dress falling to the floor. Eric’s suit rumpled, then discarded. The sharp gasp as he entered her, as she climaxed, his cock warm and blunt, forcing her to acknowledge the pleasure it gave her, raw and real. Life. Goes on. And on. Gwen sighed and gently teased her nipples, soft as plucked petals. They weren’t erect, yet were exquisitely sensitive, and she imagined a mouth. A mouth sliding over her skin, and moving down -- Eric or the young lover she could conjure up anytime. She squirmed against the slender wand, against the sheets of her old marital bed, and it was a magic wand indeed. She was a baton twirler tonight, spinning and spangled, a girl again, seventeen once, with the world ahead of her, glittering with possibility… It wasn’t the expected she missed. It wasn’t being a widow; it was not being a wife. It was not having him slide into her, presumptuous and perfect, at moments like this, to begin the slow thrusts she loved to rise and grind against. To meet him. It was that they’d made love two days before he died. And Gwen didn’t know it was the last time.. It had been precious, and she hadn’t known it. She longed for what she had had. And she longed. Her body hadn’t quite learned that Eric was not coming back. |
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12.07.06: Scarlet Letters -- in case it isn't glaringly obvious -- is currently
on an extended hiatus. The web has changed, we've changed, and
we're trying to figure out how we both fit together now, which isn't a process we want to rush. If you're looking for more current SL-related content, you can
have check out upcoming books from editor Heather Corinna and previous co-editor Hanne Blank, check out Heather's current sexuality sites, or explore sites through the femmerotic network. We hope to be back with you soon, as fresh, challenging and
unexpected as ever.
In the meantime, by all means, enjoy our years of past content,
all of which still remain in the public and subscription areas.
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