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To be honest, that does sort of stand out when there is less to do. In an emergency, it’s hard to think about making a family. If things are less of an emergency, the absence of a family life is like a gong that rings every morning when I come down the stairs.
When I was a kid, this house seemed obnoxiously lavish. Yes, it has been in my family for generations. My grandfather built it, so it’s not like my parents went out and tried to make some kind of statement. When my grandfather built it, land was cheap and a doctor having a big house wasn’t considered a huge extravagance.
Actually, it probably didn’t seem like an extravagance to my father either. It seems like it to me a little bit, because I am by myself and because in Costa Rica I happily lived in two hundred square feet for three years.
I even considered staying there, but I knew I was needed back home. I knew that the Alzheimer’s that had taken my grandfather might eventually take my father. I had to be ready to step into his shoes.
There are echoes in this house of my father, my mother, my grandparents. There’s probably echoes of me running around like a maniac up and down the hall. I seem to remember I had up tricycle with plastic wheels and I liked to ride it inside the house. The driveway is all crushed oyster shells, kind of terrible for a tricycle. The hallway, on the other hand, is perfect.
Harriet raises her eyebrows at me when I come down for coffee, since it is already almost lunchtime. I don’t have anything on the books, so I didn’t see the need to go into the office today. Besides, I saw the look that Jen gave me when I asked to examine Joanna. I don’t feel like dealing with her disapproving glares right now.
Joanna.
Does she look like the sort of person who has never experienced an orgasm before? That took me aback. That was almost more information than I could stand and I felt an overwhelming urge to take her, to make her mine. Professional distance be damned, I wanted to have her right then.
Never? Never once? It explains a lot. I almost feel bad for her… Actually, I do feel bad for her. I can imagine going through life without being able to release, without being able to hit my brain’s internal button to trigger bliss. The poor woman was tortured, and I bet she didn’t even know it.
But as she squirmed underneath me, her head thrown back, her hair sticking to her in damp tendrils as I brought her body to its natural state of climax, I could feel the transformation taking place. I could feel I was really doing something worthwhile, maybe even changing her life.
I wonder how she feels today?
All day, I try to not think about that, but I can’t seem to stop. Finally, when I am almost ready to give up, I get a message.
/> Hi.
Hi yourself, I text back immediately.
Relief washes through me. She needs me again.
When I knock on the door, I hear a scuffle inside. It takes a while, but the door flings open. Joanna stands there with one hand behind her back, a pale blue dress dangling off one shoulder and wrinkled around the middle where she is clutching it.
“I can’t… um… reach the zipper?”
She backs sheepishly into the room as I walk over the threshold, her bare feet light on the floorboards. As she breathes quickly, her flesh is hollow behind her collarbones, so delicate, like the throat of a bird.
“Are you asking me to zip up your dress?”
Her brow furrows. “I just thought I had a minute to look for a dress for the opening,” she explains in a rush. “This was my grandmother’s.”
“All right, turn around,” I suggest.
She pivots on her tiptoes, reaching up to hold her hair out of the way as she turns her back toward me. The sky-blue fabric separates in a V over the smooth skin of her spine. Slowly I draw the middle tab of the zipper toward the nape of her neck, barely resisting the urge to kiss her there. It seems like a ideal moment: a man zipping up a dress and placing a kiss on the back of the woman’s neck.
Totally out of bounds, I remind myself.
“Do you like it?” she breathes when the dress is in place. Taking a light step away, she pivots around to face me again. The hem of the dress swirls out as she does it and she catches it lightly in her fingertips. She is a beautiful picture, practically plucked from the pages of a 1960s fashion magazine.
“Your grandmother’s, you say?”
“All her things are here,” she smiles. “It’s an absolute treasure trove! Most of these are handmade, I’m pretty sure. People in New York would pay a fortune to have these!”
“I can see why,” I murmur as she prances away into the bedroom.
She didn’t explicitly invite me, but curiosity draws me to follow her anyway.
“Don’t mind the mess, please,” she winces as I enter, glancing around nervously.
It looks like a fabric bomb went off in here. There are boxes on the floor with the lids halfway off. Dresses on hangers dangle from doorknobs, from the back of the full-length mirror and from the top of the closet door. There have to be a dozen of them in every shade of the rainbow with stripes and dots and flowers, each one more feminine than the last. Something about this unabashed display of ladylike charm tickles something deep inside me.
