Magnetism Read online

  I tell him thank you and settle back on the fresh linen. The entire floor has gone quiet now that all the visitors have left. The pillow is cool beneath my neck and it’s a good feeling as I fall fast asleep.

  1994

  Butterflies

  ‘I’m like a dog on heat,’ I say to the nurse who has been taking my history before my GYN exam.

  ‘Uh huh,’ she says, like she hears this from every woman. Does she hear it from every woman?

  ‘Do you hear that a lot?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ she says, ‘Can you step on the scales there?’

  She frowns as she brings the rod down on my head to measure my height, then she slides the weights across and taps them to get them to balance. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Can you sit down again?’

  Here she puts the blood pressure cuff on my left arm. She appears to be concentrating hard as she lines up the tube with the midline of the underside of my forearm. ‘Please keep still and quiet,’ she says.

  Half an hour later, on my back, with legs in stirrups while Dr Gauntlet (as he has introduced himself) unpacks the swab for my pap smear, I try again. Better vocabulary. ‘Doctor,’ I say, ‘I’ve noticed a surge in my libido.’

  ‘Have you?’ he says, sitting down on the stool between my legs and now becoming a disembodied voice. ‘Horny, huh? Urge or orgasm? Multiple orgasms?’

  I don’t know how to answer and now I don’t want to as I can feel him begin the examination. ‘It’s just that I want to do it a lot,’ I say quickly.

  ‘You’re not married?’ he says.

  ‘No. I’m seeing someone. I have sex with him.’ I sound like an idiot.

  ‘We should do an STD screen, and I’ll get Angela to give you some sample condoms,’ he says. ‘We’ve had some terrific choices come in.’

  ‘STD?’

  ‘VD.’

  ‘I know what STD means.’ I don’t tell him that we haven’t been bothering so much with condoms after the first couple of times. He is now beginning to wind up the speculum. Best to be silent. I wait until he’s taken the sample – which feels like someone scraping at my innards – and has unclamped the instrument again.

  ‘So it’s not unusual, being horny like this? I wondered if it’s my age, or my hormones aren’t balanced or something.’

  ‘Well … ’ He pauses. ‘Libido is a very difficult thing to pin down. What might seem a lot for some, well, it might not be a lot for others,’ he says. He stands up again and looks, between my bent knees, at my face at the top of his examination table. ‘Once, twice a day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, is it a problem, then? Is he complaining? Is there a mismatch? That can be very tricky. Real tricky.’ He looks genuinely concerned.

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ I say. ‘I just wanted to check if it’s normal.’

  ‘Well, I guess, life goes like this. Feast or famine, eh? I suggest you enjoy.’ He bags the swab. ‘We’ll phone you with the results.’

  My mother has a nose for evasion like a bomb disposal dog for explosives. She’ll circle and bark when she finds it. ‘So, what does he do?’ she asks. I’ve just told her that I don’t have time to talk, that all she needs to know is that I’ve been seeing someone and that it’s working out so far. It is true I don’t have time to talk, but I also don’t want to.

  ‘He’s got a job. And I’ve got to get the kitchen clean. I’m cooking for him tonight.’

  ‘Go out,’ she says. ‘Go anywhere, or get something catered. Ring the Piggly Wiggly. You’ve got one there, haven’t you? Their gourmet section … ’ She keeps talking but I stop listening. I’m not worried about the food because I’ll probably serve ready-made and pass it off as home-made, but I am worried about the layers of grime on the stove and everywhere here. It didn’t look clean when I moved here from Tulsa but I didn’t care at the time and, when I did discover that it was filthy, I did nothing to improve the situation until today when I started with the cabinets, then the countertops, and now I’m on to the back door.

  Mom has drifted on from promoting the Piggly Wiggly and is now talking about the health benefits of blueberries and then she wants to know if I’ll be there for Thanksgiving. ‘It’ll come soon enough,’ she says. ‘I need things to be firmed up.’

  My neck is killing me. I can’t clean with the phone propped like this on my shoulder. ‘I don’t know. Look, I’m gonna have to hang up,’ I say, tilting my chin down to hold it but nearly dropping the phone.

  ‘Wait,’ I hear her yell. ‘I haven’t finished.’

  I look, really for the first time, at the screen door and start to wipe it over with the ammonia-laden cloth that I’ve used everywhere. At least my kitchen will smell clean even if it isn’t actually clean.

  There are three holes in the screen. The one in the corner is big enough to let in butterflies, let alone bugs.

  ‘Where did you meet him? Just tell me.’

  ‘Mom, I’m trying to clean up.’ My fingers explore the limits of the final hole and as I do this I manage to push the whole thing in. Half the screen is flapping out now. ‘Shit, I’ve just bust the screen door.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I’m hanging up.’

  ‘What’s his name? At least you can tell me his name,’ she shouts as I rest the phone back in the cradle and get back to work.

  To the detriment of any food, and the rest of the apartment, including the bedroom, I have wasted a whole hour hacking away at the screen with a now blunt kitchen knife. The mesh is gone and there are jagged edges all around the inside of the frame. I should never have started. Why do I do these things?

  The phone rings at the same time as the doorbell goes. ‘It’s me again,’ Mom says. ‘Don’t hang up.’

  ‘Mom, he’s here. My date is here.’

  ‘Ask him about Thanksgiving.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you cook?’

  ‘Nothing. We’ll get takeout.’

  I open the door. Johnny looks great. He’s wearing a dress shirt over black jeans and holding a bouquet of flowers, and has a bottle of wine tucked under his arm. ‘Come in,’ I say.

  ‘Let me talk to him,’ the voice from the phone says.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’ I press the button to end the call and I tell him, ‘Sorry, it’s my mom. She lives in Phoenix.’

  ‘Mom, huh?’ He nods. ‘My dad calls me. Yeah.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Who?’ he says.

  I take the flowers to the kitchen to find a vase to put them in and to get some glasses and the bottle opener for the wine. ‘We’ll have to get takeout,’ I call back over my shoulder. ‘Pizza?’

  ‘No problem.’ He appears intrigued by the bottle opener. He twists it in the air and presses the arms down to force the screw out. On the third time, I take it from him as I’ve spotted the bottle is a screw top. This is when he says that he thinks my place smells weird. I hope it’s the ammonia.

  The next day the doctor’s office phones to say there’s a problem with my pap test. I’ve got to have another one this week. It’s annoying because we’ve got a big event on and his office is all the way across town and they can’t offer me any convenient times, but she says Dr Gauntlet has instructed her to book it for this week, as soon as possible. I can’t possibly do Monday because we’ve got all the set-up and preparation to make sure everything is ready. I’ll just have to be away from work on Tuesday, just when the delegates will be arriving. It’s some Spiritual Warfare thing, which sounds a hell of a lot more exciting than it is. The only bullets are verbal and, like where I worked in Tulsa, most of the rest of the admin team here are born again and hoping to get involved. Experience tells me that at this conference if anyone acts out of line there will be twenty or more people eager to lay hands on and cast the demons out of him or her. For Christians, perhaps the social embarrassment of being thought to be possessed is what keeps them in line, even those whose booking we’ve screwed up. S
o on the whole it’s an easy gig.

  ‘Okay. I’ll take Tuesday morning, then,’ I say. ‘Ten o’clock.’ My mammogram is due too. If I have to have the morning off, I can get that done then as well and check off all the well-woman boxes my primary care physician told me to complete. It’s the same building, but Dr Gauntlet’s office can’t help me with this. I have to ring another number to get an appointment for the mammogram. I make that appointment for forty minutes after the GYN appointment. That should be enough time.

  Johnny’s dad lives on a farm out of town and on Saturday Johnny says that he thinks we need some fresh air. A walk and good blow through would do us some good. It’s true, we’ve really only spent time in the bedroom and a couple of movie theatres. We even met in the evening. He was posing for an evening class in the Civic Center and I was there, working late after a conference I’d been in charge of had ended. It has been all very nocturnal. A day’s outing will be a novelty.

  We stop at his apartment on the way out of town. When he parks, I realise how much I was expecting something else. This building is square and squat, very plain. I know it’s getting colder, but there’s no foliage at all – no evergreens. The three trees in the front lawn must be diseased or something because their leaves are already gone. There’s nothing to give the place any character. ‘Second floor,’ he says. ‘Hop out.’

  And, inside it looks like he’s never decorated it. Not one picture on the living room wall. All pale cream and beige. The kitchen is immaculate. ‘I hardly use it,’ he says after I comment on the pristine appearance of his place. He goes into the bedroom and I trail after him. He changes his clothes – he showered at mine – and puts the dirty ones in the wicker basket outside the bedroom. Other than these new arrivals, the basket is empty. The fresh pair of jeans and shirt appear exactly the same as the ones he just removed except now he’s wearing a blue, rather than green, shirt, and these pants have a small tear above his right knee.

  ‘Set?’ he asks, like I’ve been holding us up.

  Then the urge comes at me again. Lust is a kind of itch. An excitement of possibility, but I don’t want to delay us and I don’t really want to make love here. It’s too un-lived-in, like a show house or something.

  I resist the temptation. ‘Yes, let’s go.’

  When we arrive, it’s obvious ‘the farm’ really is not a farm at all. Johnny has told me, on the way, that there are no animals, or land, but that his dad’s place used to be a farm. The veranda is wide and there’s one of those old-fashioned swings with sun-faded cushions on it, which makes the place look like something out of The Waltons.

  Johnny opens the door and he calls out for his dad as we walk right in. Dave is in the kitchen. It’s an old-fashioned homey kitchen with higgledy-piggledy cabinets separated by irregular gaps. There is no countertop joining them and not all the units have doors. There’s a patchwork curtain stretching across the space under the sink.

  Dave doesn’t look old enough to have a son Johnny’s age. They could be brothers. His face has the same square features and heavy browline but the full head of brown hair on the father is a surprise, since Johnny’s hairline is receding. I wonder if Dave’s had a weave, or is wearing a wig. At the very least it’s dyed. ‘Great to see you,’ he says as we shake hands.

  ‘Got a beer?’ Johnny asks his father. ‘Want one?’ he asks me.

  I say I’d prefer a soda, so he passes me a Mountain Dew. We sit down at the kitchen table. The sweet fizz of my drink floats up as I sip from the glass, and it tickles my nose.

  ‘Long drive?’ Dave asks.

  ‘So-so,’ Johnny says. ‘So-so.’

  He has told me that Dave is a widower. Johnny’s mother died of breast cancer when he was fifteen, and I know he was an only child and Dave never remarried, so I’m surprised when a woman bounces into the room. She appears very much at home. Despite the fact that it’s October, she’s wearing cutoffs, and I’ve got to say her legs are amazing – long and firm.

  ‘Jo-Jo!’ Johnny jumps up and kisses her on the cheek. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say and then he introduces me to Jo-Jo, but all he says is, ‘This is Jo-Jo.’ I am waiting for someone to explain exactly who she is in relation to them, but no one does. It takes me a good half-hour to figure out that she and Dave are a serious item.

  I’ve already imagined Mom meeting Johnny and then meeting Dave. Now I try to imagine her meeting this Jo-Jo as well, Johnny’s surrogate stepmother, but it is all unimaginable.

  On the drive home Johnny asks me what I thought of the place.

  ‘Your dad seems nice,’ I say. ‘He can really cook, and he has fabulous hair. It’s phenomenal.’

  ‘Jo-Jo made him get a transplant.’

  ‘How long have they been together?’

  ‘Since we split up.’

  I ask him to repeat himself, and then to clarify further.

  ‘She and me, we used to go out. It’s not a problem. Don’t turn it into one.’

  ‘When did you break up?’

  ‘A couple of years, maybe. I don’t know. It was before her birthday. I remember that because I didn’t have to get her a birthday present.’

  ‘Glad to see you have your priorities right,’ I say. ‘The whole thing is weird. I don’t get it. How did they get together?’

  ‘Through a threesome.’

  I gulp. ‘Maybe I don’t want to know.’

  ‘No, not me with my dad. He was with another girl who introduced Jo-Jo to Dad. It was after we split up. That was the three-way.’

  ‘So, she’s bisexual?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. The other girl was a hooker.’

  That’s the limit for me, I think. I don’t want to be uncool, but I really don’t want to know anything more. ‘Oh, right,’ I say. Then, when we get back to my place, I say that I’m really tired.

  ‘No problem. It’s been a real long day. I’ll just catch you later.’ He kisses me goodnight and I get out of the car. He waits until I’ve put my key in the front door to the building. I turn and we wave before he pulls away.

  It’s Tuesday and I’ve left Steve in charge at the centre and headed across town for the repeat pap smear. Turns out he just didn’t get enough cells for them to work with. This time he does it in a perfunctory fashion, no need for conversation. I guess he’s as annoyed as I am that he has to repeat it because he didn’t get it right the first time. ‘Thanks, doctor,’ I say when he leaves me to get dressed. I notice that he’s still got gloves on when he does a finger wave as he leaves the room. I think about the fact that my germs are now on the door handle.

  I hope they factor all that in.

  After I dress, I open the door using a tissue stolen from the examination trolley.

  The mammogram suite is downstairs and along a long corridor. There’s a whole load of women waiting here and I’m half tempted to just walk out. It’s not essential at my age. I had one two years ago and this is just another money-maker for HMO, but if I leave I’ll have to go back to work and I don’t want to do that. Steve can cope. I decide to stay. I sign my name in at the reception desk and settle down on a seat in the corner, next to the magazines. There’s not much choice, but there is an ancient copy of Cosmo.

  Ten minutes later I decide that ‘Ways to Drive your Boyfriend Crazy,’ is not that informative. Over the years, Cosmopolitan has become tame. The Audubon magazine probably offers as much instruction on sex. In another pile there’s also a Reader’s Digest. I am reading the article ‘Ways to Protect Yourself from Crazy Boyfriends’ in an old edition when my name is called and I’m taken through one set of doors to remove my upper clothing and put on a gown and then told to wait in another, smaller, waiting room.

  This room has no windows. There is one other woman here. There are no magazines or any other diversion except for a clock on the wall. The other woman and I sit facing that wall. She looks nervous, and from what I can tell she appears to be very flat-chested. Women with small breasts have the hardes
t time with this procedure because there’s less to grab hold of. A technician once told me this fact at the very same time that she grabbed hold of my right breast and shoved it into position on to a metal plate – as if serving me up for slicing in one of those delicatessen things.

  Then a door opens and the other woman is called by a big black woman in a too-tight uniform into one of the rooms off this waiting room.

  Only a minute later, I am called through, and I allow myself to be directed, pulled and pushed into position. I stand passively as my left breast is flattened like a pancake. I am squeezed, and squeezed breathless. We do it again with the plate at another angle, and then the whole process is repeated on the other breast. Finally, we’re done.

  ‘Can you just wait outside, honey?’ the technician says. ‘I just need to check we’ve got everything we need today.’

  The waiting room is now empty. The clock tells me that the delegates at my event at work will be coming out for lunch in an hour. I hope Steve made sure that the girls who processed them when they arrived checked the dietary requirements. There’s always one we haven’t planned for. Kosher catering is a nightmare, but these spiritual warriors can also be very picky, with special diets devised to enhance their spirituality through deprivation or perhaps malnutrition.

  I’ve been obedient and switched my cell phone off, so I can’t call him to check that everything is going okay. It’s very quiet here. I suddenly start to wonder what if there was a real emergency somewhere – would I ever know? What if this building were overrun by crackpot terrorists? What if a SWAT team were called? Should I hide under the bench if I hear gunfire, play dead on the floor, or just put my hands up and hope for the best?

  Finally, a door behind me opens. A man comes out and calls me through into a new room. He indicates one of the two chairs in the room and asks me to take a seat. He does not sit down. He stands looking down at me while he explains that there’s something, ‘just a shadow,’ he says. ‘We want to take a look further.’