aroused, the man lifts my stumps onto his shoulders & presses his hot hungry face between them. What he does to me with his lips, teeth & tongue is near-unbearable to me, in a delirium I murmur his name, I cry out his name, I am utterly helpless, lost. In orgasm the man is rocked as by a sudden powerful wave yet within minutes he has begun again licking, kissing, sucking at the thigh-stumps Love love love you there is no one like you & there is nothing like this.
It is not true as Tyrell believes, that no man ever carried me in his arms as Tyrell has.
In Atlantic City, this occurred. But only once, when I was new to Barnegat & lonely & reckless one weekend.
The man was a stranger — of course — & the name I gave him was not my true name nor did he know where I lived or how I was employed though I saw in his watering eyes that unmistakable look of sick-helpless love. For without my Step Up! legs I am petite as a child, I weigh so little a man of below average height & strength can lift me & carry me in his arms. & nothing further came of this. So little do I recall, I could not tell you the name of the glittering casino & hotel where we met, in a lounge near the blackjack tables. It was a meeting I entered into of my own volition but with much doubt & distaste & abruptly then I ended it without telling the man, fled from a women’s restroom & back to Barnegat, on the bus.
As I said, he did not know my name. Had he wished to find me, he could not.
He will leave her, he says. His wife.
He speaks bravely, recklessly. You would believe that he speaks sincerely.
He wants to live with me, he says. He loves me, he thinks that we should live together…
His words are stunning to me, unreal. My heart begins to beat quick, hard & erratically. Calmly I say to him — my voice is light, lightly teasing — “You loved her when you married her — you can’t deny that” — & Tyrell protests, “No. I don’t think so” & I say, cruelly, “What do you mean — you ‘don’t think so’ — not only did you marry your wife, you had two children with her. You must love her,” & he says, speaking slowly, grimly, “I was lonely when we met — I was desperate to be ‘normal’ — Courtney was somehow there — she wanted a more permanent relationship & I didn’t want to hurt her — There is so little between us now, only the children, household matters, problems — the minutiae of life. Nothing like what I feel for you. Nothing like what binds us together. Courtney is a good decent woman & of so little interest to me, I have difficulty listening to her — her flat whining hurt voice — even when we were newly married we didn’t ‘have sex’ often — & never, now — we’ve become old people — prematurely old — only the children & the household keep us together — a kind of adhesive — adhesive tape, soiled & frayed — we’re like people of the 1950s — that feels like us, when you see a movie of that era, or photographs — the men wearing hats, fedoras — the men so determined to be mature — the women wearing hats, gloves — stockings — ‘girdles’ — the photography in black & white, not color. What infuriates me is how Courtney complains of me, to the children — she speaks of me in the third person to them, so that I can overhear — she says, ‘Does Daddy love us? Daddy never tells us that he loves us’ — ” his voice going shrill, mocking; a voice of such masculine derision, for a moment I am silenced; for a moment pricked with guilt, sympathy for the contemptible unloved female.
Then recovering I say, in my lightly teasing voice, “So — what do you tell this poor woman?” & Tyrell says, “I tell her — ‘Courtney, why should that matter? Why the hell should that matter so much?’”
He pauses, breathing quickly. In his eyes a look of utter exasperation, righteousness.
“It only proves that I was living a mistake, Jane. It proves that I don’t know why I did anything before I met you.”
Courtney! The name makes me smile, in scorn. A pretentious name, for a plain dull unloved woman.
After lovemaking that exhausts us, strains our hearts & chafes our skin — my most sensitive skin, the insides of my stump-thighs, & the soft pale cottony flesh of my breasts — sinking then into sleep, open- mouthed, quivering. The man breathes heavily, deeply — his face close up appears contorted — his forehead creased & lines in his cheeks like erosion in earth — his skin is a rough hot parchment-like skin — clammy with sweat, exuding a sharp pungent smell — by degrees I feel myself weakening I don’t want to love this man, I am not able to love any man. Still awkwardly my thigh-stumps are spread & fitted to the man’s thighs, & his arms around me are still tight, uncomfortably tight, as he sinks into a jagged twitchy sleep where I can’t follow except the love that passes between us — I think it is love — as in a single thrumming artery — whose thought is We are twins. In our souls. We are joined together at the heart.
In the morning, he was gone.
Very early in the morning, before dawn. While I lay dazed & groggy in sleep & he lowered his weight onto the bed beside me, stroking my hair, my naked shoulders & back saying he has to leave & he will call me — he will see me that evening — he will try to see me — there is so much happening in his life, a series of crises — “You are the central crisis of my life, Jane! — but you are not the only crisis” — & on his strong legs he goes away & for an hour or more I lie unmoving like a child trapped in a wreck — waiting to determine Am I alive? Or — am I dead? Rousing myself then & reaching for my Step Up! legs & my crutches & maneuvering myself into the day & at Barnegat library there is Jane Erdley reliable & professional as usual — in a lime- green velvet vintage dress, with a tinkling glass-bead necklace — her Step Up! legs stylishly encased in ivory eyelet stockings & her demure plastic feet in black patent leather Mary Janes. Yet sternly instructing myself through this long day — as for much of my life following the accident when drunk-Daddy fell asleep at the wheel — Look, Jane: you are alone. You will always be alone. No one will love you, & no one will desire you. And if there is love, & desire, it will be a sickness in the other, that will revolt you.
Monday night following Easter Sunday when he had to be with his family — a large family gathering at his parents’ house on the Sound — & there seems to have been some stress at this gathering — he doesn’t speak of it, & I will not ask — he is morose, brooding — by the smell of his breath I understand that he has been drinking before he came to the library for me — complaining how his body hadn’t ever “fitted” him right — his left leg especially is “wrong-angled” — only with me, his darling Jane, does his body fit right; suddenly he confides in me, there was a girl in his grammar school, in fact in kindergarten he’d first seen her, she’d had to use crutches — children’s crutches — & when she was older, a wheelchair — bright steel braces on her legs which were her legs but withered, wasted-away — yet she’d been so pretty — & smart — her name was Wendy — Wendy Hauserman — he’d been fascinated by this girl whose family moved away from Barnegat when they were in sixth grade & later when he was thirteen at summer camp in the Poconos there was the wife of the camp director — a tall blond beautiful woman with a sullen face, wide mouth & gray eyes & rarely smiled — said to be “Swedish” — her hair long & straight & so pale it looked white in certain lights — at dusk, & by firelight — her name was Brigit & she was missing a leg — her left leg, below the knee — half her leg had been amputated after a skiing accident — yet she lay in the sunshine in a bikini on an outcropping of shale, her pale skin oiled & her eyes hidden behind dark glasses & sometimes Brigit wore her prosthetic limb, & sometimes not; sometimes Brigit smiled at the boy-campers, & sometimes not.
“Then — when I first met you…I mean, when I first saw you — on the sidewalk, with your colleagues — I thought…”
Holding my breath & trying not to stiffen in the man’s embrace. He has been stroking my breasts, my stomach, my thighs idly, as if not aware of what he’s doing; since Easter dinner at his family’s house, he has been in a strange unsettled mood; he has smoked several cigarettes, he has not asked if he can smoke in my apartment & I have not told him Please no! The smell of smoke makes me nauseated &
