The Shadow Wife

Lisbeth gazed in the direction of Angel Island. We’ve been lovers a long time now, Carlynn had told her, and Lisbeth had sensed that her sister was moving far, far ahead of her. Somehow, all of Carlynn’s medical skills, all her education and everything else she had accomplished that Lisbeth had not paled in comparison to this. Carlynn knew sex. Lisbeth had thought about the way Gabriel kissed her, his hands running up and down her arms or through her hair, never moving anyplace she could interpret as pushing her into something she might not want to do.

“No, I wasn’t shocked. But I was—” she lowered her gaze from Angel Island to Gabriel’s attentive face “— jealous,” she admitted, feeling the color rise into her cheeks.

“You mean, you want to make love with Alan?” Gabriel teased her, and she threw the rest of her pear at him.

“Don’t make this so hard for me, Gabe,” she pleaded.

“Sorry.” He smiled at her. “Is that something you want, baby?” he asked.

She loved it when he called her baby. “Don’t you?” She bit her lip, waiting for his answer. She’d wanted him to make love to her when he’d been nothing more than a voice on the phone.

Gabriel let out a long groan, leaning back in the boat and looking up at the sky. “Hell, yes,” he said. “But I’ve been trying to be a gentleman.”

“Well, stop it.” She giggled.

“I will, if you insist.” He glanced toward the shore, then grinned at her. “Think we should go in?” he asked. “Have you had enough sailing for today?”

She laughed. “We just got out here,” she said. “Besides, we can’t do it yet,” she said. “I have to get a diaphragm first. Carlynn told me about a doctor I can go to.”

“I could use a rubber,” Gabriel said, and she laughed again at his sudden enthusiasm.

“I didn’t even think you thought about sex,” she said. “That’s what I told Carlynn.”

He groaned again. “Why’d you tell her that, Liz? Now she’s going to think I’m queer.”

“Not for long she won’t.” She smiled coyly at him, enjoying the banter, but she hoped she wasn’t giving him the impression that she wanted sex for the sex alone. “I wouldn’t do it with someone I didn’t love, Gabe,” she said, the smile no longer on her face. “I only want to do it with you.”

“I know that, baby,” he said, his face just as serious. “And if I didn’t feel the same way about you, I wouldn’t have waited this long.”

That night, they made love in the double bed in his North Beach apartment. She’d been nervous at first, but Gabriel had taken his time. She’d read about sex, but he knew more than had been written in the books she’d analyzed until the pages had started to fall out. Or maybe it was love that had been missing in those books, maybe the men in those stories did not take the time to teach, and to learn, what pleased him, and what pleased his lover.

She remembered something she’d heard one time: sex would either make a relationship better or it would make it worse, but it would not leave it unchanged. She was certain it could only make what she and Gabriel had better, but when they had finished making love, Gabriel rolled onto his back and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling, following it with his gaze. She knew something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked, resting her hand on his bare chest.

He blew a smoke ring, then spoke without looking at her. “I’m afraid of costing you,” he said. “Costing you way too much.” He rolled his head on the pillow to look at her, and in the smoky, dark room, without his glasses on, he looked like a stranger. “The whole world’s not like North Beach, you know,” he said. “You haven’t even told your mother about me.”

“Yes, I have,” she said, already distressed by the tenor of the conversation. “At least, she knows I’m going with someone named Gabriel. I’ll tell her the rest when I have to.”

“I don’t want to be a ‘have to’ for you, Lisbeth,” he said. “It makes me feel like a burden.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know you didn’t. But that’s the way it is, isn’t it? That’s the reality.”

“It doesn’t matter what my mother thinks, Gabe,” she said. “She hasn’t truly been a part of my life for a long time.”

“But you still visit her, and Cypress Point is still important to you. I know you love it there.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his windowsill and rolled over, bracing himself on his elbows to look down at her. “I’ve taken you to Oakland,” he said. “I’ve introduced you all around, to my family and my neighbors. I showed you the house where I grew up and the places I hung around. What can you show me from your childhood? I can’t meet your mother, can’t set foot in the house you adore unless I pose as a delivery boy, can’t walk through your old neighborhood without scaring people out of their wits.”

“I don’t care about that, Gabe,” she said fervently, worried that she was lying to herself as well as to him. “I’d give all that up for you in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t know that I should let you,” he said, sitting up and leaning back against the wall.

Lisbeth felt something precious slipping from her grasp. “Are you saying you want to break up with me?” She started to cry, silently, not wanting him to know.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to break up. But I’m not sure about our future together, Liz.”

Before they’d made love, he’d been full of tender words for her. Now he sounded as though he was pulling away, ready to end what they’d nurtured together for the past six months. And suddenly, she thought she knew the reason why.

“Was I not as good as your wife?” she asked, unable to hide the tears in her voice. “In bed, I mean. Not as good as the other women you’ve had?”