LOVE IN REVIEW

MAN AND/OR BOY

Every morning now Lorna McCarron would fall awake when the house was most quiet, with a crash, as the vestigial log that has smoldered for hours often drops, scaring the cat with a noisy puff of ashes. She throbbed with her unmade choice, a dilemma most poignant in the gloom of dawn, sitting on the waterbed’s wooden edge to contain her thoughts and wait until her pounding heart slowed and softened, until the fire in her body gathered itself into a manageable lump and settled in her belly.

“Huh?” would snort the sleeping David, turning on his side and discontinuing to snore. His arm fell heavily over the place where she had been.

That was okay. She knew by now, without surveying his handsome head, that he would not wake up. A month of marriage had taught her that nothing could wake David before his set time, not even a screaming child. He was securely and irrevocably locked into a career pattern.

Jeremy, on the other hand, was a light sleeper. She crept to his room and gently pushed open the door just enough to slip through without bumping against it or the chest of drawers. She was always careful not to shut the door completely before going to bed so that it would not be necessary to turn the knob in the morning. Jeremy woke up at the slightest noise, the slightest footstep, her slightest pinprick of alarm. Masking her fear was the biggest trick of the game.

She let herself into his twin-sized bed carefully, a process that took about two minutes or longer, depending on how he had disposed his five-year-old body. Once in bed she could let her limbs relax, starting from the feet and working toward the head. Even with her long hair braided and tied out of the way, she found the back of her head the hardest to relax. But only after her heart rate and cautious breathing became regular was she able to hear his sleep sounds over her anxious thoughts, able to smell his sleepy little-boy breath as he unconsciously moved close to her. Then love for him flooded her being. It was all she could do to keep from hugging him into wakefulness.

Lorna needed time in the morning to think. She still felt uneasy about having a husband. She had not known much about his background when he proposed beyond his Curriculum Vitae. She had known none of his neat little habits or compulsions, nothing about his nostalgias or patterns of pleasure, not even what he liked most about her. As she lay in the night-lit room next to her son, preparing her mind for the day ahead, she always came back to that, trying to pinpoint the moment of his strongest attraction to her. How much had she encouraged him?

Like a teenager she would sometimes prolong her stay in the bathroom beyond what was needed, trying to figure it out. She assumed David had fallen for her tall, slim, hard body, her long, slick hair and green eyes, her alluring neckline, as so many men had done before. When examining her somber face in the mirror, she could not sense what had attracted them at all. She perhaps was too critical, thinking of the history behind the image, all the mistakes she had made, mistakes her appearance had caused. Jeremy was one of those, the only one she did not regret.

She had not consciously tried to snare David. She never primped or preened like some vain or desperate woman. She always put on the same thing in the mornings, kind of a self-styled uniform. It was complicated enough just to get Jeremy through the motions, so she would shimmy into a scooped-necked, long-sleeved leotard left over from the dancing lessons of her youthful, pre-motherhood days, or even just a tank top in warmer weather, and wrap a long skirt around it, which was usually no more than a wide fabric rectangle with a bright sash at the waist. To hold back her hair, which hung to the hips, she would tie a scarf around her head, another bright rectangle. She used little make-up because it would have done little for her tanned, austere features. When she leaned over, her hair slid forward, spilling sensually over her back and shoulders in a cascade of multi-toned honey. It swung gracefully over her buttocks when she walked. Her thin but well-formed lips did not smile often. She looked like she could even cry if she had enough moisture left in her.