The security guard at the bank—they seem to get younger each year—leads me back to the safe deposit box viewing room. I repeat my routine, it only takes me a minute or two; usually I don’t even bother to sit down.
I pull the envelope from my purse, double check to make sure there is nothing inside the layers of paper besides the 25 one hundred dollar bills—there never is, but this has become habit—and slide it in the box next to the previous envelope. Even after all these years, the nightmare still haunts me whenever the envelopes arrive. The next day, I feel angry and bewildered as if the Rashid who kicks me in my subconscious were real.
The box is nearly full. Out of some morbid sense of accomplishment, I take out the envelopes and count them. Forty. Like clockwork, an envelope has arrived every three months, four times a year for the last decade. Ten years since I became the martyr’s wife, ten years of rejecting someone else’s reality, repressing the past, asserting an identity of my choosing. One hundred thousand dollars in this box that I have rejected, money I have taken out of circulation, power I have kept in suspended animation. How long will the envelopes continue to come? Who sends them? I can barely imagine the fidelity, the dedication of the organization, the sender.
At the bottom of the box, almost forgotten, rest two rings. The symbols of my marriage, inert, intact. Leave, I tell myself. Walk out. Replace the envelopes and lock the box. Don’t disturb these memories. But something propels me to take the rings. So easily the small band slides onto my ring finger. So naturally does the man’s band slide right next to it, the engraved words encircling my finger. I remember the Rashid of the nightmares. Sometimes he appears alive, sometimes dead. In the nightmare I always scream. I scream for his safety, I scream in anger, I scream out of fear. He never responds with words. “God damn it!” I say out loud. I shake the larger ring back into the box with a hollow jangling sound. I look at the smaller ring still on my finger. What if I walked out of here wearing this ring? What would change? Even without it, I haven’t acted like a single woman, available to another man. Have I been faithful to a memory? What the fuck am I waiting for?
I pull the ring off and throw it back into the box. Those rings can have each other.
“So Ed tells me you cover sports. How did you first get interested in sports?” Ed’s friend, Johannes, lifts his water glass.
“I’m a journalist and I needed a job. Nothing more to it.” Despite my evening dress and high heels, I respond as if he is an interrogator, not a date.
“Fair enough,” Johannes smiles. “And do you enjoy it? Ed says you’ve got a remarkable perspective on sports. How did he describe it? That you see it as a ‘cultural phenomena,’ not just a bunch of scores.”
“Ed. What would I do without Ed?” At the mention of his name I feel at ease. When I asked him if he could suggest a dinner companion he had seemed relieved, told me he wondered how long I was going to play a nun in red lipstick.
“I used to think sports were just a stupid distraction from all the things that really matter,” I reply to Johannes. “I mean, war can be overshadowed by the Superbowl. Millions of people will spend less time thinking about who they’ll put in Congress than they think about who’ll win the NBA playoffs.”
“You’re right.”
“So I came to realize that sports distract so well, because they tap into some of our most basic instincts.”
“How so?” He leans in, interested. He really is a handsome man. Ed had only described him as a divorced doctor in his fifties.
“I think all sports are a substitute for war, our most basic competition. Some sports are like hand-to-hand combat, others are like a battlefield, and some are just to display physical prowess, like how men have competed to lead the tribe and win the favor of the most desirable female.”
“Really? Hand-to-hand combat?”
“Think of boxing and wrestling, of course, but also golf—I mean it’s about swinging a club.”
Johannes nods, amused. “Battlefield?”
“Anything where teams vie for territory, American and European football, basketball, rugby, hockey.”
“And so the other sports, swimming, track and field, skating…”
“All about demonstrating physical prowess, the prerequisite for both leadership and the attentions of women.”
The waiter brings the wine Johannes had ordered. We pause in our conversation as he skillfully slices the metal casing, twists the cork screw and removes it from the bottle in a single flowing motion.
“I think he’d win the gold if cork pulling were an Olympic event,” Johannes winks at the waiter and approves the first pour of the wine.
“Oh, and the Olympics,” I continue, “are an incredibly efficient substitute for a global war. Every four years nations demonstrate their power for very little cost, either in blood or treasure.”
“Hmm,” Johannes seems impressed with my analysis, he raises his glass in a toast. “Well, here’s to more sports and less warfare.”
“I’ll certainly toast to that.”
“And especially the kinds of sports that win the affections of a woman!”
Johannes sits next to me in the concert hall, the entire string section vibrates, the musicians send their bows back and forth with amazing speed, then break into a melody I think I recognize from the opening of a news program I watched years ago. A musical interpretation of Mercury, god of flight. The musicians on the stage bring us through the solar system, one planet, one melodic theme at a time. The effect is magical. As we approach Jupiter—the bringer of jollity—the tones expand into a rich resonant strolling arc. I weep at the beauty. I reach for Johannes’ hand as the strings join with the horns. “Thank you,” I mouth without sound. I don’t know if he understands me or not, but he places his other hand over mine.
Before we reach Neptune I want to have a man again. I do not need a man, I have proven that to myself over and over in the last decade. But now I want Johannes, the way I sometimes want a chocolate cake or a beautiful pair of shoes, as a luxury, a delicious experience.
After the concert we sit on the couch in my home.
“I’ve seen patients heal more quickly after surgery when they have music in their hospital rooms.” He touches his fingers to his heart, traces the path of his aorta, “It’s as if music can act like a lifeblood.”
“I can imagine that. It’s been so long since I’ve heard live music. The Jupiter melody…” My hands make arcs in the air as if drawing the music. Johannes reaches for my hands mid-flight, and kisses them.
I stop talking and smile. He caresses my fingers, running his own into the spaces between them. I shift my hips on the sofa allowing my legs to separate slightly beneath my skirt. He proceeds, raising my fingers to his mouth, one, then two of my fingers disappear into the warmth of his tongue, his lips, his beard bristling against my palm. I close my eyes and lean back. His hand is at my knee, reaching inside. A surgeon’s hands, I think, delicate and precise.
He pulls me down onto the carpet, I feel the wool fibers against my back, I feel the weight of him over my hips. The intensity of his movements increases.
“Wait, not yet.” I press my hands against his hips to slow his movements. He looks at me with a confused expression. I roll him on to his back and sit astride him. “It’s been a long time, I don’t want it to end yet.”
He laughs and relaxes, allowing me to lead. And I take my time with our bodies, feeling skin, feeling muscles and bone, hair and lips. I allow him to breach my self-reliance, I accept the pleasure of a man.
In the silence that follows we drift into a sleepy oblivion.
At some point later, I wake. I sit up and look around the room. The darkness of the night still promises hours of sleep. I walk to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. Even this simple act of walking through the room, feeling the air on my naked body provides a new sense of freedom. I drink the entire glass and fill it again for Johannes. I return to him, whisper into his ear, “Come, let’s sleep on the bed.”
He opens his eyes, focusing on my face to remember where he is and who I am. He sits up on his elbow and accepts the water from me. He looks to his sex, now flaccid, and checks his watch. “I should leave now.”
“No,” I say with conviction. “Sleep, you can leave in the morning.”
“All right,” he smiles, “I appreciate the hospitality.” And he follows me to the bed. We slide between the sheets, I wrap my legs around his and tilt my pelvis into his body. He puts his arm around me, runs his hand down the length of my back.
“I don’t know if I have it in me for more tonight. Turn over.”
I do as he says and he begins to massage my back. His hands are strong but with soft skin, the hands of a man whose work is indoors. I must drift off to sleep, images of the distant planets spin in my mind
Then I feel a leg strike my back. I sit bolt upright in bed. “God-damit! Why do you always do that?” I accuse.
“Do what?” Johannes asks, startled, half-asleep.
“You kicked me!”
“No…no, we were just laying together, maybe I was turning over.”
“Oh…Johannes,” I say, disoriented, “it’s not you.”
“Its OK,” he strokes my shoulder, coaxes me to lie back down. “You’re all right. We all have bad dreams sometimes.”
And I lie down, wide awake in the arms of a different man.
I turn the key in the mailbox lock. I nearly throw away the whole pile of mail, political flyers for the upcoming mayoral election, and newsprint ads for the local grocery store. But then I notice an extra envelope, better quality paper than the usual bill or solicitation. Addressed to the Beneficiaries of Rashid Siddique, the envelope bears the name of an insurance company. I am so glad I have never allowed the boys to fetch the mail, have never given them a key. What would I have to explain if they had found this envelope before me?
I turn my back to the building, where the boys are already upstairs, and open the envelope. As ten years have passed without correspondence as to the status of my claim, the company has determined to resolve the claim by paying a quarter of the policy’s death benefit. Several pages describe the process by which I can appeal their decision, with proper evidence of the policy holders’ death.
The settlement check, even though it represents tens of thousands of dollars, seems cheap and flimsy at this point, as useless as the two-for-one cantaloupe coupons in my other hand. I laugh, scoff, at this unexpected reminder.
“Mom,” Andrew shouts from our doorway, “what’s for dinner?”
I use the newsprint to wrap up the check and the envelope and shove it into my purse. Maybe I should ask Ed what to do with it. Or maybe I’ll just shred it at the office.
“Mom?!”
“Omelets,” I call back.