She came to see Maurice again in late July 1986, intending to stay two weeks and get engaged to him. But when she stepped into his apartment, Maurice was in a trance, sitting in a beanbag chair with foam at his mouth, murmuring something nobody could understand. He wouldn't talk to Heather or anyone and didn't even recognize her. His eyes were milky, the pupils almost invisible.
That evening, having nowhere to go, Heather stayed at Nan 's apartment, her eyes red and her face crumpled. Sitting at the table in the living room, she told Nan that Maurice's father, a tribal shaman, was calling to him from a mountain in Sudan. "He's not himself anymore and didn't understand what I said," she sighed, dragging at a cigarette.
"You mean he can communicate wiz his father in Africa?" For all his fondness for Maurice, Nan suspected he was shamming. "Yes, he can," she replied in earnest. "Do you believe zat?"
"I do."
She took a swallow of the green tea Nan had poured for her, then told him that her father, an auto mechanic, after opposing the idea of her being engaged to a black man, had finally given her his approval and blessing. But some of her friends still disliked the idea. "They asked me," she said, " ' You really don't mind having a black guy in your bed?' I told them, 'It makes no difference. He's good.' See now, I'm in the doghouse." Two whitish tears fell out of her eyes, and she blew her nose into a paper towel, then raised her hand to tuck a strip of ginger hair behind her ear.
"You mean you're cornered?" Nan had never heard that idiom.
"I mean I'm in serious trouble."
Several days in a row Maurice didn't recognize Heather, who continued to stay at Nan 's apartment, in his roommate Gary's room. Gary had gone back to Israel for the summer. During the day Nan went to work in the library and in the evenings cooked dinner for both himself and Heather. Sometimes they'd converse for hours after dinner, sharing tea and ice cream. She seemed to have calmed down some.
One night, the moment he turned in, Heather knocked on his door, which he hadn't locked. "Come in," he said.
She stepped in and, with a misshapen face, asked him, "Can I spend the night with you?"
"You-you don't know me zat well."
"Please!"
In spite of the surprise, Nan did feel a stirring rush and waved her to come over. For a whole year he hadn't touched a woman, and sometimes he was afraid he might have lost his potency, so he was eager to have her. She dropped her nightgown and got into his bed.
After caressing him for a while, she asked, "Do you have a rubber?" Her silk panties fell on the floor.
"You mean candy?" he guessed, thinking of chewing gum. His fingers kept fondling her breast.
She laughed. "I love your sense of humor." She wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed his mouth hard as if to suck the breath out of him.
So they made love and even tried soixante-neuf in the way shown in Gary 's copy of Penthouse. Nan didn't like it, though he made her come, crying ecstatically as if in pain. He was glad he still could have sex with a woman like a normal man. How relieved he was after he came. Soon he fell into postcoital slumber.
The next morning he went to work without disturbing her, and left her breakfast in the kitchen-a blueberry bagel and two fried eggs, sunny side up on a white plate. When he came back in the evening, she was gone without leaving a word, though she had finished the breakfast and washed the dish. For days he was worried, fearing she might have gotten pregnant since they hadn't used a condom. On the other hand, he felt she might have been on the pill. She would have herself ready for Maurice before coming to see him, wouldn't she?
Then the thought began to disturb him that he could have caught some venereal disease. A few years earlier he had read in a Chinese newspaper that more than a third of Americans and Canadians had gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis. The previous winter his mother had written to warn him not to have sexual contact with foreign women, saying that if he got syphilis, his nose would rot, he'd go bald and blind, and he would pass the virus on to his wife and children and grandchildren. She had told him that in the old China, every day people had to boil chopsticks and bowls used by syphilitics so that their families wouldn't be infected. The more Nan thought about the one-night stand, the more he regretted it. If only he had observed Heather's body carefully before having sex with her. She couldn't have fled without a reason, could she? When he ran into Maurice, Nan couldn't help but observe the whiteheads on his thin neck, wondering if they were herpes blisters.
For three weeks he felt agitated and miserable, and even thought of going to the infirmary for a checkup, but he decided not to. Then right before school started, a letter from Heather arrived. She wrote in a scraggy hand that leaned slightly to one side:
August 26, 1986
Dear Nan,
I hope this will reach you and find you well. I don't have your address, so I'm sending this letter to your department. Thank you so much for accommodating me when I was in Boston. Without your help, I couldn't have survived the crisis. I'm sorry to have dragged you into my personal trouble when I was there. You are a sweet man. That night you made me feel great, as if I became a woman again. But to tell the truth, afterward I felt guilty, so I left in the morning without saying good-bye.
Don't be angry with me, Nan. We both sinned, though I am the one who made you commit fornication. Last weekend I confessed everything at the church, and it lightened my mind considerably. God is large-hearted and has forgiven me. Perhaps you need to go to confession too. Try it. It really helps.
Please don't think ill of me. I know you're a kind, generous man. I will remember you fondly.
Yours,
Heather
Her letter bewildered him. Nobody had ever called him "a sweet man." Neither did he know what "a sweet man" was like. Weren't men supposed to be strong and fierce, full of spunk? How could he be sweet? He was baffled.
He had never considered that, similar to himself, eager to prove the adequacy of his manhood with the one-night stand, Heather had been desperate to restore her womanhood. How could a woman have the kind of crippled feeling like a man's fear of having lost his potency? Perhaps for Heather this was more psychological than physical, since she didn't have to depend on an erection to perform in bed. She must have wanted to convince herself of being desired by a man or of her ability to make love to a man.
Rather than feeling guilty, Nan was fearful and somewhat upset.
He had promised his wife that he wouldn't have another woman in America. But Heather was a different case. He wasn't really fond of her. The yearlong celibacy had tormented him and made him feel he might not be adequate between the sheets anymore. The idea of sin hadn't entered his mind until he read Heather's letter. He couldn't imagine kneeling in a box and exposing himself to a priest, though he had gone to a church in Waltham on two Sundays. He consulted his Webster's Collegiate Dictionary to see the difference between "fornication" and "copulation." Being a one-night fornicator didn't bother him that much. What worried him most was whether Heather had carried any disease. Her letter sounded calm, with no trace of anxiety. Did this mean she was a clean and healthy woman?
For the whole fall he was troubled by that question. He examined his genitals carefully whenever he took a shower, but noticed nothing abnormal. His body was still fine and vigorous; his vision and hearing were as clear as before. Everything was normal. Not until it snowed did he manage to put the worry out of his mind.
20
AT HAMPDEN PARK, Ivan often talked to Nan about women, complaining that it was too expensive to have a date here. In Russia, he said, women would take care of the expenses when they went out with him. Nan doubted whether that was true. Ivan claimed that he had been a junior officer in the Red Army in the late 1970s and that Russian women were always enamored of uniforms and epaulets. Nan wondered why the cost of dating a woman would nettle Ivan so much if he was a successful businessman. Didn't he own real estate on Lake Geneva? He must already be a millionaire. One night, when Ivan talked about American women again, Nan asked him, "Are you not afraid of catching AIDS?"