The Missing Link 02: Liza

The barbeque went well. Waiting for Roger got me nervous, not knowing how I might act in his and Steve's presence. But just catching Roger's reassuring eyes was enough to calm me down. It even made the mild jokes and sentimental journeys back to our college-years sound natural. I don't think Steve had a clue -- we even touched each other and smiled in the comfortable, married way we always had.

After Roger left, Steve took his car to pick up Eric. He hadn't left the street yet, when the sliding doors opened and Roger returned. He bent me over the table on the deck where we had been eating and drinking minutes before. Then he fucked me to the brink of orgasm -- and stopped. He started again and stopped -- and started again, leaving me screaming with frustration. He pulled out, tore the condom off his cock and dropped the limp, empty rubber on my naked back.

"Remember what I told you," he said. Then he closed his zipper and left.

I still lay panting on the table when I heard Steve return. I rushed into the bathroom, waiting for the heated flush to go away before meeting them. Steve played with the boy and put him to bed. I still glowed when we had one last glass of wine.

I was nervous, knowing what I had to do next. Roger thought seducing Steve might work; he insisted I'd try. Well, it wasn't difficult to pull off as I was still boiling inside from the unfinished fucking I'd just gotten. So, even though I had my doubts Steve would fall for it, his refusal took me completely by surprise. I never expected him to be so rude. It shocked me and made me feel profoundly humiliated. Don't laugh. I know I have been humiliated over and over by Robert and his asshole guests. But sweet, naïve Steve turning me down hit me like a sledgehammer.

When he pushed me away it felt like a stab. He had no right, had he? We were equals; he was as weak as I was; too inferior to treat me like this. The sheer contempt in his eyes for my exposed body caused a flood of unadulterated shame to wash over me.

I heard my voice croak his name as the front door closed.

Two days later a gray haired gentleman handed me a big envelope, informing me that I had been served.

Ever since Robert and his son reappeared in my life, my behavior had become increasingly irate -- even crazy. The two men fought over me like dogs tearing at a bleeding rabbit. But now I knew a third man had joined the fight -- funny enough not by fighting for me, but by giving up on me.

Finding out that I had no control over Steve shook me to the core. Until then I stupidly held on to the fact that my marriage and my son were the only remnants from a save but rapidly dwindling world. The idiotic inconsequence of that thought never dawned on me. I easily gave in to every whim of the Morelands, but I was devastated when the man I betrayed turned me down and left me.

It wasn't fair -- I really thought it wasn't fair.

So when Steve came by to pick up his son, I flew at him, beating him with my fists, raging. I guess my words were unintelligible, torn up by my throat-squeezing anger. A sudden flood of tears finally made me break down. He told me he came for Eric and I screamed he would never get the boy again, unless we talked. He had to listen to me. He had to. His filing for divorce had yanked the floor from under my feet; a floor I'd been denying even existed. I guess it was the intuitive clinging to normalcy of an addict going crazy.

"I listened," he then said, his voice as cold as ice. "Remember? And all you did was show me you are a slut who thinks she can fuck her way back into my understanding. Do you think so little of me, Liza?" The hurt in his eyes was unbearable.

"Who are you?" he went on, almost whispering. "Who have you become?" Good question, I thought; the question to end all questions, one might say. But he did have one more.

"Liza," he said, holding me. "What can be so horrible that you'd rather ruin our marriage than tell me?"

I took a step back, away from the soft, passive pain in his eyes. It once more irritated me -- filling me with disgust for his weakness and mine. What was the use? Why did Roger -- and his father too -- want me to stay in this charade of a marriage? Even Steve wanted out, although he was the only one who truly loved me.

"Nothing!" I answered. "I told you over and over there is nothing; it is all in your mind. You tell me I lie, so I try not to repeat what you consider a lie. I try to show my love by seducing you and you divorce me! Now who is the crazy one here?"

His eyes turned distant.

"So you still think I 'm crazy?" he asked, or rather stated. His wallowing in self-pity sent another wave of disgust over me.

"I NEVER SAW THAT GODDAMN CUFFLINK!" My exploding voice seemed to blow him away, so I grabbed him, apologizing, pleading to be believed. I once more tried to make him see how he maybe drank too much, doubting his memory. I knew it was the wrong strategy, but I was at wit's end. So I apologized.

"I am sorry too, Liza," he said. "I am sorry I let you talk to me. First you try to fuck me into believing you. And now you try to fuck with my head." He pushed me away and turned to leave. I have no memory of what happened next.

Things just got black.

When the light returned, my frame of vision was filled with his face. I felt his hand under my head and my lips against the slickness of glass. Cold water seeped into my mouth.

Then I felt his arms around me -- familiar arms. He carried me to the couch and I closed my eyes. My brain fervently reviewed what happened. It must have been exhaustion. The dogs at last tore up the little rabbit. It had been stress, surely; the unavoidable result of being in the middle of disaster, not knowing what really happened and why, not knowing which way to go. I had to choose -- Robert, Roger, even Steve, it didn't matter. I had to choose, or did I? Maybe, but wasn't the crux of my situation that I was unable to choose? Wasn't I just this insignificant, weak female creature instinctively doing what the caveman told her?

It had been easy to choose between ruthless Robert and weak wimpy Steve. I only fought the divorce because Robert ordered me to, didn't I? But now there was Roger; an entirely different Roger, challenging his Alpha male father over me -- but also telling me to stay in my marriage. Why? Why not just steal me away, running off with me?

I felt the warmth of Steve's face close to my mouth. He must have been checking my breath. A sudden feeling of sympathy ran through me at the gesture. I heard my voice even before realizing I had opened my mouth.

"I never cheated on you, Steve," I desperately lied, not knowing why. "Never. I love you. I never want to lose you. The cufflink..." I stopped, checking myself before saying what I almost said. Not yet, Roger had told me, not yet. I stirred and sat up. His sweet face was worried.

"The cufflink never existed," I went on, returning to my old adagium. I saw his face fall.

"You must have either dreamed," I said, "or your memory must have been playing tricks. Maybe it was like sleepwalking? You told me you did that a lot, as a kid. Please believe me, Steve, I would have confessed -- even if I really had cheated on you. It hurts me that you think I could lie to you."

It should have hurt me that I lied to him as blatantly as this, but it didn't. I was numb. I also knew it was useless; he didn't buy it. I almost tasted his anger while I accused him of yet another mental deficiency. He rose. I couldn't stop.

"Please don't divorce me, Steve. I couldn't live without you. And little Eric..." He stopped me with a gesture.

"Keep the boy out of it, Liza," he said. His voice had an edge. "And as for talking to you again, first stop lying."

***

Robert told me I did well. Then he took me to a club and had me fucked by two men and a woman on a stage.

Roger still refused to fuck me. He had a very good attorney for me, though, to stall the divorce. I saw that there was still a difference between him and his father: I didn't have to fuck the lawyer.

The man advised me to stonewall every initiative Steve might develop until Roger deemed the time right for a different approach. I didn't understand, but I didn't have to, did I? He also told me to let Steve see Eric as often as he wanted. I would have anyway, remembering the little guy's previous objections to keeping his father out of his life.

My craziness deepened as the battle drug on. It is hard wanting one thing while doing another and stay sane, I guess. How else could I explain my reaction to what Steve told me when we met at last in the conference room of my attorney?

He said he'd had sex with a woman -- great sex with a younger, firmer, bigger-titted woman. "Just sex," he said. "Just an athletic exercise." I stared at him, speechless. Then my mouth exploded and the words tumbled out without any control of my brain.

"YOU cheated on ME? You accuse me of cheating without a trace of evidence. You want to divorce me over it and now you tell me you fucked a slut? Get out, asshole. 'Just sex,' you say? Bullshit! You could never have 'just sex.' Not you. You betrayed me, you sanctimonious asshole. You'll never see your son again. Get out. GET OUT OF MY LIFE!!"

Not one single moment did the utter irony of my words get through my blind rage. Here I had been lying and denying, fucking legions, acting and aching under the stress of it all, and I flip out completely as he calmly tells me he fucked some big titted bimbo. How could he?

Then he started laughing.

"I lied, Liza," he said. "I never cheated on you -- never, ever. You are right, I could never do that."

His laughter took my breath away. I gasped. "You... lied?"

"Yes," he said.

"But why?" I asked. "Why lie?"

"Why indeed," he said, suddenly serious again. "I guess I just needed a way to make you feel how it is to be lied to. On the other hand, maybe I am lying now and wasn't before. Maybe I did cheat on you after all. Or the other way around? Getting dizzy, honey? I only have your word, just as you only have mine. How does that strike you?"

He was right, it made me feel dizzy.

"You...lied," I mumbled.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe not."

"You... asshole," I whispered, but my heart wasn't in it.

"I guess so," he agreed.

Roger had instructed me to tell Steve a story he had concocted from facts, half-facts and lies. But I ought to make it look as if Steve forced me to at last come clean.

So I had started with my well-worn litany of denials, declarations of undying love, hints at his fatherly responsibilities, and buckets of tears. It went well. I saw how his annoyance rose with every line of my speech and I was prepared to detonate my little bomb the moment he would threaten to leave. And then he threw the house-made hand grenade of his cheating, stunning me with inexplicable emotions.

It took me minutes to shake the daze off. I treaded water like a drowning woman, grabbing blindly to find a straw I could hold on to. I felt completely lost. So I did what all lost people do -- I retraced my steps and returned to the securities I had brought with me to the talk.

"No," I said. "No, Steve, you are not the asshole here, I am. But no more -- I've done protecting the true asshole." I saw his face relax. It caused the stress to leave my body with a trembling sigh.

"Roger is a charlatan, Steve," I said. Then I told him how I married Roger in college to hide his homosexuality for his overbearing father. I said I was poor and in debt, needing the money he offered. I told about the posh lifestyle and the opulent wedding. I knew it made me look shallow, but as it was the truth, Roger thought it would add credibility to my story. I guess it did, although Steve was too stunned right then to notice.

He shrank even further when I told him about the rape at the party -- Roger's father taking me brutally, followed by the nightlong gangbang and the ten thousand dollars to silence me.

"I was nineteen," I said, staring him down. "I had gone through hell. I took the money." I saw the disappointment in his eyes. "Fuck you," I thought. "You weren't there, were you?" Then I lowered my gaze and went on about the abortion and the monthly pay-off that I'd had to collect from Roger's father.

"He, uhm, fucked me every time I came to collect, but I was beyond caring. I was a little rich, mentally wrecked girl; I dropped out of college."

His outburst about wanting to "kill the assholes" moved me. It also made me feel guilty, as the story I told hadn't been quite truthful. The poor, mentally wrecked girl never told him how she enjoyed every moment of every fuck fest, every jet set trip and every glittering day and night of the year that followed. As I summed up the memories, I felt my cunt flow. In the end it wasn't hard for me to whisper 'sorry,' even if the sorry was more a regret than an apology.

In the silence that followed I tried to clear my head and make an inventory of the story so far. Then I considered how to tell the rest. Steve interrupted me by clearing his throat.

"What made you change back?" he asked. The question took me by surprise. Of course, I realized, he is still one change behind.

"Ah, yes, " I said, taking a gulp of water. "Change back..."

So I went on about the fucked and drugged out morning in Vegas, and the breakdown in the bathroom. I was so concentrated on delivering the right story, that I forgot how explicit it was until I saw Steve jump up, white as a sheet, running to a waste basket and throwing up. Did it embarrass me? I guess so, but was it because his reaction touched me for its honest sensitivity or was it because I saw it as more proof of his weakness?

After he recovered I suggested we go outside to catch some fresh air. My story wasn't finished yet, nor was his need to hear it -- even after knowing it made him sick. It felt as though I were the mother of two. When I reached for his hand in the park, he jerked it away -- like a stubborn child.

I told him about my recovery, leaving out Roger's active part in it. It was another surprise for him to hear that our mutual friend Suzan was really my therapist -- and still was. It made him refuse my reaching hand again. So I shrugged and went on, once again accentuating Roger's gayness.

"I think he really felt guilty for letting his father do to me what he did, " I said.

"Bullshit," Steve responded.

"Anyway," I went on. "Both father and son left me alone. And then I met you and it all became moot." He snorted.

"You must have had a ball, joking with Roger Rabbit behind my back," he hissed. I had to deny it fiercely, telling him he was very mistaken, that I loved him and he was the best thing ever happening to me. I cried and grabbed him, but he shook free and started walking away.

"I became friends with the creep, goddammit Liza!" he cried out. "Even last week, when I invited him, you were happy and relaxed around him -- all the time keeping this secret from me. Who do you think I am? Who are you?"

I once again emphasized my love for him. "Nothing else matters." He didn't answer. He walked away another few steps. His leaving wasn't in my plan. Thank God he turned back again.

"What about the cufflink?" he asked. I felt relieved.

"I heard a million words," he said, "and we still haven't arrived at the retched thing."

Time for my next step, but there was no hurry. I kept silent, causing the cogs in his head to start churning. I could almost see where his thoughts took him. The cufflinks... my obvious hesitation... Roger's return... the bedroom... and then the detonation came.

"My God, Liza!" he bellowed. "I KNOW that the fucking cufflink is Roger's! His initials were on it, so was he in your bedroom while I was gone? Did you lie about him being gay? Did you fuck him for old times' sakes? Are you still with him? Do you want to leave me for him? Talk to me, Liza!"

I still took my time, slowly shaking my head left and right. Then I said, almost whispering: "It wasn't Roger's."

He slumped down on the bench across from me. It was obvious to him what the implications of my words were. I should have said there was no cufflink, as before. But I hadn't.

"You lied to me after all," he groaned, listing all the tricks I had used to keep him in the dark -- calling him sick, a drunkard and a dreamer.

"You rather drove me away from Eric than tell me the truth," he said, his voice broken. "Who are you, Liza? How could you? Who are you?"

As he rose to walk away his words tore the gossamer cocoon of my addiction, pulling my naked sickness out into the harsh light of his disgust. And I cried -- I bawled, reaching out for his body as it vanished in a blur of tears. I knew they were not tears of regret, nor tears about lost love. They were tears of self-pity.

***

When the hysterical flood stopped I felt oddly clean. Any decent woman would have felt horrible, but I felt purified. I guess every last lingering remnant of possible guilt, shame or reserve had been swept away by the torrents of my self-pity. Catharsis, they call it, don't they?

I waited till ten the next morning before I called Steve on his cell phone. It went to voice-mail, so I asked him to call me. Even I was surprised by the genuine crack in my voice.

"Call me. I'm alone, I'm sad, I'm sorry." I didn't lie. I was alone all right and sad because of that; it was enough to make me feel sorry.

He phoned back immediately, sounding sleepy.

"I'm so scared," I said.

"I'm still drunk," he answered. It set the tone for maybe the weirdest phone conversation I ever had. We joked, making our silly remarks balance on the thin line between relaxed banter and bittersweet satire -- much like we'd done in a now irretrievable past. I said I wanted to talk more. He asked how much it would hurt him this time. All of the crazy warmth had seeped out by then.

"You wanted the truth, Steve," I said at last. "So yes, it will hurt. It will hurt us both."

We met at the tiny park behind our... my house. It once had a special meaning to us. I'd cursed under my breath when Steve suggested it as a place for us to meet. All this needless mixing up of the inevitable with the sentimental made me nervous.

He started out about the cufflink at once. Damn you, Roger, for putting this at my doorstep. Or was it Roger anyway? Who should I believe and did it matter? I had to make a choice, not knowing the consequences. But there was no alternative, was there? I had to drop the intended bomb at last, if only to settle my crazy mind. So I choose.

"It was his father's," I said. "It was Robert's cufflink."

Of course he exploded, showering me with every venomous accusation he could find. How could I have betrayed him with the man who raped me -- the monster that used me as his whore, pimped me out to his buddies, drugged me, left me with a child to abort and then bought me and sold me? How could I have done that and in our own bed, no less? How could I indeed?

He did his walk-away-and-return act again. Then he asked me: "You still see him? You still fuck him? You still let yourself be whored out by him?" I shook my head in denial, more out of routine than as a planned response. But I kept my silence.

"Talk to me, Liza," he said and repeated it when I didn't. I remember actually wringing my hands, feverishly imagining how a contrite wife would act -- and overdoing it, of course.

"I should have told you the first time he called again," I started my confession. I continued by telling him when and how it began -- the way Robert overwhelmed me, forcing himself into the house.

"You let him fuck you again," he said, his voice dull -- resigned. It enraged me and I used that rage to fire up my voice. I denied. I heatedly told him I only loved him and would never betray him.

"But he did fuck you," Steve repeated.