Extended Prologue: Why God Made Woman
I don't have a single clue how she does it.
Like clockwork, uninterrupted, uninhibited, she hits the alarm midway through its first second of ringing. She slides out of the bed like it's a cloud or something barely there at all, and tiptoes into the bathroom. She always makes sure the door is shut with nothing more than a crack before she flips the light on and she never runs the water in the sink or shower longer or louder than need be.
When she steps out again, she'll be wrapped in a loose towel, hair dark and dripping across her slender back. She floats through the room, quietly opening drawers or going through her closet, it is the bigger one of course. Sometimes she'll use the bed as leverage to get dressed, while other mornings she'll opt stand in front of the French doors that lead to our deck, the late dawn light tracing the outline of her still perfect figure as she lets her clothes fall against her skin like they are nothing more than paper.
Those are my favorite mornings.
She finishes off with a few twists of her unruly hair into some sort of style for the day, usually something that can be undone and consistently and easily fixed from then on out. She grabs a purse of the dozens she has scattered, a sweater when it's cold and only a jacket when it's not. The shoes she wants, somehow always end up underneath the bed, one on her side and one on mine. She makes it around the huge mattress to spread out beneath my side, her hands sliding against the hard wood floor in that same way so I can hear the scratch her wedding ring makes over the cracks, and this makes me smile dreamily as I wake up fully. The second her head darts up, the same way most often, I catch her gaze dead on and hold her there for thirty seconds. Those are the first thirty seconds of my day, every day, and she's just mine.
Some days she laughs, sometimes she'll smile or roll her eyes, but this morning, she stands and takes a seat beside me, brushing back my mess of hair in that motherly way she's mastered. It certainly doesn't turn me off though. Nothing she has ever done has turned me off. In fact, I could go at any second she asked, between the cashmere sweaters and shoe hunts, I'd show her how fascinating she still is to me.
"Sorry I woke you up."
I'm not, and prove it by moving my hand to take a firm hold of her ass where it rests nearby, as I lay on my stomach, face shoved into the pillow. She giggles that way that tells me everything she's thinking and wishing and wanting. She giggles the IOU giggle I love in the mornings.
"You are seriously…" I begin groggily with a taunting smirk. "…one hot mama."
"Oh, is that so?" She whispers as she stands up again, sliding into her worn converse.
"Mmm…" is about all I can think to get out.
She shakes her head at me, and then turns to leave, but not before she returns the favor by smacking my ass through the sheets and sexily drawling out in a murmur from the far doorway, "You better be naked still when I get back…"
And with that final request, of which I shall gallantly fill, she's off to play superwoman.
She'll spend approximately 28 minutes helping the twins get dressed, and then somewhere between 15 and 18 minutes making lunches while she stands in that funny ostrich position at the counter, licking jelly and peanut butter off the knife, and humming to the classic rock station that is always pre-set in the kitchen. She'll move on to make sure Max hasn't dozed off on the couch again, and that Maddie has finally, after constant deliberation, picked out which shoes she wants for the day. She is her mother's daughter all over, a real ball buster, and it scares the living hell out of me.
Once she has them at the door to leave, she'll spend about 9 minutes wrapping them up in scarves and hats if need be, or making sure their shoelaces and buckles are fastened. And only, when all of this done, the lunches are in her hand, the keys dangling from her teeth and her glasses forgotten at least three times on the top of her head, she'll open the door and leave the house in silence.
I hate this silence.
It covers me when she's gone, when the kids are gone, and when I can hear things like a leaky bathroom faucet, or the iced over pipes along the side of the house, or a distant car travelling upon gravel and dirt. Being able to accept that there are other noises in the world besides Disney sing-a-longs, and tiny feet pattering through open hallways, or the sound of my wife's mental Aerosmith catalog, is a tough thing for me to do and I've never really been able to relax into it much. I need the noise, the chaos, the stuff that comes with getting old and boring and selfless.
Some of it will come back in an hour or so, after she's made the daily run to the preschool, and beat the mountain morning traffic she claims to love. She'll come back to me, more likely than not at the brink of starvation, so I'll cook her breakfast (naked this morning), and we'll make a whole bundle of new noises to outweigh the eerie silence of the place.
Roxanne is the reason God made these spectacular, long legged creatures in the first place. This done, so that they could be hazardous, and violent and a torture to anyone unsuspecting one minute, and then turn around and touch you just the right way, or kiss you so soft you could swear it went right through you, or love you perfectly, because they want to and are unwilling to be satisfied with any other activity for the day. He must have been damn proud with her, and I could almost bet he stood back, smiled, shed a few tears, and then sent her running along to do her damage.
I'll nap on this thought a while longer, waiting patiently by for the danger to fine me again.
It's always the worst part of my day, leaving my babies standing there, looking up at me near the doorway of the preschool. I hate walking away from them, turning my back in such a forward routine, just expecting them to accept it as normal. I wish I could keep them with me all day long, and watch movies and play outside in the snow and take long naps with them. But I know this way is better for them, they need the interaction with the other kids, and need not be spoiled by two parents who have such lazy jobs.
They smiled when I walked out, like every other morning, but it doesn't make it any easier driving home. I swerve through the mountain roads at high speed, focused on singing at the top of my lungs to drown out the agony of missing them so much. I think of my husband instead, that man that came out of nowhere with a dog and a wandering eye, and changed my whole world forever. I think about him, naked beneath a wave of needlessly wrinkled sheets, waiting for me to sneak back in and wake him up properly.
Yeah, that's not such a bad thought.
It's so shameless, to be able to say that I'm even more attracted to the man I married than I was when I first met him, or first slept with him. My girlfriends in town think I'm out of my mind, to be so in love with my life, and my hectic days, and the man who calms everything down for me when I need him to. They think I should despise him for forgetting to put the lid back on the milk or sleeping until noon when he wants to. They think I should be as unhappy as they are for some reason and I'm simply not.
Sure, I'll be the first to admit that there are moments when I want to kick him out in the cold for being his sporadically annoying self, and there's times when I feel like everything I do is for nothing and no one. I lose my mind trying to be a chauffeur and cook and personal stylist and lover twenty four hours a day, almost always seven days a week unless they all decide to sleep in on the weekends. No, it's not easy. It wasn't something I volunteered for when it all started, I didn't accept the draft of motherhood like some badge of honor or great celebration of myself. It all just sort of fell into what it is, with the right person and the wrong place and time, and eventually all the elements that make it as messy, and goofy, and barely tolerable and rewarding as it is.
Yes, I love my husband because he's my best friend first. He took care of me when no one else would listen. I do it because I need to. Not because I have to or something stupid like that.
Yeah, I want to drive home and put off the next ten pages of my manuscript so I can crawl into bed with him again, to make him feel wanted and needed and loved the same way he does me.
And yeah, I have thought seriously about suggesting an addition to our chaotic brood. I still am.
Max and Madeline are almost five, and that makes me sad, knowing they are growing up too quick, far quicker than I ever wanted them to. I miss the look Mort used to get on his face when he had to change a dirty diaper or when he was the one to get puked on after I had made it through hours of feeding and holding unscathed. I miss the nights that we would flip a coin to see who had to answer the call of the screaming monitor, only to both end up on the floor of the nursery together, singing and cooing ourselves into our own sleep. I really miss that stuff, because it was the most fun we'd ever had together.
I'm walking up the driveway, to the wraparound porch of our castle on the mountain's edge, and I can breathe here, unlike New York or Tashmore. I can see a thousand miles in any direction, snow on the peaks wherever I face, and I wonder for a split second as I always tend to, if this was how it was supposed to even happen, or if there is still more to it, something I'm missing.
I turn the key to the house and think about the hell we went through just to get here. I don't particularly think I could last through anything like that again. I just don't know if I would handle it as well under our newfound circumstances.
I step inside, take off my coat, my scarf and hat, boots, and even find my glasses wound into my messy bun where I thought I'd left them at home. I can hear the soft drip of a coffee pot and the sizzle of a frying pan from down the long hallway, where the music still plays low but different.
As I make it to the archway separating the great room from the wide, sunny kitchen of my dream design, I see him standing there at the center island stovetop, stirring something in a pan, a towel alone keeping his justice in check and one of my hair ties now claimed as his own. I must say this for my husband; he listens to directions almost as well as our four and a half year olds do.
He looks up with those sinking dusk eyes and smirks.
"I think you forgot a few articles there, babe."
I twist my brow, but know exactly what he's talking about.
"No, I'm giving you a challenge today."
He laughs and scoops eggs onto two plates at the bar.
"Just can't give the home team a single break can ya?"
Moving across the open kitchen, I lean on the counter across from him as I take a seat, looking through a vase of flowers.
"That's no fun."
He grins lopsided and hands over a plate.
"Energize."
It wasn't exactly a statement or question, and I looked at him teasingly as he dug into his own food from the other side.
"Is that a warning or a threat, Mr. Rainey?"
With a mouth full of food he rolled his eyes and gulped it all down.
"It was a suggestion…but I guess you're too damn sure of yourself."
He was right about that.
"I'm positively sure about myself." I took a stab at the eggs and then quietly added. "Someone has to be."
A mockery of his manhood usually did it, and he knew that I knew.
"Keep teasing him and see what happens, honey."
I wanted to, and he knew this as well.
"Oh baby, don't think it's not my every intention to insult you right into a killer boner."
I reached out to grasp for the strawberry syrup in the middle of the counter, only wanting it for my pancakes and instead felt the force of his instantaneous craze as his hand wrapped over mine on the bottle. I glanced up at him through the daisies again with a tight smile, but he didn't look up. He held my hand and kept his faux intent on the crossword for a second longer, reveling in the control he'd won back.
But I had forces of my own that he underestimated daily.
I coughed to sort through his attention and then softly whispered across at him with a blow in his face, "16 down this morning…is penetration…"
His eyes immediately flew up to mine, locking down on my senses securely. He had me, and we both knew it, and because there were no other tactics to be used or filtered through, he was about to win out. In a flash, he ripped the glass bottle of ruby syrup from my hand and in a sweep of storming desperation he tore at my other hand, pulling me down from the chair at the bar and towards the large dining room table in the opposing section of the kitchen.
He said nothing, and I liked it better this way. It was that dangerous, silent, ruthless Mort that came out from time to time to put on a little show. Or big show, depending on how you measure such things.
Flying towards the table's edge, he slammed the glass down on the oak finish and pressed me hard against the rounded side as he pulled my sweater from over my head, then held tight to my waist as his hands lifted me from the bottom up to sit with his body falling between my jeans legs. He fumbled meticulously with the button and zipper as his solitary towel slid away inch by inch with every movement he made towards me. His lips and teeth dove into my bare neck, scraping flesh in ways I'd seen animals react to their prey on Discovery Channel, and it sent a thousand fluttering shudders up and right back down my spine to think of him as my predator husband.
In the middle of this fascinating sensation and its subsiding wave, I heard the loud crash of the table center piece and candles as they flew across the hard wood floor and over the opposite oak ledge from where we were. I knew he'd gotten rid of them in his passionate rage, and it made me want to feel even more of him in that second. I tangled my fingers into his hair as deep as they would go; the small green tie from earlier all but disappearing in our act as his muddled brown and golden locks fell onto my forehead and nose. I kissed his face anywhere I could manage as I felt him sliding me further across the table to the center. He grunted in this part of the act, but said nothing, and left me to wonder about what he was thinking.
Knowing just how it had to be done, from obvious practice over the years, he quickly tugged my jeans away from my legs and to the floor I had almost forgotten existed anymore. He swept back down upon me, his bare chest pressing me to lay closer to the table as he reached around to lazily unhook my bra and rip it away at the same pace, snapping one of the straps in the process.
I shook my head as I lay nearly undone beneath his high gaze.
"I hope you know your way around Victoria's Secret by now, buddy."
He hushed me with a growl as he reached behind my head to finally hold the bottle of syrup again. He spun it around in his hand for a long moment, looking down upon me, surveying every inch of my skin it seemed, as if he were laying the foundation for a house or getting ready to paint a canvas. I knew the syrup was still mildly hot from when he must have warmed it, and so I wasn't so concerned about what I had a feeling was coming.
Except for the part where I knew I would lose my damn mind.
His eyes slowly arched around each of my breasts, coming up along my neck until he focused in on mine again, defiant but gentle at a distance. That smirk wound itself around his mouth like a call to duty and finally after the most agonizing minutes of my day so far, he spoke deeply over me.
"Think we should play with some rules today?"
I stifled a laugh but returned, "Maybe."
"Okay," he began, carefully inching the bottle towards my stomach as he pulled back on the cap. He let the syrup sit at the very edge of the glass rim as he went on. "Rule number one…" he brought the bottle down closer to my already stifling skin as I watched the red sap drizzle out. It burned only slightly at first and made me jump under him as he grinned wildly and forced himself to continue. "…I will only move under your command…under your directions."
"Done being power hungry for the day, have you?" I mused as I watched his fingers move in circles through the streaming syrup on my stomach and chest. The hardened strain of his towel as it ran along the inside of my right thigh was what made it really bad to hold back.
"Oh no…I still get the power, but it's all under the order of these."
His sweetened left thumb brushed over my lips, drawing down the bottom one harder as he pulled it away again and held my leg. I needed him now and he was drawing the thing out on purpose, doing the one thing he knew I despised enough to throw him out in the cold, the thing that my girlfriends swore was the reason I should ignore him like they did their husbands. He was being greedy, like he only ever was when he was under the spell of the ravishing, predatorily charged Mort. And I just couldn't decide what was worse, the feeling of helplessness as he spun his web of strawberry sauce and suggestive words over top of me, or not having the experiences at all.
I opted for the sex and focused back on him.
"Rule number two…I'm granting you three chances to scream my name…" he caressed at the insides of my thighs as his fingers wove down to meet the thin lace of my thong. "…as loudly as you can…" the black material slid along my legs until it eased right off of my bare toes. "...and if you fail the third time…" he held my leg bent in his hands and kissed slowly from my toes to the back of my knee.
"W-what?" I asked in a clear shudder.
He glanced over my knee as my eyelids fluttered in both fear and anxiousness.
"I'm going back to finish my pancakes."
I rolled my eyes, knowing he'd never be able to do such a thing, to me and especially not himself. But I did accept the challenge, for the mere fact that it would be impossible to lose. As if he thinks I don't know him or something…
In a sudden sweep, I watched at a crooked angle on the table as he let the towel fall away from his waist completely, exposing what I'd already felt for minutes in painful passing against my thigh. He was swollen, no doubt as ever before; larger than he had been the last few nights past, and this both excited and weakened my head. He taunted me with his wiry smile as he stood completely still, awaiting command and a fair route to his destination. The syrup was everywhere already, and only moved further along as his hands slid from my waist to knees, the sticky pink sauce painting my skin taut.
"Come here." I whispered seductively as he lowered his head.
His reply was simple, just as it ought to be for a man in dire need of directions. "Where?"
"Come down here and kiss me, stupid."
He laughed and slide deeper between my legs and across my stomach, the syrup gluing us together, his palms firm against the table beside my head as he moved down to my mouth, blowing gently. His tongue came out to lick straight across my lips where he'd left sauce in his prior advances, and almost as soon as I moved my hands to clench the smooth, warm skin under his shoulder blades, he forced his tongue through the gates and filled my mouth. I held onto him tighter as he slid his tongue back away and to almost the tip, before driving back towards my throat, again and again suggestively, so that when he did pull away, I wanted to shoot him.
I said nothing and look up at his perfectly content, smiling face with a scowl.
"Jesus…now I know where Maddie gets that mean pout from."
I wasn't laughing, but I knew I was close enough that I had to just speak. So instead, I commanded.
"Why don't you cut the shit…" he chuckled and then was caught obviously off guard when I grabbed his nearby hand on my waist and moved it up to my breast, forcing it down hard "…touch me instead."
He seemed to like that and instantly began massaging my breast with one hand, as his mouth swept down to the second, striking at every possible nerve ending allowable at the hardened peaks I'd already known were showing. While one nipple was pinched with his sticky thumb and forefinger, the other had an opposing jolt with his tongue flicking over it a mile a minute. I felt my back slightly arch off the table, but only enough to feel him still settled at the center of my legs, straining quietly.
He groaned against my breast and then switched positions to give equal treatment to the other one. I couldn't stop watching him, although I'd seen this spectacle thousands of times before, it always felt new, enticing, like that very first time he ever touched me. I cried out at the thought, as he brought my second breast to harden completely within the heated cavern of his mouth, lapping at it wetly before pulling away all over again and looking down upon me. He was showing his drain, his need even more now.
The giving directions bit of his rules wasn't working as well as I had planned for it to, since I could hardly even begin to think or breathe. So instead, I took his hand back in mine and slide it down across the saccharine sweetness of my strawberry painted skin, until I felt his fingertips brushing through the short, dark hairs that began the world at times. I gasped a little to feel him finally, and he bit his lip, like he did so often when he had finally made it, and he continued to let me guide him to the central heat, the moist pleating of my body.
"Talk to me Roxanne…" He whispered soundly, as his voice echoed through my brain. "…I want you to tell me everything…tell me what you want."
I tried, taking a deep breath, and still could hardly form words. It wasn't like me to be so out of it, especially in circumstances like these, and I think he took notice of this. Mort caught my eye quietly and came to lay over me again, softly, not as urgent as he had been. His hand was still lost somewhere below, stroking lightly, but not forcing anything yet, while his other brushed back on my hair and forehead.
"Hey, look at me." I tilted my head back toward where his lips and breath were hot. He smiled when he I looked at him wholly. "Hey..."
I glanced straight up at him as he placed a single kiss on my chin, his coiling fingertips moving between the wet folds of my ready and waiting core.
"Finally gone mute on me, huh? Five years of sex causes deafness?"
I nodded in his hand and laughed when he did, trying to focus on one thing, his eyes or the circling sensation of his fingers below. I couldn't decide for the life of me.
"Rule number one really sucks, you know that?" I exhausted when he nodded with a wide grin.
"I was hoping you'd point out as much."
I crossed my brow as he brushed it gently, and wiggled a finger tightly up into me at the same moment. I gasped and held onto his elusive arms around me, not expecting it so soon, or so rough. And this was followed by the ragged discretion of his voice in my ear.
"Which is why I'll be taking over from here, babe."
And he did, thank God for that. I was in no position to be directing the traffic of his desires as they poured over my body today. I only wanted to be taken to the height I knew he had to offer at any moment, the one I'd seen in his eyes when I had driven him to this point. They shone with a haze of rich honey in the middle of the blackened orbs when he was as intense as he was now, when he wanted to cover me in spreadable condiments and lick from head to toe.
His finger swept through me and around me over and over again, while in my head I counted the strokes and the number of times I had dug into and released the skin on the backs of his upper arms. Every time I drove my nails into him though, his own finger grew rougher in movement, and eventually, he drew a second in to scissor back and forth against the current I'd held onto so strongly. My head rolled on the table, my jaw near to breaking from the tension I'd built up in clenching onto it, and my legs grew numb and sedated at his hips.
A few more pumps inside and out, the sensation of his tongue as it crawled along my berried stomach and waist, and I felt the shuddering begin at my lower back and extend through all of my veins until I heard his soft murmur across me, "Now honey…let it go…" I did, in waves, one after the other so swiftly that it both burned and cooled my skin. "…come hard again…" he sighed still, as I felt him move his fingers in half circles a few more times within me, letting me feel the full effect he could offer as I cried out into my shoulder. The last thing I heard as I crashed was his own tiny whimper at whatever he was viewing and that made me fall twice as hard, utterly breathless.
When I rose back from what felt like the dead, I looked up into his high, rash eyes again and smiled.
"I always liked you in control better."
This brought a proud grin to his face as I watched him slide me down the table further and closer to his body, his own heat and final need.
"That's good, 'cause I don't think you could handle directing this one."
I laughed when he nodded downwards and gripped my loosened thighs at his sides, moving in deep to me again, brushing his head across my still aching bud. I needed more of him, it wasn't half over yet, and I knew he needed me especially which I felt guilty about.
"Screaming regulations remain in effect."
I accepted with a twinkle in my eye as I felt him circle into me rather than plunging directly, he knew I appreciated the feeling better. I relaxed back onto the table, letting him fill me slowly, deeply, and as completely as he ever had. My knees tightened into his hips and ribs, trying to force him into me, but knowing that there was eventually nowhere left for him to go but back up and out. And he did so quickly, drawing back to the very tip, before groaning out and swerving back inside of me as I screamed out his name anxiously.
He managed to hold up one finger, which I saw out of sparkling eyelids, and chuckled as he drew back out for another go. The sweat between our bodies began to mix with the syrup until it was all I could smell, and to which I never paid much attention to the burn of Mort as he thrust back close again, slamming my body into the pile of rubble behind me on the table. I moaned, but didn't scream, and he shook his head in an effort to bring me back to that place again.
He did so even faster, this time sending a shockwave throughout my entire system as he pressed down into the magical corners of my body, sensitizing everything all at once into a bright spark of light.
"Mort!"
He seemed to like that one better and laughed out with a moan of his own as he held my waist tight, sensing the need, the urge to finish me off quick, hard, and even faster than he already had been going. He suddenly and without warning sped up to a pace that sent my back into overdrive against the smooth oak of the table top, as I heard his body both smack into mine with each thrust and his upper thighs hitting the edge of the table itself. I bit my tongue, my lip, trying not to waste the chance I knew I had to make him happy. I felt him growing tighter inside of me, filling me even more than before as he cringed with the speed he'd made so easily, and that's when I felt the all too familiar blankness and sensation covering me.
I gripped tightly to his shoulders in anticipation, as he held my hips until he couldn't get any closer while he drifted back out tenderly, purposefully slow and agonizing as I trembled. And then, in that flash I knew would come, he struck my body as hard as ever, touching that blinking spot within my farthest boundaries, the one that released the blood curdling, glass cracking screech that echoed through the high ceilings of our house, from the kitchen, to the foyer, the living room, upstairs, and anywhere else until it could go no farther than the windows and doors.
"…Ahhh…MORT!"
He belted out in laughter as I clenched down around him and forced him to spill every bit of himself inside of me, finally, almost begrudgingly. His breath was ragged, but his intoxication with amusement was going strong, the adrenaline pumping in his veins obviously concocting a dazed euphoria as he fell over me on the table, breathing and chuckling loosely in my ear.
I felt him kiss my neck and jaw as he cradled my head, and then as determined as ever, as proud as I think I'd heard him sound in a long time, he said very clearly, "You win, Ali."
See, the difference between men and women is this very simply: Men like to provide conviction in things they know nothing about and be most demanding of their wrongness at the brink of complete disaster. While women, wait around with the right answer the entire time, hovering closely behind us with a cute little smirk, withholding the truth that can save our dumbasses at every wrong turn.
They just like to watch us blow the world up for entertainment. Then they tell us the secret.
It's incredible to me, what being married a second time has done for me. It's made me this whole other force, I can do anything, or be anything I want because I am assured that this second time, based on the woman I'm married to, and based on the beautiful faces of my boy and girl, I know that I can't fall. I can only discover more in the realm I'm so contently nestled in right now.
She's healed every last bit of me, because I don't have to be who I was anymore. I can just be who I am, that guy deep down there, the one you can't see. I'm allowed to be him, openly, widely, all over the place, at any time, day or night, rain or shine; I get to be him, for her.
Why did God make woman?
So she could look damn good covered in strawberry syrup on a dining room table in the middle of the day.
Why did God keep woman?
Because she already had all of the answers it took the man to get with that strawberry sauce and table.
Do I even particularly believe in God?
Ha. Today I do.