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Diamonds and Pearls

We made it to pearl. As I packed my half of the kitchen, I just kept thinking, we made it to pearl.

I was keeping the china and the punch bowl, not because I was fond of gold leaf or crystal, but because they had been wedding gifts from my mother. My mother made it to gold. No – I shook my head at the chip in the plate I held, the gold leaf damaged – she made it to until death us do part.

People will tell you that it’s smooth sailing if you make it past the seven-year itch. Those are the people who didn’t make it past the three-year breaking-in period. Other people will tell you that twenty is the tough year – when you’ve spent two decades with the same person and realise your best years are behind you. Those are the people who crapped out around ten years, only to get remarried and go another ten with someone else. As if a decade per spouse is somehow better than two decades with the same person bitching about your inability to remember to pay the electric bill or put your dirty clothes in the hamper.

Our silver anniversary had come and gone and my co-worker Janine said, ‘Twenty-five years! Holy shit! You’ve been married for ever!’

At the time, I’d laughed and agreed with her, but in the back of my mind I remember thinking, it doesn’t feel like for ever. It feels like we just started and then got tired before we reached for ever.

Everyone knows twenty-five years is the silver anniversary, but no one knows what represents thirty years together. Traditionally, it’s pearl. The modern is diamond. I like diamonds better, but I have a jewellery box full of both from birthdays, Valentine’s Days. Anniversaries, too. He’d given me diamonds or pearls for many anniversaries. A strand of pearls for our eighth anniversary (traditional: bronze; modern: linen) and a gold watch inlaid with diamond for our fifteenth (traditional: crystal; modern: watches – so I guess he was paying attention). Other gifts in-between and after, gifts I admired and enjoyed and put away for some future special occasion.

There were diamond earrings and pearl hair clasps and diamond-and-pearl baubles for the twenty-sixth through twenty-ninth anniversaries, the ones no one has bothered to put on the anniversary gift lists, as if those years between twenty-five and thirty don’t matter at all. As if what Janine said was true: being married twenty-five years was for ever and there was no need to acknowledge another anniversary for at least five more years, and every five years after. I guess we took that to heart. Those years between the twenty-fifth anniversary trip to the Greek Isles and the thirtieth anniversary trip to divorce court were a blur of pot roast dinners, political talk over waffles at our favourite brunch joint and mediocre sex a couple times a week or whenever we were both in the mood and awake at the same time.

The traditional gift for every anniversary should be sex. It’s hard to complain about his snoring when he’s fucking you. Suddenly every noise he’s making is a turn-on. It’s impossible to complain about her lousy cooking when you’re going down on her and your mouth is full of the sweetest juice you’ve ever tasted. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe two people can fuck every day for thirty years and still end up where I was, packing away ugly thirty-year-old plates and a dusty punchbowl.

‘What are you smiling about?’

Nathan and I were civilised people. We didn’t fight and scream, we didn’t throw things, we didn’t pull childish immature acts on each other. No, we were a couple who had been married for thirty years, raised three children and had mutually decided a divorce was in both our best interests. And now the years were gone, the kids were grown and had their own lives and we were a divorced couple packing up our mutual belongings at the same time in the same house we’d shared for over two decades.

I shook my head as I used several sheets of newspaper to wrap a gravy boat I couldn’t remember using in a decade. ‘Just thinking that if people fucked every day of their marriage, maybe there wouldn’t be any need to get divorced.’

Nathan had his hands full of some bubble-wrapped thingy from our shared home office. Probably that ugly snow globe I’d gotten him as a last-minute anniversary gift last year. I’d seen it in one of those mall stores you see everywhere and been stricken with a bout of bad taste, buying this hideous glass and wood creation depicting Chicago in winter. I’d even gotten the damned thing engraved with our names and wedding date.

‘So, if we’d had sex every day, we’d still be together?’ he asked slowly, the consummate professor repeating the information he’s been given, looking for a different interpretation.

I shook my head. ‘Who knows? Maybe we’d be fucking right now instead of packing up all this – fucking stuff – and going our separate ways.’

I don’t know why I said that. Hell, outside of when we were actually fucking, I never even used that word. OK, not even when we were fucking, unless I’d had a couple of drinks first. But something about signing my name – his last name – to a divorce decree seemed to have loosened a knot of tension inside me. There I was, standing in the kitchen, packing our wedding china, barefoot in a sundress on a warm summer evening, saying fucking, fucking, fucking.

Go fucking figure, huh?

I felt suddenly, inexplicably weary. I put the plate I was holding on top of the already wrapped stack of matching plates and leaned against the counter, studying my husband. My ex-husband, I mentally amended.

The years had been kind to Nathan. He didn’t look much different than the kid I’d met at Berkeley as an undergrad. The dark hair was turning silver, the lines around his eyes and mouth were more defined, like water etches stone after a millennium; there were a few more pounds on his always lean frame, but he was otherwise exactly the same as when I met him thirty-five years previous. Still quick to smile and slow to anger. Still stubborn as a mule and gentle as a kitten. Still kind-hearted and thoughtful. Still sexy as hell in well-worn jeans and an old Yale T-shirt.

There is a moment when every newly divorced person looks at his or her former spouse and doesn’t see their partner, lover, friend of X number of years, but a stranger. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience looking at Nathan standing in our kitchen. He was everything I had ever wanted. Still was. And yet … and yet, here we were, packing up our fucking stuff and going on our merry separate ways.

‘What do you see?’ he asked, that gentle tone of a teacher trying to coax the student to find the answer on her own.

I shrugged and turned away, fingering the single strand of pearls I wore, one last birthday present before it all went to hell. ‘I see a life together that’s fallen apart. Time to start anew, I guess.’

I sounded more carefree than I felt. Much as I’d wanted this – and I had been the one to file the divorce papers when it dawned on me that Nathan wouldn’t, no matter how much we fought or withdrew from each other – I really didn’t know what I was going to do now. The house had gone on the market once we started the paperwork for the divorce and we had gotten a more than generous offer just days after the realtor listed it. Our ‘separation’ involved Nathan moving into the guest room. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford for one of us to move out, but it seemed silly when the house was more than big enough. Our paths rarely crossed except in the mornings for a few minutes before we both went to work. It made sense for us to live together as roommates until the house sold and we could each take our half and find something new. It was civilised this way. It was also bitterly depressing to realise that after thirty years together we could live in the same house for months without talking other than to pass on phone messages, without touching because we made such a wide berth around each other, without one of us caving in and climbing into bed with the other, one late night. Depressing as hell.

I slammed the poorly wrapped plate down on top of the stack and heard an audible crack. I gasped. The tears started coming even before I unwrapped the plate and saw it had been cleaved in two. I felt Nathan’s hand on my shoulder, that gentle, familiar squeeze to comfort me. But it didn’t comfort me. It made me angry. For the first time in at least six months he was touching me and it was because he felt sorry for me.

I shrugged him off. ‘Leave me alone!’

‘I was just trying to be kind, Rachel,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if you ever liked that old ugly china.’

I whirled on him then. ‘It was my mother’s!’

‘Well, it’s not as if you liked her much, either,’ he said, evenly. ‘And she was old and ugly, too.’

I knew he was joking. Sort of. Nathan was a lot of things, but he wasn’t cruel. He was trying to make me feel better. Trying to lighten the mood. He never could stand to see me cry. I knew all of that, but my first reaction wasn’t to laugh. Or even to stop crying. I sobbed – and slapped him hard. The diamond in my engagement ring glinted in the overhead light, as hard and cold as I felt.

‘Go to hell, Nathan Davis.’

He recoiled, as much from the shock of it as the pain, I think, and stared at me. The look of utter horror on his face was comical. I’d never so much as raised my voice or slammed a door, much less slapped him before. I was the quiet, angry type, more likely to hide in the bedroom nursing my wounds than to vent my emotions and risk hurting someone else’s feelings. It was, I thought, a good quality. But standing there with my hand stinging and my entire body practically vibrating with anger while the tears dried on my cheeks, I felt pretty good. Furious and violent, clearly, but good. Alive.

As quickly as the feeling came, it faded, shrivelling up inside me like it had been deprived of oxygen. I was ashamed of myself.

‘I’m sorry.’ I watched him rub the red mark on his cheek and felt small. And sad. ‘I don’t know where that came from.’

‘I do.’

He picked up the sugar bowl from the counter, the one that went with my mother’s china, examined it for a minute, then dropped it. I gasped in horror as it hit the tile and fractured into several smaller pieces, scattering shards across the kitchen floor.

I blinked at him, certain it had been an accident, but he proved me wrong by picking up a salad plate and doing the same thing. The sound of breaking porcelain seemed to echo even as he reached for a third piece. I was frozen in place, unable to move to stop him as another salad plate crashed to the floor.

I finally found my voice when he picked up the serving platter. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘Breaking your mother’s china,’ he answered, as if that made all the sense in the world.

I looked at the fragments of the seventy-five-year-old dishes littering our pristine kitchen floor – not even our kitchen floor any more, as the house was officially sold – and felt … nothing. I took a deep breath, waiting for the indignant anger to explode out of me again, and simply exhaled. There was no emotion there, no sense of loss. All I saw was a mess to clean up and a few less things to pack.

Nathan seemed almost as shocked when I started laughing as he had when I slapped him. It started small, just a twitch of my lips as I mentally replayed his comment about my mother and her china, and built from there. First a giggle and a shake of my head at my own audacity – laughing at something that wasn’t funny in the least – then an open-mouthed guffaw at the idea that I should feel bad for giggling. I looked at Nathan, at his gaping ‘have you lost your mind?’ expression, and completely lost it. I was doubled over with laughter, clutching at the kitchen counter to keep me upright.

‘You’re right,’ I managed to say between fits of giggles. ‘I hate this china. It’s ugly and tacky and has to be hand washed. Good god, hand washed! Who has time for ugly hand-washed china? I don’t!’

Nathan nodded sagely. ‘I know.’

‘Unbelievably fucking ugly.’ I was like a kid discovering the power of dirty words. ‘Right?’

‘Right.’

It was contagious, Nathan’s baritone chuckles joined my own girlish-sounding squeals and soon we were holding onto each other, laughing like fools. And maybe we were. Fools, that is. The two biggest fools in the world – and we had to hold onto each other because no one else would.

I kissed him then. It was an open-mouthed, awkward, laughing kiss, but it was the first kiss we’d shared in at least a year. His mouth felt both new and familiar. A couple of days’ growth of beard scraped against my cheek as I cupped the back of his head and held him to me, as if he might pull away otherwise. But he didn’t. He didn’t even hesitate before he was kissing me back. He fisted his hands in my hair, kept long even now because that’s the way he liked it and I had never thought to cut it, and held me as tightly as I held on to him.

All traces of laughter gone, I tentatively nipped his bottom lip. I heard – and felt – his moan. It had been so long since we’d even kissed, I didn’t know how to proceed. I couldn’t think straight, didn’t want to think at all. I wanted to feel. His act of destruction had released something inside me, something tight and coiled, and now I was reaching for more, hungry for something more than anger and hurt. His tongue swept along mine and I whimpered softly at his teasing. This was all familiar too, distantly so, as a recurring dream feels familiar in the light of day.

I don’t know how long we stood there, leaning against the counter, pressed together and making out like teenagers. The tick-tick of the kitchen clock counted out the seconds of our mad descent into wherever this was leading and the hardness of his erection pressed against my hip corresponded to the wetness between my thighs that he couldn’t feel. Yet.

That thought, as much a memory as anything else we’d shared, made me whimper again. I could feel my long dormant arousal awakening within me, blossoming like the heat had blossomed in his cheek where I had slapped him. I cupped his face in my hand, remorseful and anxious to set things right. I kissed the spot where I’d hit him, feeling his skin warm and rough beneath my lips. I trailed kisses down the line of his jaw, along his neck, to his collarbone. I breathed in his scent, clean and masculine and all Nathan. All mine.

Mine. Where had that come from?

I didn’t have time to consider it because he was pulling me up against him, one hand still tangled in my hair, the other wrapped firmly around my hip. He nestled the bulge of his erection against the soft swell of my belly and we both groaned. I ached for him to fill me. To fill the emptiness between my thighs, yes, but also to fill the hollowness behind my breastbone.

We stared into each other’s eyes, so close I could see his pupils dilate when I wiggled against him, pressing even closer. He pulled his hand from my hair, anchored it on my other hip and slowly scrunched my dress up in his hands. I shivered as he revealed me, so slowly I thought I would scream with the anticipation of it.

‘Are you wet?’ he asked when the hem of my dress was up to my hips.

My breath caught in my throat as I nodded.

‘Take your panties off for me.’

I did the best I could with him holding onto me. I hooked my thumbs in the sides of my panties and tugged them down over my hips. They slipped down my legs and I stepped out of them. Then I waited for what he would do next.

He didn’t make me wait long. In one smooth move, he picked me up and sat me on the edge of the counter. He pulled my thighs apart, baring me to his gaze. He stared between my legs without speaking. The kitchen counter was cool against my ass, but that wasn’t what made me shiver. He looked angry.

‘What’s wrong? We don’t have to –’

I moved as if to slide off the counter and he held me in place, his fingers digging into my upper thighs.

‘Don’t move,’ he all but growled at me. ‘I want you so much.’

This was most certainly not familiar. What were we doing? We weren’t the types for sex in the kitchen, Nathan wasn’t ever demanding and I was never this passive and agreeable. But here we were, with him pushing my thighs even wider apart and me whimpering in expectation. He licked his lips as if in anticipation and then dipped his head between my legs. The first swipe of his tongue along my pussy made me squeal in a very unladylike manner. I had only a moment to contemplate the utter ridiculousness of the situation before he did it again.

Then I stopped thinking.

Nathan took his time licking me, using the broad flat of his tongue to take long, slow swipes along my pussy. I knew I was drenched, I could feel the wetness and smell my arousal. I braced my hands on the edge of the counter and jutted my hips forward to his mouth, suddenly shameless. If we were going to do this, I was going to enjoy it.

Nathan made an appreciative grunt and used his thumbs to spread my lips. I trembled in anticipation, waiting. Wanting. Needing. He let me wait, simply staring at my pussy open before him, as if he had me right where he wanted me and was in no rush to let me get away.

I didn’t examine that thought for too long. I didn’t want to think about what happened after this crazy little tryst. I didn’t want to think at all. I’d spent months, years, thinking and planning and wondering where it all went wrong. I was tired of thinking. I wanted to feel.

‘Do it,’ I urged. ‘Lick me. Please.’

It was the ‘please’ that did it. I could see the way his expression softened and he became the Nathan who would do anything for me. He stopped teasing me then and lowered his head between my legs. There was no hesitation, no need for me to beg, there was only sensation – his tongue dipping inside of me, his fingers sliding into me. He wet my clit with my own moisture, then licked it away. I cried out, gripping the edge of the counter and draping my legs over his shoulders. I dug my heels into his back, urging him on, afraid he would stop. He didn’t.

Whatever had happened between us in the past, Nathan still knew what I liked. What I needed. He held me open before him, like a feast for his pleasure alone, and then he ate me like a starving man. We both were starving. It had been so long, too long. I couldn’t even remember the last time, but there had never been a time quite like this. I clung to the counter and to him, feeling my orgasm building low in my belly. Muscles taut, body aching with the need for release, I didn’t think about anything but the feeling of Nathan’s tongue on my clit as I sat there bare-assed naked on the kitchen counter that didn’t even belong to me any more. And that thought – that wholly inappropriate, completely naughty thought – was what sent me careening over the edge.

I screamed, open-mouthed, uninhibited, raw with the need to vocalise what I was feeling. Holding Nathan between my plump thighs, riding his mouth in an effort to prolong my pleasure, I spiralled down into that blissful state of utter sensation where nothing mattered at all. I cried out my passion, my need, my frustration. My sadness. I pushed my hips against Nathan’s open mouth as he devoured everything I had to give. I slid around on the counter, its surface slick with the proof of my arousal.

I was still crying when he tugged me forward, over the edge of the counter and onto his cock. I was still coming, my pussy still contracting as he slid into me, knees bent, and pressed me against the counter, filling the emptiness inside me in a way that no finger or toy ever could. I hadn’t realised how badly I had missed him – or how much I wanted him – until he was buried inside me, staring into my eyes as he thrust into me, hard and fast. His jaw was clenched, a vein pulsing at his temple as he struggled to maintain control. I felt a surge of feminine power at knowing he was as needy as I was.

I was standing on my toes, my calves quivering with the effort to hold steady under the onslaught of his thrusts. He hooked his hand under my thigh and draped it over his hip, and we both groaned as the angle made my pussy narrow around him and brought my clit up tight against his pubic bone. In the aftermath of my orgasm his cock felt huge and every thrust sent little aftershocks of desire pulsing through me. He still wore his jeans, had tugged them down just far enough to free his thick erection, and the open zipper scraped against my slick, sensitive skin while the sharp edge of the counter dug into my back. I didn’t care. Pleasure with a side of pain, I thought fuzzily. It was entirely worth it just to hear him grunt my name.

I could feel his cock swell and twitch inside me and I clung to him, hands fisted in the fabric of his T-shirt, my leg wrapped high on his hip and holding him close. I nipped at the taut corded muscle in his neck, hard enough to hurt, which made him jerk against me. He went still and quiet, only his ragged breath and racing pulse letting me know how hard he was coming.

We stood like that for an endless moment, holding tight to each other, unwilling to move away and lose contact. Finally, he pulled back just far enough to look at me. Crow’s feet framed his laughing blue eyes and silver strands sparkled in the tousled chocolate-brown of his hair. Had it really been thirty years?

‘Rachel. I love you, Rachel.’

Staring into his eyes I had the sense that time had melted away. Suddenly, we were standing there the day we’d moved into the house, when we had a four-year-old and I was pregnant with our second, but didn’t know it yet. We’d scrimped and saved for a down payment on our dream house and finally it was ours. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

I blinked and it all came rushing back, reality knocking the breath out of me. Tears stung my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. Nathan watched and held me, never saying a word. Then he bent and kissed a tear away as it followed the curve of my cheek.

‘Now what?’ I put a hand in the centre of his chest and gave him a firm push, my wedding rings flashing in the light. Mocking my moment of weakness. ‘Was that just one last time, for old time’s sake?’

‘Is that what you want it to be?’

‘Damn it, Nathan, could you for once in your life answer a question without asking a question?’

I sounded angry and bitter. But what I was really feeling was overwhelming loss. The anger was familiar, comforting. I clung to it the way I’d clung to him moments ago, using it as a protective barrier against the words he was about to hurl at me. But there was no angry retort. He simply laughed.

‘I do that, don’t I?’

‘You just did it again!’ I said, smacking his shoulder in exasperation. ‘Just answer the question.’

‘I will if you stop hitting me, woman.’ He pulled me close, trapping my hands against his chest.

‘OK. Sorry.’

He laughed again, shaking his head. Then his smile faded. ‘I don’t want it to be the last time, Rachel,’ he said, sounding all growly-voiced like he had earlier. ‘I don’t want it to be over.’

‘But we’re divorced! And we sold the house.’ I pointed out the truths, but I neglected the most important truth of all – I didn’t want it to be over, either.

‘So what? We don’t have to be married to give it another go,’ he said, making it sound completely reasonable. ‘Let’s start over. Somewhere else. Someplace new. Let’s be new together.’

‘Let’s fuck on kitchen counters, you mean?’

‘Yeah. Let’s figure out where the hell we went –’ he shook me gently for emphasis ‘– and where we want to go now.’

I gazed at the kitchen floor, littered with remnants of my mother’s dishes while we stood half-naked in front of open kitchen windows that looked out on the street. My thighs were sticky with his desire and mine, too. It was crazy. Ridiculous.

It felt right.

‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘But we have to clean up this mess.’

‘Why? We’re not done yet.’

I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the mess or the sex, and I didn’t care. I knew what had to be done.

I twisted out of the circle of his arms and unwrapped one of the dinner plates I’d already packed. Turning it over in my hand, I examined the tacky gold trim and the faded scene of pheasants in a field, and shrieked with laughter. It really was hideous. Maybe if we got rid of all the bad, the only thing left would be the good. I made a sound most often heard in karate class and flung the plate against the wall.

‘Rachel!’ Nathan said, as if shocked. But he laughed with me as I unwrapped and smashed another plate. ‘If the neighbours didn’t already get an eyeful and think we’ve gone stark raving mad, they’re definitely going to call the police now.’

‘I don’t care!’ I said, giggling helplessly and swiping at tears between bouts of destruction. ‘Help me! This will take all night.’

I froze in place as he cupped my breast through the bodice of my dress and ran a callused thumb over one bra-less nipple. ‘When we’re done, I’m going to fuck you good and proper in our bed.’

It was a promise I believed and the only vow that mattered right now. We’d take it one day – or ugly plate – at a time and see where it went. Who knows? Maybe we’d cobble together something even better from the shattered pieces of our life together.

‘You’ve got a deal,’ I said, flinging a teacup to the floor and feeling something hard and brittle inside me give way. ‘And I love you, too.’

We destroyed every dish long before the sun came up. And then he kept his promise.