“Of course I liked it,” Lida said. “What wasn’t to like?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it never happened to you before because you never wanted it to happen to you. I knew a woman once who said it was too threatening. Orgasms, I mean. They made her feel too. vulnerable. So she didn’t let herself have them.”
“How did she prevent it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think it’s all the unorthodox things you do,” Lida said carefully. It was impossible to talk about these things. It was only barely possible to think about them. “I think it’s because you don’t do—and you do—well, you know what I mean.”
“Nope. I haven’t done a single unorthodox thing yet. I haven’t even gotten out the whipped cream. Never mind the cherries.”
“Christopher.”
“Seriously,” Christopher said. “It’s because of menopause. I’ve been assuming you’ve been through menopause.”
No man of Lida Arkmanian’s generation would ever have mentioned menopause to her. Even her doctor called it “the change.” Lida was glad the room was too dark for Christopher to see her blushing.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Christopher, I’ve been through menopause.”
“I thought so. Gregor’s always saying how you’re a year older than he is, though God knows you look ten years younger. He should watch what he eats. Anyway, the thing about menopause is, once a woman goes through it, the orthodox way, as you put it, isn’t usually the right way. It can hurt.”
“Oh,” Lida said.
“Not that I have anything against the orthodox way,” Christopher said. “I mean, I’ll do it hanging from the exposed beams in the family room if you want me to—”
“Christopher, for God’s sake.”
“—I was just trying to be a good sort. I have been a good sort, haven’t I? It’s been all right?”
“Yes,” Lida said. “It has been better than all right. I just wish I didn’t feel so… guilty.”
“About the sex?”
“No,” Lida told him. “No, not really. I feel embarrassed about the sex, sometimes, I mean it’s been days, Christopher, and we haven’t done anything else. Today I didn’t even open my mail. Are you like this all the time?”
“Nope. But I am when I get a chance. Why not?”
“Why not.” Lida sighed. “There doesn’t ever seem to be an answer to why not. So here we are again. Do you know you’re only two years older than my oldest son?”
“Does that bother you?”
“No.” Lida sighed again. “That doesn’t bother me either. It doesn’t bother me that half the street probably knows what we’re doing—and what does Bennis think? You come to visit her and then you just disappear.”
“Bennis is smart enough never to ask questions she doesn’t want the answers to.” Christopher sat up. “I’m going to get a bottle of that New York State champagne we were drinking this afternoon. You want some chocolate? I’m starving.”
“I’ll take a glass of champagne.”
Christopher got out of the other side of the bed, keeping his back to her. He whipped a robe around himself in no time at all and tied the belt. Lida was impressed. He had not been so careful when all this had started, and she had not told him that it embarrassed her when he walked around naked. He must have guessed.
Christopher came back to the bedroom with his arms full. He dropped the chocolate on the quilt—a little pile of heart-shaped dark-chocolate cremes from Godiva that Lida’s daughter had sent—and handed Lida a glass.
“Here you are,” he said, pouring champagne. “Do you know it’s already two o’clock in the morning?”
Lida took a sip of champagne. “It’s Hannah I feel guilty about,” she said. “Not having her here. Not wanting her here. In spite of everything she has been through.”
Christopher poured a glass for himself. “It’s not as if she didn’t have anywhere to go,” he pointed out. “Helen Tevorakian offered to take her. You didn’t abandon Hannah on Cavanaugh Street.”
“Helen Tevorakian doesn’t have half the room I do. And it’s more than that. It’s more even than that I didn’t want to send you back to Bennis’s to sleep tonight.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s what it’s always been,” Lida said impatiently. “Always, even when we were children. I was the pretty one and she was the plain one. I got roses from secret admirers for Valentine’s Day, and Hannah got cards from Helen and me. I had six boys ask me to our senior dance, and one of the five I turned down I fixed up with Hannah. I worry it was all too much.”