moving out of her house and into her friend’s place for the summer, so she felt free and the promise of a date was inviting. She tucked the note into her pocket and drove home.
The engagement came easily, without fanfare. Lina went from barely having had a boyfriend to having a husband.
And the children came, and the dogs came, or the dogs came first. And then the dogs died. New furniture replaced old furniture. It had never been a love story with Ed. He’d never thrown her across a bed or whispered in her ear at a dinner party. He did not have that kind of charm.
Mostly, she could not, for the life of her, remember a real kiss between them. The hungry kind that is like dogs slavering. She loves the feeling of a man’s tongue in her mouth, loves the way mouths join and suck on each other like machines hooking up. On sites where men rate escorts, Lina has heard and seen, there is a whole category devoted to Deep French Kissing. DFK. It is the fairy-tale kink. So Lina knows she is not alone in her desire. But every time she has told a friend that she only wants to be kissed, to be made love to by a man’s mouth on her mouth, the friend laughs, takes on Lina’s mother’s voice, and says, Oh, Lina! As though kissing were the silliest thing. As though Lina were a preteen girl, stuck in a fantasy.
Perhaps, she thinks, it’s because she did not get to do it enough in high school. It was never enough. She wanted one entire night, twelve hours of kissing, but she never got more than a few minutes here and there. Other girls were always making out by the lockers. Holding hands with a boy of the same height and making out like they were never going to stop. Lina’s heart lived between those mouths, mouths that did not belong to her.
She closes her eyes and sees him, his lips, the violent set of his jaw. She used to do this only in the bedroom when the whole house was sleeping, or in the shower, when for seven minutes she could count on holy freedom. But now she finds herself doing it in the car, with Danny in the back, sleeping or not sleeping and calling her, Mama. Mama. And Lina says, What, perfunctorily, and Danny will blink, because he didn’t have anything to say.
Lina doesn’t find it funny, or coincidental, that Ed hates kissing. That he actually won’t do it.
You know, Lina said to a friend at a playground, when you beg someone to kiss you and then he does but it’s against his will and you feel it the whole time, you know the way that feels?
Yeah, the friend said. She was raking her hands through her hair, concentrating on her child, who was climbing the monkey bars.
It can really kill your spirit, Lina said.
Maybe, the friend said, you could go to a therapist. Sometimes having a third party really does the trick.
Lina laughed, because they had already tried that. For Lina, it made things worse. She said to the couples therapist—who was a few years older and Lina couldn’t help wondering when she had last had sex—she said to this woman who was supposed to be impartial, For eleven years he hasn’t French-kissed me, and that’s one of the only things I ask for.
The therapist folded her hands, neatly. She smiled at Lina like Lina was a child and spoke to her very slowly.
Well that’s okay. That’s normal.
Wait, Lina said. It’s normal not to do something small for someone you love, not to kiss her deeply every so often, even when she cries and begs you to? Are you kidding me?
You know, Lina, how you don’t like the feel of the scratchy blanket Ed has on the couch? You know how it scratches you so you don’t like the feel of it? Well Ed doesn’t like to kiss you. Some people don’t like the feel of someone else’s tongue in their mouth. The sensation offends them.
The sensation offends them. Lina repeats this outside in her big yard looking up into the big sky. The sensation offends them.
For a whole week after that session Ed walked around the house smirking and when she looked at him one day and said, Have you thought about all the stuff we talked about in therapy, he said, Yeah, and I don’t have to do