Yearn: Tales of Lust and Longing

Jennifer arrived back at the old terrace house in midafternoon. Although the sun was still high, there had been a drop of ten degrees in temperature and the sky had clouded over. When she had first arrived from Sydney, she’d loved the extreme weather changes that could happen in a day in Melbourne—the strange winds, sudden hailstorms, and extreme heat in the summer—then after a while she found herself resenting the unpredictability; somehow it destroyed the rhythm of the seasons. Balancing the box under her arm, she let herself into the house. The darkened, high-ceilinged entry hall was eerily silent and an old raincoat of Toby’s, along with a couple of battered leather jackets, hung off the coatrack.

“Hello!” she yelled out automatically, her voice echoing off the tiled floor. After putting the box beside the door, she pulled her coat off and entered the lounge room. The curtains were still drawn and the air smelt stuffy. She realized she hadn’t opened the curtains since she’d begun work, nor opened the windows. Marveling at her own preoccupation, Jennifer walked across to the French doors that led out to the garden and the studio beyond. She pulled them open and the afternoon breeze pushed into the room with brisk impatience. Jennifer stared out, her eyes drawn to the studio. The temptation to walk out across the grass and lose herself again was overwhelming.

The house had always been Toby’s domain; it had existed before she arrived, it had contained his first marriage, and this still lingered in objects she sometimes found hidden away in closets; abandoned photo albums, an empty jewelry box, an old fur hat, a pair of fairy wings left over from some forgotten fancy dress party. Jennifer had never felt entirely at home despite her efforts to claim territory.

It didn’t help that the walls resounded with Toby’s professional accolades: film posters, framed reviews, photographs of openings with him standing next to various famous actors, framed letters of congratulation from other directors. Even empty, the house shouted in Toby’s loud blustering voice, whereas the studio was always silent, always her sanctuary. If only she could usurp his presence in the house somehow, reclaim some living space. Jennifer reached into the box.

In the bedroom she lay down on top of the coverlet of their double bed. She was still wearing her clothes and it was a deliciously naughty feeling to be lying on the bed in the middle of the afternoon—a sinful indulgence. She held the mask in one hand and, with her legs slightly apart and her head raised on a pillow, she carefully lowered it so that it fitted over her face. She closed her eyes, her eyelashes brushing against the inside clay surface, the scent slightly earthy, the surface cool against her skin. Now she was him, this man she had never met, and it was his long fine hands that traveled down her body and slipped between her legs.

Stroking her thighs, she imagined his lips, his white teeth biting into the back of her neck roughly, the olive-skinned hands gripping the flesh of her thighs, pushing between them, his long fingers reaching down under the elastic of her underpants, finding her wet and engorged, her clit between his fingers as he knew—through instinct, through connectedness—exactly how to touch her, the pulling and rubbing to and fro across the tip, broken only by the occasional finger entering her, testing her wetness, preparing her for his cock, faster and faster, playing out the moment so that he knew exactly when to enter her, to make her groan. Her breath quickened as she imagined his weight now shifting on her, his hands under her buttocks, lifting her up ready to take him, and then in he thrust, hard, with a passion that was equally selfish, strange, and thrilling. She wanted him to lose himself, to only think of himself, and within that her, because they were now one, and she came, a great thunderous bolt, white, blue, red, rippling through her in a violence that eclipsed the separation of her and the rest of humanity, her fingers slippery with herself and all that longing.

Somewhere in the house a door banged shut. It’s the wind, she thought, just the wind. And she left the mask on.

• • •

The next morning Jennifer laid out ten more slabs of clay and modeled ten more faces—all of the man, all with a slight variation in expression from the first mask. It was important to her that each mask was an original and not a replica of the first. It was like she was attempting to encapsulate the full emotional range of the man’s expressions, summoning him in his entirety into her world.

“What is important in a relationship?” she thought to herself. “What is important in lovemaking? What is the essence of a lover—what parts?” These questions floated about her like dandelion seeds, tantalizing, whimsical, and very difficult to catch.

Every day she would go out to the studio, switch off her mobile, put Sibelius on the CD player, and begin a new part of the man that would be complete by the evening, slick with water, the clay now shaped into flesh waiting by the kiln to be fired overnight. And every day she would let the phone ring inside the house, resounding out into the garden until it stopped, only to reverberate in her head afterward. The mental echo sounded suspiciously like guilt.

By the fourth week she had made thirty faces, five penises, forty pairs of hands, and twenty-six nipples. She was just finishing the modeling of the eyebrows on face thirty-one when she was interrupted by the sound of the studio door opening. She looked up. Toby, slim and tanned and dressed in a new Italian leather jacket, stood in the doorway. It took her a second to recognize him.

“Hello. Husband? Remember me?” He smiled wryly but remained in the doorway, both of them momentary strangers.

“Sweetheart!” Her voice sounded false in the sudden silence, but it broke the awkwardness between them. She put down her modeling tool and rushed over to him, pushing her face against his shoulder and armpit, nuzzling down, trying to find his scent, the anchor that would tug them back together. Tentatively he put his arms around her. They hadn’t kissed yet.

“You didn’t answer my calls, my e-mails, my texts.” Now angry, he pushed her away. “Jesus Christ, Jenny, what’s been going on?”

She tried to pull him back into her arms. “Nothing, sweetheart, I just got caught up with work; you know what I’m like.”

“For three whole weeks?”

“Has it been that long?”

“Since we last spoke, yes. Three fucking wee

ks, Jenny. I actually got worried, thought you might have been murdered, putrefying on the kitchen floor or something.”

“Oh baby, that’s sweet. But I was just out here, working on my show.” She opened her arms to indicate the four worktables now covered in white body parts—luminous and macabre. Only now did he become aware of the work, of the crowded presence of it, his gaze sweeping dismissively across the studio before stopping at one table. In seconds he was marching toward it.

“What the fuck is this?” He picked up one of the penises, one of the more tumescent models, and waved it in the air as if it were a baby rattle, or perhaps even a weapon.

“It’s a penis,” Jennifer answered calmly.

“I can see that, but whose? Because it sure as hell isn’t mine. Jenny?”

“I’m not having an affair if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No? Then why else would you not bother to answer my calls?”

“I told you, I’ve been working obsessively. I didn’t even hear the phone.”

Now he looked at her for signs of change, for the mark of another man. She did look different—thinner, but more plumped up around the face, flushed even. She’d even taken some care with her hair. Now he was convinced.

“You’re lying.”

Jennifer held her breath, terrified he might smash the clay penis against the table edge, but instead he put it back down, suddenly looking very tired. It was such a gesture of surrender that her heart went out to him as she wondered whether it was the age difference between them, those fifteen years that made him so distrustful of his own power, his own attractiveness. And she wanted to go over and hold him again, to let him fall against her, capitulated. But she didn’t. Her feet were fastened to the floor and yet she knew that not to move would lead to disaster. The fact that they had yet to kiss began to grow into something more urgent, something more poisonous.