The Truth About Marianne

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

Marianne and Thomas sat drinking coffee in the kitchen. Its white cabinets and pale blue walls made a cheery backdrop for breakfast, especially when the sun splashed through the windows and bathed them with the morning light. Morning was her best time of day now, with the eerie thoughts from her past most distant in those early hours. With a new day, she could always hope that she’d been cured by her last savage m**********n and the obsession would not rekindle. By afternoon, a stray thought or two would creep through the cracks of her resolve and the memories would trickle in again.

Thomas was later than usual leaving for the university where he chaired the department of Social Science and was up for Dean of Students. He was a natural as a university professor and perfectly suited to the added responsibilities he had been given. He understood the politics of higher education and could easily grasp the mood of his student body, keeping up with an ever-changing environment dictated by a moody brew of post-adolescent angst and the naïve idealism of youth. He loved the challenge of the changing years, it gave him energy and inspiration, much the same way his younger wife could energize his thoughts and dreams and s****l energy.

He was often studious, careful and guarded when he considered new proposals, but he was capable, once he finally digested a challenge, of adding his own unique perspective to an idea—one that was routinely respected. His opinions were sought after. His viewpoints were rarely off. It wouldn’t surprise anyone if he ended up becoming the university president a few years down the road.

Thomas thought of his wife as a friend, his best ally. But in the last three weeks, she’d become distant and distracted. He’d caught her brooding, and had several times awakened her from daydreams seeing a scant blush on her cheeks. She quickly changed her mood, forcing her lips into a smile.

He loved a genuine smile. He remembered the day they’d met when he interviewed her for a position in the department. She was young and cautious, carefully brushing a lock of her dark hair off her face. Her hands were sweaty from nerves. But she answered his every question with a professional politeness he liked, and though she stumbled over her prepared speech, he found the baubles endearing. He heard her laugh and fell in love. Coming from a well of emotion deep inside, the sound engulfed him, sending a strangely warm tingle of joy through his body. He hired her without review from his staff, not the usual procedure. She would be his personal assistant—a move that could have been questionable in some eyes. But Marianne buried herself so quickly in several projects that even he had to deliberately draw her out of the cocoon she knit around her. She seemed determined to lose herself. Something dogged her. Although when he finally pressed her on the subject of her past—it was some months later—she insisted that her grim work ethic was simply the nagging sound of her mother’s voice reminding her always to be useful and never in the way.

Her parents were dead, and Thomas expected that there had been lovers in her past. But that was New York, and she took great pains to assure him that that part of her life was over. Thomas looked beyond the vague recounting of her past, almost feeling afraid to probe too deeply lest he stir up something sad or ugly, or find something that would tarnish his picture of her. He preferred to think of his wife as the gentle, hardworking and delicate beauty that she was to him.

It would have been easy to worship this ‘girl from nowhere’, but Thomas understood his motives all too clearly; to worship Marianne could be dangerous. Unfortunately, the longer the pair worked together, the more at ease with him she became, the more she laughed, the more she let the unguarded slip and a tender look in her eye engage him. Their growing affections were hidden still, but very close to the surface. Too much familiarity would not look good, not in a university environment like this one.

After nearly eighteen months as his assistant, Thomas sat her down in his office.

“I’m afraid, Marianne, that my work for you here is complete,” he started what he knew would be a difficult but very necessary conversation.

“It is?” She looked at him in disbelief, while her big round eyes instantly filled with tears. “But you—”

“I’m going to table those projects,” he said—too crisply, he thought later.

“I’ve done something wrong?” Her face twisted miserably.

“No, no, no! You do everything right. Your work has been exemplary. And you’re not being fired, just transferred.”

“I don’t understand.”

He smiled briefly and returned to his point. “There’s an opening in the English Department that I think you’ll neatly fill with your talents.”

“English department? But I like working with you.”

“Just as I enjoy working with you. But you being in this position prevents…” he stopped, feeling a little embarrassed with his next admission, but resolved. “It prevents me from becoming more personal.” He gulped and took a deep nervous breath. “I’d like to see you outside work.”

She looked confused.

“I’d very much like it if we could… date?”

It took some seconds for the thought to register, then her mouth broke into a sheepish grin and her eyes lightened.

“I didn’t know… I mean, I wasn’t sure…” she giggled—not that whole-hearted natural laugh he loved so much, but he loved this youthful sweetness too.

“If you’ve felt something more from me than academic admiration, I’m not surprised. But in my position, things get delicate. It would be better, especially considering the difference in our ages, if we were to separate ourselves at work, and at least to start, keep the dating outside the University.”

“You mean keep it a secret?”

“Not secret, no. I see nothing wrong in a relationship. It’s just one of those delicate matters. You have to be careful.”

“Careful of what?”

Her puzzled expression said it all. This was not the first time he noted a strange response from his assistant when he thought that the social nuances of some matter should be fairly clear to her. It almost felt as if Marianne was not quite operating from the same basic understanding of American social norms. But then maybe she was raised in a different environment, removed from the societal propriety he took for granted. She was an interesting study in contrasts, which was likely what made her so appealing to him on not just a physical but also an intellectual level.

Once Marianne was settled in her new position, her relationship with Thomas became intimate almost immediately. Long dinners began to bristle with s****l energy until one night after pizza and a movie, she invited him to her room and they exploded on each other. She was completely silent throughout the entire process of making love, but her passion spoke quite loudly.

Marianne’s living room was dark so they could hardly see each other. When she turned to him after locking her front door, they seemed to leap out towards each other, kissing, touching, fervidly groping with a wildness that poured from her and delighted Thomas to the point that he was spasmodic from the start. His p***s could hardly fill fast enough to suit her. They were rolling on her bed without giving the matter any thought. This was a first for Thomas, though it was hardly a first for Marianne. He was more a vessel for her to use than a man to love. Although her affection for him was real, the wild uproar was clearly pent-up emotion pouring forth in the silence of the darkened bedroom. Whatever its source, he would not complain.

He tried to whisper in her ear, but she shushed him kindly, with a smile he could just barely see as she hovered over him in the darkness. They made love with nothing but the sound of the slapping, grunting, panting bodies for accompaniment. An odd quiet stirred all around them, like the rushing of the wind, or surf pounding against a beach.

Only afterwards, only after they were fully recovered and the lights went on did she speak or Thomas dare to. This form of lovemaking never changed in a year of courtship and three years of marriage. But Thomas couldn’t complain. She was lavish in her affections. She sucked his organ from limp to engorged many times, she oozed over his body with kisses and lay under him, a squirming confection of saucy sniggering brat who almost begged for a harder, more aggressive f*****g. s*x was wonderful between them, sometimes tender in the beginning, raucous in the middle and full-throated at the finish. But it was never discussed. Not one word that Thomas could remember ever crossed their lips about the nature of the physical passion they shared. Early on, when he’d tried to engage her in a conversation about their s*x life, she’d smile, she might shrug, and she usually walked away leaving him wondering what could be going on inside her head.

“Would you like a cup of coffee to go?” Thomas heard Marianne ask him as she moved around the kitchen.

“No, hon, but I’d love it if you’d sit down so we can talk. I know you have the morning free.”

She stopped and looked at him, suddenly wary of this odd request. But, she did sit, and waited sheepishly like a child for him to begin.

“Is there, Marianne, perhaps, some … some secret s****l fantasy you’re afraid to share with me?”

Her eyes could not recover fast enough from a moment of startled fear. Good God, did he know?

And yet, there was no accusation in the question, even if it was unusually blunt coming from Thomas—more like an interaction he would have with a student. With her hands on the table nursing her coffee cup, she felt the wall of lies that surrounded her beginning to crack.

“Why would you—” she stumbled on the words that crowded into her mind.

He reached out and covered her shaking hand with his, speaking ever so gently. “You think I can’t feel you at night?”

She stared ahead, blankly.

“You play with yourself, masturbate. I don’t recall you doing this before…” He waited for some response.

“I…uh…I’m sorry Thomas. I can stop if it offends you.” She grew increasingly nervous.

“That isn’t my point or my wish. I’m not offended and I don’t want you to stop if you don’t want to. But I don’t remember anything like this in the last four years. I probably wouldn’t say anything if I hadn’t felt some distance between us in these last few weeks that I’ve not felt before. I only want to know what’s bothering you. Something is bothering you, isn’t it?”

Her mind tried very hard to focus on the present and not some scene with Miklos grilling her like a government bureaucrat. It was morning still, and the obsession suddenly charged up like a lion on the prowl. Her body burst with heat. Her thighs quivered, her heart pounded, her head felt thick and fuzzy like she might pass out.

“Marianne,” Thomas voice pulled her back.

“I’m sorry, Thomas, yes…” she looked up at him startled, “there is something terribly the matter with me.” She then sunk back in her chair nearly limp.

“I’m your husband, Marianne. Husbands and wives tell each other secrets. It really is okay.”

She wouldn’t speak for the longest time, then finally turned to him and looked into his placid face. “This is all so unnecessary… such a small thing…”

“Unnecessary? A small thing? What’s necessary or small if it’s bothering you so much? Tell me, Marianne.” His fear of her past seemed to be the least of his worries right now.

“It’s just…well…not easy for me to talk about,” she said.

Thomas looked at her lovingly, as he continued to stroke her hand.

“You see, I had a lover once, long before you—I was very young.” She smiled briefly, nervously. “He did very nasty, very brutal things to me.”

“You were living in New York then?”

She started a bit, looking confused, then answered, “Yes, of course, New York. It was New York…” as if she was trying to convince herself.

“You say brutal, nasty, what does that mean?” Thomas found himself engaged more emotionally than he’d planned on before. But it was obvious that some raw emotion was rising up in Marianne. It had to be addressed.

“You’d call it…you’d call it, I think, sadomasochistic.”

“What? He abused you?”

“No, not exactly, not at all in fact,” she quickly answered. “It was my choice to be with him. I loved him.”

“You loved him because of what he did to you, or in spite of it?” He pressed because he had to get this straight in his mind.

“My loving him grew out of what he gave me in return.”

“And what was that?”

“This is so hard to explain.”

“But explaining it to me is what you need to do,” he said quite firmly.

“Yes, of course, Thomas, I know I need to explain. I will. I’ll find the words.” She didn’t resist, in fact, she seemed to thrive on his doggedness.

“Explain to me, Marianne,” he prompted her again.

“I was bound a lot. I was spanked. I was treated like a child, which I suppose I was at the time.”

“How young were you?”

“I moved into his flat before I was nineteen.”

“But you were treated like a child.”

“I needed to be, I think.” She shrunk back a little and thought deeply as she started to speak again, remembering. “He kept me safe. I needed to be safe because I had no one.” She looked up at Thomas, but her face was still curiously vacant. “But then there was the s*x he demanded and, in that way, I was his servant. He liked to bind me. He often berated me, or made me sleep in the corner. And when he was most vicious, he caused me pain.”

“Why did you put up with that?” He felt a vague anger in him rise.

“Because I loved it, Thomas.” She focused clearly on her husband now. “I did. It’s a torrid rush of pleasure once you cross this boundary. I would keep coming back for more, like I was some drug addict needing a fix.”

How to go on? What could he possibly say? But there were so many unanswered questions.

“Sadomasochism. S&M. As in leather and dungeons and whips and chains and that sort of thing?” he asked.

“Yes, but… no. It was more casual than that. Not part of some scene. Just the way he wanted us to be.” She was thinking of both Miklos and Havel, blending them into one man for the purpose of the confession. Would Thomas need to know any differently?

“So he tied you up, beat you, treated you like… what? Property?”

“Yes, that’s sort of how it was. Yes, property is a good word. He even liked to pass me around.”

“To whom?”

“His friends sometimes. Maybe even an enemy or two,” she recalled.

Thomas’ mind reeled. A desperate churning in his gut quickly followed.

“And this is what you want now?”

“No! It’s just that it’s come back to me after such a long time. I thought I’d settled it when I left.”

“You left him?”

No, it was not exactly leaving him, more like they were separated when they tried to escape. Havel was dead, Miklos probably was too by now.

“Yes, I left him.” She sat up a little, trying to add some confidence to her reply, but her voice was strained, so strained she was afraid that she wasn’t speaking properly. Would he notice the accent she’d learned to cover up through years of practice?

“And you’ve tried to separate yourself from that time?”

“Yes, Thomas, that is what I’ve done and done successfully for so long, but now…” She wanted to cry.

“What’s happened now?”

“Just a few weeks ago, I had the strangest flashback. Like I was reliving everything, and it set me off sexually… I was very s****l then. I don’t know what to do. It’s turned into a terrible obsession. Every day. I thought perhaps if I relived it, recalled all those memories and let myself re-experience those scenes once or twice, that they’d finally be purged from me. But it’s been a dozen times and I get no relief. That dark s*x seems to have a much stronger hold on me than I ever imagined it could.” She tried to smile and grabbed his hand for comfort. “I suppose I’d be a good candidate for therapy.”

“Maybe so.”

“I don’t know how to stop what’s in my mind. Oh, Thomas!” She slipped from the chair and sunk into his lap, laying her head on his shoulder, feeling as young and vulnerable as when Havel held her.