I was tempted to tell her about Teo, but I didn’t want her to think less of me. “We’re fine.”
“Your letters make it sound like you’re on one long honeymoon.”
My letters were lies, but I couldn’t tell her that. “I think I just wish Paul would acknowledge that there’s real risk with these subs. And that it’s not unpatriotic to want to understand what that risk means for regular people.”
She was quiet for a minute. “You sound unhappy.”
I choked out a laugh. “I am, a little.”
“Do you want to come home?”
Embedded in that question were other questions. Had I married Paul prematurely? Did I want to leave him? And in doing so, was I willing to give up the life I’d built in La Maddalena?
“No,” I said finally. “I want to stay. I just want…”
My voice had trailed off. It’s so telling, isn’t it? That I couldn’t even finish the sentence?
114.
TO ASSUAGE THE GUILTI felt for kissing Teo—twice, I decided I was going to improve my marriage through any and all means necessary.
To start, I asked Francesca to teach me how to make pasta. She showed me how to mix the dough and told me what kind of pasta maker to buy, then walked me through how to work all the attachments, and soon I was cranking out spaghetti and fettucine, malloreddus and lorighittas. I got a little obsessed, and for a while Paul and I were eating nothing but carbs, which maybe wasn’t great for our waistlines but did a lot to improve my mood.
I had also decided that I needed to try a little harder around the house, so I bought a few rugs and some throw pillows, put up some curtains, and framed a Mary Magdalene print, which I hung in the kitchen. While I was at it, I framed a couple of wedding photos, including one of the two of us looking wasted but happy at the Colony House. Laura noticed the changes right away and said that the house was feeling more and more like a home.
My biggest lift was in the bedroom, where I sat Paul down one Sunday afternoon and told him that I had never once—with the exception of the night of the Submarine Birthday Ball—orgasmed while having intercourse with him.
“Never?” he asked, in a state of complete shock.
“Never.”
“What have you been doing this whole time, then?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to sound flippant. “Moaning?”
He looked hurt, so I hurried to offer what reassurances I could. “It’s not that I was faking it. Not in the beginning, anyway. I just didn’t realize what an orgasm was meant to feel like. Because I’d never had one.”
“But now you have?” he confirmed.
“Yes, definitely,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“I was actually thinking… it might help if I showed you.”
“What, like now?”
I drew the bedroom curtains, slipped my shirt over my head and let it drop to the floor, then unhooked my bra. “You got anything better going on?”
“Nope,” he said with a laugh as he reached for one of my breasts and rolled my nipple between his thumb and forefinger.
It felt good, but I nixed it. “No touching.”
“Whatever you say.”
When I had stepped out of my shorts and underwear, I sat on the edge of the mattress and found my clitoris with my fingers. Slowly, I began working it back and forth, like I’d done a hundred times before.
Paul knelt before me in a sort of mesmerized stupor.
