Under the Rainbow

by Celia Laskey

  The night I imagine my wife meeting the lesbian, it would have been crowded—a new-release Friday. Some rom-com with that blond woman who’s in every rom-com these days, a memory-loss plotline combined with a married-in-Vegas plotline. When the lights dim, a woman with long black hair haphazardly gathered into a clip asks my wife if anyone is sitting next to her. My wife says no, and as the lesbian sits down a subtle gust of lavender flies into my wife’s nose. During the previews they guffaw at the same cloying lines. The lesbian tilts her bag of Sour Patch Kids toward my wife. My wife, whose second joy in life after movies is sugar, holds out her hand. She giggles a little as the vaguely human-shaped candies fall into her upturned palm.

  “These make me feel like a teenager,” she says, her tongue prickling as she places one in her mouth. In the dark, she can’t tell what color it is, but it tastes green. A car explodes in the preview, and my wife can’t make out the lesbian’s response. “Come again?” she says.

  “They’re my guilty pleasure,” she repeats, leaning in close to my wife’s ear. “Among other things,” she adds, pulling back and smiling. They make offhand comments to each other throughout the movie, even though my wife usually hates it when people talk in theaters. Is that her mother or her sister? Oh, that’s believable. Do you think she’s had work done? At some point the lesbian reaches over and places a hand on my wife’s thigh. My wife looks at her, lowering her head in an almost imperceptible nod. The lesbian uses a finger to slowly follow the inseam of my wife’s jeans up and down the length of her thigh, and my wife whispers to her, “This makes me feel like a teenager, too.” The lesbian stands up to leave even though the movie is only halfway through, and my wife doesn’t hesitate to follow her.

  Torturous images flash through my mind: my wife leaning down to lick the lesbian’s nipple, a strand of her pale red hair unfurling from behind her ear; my wife raising her head from between her legs to say, “You taste so good,” her chin glistening with wetness; my wife lying sated and smiling beside her, their bodies striped by sunlight. Sometimes I get hard, thinking these things I don’t want to be thinking about. When you find yourself jerking off to your wife and her lesbian lover, there’s not much lower you can go.

  * * *

  • • •

  A FEW WEEKS after the split, we meet up for lunch at the diner on South Street. I inspected it recently, so it’s on my safe list. My wife is almost twenty minutes late, and I can guess why. She sits down and unbuttons her coat, releasing a smell of something fruity and sour. Her hair is in a ponytail and she isn’t wearing any makeup, the freckles she used to hide glowing like flecks of amber mica. Her hair looks slightly greasy, like she hasn’t washed it in a while—certain daily activities become unimportant when you’re so in love and in love with fucking.

  “I was surprised you wanted to meet up,” she says, opening a menu. “You should be mad at me.” She says this guiltily yet admonishingly, like my own emotions are yet another thing I can’t get right.

  “I’m not mad, I’m just . . .” Curious is the word that pops into my head. Extremely, extremely curious. “Confused,” I say instead, following her lead and opening my menu even though I decided I was getting the grilled chicken sandwich fifteen minutes ago. I should be mad. But instead of anger, I feel a kind of sick fascination. How did this person I was with for twenty-five years become someone else?

  “I’m getting the tomato soup and grilled cheese,” she says, closing her menu and looking toward the kitchen. “This place passed, right?”

  “Would we be eating here if it didn’t?”

  “Right.” She smiles and rolls her eyes. “I almost forgot about your golden rule.”

  “It’s a good rule.”

  “Well, I’ve been eating at places without your holiness’s blessing and I haven’t gotten sick yet.”

  “Yet.” It’s strange to picture her out to dinner at places I’ve never been, with a woman I don’t know. I want to ask where they’ve gone just to see if it’s a restaurant that’s failed inspection, but I stop myself.

  “You should branch out, Henry,” she says. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Is that what you’re doing? Branching out?”

  She sighs and picks at a corner of the menu where the plastic has come unglued.

  “Yeah, I should branch out,” I repeat. “Because there’s so many opportunities for a divorced middle-aged man in Big Burr, Kansas.” The restaurant is full of people I’ve known for almost two decades. Christine Peterson scolding her two mini-mes. Pastor Jim counseling a distraught-looking young woman over bowls of soup. Lizzie Calhoun, the manager of the beef plant, squinting at some spreadsheet on her laptop.

  My wife’s phone, facing down in secrecy on the table next to her, makes the double-ding noise that means she has a text message. She picks up the phone and starts typing.

  Don’t say it, I think, but I can’t help myself. “Is that her?”

  “Who?” she says, still looking down at her phone, her thumbs tapping away.

  I wait, unwilling to repeat it.

  She sets the phone down. “Henry, we’ve been over this. If we’re going to have lunch, we’re not going to talk about her.”

  “Friends talk to each other about their . . .” I falter, not knowing which word best suits the situation.

  “I don’t think we’re at that point yet, do you?” I can’t stand how she always ends didactic statements this way, with the do you? It’d be like if Kim Jong-un went around saying, “I don’t think we really need a free press, do you?”

  “How’s work, then?” I say, not caring how work is.

  “This morning I had a phone session with a woman whose parrot stopped talking.” My wife is an animal communicator, what most people call a pet psychic—something I sneered at during our first date. I almost didn’t go out with her again, thinking she was some kind of crazy hippie, but then she “talked” with my dog Willie and what she told me was so specific, I couldn’t discount it. Willie didn’t like it when his tail was touched because the previous owner’s kid used to pull on it; he hated our neighbor because once, when he got through the fence, the neighbor kicked him. I never told her he didn’t like to have his tail touched or that he growled every time he saw our neighbor. My favorite part of the day used to be coming home and hearing all the stories the animals had told her. The lesbian probably gets to hear them now.

  “The parrot had gotten out of its cage and saw its owner having sex with her new boyfriend,” she says. “The parrot was so jealous it decided to give its owner the silent treatment.”

  As she goes on, I try to remember the last time we had sex. It must have been at least six months ago. I didn’t think it meant anything when she started to keep her T-shirt on, when she would get up to go to the bathroom immediately after and the water in the sink would run and run. A lot of married couples stop doing it after a while, and it doesn’t mean one of them is gay.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER LUNCH, I call Peter and leave yet another voice mail. Then I go to the Acceptance Across America website, trying to find a picture of the lesbian. The problem is, I saw mostly her hand grabbing my wife’s ass and not much of her face. She had long black hair, that’s about all I can remember, and none of the women pictured on the website have that. I stop when I see a picture I recognize—Linda Ivingston, the woman who lost her son last year. Her bio says, “Linda recently left her job at the credit union to become Acceptance Across America’s community liaison, serving as a bridge between residents and the task force.” Jesus, are they recruiting everyone now? Linda never struck me as the type to want to hang around with a bunch of gays, but maybe if Peter died I’d be doing crazy things, too.

  I can’t help but read some of the hype on the site. All their pie charts with tiny slivers showing how close-minded we’re supposed to be—all because they conducted a few lousy polls
and cherry-picked some of our tweets? They make it sound like they’re making such great strides, with their listening sessions and trainings, their community events. Don’t they know that people only go for the free food and the giveaways? Maybe my wife goes for the actual events, but I bet she’s the only one.

  She never wanted to move here in the first place. She was pregnant with Peter, and I wanted us to live somewhere more affordable. We settled on Big Burr because it was two towns over from my parents and I wanted to be close to them for the free babysitting. So we packed up our two-bedroom apartment in Kansas City and moved into a three-bedroom house that we bought for $80,000. We were so amazed by the price that we never stopped to wonder if we actually wanted to live in Big Burr. Eventually we got used to it, and getting used to something is usually close enough to liking it.

  The clock reads 5:06 p.m. I drop two ice cubes in a glass and fill it halfway with vodka, then turn on the TV and fire up Netflix. I’m on episode five of the first season of a soap opera-y lesbian TV show and if anyone knew that, I might have to kill them. My wife and I still share an account—the only thing we still share, because she’s either forgotten to remove me or she doesn’t care—and this TV show was in the “recently watched” tab. Out of masochism, I tried an episode and quickly became hooked, then got a separate Netflix account so I could keep bingeing without my wife knowing. Yeah, it hits a little close to home with the whole plotline about Jenny leaving her boyfriend for another woman, but at least her boyfriend finds out before they’ve been married for twenty-five years. How is it possible for something to come out of the blue like that? Don’t they say you’re born that way? Shouldn’t you at least know by puberty? Or, at the very latest, before you vow to spend your entire goddamn life with someone? Or is everyone just walking around with a little bit of gayness incubating inside them, not blossoming until they meet a certain person? I try to picture a penis that’s not mine. Reaching over and touching it. Nope. No erection here.

  I refill my drink and start the next episode. Fucking Jenny. If she really loves her boyfriend like she says, why can’t she just stop? I may not have been perfect, but I never cheated on my wife. Sure, I would flirt with that waitress at Giovanni’s when I would go in for inspections, but that was harmless. And yes, maybe I exchanged some Facebook messages with certain high school flames, but again, harmless. That’s nothing compared to getting oral sex from your lady lover in the house you share with your boyfriend, like Jenny did. Oh, god, did my wife do it in our house when I wasn’t home?

  She used to call me in the afternoon, asking what I wanted for dinner and what time I thought I’d be home. I thought it was sweet, her little check-ins, but now that I think about it, she was probably just making sure I wouldn’t surprise her in the middle of the day. I can see her texting the lesbian with The coast is clear. Meet at my house in 20 mins, followed by the two little ballerina emojis and a pink beating heart. My wife would rush home first, changing into a white mesh see-through bra and matching panties that she’d hidden underneath her winter sweaters in the bottom drawer of her dresser, the kind of lingerie she’d never wear for me. Then she’d sit on the couch with a glass of ice water, flipping through a Food Network magazine and folding the corners of pages for recipes like “Ina’s Lemon Yogurt Cake” and “Baby Strawberry and Honey Pies.” When she saw the lesbian’s car pull into the driveway, she’d pinch her nipples, making them push against the white mesh of her bra, and lean back onto the arm of the couch, bending one leg at the knee, tilting it slightly open. Just enough to see the smallest glimpse of red hair between her thighs.

  Her skin would tingle as the lesbian appeared behind the glass panel of the front door. She’d barely breathe as the lesbian rushed to her, kicking off her shoes and pulling off her clothes and falling gently on top of her. And then . . . and then what? What is it, exactly, that lesbians do? A lot of dry-humping? Finger-banging? A double-sided dildo? Certainly some cunnilingus, but is that the cardinal act? On that TV show, I can never tell where anyone’s hands are or who’s doing what to whom. They’ll be kissing and then someone does something off-screen that makes the other one moan, and after a few seconds of rolling around, abracadabra, a simultaneous orgasm.

  Afterward, my wife would make a Waldorf salad and the lesbian would probably sit at my place at the table. They’d talk about a weekend getaway, maybe to Colorado, where they could anonymously walk down the street holding hands. Where they could eat at a Thai restaurant and stay in a hotel instead of a motel. They’d fantasize about when I’m completely out of the picture. They could leave Kansas for good. They could move to California or Canada or even Europe. Then they’d look at the clock and frown: real life beckoning. My wife would clear their salad plates, and as she washed them in the sink, the lesbian would come up behind her and give her three soft kisses down the nape of her freckled neck.

  I splosh another glug of vodka into my glass, then open the refrigerator. A box of week-old pizza, the slices now rigor mortis. A mystery Tupperware full of something orange and pureed. A shriveled cucumber moldering in the bottom of the vegetable drawer, with a few stray onion skins for company. I deduct twelve points for all my infractions. Then I speed-dial the Chinese take-out place that always passes inspection and order my usual: beef and broccoli with brown rice and an egg roll, my wife’s order of sweet-and-sour chicken glaringly absent. Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rings.

  “Hey, Mr. Plummer,” says Zach, the delivery boy for Pu Pu Hot Pot, handing me the stapled brown paper bag.

  It’s warm on the bottom, soy and MSG wafting out. My vodka-filled stomach percolates. “How’re things at school?” I ask, handing him a twenty, a ridiculous tip for an eight-dollar meal, but what can I say, I’ve got a soft spot for the kid. A few months ago, when I was doing an inspection at Big Burr High, I saw one of the guys from the football team hock a loogie onto Zach’s sandwich, and not exactly covertly. Zach just sat there nodding, like this kind of thing happened to him all the time. Then he threw his food away without getting anything else. When I confronted one of the teachers about it, he shrugged and said, “Boys will be boys.” I never talked to Zach about it, not wanting to embarrass him, but sometimes I wonder if I should.

  “Things are good,” Zach says, in a tone that implies good is a synonym for godawful.

  “How’s your friend doing?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he says, pushing dirty-blond hair out of his eyes. “We’re not exactly friends anymore.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Why not?”

  “It’s a long story, but I convinced her to run away with me, so it’s kind of my fault she’s in a wheelchair now.” His voice catches on the word wheelchair.

  I reach a hand out to pat his shoulder, then realize that might be a little too intimate and instead swat at an imaginary fly. “No, Zach, it’s the person’s fault who was driving the car.”

  He crosses his arms. “Easy for you to say.”

  “I’m sure she doesn’t blame you.”

  “That’s what she says, too. But I blame me.”

  I shift the bag of food to my other hand. “Can I ask you something?”

  He shrugs.

  “Why did you want to run away? Did something . . . happen? At school, maybe?” The paper said it was unclear why they left, if something specific spurred it, but I can’t help but wonder if it was related to what I saw the day I was inspecting the high school cafeteria. Maybe if I had pushed harder, insisted on seeing the principal, the bullying would have eased up and Zach wouldn’t have tried to run away.

  He stares off into the space beyond my shoulder. “Your wife’s having a girls’ night, huh?”

  “What?” I’ve been assuming that Peter and I are the only people who know about my wife and the lesbian. I certainly haven’t told anyone else, other than Gabe, who knows how to keep his mouth shut. I’m hoping my wife hasn’t, either. While she’s clearly not as
hamed of her new identity, she’s never liked gossip and would hate to be at the center of it.

  “Oh, I delivered some food to her and her friend about an hour ago.”

  “Right, yes, a girls’ night,” I say. “That reminds me, Zach. She left her cell phone here and I need to bring it to her, but obviously she can’t text me the address. Do you remember where her friend’s place is?”

  “Sure,” he says. “I think it was the corner of Grubbs and . . .” He presses his lips together as he tries to remember. “Grubbs and Hickory. The blue ranch-style with the red door.”

  I smile. The naïve, beautiful child! “Thanks, Zach. She’ll sure appreciate having her phone. She’s like you teenagers, can’t be separated from it for a minute.”

  I close the door and set the Chinese food on the counter, waiting until Zach backs out of the driveway. Then I grab my keys from the hook and run, hunched over like that’ll prevent me from being seen, to my car. Grubbs and Hickory. That’s right on the edge of town, near the nature preserve. I bet she’s the type to take long weekend walks, watching birds and identifying plants using an app on her phone.

  I drive down my street, admiring the way the streetlamps illuminate the lines of soft white snow on the dark tree branches. If it weren’t for the temperature, it would be a nice night to take a leisurely stroll with someone, holding their hand, stopping intermittently for a kiss. I haven’t touched another human in over a month. Even when my wife was at her coldest, we still kissed hello after work, or she’d scratch the nape of my neck while we watched TV. Sometimes she’d roll over in the middle of the night and scoot her back right up next to me, her spine pressed to my side, and I could feel her breathing in and out, in and out.