The Actor and the Housewife

by Shannon Hale

  Hyrum made another sleepy sound, and Becky put a hand to her chest. These kids were the four chambers of her heart. She loved them so much she couldn’t comprehend it, and she stood there in the dark house for some time, just feeling that inconceivable beauty.

  Then she sat on the couch in the family room, staring at the buttons on the telephone. The lights were off . There was something about the anxious spin in her stomach that reminded her of waiting in line for a roller coaster. She dialed.

  “Hi there,” she said.

  “Hi yourself, you barmy girl. Ring off and I’ll call you back. You’ve had enough of our calls on your phone bill already.”

  The phone clicked. Two seconds later it rang again.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” he asked.

  The sound of his voice stripped away the melancholy, and she curled up on the sofa. She started out by talking movies, slyly moving the topic to lead actors, pointing out which ones were the cutest, which had the most charm, asking his opinion of Pierce Brosnan, Brad Pitt, Dennis Quaid, Tom Cruise.

  “I mean, Harrison Ford, huh?” she said encouragingly. “Han Solo? You have to admit, you’ve given him a long look once or twice in passing.”

  “You’re getting wily somehow, but I’m not following.”

  “Come on, why can’t you be gay?”

  Felix choked. “Gay?”

  “It would make everything so much easier. You’re already at thirty percent. Couldn’t you just hike that up to fifty-one? For me?”

  “No.”

  “Come on! Just a teeny bit gayer.”

  There was a brief silence. “This is about Mike.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s jealous.”

  “In a way.”

  “You’re not coming out to visit.”

  “I can’t.

  “This is rotten.”

  “I know! So you see my desire for your general gayness. A little purple thrown into your wardrobe, a couple of sparkly handbags. I think you could pull it off .”

  “And Celeste?”

  Becky sighed. “Okay, fine, you can’t be gay. It was just a suggestion.”

  They went quiet. She hung on to the receiver, listening to his silence, soaking up all the contact that she could. She was suddenly afraid. Maybe it wasn’t right to be so attached to a friend—any friend, but especially a man. Maybe this was for the best, even though it felt as wrong as swallowing chicken bones. It hurt in her throat, in her belly. She felt guilty that it hurt, that it was a sacrifice at all, and the guilt made the ache sharper.

  When he spoke, his voice was quiet and a little scratchy. “When can we talk again?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Maybe never?”

  “Maybe. I can’t think about it.”

  “I’m going to be a tilting boat,” he said. “I’m going to be taking in a lot of water, and perhaps I’ll keel over or perhaps I’ll sink.”

  “That was quite a metaphor.”

  “I can’t talk about it straight. It hurts.”

  How could it hurt both of them? She’d crossed a huge line, worrying her husband, putting her marriage and family in jeopardy. This breakup was Definitely for the best. But still they hung on in silence. She listened to his breathing.

  Being with Felix, talking to him, having his being in her heart—it was as right as the marrow in her bones. But saying good-bye was right too. How could two opposite things be right?

  “You can’t let him do this,” he said.

  “Mike didn’t do anything. It was my call. I don’t know how to balance this. I don’t know how to be married and have a guy friend. And I won’t risk my marriage in any way. Would you risk Celeste for me?”

  “Of course not. Right, so we won’t talk. It’s not such a to-do as all that. We’ll pretend we never met. We’ll just say good-bye and—wait, don’t ring off yet! Don’t go.”

  “No,” she said, “I won’t.”

  She was dazed by this moment, her whole body aching and prickling and seeming to drift as if in deep water. When had she become more to him than someone to laugh at? Still she hung on to that phone, the receiver warm against her ear.

  She lay there all night. Sometimes she dozed, then Felix would say something that would wake her and make her laugh. Sometimes she’d say something and he’d be gone, then return shortly, having visited the bathroom or gone for a drink of water. Once she asked him to sing, and he did Paul Simon’s “Long, Long Day.” She shut her eyes and moved in and out of consciousness. It was unearthly. She stopped feeling the couch beneath her, stopped being aware of the phone receiver or the hum of the refrigerator in the next room or anything tangible. She felt buoyant.

  Pale strands of light were leaking through the blinds. She realized she was cold and shivered. She must have made a sound because Felix said, “Get a blanket.”

  “I don’t want to get up.”

  “You’re freezing. Get a blanket.”

  “Sam’s spare blankie is on the floor over there. Can you get it for me?”

  He made a noise as though he were reaching. “No, sorry.”

  She hooked it with her toe and reeled it in. It fit over her torso.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “I want to hang up before Mike wakes. I want to start the day clean for him, so he doesn’t have to worry one day more.”

  Felix sniff ed. “Do you want me to repeat my boat metaphor?”

  “No, I got it. I remember every word.”

  “Good.”

  She wanted to say it, the last thing she’d probably ever say to him, to make sure he knew, even if she revealed too much, even if she took too much for granted. She said, “Felix, you were my best friend too.”

  He sighed, a pitiable moan, as if he hurt somewhere, and she knew she’d been right. Best friends, whatever that meant, that’s what was ending.

  There was nothing else. They didn’t need to assure each other how they felt or make any just-call-anytime-and-I’ll-be-here statements. They didn’t need to say good-bye. But they did that much.

  “Good-bye,” Becky said first.

  “Good-bye,” Becky said “Good-bye,” he said.

  They both hung on for a few minutes more. Becky didn’t know which of them hit the hang-up button first.

  She let go of the phone and lay there listening to the dial tone. Sam’s blankie helped. At least she wasn’t shivering anymore. She held it to her face and breathed in the homey smell of fabric softener and that other scent that was Sam, still full of babyness but also the slightly sharper smell of little boy. The scent filled her, made her smile.

  She got up, rocking unsteadily with exhaustion, lurched into her bedroom, and crawled under the covers next to Mike. He rolled over and pulled her in close. He was so warm, so wonderful, she started to shiver again just to feel so good.

  He kissed her head. “I love you,” he said sleepily.

  “I love you too.”

  She drifted, then dreamed. And by some miracle, the power went out, killing the alarm setting, and all the kids slept in, allowing Becky two perfect hours of sleep.

  In which someone offers to commit adultery

  A little hollowness sunk inside Becky’s chest, a tiny wind-filled cave, reminding her of Felix’s absence. It surprised and annoyed her—but it was bearable. Much worse was the heavy-as-mud sorrow, accusing her of almost compromising her marriage for a triviality.

  She’d thought the hardest thing about the split-up would be missing Felix—harboring things she would’ve said, those fraying sentences filling her up to bursting like an attic drawer. But as it turned out, the hardest was not being able to talk about it with Mike.

  He’d say, “Are you okay?”

  And she’d say, “Fine,” because she was determined not to hurt him again, so it was out of the question to say “Not completely. There’s a pinprick in my heart, as if a thread’s tied to it, and Felix is tugging on the other end, reminding me that we
’re apart, and that’s the way it needs to be, but it doesn’t keep me from wanting to let my chin quiver in pathetic gloom.”

  Besides, she didn’t think she should feel so much. Felix was just a friend, she told herself. It hurts to lose friends, but there’s no need to be so dramatic about it.

  She didn’t tell anyone about the breakup. She didn’t want to make a commotion, and on top of that, in the retelling Mike looked like a jealous husband and she like a flirtatious house wife, which she thought was a little unfair to both. But when her mother asked about Felix during their monthly mother-daughters day, Becky couldn’t lie. Not to Mom.

  “How is Felix Callahan doing?” Alice Hyde always referred to him by first and last name. She’d never seen any of his movies. Though Becky’s parents were lifelong thespians, they preferred live theater, preferably of the golden-age variety. “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!” was Alice’s personal theme song. Becky supposed it beat “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.”

  “I don’t know,” Becky said. “I haven’t spoken to him in a while. We’ve decided not to stay in touch.”

  Alice leaned back and hooted a sigh. “Thanks be for that!”

  “Oh. You weren’t a fan?”

  “Honey lamb, you know . . .” They were sitting in Alice’s trim backyard, assaulting a cheese ball with crackers and turning five hundred jigsaw pieces into a Japanese bridge under cherry blossoms. “I don’t think it’s ever a good idea, men and women as friends. It leads to other things.”

  Becky stifled a harrumph. Maybe with other people that was true, but Becky believed she was impervious to the threat of adultery, with Felix or anyone. Even if she was hit on the head and forgot that she was in love with her husband, even if all her moral convictions and sense of basic human decency were surgically removed from her brain, she always had that post-pregnancy body as a very last resort. No chance she’d allow any man to see her naked besides the one who’d gotten her pregnant four times. You broke it, you bought it, baby.

  “What did I miss?” Becky’s older sister, Diana, came onto the patio with her two-year-old, Robert, under one arm. He wafted the powdery scent of freshly changed diaper.

  “Becky and Felix Callahan are splits,” Alice said.

  Diana nodded. “I guess that’s for the best. I’d been worried about you.”

  Becky’s stomach clenched, but she just asked kindly, “You had?” because she’d been working on being more humble.

  “I didn’t want to say anything.” Diana set Robert on the lawn, and he took off after Sam. “I don’t want to be the bossy, self-righteous older sister—”

  “What, give up after all that practice?”

  “I know, I know. But really, being so familiar with another man, I think that crosses a line.”

  “Steve wouldn’t like it, huh?”

  Diana gave an alarmed smile. “Steve? Uh, no. But how would you feel if Mike brought home some woman from work who was his new confidant? If they chatted on the phone every day, laughing with each other?”

  “I think about that, and it would be weird, no question. But I like to think I’d be understanding, if they were both respectful of me.”

  Alice was holding a puzzle piece with some cherry blossoms and scanning the table for a match. There were approximately three hundred potentials. “Maybe it’s different with men. Maybe some women can have friendships like that. But if there’s a line you shouldn’t cross, it’s wiser to stay far away than try to get as close as possible without actually crossing.”

  “We know, Mom,” Becky and Diana said together.

  “Good,” Alice said, cramming two pieces together. “Glad I raised you right.”

  Becky sighed. She wasn’t at all sure anymore about which lines she shouldn’t cross.

  1. Having an affair

  2. Being physical in any way with another man

  3. Sharing intimate secrets with another man

  4. Having a best friend who is a man

  5. Having a close acquaintance who is a man

  6. Being alone with another man

  7. Daydreaming about fictional men

  8. Having any close friends besides Mike, even other women

  9. Being friendly with any adults besides Mike

  10. Talking ever with anyone besides Mike

  Which numbers went too far? All she knew for sure was she loved Mike, and she was going to make sure he knew it.

  As weeks and then months went by, it got easier. Her addiction to hearing Felix’s voice ebbed. When people (besides her sister and mother) inquired about him, her evasive answers became automatic. She avoided his movies, averted her eyes from the grocery checkout magazines splattered with celebrity photos. She wasn’t numb yet, but the missing became dull and more ignorable. Why was this so hard? If her friend Melissa went away, Becky wouldn’t pine like this. She no longer felt mysterious. She felt stupid.

  Fortunately, there was little time to sit idly by, playing the romantic poet and taste-testing her own melancholy. Summer did come, and summer was the season of Becky Jack. The kids were free (free!) from the constraints of homework and school days. And they would go stark raving insane with nothing to do, so the Jack home became a summer camp: summer projects (raising insects, quilting, coin collecting, studying kinds of clouds, family read-a-thons), sports (swimming, rafting, hiking, Little League), field trips (zoo, amusement park, bird preserve, lakes, mountains, rivers, meadows), service projects (neighborhood widow’s yard care, food bank drives), and just good hard play from sunup to sundown.

  Daylight lasted for hours after Mike came home from work, and they played softball in the backyard, went for bike rides to ice cream parlors, organized neighborhood games of kick-the-can. As Mike flew Sam over his head and swooped him down to kick that can, Becky’s heart nearly exploded in joy. There was no question. In Mike vs. Felix, Mike would win every stinking time.

  (Here a quiet thought: Did there have to be a competition?)

  Then school started and with it came that mania of reestablishing schedules, which after the loosey-goosey good times of summer felt both tragic and necessary.

  September did not bloom easily in the Jack home. Polly was diagnosed with asthma aggravated by multiple allergies, requiring the house be completely cleaned of all cats, cat hair and dander, down pillows, and dust. Becky wasn’t too sorry to bid farewell to Mr. Bojangles, the family’s aged and diarrhetic cat, but sending Edgar Poe to a new home was traumatic for all—even Nubbin. And dust was another matter altogether. Becky and dust had maintained an affable truce for many years—she gave a cursory dusting every few weeks and the dust agreed not to draw much notice. Now that luxury was gone. What would she have to start doing next—ironing?

  Then Sam chose this period to dabble in two-year-old tantrums (after all, the other kids were doing it, so why couldn’t he?), and Fiona asserted her twelve-year-old in dependence by abhorring everything about her mother. Sometimes when no one was looking, Becky grabbed Hyrum and overwhelmed him with hugs and kisses just because he was the only one who remained constant. He was still his grumpy, six-year-old self, but at least he was constant.

  Becky and Mike continued with their Ignorance Is Bliss silent agreement, though sometimes Mike revealed that he still thought about the missing Felix too.

  “Do you regret not having a diamond engagement ring?” he asked her one evening, touching her plain gold band.

  “Never. Do I look like a diamond girl to you?”

  “They do say diamonds are a girl’s—”

  He stopped himself, as if realizing halfway through the phrase what thoughts it would dredge up. But the halting made the words even stronger, and they seemed to scream in the pause, “Best friend! Best friend!”

  Becky spoke quickly to kill the discomfort. “Diamonds are a serious waste of cash. Think of the cool playset we could buy for the cost of one little diamond.”

  About six months into the Epoch of the Dull Ache, Becky was reading with Hyrum. He’d wok
en up early and crawled into her bed with the book. She didn’t think what it was about until she was halfway through.

  “But why do you have to go?” asked the squirrel.

  “It’s too cold for me here in the winter,” said the little bird, ruffling her feathers. “I need sun and warm wind under my wings. But I’ll be back soon!”

  The squirrel waved good-bye from his tree branch and shivered under a snowflake. It was going to be a long winter.

  Becky sped through the rest until the little bird returned, then shut the book and instigated a quick wrestling match. While she and Hyrum rolled around, she pushed the book under the bed with her foot so she wouldn’t have to read it again. Then she hurried into the kitchen to pack sack lunches.

  Mike was leaning against the counter, holding his cereal bowl but not eating. He was looking at her in that way, those brown eyes warm and knowing, and she groaned internally, sure he could see right into her soul.

  “What do you think about that book? The one you were just reading to Hyrum.”

  “It’s great. Hey, would you mind swooping by the grocery store on your way home from work? I’ve got no breaks today, and we’re almost out of milk.”

  “Sure. Honey, are you missing—”

  “Oh, and some cottage cheese too, and grapes please. That’s all Sam wants lately, cottage cheese and grapes.” And suddenly she was washing dishes. Hand-washing cereal bowls and water cups when the dishwasher was standing there empty. Duh, Becky. Mike knew her too well—she was clearly being evasive.

  She could feel him watching her. Her back tensed, and she waited for him to accuse her of secretly feeling more grief than she should for just-a-friend. Really, the pain was so minor, she didn’t begrudge it. A simple sacrifice to make for her husband’s happiness. But she was mortified to feel it at all. And under the pain, she couldn’t bury the worry—Felix was out there somewhere. A tick in her mother’s intuition warned that he needed her.

  She heard Mike take a breath—he was going to speak, he was going to air out the silence of the past months, and it was going to be so uncomfortable! But then Fiona and Polly came running in, arguing about clothes. Becky didn’t catch the core argument but told Fiona to let Polly borrow whatever it was, and as Fiona sulked and Polly skipped, she had apparently guessed the problem.