One Life With Him

by CD Reiss

  None of that would matter if he was dead. So I’d planned for that eventuality by girding myself, day after day. It would hurt. I would be in the hospital again, crying over him, alone, vulnerable, and scared. A shaft of ice already stabbed my spine whenever I passed Sequoia Hospital, and the knowledge that one day soon, I would go back for the same reason froze me in panic.

  All I did was pray for him. The first six months of our marriage had been one big prayer without end, amen.

  I couldn’t get control of it by running or staying, and he wanted children. Children. I’d lost my father, and it had crushed me. But Jonathan wanted to have children and disappear when the oldest was nine. Or eight. Or who even knew. Left with a hopeless mother who had lost the love of her life. No amount of money could cure that.

  And now, six months later, with his breath in my ear and his sexual dominance reestablished, was anything solved? No. Nothing was. But God damn if I was going to sing him a birthday song about a house because it was the only thing we could agree on.

  He was better than that.

  We were better than that.

  I had a few hours to write him a new song. Not about how much time we had. Not about all our failings, but about what we meant to each other. About how fulfilling and worthwhile those ten years could be, if I stopped squinting into the distance at the end of them.

  Tap tap tap TAP. tap tap tap TAP.

  Chapter 60

  JONATHAN

  Jogging. Herbal tea. Rabbit food. Jesus Christ, how had I survived six months without making my wife beg for mercy? I stood in the driveway, looking at our house from the street, for the hundredth time. It was deep in and behind a wall of roses, but who could see? From what angle? If I fucked her on the back patio, were her shaking tits visible from the public part of the beach? Could they hear her scream next door?

  The low-slung, mid-century glass box was so well-designed and so well-placed that unless we kept the lights on and fucked against the window in a certain part of the bedroom at night, we couldn’t be seen. I’d known that from the second day. But it felt as if we were exposed, and she liked that.

  That morning, before she’d slinked off to the guest house to tap on the practice piano, I’d taken her against that window. Her handprints were still on it, like two frosted starfish. She’d put her hands against the glass when I told her to, ass out, legs spread almost but not quite wide enough. I’d stuck my fingers in her.

  “No one can see you,” I’d said then slapped her ass.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “I want to.”

  I’d caned her hard and thoroughly until my arm ached and she was a groaning mess. It was her way of telling me she trusted me but needed that shade of doubt. It brought her so close to orgasm, I barely had to touch her with my dick before she came.

  I might even learn to like this house.

  “What are you doing in the middle of the street?” said a voice from behind me.

  I didn’t turn around. I knew my sister’s voice better than I knew my mother’s. “You should call before you show up.”

  Margie was hanging half out of the window of her Mercedes and waving for me to get out of her way into the driveway.

  “I’m a newlywed, you know,” I said.

  “We had an appointment.” She pulled in, and I followed on foot, letting the gate close behind me.

  I opened the door for her when she stopped. “We did. I forgot.”

  She got out, yanking her briefcase free of the passenger seat floor. “You shouldn’t have fired your assistant before you were finished with your business.”

  “I’m sick of calendars and commitments.”

  She made a thick sound that could have been interpreted as a harrumph, except that was too passive-aggressive for my sister. If she had something to say, she’d never let a vocal tic replace a well-placed barb. I led her inside.

  “You want something?” I asked, opening the fridge.

  “Nice place,” she said, putting her briefcase on the island bar. “I almost went to the old one. Up in the hills.” She snapped the briefcase open.

  I got her a glass of water with no ice, and she thanked me as if she’d actually asked for it. But she didn’t have to. I knew her at least that well. I opened a bottle of water for myself. I was off Perrier. Carbonation was on the No Intake list.

  “Is it what you expected?” I asked.

  “I expected a house cut in half with masking tape,” she answered, taking papers out and laying them in neat piles on the granite.

  “Did I make it sound that bad?” I had leaned on Margie the most since the surgery. I’d never talked about my emotional life before, but I had to now or I’d break. Margie was my valve, because she was honest and straight, and she knew when to shut the hell up.

  “For two people suffering from post-traumatic stress? I think you’re doing great. Not that I have anything healthy to compare you to.” She clicked a pen and handed it to me. “Sign where I put yellow tabs. Initial on the purple.”

  I started from left to right, signing away about ten years of my life. The business I’d rebuilt for Dad in repayment for silence over Rachel. Twenty-two to thirty-two—over a billion and a quarter in assets in a managed trust. He could have it. Sale of the hotels, except K, where I met Monica. I wasn’t ready to let that go. Another half a billion in real estate to a trust Margie would manage and share. After all the sales, my responsibility would be to do nothing but take care of myself.

  “You think you might get bored?” Margie asked when I was halfway through the stacks.

  “Yes. But I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “There’s this thing I heard about. You might be interested. Could kill some time. Definitely burn through some cash.”

  “Go on.”

  “In Switzerland. They’re really close on an artificial heart.”

  “No.”

  “It’s made from tissue. It doesn’t need an external battery,” she said.

  “No.”

  “They need a lot of money for development, but you have it.”

  “Am I speaking the wrong language? No.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like the Swiss. The cheese offends me.”

  “Nice answer. Got a reason that makes sense?”

  I put down the pen. I knew my mouth was set because I felt the tension in my jaw. “What would be the point? To get my wife’s hopes up when it won’t work? Then I die anyway? The sooner she starts coping with it, the better.”

  She pushed the pen toward me. “Finish up.”

  I got back to signing at the tabs. Full signature for yellow. Initials at purple. “I have the Arts Foundation to run. That’ll keep me busy.”

  “Yeah. And you don’t have to waste your time hoping for anything. You don’t have to build a future.”

  “I’m the one who wants kids.”

  “That’s not a future if you’re dead. That’s called a legacy.”

  I checked the details and flopped the last contract closed. “Just like a lawyer to get hung up on semantics.”

  “Just like a man.” She restacked her papers, clacking them against the counter. “You just want to piss on the world one last time like it’s a fire hydrant you’ll never see again. I don’t blame her for holding out on you.”

  Coming from anyone else, I would have been enraged. But Margie’s love was so unconditional, I didn’t know if she could ever say anything to make me truly angry.

  “You know this is not about legacy,” I said.

  “Not consciously.”

  “It’s about Monica.”

  “The everlasting gift of your DNA? Way to woo a girl.”

  I laughed. I had nothing else for her. I couldn’t even explain myself to myself.

  “It’s nice to see you laugh, little brother. I thought they’d transplanted your sense of humor there for a while.”

  “Are you staying for lunch? I could stand to be i
nsulted for another hour.”

  “Sorry.” She plopped the papers in her briefcase. “Some of us have to work.”

  “I have a thing,” I said. “For the birthday dinner later. I need you and Sheila to help.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me while she snapped the case closed. “A thing?”

  “You’ll like it. It involves jewelry.”

  “I hate jewelry.”

  “You’ll like this.”

  Chapter 61

  MONICA

  I exited the studio in the mid-afternoon, completely unsatisfied with my work. I went into the kitchen and, seeing as Jonathan wasn’t around, reached for his box of pills.

  I didn’t know where I’d picked up the habit of thinking it was all right to count someone’s meds. From living with Gabby, maybe. Jonathan had Laurelin to monitor him, make sure his medication was taken, and help him mind his Ps and Qs. That didn’t stop me from peeking in his little plastic box with the days of the week on it.

  Too many sets and subsets of pills. No wonder he needed a medical professional.

  “Stop it,” I told myself, snapping the box shut.

  I pushed it back into the corner between the toaster and the fridge, but it was too late. The medicines had a smell, and they brought it all back. The inevitable images of him dying in that fucking hospital, his heart breaking right out of his chest. The colors of the hospital lounge carpet, the paint, the cafeteria, the recovery room, all of it flashed before me. I closed my eyes as if that would block out the smells and colors of those weeks.

  “He’s fine,” I said to myself. “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?” Jonathan came in from the patio, slick with sweat and ocean water. He’d been jogging.

  “Stop tracking sand all over the floor. Look at this mess!”

  “Why?” He grabbed my waist and pulled me into him. “Afraid it’ll scratch your back?” He pushed me into the kitchen island and bit my neck at the curve.

  “Don’t leave a mark!” I pushed him away, not that it did anything. “We’re going to Sheila’s and—” I couldn’t finish when he stuck his hand between my legs and yanked my pants down by the crotch. “We just did it,” I groaned. I could have ended the California drought with what flowed between my legs.

  “Define ‘just.’” He unceremoniously pulled up my shirt and grabbed a nipple. My body went on high alert.

  “I’m still sore.”

  “That’s how I like you.”

  I pushed him away for real. “I don’t want to use my safe word for stupid bullshit, Drazen, but back off. I’m making a snack. What do you want?”

  He smiled, taking the hint but not believing me. “You, with butter and jelly.”

  “I have a baguette left from last night.”

  “Fine.” He pulled my shirt down.

  “You should have protein. An egg or something.”

  “There’s enough protein in my morning shake to create an entire mammalian species.”

  I kissed him gently. “You should try the bread with the chimichuri.”

  “Hell, no.” He opened the fridge and leaned into where the condiments hung out. His running pants hung low on his hips. “I see you looking at me,” he said, still rooting around the back.

  “You’ve gained weight.”

  “These are my fat pants.” He smiled, shutting the door and putting the goods on the counter.

  I unscrewed the cap on the hot sauce and ripped off a piece of baguette. “Try.” I dipped the bread into the sauce, but I got as little as possible. I wanted my husband to get over the spicy food thing. I knew it embarrassed him. I held it up. “Come on, I made this with my own hands, with my mother. Think of the generations of women who have perfected it for the sake of this one moment in time.”

  “Not to be dramatic.”

  “I’ll get a samba band in here if you like. Cha cha chadda.” I swung my hips to the rhythm, with my piece of bread out.

  He grabbed my wrist and held it still. I froze. Had I insulted his masculinity or something?

  He locked eyes with me then tore them away. He kissed down the inside of my arm, my wrist, and took the bread in his mouth. He chewed. I waited. He had zero change of expression, and I smiled a little.

  He swallowed. “I feel like my face is burning from the inside.”

  “Well, you look gorgeous.”

  He let my hand go and screwed the top back on the chimichuri. “You’re just seeing a free man.”

  “Oh, right, Margie came today. Did you get rid of everything?”

  “I gave up every hotel from A to J. I kept the one where I met you. I’m sentimental like that.”

  “Did she tell you about the Swiss thing?”

  He froze. I swallowed. Was it more complicated than I thought? Was it too expensive an investment?

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Really?”

  “I—”

  I had an explosion I couldn’t control or foresee. All my pent-up feelings went off like controlled detonation, except the building didn’t collapse but took off like a rocket. I threw my arms around his neck, wrapping my legs around his waist.

  He was thrown back a step catching me. “Jesus, Monica.”

  “Happy birthday, baby.” I kissed him seven times. I couldn’t stop, but then I had to talk. “They’re so close they just need a push. I know it’s a lot of money but it’s worth it when they figure out the rejection thing it needs its own special rejection meds which they’re also developing and then a healthy testsubjectwhois—”

  “Whoa whoa.”

  “Young, with no secondary problems.”

  “Monica.”

  “It’s you. You. Especially if you fund it, then they have to make it you. And it lasts forever. You’ll have to get hit by a bus when you’re a hundred and ten.”

  He loosened his grip until my feet hit the floor. “Do you know what the odds are of it working?”

  “Great!” I stuffed the bread back into the bag. “The odds are great. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. But the odds of the one you have lasting even twenty years are worse, since they’re, like, zero.”

  I felt like a giddy schoolgirl. I wanted to sing and dance, and my smile was totally involuntary. I could barely contain myself. I felt as if the past seven months might be erased, put away in some jar in the china cabinet where we could ogle how cute and silly it all had been.

  Jonathan leaned against the counter, clicking the ice in his water glass and staring into it as if it were a problem. I felt crazy and childish in comparison. I cleared my throat, choking back the relief and trying to find that worry again. But it wouldn’t go away. I was over the moon, and he was still on the earth.

  I breathed deeply, trying to calm down. I was overreacting for sure, but it was his heart, his life, his chest. If he was somber over it, then I could take it down a notch. I moved the bread bag three inches. I touched a pan, shifting it on the stove. I smiled as I turned a knickknack a quarter way around. My mother had given it to me. It said BELIZE.

  “I thought you were going to eat something,” Jonathan said.

  “Fuck it.” I stood in front of him. “I want you for a snack.” I dropped to my knees and yanked down his sweatpants.

  “Okay, Monica—”

  I gave him big eyes from below. “You don't want me to suck your cock?” I felt him harden in my hand.

  “I’d love a blowjob, thank you. I have to take a handful of pills. Then I’m going to shower. So I need you to go upstairs, take your clothes off, and be ready for a quick go before we leave. And when I say ready, I mean mouth open and hands behind your back.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said through a smile.

  “Your legs should be open all the way this time. I mean it. We’re on a tight clock.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have I mentioned how much I love being married to you?”

  “Not today.”

  “Let me
finish up here, and I’ll show you.”

  Chapter 62

  JONATHAN

  I loved being married to Monica—at least, I did once we had reestablished full participation by both parties. The weeks following my visit to the studio, minus the constant medication, had been exactly what I’d wanted from the honeymoon we never had.

  Things would get back to normal soon, whatever that was. I still couldn’t find a taste for the food I used to like. Anything spicy tasted like poison, and I craved sour foods as if I were pregnant. I thought less and less about having a strange piece of meat inside me. My chest didn’t feel as heavy with attention as often. I was in a routine with Laurelin, the medicine, the nutrition, and my odd addiction to jogging which made the team of doctors happy.

  Normal. For somebody.

  But at least I could still make plans for Monica’s body and execute them. If I couldn’t eat the spicy chimichuri, which we apparently had a never-ending supply of, at least I could spoon-feed her while she was on her hands and knees.

  I’d overheard her fielding calls from the people she worked with, putting them off, apologizing. She was an artist, and she’d need to get back to it soon. We still hadn’t talked about how to manage that part of our lives because when we did, I’d have to admit for the first time that I didn’t want her to travel so much. I didn’t know what to do about that.

  The visions of my heart leaving my body persisted. Sometimes it flopped around the floor and squirted blood; sometimes it only came halfway out; and sometimes, when I scratched the itchy scar, my fingers went through the soft tissue and touched the foreign, beating thing, and in response, it detached and slid into my palm.