Paul had had a serviceable if not distinguished career as a running back at the U and he could still get that arrogant jock look on his face, the exact same expression juvenile delinquents and loan officers have, the one that asked, So? So even if you’re right, what are you gonna do about it?
We stood there staring at each other, pawing at the ground like two elks deciding whether to smash antlers or walk away. I myself could have gone in for a little antler smashing, but of course we had to be interrupted by a child—Bryan charging into the room, screaming that Davey had told him he was adopted and we weren’t his real parents.
“Of course we’re your real parents,” I said, which gave him enough assurance to charge back out, screaming, “They are too my real parents, Davey!”
“But then again,” I said, noticing a chip in my thumbnail, “I was awfully close to the fellow who installed our air-conditioning—wasn’t that about nine months before Bryan was born?”
Paul shook his head. “Very funny, Audrey. Very funny.”
“Maybe I’m not joking,” I said, and even though I was, I was hoping he might, for a moment, feel a smidgin of the pain I was feeling.
Our marriage from that moment on was a roller coaster, with us most often plunging downward.
I’m embarrassed to say that our sex life continued at its usual brisk pace—no sense in me missing out just because he wasn’t. And I also—this is even more embarrassing—thought that was the one way I knew to hold him. Who was a more sexciting lover than me?
There was a time when the roller coaster seemed stalled at the top of a crest and I thought we were going to make it. It was right around when Nixon was resigning, so all of us were in a good mood. We hadn’t been fighting, and I could tell that he wasn’t doing anything on his lunch hour other than eating lunch. I was being reminded of everything I loved about him, his masculinity—his deep voice and oxlike shoulders, the way he could open a pickle jar and throw one of the boys up in the air (and catch him, too; thankfully he always remembered that part) as effortlessly as if he were throwing a beach ball. He made me feel safe. I remembered how he laughed at my jokes and how every now and then he would allow himself to get silly—doing a Bob Dylan impression while completely naked (there’s a whole different subtext to “If I Had a Hammer” when it’s performed in the nude) or playing crazy monster man for the kids and chasing them until they collapsed with giddy fright.
So Nixon was resigning (Slip went around singing, “Ding, dong, the crook is dead!”) and Paul and I were treating each other with sort of a, I don’t know, tenderness, and then we had to go to his stupid fraternity reunion. Believe me, cutting an old person’s toenails (I used to cut my grandfather’s now and then, so I know whereof I speak—it was like trying to saw through an oak tree with a penknife) is more appealing to me than sitting around listening to a bunch of men reminisce about how many kegs they could go through in one night. I don’t know why Paul wanted me there anyway, but at this point, any invitation he offered was a gift I wasn’t about to refuse.
The reunion was held on a boat that cruised up and down the Mississippi, and I must admit, it started out to be fun; we were at a dinner table with people who did talk about how many kegs they could go through in one night, but then moved on to other topics. Paul, who hated to dance, even got out on the floor a few times and shuffle-footed his way to the music of a corny little combo whose lead singer occasionally brought out a kazoo. I was wearing a thin-strapped, low-cut (natch) black dress and had the gardenia corsage Paul bought me pinned to my hair, and I am being not immodest but factual when I tell you there weren’t many men on that boat who weren’t giving me the hairy eyeball.
“Paul, you’re not going to keep this beautiful creature all to yourself, are you?” asked a fellow Delt, and at Paul’s shrug, I was suddenly in the arms of an energetic banker who fortunately had more rhythm than personality.
I plastered on a smile as we moved effortlessly around the other dancing couples, enjoying my view of Paul, who wandered up to the bar and accepted a drink from the bartender. I saw the smile the blond, round-faced bartender gave him, saw that the smile went past the point of friendliness and into invitation, and I knew right away that this woman and my husband were going to know each other in the biblical sense.
About a year and a half later, when he was in a confessional mode and thought it was somehow therapeutic (for him, certainly not for me) to list every single woman he’d slept with, he referred to her as Betty, the bartender on the boat who was going for her master’s in child psychology.
“Paul,” I said, wondering why my heart still beat when it felt so dead, “I don’t need a bio of your tramps.”
I didn’t need Slip to tell me that tramp was a sexist word—why wasn’t the man who was cheating on his wife called the same thing?—but these women were tramps in that that’s what they were doing to my marriage, tramping on it.
The confessional was the final straw. I had had my face rubbed in Paul’s infidelity—I didn’t have to wallow in it. I asked him for a divorce.
“But Aude,” he said, truly shocked, “I love you.”
I thought I’d call his bluff. “Well, then, would you agree to an open marriage? So I could fool around too?”
The shock only intensified on Paul’s face. “Audrey, that’s sick.”
I had to laugh; laughter was the only glue that was going to hold me together.
“DID YOU KNOW every time he had an affair?” asked Grant after I had told them more about my so-called psychic ability. We had crossed the bridge over to St. Paul and were driving along River Road.
“Well, I sort of knew it was a general pattern, but that’s not ESP—it’s just sort of putting two and two together.”
“Can you tell what’ll happen to Stuart and me? Will we be together always?”
“Grant, please,” said Stuart. “I don’t want to know the future.”
“And I can’t tell it,” I said. “God, Grant, you sound just like Faith. Except she always wants to know if I can see her past.”
“Faith doesn’t like me,” said Grant. “If I’m out in the yard and she’s walking by, she’ll always pretend she doesn’t see me.”
“Is she a homophobe?” asked Stuart.
“No, I don’t think so. Faith’s just kind of a hard nut to crack.”
“That still doesn’t excuse the fact that she blatantly ignores me.”
I’m sure it was fear that was driving Faith’s unfriendliness. You didn’t need any psychic abilities to know that Beau was gay; despite Faith’s efforts to turn him into a macho little athlete, he was still a boy who was going to grow up uninterested in girls. I could guess that the less contact she had with men like Stuart and Grant, the easier it was to pretend they didn’t exist or wouldn’t influence her own son.
“So, tell us more,” said Grant as we passed the stately homes overlooking the river. “Why, for instance, is a woman like you celebrating her birthday alone?”
“Grant!” scolded Stuart. To me he said, “Pay no attention to him, he has no internal censor.”
“Well, look at her,” said Grant. “She looks just like Cher—if Cher had any kind of appetite.”
“Oh, not Cher,” said Stuart. “Someone earthier, more Italian, someone like Sophia.”
“I love you, Stuart,” I said.
Grant’s elbow jabbed my side. “Well, he’s taken. Now come on, it’s your birthday. Why are you driving around St. Paul with a couple of gay guys?”
MY SPLIT from my husband did hurt, but it was a lot more amicable than a lot of divorces (Merit and Eric’s, for example, was scary). Paul quit the law firm, stepping out from under my father’s shadow, which, even though long-distance, more and more began to oppress him. He joined a fellow Delt’s firm and moved into an apartment downtown. Trying to get his college waistline back, he started walking to work and swimming every morning at the Y. He told me he wasn’t seeing anyone “regularly” but was “dating” (translation: g
etting laid). He told me all this as if I were an interested pal, which I was, I guess.
My parents wanted me to move back to Chicago with the boys, which I found insulting: who did they think I was, Leslie Trottman, hotfooting it back to her parents’ open arms and her parents’ money?
I had enough of my parents’ and grandparents’ money right here in my own bank account (thank you, trust funds; thank you, inheritances) and I could be sure that their open arms would close soon enough in a stifling, inescapable choke hold. Besides, Minneapolis was my home. And what was I supposed to do without my book club?
“KARI HAD US OVER one night for supper,” said Stuart, “and we ate leftovers from your meeting. It was strange—all the food was red.”
“She likes to color-coordinate the food to the book when she hosts,” I said, laughing. “We were discussing the book Carrie. All the food had to be the color of blood.”
“There was red bean chili, red cabbage salad,” said Grant, shaking his head, “raspberry pie, and a fluffy pink Jell-O thing.”
“I didn’t think I’d be much of a fan of her color-coordinated meetings,” I said, “but they are interesting. I remember when we read Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Everyone had to bring something chocolate.”
“Oh, we liked those leftovers,” said Grant.
“It’s gotten to be sort of a tradition that we have supper with her the night after she hosts a meeting,” explained Stuart.
I nodded. “I’ve heard her mention that, but it’s Faith’s meetings or mine where the really good themes and food come in.”
“We’re in the phone book,” Grant hinted.
“Sorry, we’re sort of a closed society.”
So closed that I hadn’t gone to the last two meetings . . . and not by choice, either. Oh, sure, Kari and Faith and Merit had all said I was being silly and to get over it and just come, but I knew that if I showed up, the Big Kahuna would freeze me out, if not leave altogether, and I didn’t want to be the one who took the fun out of AHEB. The fun meant too much to me.
“WHAT HAPPENED?” asked Grant as he lit a cigarette for me with the car lighter. “Who’s the Big Kahuna?”
“Well, it’s Slip, of course,” said Stuart.
“Slip? That little tiny thing?”
“Grant, stop for a second and think,” said Stuart. “She’s physically tiny, but how would you describe her personality?”
Grant thought for a moment. “I guess the Big Kahuna is a good enough description.” He exhaled smoke out the window vent. “I remember the first time she came over to the house to introduce herself. She brought along a petition—something about Indian rights, I think—for me to sign.”
“That’s Slip,” I said grudgingly. Boy, did I miss her.
IT STARTED THE WAY most fights do—over something small. Most fights, I’m convinced, start with something trivial; it’s like you get a sliver in your toe and then try and try to work it out with a needle, then a tweezer, then a knife, then finally a backhoe, and by the time you’re done you’ve got gangrene and they have to amputate your foot.
“Flannery told me Dave”—Slip, more than anyone, tried to abide by Davey’s wishes not to be called Davey anymore—“has been . . . well, he’s been getting in trouble in the lunchroom lately. Is he okay?”
She told me this last June, a few days before school was going to let out.
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
Slip pushed a red puff of hair behind her ear. She had given up trying to straighten her hair by herself and now had it done professionally. (It still frizzed up in humidity, but the volume of frizz was down by about 50 percent.)
“Well, she said he’s been getting into fights, calling people names . . .”
I felt that rush of not-quite-nausea, not-quite-vertigo a mother always feels when she finds out her perfect child isn’t so perfect.
“Hmmm,” I said, “I’ll ask him what’s going on. That is, after I horsewhip him.”
I’d thought Bryan would be hardest hit by the divorce. He was the most high-strung of my boys, the one who couldn’t sleep well before a test. I practically had to sedate him the night before he was trying to win a president’s physical fitness patch in the fifth grade—I think he thought he’d be failing his country as well as himself if he didn’t win one. Of course, he did earn the patch, being a good strong athlete, even though he was running on about two minutes of sleep. He was the one who never teased his younger brother the way he himself had been teased. I think what might have helped him was that the parents of his best friend had just split up, so he had an ally who understood his situation exactly.
Michael is my easygoing, tumble-through-life kid, and while I know he was hurt, I also knew he had the sort of personality that would always work toward making him feel better.
But Davey—uh, Dave—well, he was sort of an enigma to me. He’d never seemed to need me like the other two. I’d always sensed that he tolerated rather than wanted my hugs and kisses. Of course, now that he was a teenager, I could no more hug or kiss him than I could an ape. He was almost fourteen, but I’d bet if he went to a bar, he wouldn’t get carded. Paul and I are tall, but Dave is taller and has that kind of V-shaped build—big shoulders, narrow waist—that make it such a pleasure to watch the young Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas on the late show. He has my dark coloring and Paul’s clear blue eyes, and the girls are crazy about him; the brave ones call and ask to speak to him, the shy ones hang up as soon as I answer.
And yet there was something of a bully about him. I know kids are wired to torment their siblings (my brother Lewis loved to comment on my changing body at the dinner table: “not the drumstick—I’d like the breast”), but Davey always seemed to get more enjoyment out of Bryan’s unhappiness than he should have.
“Davey . . . Dave,” I said later that evening when he and I were the only ones in the TV room still conscious (The Tonight Show was a little too sophisticated for Michael and Bryan, who had fallen asleep before Johnny Carson finished his monologue), “I was talking to Slip today, and she mentioned that you’ve been having some trouble in the lunchroom.”
“That stupid Flannery! She doesn’t know what she’s talking about! She is so stupid, Mom, you wouldn’t believe it! She—”
“Shh,” I said, seeing Bryan stir. “You’ll wake up your brothers.”
“Nobody likes her,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “She’s always sticking her ugly little face into everyone’s business and—”
“Davey,” I said, shocked at the vitriol in his voice. “Davey, calm down.”
“How many times do I have to ask you not to call me Davey?” he said, getting off the couch. “Nobody ever listens to me around here!”
“Davey—Dave—where are you going? I’m not done talking to you yet. I want to know what happened.”
“Why don’t you ask Flannery? She seems to know everything anyway.”
He hopped over an ottoman as easily as if it were a shoebox and was out the door before I could say anything, or before I could think of anything to say.
I didn’t get around to talking to anyone at school before it let out for the summer, but I did run into Davey’s homeroom teacher at the grocery store about a month later, and I pushed my cart alongside hers (noticing she was quite a fan of Salisbury steak TV dinners and rocky road ice cream) and asked her about my son.
“Oh, he’s a very popular student,” she said as she tried to cover one of the ice cream containers with a bag of celery. “But occasionally he thinks that his popularity should grant him special favors.”
She set her purse on the pile of the TV dinners. “For instance, he and his friends could hardly believe that we made them clean up after the food fight they started. They wanted to do the crime without serving the punishment.”
“So you . . . so you’re saying it wasn’t that big a deal?”
“Mrs. Forrest, I’ve been volunterring as a lunchroom monitor for as long as I’ve been teaching, and you can see I’
m no spring chicken!” Her laugh was as jarring as a jungle bird’s. “Food fights have always been a part of an eighth-grader’s life and always will be.”
I raced out of my front door when I saw Slip the next morning.
“Slip! I just wanted to tell you—”
“That you’re finally going to run with me? Thanks.”
She stood there resting her hands on her knees, breathing deep. Her sweatshirt had a half moon of sweat ringing the neckline.
Slip had started running about three years ago, and what we’d been sure was a crazy phase had locked into a daily habit, seven days a week. She didn’t miss an opportunity to invite us to join her, although none of us ever RSVPed with an acceptance.
“No, I just wanted to tell you that I spoke to one of Davey’s teachers and she seemed to think that that lunchroom incident was no big deal. Just your average, out-of-control food fight.”
“Food fight?” Slip looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh,” she said, running two fingers under her sweatband. “I think Flannery was talking about more than just a food fight.”
“Well, then, that’s Flannery, isn’t it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The smart part of me said, Watch it, and the reckless part I give far more attention to said, Let it rip.
“It means that Flannery always has been prone to exaggeration, to tell a story in the most dramatic way possible.”
“According to Flan, Davey has been—”
“And she’s always been the neighborhood tattletale.”
Slip stared at me, and even though her eyes were squinted, the anger still blazed through.
“Well, if she’s always been the neighborhood tattletale, then Dave’s always been the neighborhood bully.”
“That is completely ridiculous.”
“No, Audrey, it’s not. Only you’ve always let those boys run wild, so you’re not even aware of half the stuff they do.”
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