It’s at this moment that I feel the pang – something like sadness – that my marriage is so different from theirs, my wife so different from Karen. Libby is hiding in the bathroom, sulking about some perceived slight that I must have perpetrated, but which I do not yet understand and probably never will.
As if on cue, Libby returns to the table. She wears the expression of a boxer, steeling herself to go one more brutal round.
‘You all right?’ I say.
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Just needed a minute.’
We all eat quietly, and let the moment pass.
Pete finishes his second plate of crabs, dumps the shells into the centre garbage hole.
‘Hey that works pretty good,’ I say. ‘We should cut one of these holes into our kitchen table, Libby.’
My wife smiles wanly.
‘Who needs a hole?’ Pete says. ‘At home, me and Karen just toss them on the floor.’
Soon the conversation breaks into two, the men talking business – about the lay-offs, the prospects for turning the company around – not good, I admit to Pete; and the women talking between themselves. I half listen to them, chatting beside us, murmuring about Florida, and the heat, and the best beaches, and the shells on Sanibel, and shopping in Naples.
The third serving of crab legs soon arrives. As I eat, I watch Libby methodically dispatch her crabs. Is there anything sexier than watching your wife suck meat out of a claw? Things seem normal again, and I almost forgive Libby for the way she acted tonight – almost love her more for it. My fragile, volatile, intelligent wife. It’s just Libby being... Libby, after all.
In the end, we finish three portions each; and when our waitress asks if we’re ready for our fourth plate, we all raise our hands in surrender. ‘No mas,’ I say.
We sponge off with postage-stamp sized towelettes, scented like lemon, and courteously provided ‘for free’ (as the waitress explains graciously when she hands them to us). We decline her offer of pecan pie for dessert, and Pete and I settle the bill. The entire feast costs less than the price of four fish tacos in San Francisco. At least there are some perks when you relocate to the middle of nowhere.
We waddle from the restaurant, sated, and buttery too; and I watch Libby from behind as she and Karen walk in front of me and Pete, past the alligator pond. I compare the two wives’ asses. I must admit, Libby looks damned good, even in a T-shirt and jeans. Karen may be ten years her junior, but my wife is holding up. I wonder if Karen will look this good, when she reaches Libby’s age. I find this observation – sexist and detestable as it is – weirdly heartening. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all.
‘DeeDee?’ calls a woman’s voice from behind us.
Karen turns, and so does Pete, but Libby ignores the voice, and keeps walking. The woman calls again, louder, more insistent. ‘DeeDee? Is that you?’
Footsteps approach from behind, and now there’s no ignoring her. A woman, about my wife’s age – late thirties – but worn, terribly worn, with circles under her eyes, blonde hair turning grey – jogs towards us. Libby keeps walking, leaving me, and Karen, and Pete to face the woman alone.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman says. She’s peering past me, at my wife, who barrels on, ignoring her. ‘DeeDee? Is that you?’ she calls.
Libby has no choice. She turns to the woman. Libby stands a dozen feet away, shoulders squared and ready for confrontation.
‘It is you,’ the woman says. ‘I knew it. I told my husband, “That’s DeeDee.” What in the world are you doing in Florida?’
Uncomfortable silence. Libby regards the woman coldly. I’ve been on the receiving end of that look before: it’s the look you get when you say something stupid to a very smart wife. Like, for example, when you explain that you broke into someone’s house and found cash in the attic. That look.
The stranger must be a masochist, because she doesn’t catch on to what I know is merely Libby’s warning glance. ‘It’s me,’ the woman insists, ‘Kimmy.’
‘I’m sorry... Kimmy,’ Libby says, spitting the name. ‘I don’t know who the hell you are.’
Something clicks, and the woman blushes. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says, quickly. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She looks to me and Pete, and then to Karen. She backs away. Muttering embarrassed apologies, her face crimson, the woman named Kimmy disappears back into the Gator Hut.
‘That was weird,’ I say.
Pete turns to Libby. ‘You know her, Libby?’
‘No,’ Libby says, and turns a venomous gaze to Pete.
Karen says soothingly, ‘Nowadays you can’t be too friendly to strangers. You just don’t know what they’re up to.’
A valiant attempt to make my wife’s behaviour palatable. But an unsuccessful one, we all know.
In the parking lot, we say goodbyes, and we promise to do this again, since it was, Karen insists, ‘so much fun’.
‘Take care,’ Pete says to me. He shakes my hand and looks me in the eye meaningfully, man to man, as if to say, ‘I don’t envy your job... or your home life.’ I turn to Libby, but she’s already gone, twenty yards away, climbing into our car, rushing to escape.
CHAPTER 23
During the ride home, we don’t talk about what happened in the restaurant. Libby sits in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, with that expression that I’ve become so familiar with over the last decade. It means: I may be sitting just inches away from you, but do not dare to speak to me.
So I stay silent as I drive, flipping through the radio channels, trying to find a station at once innocuous and soothing. I settle finally on Christian contemporary music – which fills practically every channel on the dial – and we listen to a song about Jesus and his love for all men. The ride passes quickly enough.
Back in the house, Libby wanders around downstairs, performing her night-time rituals, straightening pillows on the couch, wiping down counters, starting the dishwasher, checking that the sliding doors to the patio are securely locked. She is delaying what inevitably must come next – being alone with me, with nothing left to distract us.
I follow her from room to room, cautiously trailing behind, not wandering too close, waiting for the right moment to speak.
At last, when she is finished straightening and fiddling, and there is no task left undone, I say, quietly: ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
She looks up at me, as if surprised that I’m in the room with her.
‘Talk about what?’
‘About what happened tonight.’
‘No.’
‘Because you were behaving kind of... ’ I stop. I am about to say, ‘strange’, but decide at the last instant the word will provoke her. I say instead, ‘... like you were sad.’
She looks at me. Her eyes are weary, heavy-lidded. Her face is more than sad. It’s despondent.
I say, ‘You were thinking about... him.’ I can’t use Cole’s name in her presence. This was never formally discussed, never explicitly agreed; but one day I noticed I hadn’t spoken it in a very long time, and neither had she; and then every day that passed, it became harder to say it.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘When they started talking about their children, I... ’ She shakes her head. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’
I walk to her, and hug her, wrapping my arms around her protectively. I love this woman, and all her faults, and all her meanness and unkindness to me. She has stayed true to me, despite everything – everything that I have done, everything I have destroyed, everything I have taken from her.
She stands motionless, wooden and stiff in my arms.
‘I love you,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry I dragged you to that dinner. You didn’t really want to go.’
Silence.
‘And I’m sorry I dragged you here. To Florida.’
Still no answer.
‘Come upstairs,’ I say, raising her chin gently, so that she must look at me. ‘Let’s make love.’
She stares at me. Her expression is not one of love; I am certain
of that. It is not even particularly matrimonial. It is an expression familiar to me, though; I have seen it before. I saw it on the faces of men that night I spent in jail. It’s the dull and glassy stare of a prisoner – a look of powerlessness – an expression that says: Do with me as you will.
‘I’m so tired, Jimmy,’ she says, quietly, without much hope.
‘Come,’ I say again – still gently, but with more firmness in my voice. ‘Come upstairs with me.’ I tug her hand.
She lets me lead her up the stairs, to the dark bedroom. I don’t bother shutting the bedroom door, or closing the blinds. Outside the window, past the branches of the oak tree, I see our neighbour’s house across the street. The velociraptor’s attic light is on. What is he doing, on a Wednesday night, in his attic?
‘Come here,’ I say, and gather Libby close. I pull her T-shirt over her head, drop it to the floor. I unfasten her bra, put my hands on her breasts. I kiss her neck, taste her salt, smell her sweat.
She stands there, stiffly, like a patient under a fluorescent light, in a doctor’s examination room.
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask.
‘Nothing,’ she says sullenly.
I unbutton the top of her jeans, work my half-stub of a pinky into the elastic band of her underpants.
‘No,’ she whispers. ‘Please, Jimmy.’
I ignore her. I unzip her jeans, pull them over the hump of her hips, down to her thighs. Her underwear catches and goes with them. Now she’s standing, bound around the thighs by her pants, her pubic hair exposed.
‘Please,’ she says, louder now. She pushes me away.
‘What now?’ I ask, finally losing patience. ‘What now?’
She’s looking past me, to the teak ceiling fan, spinning lazily in the middle of the room.
‘I’m just tired, Jimmy,’ she says, softly. ‘Is that OK? To be tired?’
‘You know, Libby,’ I say, petulantly, ‘it would be nice if, every now and then, you acted like my wife.’
With that, I stomp off to the bathroom, letting the door slam just a bit too loudly. It’s my turn to have some drama.
I let the cold water run into the sink, splash my face. I look at myself in the mirror.
I try to do the impossible – evaluate my own appearance with complete honesty: my hair, coarse and greying at the temple; my nose, not overly large, but nevertheless awry, from some long-forgotten drunken stumble or fistfight.
I am not an ugly man. But neither am I handsome. I possess one of those faces that, when woman try to be charitable say, shows character. But the character it shows depends entirely on the story that goes with it. Long ago – when I first met Libby, when I was a young executive, on my way up, when Libby and I walked into restaurants together, when we came home after a long day and tugged on each other’s pants – this face would have told a story of a businessman, a star on the rise, a young man with talent, and ambition, and the world spread below him, available for his taking.
Now the cragged lines on my face, the disjointed nose, even the missing pinky, tell a different story – a story of wear and waste and attrition. And failure.
The water gurgles into the sink. Outside the bathroom door, I hear sounds. I shut off the sink, and just barely detect the last echo of a telephone ringing in the bedroom. Libby is speaking to someone. I try to listen, to discern the sound of lovers’ whispers, of a secret affair, of a hurried, ‘I have to go’. But I hear only one or two syllable answers, ‘Yes’, or ‘I know’, or ‘Please don’t’, or ‘OK’.
I open the bathroom door, just as Libby is replacing the phone in its cradle on the bureau. This is not the act of a guilty woman. She is not trying to hide the telephone from me, nor the fact that she was speaking into it.
‘Who was that?’ I ask.
She looks at me for a long time before she answers. Finally she says, ‘Our neighbour.’
‘What neighbour?’ I ask, even though I know.
She gestures with her chin, out of the bedroom window, past the gnarled live oak, to the house across the street. When I turn to look, I’m expecting to see the velociraptor in the attic window, with a pair of binoculars, waving to me. But now the attic light is off, and the house is dark.
‘What did he want?’
‘Nothing. He noticed our back gate was open. He closed it for us, when we were at dinner.’
‘That was nice of him,’ I say. ‘Have you spoken to him before?’
‘Not really,’ she says.
‘Not really?’ I repeat. A strange answer to a simple question. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says. And then, suddenly: ‘Come here.’
‘Why?’
‘Come here.’
‘Libby,’ I start, wanting to ask more questions about the neighbour, about what he said on the telephone, about how often he and Libby have spoken... and about why they had spoken.
‘Shhh,’ she says. She walks to where I stand, near the bathroom door. ‘I want to suck your cock.’
She kisses me on the lips, hard, with a desperate craziness, and I feel her fingers expertly unfasten my belt, unzip my fly, pull down my pants.
She kneels on the floor in front of me.
‘Forget it, Libby,’ I say. ‘It’s not necessary.’
‘It is necessary,’ she corrects me. ‘It is very necessary.’
She begins to suck me. Libby gives me blow jobs sometimes, but it is not her favourite activity – something akin to rearranging the cans in the pantry – something she does periodically to keep the house running smoothly, but not something she enjoys.
Tonight is different. I have never seen her like this. She has turned ravenous, cannot get enough of me. She forces me into her mouth, pulls me towards her from behind, deeper. She moans something, but her words are lost.
‘Libby,’ I say, ‘forget it. It’s OK.’ A part of me wants to spurn her, to walk away so that she can’t make everything OK, not so fast, not like this, but then the reptilian part of me, the animal, doesn’t pull away. Not at all.
She lets me slide from her mouth. ‘Is that better?’ she asks. ‘Is that better?’ And then she starts again, more violently. Things are getting a bit weird now. She’s moving her head back and forth, spastically, violently – and her motion is more epileptic than sensual.
I grip the door frame to steady myself. ‘Libby,’ I say. ‘It’s OK. Stop.’
But it feels good. And I don’t want her to stop. Not really.
She releases me from her mouth again. ‘Is this better?’ she says, practically shouting. ‘Is this better?’ And I see that she’s crying – are those tears of sadness? – and she’s looking up – not at me, but at the ceiling fan, which is spinning lazily like a giant lascivious winking eye. ‘Is this better?’ she shouts at the fan.
She sticks me back into her mouth, and pumps her head back and forth, like an automaton. There is nothing loving or kind in what she does to me. There is nothing warm. It’s barely human, barely biological – she is a machine, with gears and pinions and wheels.
But that doesn’t stop me. I grab her head from behind, gently at first, then with something approaching violence, and I finish in her mouth, pumping, and then I hold her head in place, and I see that she’s looking up with vacant eyes, her gaze fixed on the ceiling fan. After a moment, I release her. She stays on her knees, and wipes the tears from her eyes. Then she crawls onto the bed and lies down. ‘Is that what you want?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, in a hoarse whisper.
‘Then you have what you want.’ She pulls the pillow over her face.
I look across the street, at our neighbour’s house, and the lights are off, and I see no one in the window.
CHAPTER 24
That night, I see Cole again, but this time, my dream is different.
I am in a house. I walk up a flight of stairs. Moonlight casts the way, spilling through banister slats at my feet. At the top landing, there’s a hallway. I hear the sound of a boy,
laughing, splashing water. I follow the sound. My feet are silent in the carpeted hall. Why am I sneaking? Darkness, all around. At the end of the hall, I come to a closed door. I can see a thin line of yellow light beneath it. Behind it, the sound of a little boy’s laughter.
I open the door. Cole is in the bathtub. He’s alive – sitting and smiling and playing with a red plastic boat. I must surprise him. He looks up at me, stops playing.
His face changes to confusion. Then fear. He doesn’t recognize me. Who is this man standing in the door?
He opens his mouth. He screams.
I wake, my own scream strangled in my throat.
Libby is sleeping beside me, breathing slowly, a dark shadow barely moving on the bed. The branches of the live oak tap the window pane.
‘Libby,’ I whisper.
No answer.
‘Libby?’ Her breathing stutters, then starts again. She hasn’t moved, but I know she’s awake now. Listening.
‘I’m sorry, Libby,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. Everything that I’ve lost for us.’
She is silent. Though her body is turned from me, I somehow can picture her. I somehow know exactly how she appears. She’s awake. Her eyes are open. She is staring into the dark.
I want to say more. I want to tell her about the dream – how my own son did not recognize me. And how, sometimes – like tonight – I don’t recognize myself. How I can’t stop being a monster.
But these words don’t come. I think them. I hear them in my mind. I desire to speak them aloud. But nothing comes. After a few minutes of sitting upright, in dumbstruck silence, I lay my head down beside my wife. I listen to her breathe.
And soon I sleep.
CHAPTER 25
It’s Thursday morning, the day after the lay-offs.
When I arrive at Tao, the parking lot is deserted – just a few cars, no sign of human activity. The only thing the scene lacks is a dusty wind and a tumbleweed rolling past my feet.
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