The F Word

by Liza Palmer

  We are quiet.

  “I didn’t know he had a lunch yesterday,” I say. Leah’s face colors and she lets out a little half-laugh.

  “Yeah, at the Lake House. Remember we went there and you hated it so much you signed up for Yelp just so you could leave a bad review?” Leah’s talking faster and faster. “What was it you said?”

  “I said, ‘more like the Fake House.’”

  “That’s right,” she says, laughing. “So funny.” Even I know that’s not my best work.

  “Who was he having lunch with?” I ask.

  “Uh, some woman. Another doctor, I think.”

  “Oh—”

  “Nice enough,” Leah adds. The valet hops out of my car and holds the door open for me.

  “Sorry to skip out on you,” I say, giving her a quick hug.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re right.” I hand the valet his tip and climb into the driver’s seat. As I pull away from the curb, I feel exceedingly angry, which makes sense given the last thirty minutes or so. But my anger has this furious tail on it that I’m having trouble controlling.

  Is it the fear that spending extended periods of time with the likes of Jillian and Elijah will suck actual brain cells out of my head? Or is it Leah’s insinuation that I’ve been too busy to be a proper wife to Adam? Maybe it’s the cool Halloween parties everyone’s going to while I hunker down for another evening of work. It could also be the lingering effects of my day at the fair trapped in a tree, reliving every painful moment of my Sweaty Marble adolescence. Maybe I just feel guilty about how much I liked kissing Ben. I wait at a red light, my jaw tight, my breath becoming ragged.

  The light turns green.

  It’s the lunch. I wasn’t always aware of every item on Adam’s daily schedule. But because of the now-infamous Failed Calendar Project, it strikes me as odd that he’d never mentioned his lunch at the Lake House yesterday. We sat at the dining room table and I sifted through all of the slips of paper, backs of envelopes, and receipts where he’d scribbled the various appointments and events he’d absently shoved into the “Desktop Papers” basket by the microwave. We went through the calendar on his phone and even added the stuff he’d put in the Notes app, as well as the terribly naive scheduling app I’d downloaded for him earlier this year.

  So, what’s the big deal about a perfectly innocent lunch?

  Why didn’t he mention it?

  EVEN IDIOTS CAN BE RIGHT ABOUT FIFTH CHAKRAS

  I’m driving down Arroyo Parkway in a dangerous haze, picking at Adam’s lunch like a hangnail. Come on, it was a last-minute lunch with another doctor. So what? Why am I making such a big deal out of this? I snap out of it just in time to realize the Lake House is right across California Blvd. on South Lake.

  I bet it’s open right now. It’ll be a madhouse because it’s Halloween and a Friday night, but … maybe I can use that chaos to my advantage. Jesus. Stop. Get ahold of yourself, Olivia. Really? This is the hill I’m going to die on? Adam has cheated on me for our entire marriage, but yeah … he doesn’t tell me about one totally normal lunch and all of a sudden I’m Sherlock Fucking Holmes.

  Okay, but why not just put it on the calendar? I get into the turn lane. It’s going to bug me all night, and because I’m being dramatic and no, YOUR fifth chakra is overstimulated, Elijah. I come to a stop as the two cars in front of me make their lefts. The light turns red. I wait. My mind is now empty, save the click-click-click of my turn signal.

  As I zoom down California Blvd., my mind boots back up. Am I even sure he was there with Nicola? I guess that’s what I need to know: Did Leah just admit that she and Gregory stumbled upon my husband having lunch with a woman that wasn’t me? Will they assume she’s just a work friend? Or will they suspect something more salacious? Do they now feel sorry for me? Do they think she’s prettier than me? Have they been talking about it ever since? Is that why she invited Thing One and Thing Two to happy hour? Because she felt awkward and didn’t want to talk about the crumbling state of my marriage? I make a left onto Lake Street.

  The so-called South Lake area is a section of Pasadena loaded with high-end boutiques and restaurants. It’s walkable. It’s adorable. And tonight it’s bustling and alive with people in costumes and packs of trick-or-treating kids as I inch my way toward the Lake House. I practice my speech. I build the backstory. I am ready for anything.

  With absolutely no parking available, I pay way too much for a valet that I’ll need for approximately five minutes. I grab my phone and purse and am immediately boomeranged back into the car. My phone is still plugged into the charger. I crawl back into the car, unplug my phone, and stand back up, collecting myself as best I can. I smile at the valet and begin to walk toward the restaurant.

  “I need your keys,” he says, running after me. I open my hand to reveal my keys and shrug back toward the young man.

  “For Halloween, I’m going as a train wreck, apparently,” I say to the poor man. He nods and offers a bewildered, strained smile. “I won’t be that long.” Another nod. Leave it, Olivia. He’s not going to be sold on whatever forced sanity you’re trying to shove down his throat. “Bye.” In response, the young man just furrows his brow.

  What is it that I think I’m going to find here? I know Adam is cheating. I know Adam has been cheating since the beginning of our marriage. Hell, Nurse Brenda knows Adam has been cheating since the beginning of our marriage. Do I really need proof positive that Gregory and Leah are privy to his cheating as well? Shouldn’t I have figured out by now that, besides that one terrified intern at work, everyone else knows that I am a cuckold? Can women be cuckolds?

  Shit, maybe I just don’t want to go home to a dark house and another night alone.

  I push my way through the front door and the rage in my shoulders hurls it open a lot more energetically than I was expecting. I need to calm down. I take a deep breath as I pose the question I came here to get answered: Do Leah and Gregory know about Nicola, and, if so, do they think I’m a silly fool for allowing my husband to philander so brazenly? I mean, what kind of woman would know about her husband’s affairs and do nothing?

  Indeed.

  I shove past the crowd and find the teenage hostess safely behind a podium, talking on the phone. She’s wearing sequined devil horns. I am just about to say something and she holds up a single, manicured fingernail. I notice her nail has a tiny panda painted on it. Her other nails are all painted to look like bamboo. I look away thinking that there is no way this woman is washing her own dishes. Just then a group of young women dressed in multicolored leotards with the word “Crayola” emblazoned down the front of them crowd inside the restaurant.

  I settle in among the Crayola girls and scan the restaurant. Just like in Escuela, I play the “Guess Who’s on a First Date” game. Which ninety-seven-pound girl is eating her weight in pasta, thinking the best way to ensnare a man is by acting like you’re an effortlessly sexy robot who doesn’t sweat, poop, diet, or nag?

  Hell, I did it.

  Wanting a fresh start, I decided to move to Washington, D.C., once I’d lost all the weight. There was no way I was going to officially become the New Olivia Morten as long as I stayed in my hometown. It was easier to reinvent myself back then, the Internet and social media hadn’t really taken off. A new town offered me something I never thought I could have: a new identity as someone who was never fat.

  I remember riding in the shuttle on the way to the airport and at every turn being amazed at this big new life I could have. I thought receiving male attention for the first time ever or being able to buy clothes off the rack would have the biggest impact on me. Instead, I got emotional at just being able to climb into the backseat of the shuttle bus without a hitch. As I crawled over the outstretched legs of an older businessman, I was overcome.

  Being fat had whittled my freedom away one pound at a time. The bigger I got the safer I played it, until my life became heartbreakingly, unrecognizably small. I’d never no
ticed how much time and energy I spent scanning the horizon for potential difficulties; most times I opted out altogether. My rallying cries of my life as a fat person were always, “Do I have to walk there?” and “Will I stand out?”

  And traveling was always the worst.

  Red faced and winded, was it too far to walk? Would people notice how out of shape I was? Would I have to run through the airport in order to make my flight? Would I be able to fit as I walked down the aisle of the plane? Would I fit in the seat? If I didn’t fit in the seat, could I ask a flight attendant for a seatbelt extender quietly enough, so no one would hear? Would anyone see her handing the seatbelt extender to me? Could I hold off on any bathroom needs so I wouldn’t have to shove myself back in the seat? Could I fit through the door of the airplane bathroom? Once I got to my destination, how much am I missing out on because I’m too fat—sitting out by the pool, riding on the backs of motorcycles, magnificent views from the tops of ancient buildings, tight restaurants with tiny parlor chairs, cobblestone streets and steep hills, etc., etc., etc.…?

  My mind was such a tornado of all the things I’d simply accepted as part of my life, that by the time I boarded that flight for D.C. and sat down comfortably in my seat, I openly cried when the seatbelt clicked easily into place. I told the man next to me I was crying because I was a nervous flyer.

  “We’ll get through this together, then,” he’d said. That was Adam. We’d talked throughout the whole flight. It never occurred to me he was flirting. I thought he was just being nice. I couldn’t believe that this was how people actually lived. Whenever I’d flown before, I never looked directly at anyone. Eyes down. Don’t look at me and if you do, I’ll apologize immediately for taking up too much space.

  On that five-hour flight from LAX to Dulles, emboldened by Adam’s attentions, I became her. This. The New Olivia Morten. When I returned to my seat, I was the Olivia Morten who played competitive tennis in high school, did some catalog modeling on the side, and was homecoming queen. Twice.

  When Adam asked for my phone number just as the flight attendant told us to buckle up for our descent into D.C., I stifled the giggle that bloomed in my chest and coolly said, “Sure.” The freedom of playing this version of Olivia Morten was intoxicating. Her voice was silky and confident. She moved with elegance and allowed men to look at her like she was a piece of priceless art in a museum. Her eyes were never cast down. I naively thought that all I had to do to pull this off was toss my fat history out like trash. I couldn’t make the deal fast enough.

  “One?” The teenage hostess sighs.

  “What?”

  “Is there just one of you this evening?”

  “No. What? No.” The hostess sighs. “I was looking for someone, but—”

  “Oh.” The hostess types something in her tablet and I hear a buzz just behind me. A young couple appears with a flashing red buzzer that tells them their table is ready. “Right this way.” I tuck in once again behind the Crayola girls, when another hostess comes up to the podium with a stack of menus. This hostess’s Halloween costume is simply a little gold halo. I know I should leave. But, I have to know if Leah went back into that happy hour and told her two dipshit friends that she may have just said something she shouldn’t to her poor friend whose husband is cheating on her. The idea of Jillian and Elijah feeling pity for me both enrages and sickens me. It’s one thing to know that Adam is cheating. It’s something else entirely that his infidelity is being gossiped about behind my back by all of my supposed friends.

  “Hi, I’m so sorry. I know it’s super busy, but my boss—you know how bosses can be,” I say.

  “Oh, absolutely,” the hostess says.

  “Well, he wanted me to come down here tonight of all nights.”

  “On Halloween?”

  “I know! Anyway, he had a lunch yesterday and his companion left her purse.”

  “That’s awful!”

  “I know!”

  “What’s the name?” she asks, conspiratorially.

  “It would be under Farrell,” I say, my voice dipping to a whisper.

  “Sure, they come in all the time.”

  “Oh, good. What a relief,” I say. Black speckles crowd the corners of my eyes. The restaurant blurs. My mouth goes bone dry.

  “So is the purse Mrs. Farrell’s … oh wait, she’s a doctor too, so is the purse lady Dr. Farrell?” She scans her tablet, pressing a few buttons as the restaurant mutes and blurs around me.

  “Oh, uh…” I blink back the panic, my fingers curling around her little hostess podium as I pitch a bit forward.

  Everyone knows.

  I feel like I’m going to be sick. I push my way through the crowd and out the door. Leah and Gregory know. I swing wildly between being furious and feeling utterly humiliated. How can I show my face? How long, exactly, have I been the butt of everyone’s joke? How do I act like I don’t know? I hand the young man my now crumpled-up valet ticket.

  “Oh, it’s right here,” he says. He hands me my keys and shakes off the money. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I hear the pain in my voice and it unsettles me. The young man nods and closes the car door behind me. I sit in my car. Robotically put on my seatbelt. Check the mirrors. Put the car in drive and once it’s safe, pull out from the valet. I drive up Lake Street going the exact speed limit. Safely signaling. Stopping at the red light to let the Halloween partiers cross the street. All of them smiling and laughing. Enviably carefree as a night of fun and possibility spreads out in front of them.

  My hands tighten around the steering wheel. I shake my head as my last question thunks and whirls around my brain. How do I act like I don’t know? What I actually mean is, how do I act like I don’t know about this new thing, on top of all the other stuff that I’m already acting like I don’t know about? And it comes to me, I finally understand that saying: the straw that broke the camel’s back. You know, if that last straw is an entire fucking building and the poor camel has been lugging around hundreds upon thousands of pounds of straw for years—just waiting for a time when she could be free of it all.

  “Oh my god,” I say. My voice is tight and strained. “What am I going to do?”

  I’ve been a fool.

  Someone honks behind me and I give a little wave, pressing on the gas pedal. I don’t know what to do and the pain and all the lies are slithering up my throat like a boa constrictor. I feel like if I unleash this hurt, I won’t be able to control it. Whatever is crawling up my throat right now feels so big and vast, I don’t know if I’ll survive it once it gets free. I’m frightened. And desperate. I remember Elijah’s words: “Do you ever feel strangled, Olivia? Choked up?”

  Strangled. Choked up.

  I start humming “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” Quiet, at first. The queasiness rolls through my entire body, so I roll down my window. The balmy October night feels good on my face. I signal. Turn. Make it home. Just make it home. And I hum. Louder. And louder. And LOUDER. AND LOUDER.

  Somewhere along the way I remember that tomorrow is the day Adam and I are supposed to take our Christmas card picture with that fancy photographer Caroline recommended. Something about this soothes me. It’s a plan. It’s the next right thing. I may not know how to fix this, but at least I can control what’s going to happen next. See, Nicola? You may have him for some dumb lunch at the Fake House, but I’ve got him for Christmas cards that go to all of his colleagues, extended family, and the entire fucking world.

  Focus on tomorrow, Olivia. The photo shoot. This can tip the scales back in my favor. Remind Adam of what he has and that what we have is best for both of us. It’s good for business. I mean, I could breezily remind him how much Jacob likes me and how detrimental it would be to his status, not only at the hospital but in our private circles, to be That Guy who got caught cheating.

  Oh my god.

  What am I doing?

  Am I honestly thinking about threatening my husband with social ruin if he d
oesn’t behave? Is this what my marriage has become? A series of ultimatums and threats that paint me as some key-jangling warden. I think back to our wedding and my heart seizes as I rewrite the vows that I so lovingly repeated that day:

  I vow to monitor you like a prison guard until both our spirits break.

  I vow to settle for a loveless marriage just as long as I don’t have to be alone.

  I vow to act like I’m not miserable, too.

  I vow to put on a good face for friends and family, never speaking ill of a marriage that I still need everyone to envy.

  I vow to keep telling myself that this is a phase.

  I vow not to remember how in love we were in the beginning.

  I vow not to notice when your indifference toward me turns to disdain.

  I vow not to notice that I don’t make you laugh anymore.

  I vow not to admit that I am no longer attracted to you either.

  I vow never to admit that marriage is so much harder than I thought it was.

  I vow never to admit that maybe I didn’t know you well enough to be in love with you.

  * * *

  My breathing is quick and shallow as I pull into the driveway of the perfect home I always fantasized I’d live in. Packs of adorable kids dressed up as their heroes pepper the street, disappointed when they see the light on our porch unlit. I stare at it. Frozen. Unlit. No one’s home. My car idles and rumbles beneath me. Minutes pass. More.

  Just walk inside.

  Turn off the car, Olivia.

  Turn off the car and walk inside.

  But, I can’t move.

  I can only stare at our home. The autumnal porchscape. The perfect spiraling topiaries draped with tasteful Halloween decorations. The bright red door. The black shutters. The gray paint color I scouted for months. The address numbers I hung myself. Surely, this is the house of people who have it all figured out.

  I finally will myself to turn off the car. Now get out of the car. Open the door. You don’t even have to grab your purse. You’ll get it later when you’re feeling better. Just open the door and get out. Open it. People are starting to stare. My breathing quickens. Open the door, Olivia. There are close to a thousand people roaming your street, this is not the night to do this. My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the tops of my legs to steady them. Open the door. I finally lift one hand and push it toward the door, curl my fingers around the door handle, and push the door open. My breath won’t catch. Shallow. Shallow. Shallower.