Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  “Andy’s so happy to have people to play with,” Joanne said, glancing out. Then she lowered her voice and said, “If he spent half as much time on sex as pétanque, we’d have a totally different relationship. I told him when we get back, we’re going to do it twice a week.”

  “Twice a week?” Marco said. “That’s nothing!”

  “I think he has a low libido,” Joanne said. “If he were skinnier, he’d have higher drive. There’s this thing called sexual fitness. The reason all these American men are on ED meds is because of obesity.”

  “How often do you blow him?” Marco asked.

  “Oh my God, I love your friend!” Joanne cried to Rebecca.

  “Well?” Marco asked.

  “Maybe once a month.”

  “That’s unconscionable,” Marco said. “I don’t understand straight people. No wonder you all get divorced. Try waking him up with a blow job on a Sunday morning. Todd loves it when I do that.”

  “Did you guys have less sex after you adopted?” Rebecca asked. Marco seldom talked about his sex life, and she often wondered how hot it could be with such a cold person as his lover.

  “It definitely got worse. He didn’t touch me for a long time. Then it got better. But now it’s going to happen all over again.” He looked off above the treetops morosely.

  Benny was whimpering from the trampoline. He’d gotten jostled by Francine. Rebecca went down and scooped him up. On the porch she stuck him on her breast to quiet him, and within a few moments he was nursing happily. She dreaded the day she would have to quiet him without the magic power of the breast.

  “I think part of the problem,” Joanne said, “is that I need to masturbate more. I used to do it all the time, but now it’s just another chore. More shit that I have to do. I tried the other day when you guys were at Newcomb Hollow, but then I started thinking about dinner and made crab cakes instead.”

  “Sometimes I wish Theo were more aggressive,” Rebecca said. Benny was getting sleepy in her arms. She reached over him for another sip of wine. It would help both of them.

  “What do you mean, aggressive?” Joanne asked.

  “Less polite. Like in Revolutionary Road. That scene on the kitchen counter.”

  “Ugh! I hated that scene!” cried Joanne. “Kate Winslet was psychotic! Who would want to fuck such a crazy bitch?”

  “A lot of guys,” said Rebecca. “They don’t marry crazy bitches, but they want to fuck them.”

  “You want the affectionate rape,” Marco said. “You want him to help with the housework and the child care but then be Humphrey Bogart in bed. You can’t get both in the same package. The modern companionate marriage is not good for sex.”

  “I wonder what is,” Joanne said.

  “Adultery,” Rebecca said. Joanne laughed.

  A voice called “Hello?” from inside the house. The screen door slid open, and CC and Gottlieb came out with Harry and Sam, looking miserable. Evidently, they hadn’t patched things up. Joanne offered them beers. CC, usually an eager drinker, said no. Gottlieb took a beer and drank quickly. Sam went off to join the other kids on the trampoline.

  Harry tried to squirm out of CC’s arms to be with his brother, and after clinging to him, she finally let him go. “Gottlieb! If Harry’s going to jump, you have to watch him! And not bullshit-watch him, like before.” Gottlieb took his beer with him. Rebecca hoped they wouldn’t ruin the night with their bad-marriage karma.

  She looked down. Benny had fallen asleep on her breast. She pried him off, lowered her shirt quickly. “So what did the doctor say?” Joanne asked CC.

  “He’s fine,” CC said, sounding a little disappointed. She sat on the wraparound bench next to Rebecca. “I swear to God, Rebecca, when it comes to kids, it’s like Theo has eyes in the back of his head. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t been there.”

  CC had mentioned it earlier, at the house, and Theo had soaked it up. Women were turned on by his facility with children. It was the old cliché about how the best foreplay was the husband doing the dishes. They found him sexy because he wasn’t a narcissist, like the other dads.

  “That’s my husband,” Rebecca said. “Superdad.” She shifted Benny in her arms. Sleep had turned him heavy.

  CC ran her hand down his head. “God, his hair’s so red this summer,” she said.

  “It’s the sun,” Rebecca and Marco said at the same time.

  • • •

  After the coals were fired up, the hot dogs and burgers cooked, the corn boiled, the s’more marshmallows burned, and all the food eaten, Gottlieb took the kids to the indoor porch to play board games. Rebecca figured he was doing penance for the Dyer Pond incident. She deposited Benny, still asleep, on the couch in the indoor porch and went upstairs to the bathroom, wobbling a little as she walked. The wine had caught up with her. Downstairs, the children were playing quietly. “I’ll bring him to you if he wakes up,” Gottlieb said. Rebecca felt CC was being too hard on him. He was responsible, and nothing bad had happened at the pond, after all. In the kitchen she did a dozen dishes so Joanne wouldn’t have as much work to do.

  Back outside, the porch was empty. Todd, Andy, and Marco were playing pétanque in the glow of the fire pit, laughing raucously, but there was no trace of Theo and the women.

  She heard loud laughter from the side of the house. She went down the steps and noticed a wooden gate. The gate was chest-high, and over it she saw Joanne, Theo, and CC all sitting on Adirondack chairs. There was an aura of exclusivity, and then she saw CC kissing Theo on the lips.

  Rebecca tried to push the gate open, but it didn’t give, and she had to reach over and pull the metal latch, which made a loud clacking noise. They glanced up with mild irritation.

  “Why were you kissing my husband?” Rebecca asked more loudly than she had intended to.

  “We were playing Marry, Fuck, Kill, and I was just telling Theo I’d marry him,” CC said. “Because he’d be the best with my kids.”

  Theo looked relaxed and happy. It was as though he enjoyed the company of her friends more than he enjoyed hers.

  “What’s Marry, Fuck, Kill?” she asked.

  “It’s this game where you pick three people,” Joanne said. “You have to marry one, fuck one, and kill one. So if I had, say John Boehner, Marco, and the fat guy from Superbad, I would kill John Boehner because he’s the embodiment of evil, fuck the fat guy from Superbad to get it over with, and marry Marco because he’s smart, cute, and funny.”

  “But he’s gay,” Rebecca said.

  “We’d figure it out.”

  “It’s a game of imagination,” Theo said as though to imply that Rebecca lacked it.

  The women nodded. She felt they viewed her as too literal, too jealous, no fun. Theo called her a fishwife sometimes. She hated this name, called him a misogynist when he said it. But maybe she was. Why was she in a bad mood all the time? Was it the stress of keeping her secret, or was every working mother in a bad mood all the time? You were supposed to be at your best when you were with your spouse, but within a few years, most people were at their worst.

  Rebecca noticed that Joanne was holding something in her hand. A joint. They all had squinty eyes. She was shocked that they had been smoking. How had so much happened in the fifteen minutes she had been gone?

  Theo had never liked pot. He couldn’t have had any. She couldn’t imagine he would drive the car back home to the rental even mildly stoned, not with the kids in the back. You didn’t rescue a toddler from drowning and then drive two children home high.

  “So who did you have, Cees?” she asked CC.

  “Daniel Craig, Theo, and Gottlieb. I fucked Daniel Craig because he’s on my hump island; I married Theo; and I killed Gottlieb, of course.” She had a hard smile. Theo and Joanne must have told her about the hot mom at Dyer Pond. CC had realized it hadn’t just been an accident; it had happened because Gottlieb was talking to a woman. Now CC was bitter as well as stoned.

  “You should
have seen his arms,” Rebecca said, “the way he was holding them when he talked to her.” The wine swirled in her head. She could have fun, too. She wasn’t the party pooper they thought she was. She did an imitation of Gottlieb standing in the pond, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “What?” CC asked.

  “He wanted to make his biceps look bigger. His guns.”

  “For who?” CC asked.

  “That MILF,” Rebecca said.

  “MILF?” CC asked.

  “At Dyer Pond,” Rebecca said. “The one he was talking to when Harry went under. With the bikini and the tattoo. The long, swirling rope tattoo.” CC went pale. Theo shook his head. Rebecca heard crickets.

  “No one said anything about a MILF,” CC said. She stood up abruptly and rushed into the house. Joanne handed Theo the joint and went after CC.

  Rebecca felt like she’d been set up. Theo was stubbing out the joint between his fingers, a skill she’d never known he had. In less than ten seconds, she had managed to enrage three people and cause the extinction of a roach. She thought of the word “buzzkill.”

  But it hadn’t been her fault, not entirely her fault. Theo should have protected her. Or interrupted her to save her, the way they did on Mad About You. That was the kind of thing a husband was supposed to do for his wife. She opened her mouth. “Please don’t speak another word tonight,” Theo said, and brushed past her out the gate.

  Gottlieb

  Gottlieb was waiting for a wave at Newcomb Hollow Beach when a seal rose up next to him. It was raining, but SwellInfo.com had said the waves were chest-high, so he decided to go out. When he told CC, she said fine, as long as he was back by eleven so they could take the boys to Provincetown. It occurred to him as he drove toward the ocean that the good thing about being in a fight with her was the freedom borne out of her rage.

  Rebecca had blabbed at the party that he’d been flirting with a woman at the pond, and for the three days since, CC had been giving him the cold shoulder—making nasty comments, refusing to leave him alone with the boys, and babying Harry. He was furious with Rebecca for mentioning it but thought CC was being ridiculous. If something bad had happened to Harry, it would have been one thing, but he was fine: The blond, middle-aged, very low-key pediatrician at Health Services had said so.

  It was gray and drizzling at the beach, just a few surf lessons at the next sandbar and a couple of guys he’d gotten friendly with—Tom, a retired physical education teacher from Long Island, and Darius, a young doctor who lived in a VW bus with his dog and an assortment of much younger girlfriends. Nobody was talking much.

  Gottlieb paddled, listening to the sound of the waves and looking out at the lines on the clear horizon. It was like art, the way the waves told you when to ride them. This morning they were being kind to him. So much of surfing was chance—you “caught” waves the way you “fell” in love; you could have a great day or a lousy day, and it didn’t always have anything to do with you.

  He saw the set coming at the same time the other guys did and paddled hard for position, feeling his triceps burn. He waited for the first wave to pass and saw that the second was even bigger and cleaner. Tom and Darius took off first, one going left, one right.

  Gottlieb was alone. He popped up easily, making a smooth left-bottom turn and carving up to the top while he dragged his left hand along the face of the rising water. He took two small steps forward on the board. Staying low and in the pocket, he trimmed the wave perfectly, flying. He was aware of Tom, his sole witness, paddling back out and grinning as Gottlieb flew toward the beach.

  He felt hypnotized by the beauty of the experience. He loved being in the water, though it sounded corny when he tried to articulate it to other people. Surfing was the closest thing he had to religion. It was an antidepressant for him; when he was in the water, he lost the dread. After a few more rides, he checked his watch. CC would be pissed if he didn’t go back soon.

  His last wave took him all the way to the sand. It was like riding a trolley and hopping off. He peeled off his leash and wet suit. In the parking lot, it was raining harder. He didn’t care, wet on top of wet. Surfing changed the way you thought about rain. You weren’t afraid of it, like everyone else. Standing on a small square of plywood he had cut for this purpose, he poured a gallon jug of tap water over his head, chest, and back. He washed the sand off his legs, taking extra time with his feet because he hated when the car got sandy, and drove to the rental, cranking T. Rex on the Forester sound system. Better than sex.

  Theo and Rebecca were gone, having taken their kids to the Well-fleet library. On rainy days, the only things to do were go to Provincetown or to the library. Traffic was thick on Route 6 to P-town, everyone with the same plan, thinking the same way.

  He and CC packed up the boys in the car and headed east. They were going to visit the Whydah Pirate Museum, which they did every year, maybe go whale watching if the rain cleared up a little. Somewhere past Truro, his cell phone rang. He looked down and saw “Topper Case.” They had just passed the Wellfleet-Truro town line, and CC was saying something about a restaurant there called Blackfish that she wanted to try.

  He grabbed for his earbuds, which he kept by the gearshift, because CC was a lunatic about being hands-free in the car. He had to fumble to get them in and had only one in when he answered. CC saw the name on the display, too, leaned over, and stuck the other bud in his ear, which he took to be a peace-making gesture.

  “I have Topper Case for you,” Topper’s assistant, Kate, said. Andy and Gottlieb often joked about this. It was called “rolling calls”: the assistants always dialed for their bosses. Sometimes, when Andy called Gottlieb, he would say, “I have Andy Shanahan for you,” then pause before speaking again in the same voice.

  “Great,” Gottlieb said.

  “It’s brilliant,” Topper said.

  “Really?” Gottlieb said, trying not to sound desperate. An agent needed to believe he was more powerful than his client to be motivated enough to work hard for him, but if the client sounded too hard up, the agent wondered whether he was right to believe in him.

  “Really. I loved it. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you. I just got back from Cabo.”

  “No problem,” Gottlieb said.

  “Dark, true, and underdog, and underdog is huge right now. I liked it so much, I sent the pitch to Jed Finger, and he loves it.”

  Jed Finger was a rising comedy actor who had gone from former Saturday Night Live cast member to minor movie star in a few years. With a group of guys he knew from NYU, he performed a mock pop-music video called “Real Men Don’t Mind A Finger” with Kanye West that got twenty-three million hits and catapulted him to international fame. From then on everyone wanted a piece of him. Through a series of well-chosen supporting roles (best friend to Adam Sandler in a dramedy about a divorced dad; wrong guy for Ellen Page in a romantic comedy set in Wasilla; fallen son in a family drama with Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon), he’d displayed a unique ability to walk away with a movie.

  Five-seven, dark, wiry, and Jewish (he was rumored to have gotten an eighties nose job as a teenager), Jed Finger specialized in the angry-but-lovable underdog. Recently, the trades had him attached to a film about the 1930s-era, mob-connected Jewish boxer Bummy Davis, to be written by the screenwriter of Munich. He had trained for months with Angelo Dundee at the famous 5th Street Gym in Miami before the project fell apart. Now he was into Brazilian jiujitsu.

  Gottlieb thought Jed was smarter than most comedians and would be respectful to the Say Uncle script once he and Andy wrote it. Even if he’d gotten beefier since his boxing and martial arts training, he was short enough to be right for the role of a bullied kid who had grown into his rage.

  “He read it in one night,” Topper said, “and called me back to say he is Mikey Slotnick. I sent him the DVD of The Jilt, and he said he thought you were an exciting new talent.”

  “Why would he want to do this?” Gottlieb said. “Wouldn�
��t he have to take a pay cut?”

  “He wants to be associated with highbrow material. He wants his production company, Donkey Punch Films, to produce. His producing partner, Ross Biberman, is very good, very smart. Now I gotta warn you. It’s very hard selling pitches these days, as opposed to full scripts, but with Jed in the room, I think you could get a bidding war.”

  “Who does he want to direct it?” Gottlieb asked.

  “You. He called this a Rocky situation. Said the project won’t work unless you direct.” CC was glancing over at him anxiously, eager for the full report. “Where are you right now?” Topper asked.

  “Andy and I are actually both on vacation in the Cape,” Gottlieb said.

  “He’s my next call. Do you think you guys could be out here by Monday, September thirteenth? You’ll have your first meeting on Tuesday. I can book all your meetings close together, pack the days really full.”

  Gottlieb glanced at CC. “Ah, yeah. That sounds perfect.”

  “Jed wants to get on the phone with you guys,” Topper said. “You can Skype. He wants to tell you how brilliant you are. I’m going to have Kate set it. Congratulations. Now the fun part starts.”

  “So?” CC said after he hung up.

  “Jed Finger wants to attach himself as Mikey, and he thinks I should direct. Topper wants us to fly out and pitch it the week of the thirteenth. We’re going to have a ton of meetings.”

  “The thirteenth?” she said.

  “Yeah. What’s the big deal? Sam’ll be in school. Topper wants to strike while the iron is hot.”

  “Is there any way you could push it like a week later, after Sam’s settled?”

  “He will be settled.” She looked out the window. He couldn’t believe her selfishness. This was the single most exciting thing to happen in his career, and she was asking him to rearrange the days? He felt like a deflated balloon. “Come on, Cees. Jed is hungry. We can’t make him wait.”

  “I know. It’s just—I guess it’s always everything at once.”

  She couldn’t get to him. He was going. If she wanted to be grumpy about it, then let her.