Don't You Forget About Me

by Jancee Dunn

  I just had no interest in contemporary pop culture. The last time I was fully engaged was during my teen and college years in the eighties. After that I seemed to stop, then go backward. Fortunately, during my tenure with Vi, it was easy to forget entirely what decade I was actually living in. Adam and my modest gaggle of friends did not share my more retro interests but tolerated them with good humor, while Vi could have been my more creased twin. Some of my happiest times took place at her capacious house in Connecticut, playing June Christy records on the “hi-fi” and sifting through the piles of jewelry given to her by her three husbands. Her housekeeper would fix us creamed chicken on toast, and we would settle on her mauve floral couch to watch the episodes of Your Show of Shows that Vi had glommed from the Museum of Television and Radio.

  I was perceived among my contemporaries as charmingly eccentric rather than a weirdo, protected as I was by decent looks and the requisite runner’s body of the Upper West Side professional female. It’s simple: If you collected old 78 records for phonographs, as I did, good looks provided a handy upgrade from “nutbag” to “interesting.” Even so, I had never been able to master the careless ease with which the attractive flitted through life. During the few times that I accompanied Adam to events, he was always surrounded by a horseshoe of chortling people. I was content to laugh along. It was the same way with Vi. I was happy to let her sparkle. I didn’t want to be them; I just wanted to be around them.

  My co-workers, used to me begging off, stopped inviting me to their shindigs years ago. It didn’t bother me. After all, it was my doing. Still, it was painful to discover for myself the two saddest words in the English language: “What party?”

  I glanced out my office window. The light was fading and the streets glowed dark blue. I went to the production room to edit Vi’s tape, a painless process that took the usual forty-five minutes, and then shut down the equipment. I called out my “See you tomorrows” as I walked down the hallway, in which every inch of wall was covered with photos of Vi and various grinning guests. As I headed for the subway, a rough wind spiraled the trash. Plastic bags lurched and twirled on the street like urban tumbleweeds. I shivered happily in the crisp September air. Vi had been humming “Autumn in New York” for the past week, and now I was too.

  The #1 train was crowded but I slid into the one remaining seat. I opened my New York Post and glanced at Page Six as a lanky guy with a knapsack wended expertly through the passengers, plying hand-cranked flashlights that ran without batteries. “Better to have and not need than to need and not have,” he announced in a deep voice. No takers. “Don’t want to be running to the battery store when there’s a blackout.” One more time. “How are you gonna get to the battery store anyway if you can’t see where you’re going?” He shrugged and moved to the next car.

  One stop later, a pair of sturdy women, chattering loudly and carrying shopping bags, planted themselves in front of me.

  “So if The Lion King is at eight tomorrow, then we should go to dinner at six,” said the taller one with the pink floral purse. Out-of-towners. “Mike likes to eat early, right?”

  “Yah. We have to go to Red Lobster in Times Square, it’s supposed to be yuge.”

  The corners of my mouth twitched. A stupendous idea! Travel hundreds of miles from the suburbs to the culinary capital of North America so that you can order the Admiral’s Feast and the Fudge Overboard at Red Lobster, just like you do in your hometown!

  The taller woman shifted her bags and looked around in vain for a seat. “What’s going on next week for you?”

  “Well, it’s Kaylin’s fourth, so we thought we’d get her that swing set, like the one you got for Taylor. You know, the orange one.”

  Ah, yes! Those orange and yellow molded plastic swing sets that sit forlornly in every suburban backyard! The ones with the depressing, three-foot slide, right? Hey, question: Have you ever seen a kid playing on one? Ever? But go ahead and buy it for Kaylin, and after she halfheartedly climbs on it once and then goes inside to watch television, it can function as a clown-colored memorial to the last time she played outside!

  The women had stopped chatting, their eyes fixed uneasily on me, and I realized that I was mouthing the words like a crazy person.

  After they exited the train at Times Square, I read in silence until a blond man next to me said loudly, “How are you today?” He was staring past me at a fixed point, smiling, and I realized that he was blind. Was he talking to me? He seemed to be taking a gambit that someone, anyone, would answer.

  The other riders were silent. Oh please, someone speak. He waited, smiling vaguely.

  After ten seconds of eternity his smile wobbled. I couldn’t bear it. I cleared my throat. “I’m doing all right,” I said.

  “Well, good,” he said, loudly enough to make people look up from their papers. “Just getting home from work?”

  “Yes,” I said. Everyone was studiously pretending not to listen to the spontaneous theater.

  I jumped up abruptly as the train slowed. “That’s my stop,” I said overcheerfully, as I made my escape. “Have a good night.”

  I blinked confusedly at the sign above the platform. In my haste to escape, I had gotten off two stops early. Well, it served me right to have to walk the extra ten blocks. Why couldn’t I just talk to the guy? That bit of conversation might have been his only chance for social interaction before retreating to his apartment. Or maybe the people on the train were this man’s way of passing the time, his Page Six. I was still rattled as I climbed the stairs to our third-floor walk-up. I needed to get right into my robe and my Socks to Stay Home In, an actual brand name of socks that my mother gave to me every Christmas. They were the sock equivalent of I-give-up elastic-waist sweatpants—fuzzy and comfortable, in fashion-forward colors like pea green and fuchsia-and-black stripe. Petroleum-based Socks to Stay Home In did not contain a particle of anything found in nature, so during the colder months I kept my feet well away from our fireplace because those highly flammable socks could easily catch fire and the chemical ooze would weld them permanently to my feet.

  Fortunately, Adam rarely noticed what I wore (the trade-off being that he would only comment on a nice outfit if prompted), so my Socks got quite the workout. Tonight: fuchsia and black. Oh yes.

  I always made it home before Adam, who liked to have a post-work wind-down with his realtor cronies at a pub below the office. I planned to flip through the pile of magazines that teetered on the coffee table. Were there any gingersnaps left in the pantry? I had hidden the box from Adam, behind the mugs, but sometimes he found my stash anyway.

  I frowned as I fumbled for my keys. Was that the squeak of shoes on the kitchen floor? Somebody was already home.

  chapter three

  I was slightly miffed to open the door and find Adam standing in the kitchen. He didn’t appear to be doing anything. His arms hung at his sides as he stared at me.

  “Hi,” I said. “What are you doing home?”

  He swallowed. “I have something to tell you.”

  I smiled, but my heart lurched and began to pound. I didn’t like the expression on his face.

  I put my bag down. “Sure.” I hesitated. Come on, I told myself, this is the guy that children climb all over at parties, the one who does funny dances in public places to embarrass me.

  He took a breath. “I can’t do this anymore.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘this’?”

  “I think…” He struggled for composure. “I think we need a break from each other.”

  I sat down on a kitchen chair, slowly, gently.

  “I know this is a shock, and I’m sorry to do it this way, but I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks,” he said in a rush.

  “Can’t we…” I cleared my throat. “Can’t we at least go back to counseling?” Last year we had seen a couples therapist after our marriage hit one of our “rough patches.” It’s not that we had been arguing. We rarely did. We were, as always, respectful
of each other. We had just stopped having sex for a month, which stretched into two, and then four. Sometimes when we were both home we could spend the whole evening not exchanging a word—a situation not helped by Adam’s newfound habit of wearing an iPod in the apartment—but I always felt that we didn’t need meaningless chatter to feel connected.

  He sighed. “All counseling told me was that we’re great friends. I knew that already.”

  “But isn’t that the basis for a good marriage?”

  “I have plenty of friends. I want something more. I want to be excited to see you, Lillian. And I’m not. We barely have sex—”

  “We’ve been together for fifteen years! Show me one married couple that has a ton of sex when they’ve been together for as long as we have.”

  “A ton? How about once a season? We don’t even look at each other anymore. We don’t do anything together on the weekends. Every so often, we make these big plans to improve our relationship, but then we get caught up in work and friends and…and dentist appointments, and nothing ever changes.”

  “But we love each other,” I said dumbly.

  He softened. “It’s not the same as being in love. We’re comfortable around each other, but that’s not enough, at least for me. I’m going to move out. Just to step back.”

  When I was a junior in college, I had been in a car accident, and I felt the same numb panic now that I did before slamming into an embankment. I said the first inane thing that popped into my head. “But we’re seeing Chris and Elaine’s new baby on Saturday.” As if our brunch plans would make Adam change his mind. As if Adam would say, Oh, right. You know what? Never mind about the whole moving-out thing.

  He didn’t answer.

  I just sat there, gaping at him. I tried to talk, but my face didn’t seem to work.

  He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m bored by our life,” he said quietly.

  “I thought you liked our little routines,” I said, trying to keep a querulous note out of my voice. Every Sunday I looked forward to our noon matinée; one week I picked the movie, the next week, he did. Every Tuesday, Adam made pizza because he said that Tuesday was the dullest day of the week.

  He sighed. “It’s more than that.”

  “It’s the kid thing, right?” I said. His face wavered glassily as tears filled my eyes. When we got married right out of college, I made it clear that I was not interested in having children. At the time, he said he loved me so much that he was willing to accept it, but I knew he assumed I would eventually soften. I didn’t.

  “It has more to do with your reasons,” he said. “You never wanted kids because you always say that things are fine the way they are. I’m tired of fine.” His voice rose. “I’m fucking tired of fine, Lillian. It’s like you picked a place and just want to stay there forever—no risk, no change. I’ve never understood what you’re so afraid of. You don’t want to meet anyone new, you aren’t interested in—”

  “What about all the traveling we do?” I broke in. We had recently returned from Palm Springs, where we stayed at a hotel that Vi had told me about, a favorite of Sammy Davis, Jr.

  “We were the youngest people there, as usual, and I think the old guy behind the desk was getting more than I was. Didn’t you notice that I wasn’t having fun? I couldn’t wait to get home. And that trip just ate into our savings once again. We’re in this holding pattern where we’re still renting an apartment, we’re in our mid-thirties and we don’t own a thing, and I’m in the business—” He stopped himself. “But I want to be clear. This isn’t about money, or the sex. This isn’t about kids. And this isn’t about someone else. It’s about us, right now. This is just not working, and the fact that you look so shocked tells me we’re even more disconnected than I thought.”

  The still-rational white space in my mind offered up one last question before it winked out entirely. “So what do we do now?”

  “I’m going to stay at Jason’s, so you can live here for a while. I know the lease is up in a few months, and I’ll pay for my half until then. After that, I’m sure I can find you a cheap rental.” He had planned this. He had been planning this for a while.

  After he left, hardening himself to my frantic pleading, I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling with blank eyes until the cold morning sun slanted across the dresser and crept over the rug. When I could focus my cotton-wrapped mind at all, it returned, over and over, to our first anniversary.

  Good morning, honey. Did you have a nice sleep? Happy anniversary. What’s the traditional gift for one year together? I believe that it’s paper, but I thought this might be nicer. Yes, open it now! You always look so confused when you wake up. It’s very endearing. Do you like it? I know you love bracelets. You are so pretty in the morning. That’s the true test of beauty, you know. Do you believe a year has gone by? It has been the best one of my life. I mean it. Even better than the year I met you.

  Now I am going to make you some anniversary pancakes, and serve them to you in bed, if I can find a tray. With blueberries? I think that can be arranged.

  I can’t stop kissing you.

  chapter four

  When I stepped off the train in Morristown, New Jersey, I saw the slight figure of my father waving cheerily—no, it was more like frantically—as he waited in the car. “Hello, sunshine,” he called gaily, jumping out of the driver’s seat to take my bags and enveloping me in a crushing hug. His pale, slightly watery blue eyes scanned my face intently before he reaffixed his cheerful expression. “We need to fatten you up,” he said heartily, opening the car door for me. He was wearing his usual post-retirement uniform of “dungarees,” black sneakers, and a plaid shirt with the sleeves a precise three folds up his arms.

  When my father was worried, he patted my arm a lot. “Got your room all fixed up,” he declared. Pat pat pat. “There’s a new coffee place in town, we’ll drive by, I know how you like the coffee.” Pat pat pat. As he drove, he snuck looks at me. I knew I had lost too much weight. After Adam left, my regimen had consisted of one bowl of cereal in the morning and another when I returned home from work. A week would pass and I would run out of cereal bowls before the dishwasher was filled, so that I ended up washing the ten bowls—that’s what we received as a wedding present, ten place settings—and starting anew. For some reason, that bare dishwasher depressed me more than anything. Until, that is, Adam called me and haltingly said he wanted a divorce. I had actually believed that he wanted to “step back for a while,” conveniently forgetting that Adam had a ravenous need to be liked, even when he was divorcing someone. So he cut me loose in manageable stages.

  One day rolled blearily into the next. If I slept at all, I woke well before dawn, then sat on the edge of the bed for half an hour until I could commit to standing up. At night, friends came over and clucked over my spotty bathing habits, suggesting therapists and antidepressants and trips upstate. I waited for them to leave so I could resume my dead-eyed television watching. My folks called me every day. I think they took the news even harder than I did. They loved their charming, gregarious son-in-law, who insisted on cooking them elaborate dinners whenever we would visit and readily helped my father with his never-ending landscaping projects.

  It was alarmingly easy to sleepwalk through work, until one afternoon when Vi announced that she could stand it no longer. “I’m giving you some time off,” she said, standing in the door of my office. When I protested that work was helping me, she cut me off. “Lillian, I must tell you frankly that you look like death warmed over. It’s depressing me. Please, take a vacation.”

  I passed a hand wearily over my eyes. “I don’t want to take a vacation.”

  “Well, then, why don’t you stay with your parents? Haven’t they invited you, over and over? Take a break, put your things in storage, and go home to your mother and dad. There’s no shame in picking yourself up and dusting yourself off! You can get an apartment later.” She was in take-charge mode, hands planted on hips. “And don’t you worry
about me, I’ll be just fine. Frank can produce; he has enough experience.”

  She sat nimbly in the chair opposite my desk. Her bright, quick movements reminded me of a sparrow, or a squirrel. “You know, when Morty died, I felt old for the first time in my life,” she said. “I thought that no man would ever want to take me out. I can put myself together, but Rita Hayworth I’m not. I thought that nobody would ever hire me again. And of course I felt guilty that I was alive while Morty was dead. I realized that I was grieving, and there was no way around it, over it, or under it. I just had to face it. You, my girl, are not facing it.”

  She leaned forward. “You know, Lillian, it took years before I discovered some of the simple pleasures of being on my own. But now I can eat chocolate chip cookies in bed at midnight if I want to! I can watch my programs and gab on the telephone all I want. You know how men hate the telephone! I’m not making light of my loss. Or yours. But go home to your parents.” She took off her glasses to dab at her eyes. “Oh, what I would have given to have Mother with me after Morty passed! What a comfort she would have been.”

  She patted my hand. “Go. Frank has been itching for more responsibility, and the show almost runs itself at this point. After ten years, I think you’re entitled to some time off. In fact, let’s call it a sabbatical.”

  And so my father was driving me home to the town in New Jersey where I had grown up. I relaxed instinctively as we passed one nail salon after another, their names familiar friends: Sharyn’s Touch of Class Nail Creations, Fingerz and Toez, Unique Nail Design by Camille, Who Does Your Nails. Every one of them was jammed. New Jerseyans love their nail salons. And their tanning salons: Bronze Age, Life’s A Beach, the unfortunately titled Sun Spot. And, of course, nail-and-tanning salons: Pretty Feet and Hands Plus Tanning II.

  As my father hunched over the steering wheel, he gave me his customary update of our town. He jabbed a finger at a half-built complex on the left. “You know what’s going in there, don’t you?”