Goodbye To All That

by Judith Arnold

  “Pretty much every night. I’m a regular,” she joked.

  Gordon knew her well enough to sense that, despite her playful words, she was in a glum mood. He could have tugged down her nightgown, watched her nipples harden at their sudden exposure to air and claimed that as proof she was aroused. But he spared her, just running his hand up and down her arm. “Any chance I’m gonna get lucky tonight?”

  No. “Depends on your definition of lucky,” she said tactfully, hating that she couldn’t muster even a smidgen of romantic interest for him at the moment. “It’s been a long day.”

  “This weekend it’ll get longer,” he noted. She thought he was referring to her mother’s impending night on the town, which would surely keep Jill fussing and fretting. But then he said, “Daylight Savings ends.”

  She groaned. All the clocks—in the microwave, in the oven, in the DVR—had to be reset. One more chore she didn’t need.

  “Do we really have to take the twins for a week?” he asked.

  “You don’t want them here?”

  “For an afternoon, sure. For a whole week? They’re five years old.”

  “Six,” she said.

  “I still can’t tell them apart.”

  “I’ll put a braid in Mackenzie’s hair.”

  “You’re going to have to drive them back and forth to school,” he went on. “Their bus isn’t going to cross town lines to come and pick them up.”

  “So I’ll drive them. I’m driving Abbie and Noah all over the state, anyway. What’s two more passengers?”

  “Your brother is probably spending a fortune on this trip to Nevis. I don’t see why he can’t spend a little more and hire a baby-sitter.”

  “They’re my nieces,” Jill said, trying to ignore the logic in Gordon’s words. “Why should they stay with a stranger? I don’t mind, really.” I do mind, she thought. But how could she have said no to Doug? Whether or not he knew it, his marriage might be in jeopardy. What did it mean when your wife traveled two hundred miles to get her hair cut by your sister’s boyfriend? Melissa was right. It was weird.

  Mackenzie and Madison had enough instability in their lives with their grandparents contemplating divorce. If taking them for a week enabled Doug to fly off to the Caribbean with Brooke and get their marriage back on track, Jill would do what she could to make that happen.

  “Here’s what I think,” Gordon said. “Doug and Brooke should stay home with their kids and give us their tickets to Nevis.”

  Gordon had never expressed a desire to vacation in Nevis before. As for Jill . . . If she were taking an exotic vacation, it would be in France. Not that she’d ever mentioned that wish to him. Her dream of France was a private thing, personal, fragile. If she expressed it aloud, Gordon would remind her that given his salary as a public high school teacher, given that they had to save for the kids’ college, given that the damned Old Rockford Inn was ripping them off to the tune of three extra dollars a person for Abbie’s bat mitzvah, and who knew how much catering would cost by the time Noah’s bar mitzvah came along, and given that France was full of frogs, a trip there wasn’t really feasible.

  Or else he’d say, “Fine, book two tickets and a hotel room with a view of the Eiffel Tower,” and she’d have to explain that she wanted to go by herself. Even if she hadn’t spoken French since her sophomore year of college. Even if she wasn’t sure where her passport was, let alone whether it had expired. When was the last time she’d used it? Their honeymoon in Bermuda?

  If Gordon wanted to go somewhere with her, they could go back to Bermuda. But France was for her alone—if she ever found the guts to make that dream come true.

  “Nevis is too glamorous for me,” she said, although she had no idea how glamorous it was. “The girls will have fun here. Abbie will love having more females in the house.”

  “Noah and I will be grossly outnumbered. We might have to move out when the twins move in. And take in a lot of Celtics home games to restore our manhood.”

  “Fine.” If they wanted to flee a house full of Bendel women, let them go. Jill wasn’t going to waste energy worrying about an eventuality that was months away. She had more immediate concerns. “Melissa called me today from a bathroom,” she said.

  “Do I want to hear this?”

  “She’s in love with an apartment she can’t afford. She needs a loan.”

  Gordon groaned. “Don’t tell me you said yes to her, too.”

  “She didn’t ask. She said she wanted to ask Dad, except that he and Mom are embroiled in their marital crisis. And she wanted to ask Doug, except that he and Brooke . . .” Jill drifted off, unsure she ought to share the whole bizarre situation with Gordon. He already thought Doug was a pain in the ass. Doug was a pain in the ass. Her whole family were pains in the ass.

  “He and Brooke what?”

  “Well, it’s just that Melissa told me Brooke went to Manhattan to get her hair done.”

  He didn’t seem concerned. “Brooke has too much time on her hands.”

  “Not just Manhattan.” Jill propped herself up so she could look at Gordon. “She had her hair done by Luc. Melissa’s Luc.”

  Even this didn’t perturb him. “Keeping it in the family. Is there a problem with that?”

  “Melissa made it sound tawdry.” She settled back against him and shrugged, her shoulder nestling in his armpit. “Luc isn’t family. And the way Melissa was talking, he never will be.”

  “He was a nice guy,” Gordon said, then added, “A little too suave, maybe.”

  Jill tried to smile. “That day, when you and Brooke and Luc and the kids were watching videos while my parents were making their big announcement, did you notice any undercurrents between Luc and Brooke?”

  “You’re asking me if I noticed undercurrents?” Gordon laughed. “Come on. If Brooke had heaped a bunch of twigs at his feet and set fire to them, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  True enough. Gordon was Mr. Oblivious, at least when it came to undercurrents. “It’s probably nothing,” Jill said. “Brooke and Doug are still planning to take this trip to Nevis in February, so I guess things are okay between them.”

  “What difference does it make who did her hair?” Gordon sounded genuinely perplexed. “I mean, what’s the big deal?”

  “No big deal.” But it was a big deal. If her parents could be contemplating a divorce, why couldn’t Brooke and Doug? Just because they looked so good together, and they were both devoted to their daughters, and they complemented each other financially—Doug made tons of money and Brooke spent tons of money—didn’t mean their marriage was destined to last. Once Jill’s mother had informed the family that she was ending her marriage, Jill had lost all faith in ’til-death-do-us-part.

  Her own marriage was . . . good, she assured herself. Unlike Melissa and Doug, Jill hadn’t dated much when she’d been single. She’d met Gordon that day in the student union, gotten to know him and decided he’d make a good husband. When he’d asked her to marry him, of course she’d said yes. And she had no regrets.

  Except that she wanted to go to France alone.

  And her libido had lapsed into a coma.

  And she’d lost faith in the institution of marriage.

  “I think Melissa is looking for an excuse to break up with Luc,” she said, remembering her sister’s call from the public lavatory. “And on top of that, she wants a child. If she breaks up with him, she’s got to find someone else to father it.”

  “She could adopt. Or go to a sperm bank.” Gordon was adept at coming up with simple solutions to problems. Unfortunately, most problems weren’t simple. “Your family is nuts. All of them. Excluding you.” He rolled onto his side, facing her, then leaned in for a kiss.

  Jill kissed him back, but she couldn’t fake a passion she didn’t feel. “I’m sorry, Gord. I’m just so stressed.”

  “Sex might de-stress you,” he said, skimming his hand over her breast. Her nipple perked right up; she was sure he could feel it through the flannel.
His eyes glowed.

  She sighed. “You know what I’d like?”

  “To be on top,” he guessed hopefully.

  She sat up. Her phone conversation with Melissa was still reverberating inside her mind, all that clamor about apartments and Luc and Brooke and fake pocketbooks. “I’d like you to massage my scalp.”

  “Your scalp.” He sounded dubious.

  Luc massaged women’s scalps. Melissa was upset because he’d massaged Brooke’s scalp. The thought of Gordon’s hands in her hair, his strong fingers stroking, turned her on more than his naked chest or his kisses. “Just for a minute,” she implored. “Just to de-stress me.”

  “I think sex would work better.”

  I don’t. “Please, Gord.”

  He sighed dramatically, then rose onto his knees behind her and placed his hands on her head, molding them to its curves. “Like this?” he asked, moving his palms in tentative circles.

  “Use your fingers,” she said.

  He probed with his fingers. He swirled them through her hair as if he was shampooing it. He must have heard her respiration deepening, because he increased the pressure, tangling into her hair, probing her skull with his fingertips.

  Oh, God. This was good. Better than sex. Much better.

  If he would do this every night instead of sex, she’d never leave him. Not even if he left dried toothpaste in the sink. Not even if she never got to go to France by herself. This—this glorious sensation, this strange intimacy—would satisfy her forever.

  She would never leave him. But if she made him do this every night instead of sex, he’d probably leave her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  What am I doing here?

  An hour ago, Ruth had been in her apartment, dabbing on make-up while Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in C Minor spilled out of the speakers of Doug’s old stereo. Such sweet, rich music, the familiarity of Corelli’s counterpoints, the tinkly rhythm of the harpsichord almost, but not quite, overwhelmed by the strings, and of course the suspended seconds. She loved how those two notes would bump against each other, creating all kinds of tension, and then resolve themselves into a safe, solid chord.

  But that was then. This was now, in a place called some number, Thirty-Two or Fifty-Six or something. The room was dimly lit and loud, and so crowded you had to walk with your arms pinned to your sides to avoid accidentally hitting someone.

  Somehow Wade had managed to secure a table for them. It wasn’t much bigger than a seder plate in circumference, but it was tall. They had to perch themselves on stools around it, and she had to sit between Wade and Hilda, who were barely talking. Hostility swept back and forth between them like the waves rolling in on Cape Cod at high tide.

  Wade played with the straw in his club soda. He was the designated driver and promised to stick with soft drinks. But Hilda was making quick progress with her cocktail—some fashionable variation on a martini—and the white wine Ruth had ordered was so cold she couldn’t taste it.

  Across the room was a dance floor crammed with people. From this distance they looked like a single writhing organism, their movements in no way related to the thumping music a DJ was playing. She didn’t recognize the song. She’d followed the music her kids had listened to in their youth, but this next generation, she just wasn’t exposed to their music as much. Unlike Doug and the girls with their stereos, Abbie and Noah absorbed their music through iPods plugged into their ears. Ruth could never lurk in their bedroom doorways, eavesdropping on what they were playing and deciding whether she liked it.

  She hoped they weren’t listening to this. The singer was nasal and whiny, and the song had a robotic feel to it, the rhythm as regular as a ticking metronome and the instruments all synthesized. Somebody ought to open a club where the DJ played Corelli. Not exactly dancing music, but much kinder to the eardrums.

  “Why don’t you two dance?” she suggested to Wade and Hilda, motioning toward the dance floor. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be negotiating a truce between them, helping them mend their relationship. It wasn’t as if she was responsible for their happiness. But the two of them, while both speaking nicely enough to her, kept snarling and snapping at each other. A couple of bouncy dances might erode their prickliness.

  “I don’t dance,” Wade told her.

  “Sure you do. Everybody dances.”

  “Not me.” He gave his head an emphatic shake, causing his hair to tremble. Without his red smock he looked a little less benign. Or maybe it wasn’t the missing smock that gave him a mildly sinister appearance. Maybe it was the snug black shirt, the black jeans and the thick-soled black boots he had on. The thing in his eyebrow was different, too, not the usual modest strip of metal with a tiny ball on each end. Tonight’s piece looked like a twisted barbell, with cone-shaped points on the ends. It had never occurred to her that a person might want to vary his eyebrow jewelry, but she supposed if a woman could have a full wardrobe of earrings for every occasion, a man could have a full wardrobe of eyebrow thingies.

  Hilda looked relatively wholesome compared to him, dressed in a ribbed pink sweater and blue jeans, her brassy blond hair rippling loose down her back. Her only jewelry, besides multiple earrings, was a silver ring on her thumb which didn’t seem to inhibit the thumb’s movement. Of course, she was young. In thirty years, when she started sprouting knobs of arthritis in the joints of her fingers, the thumb ring would be out.

  “I’ll dance with you,” she said to Ruth.

  Ruth’s mouth flopped open and she slammed it shut. She’d suggested the dance to try to get Hilda and Wade interacting, not that it made a big difference to her if they reconciled, but the evening would be more pleasant if they stopped sniping at each other. She had nothing against dancing with another woman, though. She’d done it often, starting back in her high school days, when the gym was transformed, thanks to paper streamers and cheesy murals, into Winter Wonderland or Around the World and all the boys who weren’t going steady spent the entire dance climbing on the bleachers or ducking out onto the hockey field to drink booze. The girls who didn’t have boyfriends wound up dancing with each other.

  But she hardly knew Hilda and she had no idea how to dance to this thumping, thudding music. If you could even call it music.

  “He doesn’t want to dance,” Hilda said, shooting Wade a lethal look. “Let’s go out on the floor. I bet we can find some guys to dance with out there.”

  Wade scowled and Ruth suppressed a smile. Was Hilda trying to make him jealous? Maybe she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she was pretending to be.

  “Watch my purse,” Ruth requested as she slid off her stool. Hilda didn’t have a purse, unless you counted the tiny sack on a black velvet cord around her neck. It was hardly bigger than an eyeglass case. What could a woman stick in it? A credit card and keys, maybe. A tube of lipstick. Not much more than that.

  She was grateful for Hilda’s bright pink sweater as they wove past tables and clots of people to the dance floor. If Hilda had been dressed like Wade, Ruth would have lost her in two seconds flat.

  The dance floor was as crowded as it looked. It smelled like humanity—sweat, perfume, aftershave, liquor. Blue and green lights gave the impression that this mass of bouncing people was underwater, an enormous sea monster that had swallowed her and Hilda without a burp.

  Ruth glanced around her. No one was doing a dance she could recognize. They were just bouncing, flailing, swaying.

  She started bouncing.

  Four songs later, or maybe it was five—one song sounded like another to her—she was still bouncing. More than bouncing, really. She was waving her arms and shimmying her tush. She might have some arthritic bumps on her fingers, but her hips and knees had so far been spared that affliction, and while she didn’t dance as wildly as some of the young people around her, she fit in well enough.

  When was the last time she danced like this? When had she ever danced like this? The exertion, combined with the heat of all the gyrating bodies aro
und her, caused her to sweat. Someone jostled her. She didn’t care.

  She closed her eyes and let the music’s rhythm run up and down her spine. So what if it was awful? It had an infectious beat, and she let it invade her like a virus and take over her body. She was no longer a grandma, no longer a store clerk, no longer a student of Baroque concertos, no longer a wife contemplating divorce. She was no longer a woman who savored her newfound solitude. In the middle of the dance floor—well, actually more on the edge; she had no interest in muscling her way deeper into the crowd—she was alone and united with all these people, all this energy.

  When she opened her eyes again, she couldn’t see Hilda. Someone patted her shoulder and she kept dancing. Another pat and she turned to find Wade behind her, smiling sheepishly. “Hilda came back to the table,” he shouted, although the music was so loud she barely heard him. “You tired her out.”

  Ruth nodded. She saw no point in straining her vocal cords in an effort to be heard over the clamor on the dance floor.

  Wade started to bounce. He was not a good dancer. His movements were stiff and klutzy, lacking fluidity. His hair fluttered around his head, reminding her a little of the way the pile of her apartment’s shag carpet fluttered when she vacuumed.

  He shouldn’t feel obligated to dance with her just because Hilda had abandoned her. She was perfectly happy to dance by herself, although it was hard to be by herself when she was surrounded by a hundred other dancers. Wade could be sitting at the table with Hilda right now, without Ruth positioned between them like the Berlin Wall. They could be talking, working things out.

  But he remained with her, loosening up a little—although the more he loosened up, the klutzier he looked. Still, he didn’t seem too pained by the ordeal. Maybe Hilda had been lying when she’d said he didn’t dance. And what the heck—dancing with a young guy, even if they weren’t touching, was good for her ego. Imagine if Myrna from the B’nai Torah Sisterhood saw her. All that work Myrna had had done on her face to make her look younger, and she was still stuck dancing with her husband Howard, who looked like a turtle.