Today at our session, Reuben said I can’t expect marriage to be one long orgasm. But he pointed out that it was often better than having no one and being alone.
Then he said, “Time’s up.”
After the first forty years of marriage, the divorce rate is very low. I read that this morning. It did not seem particularly to help.
I talked to Dusty today and he said that he is dating a new man whom he is trying to horrify with true stories from his past, including the rehab hospital story, the cold sore origin story, and the story about how when he was growing up his neighbor used to make his daughter and Dusty dry out their turds so he could read their fortunes.
Dusty says he doesn’t want this new man to think he’s just the boy next door.
Then he says it isn’t working yet because the new man just seems fascinated by the stories and wants him to write them all down.
“I was hoping he’d run away so that I could begin to like him,” he says.
“You are so very unwell,” I say.
In the background I can hear a woman with an intimate, deep voice selling solid perfume. Only two thousand left.
“This is solid perfume,” she explains. “This is a treat.”
“It’s Tova,” Dusty says. “Ernest Borgnine’s wife.”
Out of all the QVC hosts, Kathy Levine is Dusty’s favorite. He also has a secret crush on Dan Hughes, who is the morning host and also the race-car host. Dusty has his own Q Number, which he has memorized. He knows perhaps a little more than he should about the hosts, frequently watching all night long and then sleeping in until three or four the next day. Yet all in all, it’s probably better than waking up in jail, still drunk and swathed in urine-soaked pants, his last memory that of being carried out of a bar weeping. Probably.
“I adore Tova,” Dusty says.
Modern Bride keeps coming: huge, wrapped in thick plastic. Covers resplendent with lace-veiled twenty-year-old blonds whose fathers are international bankers. Whose fathers are alive and writing checks in their mahogany studies, their boundless joy and confidence suggests.
“How much do you need?” they ask, over horn-rimmed half glasses.
None of these cover girls has ever buried anyone. They have never been stood up or hit or have awoken with blood on their pillow from too much cocaine. They live size-2 lives of constant love and laughter. Their parents are still together; they hold hands and take long leisurely vacations where no one drinks too much or raises their voice.
At their large well-organized weddings, the Modern Bride women dance the first dance with their father. They both cry.
I broke down and called Reuben, using the home number. I needed to talk to someone about Michael’s depression, which is making me feel not just helpless and sad, but depressed. And something else: rage. I think Reuben will be shocked, but he isn’t.
People are never shocked.
He said that it was fine if I wanted to comfort Michael, and fine if I didn’t. That actually by comforting him, I might be derailing him from the work he needs to do.
This feels like permission to be a heartless bitch. I run with it.
You go through sudden periods where you change your mind; you think, No, not him.
Husbands should be at least six feet two inches tall, you think. They should be thirty-five years old forever, and they should have thick dark hair and black Izod shirts and a pilot’s license. They should never get depressed, providing emotional bedrock not just some of the time but always. And he knows you’re doubting him, and then he gets even smaller until he looks like a midget. A sideshow freak. A man without legs on a skateboard dolly in front of Macy’s.
You pull out of it, you look at him again. And he’s two inches taller than you are, as he has been all along, and it’s fine again.
I also think about death more, now.
I used to focus on Michael’s death, since he’s older than I am. But now I begin to see my own mortality, winking from behind the folds of lace. Maybe that’s why I am stalling on finding the wedding dress. If I don’t get married, I’ll never move on, and then I will never die. I can just date forever and stay young. No one who’s old dates.
I search for loopholes.
Reuben nails my fantasies every time, with iron rods of reality. He asserts that I am going to die, but probably not for a while, and that maybe I should try getting married and having a life first. He’s seventy and knows things, which is why I go to him. But it’s sad to leave my romantic illusions at the door of this passage. Although false and destructive and useless, they’ve been tremendous company.
We were taking a walk around the block when Michael said he was a good value.
“Sure I’m depressed now,” he said, “but don’t forget what a good value I am.”
“Why?” I asked. I wanted him to sell me.
“I’m smart, I’m funny, I’m good-looking, and I make more money than you do.”
“Not by much,” I say. I am closing the gap. Coming in hard on the outside.
It’s lifting.
This morning, immediately upon waking, Michael said, “You know who has really nice lips? Mr. Potato Head.
“They’re his best feature,” he said.
He says something like this and keeps me from giving up on love, which is so hard and demanding and tricky. He says something like this and keeps me from leaving. Leaving is what I am good at. Leaving and driving people away.
When I first knew him, he once turned to me and said, “If I had to choose only one fabric, it would be rayon.”
• • •
The honeymoon is planned. Tickets to Paris have been procured, using up all of Michael’s Delta frequent-flier miles, which he didn’t even know he had. They would have just expired quietly in his desk drawer, had I not ferreted them out. We are going to fly business class, 150,000 miles for both tickets. I’m stunned that Gabrielle didn’t get to them earlier; they had somehow slipped through a crack in the system.
I read in a guidebook that the Hôtel Panthéon in the Latin Quarter has the perfect room for honeymooners, with a canopy bed and a view, all for less than two hundred dollars a night including breakfast. Room 14. I send a fax, they send one back, and it’s ours.
This is tremendous. It is absolutely nothing like planning a wedding.
I am spooning with him, on top of the bed. It’s almost noon, and neither one of us has gotten up.
Michael is reading The Tailor of Panama, by John Le Carré. He turns a page and cocks one eye at me, as though I am slightly dangerous and must be watched.
“One of the greatest living British writers,” he says. “Any literary critic will tell you that.”
“Do you love me?” I ask.
“Uh-huh.”
“How much?” I ask.
“This much,” he says, holding his thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart.
• • •
As I was packing to leave for a weeklong business trip to L.A. this morning, I heard Michael in the shower, singing “Do Nothing till You Hear from Me,” in an above-average Louis Armstrong.
His depression is completely gone. It may be that I am a carrier.
As I was boarding the United shuttle, I started to notice that the plane was filled exclusively with men. Young men. There were about fifty of them, uniformly attractive, freshly showered. They all looked like Matt LeBlanc. It occurred to me that now I could never go out with any of them. The option to make eye contact and exchange phone numbers was no longer available to me. It felt as though my checkbook were missing.
I sat alone in their midst, looking about. Just me and the Matt LeBlancs, hurtling through the clouds. Naked under our clothes.
What I do is open up the hotel mini-bar corkscrew and, using the small knife, carve a tiny slit into the bottom of the cellophane bag of jumbo cashews and slide half a dozen out. I then replace the bag on the black lacquered tray.
I do this out of self-defense, to avoid the four-pack of Nutter Bu
tter cookies, which are screaming out to me from behind their orange foil wrapper.
This morning I drove to the Rose Street clown in Venice Beach, near Main Street. I needed to look at it. It’s a giant fifty-foot bearded drag queen clown on pointe, perched at the top of a building that has never been occupied, as far as I know.
What I thought was that clowns were all different: some were big and flashy, and some were medium sized and sad, and some were fat and smelled like vodka, but they each had an odd beauty. Each clown was impeccable. On some level you were always glad to see them.
I resolve not to evaluate constantly; nothing has to have a reason for being. Like that clown. What’s he doing up there?
If that clown can be there, then I can be here.
We’ve been together two years today. On our first date we went to the Hillcrest Bar and Grill on Fillmore Street and ate turkey burgers with curly fries. It became our favorite place to just sit and talk. The bar was a sea of enormous comfy chairs. We held all our important negotiations there. Those were the curly fry days.
They closed down the Hillcrest, about a day after we got engaged. There are no more curly fries anywhere that I know of. You can’t get them.
It’s impressive how God attends to the details.
I was flying home from L.A. and all of a sudden I looked out at the clouds, and I realized, Jesus we are really flying, and it was the most wonderful and miraculous thing, and about a minute later the feelings of anxiety and panic began.
I feel the same way about marriage, today.
• • •
My mother was driving down Highway 1 behind a big pickup truck yesterday, and a pig fell out of it. She veered out of the way just in time. The pig rolled a few times, shook itself off, and went to the shoulder of the highway, where it began rooting in the grass.
She accelerated and pulled up alongside the pickup truck and yelled at the driver, “You dropped your pig!” He looked at her for a few seconds with a stunned expression, and then floored it. Thinking she was just another crazy driver, I guess. Somewhere in Monterey, a pig wanders free.
This is a good story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Unlike my life, it is not really important to know what happens next.
When he woke up this morning, Michael couldn’t remember where he had parked his car last night. I asked him if he had been drinking. “I had one drink,” he said. He raised his voice a little when he said it.
We drove around, me in my pajamas, looking. After ten minutes he had given it up for towed, stolen, or completely disappeared. He seemed convinced that it had been spat like a watermelon seed out of the linear universe. “I can’t afford a new car,” he said, balling his fists in panic. He can, but I didn’t say so. I took a last pass at Washington Street and found it, a white Honda cunningly tucked behind a PG&E truck. He got in and drove off to work; he goes to his office at eight and I get to mine around ten.
This was one of the times when I stay calm and he goes insane. We rotate.
As I got to work I saw the homeless man Graham calls the Ex–Creative Director, sitting on the park bench near the water fountain, running one hand backward through his dirty hair, basking in the sun. He is wearing Kenneth Cole shoes, an unconstructed jacket, and greasy black tuxedo pants. I never see him with a bag of cans or a shopping cart; he always has fresh coffee. I have never seen him beg. He survives, I imagine, by persuasion.
I wonder if he was ever married. I wonder if there is a Mrs. Ex–Creative Director.
I fainted yesterday, in front of Whole Foods.
Around three o’clock, after I saw Reuben, I stopped at Whole Foods, as I always do. Right away, next to the Japanese eggplant, I started to feel dizzy. I left the store and headed to the parking lot, with great determination. The idea was that I would make it to my car and sit for a while before I drove home. One minute I was leaving the store and making this plan, and the next minute the white dots appeared and then they all held hands, and I crashed.
When I came to, I was stretched out on the asphalt, lodged between two parked cars. Nice, I thought. Private. My shoes were placed side by side at my feet; my jacket was neatly folded next to me. All of this I found fascinating.
Five or six out-of-focus faces looked down at me with concern. The base of my skull was cradled by a strange kind man. Because of his position above and behind my head, I could not see his face but just heard his voice. I liked this man, and the man at my feet who had removed my shoes, and the bag boy who had brought orange juice. It was possible that I loved them.
He spoke clearly and distinctly, holding my skull off the pavement with tenderness. He asked me questions.
“Is there anything we need to know … ? Is there anything you need to tell us?”
I’m getting married, I thought.
I explained that I had just fainted is all; it’s happened before, ever since I was little. They nodded slowly, as if trying to remember.
I held the straw and drank the juice. I rubbed my face, where a lump was forming. My arm hurts; the knees of my pants are torn. I begin to hope no one I know sees me. Self-consciousness wades back in. The kind man asks me if I can sit up. I can. I make a joke; they all laugh. With regret I realize I have come back. I am entertaining again. Soon I will have to get up, get in my car, and drive home. To get away from what I have created, which I see now is a Scene.
A second man, who had been running the Save the Rainforest booth next to the open-air crenshaw melon display, reaches out and takes my pulse without comment. He announces that my spleen is out of whack. He hands me his card: Jon Berkhald. Shiatsu Massage and Nutritional Counseling.
“Did you have a hard day?” Jon asks.
Jon wants to solve me, I can tell. He doesn’t seem to understand that this is not me fainting; this is a documentary of me fainting.
At my two o’clock session with Reuben, I’d admitted that I didn’t have any motivation or interest to deal with my family or Michael’s anymore. They seemed like pleasant and defective strangers.
And now the strangers seem like family, as I lie on the ground. Perhaps this is my new family, I thought. Conveniently located next to the crenshaws.
Reuben had said, “You are about to take a husband. This is the biggest passage you can make, other than birth and death.”
“I know,” I said. Then I drove to Whole Foods and passed out.
May
I don’t have time every day to put on makeup.
I need that time to clean my rifle.
HENRIETTE MANTEL
According to the lingerie department at Nordstrom, the Top-Ten Bridal Essentials, in this order, are:
A blue garter to keep
Another to throw
Bustier
Alluring chemise and robe
Captivating gown and robe
Lacy bra and panty/matching garter and stockings
Silk camisole and slip
Teddies
Silk pajamas
Forever New
Forever New is Nordstrom’s own brand of granulated fine-washables soak. Five dollars for an eight-ounce jar; I buy two but no lingerie.
The top-ten list is inscribed on a placard at the lingerie counter. I read the whole list, and then I think, They forgot Valium. A woman standing near me laughs, a short burst. Her ten-year-old daughter looks scornful. I have said it out loud.
Five months and twelve days until the wedding.
What nobody tells you about getting engaged is he asks you and you’re delirious for about two days and then it tapers. He asks you and you’re running around telling grocery clerks and ordering subscriptions to bride magazines and discussing prong settings versus suspension settings, and then after two days this ebullience passes. And instead of looking ahead you are suddenly struck by everything you are leaving behind.
He asks you and two days go by and you haven’t even gotten the ring yet before women, mostly big scary already married women with perfect manicures, start asking spec
ific questions about your wedding. It is then you realize it is no longer conceptual. You have the whole wedding to plan, and from that moment on the pressure builds. And every time you talk to your mother she grills you about caterers and flowers and whose name is going first on the invitations. Efficient shop clerks whip out calendars and show you how little time you have left, actually. How it’s a lot sooner than you think, the wedding.
You could say, Oh we’re getting married in fifty years, and they would arch their eyebrows and say in a lilting voice, It’s sooner than you think.
A warm night, the scent of wet leaves sidling in the open window. We are in bed with our laptop computers. It’s the new sex.
Michael is surfing the Internet. I feel very close to him, as though he were my right leg, or an eye.
Out of a clear silence he recites, “Omaha Steaks.
“Four for thirty-nine dollars and eighty-five cents, with six free hamburgers.”
“How much is that each?” he asks, beginning to calculate the enormity of it.
A considering pause.
“Six free hamburgers … like that makes up for it.”
I don’t answer. My not answering, in fact, seems to fuel the whole discussion and enliven it.
A minute later, just when I think he’s moved on, he poses this question to the imagined audience, whom it is his duty to enlighten.
“Have you paid ten dollars apiece for a steak yet?”
Then, “Might as well go to Alfred’s,” he says.
Ah. The epilogue I had hoped for. Alfred’s steak house near the Broadway tunnel, featuring valet parking. Extreme old San Francisco bordello, full of mafioso types and Italian women with thick eyeliner and secretive faces. We are going to go there sometime soon, now, because of this. We will go there and eat bloody steaks and gigantic potatoes with everything on them. We will do all of this before we get married and have a baby and our lives end.
Otherwise Engaged: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) Page 10