Isn't It Bro-Mantic?

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “C’mon, guy,” I say, scooping the cat up, taking him to the basement stairs, setting him down on the landing and adding a whispered, “you’ll be out again before you know it,” before shutting the door on him and returning to my place at the table.

  For a while, everyone just eats and I’m fine with that. It’s never occurred to me before but there’s a peculiar satisfaction to preparing food for people you love and watching them enjoy it.

  OK, it’s too fucking quiet in here.

  “How’s work going, Alice?” I say.

  Geez, I hope it’s OK to ask her about her work. If anyone died a grisly death recently, that could put a damper on things.

  Alice is a nurse which has always struck me as a bizarre job for her to have. After all, she can be a little…harsh at times, so how does that work? Does she just scare people into getting better?

  But apparently no one’s died lately, or at least not in any disturbing fashion, because all Alice says is, “The hospital switched me to third shift for a while but that’s cool. Billy and I don’t see too much of each other but at least I don’t have to DVR GH. I can watch it right when it airs.”

  “It’s been so good lately!” I say. “Well, except for that stuff with Kristina.”

  Kristina, Sonny Corinthos’s daughter, dropped out of Yale and returned home with a film crew in tow to shoot a reality series called Mob Princess, starring her family.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not possible,” I say. “She doesn’t even own the house and yet she can sign a release for them to shoot inside there? It’s crazy. Her mom’s a lawyer—doesn’t she know this?”

  “I know, right?” Alice nods vehemently. “That storyline is driving me absolutely up the wall. I understand that in the summer the writers increase the storylines involving younger characters because kids are out of school and watching, but do the storylines have to be so lame?”

  “I know—” I stop myself in time. “Yes, I agree completely.”

  “So, obviously, you’re still watching,” she says.

  It was Alice who first advised me to watch GH in order to make myself more appealing to women.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I say. “As a matter of fact, Sam and me make it a habit to knock off work in time each day so we can come back here and watch together on the two TVs.”

  I think she’ll comment on the two TVs—after all, Helen has pointed out to me that it’s an eccentric use of the TVs for Sam and me to watch the same program on both—but apparently, for Alice, this is not the salient feature in what I’ve just said.

  “You have someone to watch with?” she says wistfully. “That just seems so…nice.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but even if you and Billy have different schedules right now, he still DVRs it so you can discuss it together later, right?”

  “Nah, I stopped watching,” Billy says.

  Why would he do that?

  “I guess I just lost interest,” he says.

  “He lost interest in a lot of things,” Alice adds.

  I don’t even want to know what she means by that, so, “More pizza, anyone?” I offer.

  I get no takers.

  Instead, Billy says, “It just started to seem, I don’t know, what’s the word?” He consults the dining room ceiling as if he might find what he’s looking for, then he levels his gaze dead on Alice. “Stupid,” he says. “It started to seem stupid.”

  Alice knocks back about half of her glass of wine and turns away from her husband, her eyes resting instead on me. “Like I said, it sounds like it must be nice, having someone to watch with.”

  “Hey,” I say, “come by anytime. We’re here most weekdays at three P.M.”

  She considers. “Maybe I’ll do that,” she says.

  But of course I know she won’t. I was just saying the polite thing, because I needed to find something polite to say, and Alice was simply saying the polite thing in return. But Alice and I have never been friends. Alice has never even liked me.

  I’m in the kitchen getting dessert—it’s just ice cream, and no, I didn’t make it myself, but it is the expensive stuff—and Helen has followed me in to help, when we hear the muffled sounds of my best male friend and his wife fighting in the other room. From the insult of his not watching GH anymore, they’d proceeded to the injuries of all the other things he no longer does that he used to do, and believe me, I was right: some of them, I did not want to know about.

  “I don’t remember them ever being like this before,” I whisper.

  “It’s awful,” Helen says, putting her arms around my waist and pulling me close.

  “Maybe they’re just having an off night?” I suggest.

  “He’s so insensitive,” she says.

  “He is?”

  “Didn’t you see the way he helped himself to the pizza before offering it to her first?”

  That seems like a minor offense to hang a guy for. But then I think of other little things, like him deriding GH when he knows she loves the show. It occurs to me, then: Alice may be something of a shrew—although she did seem better than usual tonight until Billy provoked her—but my old friend Billy can be something of an insensitive jerk.

  “You would never do something like that,” Helen says of Billy’s pizza behavior. “He obviously doesn’t care about what she wants or needs anymore.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” I say. “Like I said, maybe they’re just having a rough night? Besides, I’ve been told once or twice that I can be pretty insensitive myself.”

  “So?” Helen says. “It’s not like you try to be. Instead, you try so hard to do everything right for everybody. Even when you screw up, anyone can see how hard you try.”

  “I guess…”

  “Promise me.” She leans back far enough that she can place a palm on the side of my face as she gives a head jerk toward the fighting in the other room. “Promise me we will never be like that.”

  It is an easy promise to make.

  I can’t stand to look at all that pink and black.

  The battling guests are gone, the cat’s been let out of the basement but frustratingly locked out of the master bedroom. Helen and me, reveling in our “we will never be like that” vehemence, began ripping each other’s clothes off on the way up the stairs, determined to reaffirm our relative perfection as a couple.

  But in the bedroom, there is all that pink, all that black, and it’s all together.

  So, for the first time, I keep my eyes closed while making love to my wife.

  Afterward, I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I hear that ticking sound again, that sound I heard in the afternoon. What the hell is that?

  I check the shower knob but there’s nothing leaking in the shower, press my ear to the tiled wall—still nothing. I’m looking all around me, trying to figure out what it is, and then I realize it’s coming from above. At last, I look up, look all around the upward perimeters of the room, and that’s when I see:

  Over the doorway, just a smidge off center so as to make its placement slightly maddening to those of us who are partial to perfect symmetry, is a clock. The frame is some kind of black filigreed metal surrounding an antique-white face with old-fashioned black hands. This is the source of the ticking.

  “Hey, Helen?” I call out. “What’s this thing doing here?”

  “What’s what thing doing where?”

  “This thing over the bathroom door.”

  “Oh, you mean the clock?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “I bought it when I went out to get the paint this morning. It makes me crazy when I’m in the bathroom and I don’t know what time it is.”

  I suppose that makes sense. I mean, we’ve all got our own quirks, our own likes, our dislikes—our tics, if you will. Still, couldn’t she just put her wristwatch on the bathroom counter like normal people if she wants to know what time it is? Plus, shouldn’t she—I don’t know—consult me before making purchases that result in permanent altera
tions to our environment?

  The clock continues to tick. Loudly.

  Sunday Dinner

  When the phone rings the following morning, it spells disaster. Well, if a phone could spell.

  “Hello?” I answer the phone on the bedside table.

  Some of my friends have given up on having real phones in their homes completely, preferring to rely on their cells. But just like I don’t like texting, I’m old-fashioned about my phone usage. Cell phones are fine for their convenience when I’m out and about, but when at home, I prefer something sturdier, something that fills my hand.

  When Helen and me first talked about setting up house here and she found out I intended to keep my old phone number, and I further explained why, she laughed. “You’d probably like one of those old black jobs with a finger dial like on I Love Lucy,” she said.

  “I would,” I admitted.

  “Or better than that, go back even further in time, get one of those things where you hold one piece to your ear and talk into the other.”

  “That,” I agreed, “would be ideal.”

  And now I’ve said all I’m going to say on the subject of phones.

  “You coming over today?” the voice on the other end of the line says. It’s Big John.

  “Are we coming over today?” I echo out loud. Helen looks up at me drowsily, a question in her eyes. It’s eleven o’clock and we’ve slept in after our late evening the night before. It’s Big John, I mouth.

  I’m thinking I should tell him yes. I’ve kind of missed him, even if I did just see him for poker on Friday. But we were surrounded by lots of other people then, so it wasn’t like real quality time. As I’m about to accept, though, Helen makes a guillotine gesture, running her finger across her throat. I’m guessing that means no.

  “I don’t think we—” I start to say but Big John cuts me off.

  “It’s your aunt’s birthday,” he says. “You gotta come.”

  “Shit,” I say. “It’s her birthday again? Already?”

  “Once a year,” he says, “like clockwork, whether we like it or not.”

  Crap, how did I forget? I remember what Leo from the coffee shop once taught me, about the importance of remembering significant dates, and I hope I never forget Helen’s birthday.

  It’s Aunt Alfresca’s birthday, I mouth to Helen.

  She closes her eyes and gives a wincing damn look, but then opens them again, sighs, nods.

  “Of course we’ll be there,” I say to Big John. “What time do you want us?”

  “An hour?” he says.

  “An hour?” I think frantically of all we still have to do: shower, feed Fluffy, get a present. “But—”

  “Your aunt said noon,” he says. “She said noon is the perfect time to start the celebration of her birth.” Pause. “You know your aunt.”

  Yes, I know my aunt. Crap.

  Twenty minutes later, we’re showered, the cat’s been fed, our teeth are even brushed. Now, what to do about a present…

  “We got so much for our wedding,” Helen says. “A lot of it we don’t even need. We could give her one of those.”

  “No, we really can’t,” I say. “Aunt Alfresca is vehemently against regifting.”

  The problem is, with the clock ticking, we don’t have time to go to the mall, what with all that going from store to store, trying to find the perfect thing…

  But wait: ticking—that’s it!

  “We could give her that new clock you just bought for the upstairs bathroom!” I say, excited. Am I killing two birds with one stone or what here?

  The answer turns out to be the latter. Apparently, I’m doing what here, as Helen points out when she says, “What?”

  “I just figured—”

  “I just bought that clock.”

  “I know but—”

  “It was the only one they had just like it at Home Goods. So why in the world would you want to give it away?”

  I imagine if I alternatively suggest we give Aunt Alfresca the grandfather clock her parents gave us—bong, bong, bong!—that would be the wrong thing to say too? And right, I realize resignedly, that would be regifting.

  “No, of course, you’re right,” I say. “What was I thinking?” I do that thing where I hit myself on the side of the head to indicate my awareness of my own idiocy. “We’ll get her a present at Super Stop & Shop.”

  She looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You’re going to get your aunt her birthday present from Super Stop & Shop?”

  Here’s the thing, though: I do know what I’m doing.

  As we wander the specialty aisle of Super Stop & Shop, I’m almost sure of it.

  “So how old is Aunt Alfresca anyway?” Helen asks as I pick up and reject fuzzy slippers—too impersonal.

  “Now, that is a good question,” I muse, my eyes scanning, scanning, “that I do not know the answer to. But I’m thinking, not nearly as old as you’d think. Big John and my mother were pretty young when they had me, Aunt Alfresca was my mom’s sister, so. I don’t know. I’m going with timeless.”

  “I like that.” Helen links her arm through mine. “I hope some day you look at me as timeless.”

  “I already do.” I kiss her nose.

  But since my eyes are still open, I see…

  “Perfect!” I say, snatching up the big box before any other savvy shoppers grab it out from under me; it’s the only one left.

  Helen raises a skeptical brow. “Fuzzy slippers were wrong and that thing’s…right?”

  “Absolutely,” I confirm. Then I see something else. The package is small but you can push the button through it and when I do, a little red dot appears on the ground at my feet. I wave the package around and the little red dot dances. “Let’s get this too,” I say.

  “You’re going to get your aunt a laser dot?”

  “No. It’s for Fluffy. See on the side here, it says: For cats. But hey, if Aunt Alfresca doesn’t like her main present…” I press the button again. “OK, let’s go pay.”

  “Shouldn’t we gift wrap it?”

  She has a good point. Aunt Alfresca is as hard on unwrapped presents as she is on regifted ones.

  “You’re right,” I say, “but I don’t think they do gift wrapping here.”

  We go to the appropriate aisle and I select wrap, scissors and tape.

  “We can wrap it in the car,” I say.

  “Smooth,” she says. “Card?”

  “I am so lucky to have you,” I say, kissing her on the mouth.

  Seriously, if I’d shown up without a card, it wouldn’t matter how good the present was, Aunt Alfresca would crucify me.

  We look at cards, quickly, since we’re running out of time.

  Helen keeps suggesting things, but they’re all joke cards, so finally I have to tell her, “Aunt Alfresca hates funny cards.”

  “Who hates funny cards?”

  “Aunt Alfresca.” Didn’t I just tell her that? “She says humor is too subjective. She says every time someone else tells a joke, it’s a crapshoot.”

  I look at the serious nephew cards, which I’ve always given her in the past, but I want something Helen can sign too. Finally, I find a serious card that goes on and on, in bad poetry, about what a wonderful human being the recipient is. Perfect, and hopefully, Aunt Alfresca won’t get the irony.

  And what’s even more perfect?

  On the front of the card, it says: From Both of Us.

  I am now, officially, part of both of us. I love this marriage shit.

  “OK,” I say, “I think that’s finally everything: present, potential backup present, wrapping and wrapping utensils, card.”

  I start heading toward the checkout lines. Since it’s Sunday, they’re really long. Crap, will we make it on time?

  “Wait,” Helen says.

  I turn and see her gather a bunch of thin, long, flat rectangular items. She waves them at me.

  “I don’t think that’s necessary—” I start to say.

  “
It’s just a little something,” she says.

  “But we’ve already got this,” I say, indicating the big box in my hands with my chin.

  “I know,” she says, “but I want to give her something just from me.”

  “Really, that’s a lovely gesture but—”

  “Every woman loves chocolate,” she says, “unless of course they’re allergic.”

  “Yes, but not—”

  “C’mon, Johnny.” She tugs me toward a previously unopened register aisle that’s miraculously opened up just for us like one of those retail mirages a person is fortunate enough to stumble upon every now and then. “We don’t want to be late.”

  As we’re paying, it occurs to Helen to ask me if I have a pen—“I don’t have a pen. Do you have a pen?”; “I don’t have a pen”—so we wind up having to borrow the one from the cashier so we can sign Aunt Alfresca’s card.

  We stand on the doorstep, our now-misshapen presents in hand. Turns out, it’s not so easy to wrap presents inside a motor vehicle. I’ve got my hand on the knob, ready to open the door, when Helen presses on the buzzer. I guess she doesn’t feel comfortable yet just walking in. So I take my hand back and we wait for someone to come open the door.

  That person turns out to be Big John, who’s in his wheelchair. Must be a bad day.

  “Come in, come in!” he says. “You’re practically,” he consults his watch, “on time. Just two minutes late.” He gives a nervous shrug. “Well, what’s two minutes? Maybe she won’t notice.”

  We follow him into the kitchen. I look around.

  “Where’s the birthday girl?” I ask.

  “Oh God.” He rolls his eyes. “She’s on Twatter.”

  “What?”

  “Twatter. You know: Twatter! That thing everyone uses now.”

  “No, I don’t know that thing.”

  “Twatter.” Now he’s getting exasperated. He holds his hands up, starts wiggling his fingers like crazy. “One-hundred-and-forty-character limit. People saying crap to other people in short bursts on that Internet thing.”