Bertrand Court

by Michelle Brafman

  Thank God Nikki appears. She gives a little clap. “Let me show off my peonies before it gets dark.” We follow her into the garden, where the cicadas are screeching in cadence. I love summer.

  Georgia bends over to sniff a pink flower, nodding in appreciation. “Remember that orchid you stole from Perry Eisenfeld’s wedding?”

  She means Perry Eisenstadt; he had a thing for Nikki when he worked for her. She wore stilettos to his wedding, which gave her a good inch on me. Sexy. After a few gin and tonics, she led the guests in a plucky if less than graceful version of the electric slide. A couple of hours later, I held her hair while she retched from an unfortunate encounter with a shrimp cocktail. Luckily for me, I’m allergic to shellfish. Luckily for me, she decided to marry me that night.

  Nikki smiles wistfully, fingering the pendant I gave her for our tenth anniversary. “Seems like another lifetime.”

  We return to the den to find that Hugo has polished off the artichoke dip. Nikki and I exchange glances. Mine says, “He never would have gobbled up my artichoke dip.” Nikki’s says, “I’m working on it, Tad.” And even though we haven’t spoken, I feel like Georgia has heard every word of our conversation.

  I clear the spotless — thanks to Hugo — dip bowl, a wedding gift that we rarely use anymore. These days, we mainly invite other families over for pizza. The energy is different when it’s just Georgia, who almost always arrives solo. After the twins were born, she showed up with a manic bass player who looked like an exterminator but apparently oozed sex appeal onstage. He lost his charm when he tried to light up in our living room, only a few feet from our dozing infants. Georgia’s visits grew less frequent after that.

  Nikki is sprinkling dried cranberries on the salad when Georgia asks me about my new job.

  “I write a lot of op-eds, even though people are about as excited to read about health-care issues as they are to hear the details of someone’s Disney vacation, in real time.” I chuckle, more out of truth than self-deprecation.

  Nikki gives me a courtesy laugh. She used to love my analogies.

  “I’m the number-two guy at the association, so I have quite a bit of freedom.” Code word for boredom, but the money is good, and I haven’t had to give up much training time.

  Nikki adds brightly, “One of Tad’s Harvard buddies wants him to coauthor a book.”

  Ever since my career went on life support, Nikki’s been sneaking my Harvard degree into conversations: “When Tad lived in Cambridge…” or “He graduated with Tad, Harvard, class of ’82…” or “Tommy Lee Jones lived in Tad’s dorm.…” She used to drop the H-bomb to mock her snotty little pedigree-happy DLC staffers, back when we were a power couple. Now she says these things without irony.

  Hugo interrupts us by barking at some neighbors strolling past our dining room window. “Hugo,” I command. He quiets down immediately, and I rub his belly with my foot.

  Georgia nods toward the dog. “So are the girls helping with him?”

  Nikki’s pale blue eyes reveal amusement. “Hugo is definitely Tad’s puppy. They run together in Rock Creek Park, and then he takes him to Starbucks.” In a singsongy voice, she crafts an entire album of Kodak moments for her friend, as if she’s composing our annual Christmas letter.

  “Hugo would be your dog too, love, if you asserted yourself.” I sound like I’m scolding one of our daughters.

  Nikki sighs dramatically. “Are we going to have this alpha-rolling squabble again?” Another Georgia thing we do is stage fake arguments for her to settle. “Tell me what you think of this, Georgia. Tad’s upset with me because I refuse to alpha-roll the dog.”

  “Alpha-roll?” Georgia raises an eyebrow over her glasses.

  My enthusiasm for this topic crackles like a hot tin of Jiffy Pop. I describe how I stumbled upon a book called How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend, written by the monks of New Skete. They based their advice on scientific studies of wolf behavior conducted in the 1940s.

  “Georgia, you may know from editing nature documentaries that dogs order themselves, like wolves.” I take a sip of wine, which goes straight to my head after my long bike ride. “You’ve got to show the dog that you’re dominant, or alpha. That’s the only way they’ll listen to you.” My voice is loud.

  Georgia adjusts her glasses and blinks. “So have you alpha-rolled Hugo?”

  “I have.” I look at my wife. “Nik won’t do it.” This is Georgia’s cue to offer an obvious solution to our discord, granting the illusion that we’ve acquiesced to her idea and not to each other.

  Instead she furrows her brow. “What does it entail?”

  Despite her soft voice, I feel like she’s putting me on the witness stand, and I don’t like being challenged. “You flip the dog onto his back and hold him in that submissive position, sometimes by the throat, and then you growl at his jugular.”

  “This works?”

  “Have you noticed how Hugo only responds to my commands?”

  Georgia pauses for her usual few seconds, during which I assume she’s registering my wise choice of technique. “Doesn’t this traumatize the dog?”

  Did she hear me say that a group of fucking monks thought this up?

  Nikki scoops up a stray walnut with her fingers. “That’s right, Georgia. I knew you’d go to bat for me.”

  “Make that you and Hugo.” Georgia puts her salad fork on her plate with finality.

  People don’t listen to me like they used to. I even caught an intern, a little sorority girl from the University of Alabama, playing Sudoku while I led a staff meeting. This just didn’t happen when I worked four offices down from the President. The anger I numb daily with exercise is pitching a tent in my gullet like a Bedouin in a sandstorm.

  Georgia helps Nikki clear the salad plates while I hunt through the refrigerator for another bottle of wine. Nikki reaches out to stroke my arm, but I move away from her. The last thing I need right now is her propping.

  “Here, Georgia.” She hands her friend a bag of feta to sprinkle on the eggplant dish and then removes a pan of Greek chicken from the oven. “Did I tell you that Becca Coopersmith is taking a pole-dancing class?” She’s trying to maneuver the conversation to safer terrain. Nikki has been feeding stories about Becca to Georgia for a while.

  “Striptease pole dancing or folk pole dancing?” Georgia’s tone is sardonic.

  “The former.” Nikki giggles.

  “Is she still having the adult bat mitzvah?”

  “Yeah. Ooh, this is hot.” Nikki puts the Pyrex pan on the stove. “All in the name of self-actualization. Becca takes very good care of herself.”

  I love the bite in her voice; I miss the random moments of bitchiness she used to reserve for me alone. “Well, all that dancing melts that middle-aged sag, like a slab of butter on a hotcake,” I say, glancing toward Nikki’s belly, focusing my gaze on the spot where her blouse labors over a fold of skin that won’t budge no matter how many crunches she does every morning.

  Georgia averts her eyes as if she’d just walked in on Nikki giving me a blow job. Nikki blinks, almost as if I’ve cold-cocked her. She pauses for a second, and then looks right into my soul and replies in perfect body language, “You miserable sack of shit.”

  By the time Nikki cuts the first piece of lemon tart, I’ve polished off the rest of the Williams Selyem 2001 Chardonnay and my head is pounding. We’ve been chatting too politely, exhausting our topics of conversation: Emma and Sophie’s summer plans, Washington bike paths, Georgia’s film on Lewis and Clark, and Nikki’s new fundraising client, a literacy group based in Northern Virginia.

  Nikki fills the tea kettle and rummages in the pantry. “No tea. How can we enjoy our sweets and Stilton without tea?”

  “I’ll fetch you some,” I offer, trying to be funny and a little mean, too. Mainly, I just need air.

  “Take Hugo with you, Tad.” Nikki looks at me like I’m a stranger. I’ve really pissed her off. Took long enough.

  The Coopersmith-Kornfelds ca
n probably spare a tea bag. I knock on their door, not knowing what I’ll do if Becca answers. Tell her that all her pole dancing is paying off? That I liked what I saw when I watched her unload her groceries the other day? Hugo needs to crap, which saves me from myself. I walk away quickly, not knowing if she even answers the door. I haven’t played ding-dong-ditch since I was twelve.

  I’m too drunk to drive anywhere, so I walk a mile to the 7-Eleven. They’ll carry Lipton, which will have to do for the Brontë sisters, who are probably shredding me right now. Not that I don’t deserve it. I’m a cad. I’ve become that underachieving Harvard guy whose arrogance unsuccessfully masks his “I got picked last for kickball” disappointment in life. I’m Charles Emerson Winston III, the Bostonian whom Alan Alda torments in old M*A*S*H episodes. My insignificance overwhelms me. A ball-breaker wife like Becca Coopersmith would have lassoed me, insisted that I pull myself together. Nikki used to be like that; I want that Nikki back.

  Hugo leads me to the park around the corner from our cul-de-sac, where I throw a stick for him to retrieve while I sit on Sophie’s favorite swing, dragging my feet. Dust smokes around my calves.

  Georgia is gone by the time I return from the 7-Eleven with a box of Lipton tea bags. The dishwasher hums and a mound of soiled linen napkins lies on our kitchen table. I am sick with shame and loss, the loss of Georgia’s reflection of who we were. That mirror broke tonight; its shards puncture my heart.

  In a vain attempt to rinse my mouth of the foul taste of the evening, I take a swig of Listerine. I let the khakis Nikki ironed drop on the bathroom floor. I stare at the tan lines from my sunglasses, at my flat eyes and newly chiseled cheekbones. I looked younger with a little baby fat.

  I sidle up to Nikki, who lies coiled on her side of the bed. I close my eyes, willing the sunrise to come early, longing for my daughters to poke their heads in our room and wish us good morning. The girls haven’t woken me up in a long time; I’ve been too busy swimming laps. Tomorrow I’ll cook up a batch of blueberry pancakes. I’ll try to make things right with Nikki. And then, for no reason, I’m angry again. And horny. I stroke the side of her face, and her tears wet my fingers. I still want to have enthusiastic sex. How did I get here?

  I roll away from her, and through a bent slat in our blinds I study a cluster of spindly pines backlit by the moon. It seems like hours pass before the tension of the evening drains from my limbs. Just as I’m drifting off to sleep, Nikki yanks the warm sheets from my body. I shiver. She grabs my waist, rolls me over on my back, and mounts me. I can feel her nakedness on my belly. She grabs my hands and hoists them over my head. She’s going to kiss me; we’re going to have married sex nonpareil. In slow motion, she lowers her face toward me. She looks like she did when she pushed out Emma and Sophie: fierce, brave, fed up with the pain. Her hair is wild and her breath caresses my face; it smells like toothpaste and Stilton and alcohol. I want her. My lips part, waiting, waiting for her to kiss me. Her mouth comes within a millimeter of mine before she jerks her head away, slapping her hair against my face. She slides one hand from my wrists down toward my throat, and then she presses her dry lips to my jugular and growls.

  GEORGIA AND PHIL

  Georgia Dumfries, December 2003

  Phil Scott shells pink pistachios at breakneck speed, leaving the detritus for Georgia to vacuum up later. The Redskins are winning 13-10, and the sportscaster’s baritone blends with the hum of the dryer tumbling a load of Phil’s whites. This afternoon the sound annoys Georgia. Without glancing up from her novel — she’s reading My Ántonia for the fourth time — she knows the half is over by the feel of Phil’s stained fingers rubbing the inside of her arm.

  She puts down her book and leads him upstairs to her bedroom, where she’d made up the bed with a fresh pair of sheets (one thousand thread count) moments before his arrival. After he kisses her on the mouth, he removes her glasses. She opens the top drawer of her nightstand and hands him a condom. Six minutes later, spermicide trickles down her thighs.

  “Did you go?” This is Phil’s language for inquiring about her orgasm.

  “Hmmm.” In six minutes? At least he asks. Nikki is right; ugly men are better in bed. They have to try harder. Phil is better-looking and younger than Georgia; he calls on schedule, wipes down the toilet basin after he pees, blogs about the conflict in Darfur, shoots the best video in town, and loops one of his ropy arms around her torso after they make love. For the past seven months, this weekly arrangement has been enough for her. She turns her head into his sparse chest hair and breathes in his scent: clove cigarettes and cat. Her nose starts to tingle as if she’s going to cry. God, she’s been so needy since her cat died. It’s been almost seven months already.

  Start to finish, they spend about fifteen minutes — roughly the length of the halftime show — in bed. Georgia times it. While she sprays Shout on the pink thumbprint he left on her new sheets, Phil sneaks downstairs to catch the second half of the game.

  “Georgia?” he calls up to her in a sweet voice. “Mind taking my clothes out of the dryer?”

  Georgia does not yell. Ever. She walks down the two stairs of her split-level condo in her terrycloth robe. “Got it.” She goes back up to her bathroom, washes herself, and puts on a fresh pair of panties and the jeans and blouse she was wearing earlier.

  She slides her feet into slippers and pads over to the fridge. “Hungry?” She also never uses more words than she needs.

  “Always, after some good loving.” Without looking away from the game, he grins at her and reclines on the couch.

  Georgia loves to cook. While retrieving two television trays from her front hall closet, she muses about walking next week to the All Soul’s farmer’s market across from the cathedral and picking up a hearty bread and some butternut squash. She’ll buy fresh gingerroot and Asian pears from the vendor with the bushy eyebrows, and come home and make a nice soup. Shopping and preparing a meal for Phil gives her Sundays structure, and the leftovers carry her through the week.

  “You spoil me.” He finishes his last bite of poached salmon and pats his stomach as lean people sometimes do to draw attention to their waistlines.

  “You’re right.” The edge in her voice surprises her. Maybe she’s going through menopause; her mother went through it in her early forties.

  “You okay?”

  For the first Sunday in seven months, she doesn’t feel okay about their routine: cable television, bad sex, laundry, and a home-cooked meal, followed by the cell phone call on Wednesday afternoons. “I miss Willa.” This is true, but it also lets Phil off the hook.

  He pulls her toward him and strokes her hair. “How long were you two together?”

  She likes the way he phrases the question. “Eleven years.” Georgia and Phil initially bonded — they met a year ago when he sweet-talked her into editing his reel — over the respective pride in their cats’ names: Mandu, to remind him of his travels to Kathmandu, and Willa Cat-Her, after her favorite author. Funny how such a simple exchange of information had led to their absurd coupling.

  “Whoa. It’s just going to take time.” He kisses the top of her head. “It took about a year after my first kitty died before I was ready for another one. Now it feels like Mandu’s been with me forever.”

  He strokes her hair again, wrapping a curl around his pointer finger, and his tenderness embarrasses her. She extricates herself from him. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow.” Tenderness is not part of the deal.

  The next morning, Georgia awakens at five o’clock, unsettled from Phil’s visit. Too agitated to sleep, she heads to the office to work in peace. She edits a scene for The Mettle of a Marriage, a reality television show that tests the strength of a seemingly happy marriage — an institution she rebuffed back in her thirties — by sending the husband or wife on a date with his or her first love.

  Working on reality shows makes her feel greasy, but the day after she put Willa to sleep, she chipped a tooth and needed money to foot a hefty dentist b
ill. She began to suffer panic attacks over her meager savings and the prospect of growing old alone, so she swapped her earnest, broke public television colleagues for hungry young producers with hip haircuts.

  She files her exchange with Phil in the back of her mind and parachutes into a stack of field tapes. Patient enough to mine footage for whispers and images, moments that would escape most editors’ attention, she sculpts this material into perfectly rendered scenes. Today, she zeroes in on Wife Sheila hunting down a pair of miracle jeans that will hide what gravity has inflicted upon her rear end.

  Heidi, her producer, breezes into the edit suite at nine-thirty with two skim lattes. Even though she’s young, she has the look of a woman who has dated too many married men. She hands Georgia the steaming cup. “So what have you got?”

  Georgia hits the space bar on her Avid, and the clip resumes playing.

  When the sequence is over, Heidi whistles in genuine awe. “Fucking wizard, Georgia.” She puts down her latte. “That shot of Sheila struggling with her waistband is killer. I totally missed that.”

  Georgia is disturbingly good at her job. Her editing prowess enables her to exploit this poor middle-aged woman, whose thighs look like her own, like someone stuffed a vat of cottage cheese into an old pair of pantyhose.

  Heidi pulls up a chair and sits too close to Georgia. “I totally nailed that interview. What a boo-hooer! She was so into that high school flame. They like played in a band together or something. And her husband Joe is a marathon runner, he’s probably Viagra-dependent from all that exercise.” Heidi natters on while Georgia continues to shuttle through the footage, willing Heidi to stop talking. “Major flippage in store for this one,” Heidi snorts.

  Flippage is the network’s term for the moment when the spouse moves from mild interest to obsession over his or her first love. Flippage makes fools out of perfectly normal people, makes them do crazy things. Good job, Heidi. Congratulations on ruining another marriage. “You sure know how to pick ’em,” Georgia mutters.