At the kitchen window Beau had put his mouth around my finger and gently sucked it.
“What about like other words?” he asked.
I was amazed to think we might have once had the ability to read each other’s thoughts, but our minds were so uncomplicated back then there couldn’t have been that many thoughts to choose from.
“What words did you have in mind?”
“Like ‘fuck.’ Like ‘suck.’ Like ‘cock.’ Like ‘pussy,’” he whispered, stepping back to seriously assess the architectural challenges of that sundress, which would always give him a bit of trouble. I turned to press my back into him and saw Lou through the window playing with the baby in the grass. Beau placed his erection between the canyon of my ass and started to fiddle with the knot behind my neck. (Was it ridiculous to be angry at Beth for ruining this sexual position for me as well? Now not only couldn’t I imagine facing my husband during sex, I couldn’t imagine not facing him either.) Giving up, Beau lifted the skirt part, ripping it slightly at the hem.
“Oops. Sorry. Hoping to avoid that,” he murmured into my unburdened shoulders.
“Liar, you hate this dress.”
“No I don’t. I love it on you. I just hate taking the fucking thing off.”
What had I worried about eight years ago? Saggy boobs and an unpaved driveway? The creepy notion of my dad catching me going at it with my husband? My hip bones getting bruised against the granite counter? Being twenty-one with a new baby? Finishing school? I don’t remember worrying about any of those things. For those few minutes, while my husband moved behind me with uncharacteristic grace and my father washed our stinking dog in the baby pool, our life was still only a series of regular vignettes—the wedding, then the baby, and then there should have been a graduation, and then a job, and then perhaps another baby, in that order, a long story with a happy ending. And though it had felt wrong having stand-up sex not twenty feet from my dad and sleeping son, I remember it had felt necessary, because this, I thought, was how husbands and wives inoculated themselves from disaster. This was how you kept the demons of marital disaster at bay.
THE CORN SPUTTERED and hissed on the kitchen island. I glanced at the back of Sam’s head; there had been no fit, no spell, so far that day. I made a mental note for Dr. Best.
“That’s not a word, Auntie Lucy. It’s a swear,” Sam said, sounding manly, a bit too scolding and professional. I walked over to where they were sitting and looked over their shoulders. Lucy had organized her computer tiles to read “bitch.”
“It’s a word. It’s a female dog. Scoots is a bitch, isn’t she?”
“Actually,” Sam said, correcting her, “Scoots is a guy dog.”
“Then that would make Scoots an asshole,” Lucy said, hand cupped under Sam’s chin. “And don’t you ever become one. I’m going to check on Leo and the kids.”
It was going to be that kind of night, I thought, as Lucy grabbed another beer from the fridge and headed out back. Most likely she wanted to keep an eye on Beth, a wise move on her part.
“I’m coming too, Auntie Lucy,” Sam said, scrambling after her, leaving me alone for a few blessed minutes to check my email.
At that point in our awful, rueful prank, no outright physical infidelity had occurred. But my thoughts and actions had all of the hallmarks of betrayal; obsessiveness, secrecy, sneaking around to check email, lying to myself that I’d stop, that it didn’t mean anything, plus that rush of blood to the groin when I’d be driving and thinking about sleeping with a man other than my husband, in particular Beth’s most recent ex, Marcus Edward Street. The problem was he felt the same way. About me. Well, not me, another me, a different me, a woman Beth and I have both come to think of as our “almost me.”
Maybe I got easily snared in this mess because I was both bored and scared, and infidelity was spreading like a flu through many of the homes in our town, and what business did I have of thinking us immune? Still, nothing about our drama started out innocently. It was all venal—and ballsy and galling—and though Beth had been the plan’s unapologetic architect, in the weeks prior to my first trip to New York, I had been the avid builder.
chapter five
DURING THE SUMMER between my first and second years of school, I had signed up for a stint (for credit) with physically and mentally challenged kids. They were sweet kids with gummy voices, sticker-strewn wheelchairs, hovering moms, and thick necks. In fact, I had wondered if perhaps special ed would suit me more than social work. Then I was handed the unwanted task of supervising special ed arts and crafts, myself in turn supervised by a couple of stern doctoral candidates, sent to evaluate my skills and report back to the university. I thought it would be a cinch. I had always stood up for the slower kids, those lumped with regular ones, kids forever screaming Wait for me, I have asthma. But I was not prepared for these ones. Regular kids are messy enough, but these kids moved like demented dervishes. None of our exercises were completed on time, if at all; nothing we produced was remotely close to the curriculum. The trees we drew were lightning bolts or freckles or flowers. The Popsicle-stick houses looked like what a tornado would see in its rearview mirror. The macaroni pictures reminded me of the table-scrap shrapnel on the floor around Scoots’s bowl. I knew the point wasn’t to produce perfection. I knew these kids were only to be coached on the attempt, and that art was merely meant to enhance expression and release. No one expected them to become accidental Picassos.
But I took their results personally. Somehow I thought it was my fault that I couldn’t bust through the plasma that prevented them from creating little linear masterpieces. And my frustration rubbed off on them. I was too young to understand that teaching people to attempt the impossible, then to be unafraid to try again after failure, was about the best lesson you could grasp in life. Instead, I panicked. And then I insinuated myself in their tasks. I’d sit behind Chelsea, my hand firmly wrapped around her hand, and I’d make her draw what was assigned. I’d sit next to little Monty and efficiently shape the macaroni elbows into a radiating sun, even though he had no idea what I was building in his name. I’d pivot to catch and wash Joey’s brushes. Then I’d helpfully guide his palsied hand toward the correct colors for oranges, bananas, or trees in summer. The kids were overjoyed at the results, the parents a bit less so after they discovered me to be the kids’ arts-and-crafts Svengali.
Despite showing what I thought was real verve and command, my evaluators did not agree. They wrote that I was “uncomfortably impatient, and overly protective.”
Georgia Archer clearly demonstrates a deep fondness for the children in her care, but she has trouble allowing them to explore the limits of their own fallibility. She says her motives are to minimize the pain and frustration some of the children feel over completing the tasks at hand. But we feel she may be focused more on keeping the room clean than letting the children explore the outer reaches of the materials and the projects. In one instance Georgia brought in garbage bags (expense hers) to place over their artist’s smocks to prevent too much paint from getting on them. In another instance, she completed an acrylic picture of a student’s pet, after hours, and allowed the student to take full credit, even though the results obviously exceeded the child’s natural capabilities. Though her intentions are admirable, and we do feel that Ms. Archer might make an outstanding teacher, we do not think she’s a fit for special ed, let alone for the demands of social work, which requires particular detachment skills as yet unseen in this candidate.
I wasn’t supposed to see that note, but a TA had accidentally slid the assessment in my mail slot at school. It was an odd feeling to read about myself, to picture myself doing those things, however wrong. But as with the artistic pursuits of my special ed charges, my intentions for Beth and her love life had always been good ones. My advice was always meant to help Beth; it was how I attempted to wrap my hand around hers so she could begin to spell out happier endings. But what she and her friends had hatched went way beyond casual inte
rference or heavy-handed advice. It was near-criminal in its brilliance, and for the first time ever, I had been included.
WEEKS BEFORE BETH’S last disastrous trip home, I had returned from grocery shopping to find Beau splayed out on the couch, the top of his pants undone. His furtive masturbation had woken me twice that month. I didn’t get angry because I wasn’t doing anything to offset the need. He was welcome to play with himself all he wanted; I just didn’t want the boys to catch him.
“Why not?” teased Beau.
“It would traumatize them. That’s why.”
“How?”
“They’re just boys. And they don’t need to know they’ve surpassed their father in every way. It would mess up their ability to admire you.”
“There’s a message from Beth. She’s in fricken Thailand somewhere. I saved it,” Beau mumbled, tugging himself out of the tail end of his nap. “She’s crying again. I swear, you spend more time with her than me.”
Beth’s crew was on a two-week buying trip to find cheap batik and men’s Hawaii shirts for a special episode on leisure wear. It was that aspect of her job that I had always found bafflingly enviable. She did these things, went to these places, and worse, she had a way of making the trips seem as important as G-8 summits.
I dumped the grocery bags on the kitchen counter.
“What time is it where she is?”
“I don’t know, but she and her friends are pretty drunk. It kills me. She calls, you drop everything. I want something from you, you tell me later. Wait. Not now. No. Quiet. Leave me alone.”
“Don’t be like this, Beau.”
“It’s true, man. I did the math. Fucking seven hours on the phone last month. That’s more than you spend talking to me. Or anyone else.”
“Where are the boys?”
I yanked a can of beer off its collar and threw it at Beau the way you’d pacify a caged lion with a lamb shank. I wanted to say that if I didn’t have Beth, I’d have let the hair on my toes grow black and long like they want to. I’d be fat(ter). I’d have cut my hair into that spiky middle-aged, manageable lady mullet, one you and the boys would be sporting a variation of, too. Worse, all proudly. Without the computer Beth gave us, we wouldn’t have found that not-too-bad-looking, unobtrusive helmet that Sam can wear when we’re not around, or when he knows he’ll be negotiating hard surfaces. And forget about that red halter dress, the French perfume, the playful lingerie, the tasteful porn. Forget about those recipes you love so much you once said that you wanted to spread my eggplant parmesan all over your chest in front of the guys at the shop, like a monster, It’s that good. Without my biweekly Beth dose, we never would have heard of The Usual Suspects, Lucinda Williams, or braised rapini, all your favorites now.
You have no fucking idea, Beau, I wanted to say.
“So. Where are the boys?”
“I butchered Jake and stuck his body in the freezer. Sam’s out back choking on his vomit,” he said, punctuated by a loud burp.
“Ass. Hole.” I slapped him not lightly on the back of the head. “Don’t joke about that.”
“Relax, they’re with Lou. He took them to the fair in Wheatley. He’s gonna feed them lunch there.”
“Lou take extra pants?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“Jesus. I told you, that’s part of watching Sam, for chrisakes. Did you give him your cell?”
“No. I forgot.”
“Man …” I took my anger out on the answering machine button, smashing down PLAY.
“Paging Dr. Peachy,” Beau screeched through a TV Guide bullhorn. “Waa, it’s Beth. Nobody loves me. Call me. Waaa!”
Peach, it’s Beth. Check your email please, please, please. Then call me back. My cell. The hotel’s a backwater. I’ll call you right back. I did something kind of funny. Well, Jeb, Kate, and I did something funny. Anyway, can’t wait to tell you. Miss you. Need some HDP.
Heavy Duty Peachy.
I used to ignore that laptop when Beth first gave it to us. Then I started researching Sam’s illness, a terrifically addictive and terrifying habit that I was trying hard to break. Her email was titled “I Want to Die.” The body of the email contained two Web links, the first one taking me to a New York newspaper’s daily gossip section.
July 7—Media lawyer Marcus Edward Street probably isn’t laughing about his girlfriend’s latest antics last Saturday. Potent party girl and TV fashion diva Beth Archer roughed up one of the bouncers at Marquee after she and her friends refused to vacate a reserved table. The incident escalated to the point where the bouncer, who has since been fired, allegedly put Archer in a headlock after she punched him squarely in the face, breaking his nose. Aggressive Archer had police called to the Chelsea hot spot after she was escorted out, but declined to press charges. Now that’s, um, class!
The second link in the email took me to a dating Web site, specifically to an ad featuring a “Newly Single Lawyer,” presumably Marcus. My heart actually leapt at seeing his handsome, happy face again, chin resting in his hand, making him seem professorial and wise. He looked exactly like a well-balanced, evolved, curious, committed, kind human man—no one like Beth had ever dated, including Beau. Plus, he ticked off an income category which exceeded that of everyone I knew or was related to, combined.
I finished reading, checked the time in Thailand, and phoned Beth’s cell.
“Congratulations!” I said when she picked up.
“Fuck, Peach. You gotta be kidding.”
“Whoa. Didn’t you say you always wanted to make the gossip pages?”
“Not as Tara Fucking Reid!” she yelled over a loud crowd behind her. I could hear a man’s voice say, “She was great in The Big Lebowski!”
“Fuck off, Jeb,” Beth yelled, trying to muffle the receiver.
She told me they were in the hotel bar after a long shoot involving cauldrons of dye on the beach. It was almost midnight there, just after lunch for us. I looked at the back of Beau’s skull, the alert part of his head facing NASCAR on that stupid flat screen we bought with the satellite dish after 9/11.
“Beau, turn that thing down, okay?” He raised the remote over the top of the couch and ratcheted down the sound.
“Peachy, did you see his fucking ad? We just broke up, and he had the balls to send the link to Kate, in case she had any friends who were single. I mean, he doesn’t even like Kate. No offense, Kate,” Beth said, presumably to Kate. I could hear people laughing in the background, but I could also tell Beth was on the cusp of some real pain for the first time in a long time. I whipped out my old voice, my soothing social worker voice, the one I had hoped to take out of its imaginary, velvet-lined box upon graduation.
“Okay, calm down, Beth. What happened? Walk me through it slowly. Start from the start. What sticks out? And go somewhere quiet, would you? I’ll head out back too.”
I grabbed a Coke in the fridge before letting the back door slam behind me. On my way out Beau muttered, “No, no, I’m good, Peach, I’ll just stay right here, playing with myself.”
“So tell me what happened, Beth.”
“You wanna know what happened? You wanna know what he said? He said: ‘Well, Beth, I wasn’t sure I could fall in love with you before. But after that Page Six stupidity, it’s doubtful I ever will.’ He’s looking to join a private firm. Make partner, or whatever law people do. Seems I’m not law-partner-wife material. But dammit, Peachy, that bouncer was a fucking tool.”
Marcus told her he thought that they should take a long break, as though Beth was an arduous hike and lucky him coming upon a bench. I understood that urge, but sometimes that’s all it took. A brief break, feet up, phone off for a spell, and then I’d muster up the business of missing Beth again.
“I want to know what’s wrong with me, Peachy. Why I can’t get a guy to love me?”
“I wish I knew too, lovey,” I said. “Maybe your picker’s broken and you should retract it for repairs. You know?”
Beau was right,
I did spend more time on the phone trying to fix Beth’s life than I did making sense of ours. I know now we had just begun the mysterious process of growing apart, something that used to baffle me about other couples. I used to wonder how, after seven, eight years together do you possibly “grow apart”? And please can you show me how to do it? I used to worry Beau and I had grown way too close, not in the cute way of finishing each other’s sentences, but in the bad way, like a pot holding too many plants, the roots eventually strangling each other. After almost a decade of marriage, my body, my life, was becoming indiscernible from my husband’s, a man who ate off my plate, used my toothbrush, and talked to me while sitting on the toilet, scouring his molars—worse, I understood every word he mumbled through the suds, standing there at the vanity wearing his tossed-off T-shirt and rubbing his medicinal hand cream into my heels. Even if I hadn’t had sex with him, hugged or touched him, by the end of the day, I would smell like Beau. Once, after my hernia operation, I was about to scold him for clipping his toenails in the living room. But when he was finished with his toenails, he started on mine as though my feet were simply an extension of his own, a backup set, perhaps, and I loved him so much in that moment.
“Beth. Listen to me. Have you spoken to him?”
“Marcus won’t talk to me. Won’t answer my emails. Won’t tell me why he can’t love me. Then he goes and posts that ad and he makes sure I know about it. It’s so cruel. I hate him, but I love him so much. Oh, Peachy, I’m going crazy. And now the Internet’s down at this fucking hellhole hotel, and I’m fucking here for another week of fucking stupid models and fat Germans trolling the beach for kids. I hate it here.”
I let her cry while craning my neck to watch Beau stretch off the couch, channel-surf, then fall back down after finding something else to watch. Like bobby pins under a high beehive hairdo, or the spider web of arthritic knots tied behind a delicate piece of embroidery, men have no idea how relationships are held together, the girdles and duct tape, the emotional scaffolding that hold two people together.
The Almost Archer Sisters Page 6