Four: Stories of Marriage

by Nia Forrester

  Still, they weren’t doing that crazy shit with the next kid. Brendan didn’t give a damn what The Book said. He still hadn’t forgiven himself for doing it with Layla in the first place.

  “Okay, I can’t promise seven, but I’ll try to be there by eight,” Brendan said, sobering up since he could hear that Tracy wasn’t in the mood to play. “And it’ll be too late for dinner so eat without me …”

  “Okay.”

  “… and meet me at the door naked.” He couldn’t help himself.

  “Brendan.”

  Given that it was almost one a.m., Brendan was sure Tracy had long departed Seriously-Pissed-Off and was somewhere approaching Ballistic. But there hadn’t been any way to avoid it. The men he’d been entertaining all evening had flown in from Dubai. They were young Saudi sheiks, or sons of entrepreneurs or some such thing, with money to burn and looking to invest in music. And they were the best kind of investors—young, wealthy and feckless enough to be largely incurious about details. Investors of this type tended to believe that if they liked you, and you showed them a good time, it would be impolite to leave without investing at least something.

  The problem though, was that the Saudis were always hard to shake. They had no interest in going to bed by midnight after traveling halfway across the world. So, Brendan should have known it was folly to plan to get home after an ‘early drink at the hotel.’ When they came to the States these guys didn’t just expect to be shown a good time. No, they wanted pure debauchery. Strip clubs, loose women, hard liquor—the whole nine yards. That was part of his business that Brendan seldom talked about with Tracy. She didn’t like him being around women in power-suits let alone those in thongs shaking their tail in his face. And while Brendan never partook in that manner of festivity, he was expected to be along for the ride.

  Tonight, his charge had been a twenty-three-year-old with a potential $2.5 million investment who happened to like blondes. But he and his entourage had two very specific requests: full nudity and twerking. Easy enough in New York City, right? Wrong. Because dude also wanted them to have big butts. Like, really big. The stripper aesthetic differed from city to city, and big butts were more of a down South thing.

  Manhattan’s clubs were more into toned and athletic girls, some of them more on the slender side. So, they’d been to three clubs before Karim or Jahir or whatever-the-hell-his-name-was had found the perfect dancer who met his and his friends’ requirements. Then they’d spent the better part of three hours making it rain. Things only got worse when the working girls realized that what was raining was twenties, instead of singles. The mayhem that ensued could only be described as a stripper stampede.

  What should have been a perfectly respectable evening having a few early drinks with potential business associates had turned into a frat boy’s wet dream. And a husband’s nightmare. Brendan practically had to fight his way out of the club through a sea of tits and ass, dragging the reluctant-to-leave Saudis behind him.

  Brendan couldn’t hear Tracy now as he opened the front door—the house was completely silent—but he knew for certain that she was wide awake. Wide awake and waiting.

  Making his way up the stairs slowly, he tried to avoid the loud spots, but of course, failed. The door to the master bedroom, which was directly opposite the top of the stairs, was ajar. They were staying in Brooklyn these days, in the house that Tracy owned before they got married. Layla was starting to need more space and they’d agreed that the apartment in the city had way too many hazards, not the least of which was the beautiful, but child-unfriendly spiral staircase that led up to the loft.

  Pausing before heading for the master bedroom, Brendan instead decided to go check in on his little girl. The second bedroom, once Tracy’s home office, had been transformed into an explosion of pink, ruffles and butterflies, at the center of which was what Tracy had described to him as a “princess sleigh-bed.” And in the center of that bed, his baby girl lay, sleeping sweet little-girl dreams, her long wild, reddish-auburn hair spread around her head like a halo, her rosebud mouth slightly open, her breaths soft and even.

  Smiling, Brendan knelt next to the bed and inhaled the scent of her curls, kissing her lightly on the cheek and then on the forehead. In her sleep, Layla stretched out her arms, waiting to be lifted. Gently, he pushed her arms back down to the covers.

  Around the time she turned a year old, things had been so hectic at work that he rarely made it home before her bedtime. So, it had been his practice, as he had done tonight, to go into her room just to pick her up, hold her while she slept and walk back and forth in her room for a few minutes. The weight and warmth of this incredible little being—the most amazing thing he had ever done in his life—was something he couldn’t even begin to describe.

  Tonight, he didn’t pick her up, but just looked, smelled her, kissed her, and went back down the hall to face his wife.

  When he opened the door to the master suite, Tracy was sitting up in bed, back straight as though she was in lotus pose, her hair loose about her shoulders, arms folded on her lap, and legs folded. Still the most beautiful woman he had ever known, it struck him right in the chest, and in the gut whenever he walked into a room and caught sight of Tracy. Tonight, was no different.

  “Is it important to you that we have another baby?” she asked, without greeting him first. Her voice was scarily calm.

  Trick question, incoming.

  “Of course it is. You know me. If it was up to me, we’d have a few more.”

  “It is up to you, Brendan. All you have to do is make it home during the window.”

  “Let’s not talk about ‘the window’ at one-thirty in the morning. I don’t think I have it in me right now to talk about ‘the window’.”

  “According to the book, it’s our best chance for …”

  “I know. You’ve read the book to me every morning for the last few months while I’m trying to get out of the house for work, so I know all about it.”

  “So, you know today is …”

  “Yep. I know. Twelve Hours Post-Ovulation Day. Optimal Conception Day.”

  Brendan shed his shirt and began working on his pants. As exasperated as he was by the conversation, he was mostly relieved that she wasn’t angry after all. By Tracy’s standards, this was nothing short of a miracle. His wife was not one to take it well when things didn’t go according to plan. Particularly if the plan was hers.

  “Are you making fun of this process?”

  “Nope. Not at all.”

  Tossing his clothes over the back of the bedroom armchair, he turned toward the bed, pausing only to switch off the overhead lighting, throwing the room into almost complete darkness. The only illumination came from the hallway where they always kept a dim light on in case they needed to make their way quickly to Layla’s bedroom in the middle of the night.

  Climbing onto the bed, Brendan grabbed his wife by the ankles and pulled her toward him, causing her to topple backward.

  “Brendan!”

  “Shh,” he said, spreading her legs. “You’re going to wake Layla.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Tracy asked as he grasped her behind the knees and lifted her legs.

  “We’re about to make a baby.”

  “No.” Tracy said.

  “No?”

  “No, Brendan. It’s too late now. And anyway, you don’t get to come in here smelling like a distillery, hours later than you promised and get some purely-for-enjoyment sex.”

  “What’s wrong with purely-for-enjoyment sex?” he asked, turning his head to kiss along her inner thigh. “That’s the only kind we used to have, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  Her voice had softened somewhat, and she sighed as he made his way up her right thigh toward the apex, and her chest had begun to rise and fall more visibly. Baring his teeth, he nipped her lightly and was rewarded with Tracy swatting him on top of his head.

  “You suck,” she said. “We missed the window bec
ause of you.”

  “I don’t suck,” Brendan said sliding a hand up and under her nightshirt. “But if you’re nice to me, I will …” He tweaked a nipple and Tracy’s pelvis lifted off the bed.

  “You always think you can placate me with sex,” she said.

  “Because I always can.” Brendan moved up her body so that finally, they were face-to-face.

  Tracy’s greenish-amber eyes blinked slowly, and her perfect bow-shaped lips curled into a smile. Her hair was wild and disheveled, spread around her head and shoulders on the pillow. It caught what little light there was, so that it seemed streaked in gold.

  Brendan smiled back, and for a few long moments they just looked at each other. He loved the hell out of this woman, with all her prickliness, and moods and complications. But among the things he loved most was how hopeless she was at hiding all she felt for him. Even now, pissed as she was, he saw it in those incredible eyes of hers.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I should’ve been here.”

  Tracy reached up and swatted the top of his head again. “Yeah. You should have,” she said quietly. And then a pause. “So … where were you?”

  Brendan froze, weighing the odds that Tracy’s surprisingly mellow mood would persist if he told her the complete truth. He felt her legs, wrapped around his torso slacken a little.

  “Out with a potential investor. Young guy from the Middle East. He, and his friends wanted a little … Western-style entertainment.”

  “So, you were at a … country-and-western bar?” Tracy asked sweetly.

  “No,” Brendan said slowly. “Not exactly.”

  “Brendan.” Tracy’s voice hardened.

  “Sweetheart …”

  “Brendan, tell me you weren’t at a …”

  “Yes. But I swear I didn’t enjoy it.”

  Tracy thrashed around beneath him, trying to get free, and shoving fruitlessly against his chest. “Get off me,” she ordered.

  “Tracy, c’mon.”

  “C’mon nothing! You know how I feel about those places, and yet you …”

  “I go where the investors and clients want to go, Tracy. You know that. You think I want some sweaty-ass chick who’s been groped by a dozen guys grinding on me?”

  “What do you mean grinding on you? Did you get a freakin’ lap-dance?”

  Brendan sighed and rolled over onto his back. “No, I didn’t get a lap-dance.”

  “You’d better not have, Brendan. Or …”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s fight about this tomorrow. Are we having sex or not?”

  “Not.”

  “Fine. G’night then. I’m exhausted.”

  After getting up to switch off the bathroom light, Brendan climbed back into bed. Next to him, though they weren’t touching, he felt Tracy’s tension and wakefulness. She could never sustain her anger at him for very long. She flared, and then she cooled, and then they were all over each other again. But at least for the next couple of hours, she would be seething.

  Knowing that by morning the whole disagreement would be a thing of the past made it much easier for Brendan to be sanguine about it.

  Still, it would probably take Tracy another two hours to drift off as she tried to talk herself down from her annoyance. Meanwhile, he could already feel himself slipping beneath the soft cloak of sleep. His wife was nothing if not intense; and once she decided to do something, she was single-minded until it was accomplished. And having a second baby was her new mission.

  The pregnancy with Layla had been far from uneventful. Even their daughter’s conception had happened somewhat against the odds. Tracy had been on and off the pill, and only occasionally having periods. And Brendan hadn’t been trying to get her pregnant back then, because they weren’t married. He only began to reconcile himself to fatherhood—and acknowledge how much he wanted it—when Tracy almost miscarried early on in her first trimester. But after Layla was born, that was it, he was all the way gone, and the future he imagined for them included a large family.

  Unlike Tracy though, he was willing to trust that it would all happen in due course—they didn’t need to orchestrate everything. But because family, their family, was Tracy’s only occupation—since she had left her job to be a full-time homemaker a year after they married—Brendan was happy to let her take charge of all things home-related, including the baby-making. The problem was, knowing his wife, if she couldn’t have even a modicum of control over the process, she would grow increasingly tense.

  “Hey,” he said to her in the dark.

  “What?”

  “Come closer.”

  He heard and felt Tracy move toward him, but still, they didn’t touch.

  “Closer,” he said again.

  This time her arm brushed against his.

  “Closer.”

  “Brendan …”

  He dragged Tracy toward him so that her head was on his chest, and his arms were wrapped around her. Heaving a deep sigh, he shut his eyes again. “Good. There,” he said. “That’s where you’re supposed to be.”

  “You still suck,” Tracy whispered.

  “I know.” He inhaled her hair, kissed her atop the head, and felt himself drift toward sleep.

  2

  It was difficult to keep a straight face watching the gaggle of three- and four-year-olds running back and forth across the grass, smartly outfitted in soccer uniforms, and yet not knowing a thing about the game. Tracy kept her eyes on Layla’s curly-haired head, her ponytail bouncing up and down as she chased the ball with her teammates. Before they left the house, Tracy had pulled her socks all the way up and over her knees to make sure that if she—God forbid—fell while playing, Layla’s legs would not be cut and scarred.

  This whole soccer fiasco was Brendan’s idea, and she’d only gone along with it when, after much coaxing, he pointed out that she was raising Layla to be what he called “a little princess.” Like there was anything wrong with that.

  She’s always going to be our princess, of course, he said in a voice that Tracy recognized as the one he used when he was humoring her. But we still need to teach her other things too.

  Like what?

  How to be a member of a team, how to deal with competition, with losing ...

  Sounds like big lessons for a three-year old, Tracy had muttered.

  Okay, fine, Brendan capitulated. So, let’s just say she needs to get outside, run and get dirty once in a while.

  Now that made a little more sense. Especially since Tracy caught herself about to say: Little girls don’t need to run outside and get dirty. The impulse scared her to death. Because it sounded precisely like the kind of thing her mother might say.

  So, now Layla was in a neighborhood preschooler soccer league which Tracy found out about on the Mommy & Me Listserv. When she showed Brendan the prospectus about the league, and that of another similar one that she couldn’t decide between, he shook his head, laughed and gave her the okay to sign Layla up for whichever she chose, all the while mumbling something about ‘First World problems.’

  Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Tracy came out to Prospect Park with a bunch of other stay-at-home moms and a smattering of nannies to watch their kids and charges running around in befuddlement at which of them should be kicking the ball, and in what direction. Glancing down at her watch, Tracy saw that it was almost four. The game was just about over, and Brendan had promised he would make the last half.

  Lately, he’d been terrible about time, and keeping appointments. She still hadn’t quite gotten over him missing Ovulation Day about a week back. And now she was just nine days away from her period, so they would have to wait another three weeks to even give it a serious shot.

  “That’s some crappy defense.”

  Tracy’s head whipped around and despite herself, she smiled at the sight of her husband, without his suit-jacket, tie loosened, and sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing his firm, sinewy forearms. He was tall and lean, firmly-muscled but not bulky, with t
he square-jawed, even handsomeness of someone who could very well have made a living off his good-looks.

  But by far, the most amazing thing about Brendan was his smile, and its uncanny power to make Tracy weak at the knees darn near every single time. It felt like he had a million smiles for the rest of the world, but one very special one reserved just for her. And of course, another just for Layla.

  They’d been together for five years and married for three, and he was still the only man who had ever affected her this way, making her feel safe, protected, and always, always wanted. Even now, he was grinning at her in that way he had, his eyes, slightly narrowed, assessing, and traveling her length, from head to toe, lingering at her chest, and then again at her eyes.

  Finally, he bit into the flesh of his lower lip, and smiled at her once again, like a man flirting across the room with a woman he hasn’t yet met. After all this time, he still looked at her the way he had before they had even been dating, like they’d never touched, made love, had fights, made up, seen each other ill, and gone through many more messy and unromantic rites of marriage. There were still days, even now, when Tracy couldn’t quite make herself believe she had him, and that she deserved him

  “Hey, sweetheart. We winning?” He leaned down to kiss her, and then turned his attention back to the game.

  “I haven’t a clue,” Tracy said. “It just looks like a big jumble to me.”

  “We’re one goal down,” someone said.

  Tracy turned at the voice. It was one of the nannies, a college-aged young woman who escorted a set of twins, whose parents Tracy couldn’t recall ever having met. The twins’ names were Aidan and Ethan. They were super-cute, ginger-haired with cornflower-blue eyes, but appeared to be quite the handful. Of course they were. With absentee parents, how could they be otherwise? The thought felt mean and small-minded of her, but once she’d made the choice to stay home with Layla, Tracy couldn’t conceive of how women—assuming they had the option—could voluntarily make a different one.