They Only Eat Their Husbands

by Cara Lopez Lee

  “I do not know this word, but for your birthday you must give yourself a present: to not think so hard. Sometimes it is time for asking questions, sometimes life should just be enjoyed.”

  “You’re right,” I said, and raised my glass to his. “Yassas!” We both shouted the traditional Greek toast and tossed back our drinks.

  He asked me if I’d like another.

  “No, thank you. I’ve already had enough.”

  “You don’t like to drink?”

  “Not much. I used to hang around people who drank all the time, and some of their problems had a bad effect on me. So I don’t like to drink too much.”

  “I don’t drink very much either. Some people, they drink a lot. But I always limit my number of drinks,” he said. Then he ordered another. Maybe five is his limit.

  At about two a.m. I took my leave of Zeph. He gave me a fatherly kiss goodbye on both cheeks.

  I took off my shoes and walked down the beach until the shouts of the partiers fell to a distant murmur. The full moon, now radiant white, laid a long finger of silver light from the horizon to the surf, pointing to the place where I stood alone. “Fuck introspection!” I shouted at the moon, as my toes curled like tiny question marks in the nighttime coolness of the sand.

  ***

  Last night I dreamt about Chance again. In the dream, he held me in his arms and promised he’d never again let me go. I felt a confusing mix of passion and sorrow. Then I heard Autumn, the other woman, in the next room laughing. Overcome by a terrifying feeling of suffocation, I jolted myself awake.

  Many nights on this journey, I’ve fought my way to Morpheus through a miasma of loss and regret. Chance’s face often floats through these end-of-day vapors, which morph into bad dreams. I’ve worried that such dreams meant I was still in love with him. But I’m starting to think that’s not it. This wasn’t a dream; it was a nightmare. The reason I keep thinking about him isn’t that I still love him: it’s that I still suffer from the cruelty he inflicted, the love I wasted, and the fear that no amount of experience can ever protect an open heart.

  Then again, maybe I am still in love, with the dream of who I believed he could be, instead of who he really was when he was with me. It’s not love that hurts, it’s loving people in parts, because there are some pieces we never want to throw away, even when the rest must go.

  The Last Frontier

  thirty-four years old

  The second time I broke up with Sean I wasn’t planning to go back to Chance again. I just wanted to forestall the ineluctable pain of another relationship with another guy who didn’t want what I wanted. I wanted a commitment, Sean didn’t. Put more bluntly: I was falling in love, he wasn’t.

  One day, I asked him to come over to my apartment after his aikido class to “talk about something.” I planned to break it off then. A few hours before Sean and I were scheduled to meet, Chance invited me to meet him for dinner, also to “talk about something.”

  At dinner, Chance told me he wanted to thank me. He said his counselor had helped him a lot. “I owe that to you, because I never would’ve gone to counseling if you hadn’t suggested it. I realize you were right: a lot of the problems we had were probably because of my drinking.”

  We talked about our relationship, what went wrong, what went right, what we missed. He missed the way I let toothpaste suds run down my arm when I brushed my teeth and the way I ran out of a room when I got embarrassed. I missed the way he used to grab my hand and lead me around his condo to show off the improvements he built—doing chin-ups from his shelves to prove how sturdy they were. We didn’t decide to reconcile, but agreed to talk again soon.

  After dinner, I drove home for my dreaded appointment with Sean.

  When he showed up, he was obviously nervous. “I think I know why I’m here. You never invite me to your place.”

  “I thought it would be easier to talk here. At your place we always end up making love.” I explained that our relationship wasn’t enough for me anymore, that I needed to be free to find someone who could offer me more than just friendship with sex.

  He looked at his hands. When he spoke, his voice shook, “I know this is happening because I held back. But I do love you, Cara. I tried to stick to what we said: have an affair, no attachments. I tried to have sex without falling in love. But I couldn’t.”

  Before I could absorb this new information, the phone rang. I debated letting it keep ringing, but I knew who it was. I didn’t want to sit on the couch with Sean while we both listened to my ex-boyfriend leave some sweet-talking message on the answering machine. Worse, I feared if I didn’t answer, Chance might decide to show up at my door. So I picked up the phone.

  Chance said he was just calling to tell me how much he’d enjoyed dinner and how hopeful he was about working things out. I kept my responses vague, things like, “That’s nice, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  I glanced nervously at Sean. I could feel the comedy of errors rushing toward me, and I wasn’t laughing. Sean paced the room, acting as if he’d developed a sudden interest in the artwork on my walls. He soon gave up the pretense at art appreciation, shuffled into the bathroom, and shut the door.

  Chance’s voice buzzed enthusiasm in my ear, but I was distracted by the dawning realization that just a moment ago, for the first time, Sean had told me he loved me. In the sane life I sometimes imagined for myself, I would have evaluated my feelings while gazing into the eyes of the man who’d just declared his love, instead of listening to my ex talk about . . . whatever the hell he was talking about . . . while trying to calculate which guy was worth the risk.

  Then I realized Chance had fallen silent. “Cara . . . is someone else there?”

  “Hmm? What? Why?”

  “Is someone else there?”

  I looked at the closed bathroom door and considered my answer: Well, Sean would be gone soon enough, since I was breaking up with him, and it wasn’t Chance’s business at this point anyway. I knew if I admitted someone was with me, Chance would throw a fit. So I said, “No, no one’s here.”

  “You sound funny . . . ”

  “That’s probably because this subject makes me uncomfortable. We already talked at dinner. Let’s not spoil the progress we made. Let’s just take some time to think things over.”

  “Okay. You’re probably right. I’ll talk to you later.”

  When I hung up, I began to panic. Chance was suspicious, and I was gripped with the conviction that he must be on his way to my apartment to spy on me.

  Sean emerged from the bathroom but said nothing. Our eyes refused to meet.

  “I told you I still talk to him,” I said, and immediately felt contrite. “I’m sorry. Maybe we should talk this over. You know . . . we’ve always been more comfortable at your place. Let’s go over there and talk.”

  Either ignoring or not understanding my transparent attempts to flee my apartment, Sean said, “No, I don’t want to go to my place. Here is just fine. Besides, what else is there to say?”

  “I don’t know. You told me you loved me. You never said that before.”

  “I haven’t had much chance. You’ve always been in love with someone else.”

  “So have you,” I accused.

  This was perhaps the wrong subject to broach if my object was to wrap this up in the fifteen minutes it would take Chance to drive from his place to mine. As Sean and I talked, I repeatedly leapt up to pace the room, casting surreptitious glances out the window, fearful of spotting a familiar SUV. I sensed my ex-lover charging toward me like a tsunami. The anxiety was so intense it became impossible to continue a coherent discussion about the relationship in front of me, which now seemed worth saving.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “You’re my best friend.”

  “But you don’t love me.”

  “I do love you.” I was only
slightly surprised by my feelings. I was more surprised by how painful it was to admit them.

  “But you loved him first. I get it.”

  “Tell me you’re not still in love with Heather,” I said, with a bitterness I hadn’t known I felt. “You talk about her all the time. Tell me you wouldn’t want to get back together with her if she showed up.”

  “Cara, that’s never going to happen. But that’s not the issue. You just need someone who can make you happy, and I don’t think I can do that. I can be a real dick. You just haven’t had a chance to find out yet. You’re probably making the right choice.”

  “I don’t even think Chance and I are going to get back together. I’m just confused and I need time to think.” I walked over to the window again.

  “Why do you keep going to the window? You think he’s going to show up?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Are you going to be okay?” By this he clearly meant to ask whether I was in danger.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m going to go then.”

  “But . . . ”

  “Look, we can still talk later. But I’m going to cry now and I don’t want to do that in front of you. You’ve got to let me go.”

  As I watched him drive away, I exhaled in relief that we’d gotten through it all without Chance showing up. Then the phone rang again. It was Chance calling from his cell phone; I could hear his car humming in the background.

  “Cara, why’d you lie to me?” he asked, in that quiet but trembling voice that everyone knows men use before they chop entire families into bite-size pieces with a meat cleaver.

  “I was going to tell you—” was all I managed to squeak, before he cut me off.

  “You lying little slut. I knew someone was there. I just had to see for myself.”

  “You never let me explain.”

  “Fine. Explain.”

  “I invited him here to break up with him. I figured there was no point telling you he was here, because I was breaking up with him anyway, and because I knew you’d react like this.”

  “You have an explanation for everything. You think all that matters is that you had good reasons. You never think about how it makes me feel. All that bullshit you gave me about not wanting to ‘get ahead of ourselves’—for a minute I thought, ‘Oh, she’s so wise.’ But you’re just another fucking cunt!”

  In that moment, I found the eye of the storm and felt instantly immersed in a deep calm. My voice softened. “What did you call me?”

  “I called you a fucking cunt.”

  “So let me see if I understand you: you think I’m a ‘fucking cunt’?” I didn’t flinch from speaking the odious words, hoping he’d see them for the ugly emotional weapons they were.

  But all he said was, “That’s right.”

  “A ‘fucking cunt’? Are you sure those are the words you want to use to describe me?”

  “Yup.”

  I repeated the phrase until it sounded silly: fucking cunt . . . fucking cunt . . . fucking cunt. Then I said, “And you don’t think you’ll regret it later?”

  “No way.”

  “I see,” I said, and quietly hung up.

  He called back and started yelling. I hung up again. He called again and, in a voice so reasonable it made me twitch, said, “Cara, let’s not argue anymore. I think we should just be friends.”

  I screamed into the phone, “I don’t want to be your friend! My friends don’t treat me this way! I can’t take this anymore! Leave me alone! Leave-me-alone! Leavemealone!” I was lying on the floor, and I ended each exclamation by kicking the wall for emphasis. On the third kick, my foot disappeared in a puff of plaster. I yanked it back with a yelp of surprise.

  “Cara? Are you okay?”

  I spoke through clenched teeth, “Don’t . . . ever . . . call me or come over here again.”

  After I hung up the third time, there was a long and blessed silence as I studied the hole my foot had made.

  The next time the phone rang it was Sean. He said Chance called him.

  “Oh my God! This is just too much,” I said. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  “Nothing. Really. He told me you were upset and said I should call to make sure you were okay.”

  “That manipulative snake,” I said. “Can’t you see what he’s doing?”

  “Of course. I’m not stupid, Cara. That’s why I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine.” I took a breath and told him everything that had happened.

  An astonished gust of breath crackled through the phone. “So now he’s stalking you?”

  “Technically, I don’t think it qualifies as stalking.”

  “Cara, I think you should stay away from him.”

  “So do I. I’m so sorry I got you into this.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I knew what I was getting into. You’ve always been honest with me. I know you’re just a human being who’s doing the best she can. You have a good heart, even if he can’t see that.”

  “You think so? I kicked a hole in my wall.”

  “You did? Awesome.”

  “I’m serious,” I said, trying not to laugh.

  “Cara, have you ever seen those three holes in the wall at my apartment? Where do you think those came from? I practically broke my hand putting my fist in the wall. I mean, it’s not the smartest thing you can do, but you didn’t hurt anybody did you?”

  “No.”

  “And your hand’s okay?”

  “It was my foot,” I said, laughing.

  As usual he made me feel better, mostly because he knew everything about me, understood, forgave, and loved me anyway. In my life before Alaska, I’d often been teased about being a Miss Goody Two-Shoes, Little Mary Sunshine, Pollyanna, or any number of irksomely nice girls. That night, I knew I could no longer play any of those roles. I’d finally discovered what it was like to do everything absolutely wrong. Maybe I had to do something unforgivable and be forgiven for it, before I could understand the true nature of love.

  Although Sean still loved me, our relationship remained a casualty of my war with Chance. The war was over, but the wounds ran deep. I told Sean I couldn’t see him for a while. Speaking psychobabble so perfectly that even I couldn’t detect my lack of conviction, I explained, “I need time to just be with myself and no one else. If we’ve really got something here, surely it can wait a month or so?”

  I knew he would wait. He’d confessed many times that he was the type who felt attracted to whatever seemed most difficult to obtain. Convincing him to wait for me would be the easy part. The difficult part, once he had me, would be convincing him I was still hard to get.

  Chance did what I asked and left me in peace. He didn’t try to see me again—although I did see him, a few months later when I was covering a news story. A construction worker was crushed when a piece of equipment fell on him. When I arrived, a paramedic was on his knees trying to revive the victim. The paramedic was Chance. One of the victim’s friends yelled at the photographer and me for videotaping the rescue effort: he called us “vultures.” But Chance never saw me. He was completely focused on the unresponsive body before him.

  The man died. It wasn’t Chance’s fault; the guy was dead when medics arrived. But Chance wouldn’t give up until he had to. He was always sober and professional on the job, and at his best in a crisis. He truly was a hero. Just not mine.

  Without a man in my life, at least for the moment, I took the next step in my personal sexual revolution: I patched the hole in the apartment wall by myself. Performing a home repair with actual tools, without male assistance or advice, might have been a simple act of self-sufficiency, but it was also a start at repairing my damaged self-esteem. I could fix a wall; maybe, just maybe, I could fix myself.

  Flypaper for Freaks


  thirty-six years old—xania, crete

  It seems to me a woman who travels alone is automatically an object of suspicion. What could she possibly be up to, all by herself? A woman who travels alone must be looking for trouble, or at least . . . a man.

  One afternoon in the National Garden in Athens, I stopped at a long and lovely arbor of overarching vines, sat on a bench in the green tunnel of sun-freckled shade, and began writing in my journal. I was lost in my own world until I looked up to see a man in the shrubbery across from me, staring directly into my eyes as he pulled his private weapon out of his pants and started playing with it. People continued walking up and down the path, oblivious to the sexual assault taking place on either side of them: masturbating pervert to the left, eye-rolling victim to the right. If Kaitlin were here she’d say, “Face it, you’re flypaper for freaks.” I sighed in disgust, closed my journal, and moved to another bench.

  One day on Naxos Island, I was dozing atop my sarong on a nearly empty beach when I heard shuffling footsteps in the sand. I opened my eyes to a pair of hairy legs. I tilted my face up to a dark, bare-chested, curly-headed young Greek man with a towel draped over his arm. He gave me an oafish grin and asked, “Ameriga?”

  I closed my eyes, pressed my face into my sarong and, in a voice muffled by sand, replied, “No. Canada.”

  “Ameriga!” he repeated, still grinning. He laid down his towel just a foot above my head, turning my sarong and his towel into a capital “T” in the sand. Then he lay down.

  In disbelief, I propped myself up, pointedly looked around me at the acres of vacant sand, and turned a disgusted look at this man invading my personal space. “No!” I bellowed. “I’m not looking for a boyfriend. I have a boyfriend. Goodbye!”