Remind Me Again Why I Married You

by Rita Ciresi

  Clearly it was time to tell Ebb. But as I idly turned forward in his Filofax, I stopped on Monday, March 23. Next to the smiley face I had drawn to herald my ovulation, Ebb had written bliss.

  I brushed my hip, gently, against his hip. “Bliss, hmm?” I asked.

  “You bet,” Ebb said. “Victoria is going to a computer meeting. For two whole hours, I get to be completely by myself in the office. Do you believe it?”

  “No,” I said crossly. I stabbed my finger on the Filofax. “You should erase this bliss. Before she sees it.”

  Ebb looked down at the tile floor, as if he had never seen the hexagonal pattern before and found it utterly fascinating. “She already did.”

  “Oh, Ebb,” I said. “How could she have?”

  “It was an accident,” Ebb said. “I went to talk to Rudy and left my Filofax on my desk. When I came back, Victoria had put a flight itinerary on my desk—”

  “An itinerary!” I said. “Where are you going now?”

  “Nowhere. The trip got canceled. But Victoria must have seen what I had written, because she looked . . . you know, all shriveled and hurt. Her lips, especially, got all pulled in.”

  “Lips get thinner,” I said, “as a woman gets older.”

  Ebb pushed up his glasses and peered at me. “Your mouth looks larger than ever.”

  “But my lips are disappearing.”

  Ebb touched a tiny tusk of skin on my bottom lip; his finger brought away a tinge of brownish red. “They’re a bit chapped,” he said. “But not in obvious danger of extinction.”

  He smiled at me. I smiled back. Then I pointed, once again, to his Filofax. “I guess you’d better be extra nice to Vicki on Monday.”

  “Who’s Vicki?”

  “Your secretary.”

  “She goes by Vicki? She never told me.”

  “You probably never asked,” I said.

  Ebb took the pencil and scribbled something puzzling on Monday, March 23: Teleflora.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I’m not supposed to tell. So don’t you either. But Rudy’s wife is having a hysterectomy.”

  My hand immediately went to my abdomen, as if someone were threatening to reach inside and remove a vital part of me too. “Oh,” I said. “That’s too bad.”

  I didn’t especially like Dorothy Furlong—in fact, she was exactly the type of corporate wife who set my teeth on edge. The first time I had met her was at a huge party the Furlongs had thrown right after the SB merger. I was so astounded that any woman had the stamina—never mind the stupidity—to stand in the front door of her McMansion in a sequined dress, repeating over and over, “Hello, I’m Dorothy Furlong and I’ll be your hostess for the evening,” that I had been tempted to reply, “Well, I’m Lisa Strauss and I’ll be your guest from the Planet Ape.” But now I felt guiltily sympathetic toward her.

  “Does she have cancer?” I asked. “Or is she doing that voluntarily?”

  “Why would Rudy tell me if it were voluntary?”

  I shrugged. “I’m surprised he told you anything so private in the first place.”

  “He told me because he wanted me to go to Cleveland on Sunday and Monday.”

  “But, Ebb, you can’t!”

  “I know. I told him.”

  “That I’m ovulating?”

  “Of course not! I told him we might be closing in on a house.” Ebb shut his Filofax. “And he, in turn, told me far too many details about his wife’s surgery.”

  “I guess he’s scared. I guess he just needed to confide in someone.”

  “I understand that. But sometimes I just wish that everyone at SB—from Rudy on down—would quit pouring all their personal problems into my ear—”

  “But, Ebb,” I interrupted, “that’s why Rudy chose you for that position. Everyone knows that you’re a good listener.”

  Ebb opened his mouth and out came some garbled, throat-clearing sound. Maybe Ebb was about to say something important. But he hesitated so long—and got so tongue-tied—that I grew impatient and turned my back. I slid a fistful of spaghetti out of the blue Ronzoni box and, with a rippling crack, broke the bundle in half and dropped it into the frothing water, drowning out his silence.

  Then I stared at the bundle of spaghetti standing stiffly in the steaming pot. Usually I was good about listening to Ebb. I prompted him. Sometimes even begged him to talk to me, using every persuasive phrase in the book short of resorting to the standard command Danny’s teachers used to deliver when he stamped his toddler feet or clenched his fist in frustration: “Use your words! Use your words to express your feelings!” But four quarters of the time, it seemed, Ebb didn’t even know his feelings, much less how to vocalize them. Like right now. What sat upon the tip of his tongue that he seemed so reluctant to tell me? I love you more than life itself? I need to plotz? Did you get some more of that Chunky Monkey ice cream for dessert? I would die if you ever left me?

  The furnace clicked on. And just as heat was about to blast from the vents, Ebb took me by the wrist, pulled me away from the stove, and gave me a quick, hesitant kiss on the cheek.

  “Oh,” I said. But that didn’t sound too encouraging, so I added, “Mmm.”

  With Ebb, a little bit of mmm went a long way. He placed his hand on the bone of my hip and kissed me on the lips. He tasted sexy to me—like chilled water and stale office air and the insistent brilliance of fluorescent lights. I knew I tasted like the wine I wasn’t supposed to have been drinking—but I also tasted salty and sharp, because before Ebb had come home, I had eaten eight (but not the truly piggish number of nine) jalapeño crostini.

  I put my hands beneath his jacket and ran my fingers over the warmth of his shirt. Ebb looped his fingers through the strap of my apron and kissed me again. And again.

  “How long does that take?” he asked. “The pasta? To cook?”

  “Eleven minutes. Claims the box. But on our stove— Oh. Mmm. It’s really thirteen—”

  “Turn off the burner.”

  I reached for the stove. Then my hand pulled back. “Ebb,” I said. “Danny.”

  “You said he was asleep.”

  “Remember what happened last time?”

  Ebb probably recalled—only too well—the specifics of Danny’s last ill-timed interruption. But it wasn’t just the memory that caused him to step back. He had pressed in close to me only to discover that earlier I had slipped a wooden spoon—an implement big enough to spank a man—into my front apron pocket.

  “Later,” I said, dabbing a trace of my lipstick away from Ebb’s cheek with my thumb.

  “Sure,” he said. “Later.”

  In literature, these were called lost moments. I didn’t understand why—for these tiny units of time, tinged with sorrow and disappointment, were those that lodged most firmly in my memory. For instance, I swore I’d take to the grave the image of Danny—who’d been roused out of a deep sleep just a month ago by my lusty cries—standing in the moonlight at our open bedroom door, his tiny voice quivering as he asked an unanswerable question: “Daddy? Mommy? What are you two doing?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EBEN

  In our crowded, cluttered bedroom, I put on my blue workshirt and Dockers and left my suit lying like a rumpled, headless man on the bed. Then I sat on the edge of the mattress and surveyed the chaos: Damp towels and soiled underwear were piled high in the wicker laundry basket, the sheets were crumpled at the foot of the mattress, and the bedspread had slipped to the floor.

  Half—if not more—of this mess was mine. I admit I didn’t turn my socks right-side out before I tossed them in the laundry basket and that I had a less-than-loving relationship with all clothes hangers—wire, plastic, cedar, and Victoria’s pink-and-blue knitted ones. I piled receipts and bills on my nightstand and failed to search thoroughly when one of my clipped toenails accidentally went flying into the nether reaches of the plush carpet. But I wasn’t home enough (or at least that was my excuse) to pick up after myself. Lisa
was home—but she really wasn’t home except to whatever strange assortment of characters populated her head.

  Sometimes—and this was one of those times—I wished Lisa did not want to write. I stood up from the bed, my body gravitating toward the only one of Lisa’s possessions I was forbidden to touch: the gray laptop computer propped open on her tiny white desk. My fingers hovered above the keyboard before they lightly grazed the RETURN key. The PowerBook (which had been “sleeping”) hummed to life—and then let out a raucous monkey’s shriek known, in Macintosh language, as “the wild eep.” The screen instantly lit up and displayed this message:

  YOU ARE NOW RUNNING ON RESERVE POWER.

  Sometimes I couldn’t figure out which was sharper—Lisa’s tongue or her ears. “Ebb!” she immediately called out from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you on my computer?”

  I pulled my hand away. “Of course not!”

  Lisa remained silent for a moment. Surely she wanted to make love tonight as badly as I did—because, instead of calling out Liar! she merely said, “I could have sworn I heard that wild eep. Wake up Danny, why don’t you? That child’s been snoring long enough.”

  Dinner conversation consisted of the usual long list of ignored directives: “Sit down, Danny.” “Wipe your face, Danny.” “Use your napkin to wipe your face, Danny.” “Please stop interrupting Mommy and Daddy, Danny.” But the moment Danny went silent, so did Lisa and I. The silverware—forks clinking against knives—seemed to have so much more to say.

  On Friday nights, I had the dubious honor of putting Danny to bed. As I scrubbed his face with a washcloth and stuffed his squiggling limbs into his tiger-striped pajamas, I confirmed, once again, the truth of what people often said: “Your son looks exactly like your wife.” Lisa’s genes had whomped mine into complete oblivion. Danny had Lisa’s cheerful teeth and pinchable cheeks, her skin (pale as parsnips) and her eyes (dark as the bedroom walls I sometimes stared at on a sleepless night). His thick hair was Lisa’s deep brassy brown. Plus—just like Lisa’s—Danny’s voice always rang too loudly in my ear.

  “How much will the tooth fairy leave me?” he asked as I tucked his lost tooth beneath his pillow.

  “Maybe a dollar.”

  “Just a dollar!” Danny dive-bombed onto his bed. “But I still have to buy you a birthday present.”

  “I guess you’re going to the ninety-nine-cent store, then.”

  “I can’t wait until your birthday, Daddy.”

  “I sure can,” I said.

  Although Danny was eager to turn the calendar to April 1—which gave him an excuse to put the sugar in the salt shaker and eat too much of my birthday cake—I easily could have placed a moratorium on such merry japes. Turning forty-two big ones (on April Fool’s Day, no less) was an unpleasant prospect—especially since Lisa’s compassion for the aging Birthday Boy wasn’t exactly boundless. For my fortieth, Lisa thankfully had not thrown me an over-the-hill party, nor had she draped the mirrors in black. But trying to convivial-ize the sad occasion, she had presented me with a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a rude card that showed a Jewish mother in a muumuu and cat glasses berating the Grim Reaper: Put down that scythe before you have a heart attack! On Lisa’s last birthday, I had retaliated with a Whistler’s Mother coffee cup and a card that showed a basket full of shar-pei puppies plastered with this caption: And you thought you had wrinkles.

  Birthdays reminded me that time was passing way too quickly—except when I really wanted it to speed by. I glanced at my watch and saw the minute hand was edging close to Danny’s official bedtime of eight P.M.

  “Choose a good-night story,” I said.

  Danny shoved himself off his bed and stood in front of his overflowing bookcase. I tried to sway his decision by sending him mental vibes: The ants and the grasshoppers. The dog and the oyster. The miller, the son, and the ass.

  “Choose Aesop,” I finally said.

  “I don’t like Aesop,” Danny said. “The stories are too short. The pictures are in black and white. And I don’t get the morals.”

  I liked literature in which characters did something wrong and then were held accountable for their actions. The veiled warnings of Aesop—one swallow does not make a summer, give a finger and lose a hand, act in haste and repent in leisure—struck a deep chord in me. But Danny, like Lisa, had little patience for the poetry of right and wrong. Last Friday, when I had read to him the fable about the astrologer who fell in a mud puddle as he walked along gazing at the sky, Danny had interrupted the moral (What use is it to read the stars when you cannot read what is right here on the earth?) by blurting out, “The moral oughta be: Watch where you’re going, stupid.”

  “If you don’t want Aesop,” I said, “then choose another story. With color pictures.”

  I tried not to squinch up my face as Danny’s fingers hovered above The Little Engine That Could. Just the thought of the can-do Little Engine—as well as the author’s upbeat name (Watty Piper)—grated on my nerves.

  “No Little Engine,” I said.

  “Then I want Pooh,” Danny said.

  I’d never been a big fan of the too-soothing ados of Winnie-the-Pooh and his girlish sidekick, Christopher Robin. I reluctantly took the book from Danny’s hand and we leaned back against the pillows on his bed.

  “ ‘Chapter One,’ ” I read. “ ‘In Which a House Is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore.’ That’s a long title.” I flipped forward the pages, then glanced at the clock. “This is a long chapter.”

  “Please, Daddy. I lost my tooth today. And there are pictures, even if they aren’t in color.” Danny turned a few pages and pointed to a black-and-white drawing of Eeyore (drooping ears, sad eyes, and dragging tail) getting buried beneath the falling snow. “That mule looks like you in the morning.”

  The resemblance was striking. I gave Danny a warning look, then glanced over at the digital clock on the nightstand, certain it would take me half an hour to read about this woebegone mule—donkey—ass—whatever!—who needed an even bigger dose of prunes than I did. “Eeyore needs to stop moping,” I said.

  “But, Daddy, he’s sad. Because Pooh and Piglet took his house away.” Danny inspected his pale, tiny fingers. “Daddy?”

  “I’m going to start this chapter now.”

  “But, Daddy? There’s this boy at school? Named Zachary?”

  I nodded. Five boys at Danny’s school were named Zachary.

  “Zachary’s parents sold their house,” Danny said as he plucked a solitary pill off the sleeve of his striped pajamas. “And after they moved, his father didn’t live with Zachary and his mother anymore.”

  I suddenly felt heartsick—and censorious—the way I always did whenever I saw weekend fathers buying their kids a second chocolate milk shake at the mall.

  “That will never happen to us,” I told Danny.

  “Do we have to move?”

  “I thought you wanted to move,” I said.

  “But you fight a lot—about moving—with Mommy.”

  “That’s not true,” I said—then immediately remembered that Lisa and I had bickered after dinner about dropping the price on our condominium again. “Sometimes Mommy and I have earnest discussions . . . because we need to work things out. But we would never leave each other, because we love each other. I mean—” I picked up the Pooh book and shook the corner at Danny. “Just remember that.”

  “Remember what?” Danny said.

  “Marriage is forever. When you get married . . .” I tried to find some pearls of wisdom to offer Danny but could only dredge up some lame advice my own father had doled out years ago. “Choose your wife like your battles: wisely.”

  Danny burst into giggles. “In our new house?” he said. “I want a collie dog.”

  “You’ve made that very clear.” The clock read 8:11. “Now, we’re going to hear a nice story—about these very nice animals—and then you’re going right to sleep.”

  The chapter was endless! But it was just as well. As a snowy bl
anket covered the Hundred Acre Wood, I felt my frayed nerves mending. The simple message of A. A. Milne (Let the wind blow your house where it will!) comforted me. Even Danny looked sleepy by the end. I turned off the lamp and remained seated for a moment on the edge of the bed, watching the phosphorescent stars from Danny’s shine-in-the-dark astronomy kit glow overhead on the ceiling. Last fall I had climbed on a stepladder and fixed those flat plastic stars to the ceiling while Danny and Lisa called out directions from below. (“An inch to the left.” “A tad to the right.” “Ebb, that looks more like a soup spoon than the Little Dipper.” “Daddy, make the North Star bigger than big!”) I had felt as abused as a jackass that afternoon, but now, watching the shapes glimmer yellow-green in the night, I felt the glow God must have felt after hanging up the moon and the stars in the heavens.

  I gave Danny a hot-breathed kiss and hug. His tiny shoulders felt warm and his hair smelled, inexplicably, like saltwater taffy. “When we move,” I said, “you can take your stars with you.”

  “Thanks, Daddy. Good night, Daddy. I love you, Daddy.” Danny’s voice, pleading with me to stay longer, followed me downstairs—where I had every intention of helping Lisa with the dinner dishes. But as I turned toward the kitchen, I found Lisa cradling the cordless phone between her shoulder and her ear as she swept the floor with her worn-out broom.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Lisa said. “Oh yes. I know. I hear what you’re saying.”

  I cleared my throat.

  Lisa stopped sweeping and looked up at me. “I’m on the phone.”

  “So I see,” I said, trying not to frown—because I could take an educated guess whose mild, soothing voice was on the other end of the line. Why did my secretary think I was the one having an affair with Cynthia Farquhar? If anyone was enamored of Cynthia, it was Lisa.

  I retreated to the living room and headed for the couch—a piece of furniture I should have referenced when telling Danny that divorce was out of the question. Yes. Lisa and I had a healthy marriage. Last year we had junked our comfortable old couch and bought a new Italian leather sofa—three thousand dollars, one thousand for each damn cushion—to prove it. Three could never be split in half (although I was sure some crafty lawyer could create the illusion of fair division while grabbing the entire amount for himself). I plopped myself down on the center cushion. For three thousand dollars, I thought, the least the couch could do was not give off flatulent protests every time somebody sat on it.