Remind Me Again Why I Married You

by Rita Ciresi

  I didn’t want to get audited. I knew I needed to pay attention. But as Josh went over my 1040, line by tedious line, I wondered which other men I knew secretly subscribed to Playboy and thus had seen “He Left His Heart at the Office.” Rudy Furlong? Dr. John Goode? The security guards at Scheer–Boorman? Focus. Focus. I started nitpicking at the capital-gains portion of the return. I got argumentative; Josh got defensive; but by the time we got to the final calculation, I had to admit Josh knew the rules—unjust as they seemed—and had played around them as best he could. I uncapped my pen and signed off on the form, knowing my heart would be even heavier when I signed off on the accompanying check—which, I told Josh, I wouldn’t be able to deliver until later that week.

  “Send it in with Lisa,” Josh said.

  “Lisa’s seeing you? What for?”

  “I need her John Hancock too.” Josh waggled his finger at me. “You don’t trust me with your wife?”

  “I completely trust you.”

  Josh sighed. “See. I told you I was pathetic.” He took the forms from my outstretched hands. “I might get done here by three-thirty or four. Feel like coming over my place for a beer?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t. We’re going to look at another house.”

  Josh returned the forms to the manila folder. “Why’s it taking you two so long to move?”

  “That’s a complicated question.”

  “Who’s your agent, again?”

  “Her name is Cynthia Farquhar.”

  Josh gave me a low, sensuous bleat. “La Farquhar is a good-looking woman.”

  My efforts to keep my facial muscles impassive only made them ache. “You know her?”

  “She’s a great-looking woman,” said Josh.

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “You hadn’t noticed! Bullshit you hadn’t noticed.”

  I permitted myself a smile, which Josh took as encouragement to wax on Cynthia Farquhar’s remarkable assets: Her feline figure. Her Siamese-blue eyes. Her smooth hair. Her lengthy legs. Her . . . um . . . well-fitted? . . . wardrobe. A guy would have to be blind . . . Of course, a woman like that . . . would not look at the likes of—

  I cut him off before he could say you and me.

  “How do you know Cynthia?” I asked.

  “Rotary Club.”

  I took off my glasses and began cleaning them—a little too thoroughly—with my handkerchief. “Isn’t Rotary a fraternal order?”

  “Get hip. Women can even be Odd Fellows now.”

  “Why would they want to be?”

  “Because, Mr. Big Business—Cynthia and I are in small business. We’ve got to ring that Salvation Army bell at Christmas and scrub hubcaps at the charity car washes. Of course, Cynthia looks much better holding a hose than I do.” Josh smoothed the palm of his hand down his tie. “At Rotary, we have these once-a-month luncheons. When Cynthia sits down at a table, you should see how fast the rest of the chairs fill up.”

  “I thought Rotary was a service club,” I said, “not a pickup joint.”

  “Go on,” said Josh. “We all know why we’re there—to eat and schmooze—and only then to pass the can for college scholarships. Want to come to our next meeting?”

  My hand went to my pocket for a pen. “Oh,” I said. “That’s strange. I left my Filofax at home.”

  “I’ll call you. With the date. Or better yet—I’ll have Cynthia call you with it. She and I cross paths quite a lot these days.”

  “Is that right?” I asked, wishing Josh would stop smoothing down his tie in such an obscene way.

  “Yeah.” Josh smiled. “Her office is right next to that bagel shop Deb always sends me to when she’s in a pinch for dinner.”

  “Sounds like a tight relationship.”

  Josh laughed. “In my dreams.”

  No, I thought. In mine.

  I cleared my throat. “That’s a pretty good bagel shop. But I don’t like their onion. It’s not oniony enough.”

  “Bet you five dollars,” said Josh, “that the WASPy La Farquhar has never even tried the onion. Bet you ten she’s never even eaten a bagel.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Even skinheads eat bagels.”

  Josh laughed. “Why’d you choose Cynthia as your agent, anyway—when you had your choice of a dozen nice old yentas?”

  “Lisa chose Cynthia,” I said. “You know. She likes Cynthia’s clothes. And her haircut. And her taste in coffee. So that’s why it’s taking us so long to move. Whenever Lisa gets together with Cynthia, I swear they spend more time drinking cappuccinos than looking at houses.”

  “Lisa’s probably addicted to the hunt,” Josh said. “Like Deb. I don’t know what they’re looking for. Since all houses are the same. I mean, none of them has enough closet space.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell Lisa,” I said. “But she seems to think that somewhere out there lies some perfect house that we need to keep searching for.”

  “Search,” Josh said. “Wait until you find. And remodel.” He made a pained face. “Beware of a woman with a fistful of paint chips.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Seriously. For weeks after we moved, Deb fretted over the color combination. ‘Should we have the bucolic blue,’ she kept asking me, ‘or the pristine pink?’ Like I could tell the difference? She ended up ruining every screwdriver I own—not that I know how to use either one—prying open gallon cans of Martha Stewart.”

  “Who’s Martha Stewart?” I asked.

  “Who’s Martha Stewart?” Josh asked. “What planet are you living on?”

  “A planet that used to have only men’s names—Benjamin Moore, Dutch Boy—on cans of paint.”

  “Martha Stewart is . . .” Josh’s pink tongue hung in limbo for a moment as if straining to catch just the right words. “Martha is this multimillionaire businesswoman who looks a lot like La Farquhar—completely put together.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I think I remember reading about her. In the Journal.”

  “Sure. She pops up in all the newspapers now.”

  “But how did she make her money again?” I asked.

  “She writes all these books that show women how to be more womanly. Next time you’re at the grocery—”

  “I hardly ever go to the grocery store.”

  “—look on the checkout rack. Martha has her own magazine called Martha Stewart Living that some people have renamed Is Martha Stewart Living? Because she’s like some Superwoman. She cooks, she cleans, she decorates, she gardens—and she even breeds her own hens that lay these weird turquoise eggs.”

  “Edible?”

  “That’s exactly what I asked, when Deb showed the eggs to me in Martha’s magazine. Deb got all horrified—like to eat one of Martha’s eggs was sacrilege—and she goes to me, ‘Martha uses these eggs as inspiration for her paint palette!’ ”

  I paused. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I. But Deb laps that Martha crap right up. She spent three whole days, I kid you not, making one of Martha’s festive holiday wreaths, and then she got all miffy at me when I asked, ‘What the fuck you going to do with this wreath, when we don’t even celebrate Christmas?’ Ugh. That wreath. It was made out of pistachio nuts! Spray-painted silver. The girls laughed for half an hour after I called it gold.”

  Josh heaved a deep, lonesome sigh. Taking this as a sign that the conversation was winding down, I pushed back my chair, until snagged once again by Josh’s outburst: “It’s all Martha’s fault.”

  “Martha’s fault that what?”

  Josh wrinkled his fleshy forehead. “That I come home and Deb reeks of turpentine and is wielding some threatening implement—like a garden hoe or a hot-glue shooter—in her hand. You want to know the real reason I came in at five-thirty in the morning? I didn’t dare come between Deb’s staple gun and the wall.” Josh got out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Man oh man, Deb’s going menopausal. And her hot flashes—I swear—are contagious
.”

  Between Deb’s waning womanhood, Dorothy Furlong’s hysterectomy, and Lisa’s radioactive fallopian tubes, I didn’t know how much more detailed gynecological information I could assimilate. But I nodded sympathetically. Among the many diagrams in Lisa’s fertility literature was a representation of a woman’s body, with arrows pointing to all the menopausal trouble spots:

  HEADACHES AND HOT FLASHES

  THINNING HAIR

  RECEDING GUMS

  DROOPING BREASTS

  VAGINAL DRYNESS AND SHRINKING

  STRESS INCONTINENCE

  If I thought this diagram was scary, I could only imagine how it would freak out those of the female sex.

  “You should be more understanding,” I told Josh. “That’s got to be disconcerting, all those changes in your body.”

  Josh shook his head glumly. “I don’t care about Deb’s body. I mean, she’s been fat—and I’ve been fatter—for years, and neither one of us has ever complained. It’s her head I’m worried about. It’s like overnight, the hormones—or all that furniture stripper she’s been using—went right to her brain. I mean—for example—can I give you an example?—the other day she told me I kept her down. Silenced her. Didn’t encourage her to reach her full potential. I came home yesterday and she had this pamphlet out on the coffee table that said WOMEN AND ANGER: RECLAIM YOUR RIGHT TO THIS VERY REAL FEELING!”

  “Sounds dire,” I said.

  “She told me—point-blank—that she was tired of babying me and she wasn’t going to sort my clothes by color in the closet anymore.”

  I hesitated. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Then I need to tell you. Get your daughters to help you. Because that tie you’ve got on? It’s the color of Gulden’s mustard. And there’s a decided swimming-pool-blue feeling to that shirt.”

  Josh pulled his sickly mustard tie around to the side of his head so it made a mock noose. Then he let it down with a grin. “You know how Deb’s afraid of heights? I’m going to sign her up for one of those marriage-strengthening camps, where you have to tandem skydive in between primal-scream sessions.” Josh’s eyes lit up with joy. “Hey, that might make a good Playboy article for Lisa. Although you’d have to go to camp with her while she did her research.”

  “I have no intention,” I said, “of attending a marriage-strengthening camp.”

  “It might be fun,” Josh said. “I’ve heard at some camps you get to beat an inflatable doll with a baseball bat and pretend it’s your wife. Although I’ve heard—at others—you have to touch your wife for hours without actually, you know, giving her the full-force fuckeroo—”

  I pushed my chair back from the table. “Josh,” I said, “as always, it’s been good talking to you.”

  Josh held out his fingers and took a playful nip at my shirtsleeve. “Hey, you know that novel Lisa is writing—the story’s really about you, isn’t it?”

  I felt my feet stiffen in my shoes. “Simon Stern,” I said, “is completely imaginary.”

  “And I’ve got this friend—named Martha Stewart!—who’s got herpes.” Josh leaned back in his chair and laughed. He pointed to the pile of forms. “Remember to send your big fat check in with Lisa. And don’t come crawling back next week telling me, ‘Oh, by the way—my wife and I bought a boat last summer.’ ”

  “People do that?”

  “Once somebody called me—on April fourteenth, no shit—and said, ‘I forgot to tell you, last year we adopted a kid.’ Nice father, huh?”

  I took the True Value hardware bag off Josh’s desk.

  “Hope your lock works,” Josh said mournfully—wistfully—then broke into a snaggletoothed smile. “My love to Lisa. And Cynthia.”

  As the wall vibrated with the sound of “Poison Ivy,” Josh puckered up and blew a kiss destined—via me—for La Farquhar’s admittedly lush pink lips.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LISA

  I stood in front of the bathroom mirror inspecting the wormlike furrow in my forehead. Several times last night it had been on the tip of my tongue to tell Ebb about my Playboy income—but each time I spotted a chance, somehow or other the conversation had taken an unexpected turn.

  I had made a bad move by not making a move. I’d been too chicken to speak. Now Ebb probably sat with Josh in front of our 1040, and how could Ebb not notice that something was amiss with the return? Even though Ebb left globs of toothpaste and shaving cream in the bathroom sink, he was extraordinarily tidy when it came to numbers.

  Trouble, no doubt, was right around the corner. But I didn’t have the heart to think about it. I made a face at myself in the mirror and leaned forward over the soggy sink. The closer I drew to the mirror, the scarier the picture. Only Ebb saw me this close up—and even then, he was in the dark with his glasses off and his eyes closed—so he couldn’t evaluate my scraggly eyebrows and fuzzy facial hair. When he did see me the way I really was, he was a prince about it. He told me I looked fine when I didn’t look fine. He was accepting.

  At least one guy in the world took me the way I was. A hairdresser, however, would note all my imperfections and attempt to make me into someone better. I dreaded letting the great Ricardo get so intimate with me that he would brush up against the twin brown spots on my face that I optimistically called beauty marks. As I smoothed a styling product called Your Secret Weapon on my frizzed-out hair, I kept a maternal ear cocked outward—and heard nothing but silence coming from Danny’s room.

  “Honey,” I called, “are you getting dressed for the birthday party like I told you to?”

  No response. I went to the door of Danny’s room. Danny sat smack on his butt on the rug, his sneakers sitting uselessly between the parted V of his legs.

  “I’m stupid,” he said.

  I knelt down on the carpet next to him. “Oh, sweetie, you are not.”

  “But I can’t figure out which sneaker is left and which is right.”

  I pointed to his right Reebok. “Remember, just like I told you last time—the curve is on the inside.”

  Danny stared down at the dirty gray laces. “But even when I put my shoes on right, I can’t tie them.”

  I pulled back the sleeve of my sweater and glanced at my watch. A good mother would take the time to patiently demonstrate how to tie a perfect bow. Yet I still had to wrap the birthday-party present. “I’ll do it for you,” I said. “But just this once.”

  “Why can’t you do it all the time?”

  “You don’t want me tying your shoes when you’re seventeen years old.”

  “Why not?”

  “For starters,” I said, “that would keep you out of Harvard.”

  “I don’t want to go to Harvard.”

  “You’ll love Harvard,” I assured him. “You can ride the swan boats every day. After you finish all your homework, of course. Now, give me your sneaker.”

  Danny gave me his right sneaker, then stuck out his left foot—confirming that even though he had learned to read before he turned five, he still wasn’t, just yet, Ivy League material. I took his right foot, clad in a red-capped sock, and pushed it into his Reebok.

  “What’s the matter, grumpy face?” I asked. “Don’t you want to go to the party?”

  Danny’s snaggly front tooth latched over his lip. “Why are you and Daddy always doing the fucking?”

  Since when did once a week count as always? I pulled so hard on the dirty sneaker laces that Danny’s foot went two inches up into the air.

  “First of all,” I said, “don’t say fucking. Second of all, I’ve told you a hundred times that Mommy and Daddy are trying to make another baby.”

  “But . . . but . . .” Danny’s voice quivered, like a rejected lover’s. “I’m your baby, Mommy.”

  I knotted the sneaker laces, then tied a bad bow that I instantly had to undo and make again. “Of course you’re my baby,” I said, in my own quivery voice. “I’ll always love you more than anyone else.”

  “Even Daddy?” Danny asked.

  “Let m
e think about that one,” I said. “For just a minute.”

  I reached for Danny’s other Reebok. The idea of loving Ebb more than Danny—or vice versa—seemed as absurd as favoring my right foot over my left. I needed both to walk. And yet my smitten-ness for Danny was so fierce that sometimes it made me question the extent to which I really loved Ebb. My feelings for Ebb had such . . . distinct limitations. My feelings for Danny were boundless! Yes, my first child took up so much room in my heart that I feared I wouldn’t find half as much love left in there for the second.

  “You know,” I told Danny, as I pushed his left foot into the sneaker, “love doesn’t grow any smaller if you have to share it with somebody else.”

  “That’s not what Zachary’s father said.”

  “Which Zachary?” I asked.

  “The one whose father moved out to live with another lady. Zachary said his dad told his mom, ‘I can’t love you if I love somebody else.’ ”

  I yanked on the laces of Danny’s left Reebok. “The fucker.”

  Danny’s eyes widened with glee. Then he giggled so hard that spit bubbled between the gap in his teeth.

  “Well, really,” I said. “Can you imagine Daddy saying something like that? To me? In front of you?”

  “The fucker.”

  I swatted him on the leg. “Not that. Don’t say that word.”

  “You just did.”

  “I meant saying, I can’t love you—” I frowned. I finished tying the bow of Danny’s laces, pushed his foot away, and stood up. Danny’s striped pajamas were flung over his unmade bed. Crayons and dirty underwear and probably a dozen plastic fast-food prizes were strewn all over the floor. Five times. Five times I had told Danny that he needed to straighten this room before we left for the birthday party. Now it was all I could do to stop myself from hollering, I’m your mother, not your maid—so clean up this disgusting mess!