Remind Me Again Why I Married You

by Rita Ciresi

  “We can’t get rid of the sushi bar,” I said. “The Healthy Living Task Force fought hours for that.”

  The architect took his finger off the blueprint and stared down at the smudge left on his skin. “You’ve never built a house, have you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I started out in residential architecture,” he said. “And whenever my clients started changing their minds—which they did every other minute—I used to tell them that building a house is just as tricky as building a house of cards. You move a wall here, or raise the roof there, and the whole structure has to shift with it, otherwise it becomes unstable.”

  I nodded. “I follow you.”

  “It’s exactly the same thing here—only even more complicated, because this is an industrial space.” He traced his finger along the outside line of the plan. “From your perspective, it’s easy enough to say—oh, just give me a few more square feet and make the building a little bit longer. But you can see here that an extension would take us onto this slope that leads down to the creek. This is flood plain. If you build on it, your insurance will go through the roof.”

  “So will the women who feed the rabbits,” I said.

  “Rabbits?”

  “There are rabbits that live down there. When spring comes, some of the secretaries go out by the creek on their lunch hour and feed them carrots from their bag lunch.”

  The architect frowned. “You should put a stop to that. Right now. You know how rabbits proliferate.” He pointed to a section of the blueprint that I had never paid much attention to—where ducts and boilers and God-knows-what-else would be housed. “They’ll tunnel their way under here and chew through your transformer.”

  I nodded, as if I knew what service a transformer actually performed.

  “Before you lay your foundation,” he said, “you want to gas those rabbits out.”

  “That doesn’t sound very humanitarian.”

  “Rabbits aren’t humans. They’re vermin.”

  “But to these women, they’re like pets.” I thought hard. “A friend of mine knows someone who—I mean, what’s your opinion of these exterminators who trap and relocate wildlife?”

  “That’s an expensive scam,” he said. “There’s always one—or, rather, two survivors who start up the population all over again. Your best bet is to have a service come out here and release the gas at night. The rabbits’ll die underground. And your secretaries will never know the difference.” He gestured back toward the blueprint. “Now, about these stalls. I don’t know what to tell you, except that time is money. You’re charged by the hour, and it will take us more than a few to find a solution to this.” He looked at me closely. “Are you sure you really need to make this change?”

  “I have a lot of angry women on my hands,” I said.

  “My sympathies.” The architect rolled up the blueprints and dropped them into the tube, where they hit the bottom with a sharp clack.

  Lisa hadn’t paged me while I was in my meeting. She also—curiously—hadn’t called me on my private line, because I checked my voice mail from the boardroom phone and the automated female voice on the other end informed me, “You have no new messages.”

  I found Victoria on her hands and knees—again—in front of her defective copier. “How did you make out with the architect?” she asked.

  “The man is heartless.” I looked down at the box where she stored my pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT messages. “Did my wife call?”

  “No, but a very strange man—with a gruff voice—rang twice. He refused to leave a message, just said, ‘Tell him Amore called.’ ”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  Victoria gave a sniff, as if to say, I should hope not. “Oh, and your real-estate agent—Order, not Farquhar—called. She claimed it was urgent.”

  I grabbed the pink message from the box, went into my office, forgot to close the door behind me, and quickly punched in Mrs. Order’s number. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Good news,” she said. “I have an offer on your place, from that bachelor I brought by on Saturday.”

  “What’s his offer?”

  “Fifteen below the listing,” she brightly said, as if pronouncing it in a cheerful tone would make it acceptable. “Mr. Strauss. Did you hear me?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “We’ll counteroffer. Tell him seven thousand more.”

  Mrs. O. was the only person I knew who could make even a sigh seem brisk. “If I might make a suggestion—”

  “Yes?”

  “I recommend five. At the most. All of your walls need repainting. All of your floors need recarpeting.”

  “This is two thousand square feet we’re talking about,” I said, “not a skyscraper.”

  “But the price of carpet. And quality paint—have you seen recently the price of paint?”

  I nodded. In the True Value, I had passed by a row of paint cans priced at over thirty dollars a gallon. “All right. But don’t settle for less than . . . say, four point five.”

  “Four point two-five?”

  “All right. Four point two-five, and you don’t even have to call me back. We have a deal.”

  She paused. “Don’t you want to consult with your wife?”

  “I’m sure I know exactly what Lisa wants.”

  She gave me a dubious silence.

  So I said, “But I’ll call you if she voices any objections.”

  I put down the phone and heard Victoria clinking her metal spoon against the side of a ceramic mug. She probably had been listening to every word I said to Mrs. Order—and now was fixing me a cup of celebratory Postum.

  If I knew Victoria, her mouth was fixed in a grim little grin as she listened to my next phone conversation—which really was a monologue delivered to our home answering machine: “Lisa? Lisa? Are you there? Please pick up if you’re there.”

  I guess I understood—on some level—why Lisa didn’t want to pick up the phone in the morning: because it “broke her concentration.” But we needed to get going on these negotiations with Cynthia. And I had important news. Surely Lisa could overhear my voice on the answering machine, even from upstairs, so why couldn’t she stop scribbling about this Simon Stern for half a second and call me back? More to the point, those tulips—with that message!—should have arrived half an hour ago. Why hadn’t she called to acknowledge them? Unless, of course, she didn’t answer the doorbell, either, when she was writing. But her desk was by the window and she would have seen the florist’s truck pull into the driveway. She definitely would have gone downstairs and retrieved the white box left on the porch so the flowers inside would not turn to ice.

  Lisa wasn’t easily offended, I thought. But maybe I heard you need a plumber had raised her wrath rather than her passion. Maybe she had gone outside to retrieve the box of flowers and slipped on the ice and cracked open her head. Maybe the delivery man had shoved her inside the house and brutally . . . brutally . . . Maybe on the drive to drop Danny off at school, her Camry had skidded off the road and now Lisa and Danny were lying in a ditch. . . .

  My imagination got the best of me. I called Danny’s school. After nine rings, the overly sunny Montessori directress answered the phone with, “This is the best morning of the rest of your life! Gloria speaking.”

  The chattering of children in the background seemed positively deafening. “Gloria,” I said loudly, “Eben Strauss here. I guess school is open.”

  “We had a two-hour delay, but here we are.”

  “Is my son in school today?”

  “He’s very much here,” Gloria answered, before she half-covered the phone and called out, “Noah, remember, a gentleman uses a Kleenex! Hold on, Mr. Strauss, while I get Danny. Where is Danny Strauss? Is he in time-out?” She put down the phone. I heard a loud squabble, and then a sharp, high voice whined, “I wasn’t putting my snots in tha-yuh!” before Gloria returned to the line and reported, “Danny’s in the bathroom.” She clucked her tongue. �
�I was telling Lisa this morning, Danny seems to have loose bowels lately. Is he worried about something?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Lisa seems to think he’s afraid to move. But we couldn’t really discuss the situation, since—Excuse me, Zachary One and Zachary Four! Use your words, not your fists, to express your feelings!—Lisa was in such a rush to get back to her housework.”

  “Her housework?”

  “Yes, this morning she said, ‘Got to get back home! Got a hot date with the broom and the mop!’ I imagine your house will be pretty spic-and-span tonight.”

  Imagine was the operative word there, I thought.

  “Did you want to talk to Danny, Mr. Strauss?”

  “No. No, I . . . just tell him that I called to check in on him. There’s no need for him to call me back.”

  After Gloria wished me “a great day,” I put down the phone. What an ass I had been, sitting there worrying that Lisa had been stabbed, mutilated, raped, or dead in the ditch—when the truth of the matter was, she was just off on yet another hot date not with the mop or the broom but with Simon Stern or whichever male character had stepped in to take his place (probably some Scandinavian—named Lars Larson or Gustaf Gustafson—whose sole function in the plot was to do what Scandinavians were reputed to do best).

  I picked up the phone and called our home; once again I talked to the answering machine. But this time I wasn’t half so polite. In fact, I mimicked the words Lisa often said to me whenever I was trying to peacefully read the newspaper: “Hello? Hello? Earth to spouse? Are you still married to me? Come in if you read me. Come in if you—”

  Lisa didn’t read me—nor did she come in, at least not until a minute later, when my phone finally buzzed. I was greeted solely by a dial tone when I picked it up. I looked down at the phone, puzzled, until I realized I needed to punch out of my private line.

  “Mr. Strauss?” Victoria asked, her voice echoing both on the phone and from the outer office.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you there?” she asked.

  “Of course I’m here.”

  “I’ve just called your name twice. And received no answer. Will you take a personal call? From your other real-estate agent?”

  “Put it through, please,” I said.

  The line clicked. I swallowed—my throat so dry it could have benefited enormously from one of Victoria’s Jolly Ranchers—as Cynthia Farquhar murmured in her smooth voice, “Good morning, Eben. How was your weekend?”

  “Too short.” I leaned back in my chair and stared at the open door—through which Victoria undoubtedly was listening to every word I said. “And yours?”

  “Wonderful,” she said. “I went to Bear Mountain.”

  “I didn’t take you for a skier, Cynthia.”

  “I’m not.”

  I cleared my throat. “Did Lisa call you this morning?”

  “No, I haven’t heard from her . . . but . . . did my friend Rob call you?”

  “Why would he call me?”

  “About your friend—Simon was his name? Who had squirrels in his walls?”

  “Oh, right. I probably have another job too. That involves rabbits. Ask him to call me. Better yet, here’s the number of my pager.” I slipped the pager off my belt and read the number—which I never had bothered to memorize—aloud to her.

  She repeated the number, then said, “I’m sure you know the real reason I’m calling. I was wondering if you had any more thoughts about the house.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I was just about to call you. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind showing me that house again. This afternoon. Solo.”

  The phone went quiet for a moment. “Lisa’s tied up, I guess.”

  “She’s waiting for the plumber to arrive,” I said. Loudly—so Victoria could not fail to overhear—I asked Cynthia, “I know this is a last-minute invitation, but are you free for lunch? I could meet you. You name the time. And place.”

  “I’m in my office,” Cynthia said. “There’s a good bagel place right here in my mini-mall.”

  I looked at my clock. It was 11:32. I hadn’t accomplished a thing all morning, and I didn’t give a damn. “I’ll meet you there at noon,” I said.

  I hung up the phone, went into the outer office, and took my coat off the blue hanger.

  “I’m sure you heard my good news,” I told Victoria.

  Although devoutly Christian, Victoria wasn’t above telling a little white lie. “I can’t hear into your office,” she said, “above the hum of my computer.”

  “Well, I think we’ve finally sold our condo.”

  “In spite of your plumbing problem?”

  I raised my eyebrow.

  “Tusk!” Victoria shifted in her chair. “When can I expect you back from your lunch? With Mrs. Farquhar?”

  I buttoned my trench coat and put on my gloves. “Whenever I get back.”

  “What should I tell your wife if she calls?”

  Now, there was an interesting question. Which—to Victoria’s obvious discomfort—I simply refused to answer.

  “Don’t forget,” Victoria said, “from one-thirty to three-thirty I’ll be in my virus-free meeting.”

  I paused. I knew something had felt odd this morning. “We forgot to go over our calendars today.”

  I didn’t know whether to feel sorrow or joy when Victoria told me, in an aggrieved voice, “Maybe that routine has outlived its usefulness.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  LISA

  Only after I flopped down in the first available seat on the 11:10 train into the city did I stop to consider the crime I had committed that morning. Today—of all days—I hadn’t taken my temperature.

  When Mr. Chanticleer had crowed for me to wise-and-shine at seven A.M., I rushed to the window and despaired when I saw that more snow had fallen during the night. I grabbed my thermometer and ran downstairs. The minute I flicked on the TV to see if Danny’s school had been canceled, the solemn-faced newscasters started talking about a plane crash at LaGuardia. I hit the MUTE button, thankful that Ebb no longer traveled on a regular basis and that my heart no longer had to skip a beat every time a newscaster announced, “A 727 bound for Chicago . . . Denver . . . Houston . . . crashed upon takeoff, there are no known survivors.”

  I crouched in front of the television, clasping my thermometer in a tight fist as I watched cancellation after cancellation scroll across the bottom of the screen. Finally, just as I lost all hope that I could make my lunch with Aye-Aye, this marvelous message appeared: MONTESSORI HOUSE DELAYED TWO HOURS. OPENING 10 A.M.

  I flicked off the TV, took my thermometer between my fingers, and shook it down. Joyously. Carelessly. So recklessly that the bulb slipped from my hand, hit the television, and fell to the carpet in two sharp slivery pieces. Mercury blobbed onto the carpet.

  Oh God, I said to myself. Oh Lord. Unless I dug my car out from the driveway and gunned it to the Walgreens to buy another BBT thermometer, there was no way I could take my temperature. More important, by the time I huffed and puffed my bloated self to the drugstore and back—which would raise my temperature several notches—the mercury would rise and tell me I had surged when maybe I was still one or two days away from really ovulating.

  “Mommy?”

  I turned. Danny stood at the bottom of the stairs.

  “What’s that stuff on the rug?” he asked.

  “What does it look like?”

  Danny jumped down the last three steps of the stairs (a move I had forbidden him to make many times, warning, “If you kill yourself, I’m going to kill you!”). “Lemme see.”

  “No!” I said. “Don’t touch it! Mercury is poisonous! You’ll die!”

  “Mommy.” Danny put his hands on his hips—and for a second he looked like a miniature Ebb instead of a miniature me. “You’re being unreasonable.”

  I advanced toward Danny—with such an unreasonable look in my eye that he retreated two steps backward. “Go get ready for school. Right
now.”

  “But it snowed,” Danny said. “School’s canceled.”

  “It isn’t canceled,” I said. “It’s delayed. Two hours. And you’re going.”

  I wore two sets of rubber gloves to dab up the mercury from the carpet—fearful I would die of poisoning before I even had a chance to make it into the city and gag on my Ichikawa sushi. Then I fixed Danny breakfast and a bag lunch. After that, I ordered him to go change his clothes.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because your top and your bottom don’t match.”

  “Brown goes with black.”

  “Those pants aren’t black,” I said. “They’re navy.”

  Danny regarded his pants with puzzlement. “Why do you always tell me and Daddy that we can’t tell colors apart?”

  “Because you can’t tell colors apart,” I said. “And that gold doorknob Daddy bought from the True Value—which doesn’t match the brass light switch—proves it.”

  Once Danny was all set for school, I took a shower, attempted to do something—anything—with my frowsy, boyish hair, and tried on six different outfits (all of which made me look like my name should be Fat Fanny Frump). I also tried on three pairs of shoes before I realized I was stuck wearing boots, anyway.

  It was shaping up to be—as they said—one of those days. The only thing that went right that morning was that Ebb—bless him—had shoveled out the driveway and brushed the snow off my car. As I inched my Toyota down our poorly plowed street, I remembered that I had promised to call Ebb if I surged this morning. But technically I hadn’t surged. Besides, I told myself, even if Ebb returned home and made love to me on his lunch hour, he could only come inside of me twice at the max. Considering how many failed attempts we already had made at getting pregnant, two more missed opportunities seemed inconsequential.

  And yet monumental. After I hurriedly ushered Danny into the front hall of Montessori—calling out to Glorious Gloria the directress, “Gotta run! Got a hot date with my broom and mop!”—I bent down to kiss Danny’s soft, sweet cheek and instantly was reminded that it took just one passionate embrace to make a baby. And every second of the hot, stuffy train ride into Grand Central, I kept thinking: What if that single embrace turned out to be the one Ebb and I were about to miss?