Arm Candy

by Jill Kargman

  “I’m . . . happy, I am.”

  “You don’t sound so convinced to me.”

  “No, no, I am . . . everything’s great.”

  “Careful there, Chasie. You keep telling yourself that and you might believe it.”

  Dr. Smith knocked as he opened the door.

  “Mrs. DuPree, good afternoon!” he bellowed as Chase rose from the bed to shake his hand.

  “Hello, Doctor,” Chase said, shaking his hand. “I should be getting back to work, Grandma. I’ll be back later, before dinner.”

  “All right, darling. See you later, sweetheart.”

  “Love you.”

  He closed the door gently behind him and got back to work just in time, as always.

  14

  We know we’re getting old when the only thing we want for our birthday is not to be reminded of it.

  —Anonymous

  As Eden stared down the barrel of thirty-nine, she began to look back on her life and her choices and consider her future needs. Fall was approaching, and soon Eden and Cole would order twelve moving boxes to pack him up for college. She cried as she left him at JFK to head off to Stanford, where he had been accepted early decision. The house seemed empty, like when she had first moved in. Except that back then, the massive home was filled with the bubbling energy of the pair’s joint excitement, both for their artistic endeavors and for each other.

  That was long gone. As Eden walked around the living room, picking up a sweatshirt Cole had left behind, she feared that she was falling slowly into an abyss of frustration and depression. Those Prozac ads with the little cartoon blobs with sad frowny faces started to speak to her.

  “Are you not enjoying the things you used to?” Check.

  “Are you feeling like an outsider?” Yup.

  “Are you dreading social engagements?” Hell, yes.

  “Is your partner making you feel underappreciated, invisible, and, oh by the way, is he fucking twenty-somethings behind your back?” Ding, ding, ding! Okay, that one wasn’t in the commercial, but it was starting to be difficult to ignore as fact. Little by little as the weeks passed and she took stock of Cole’s departure and her empty nest and empty chest, Eden weighed her fate. And then she weighed her options.

  But where would Eden go? What was she going to do? Leave this life? Start all over again like old times? Hell-to-the-No. She would do what everyone else did: Deal with the fact that you can’t always have everything. And how spoiled was she? She had it all!

  Here she was, at the height of fame and fortune, in a place where everyone would want to be. But like Sheila E. once crooned about the glamorous life, “Without love, it ain’t much.” Eden always thought love was for naïve Hallmark card buyers, a kick-in-the-pants cocktail of pheromones. But in the complete and total absence of romantic love, which she now realized her relationship was, she starting to have a feeling she never had known: longing. She didn’t know what that intangible lack was, what it was she yearned for, but she knew the growing emptiness inside her was getting worse as time quickly passed.

  Eden popped more happy pills, drank more wine, but they were only temporary fixes for what she would inevitably face in the morning: an even bigger pit in her gut, not to mention the bed she shared with Otto. She slept only on her left side, her back to him. And even if her every muscle wanted her to roll onto her right, she fought it. She couldn’t bear to face him, knowing full well he slept beside so many others. For years she truly didn’t care. But more and more lately she found herself getting suckered into romantic stories, movies about true love, and she would even find herself staring at older couples holding hands or dining together. Sometimes she went to films by herself to pass the time, watching the tilted heads of couples watching the screen, their hands touching the popcorn, or resting on each other’s thighs. She started to realize that all those romantic stories she’d dreamed of as a child were tantalizing her again, filling the voids they once had. And this time, it wasn’t with the hopeful glimmer that she had watched Molly Ringwald kiss Jake Ryan as she had as a kid; it was with a nostalgic sadness that she may never know such a pure love like that again. She realized she was experiencing a brand-new feeling: envy. Sadly, it seemed Eden, the woman everyone wanted to be was starting to want to be someone else.

  Eden tried to exhale any thoughts of moving on out of her head. It was too far-fetched and too silly; her childhood resilience, she feared, had evaded her more and more as her age ticked upward. But little by little, Eden began to think the allegedly perfect world she had built for herself might splinter into a thousand meteors if the pressure welling inside her were to grow stronger.

  “Otto, we need to talk,” Eden said one night as he slid under the cover in the pitch-black of night. “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

  “My love. Don’t be silly! You know I love only you. You are my whole world!”

  “I’m starting to feel more like Pluto,” she said. “I’ve been deaccessioned, downgraded from planet status.”

  “Oh, Eden, don’t be so dramatic.” He cackled casually.

  “I’m serious,” she replied. “I can’t take it. I’m tired of being the ‘cool, modern’ woman. Maybe I want to be old-fashioned!”

  “You? Impossible,” Otto scoffed.

  “We’ll see,” she trailed off, hating being goaded by him. She used to love a challenge, but at her age she feared one.

  “Good night, Eden,” he said, rolling over. His snoring soon sounded like a foghorn that could easily register on the Richter scale. Nice. Now she had to fucking lie there being tortured by his soundtrack that was akin to a nasal chain saw. She put a pillow on her head. She rolled back and forth. She tried to dream of a different life, something romantic, something new. But she never achieved freeing slumber that would send her traveling away from the life she was entrenched in. Instead, by the lavender light of dawn, she was still staring at the ceiling with red eyes.

  “I’m just a little down, that’s all,” Eden told Allison over coffee when she inquired about bloodshot retinas and her seemingly blue demeanor.

  “Why, because Cole left for school?”

  “Maybe. That, and I just . . . get this feeling that maybe I’m in a rut right now. A really deep one. And it’s growing deeper as more time goes by. I’m not happy. It’s been a while now, to be honest. I just never said anything until now.”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I’m getting old. I can’t sleep at night. I’m getting more and more restless.”

  “That’s why you’re down? ’Cause we’re getting older?”

  “No. Well, yes, that and I’m also growing upset with Otto’s . . . dalliances. Maybe there’s more out there for me. Otto’s, you know . . . being Otto.”

  “That never bothered you before, you two are upfront, open.”

  “The problem is,” Eden said, looking out the café window, “it’s starting to bother me now.”

  “Interesting,” Allison said, sipping her coffee. The other sexy strappy sandal was about to drop. Allison always knew Otto’s ways might be a heavier burden on Eden as the years wore on, and she feared this day would come.

  “There’s this new girl in the studio. Mary. I could be her mother. She’s blond, beautiful, and so . . . young,” Eden said to her black coffee, sadly. Mary had been around a few months and was like any new model or part of the entourage, except that Eden recognized in her eye the very same twinkle of ambition she once had. Or blazing fire was more like it. She had her talons into Otto, and Eden suspected he was beginning to wilt in her grasp. She was Eden, only younger.

  “So? He’s always been into mixing it up, you know that. He is still obsessed with you and fully devoted, right?”

  “I’m not so sure anymore. You know, I look back and I feel like an ungrateful idiot because I got everything I thought I wanted but it doesn’t feel quite right,” she said, trailing off.

  “Well, E, you have to be realistic. I mean, I am madly in love with And
rew and it’s not like we are rabbits pawing each other every single night. Day-to-day life is about companionship and respect and love, not necessarily boning.”

  “It’s not that. It’s not just about the sex; it’s a connection that has flickered and faded out completely. I’m getting really lonely. I’m just starting to realize that I’m hitting middle age and I have my own needs. It’s been a long time coming. And it’s starting to scare me.”

  “So what, are you seriously telling me you might split with Otto? After all these years?” asked Allison, incredulous.

  “I’m thinking if I ever want to be truly happy, now is the time I need to take a step away from him, from this relationship.”

  “Let me tell you something, Eden. When I was single and screwing all these guys and you asked me about it like you missed it, what did I say? I said, It’s hell out there! You are missing nothing! Once the sex sparks burn out it’s all about companionship anyway.”

  “Well, I don’t even have that. Not anymore, anyway. And plus, come on, there has to be more than that, Allison! I mean I’m turning thirty-nine, not eighty-nine. Yes, I want companionship, but can’t I have both? I can’t be invisible to him for the rest of my life.”

  “At first when you met Otto and had Cole, I was still lonely and single and I thought all you couples drank the Kool-Aid and were skipping in rainbow slow motion, walking your unicorns. And then when I got married I realized: It wasn’t a fantasy! It is so much better to be part of a couple! You just have to work through the dry patches. That’s normal—peaks and valleys.”

  “This is a big fucking valley,” Eden said. “I’m talking Grand Canyon.”

  “You’ll get through it!” Allison said, patting her friend’s arm. “Trust me.”

  “I guess.”

  “No, you don’t guess. You have to make it work, try. What are you fantasizing about, anyway? Now you’re having this vision of what it’s like to be single! Again: It sucks out there.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Eden said, confused and exhausted. “But it’s starting to be pretty miserable for me as well. Now the freedom of being single and hopeful is the side with the pegasuses or whatever.”

  “Unicorns.”

  “Same thing,” said Eden, rolling her eyes.

  “No. One has a horn, one has wings.”

  “I’m just so tired,” complained Eden. “I can’t sleep. I lie awake obsessing about life, aging, death . . .”

  “Cheerful,” Allison teased.

  “I know, it’s pathetic,” Eden admitted. “That’s what I’m saying! I’m in a rut.” Great. Now even Allison thought she was being dramatic, just like Otto had said.

  After they left the café, Eden sulked homeward and climbed into bed listlessly for a nap. When she woke up, Mary and a bunch of young people were there at the studio. This was starting to become the routine lately, and Eden had always sucked it up and joined them. But as Otto more frequently mentioned a new film Mary adored, or a new café they must try on her recommendation (“All the young people are going there!”), Eden started to suspect that Otto and Mary were enmeshed more than his other rolls in the hay.

  Her suspicions were confirmed one rainy day, when she arrived at her local yoga studio to find it was closed due to a water main break. She did a disappointed 180 and wandered back home. When she opened the door, she found Otto in their marital bed with Mary. Clearly, post-coitus. This was a first.

  “Honey! I . . . didn’t know you’d be home.”

  Mary pulled the sheets up over her mega breasts and resembled a young Marilyn Monroe.

  “IN OUR BED, REALLY?” she fumed.

  Eden turned and stormed out. Otto left Mary and followed her into the cavernous stairwell.

  “Eden. Come on, love, you know I love you. We were just painting and things got . . . come on, love, Mary is just—”

  “Just the one who tells you where all the young people are hanging out? What the young people are listening to? Huh? FUCK YOU, OTTO. I can’t take this anymore.”

  “Let’s not be immature, Eden. You knew I had my needs—”

  “AND I HAVE MINE.”

  Otto stopped, looking surprised as his brow furrowed.

  “Honey, this never bothered you before.”

  “IT BOTHERS ME NOW. No wife in America would put up with what I have. I should have known! Marriage is just a piece of paper, right? Now what?”

  “Eden, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!”

  “This is madness!” Otto laughed with an evil cackle. “You know we are meant to be together! Mary is nothing,” he said, looking away. His downward gaze betraying his lie.

  “Otto, she’s fine. She’s cool, even. But you’re into her. I can tell.”

  “I’m not ‘into her.’ How juvenile this all sounds. Into her. What are we, ninth graders?”

  “Fine, so tell yourself that if you’d like. Anyway, it doesn’t even matter—if you’re not into her, you’ll be into others. There will be more young girls who make you feel recharged and immortal. And we need to be honest about this: You and I are running on fumes here. I have struggled with this for a while and I know now, seeing her IN OUR BED, that I need to go.”

  “Eden, don’t be dramatic.”

  “I’m not. See, you didn’t smash my heart like a sledgehammer with Mary overnight,” she explained sadly. “You broke it slowly, like putting it through a cheese grater. No, it was even slower, wearing it away like sandpaper each night, with each woman you fucked. And now I’ve taken a new shape. And I don’t like what I see.”

  “Honey—”

  “I have to go.”

  Otto didn’t fight the fight. In fact, he let her walk without any resistance.

  Eden, who hadn’t cried in years, walked like a teary-eyed windup doll onto the uptown subway, exited and walked to Allison’s apartment, and collapsed into convulsive sobs Allison had never seen from her best friend. After decades of holding the water back from her eyes, Eden let loose, crying not just for Otto but for everything in her whole life.

  “Let it out, sweetie,” she said as she handed Eden tissues and rubbed her bony back, which racked with sobs.

  She could see the flashes of Eden’s whole life in those tears, all the disappointments. It pained Allison immensely to see her friend’s resolve disintegrate before her eyes. Allison prayed that her friend would have the strength to deal with the flood the way she had in her youth. She had to pull herself up and soldier on.

  “We are going to get you sorted out,” Allison promised. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You will stay here this week in Kate’s room and she’ll stay with the twins. I am calling Schlepper’s Movers. They are hot Israelis. They will come in like a tornado and pack you all up. You’ll move up here near us. You’ll start over.”

  Eden nodded blankly, happy to hand over the reigns for the first time in her life.

  She was catatonic over the next week as Allison (and Gadi and Asa, the movers) helped pack her things and move her into a small rental apartment uptown. She nodded at the broker as a signal of “I’ll take it,” as Allison scurried about settling her in with a bed, furniture, and fresh-cut flowers by the window.

  After Alison left with a long hug to go deal with the kiddies’ bath and dinnertime, Eden was left alone to face the four walls of her first solo apartment ever. Drowsy with a mixture of grief, dread, and that mental bungee jump, she sat down and sobbed. She bent her head to her hands to wipe the streams from her eyes with her palms as there were so many tears a mere finger wouldn’t cut it. After a few minutes of making sounds not unlike a cat being strangled, she knew her cries had to stop. Okay . . . deep breaths.

  Eden wearily surveyed the brown landscape of corrugated cardboard. She knew from her many moves that if you don’t power through and unpack every last box, then you’ll carry that pit of dread with you until you do. Enough blubbering, it was time to rip open that tape. Power through, she told herself. Every last box. Eden open
ed her first one in a blur. But then she opened the second and started to figure out where each thing would go and she began to get focused. By the fifth box, she was getting organized. By the next, she had located her speakers and iPod. She limped to find a wall socket. She plugged in her gear and put on some eighties music, starting to sway as she slashed the next box with her cutter. As Duran Duran swelled, so did her hope; despite her fragile state, she recognized in the distance the feeling that everything was not going to shit. Nick Rhodes’s synthesizer triggered an ever-so-slight memory of looking at herself in the mirror at seventeen and knowing that she was going places as she packed those first boxes in Shickshinny. If she had that strength and confidence in her then, surely she could tap into it now, even if it had laid dormant for a while. After she finished unpacking the seventh box, Eden’s despair was beginning to be eclipsed by a tiny glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, she would be okay.

  Splitsville for Painter Clyde & Muse Eden!

  Record-breaking artist Otto Clyde, fifty-five, and his longtime companion and muse, Eden Clyde, have called it quits, sources say. The duo, who have a teenager named Cole and have been together for nearly twenty years, have long dodged questions of their apparently open relationship as rumors of the Picasso’s infidelity have long dogged the dynamic duo. But now friends say the pair have split for good after Clyde’s paintbrush was stroking more than the canvas: He allegedly has been spotted with new studio model Mary McGregor out and about at hotspots downtown. Sources in the artist’s circle say the pair will remain friends and continue to work together for his upcoming show at the Lyle Spence Gallery, one of his biggest to date. No word on where the aging model, Eden, nearly 39, will wind up but she has vacated their large loft and will remain in the city.