Live a Little

by Kim Green

  “Like not asking the wife if there’s any beer in the house right after chemo?” The ponytailed programmer from Berkeley wiped some sweat off his forehead with a tie-dyed hankie.

  “Exactly.”

  The men enjoyed a hearty belly laugh at the expense of their less evolved brethren. It was all they could do not to slap each other’s sweaty backs with pride. Phil joined in with the rest of them. Oh, poor Neanderthals who have yet to shed the coarse trappings of common manhood and don the royal cloak of BC-compliant maleness!

  One of my subjects, a BC patient advocate who, after twelve years helping others navigate the field, contracted the disease herself, had told me that BC functioned as a marital health barometer.

  “It’s like, if things were tense before, you may as well sign those divorce papers now, honey,” she’d said during a break, rubbing plaster off of herself with a scruffy towel. “Frankly, most of the husbands are a disappointment. It’s just the reality. Sure, they’re all gung ho the first few weeks. But after she’s had her biopsy and her surgery and done a few rounds of chemo and maybe radiation, they’re like, can we get back to normal already? Three months. That’s the length of time your typical husband can deal. After that, all bets are off. Once in a while, you get a star, the guy who puts everything on hold, quits his job or whatever, and makes it his raison d’être. But those ones are like radiologists who can actually communicate with humans—a once-in-a-lifetime proposition.”

  Could it be true? Could my Philly, he of the family vacations to obscure railroad museums and the ability to watch six hours of back-to-back Law & Order, be a once-in-a-lifetime proposition? (In a good way, not a government-study-of-thesocially-damaged way.)

  It boggles the mind.

  The third thing that has reared its head since the show is Ma. Or, rather, Ma and me.

  Before, our relationship exuded the stale whiff of unreciprocal approval—mine for Ma, her lack for me. It now has about it an almost honeymoonish fervor. Used to her pronounced, lifelong preference for Laurie’s poised focus and victorious single-mindedness, I am caught off guard by Ma’s attention.

  She showed up at my door unannounced a few days after the show. She had on a velour tracksuit, a BC awareness ribbon, and an army jacket that looked like it had been abandoned by Che Guevara out of spite, plus her usual chest-strapped handbag—to foil purse snatchers—and tote stuffed with partially used Kleenex, Sweet’N Low packets, flaxseed

  caplets, and self-help tomes.

  “You need acupuncture,” she said.

  I staggered back involuntarily due to an insufficiently repressed memory of Dr. Minh and his horrible panoply of engorged digestive organs.

  “No way,” I said.

  Ma unfurled a news clipping from a thick rubber-banded wad. “ ‘While medical experts are unclear as to the physiology of its effects, acupuncture is known to relieve a range of symptoms associated with breast cancer and breast-cancer treatment, including water retention and even the memory loss associated with chemotherapy.’”

  “Ma . . .”

  The woman who once made me walk home from a spelling bee because I fucked up “calliope” on the first round took my hand. “Look—you can’t blame a mother for wanting her precious daughter to have every chance at making a full recovery, sweetling.”

  Can alien abduction possibly be epidemic?

  “I made an appointment for you already. It’ll feel good, like a massage.”

  I sighed.

  Then there was Ma’s increasing habit of coming to me— me!—for advice on, well, Laurie. Or, rather, Laurie’s problems.

  “What do you think about all this adoption mishegoss?” she asked me the other day. She’d invited me over to help her wash donated clothes for the battered-women’s shelter. The clothes teetered on the dining room table, stacks of frumpy sweaters and depressingly bright toddler outfits. Apparently, Ma thought being reviewed by a sex-and-death-obsessed art critic gave one’s opinions on reproductive matters a certain gravitas.

  “I think it’s probably their only chance to have a kid.” I was outwardly calm yet reeling. Laurie and mishegoss: two words not paired in normal times.

  Ma blinked. “Do you think they’ll find, you know, a Jewish one?”

  “No, Ma. Jewish girls don’t get pregnant unless they’re married to Jewish boys. It’s in the Torah.”

  Ma jabbed her finger at me. “Don’t poke fun. These things get more important when you get older. You’ll see.”

  Ah, the quality-control issue. Perpetuation of the tribe and all that. Ma had always been comfortable with Ren’s WASP pedigree—as long as it was paired with the hallowed genes of Rachel, Sarah, and Esther and left to soak in a nice medical-school-love-of-stinky-fish reduction. Now that we were looking at a potential genealogical wild card, Ma was closing tribal ranks.

  We talked a little more. Ma made a few offensive remarks; I countered with a few inanities. Either Ma didn’t notice that my responses lacked both insight and originality, or she didn’t care, because she sandwiched my face in her hands and whispered something laudatory about my unique ability to understand people. And life. She actually said that: “People in your position understand life.” I think, like most people, she believes that, along with tumors and general malfunction, cancer bestows upon its targets a sort of Zen clarity and sage-like wisdom.

  That’s really what gives me pause these days—her effusiveness. And my collusion. There is something almost vaudeville about it. “You’re so great!” she might be saying. “No,” I’d reply. “You’re great!” “No, you are!” and so on and so forth. Was this what her approval felt like to Laurie, you know, before? Did Laurie worry that Ma’s pride in her was over-the-top and therefore slightly counterfeit? Or am I simply getting the (slightly tainted) quality of maternal love I deserve, after what I’ve done?

  Which leads me to the worst part about this whole business: When I tell them the truth—and I’m going to tell them soon, this month, possibly right after Laurie’s job proves secure, the telethon checks finish coming in, a few more commissions roll in, and I’ve torn Eliot’s monthly check into green shards and paid the kids’ tuition bill myself—is my treachery going to convince them I am worthy only of how they treated me before, or something substantially worse?

  “Hey,” Sue says. Her face is thin and wan.

  “Hey.” We hug, and I strip off the many layers of sweaters and scarves that a typical San Francisco evening requires. Through the stained-glass windows, the insouciant glow of North Beach, with its hole-in-the-wall trattorias, dim bars, independent bookstores, and sex shops, beckons. Sue probably picked Vesuvio’s, a classic yet slightly bedraggled haunt, because it matches her mood. “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  Sue doesn’t respond, just raises her delicate eyebrows as if to say, Are you nuts?

  “What can I get you?” The barista is sleek and tawny-skinned and tattooed and highly fuckable in that way all of them seem to be these days. It is hard to believe we ever looked—felt—like that, but then again, maybe we didn’t.

  “Anchor Steam. Sue, do you—?”

  “Do you have tea?”

  The barista nods.

  “Is it organic? Okay, then I’ll have mint, tea bag in. Lemon, no sugar. Thanks.”

  “So,” I say when the girl’s perky backside disappears behind the bar.

  “Yep.”

  “What are you going to do?” Sue’s pregnancy is not a foregone conclusion. Besides the fact that she and Arlo, though wholly committed, are not contracted to provide for legitimate children in the eyes of the law, Sue has always said she was finished having kids after Sarafina.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about Arlo?” I don’t think Sue—or I—could stand it if Arlo Murphy walked out on her the way Sarafina’s father did, protractedly and painfully.

  Sue mumbles something.

  “What?”

  “I said he doesn’t know yet.”

  “Oh, Sue.”
>
  “I just don’t think it’s fair to tell him, if I’m only going to. . . you know.”

  I take a sip of beer. It is cold and slightly bitter. “You have time. You don’t have to decide anything yet, you know? It’s not like last time”—I let mention of her college abortion hang there, gnarled and splintered, a broken tree branch of a memory—“you aren’t a kid anymore, Sue. It doesn’t have to be. . .” I search for the right word, wanting to give my friend real solace, not blather. “Damaging,” I finish inadequately.

  “Quel, the thing is. . .” Sue’s gray eyes bead with tears as her words fade out. She fingers her mohair poncho. “Things are so good right now. They’re good between me and Arlo, with Fina, at Tamarind. It’s the first time I can remember that I actually feel like I can let my guard down for a while. Like I’m not constantly making contingency plans for failure. Or wondering if I can pay the mortgage. Or breaking up with somebody. Or taking Fina into bed with me because she’s having nightmares that her dad was in an airplane crash or has another family now.” Sue hesitates. “God, listen to me. I sound like the baby—the pregnancy, I mean—is some inconvenience, something I have to check off my to-do list like the goddamn shopping. I know I have to tell Arlo. I know it’s his kid, too. It’s just that I’ve been so sick...” Sue’s hand trembles as she raises the tea to her mouth, and she scalds her hand. Without a word, she puts the mug back on the table, wincing. “I’m forty-two years old,” she says.

  “You don’t look it.”

  “But I feel eighty.”

  I draw my oldest friend into a deep hug, the kind where the other person’s hair fills your nose with its grassy scent and boobs press against chests and you both know the hug is as much for you as it is for her. Sue lets go first.

  “Want to know why Arlo left Liesl?” Liesl was Arlo’s first common-law wife, a hard nut of a motorcycle mechanic whom Sue has no beef with and even serves personally on the rare occasion when the woman dines at Tamarind.

  “Because Liesl wanted to have kids and Arlo didn’t. It was the dealbreaker. Arlo was going to get a vasectomy, but Liesl got pregnant first, and then he walked out. Wouldn’t even discuss it. She had to terminate in the fifth month because the baby had Turner syndrome,” Sue says with real sorrow.

  I try to square this revelation with what I know and love about Arlo Murphy, and how good the man is with Sarafina, and conclude that nothing, least of all other people’s relationships, is as it seems. For all I know, some confused couple is right now comparing themselves to me and Phil and finding their own connubial state wanting.

  After that, we order one more round of drinks and leave them standing while we talk about nothing in particular. At around eight P.M., Sue says she has to pick up Sarafina from her dinner playdate and swaths herself in her amber wrap.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I ask.

  “Are you?” It is our standard exchange, employed loyally since college.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I watch Sue leave, imagining my small, plump friend weaving in and out of tourists toward the bus stop, her little feet landing purposeful and sure on the cracked sidewalk. My beer is tepid, but I take a few more sips anyway.

  Seeking relief from the evening’s tension, I gaze out the window. The stained glass is blue and purple, littered with tiny flecks of orange, with a clear opening in the center. Across the street, a black-haired man in a white shirt and dark slacks stands forlornly in front of an empty Italian restaurant, summoning tourists halfheartedly with a laminated menu. There is a strip club a few storefronts away, with a gigantic neon blonde pulsating above the entry. She is wearing electric pasties. They flash frantically, like a small dog dry-humping the couch.

  A couple pauses in front of the lens of the window, blocking my view. The man is solid in an overcoat, his brown hair fluttering in the wind. The woman has a small firm handful of a butt, like Hilary Swank’s. The man kisses the woman— or does she kiss him?—bending her backward violently, as if aiming to fracture.

  “Phil,” I think I whisper, but he is already gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  Mousse On the Loose

  At the precise moment when I receive confirmation of my husband’s affair, I am swallowing a mouthful of the smoothest, downiest chocolate mousse you ever had in your life. It is ironic, really, because not three seconds prior to the crash, I was cautiously sure that I was having the second best day of my life.

  Why second best? Ask any mom what her best day was, and she’ll tell you—as she peels her newborn off her shredded nipple or locks herself in the bathroom to escape her haranguing teenager—that the number one slot belongs to the day she delivered her children into the waiting arms of her OB. She will be lying. That slot belongs, by rights, to the day she received notification of her acceptance to NYU Law, consumed five flawless piña coladas, and bedded the elusive Trinidadian underwear model on her belly-pierced-flashing roommate’s Amish quilt. Nevertheless, she will derive real pleasure from her conviction, reinforcing, as it does, the rightness of her current purpose in life.

  In any case, my second best day thus far consisted of the following:

  • Finding five dollars on the ground outside Starbucks ( tax-free).

  • A call from Shiny Pony confirming that, thanks to the success of my guest spots, Living with Lauren! ratings were up.

  • Lunch with Ren White at a trendy restaurant, enhanced slightly by hard-laboring push-up bra and massively by air kiss from fellow diner.

  • Securing three more commissions, none of which will require me to adorn Jesus in a football jersey.

  • Taylor breaking up with Biter via text message (kapow!).

  • Neither dog peeing or crapping anywhere in the house, mud closet, or foyer.

  • Refusing Rochelle Schitzfelder’s request to chair the next session of the Hillsborough Native Tree Club.

  • Relishing the knowledge that there will be no subtle retribution for said refusal, since Rochelle Schitzfelder now believes I am—don’t laugh!—“adorable.”

  See what I mean? Even with the unnerving reason for the lunch hovering in the back of my mind, this day is tops.

  “Sorry,” I say to Ren when my cell phone chimes for what seems like the fifth time since we sat down at twelve-thirty P.M. I consider ignoring it, but the call window says “Mic.”

  Duty calls.

  “Hon?”

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “What’s up? I’m a little tied up right now.” I try not to watch

  too avidly as Ren tucks his silky periwinkle tie back between his shirt buttons. It is possible that Ren, being Ren, knows his tie is periwinkle and not blue or lavender or silver; that’s the type of guy Ren is. On the rare occasion Phil dons a tie at all, it is brown, stained, too wide, or all three.

  “Ronnie and I are going to a game in Marin tonight, so I’ll be home late, okay?” Micah says.

  “Late as in?”

  “Midnight. Or one.”

  I have no idea what sort of game my son means, and the steadily weakening Mommy warden inside me sounds a brief alarm at the hour and distant location of the event. Nevertheless, the ever distracting presence of my brother-in-law quiets her.

  “Call if you’re going to be later, okay?” I tell him.

  “I’ll just wake you up.” Based on my experience, this is what kids say when they already plan on breaking curfew.

  “Okay, bye,” I singsong and click the phone off.

  “Everything okay?” Ren says.

  “Yeah. You know, kids.”

  Ren smiles a bit sadly. We both know he has yet to know what it is like to tolerate children. I’m ashamed to say, I have mixed feelings about the imminent prospect of my sister’s adoption of a baby, negating, as it will, the only thing I’ve ever managed to best Laurie at: the womb war.

  “Any news on a baby?” I say.

  “There was a fifteen-year-old girl in Kentucky who picked us to adopt, but she decided to keep the baby. There were
a couple of others—one of the mothers turned out to be an Oxycontin addict. We’ve been talking to a Chinese agency. It’s hard . . .” Ren shrugs. Over the years, his face has earned a network of gently trod paths that only makes his cheekbones finer and his smile sexier. I am pretty sure Ren has not had work done— if he has, it is subtle—his restraint no doubt a selling point for his more discriminating cosmetic-surgery clients.

  “Ren, can I ask you something?”

  He nods. Something about his lack of surprise—he didn’t even question the purpose of the once-in-a-decade lunch invitation when I called him this morning—sends a spike of dread drilling into my stomach. In fact, when his receptionist sent my call through to Ren’s desk line and I heard him say my name in welcome, I was struck with the weird notion that he had been waiting for the call and was relieved it had finally arrived. This would have bothered me more at the time, except that, in the intervening days since Vesuvio’s, I have convinced myself it was not my husband who grabbed Tate Trimble’s thimble-sized ass and licked the perfume off her throat through the telescopic lens of the bar window but, rather, some other middle-aged Don Juan with a thinning rotunda and dun-colored coat.

  It bothers me now. Naturally, I take steps to comfort myself—in this case by spooning large shovelfuls of chocolate mousse into my mouth.

  “Um, this is a bit awkward,” I mumble, my tongue trapped in a thicket of chocolate. “But I need you to be honest with me, okay? If I had any other option, I wouldn’t be asking, and actually, I suppose I’m really just coming to you for confirmation that I have, um, imagined something that doesn’t, in fact, exist—that is to say, that I’m just being paranoid.” Ren lowers his eyes at this disclosure, sparing me his vicarious shame and enabling me to continue past the increasingly dry lump in my throat. “The other day? In San Francisco? I was having drinks with Sue at a bar”—in a flash, I see myself lurching out of Vesuvio’s onto the empty sidewalk, hoping (and not hoping) to catch my husband entwined with his boss’s wife— “and I saw Phil on the street. At least I think it was Phil. He was with Tate Trimble, and they were hugging. And kissing.” I say it very calmly, like those tall, emotionally distant women in Alice Adams novels who are able to maintain composure in the face of death, financial ruin, and bad produce. We all know they don’t exist—and we’d hate them if they did—but isn’t it nice to pretend just for a second?