Live a Little

by Kim Green

  My daughter tears her gaze away from the TV. “You aren’t even trying to work things out with Dad! Why don’t you just get a divorce and, like, go have a midlife crisis at Club Med or something?”

  So, not the garden variety. Clearly, Taylor’s interpretation of remission hews quite closely to meaning number three in my dictionary: “a release from debt, penalty, or obligation.” From treating me civilly, I mean.

  “Does this have something to do with the reunion?” I say.

  “Dad wants to make things right. It’s you who won’t listen to him!”

  “Tay, not to condescend, but there’s a little more at stake here than simply making things right. Not to mention that this is between me and him.” I stir the remaining packet of sugar and chemicals carefully into the water. The crystals sparkle. I seem to recall someone at the last BC support group warning us off artificial red #7. The thing is, how would you even know it’s in there? Wouldn’t they call it something else, something more wholesome-sounding, so you wouldn’t sip it and think, Cancer?

  Taylor slaps her hand against her leg in frustration. “Why are you doing this to us?” she cries.

  Micah shakes his head, picks up the car keys, and heads outside. So much for backup.

  Taylor continues, “I just want to say, screwing a guy half your age is, like, totally pathetic.”

  “That’s enough,” I say sharply. How does she know I’m considering, uh, screwing anybody? For that matter, how does she know Duke is even in this hemisphere?

  Mindful of my face’s usual transparency, I try to radiate indignance and also celibacy. Think: Outraged Bride of God.

  “When you talk like that, Tay, you only degrade yourself,” I murmur. The nuns would be proud.

  “What a bunch of crap,” Taylor says. Then, with satisfaction, “Chloe Hughes’s mom told her you brought a”—nose wrinkling in disgust—“date to the reunion! And he was, like, nineteen. And he did shots! And you danced with him right in front of Dad! Chloe said you looked like Big Bird doing the chicken dance!”

  It is one thing to be outed as a dater of (young) men. It’s yet another to be labeled a bad dancer. This hurts. Damn Misty Hughes and her evil spawn. Damn them.

  I try to cover Taylor’s hand. “Tay, I know you’re worried about me and Dad. And me being sick. I think that’s what’s really pushing your buttons. The thing is, everything’s going to be okay. I’ve gotten through the worst of the treatment, and I’m doing great and—”

  Taylor cuts me off with a great jeer of a guffaw. “Is that what you think? For God’s sake, Mom, stop using it as an excuse. You’ve been, I don’t know, crazy ever since you got sick. Your clothes. Your friends. Your job. The things you say to the other moms. Going on dates. Flirting with our friends. It’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating. It’s immature.”

  I feel my eyelids prickle with shocked tears. Is it true? Is it possible that what feels to me like being alive is just a youth fantasy with a pitiable ending? Is it possible that, all this while, I’ve justified my fabrications as part of pursuing my true self, as being for a good cause—money—when, in fact, there’s just a pouffy-haired sad sack waiting at the end, arguing homecoming-dance themes at PTA meetings in pilled sweatpants?

  “I . . . I’m sorry if I’ve embarrassed you in any way, Tay. I didn’t mean to— ”

  “Dad’s lonely, Mom. He eats, like, Hungry-Man dinners! The kind with the gooey pink dessert in the corner!”

  “Maybe I could get him some of those veggie lasagnas at Trader Joe’s.”

  We stare at each other, my daughter and I, Taylor’s dismay lapping at me like dirty water. Then her face goes studiously blank, she picks up the remote, and Tyra’s latest tirade fills the room.

  CHAPTER 20

  Southern Exposure

  I awaken, take inventory of the body next to me, roll over, and stare out the window of the hotel, trying to discern if the San Francisco skyline has changed since I had sex with a man who isn’t Phil.

  Nope: There is the Transamerica Pyramid, the gleaming arch of the Bay Bridge, the humorless facade of the Bank of America building, the checkerboard sweep of hooker hotels and shoe stores and Chinese pagodas and overpriced condos that is downtown.

  Somehow, in the harshness of day, I expected everything to be different. Not just me or, more accurately, the feverish nugget of sex-stoked mojo glowing inside me, but the sheets and pillows, the office buildings and sidewinder streets, the cable cars and taxis, the cloud-flecked sky. The idea that everything continues on, blissfully impervious to the fact that I, Raquel Rose, have just been ravished by a twenty-six-yearold surfer twenty-eight days into my trial separation, is more comforting than not.

  I glance back at the bed, a perfectly innocuous Grand Hyatt jobbie, in its undisheveled state a model of crisp, starched whiteness. (Its undisheveled state being nine hours and five penetrations ago.)

  “Quel, babe, get over here.” Duke is scratching his chest absently with one hand. The other hand is busy stroking his—okay, I’ll just say it—dick, which is pleasantly short and thick, the Bilbo Baggins of penises.

  Duke Dunne is gorgeous. And energetic. And sweet. He is also somewhat prosaic and quite possibly dyslexic, but who am I to judge?

  I return to his side of the bed and lie down next to him. I am about 35 percent less embarrassed than I thought I would be, facing my juvenile ravisher in the light of day without makeup, clothing, or New Yorker subscription as protection.

  “Suck me,” he says without a touch of petulance.

  I automatically try on reasons not to, as I’ve done with Phil for fifteen of the past nineteen years. Then a small worm of an idea squirms its way into my head: Why not?

  Indeed.

  Nine hours ago, I asked myself the same question. Nine hours ago, I found myself slurping down oysters and Laporte Sancerre with calculated abandon at Hog Island, a charming seaside bar stuck, barnacle-like, on the back of San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Lights from barges churning toward the port of Oakland studded the black waters of the bay, merging with the rope of traffic that burned a swath across the Bay Bridge. Conversation tangoed with the dulcet tones of stereophonic jazz. The scene oozed romance; I thought I might vomit into the oyster bucket.

  “Do you like beurre blanc?” Duke pronounced it “bear blank.”

  “I’m not sure. Is that food?”

  Duke smiled in that boyish, unself-conscious way that said, I can charm the pants off a Brazilian supermodel; why should I care if my French is crappy?

  “Raquel,” he said.

  “Hmm?” I busied myself with the menu. Perhaps the barbecued—

  “Stop.”

  “What?”

  “Stop being a bitch. If you don’t want to be with me, just say so. I’ll be disappointed, I’ll admit it. But I can handle it. I’m a big boy.”

  Embarrassing.

  Duke leaned over and slowly, sexily plucked my white-knuckled fingers one by one off my clutch, which was lying, fondled into suppleness, on my lap. He pressed his palm against mine and twined our fingers together.

  “Estás hermosa, Raquelita.”

  “Thank you.” Since my Spanish ran to restaurant menus and Shakira choruses, I had no idea what he’d said, but it sounded admiring and vaguely horny. His other hand grazed my thigh. Not the tame, clichéd lower part. The part that attaches to the body, known among underwear manufacturers, I believe, as “crotch.”

  Lust, muggy and gelatinous, stormed my nether regions.

  You know those moments in life when you see your options spread out starkly, almost topographically? When you feel the weight of your future resting in the balance of spliced time, daring you to make the wrong choice? That was one of those moments. Nine hours ago, here’s what I was thinking: Take the dark path and consign yourself to a life of empty sex, of extramarital clutches in murky bars, of leopard-print miniskirts and shar-pei knees spread against indifferent hands. Take the darker path, and say hello to thirty or forty years of ma
rried spinsterhood, to a raft of daily motions so featureless, so sexless, that the face of the microwave starts to resemble a grimace. Say hello to the well-thumbed love scene on page 172 of . . . whatever, because that’s the hottest heat you’re ever going to feel. Again.

  I didn’t want to let my kids down. Or my husband (really!). Or my mother. But most of all, I didn’t want to suffer the cold vacancy of fate’s fingers slipping through mine. I wanted to be warm again. I wanted to be excited. I wanted to excite someone. I wanted to be alive.

  Here’s the kicker I’m not so proud of: I thought, in that moment, Who has to know but me?

  It may not be an admirable incentive, but it is an age-old one. And that, my friends, is how I ended up laying a thicket of bills on the table, wrapping myself in Sue’s pashmina, and floating the ten or so blocks to the Grand Hyatt in a cloud of apprehension, precipitate guilt, and . . . that other thing.

  Back to present.

  Duke Dunne is tumescently awaiting my response, which is—boy, am I getting predictable—Why not?

  We writhe around on the starchy bed, Duke muttering some mild obscenities. It is all unexpectedly and ambivalently validating—sort of like being named employee of the month at Taco Bell. Even the menu is somewhat Taco Bellish (neither tasty nor repugnant, basically just salty and a teeny bit rancid, like a tortilla chip with a smear of guacamole that has turned).

  I know women of a certain age and generation—myself included—are not supposed to find being treated like a porn queen by a near-stranger beneficial to the self-esteem, but dammit, it so is!

  Duke withdraws, and I gratefully gulp air and await his next move. It is amazing how easy it is to have sex with other people again once you’ve crossed the threshold into sin. There is very little guilt and a shockingly low weird factor.

  That I am able to view the joining of our bodies with a modicum of detachment is, quite frankly, a huge relief and a significant achievement: Finally, after all those years of failing to meaningfully connect with my spiritual life partner, it is no longer intimacy I crave, but a good old-fashioned screw. It feels almost as if my body has a mind of its own, following the biological imperative toward callow virility like a bee buzzing frantically toward nectar.

  Duke turns me over, and I wonder briefly if I should have gotten one of those back facials. Not that I’m broken out or anything, but how much better it would have been to blind him with the dewy glow of my flawless shoulders, rather than the mind-boggling dairy-cow breadth of my hips.

  “Oh my God,” I breathe as Duke pushes himself inside me from behind. His thrusts are very athletic and rhythmic. Not like Phil’s, which, though thankfully not rabbity, tend toward the leisurely and irregular. It’s heart-attack paranoia, of course. My personal theory is that men in their forties fear heart attack so ardently they actually view sex as a drain on their mortal resources and the loss of their seed as a bad investment.

  Duke smushes my face down into the pillows and speeds up. His self-interest alone is enough to catapult me toward orgasm; the coarseness of his assault licks at my exhilaration like flame.

  If sex with Duke Dunne has taught me anything, it’s that the deliberate, reverent, tortuous thrumming of the clitoris, so widely employed it must be handed down from father to son like a Willie Mays–inscribed baseball, is a waste of valuable finger strength at best and a travesty of amorous misunderstanding at worst. The truth is, there is not a man alive who does it better than women can do it themselves. Let me clarify: not one!

  I experience a fleeting urge to call my mother and crow— “Ma, you didn’t burn your bra for nothing! I’m fucking a twenty-six-year-old, and it’s dope!”—before blank, lovely pleasure explodes out of my pelvis and out into the slightly antiseptic-smelling room.

  Duke arches and quivers against me. We are so sweaty his hand slips when he braces it on my back, and he bashes his face against my shoulder blade.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. Ever the mom.

  “Yeah.” Pause. “Are you?”

  I ignore him. Why inflate his already healthy self-esteem further by telling him I may require imminent hospitalization for ovary displacement?

  “Let’s order room service,” I say instead.

  Like a couple of kids, we page through the book of goodies. Protein and carbs, that’s what we need. Replenishment. Visions of fluffy banana-almond pancakes and cheese platters and tangy Caesar salads and pan-fried steaks and . . .

  “I’m dying for some bacon.” I bounce a little, feeling quite glad, almost happy. The mattress is very springy, and I don’t even have to wash the sheets myself. “Do you have any of that pot left, by any chance?” I ask him.

  My house is quiet. So quiet, I feel like I’m at church—I mean synagogue—and I’m most definitely a sinner. I drift through the empty rooms, imagining that I’m a real estate agent assessing the house following the untimely demise of its inhabitants. “Such a shame,” I might say. “They were so young. And so attractive! They had everything to—Hey, is that a plasma flatscreen? Is it built in?”

  I am not supposed to be here. That’s why I had to come home. If I were being honest with myself, I suppose I’d say that something in me, some derelict kernel of wanting, knew this was going to happen. Knew Duke Dunne—or a Duke Dunne—was going to stumble his way into the vacuum of my need like a shining inbred stallion, kicking his heels and shaking his silky, comely, brainless mane in my face.

  You just want to be home after something like this happens. You know the feeling: Break up with husband, lurk around in robe conjuring visions of women-only book clubs and geriatric singles junkets to Reno, choke down handfuls of antidepressants, sleep with nubile surf god, flee home in terror of own audacity and likelihood of contracting crusty venereal malady, curl up in own bed with nutritionally deficient foodstuff, watch cable ringed by crumbs. You want to surround yourself with the familiar so you can identify exactly what’s changed in the aftermath of your Shocking Exploit, skewer it on a pushpin and probe it, searching for tender spots.

  I’d told the kids I was spending a spa weekend with Sue, which they’d taken as an opportunity to disappear into the froth of their social lives, Taylor to Lindsay’s and Micah to Ronnie’s. Phil was not a problem. I’d stopped reporting my whereabouts to The Cheater, oh, around the time he was grappling with Tate Trimble under Ross the Boss’s Miró.

  I enter Taylor’s room, a pretty study in sage and peach plastered with tawdry keepsakes and adulatory images of weak-chinned rock stars. The light in her walk-in closet is on, so I turn it off and fling a few stray shirts and undies into the hamper. I wonder if Biter has been replaced yet. Something about the pink hard-candy scent of my daughter’s room makes me think so—or maybe it’s just my own tuned-up sexual antennae—and I resolve to ask her about it point-blank and make an appointment for her with my ob-gyn.

  I walk down the hallway. Willard the dog is sitting outside Micah’s room, his top-heavy basset body pressed up against the door.

  “Hey, guy,” I say. I cannot remember if the dog has finished his course of antibiotics, but nothing looks like it’s in imminent danger of turning putrid or falling off, so I push by him and go inside.

  They are in bed.

  The bodies are a study in ivory and peach. Limbs tangle around one another like the branches of saplings, pliant and lithe as only young flesh can be. I simply stand and stare, cognizant only of the extreme beauty of naked youth, of the ardor rising up from them like steam off a racehorse on a frigid day. Then shame washes through me; I am a trespasser, a violator, an uninvited witness to the most private proclamation of love. I have to leave. Now.

  My presence might never have been noticed. But as I back through the doorway of my son’s bedroom, a soccer cleat springs from nowhere, and I stumble backward over it with a soft, clichéd “oomph.”

  The bodies still. Faces rise up above the nest of sheets, mouths perfect moues of shock, eyebrows arching bold over strong noses. Oh God, it can’t be—
/>   “Mom?”

  I scurry out, crablike, my mind snatching at thoughts, tossing them aside. The sliding glass door is still open, my favorite chaise spread open against the sun. I hurtle toward it.

  “Mom?” My son’s voice follows me down the hallway, shades of the demanding baby he used to be. I can’t. I can’t because if I do, I’ll freak out, and if I freak out, I’ll fail him, and if I fail him, I’m lost, lost, lost.

  I slip through the doors into the backyard and—

  “Mom!”

  Micah is naked save a robe he’s holding around his waist.

  My son is less hirsute than Phil, his torso carved with lithe muscle. Micah’s beauty used to seem harmless, a stroke of mild, benevolent genetic fortune that bypassed me and Phil. Now it is lethal.

  “Mom, please, hold on a minute, will you? Can’t you just stop and listen?”

  I drop into the chaise, careful to avoid the end that always flips. Micah glances back at the house, back where Ronnie Greenblatt, my son’s best friend, is likely pulling on his pants and one of those ugly skater shirts he’s always wearing. I fish around in my mind and find, to my surprise, that I want nothing more at this moment than to slap Ronnie very hard in the face.

  “I’m sorry that happened, Mom,” Micah says. He sounds unrepentant and icily, shockingly adult. I actually feel my heart rate ratchet up a notch, locking into high gear like a runaway train. Who is this person, this man with the body of a dryad and the gaze of a predator? Where is my son, my Micah, he of the dreamy blue eyes and soccer passion?

  “Is this. . . Oh my God, did he seduce you?” This is not the question I want to ask. Why did it come out like that?

  Micah’s normally receptive face, suntanned and eager and blue-eyed, snaps shut. “Actually, I seduced him, if you want to put it that way.” My son is enjoying this too much; he is angry with me for something that goes beyond today’s discovery.