Val bit her lip. “Not tonight, but you know, I like that idea. We should do it soon. The three of us could have movie night or something.”
“Are you coming home?”
“Of course I’m coming home. Look, remember when Stella came over after Casey dumped you? Two pints of ice cream and sympathy? That’s what this is. I need my Stella.”
“All right.” Deane’s voice wasn’t putting any money on this.
“I’m not leaving you or Dad. I promise. This is not divorce. All will be worked out, but I need tonight here. If you don’t hear from me in the morning, call Weight Watchers.”
Finally, Deane laughed. “Oh my God, Mom.”
“I love you. I for to text you before I go to bed.”
“I for to love you as well.”
“Oy God,” Val said, tossing her phone aside and sinking onto a stool.
“Here.” Trelawney put down a bowl with some plain pasta. “Line your poor stomach with that.”
Val forced a few bites down. “What am I going to do?”
“What are your options? Start with the obvious.”
“Leave him?”
“Any self-respecting woman with zero tolerance for infidelity would.”
“I’m a self-respecting woman, sure.”
“He cheated on you. He had sexual contact with someone else. Gender is irrelevant. Gratification is irrelevant. That he didn’t get off is no excuse. He gave and received pleasure. He’s out.” Trelawney cocked her head. “Is any of this working?”
Val slowly shook her head. “I don’t feel cheated on. I feel shit on. He threw me under the bus, then put it in reverse and backed up to finish the job.”
“Who are you and what have you done with Alex?”
“Right? He’s unrecognizable to me.”
“Which tells me his own mental state is a disaster area.”
Val ate a few more bites. “The thing is,” she said, “I get it. I completely understand Alex and Jav being attracted to each other.”
“And a bit of you is turned on by it, I bet.”
Val put her fork into the bowl and pushed it away.
“Shit, I wouldn’t kick it out of my bed,” Trelawney said. “Purely from an aesthetic viewpoint.”
Val unwound the towel from her head and tossed it onto another stool. “Alex and I… We fooled around with the idea. Couple weeks ago, we were stoned and having magnificent sex. Inhibitions gone, minds open and we fantasized a little about Jav being with us. Together. It was hot.”
“That’s bold,” Trelawney said. “If I didn’t know then what I know now, I’d be shocked Alex entertained another guy in the scenario. Usually with men’s threesome fantasies, it’s another woman.”
“The idea of it is a total turn-on. Having both of them at the same time is like numero uno in the spank bank. I pitched it one night and I was amazed he played along. We shared a crazy fantasy. It was fun. We came our brains out over it. How the hell was I to know…?” She turned her hand over, cupping it toward the ceiling. Looking for an explanation but seeing only the silver bands encircling her fourth finger and an empty palm.
“How were you to know he’d take it out of fantasy,” Trelawney said.
“But he said it started in Vermont for him.”
“What? He and Jav fooled around in Vermont?”
“No. He said on the drive home from Stowe, it started to get into his head that he was attracted to Jav. He already had something cooking in his brain.” Val pressed her lips hard as her eyes welled up and overflowed. “What the fucking hell. Telling me I was riding him and lying when he was doing the same goddamn thing. He was…” She was crying too hard to finish. Trelawney came around the corner and put arms around her, crossed them tight around Val’s head and rocked her back and forth.
“It hurts,” Trelawney said. “I’m so sorry, honey.”
“I don’t understand,” Val said between sobs. Over and over. “I don’t understand. I don’t know who he is.”
“I know. I don’t either. I mean, I understand how the attraction could happen. But I don’t understand his actions.”
Val reached for the towel to wipe her face. “If he’d only said something sooner. If he’d brought it out when he found the text, found out Jav and I used to sleep together. We would’ve been on equal ground and we could’ve had a conversation. I am so pissed, Trey. I withheld information but so did he. Making me feel like shit while he’s making out with Jav in the fucking shed…”
Trelawney stepped into the little bathroom off the kitchen and came back with a comb. She started working it through the wet tangles of Val’s hair.
“Maybe I’m biased,” Val said. “But his was the shittier transgression. Or hell, maybe we each drew blood. Game ends in a tie. We can reset and move on.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t make decisions when you’re this emotional. Right now you have to sit here and be hurt.”
“The fucking goddamn shed, Trey.” Val leaned back against her sister, reaching for Trelawney’s wrists and pulling them around to hold her. “It hurts so bad.”
“He loves you. And I know he’s dying right now. He couldn’t have seen it coming, either. When everything you thought you knew about yourself is suddenly different, you make lousy decisions. You make self-preservation decisions. Hide your bad qualities by ripping open someone else’s. Who knows, maybe he dumped on you the other night in a desperate attempt to be the man of the house. Masculinity fire drill.”
“If he just told me.”
“Well, to be fair, when I counseled you to tell him about Jav, you balked. Why? Because, quote, how the hell do you bring that up in conversation?”
Val squirmed in the circle of her sister’s arms. “Who’s side are you on?”
“Yours.”
“I hate what Alex did, because I know he’s not an asshole,” Val said. She exhaled. “And I’m not a bourgeois twit.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Where did that even come from? Bourgeois twit. I’ve been saying it all my life and I don’t even know where I got it.”
“Don’t you remember? Mom read it in one of those Rosamunde Pilcher novels she loved. A woman’s drip of a husband is at war, and she’s falling for the handsome American ranger stationed in town. She tells her father she’s worried she’ll get involved and he says to her, ‘So get involved. You’re a married woman, but not a bourgeois twit.’”
“I think I’ll tattoo that on my face.”
“How about that wine?”
“Big glass. Fuck it, give me the bottle.”
“Eat some more. Choke it down.”
Val choked down a few cold mouthfuls of pasta. Her phone pinged. She knew before looking it was Alex.
Val, I’m so sorry. Please come home.
The pasta felt like glue in her mouth as she chewed and texted: What did you tell Deane?
That I was an asshole.
Good. Leave me alone now.
“He’s sorry,” she said, sliding the phone away.
“Of course he is,” Trelawney said.
“God, if I were twenty-something I’d be milking this one out for a week.”
“It’s prime drama, baby. You could get… I don’t know, jewelry or something.”
“Fuck drama. I don’t want jewelry. I’m forty-five years old—I don’t have time for this shit.”
Her phone pinged again.
Val, I love you. Please come back and talk to me. I need you so much.
She typed back, I needed you the other night, you know.
I’m so sorry.
She should be cool and distant. Make him suffer as she had. Teach him a lesson. But it wasn’t her. She relied heavily on comic relief in a tense situation. Her way of diffusing stress was to find the funny in it.
Or at least snark.
You fucking hurt my feels, dude, she typed. I’m sleeping over my sister’s. We’re going to make popcorn and talk about you. I’ll
be home tomorrow. Or the day after. And we’ll do whatever couples do in this situation. Right now I’m pissed off and it’s your turn to suffer through a long night.
She put the phone down and picked up her wine. “Twenty bucks says he’ll be throwing pebbles at the guest room window tonight.”
“Fifty says he’ll be ringing the doorbell in an hour.”
Trelawney made popcorn on the stove with an obscene amount of butter and salt, the way Roland always made it. The sisters took the giant bowl and two dish towels into the living room.
“Have you said anything to Jav since this shit went down?” Trelawney asked, pouring more wine in their glasses.
“Said? No. Screamed? Yes.”
“And what did he say? Or scream?”
“I didn’t give him a chance to do either, frankly. His side of the story wasn’t relevant at the time.”
“Fair enough.” Trelawney donned her reading glasses and opened a book.
Val flipped through a magazine with greasy fingers, pictures and text blurring together. “This changes everything,” she said, closing her eyes. “I don’t mean just Alex and me. We’ll work it out. I’m angry and hurt but I don’t want to leave him. This is marriage. It’s my marriage and it’s worth fighting for. At the same time…”
“It changes both your relationships with Jav.”
“And I like Jav. I want to throw him off the bridge at the moment, but that man flew to Santiago for my daughter. Twice he got her down from the mountain.”
“He’s a lovely man. Damaged, but lovely.”
“He got dealt a shitty hand in life and he wants to be everything his own family wasn’t. And as much as he denies it, I think he desperately wants someone to love.”
“All of which tends to color the decisions he makes. Parts of him still make the choices of an abandoned teenager.”
“Now it’s all going to be tense and awkward, at best. Estranged at worst. And that sucks. He’ll feel kicked out again. I liked having him around. I liked seeing Alex be friends with him.”
“Until the attraction part kicked in. Who the fuck saw that coming.”
“I did.” Val threw the magazine and put her head on the back of the couch. “I should’ve known. I knew he hadn’t worked it out yet.”
“Who worked what out?”
“Jav. Twenty years ago he was on the fence about being bisexual. He had a thing for Alex he didn’t know what to do with.” She scratched at her scalp, trying to dig answers out of her head. “But I can’t believe he flew to Santiago to get in Alex’s pants.”
“No,” Trelawney said. “That kind of thing, you do for love.”
“He’s become like family. Same way Alex became part of our family.”
“And you blew him in the back room of Grandma’s shop.”
“Once,” Val said, but she was laughing. “Oh my God, maybe this is the Lark destiny.”
“The exaltation of Larks.”
“Shut up.”
Trelawney sighed into her glass. “It’s certainly complicated.”
“Thank you, Madame Obvious.”
“Alex was jealous you got to sleep with Jav and he didn’t. Now you’re jealous Alex got to mess around with Jav and you didn’t.”
Indignant, Val coughed through a swallow of wine. “I am not.”
Trelawney lowered her glasses. “And I don’t have a masters in human sexuality studies.”
“Fine. Yes. A little.”
“A lot.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours,” Trelawney said, smiling.
“Look, I admit Jav was an amazing experience. It doesn’t suck to look at him and walk down memory lane. He hugs me hello or goodbye and it feels like a private joke. It should be illegal for a man to smell that good. But I never intended on acting on it. If Alex is going to pursue some homoerotic wet dream, it’s going to be…”
Trelawney blinked through the silence. “Be what?”
“Nothing.”
“No, go on. It’s going to be what? On your terms?”
Val filled up her lungs and slowly exhaled. “What if I hired him?”
“For Alex?”
“For both of us.”
“To what purpose?”
“Pure entertainment.”
The sisters caught eyes and held. Then, at the same time and at the same cadence, shook their heads.
“Probably the greatest terrible idea I’ve ever had,” Val said.
“It would not end well,” Trelawney said.
“And Jav doesn’t do couples anyway.” Val blew her breath out and buried her head in her palms, fingers scratching at her scalp. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
“I want to go home,” Val said to her lap. “My whole life, whenever the shit went down or it got to be too much, I’d always think, I just need to go home. And whenever I did, Alex was always there. After Mom and Dad died and I finally broke down, I went running from town back to the house. Falling down sobbing. Alex was there and he caught me. He’s home to me. Getting out of New York on Nine-Eleven, all I kept saying to myself was Get home, just get home. Get back to Alex, go back home…”
The doorbell rang. The Lark sisters looked toward the front hall, then at each other.
“Your ride is here,” Trelawney said.
Val sighed, but didn’t move.
Trelawney leaned forward. “My front door is fumed oak and extremely expensive,” she said. “And I will send you the bill if Alex breaks it down.”
The doorbell rang again. Val uncurled her legs and got up to answer it.
Val came home and accepted his apology.
“Please forgive me,” he said.
“I will,” she said. “I want to. Right now, I’m still hurt.”
Tender, fragile days turned into anxious nights.
“I don’t feel like making love,” she said, when he reached tentative hands toward her. “I’m not punishing you. I literally don’t feel like it.”
“I understand,” he said, desperate for her and feeling punished. He barely recognized their relationship without its sexual current. They moved through the house like cordial roommates, giving short bulletins on their whereabouts. Val was busy with a wedding order and worked late into the night. Alex had rescues and adoption events. Graduation loomed. Dogs had to be walked, bills paid, dinners cooked.
Life went along on its routine, but the comfortable, perfectly-broken-in jeans of their marriage had fallen to threads. Now Alex was walking around in stiff, scratchy denim, the inseams chafing him. They’d feel good one day. But not today.
KLK, Jav texted once.
We need 2 talk and I want 2 talk, Alex typed back. But right now all my time, energy & attention is here. I need 2 be here.
I know. I’m sorry. I’ll leave u guys alone.
Alex almost deleted the exchange, but after consideration he left it, and left his phone on the kitchen counter where anyone could look at it. Transparency was key right now. He’d be an open book.
Besides, he had a shitty poker face.
And he still wanted Jav.
In the immediate aftermath of the garden shed bust, his thoughts flinched away from Jav and stayed far away. By day, anyway. He couldn’t control the dreams at night. The weight on his back, the tattooed arms pinning him safe and Jav’s voice on the nape of his neck.
I walked into your house. And now I’m on you…
Then Alex would wake up with a throbbing, guilty erection and Val’s back turned on him.
Jav was right, he thought. Three in a bed is too complicated.
His thoughts were a tabloid scandal but Alex kept his behavior unimpeachable. He didn’t call or text Jav, didn’t casually wander down Main Street or into Celeste’s where he might see him. He kept up a calm, amiable front for Deane. He paid special, solicitous attention to Val. He not only made coffee in the morning, but brought her a cup in bed. Took a sandwich to her if she was bogged down at the shop. Texted her ofte
n. He kept reaching out to touch her. She didn’t shy away, but didn’t lean into him either. He refused to let it make him complacent. He had to own this, and he couldn’t own it without putting his hands on it.
At the end of the day, they said goodnight and lay down. The “I love yous” sounded perfunctory. Sometimes they held hands. Most nights they didn’t touch at all. The dreams came then, and Alex exploded in happiness and imploded with desire as he was pressed tight between the two things he wanted most in the world.
I want him, he thought. Some days he could sit it down in a chair like a child who needed a talking-to. Elbows on knees, fingers laced and expression firm, he looked it in the eye. I want him. But I can’t have everything. I’ll just have to want it until I don’t anymore.
Other days, he thought he was losing his mind. Then more anxiously juvenile thoughts came for lunch.
Am I gay?
He had no one to talk it out with. He wanted Val desperately, and not just to prove his masculinity—he needed her head, her insights and her patient ear.
“Please can we talk,” he said. “I love you and I want to work this out.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m just tired, Alex, and I have nothing to say right now.”
His finely-tuned antenna could feel the sad tension radiating off his wife. It wasn’t angry. It was depleted. Being his rock had exhausted her. Somehow, her ambivalence hurt more than a screaming rage. More than his own shame. Her abstracted demeanor was a wrecking ball into his spiritual house. Being so disconnected from her was like trying to drive around town with the car in reverse. Like walking backward through life—not knowing what was coming next, only what had already occurred.
What have I done? he thought, while his thumb ran over the keyboard of his phone, itching to connect with Jav.
An evening came when Alex was watching Val mix ground beef with Worcestershire sauce and spices, molding it into burgers. Water was boiling for corn, and tomatoes were sliced and fanned on a plate, sprinkled with salt and pepper.
“Our anniversary’s coming up,” Alex said.
“I know.”
“Do you want to go out?”
“Don’t we always?” She gave him a closed-mouth smile and flicked the faucet on with her elbow. She washed her hands, then took a small toothbrush to the corncobs, getting rid of the silks.
An Exaltation of Larks Page 42