The Trouble with Lexie

by Jessica Anya Blau

  Ethan sat on the couch across from Lexie, kicked off his boat shoes, and lay down with his head on one armrest and his feet on the other. He lifted his feet once before letting them drop again. “Either this couch got shorter, or I got longer.”

  “I think you got longer,” Lexie said. “You’re at that age where boys grow like aliens—like time-lapse photography.”

  “Yeah.” Ethan lifted his head and looked at his feet. “My mom thinks I’m too big.” He lay back again.

  “Too big?”

  “Like if me and my dad are watching a game together on the same couch, there’s no room for her. She hates that she’s stuck in the chair, or on the floor if she wants to sit near us.”

  “I see.” Lexie wondered if watching TV together was a regular activity when they were all home. Did Daniel mind hanging out with Jen for the length of a football game?

  “Did you ever notice that if there are no seats left, it’s the women who always sit on the floor?” Ethan looked up at the ceiling, like he was thinking this all through.

  “Yeah. I have noticed that. And I think it’s great that you’ve noticed that.”

  “Like at senior meeting this morning there weren’t enough seats and Toni and Megan were sitting on the floor.” Ethan continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “Maybe you can be one of those guys who moves to the floor. You can change the pattern for all of mankind.”

  “One human at a time, right?” Ethan looked so serious. Lexie was heartened by the idea that he’d try to make a change in this way.

  “Exactly. So, you and your dad are always taking up the couch and your mom sits on the floor. Do the three of you watch a lot of games together?” Lexie’s internal voice told her to quit prying.

  “Hmm, I dunno. I guess when I’m home. But I’m rarely home.” Ethan turned his head toward Lexie. She wanted to snap-freeze him so she could unabashedly study him. Lexie could see in Ethan the Daniel of the past. It was clear that the way Daniel was now was the way he’d always been: relaxed, fearless, comfortable in the world.

  “And how are you doing with those essays?” Lexie didn’t give a shit about college application essays, but it was essential to focus on Ethan alone. Her yearning heart could remain unattended.

  THAT NIGHT WHILE LEXIE AND PETER WERE HAVING SEX DANIEL KEPT slipping into her mind like a slideshow that wouldn’t rotate to the next photo. There he was: his square face, his hard body pressed against hers, his sweet smell that reminded her of sunlight on fresh-cut grass. It felt impossible to conjure up sink-strainer garbage.

  Lexie stared at Peter. She said Peter in her mind. Once she put her hand on his chin, turned his face and asked him to open his eyes. Peter. Peter. Peter. Lexie was so intent on seeing Peter that she could barely feel the stirrings in her body. She faked an orgasm because she didn’t want Peter to worry that he was doing something wrong. And he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He just wasn’t Daniel Waite.

  TWO DAYS LATER, LEXIE WOKE UP WITH THE WORDS FRITO FRIDAY IN her head. She said it aloud: “Frito Friday.”

  “Huh?” Peter wrapped his arms around Lexie and pulled her into him. There was nothing else in life that gave you that perfect feeling of skin against skin, Lexie thought. And when you shut your eyes, that skin could belong to anyone.

  “Nothing.”

  “You said ‘Frito Friday.’”

  “ ’Cause last Friday I met that Ruxton dad at the Inn on the Lake and we had Frito pie and he called it Frito Friday.”

  “Maybe we should serve Frito pie at the wedding,” Peter said.

  Lexie thought how cruel it would be to serve the food that she’d come to associate with the best sex of her life. “Maybe we can use Pringles cans to hold the flowers on each table.”

  “We could put whoopee cushions on each seat.”

  “And use beer pull tabs for our rings.” Now that Lexie had fully recommitted herself to this relationship and the pending marriage, she planned to also recommit herself to the ring. In her short time with Daniel, the ring had started to represent a factory-discount-outlet life she had never wanted. Lexie knew she needed to reimagine the ring as charming, quaint, understated.

  “I’d marry you with whoopee cushion seats and beer pull-tab rings and Frito pie for dinner any day,” Peter said. “I’d marry you in a dingy linoleum-floored courthouse in Northampton.”

  “I’d marry you at an unsanitary, pubic-hair-laden, nudist colony in Florida where no one wears underwear but everyone’s carrying a gun.” Hell yeah, Lexie could play this game. She could play it full-on. With devotion! It was time to make the best of her days and nights with Peter. The more fun she had with him, the sooner Daniel would fade to a blurry smudge.

  “I’d marry you at a nudist colony in Alaska, in the winter, where everyone’s stuck inside some ice cave that smells like BO because there’s no hot water and no one’s showered for thirty-seven days and there are outhouses without even a sink, and everyone is related, except us, and they’re all bitching at each other the whole time, nonstop bitch bitch bitch.”

  “And they all want you to make guitars for them, so you’re filling, like, thirty-seven guitar orders while we’re there and you’re sanding a guitar while we’re getting married, naked, in the smelly igloo . . .”

  “Yeah.” Peter pulled Lexie in closer. “Even like that, it’s worth it.”

  Daniel flashed in Lexie’s mind. Was she deliberately, or subconsciously, creating the impulse to see Daniel at every tender interaction with Peter as a way to punish herself? Was this going to turn into something like her (currently waning) door-locking OCD?

  “Let’s cancel the wedding and—” Lexie dared herself to say something crazy and destructive. Why not blow it all up and get a do-over? She turned her head and looked at Peter. Was she cursed to spend every day of her marriage contemplating a possible end to it? Maybe.

  “Cancel the wedding and what?” Peter asked.

  “And get married in the igloo.” No, she wouldn’t blow it all up today. She would try to be better than her parents. She would try to make this relationship work.

  “I’d love that.” Peter leaned in and held his lips against Lexie’s in one long, slow, honest kiss. The wedding had always been for Lexie. If they had done things Peter’s way, they would have gone to a linoleum-floored courthouse in Northampton.

  “Done.” Lexie slipped out of bed and went to the shower. “Go away,” she whispered to the image of Daniel as she showered. She had done so well all week, glutting her brain with images of sink-strainer gunk; mostly avoiding the topic of Daniel during her session with Ethan. But today was testing Lexie’s resolve. She was sick of sink-strainer gunk. She was sick of smelling imaginary dead shrimp.

  “Accept,” Lexie said aloud. Accept this crush, this obsession, without judgment. She would allow Daniel into her mind with the hope that the act of acceptance would dilute his power, would weaken the allure of the forbidden.

  “Accept,” Lexie said, again, and she saw an image of Daniel opening a quiet door and slipping into a dark room where Lexie lay waiting. Before she could go to step two, she allowed herself to masturbate while thinking of Daniel Waite.

  9

  LEXIE LOOKED OUT HER OFFICE WINDOW AND SPOTTED DOT speed-walking straight toward her. She opened the door and waited.

  “Honey, come over to my apartment and see the dress I bought,” Dot said.

  “Sure.” Lexie stepped outside and locked the office door. “You didn’t have to come over here, you could have called.”

  “I read that walking fast keeps you alive. And the faster you walk, the longer you live.” Dot started down the brick path toward her dorm apartment. Lexie followed.

  “Then, it looks like you’ll be checked in for a couple more decades.” Dot’s speed was terrorizing Lexie’s feet, which had on four-inch platform heels. She was going mod today in flared white pants and an embroidered blouse that looked like it was from Mexico. On Mondays, when Lexie taught the sexuality part of
the Health and Human Sexuality class, she tried to wear clothes that were relaxed and less authoritarian. While the American and European kids were—for the most part—completely comfortable talking about sex, some of the Asian and African kids could barely lift their eyes from their notebooks. Lexie tried to assess the group the first day so she knew how to pace herself, when in the semester to bring out the condoms that they’d practice rolling over bananas.

  She and Dot approached the cathedral-looking dorm called Rilke. It was one of Lexie’s favorite buildings on campus. Two hundred years ago it had been a Catholic seminary, and so it had a bell tower, stained-glass windows, and a craggy, muggy, European chapel that smelled like incense. Ecumenical services were held here on Sunday, and more students than Lexie would ever have guessed attended. Sometimes, after lunch, Amy liked to go into the chapel and pray. Lexie often went with her, sitting silently on the smooth-indented wooden pew, staring at the thick shafts of dusty light that looked like they could be cut with knives.

  Dot scanned her ID to open the heavy front door. Lexie followed her down the dark, dusty hallway to her apartment. Unlike the halls, the apartment was a gorgeous (though beat-up) place with massive windows, ornate crown moldings, and herringbone-patterned hardwood floors.

  Lexie looked at Dot’s fifty years of accumulated junk (stacks of paper on every surface, books spread across the couch, an ironing board obscured by wrapped gifts with yellow Post-its on them saying what was inside, framed photos crowded over two round tables with dusty, red tablecloths that reached to the ground) and thought there was much to be admired in Dot’s focus in life being life itself, rather than the arrangement and care of the things one acquired while living.

  At one time the apartment had belonged to a bishop of the seminary. Certainly he hadn’t cooked there (and neither did Dot), so the kitchen was a later add-on, upgraded in the ’70s with avocado appliances and a chipped linoleum countertop with a pattern of copper maple leaves.

  “Did you use the kitchen when Beau was alive?” Lexie asked as they walked past it. Lexie had heard many stories about the brilliant and kind Beau Harrison. He didn’t tap dance like his wife, but he was reputed to have been equally fun.

  “Nah! He was as cheap as me. There was no way that man would buy food when we could get it for free a five-minute walk from the kitchen.”

  “Five minutes if you’re snorting crack.” Lexie paused in the doorway and watched Dot rearrange a closet’s worth of clothes on her bed.

  “Beau liked to walk fast, too.” Dot picked up an embroidered and jeweled burgundy dress. It had a built-in satin slip and a scalloped hemline. “What do you think?” She shook the dress out and laid it back on the bed, on top of the other clothes.

  Lexie went to the dress and delicately lifted the hem. It was too shiny and ornate—Dot would look like an overdecorated Christmas tree in it. “It’s for my wedding, right?” Lexie’s words caught in her throat, but she wasn’t hit with anxiety as she’d been the last time she and Dot discussed the marriage.

  “Hell, yes! Where else would I wear something like this?”

  “It’s gorgeous. I love it.” Lexie stared at the dress. If they made eye contact Dot would know she was lying.

  “Okay, good. ’Cause this thing cost a small fortune.”

  “I thought you were cheap?” Lexie hated that Dot would spend a small fortune on an event that wasn’t as simple, sure, and pure as it had been at its inception.

  “I am! That’s why I bought the damn thing at an outlet.”

  Lexie turned the dress over and examined the tiny satin buttons that went down the back. She wondered who would button them. Another reason marriage was good: You always had someone to button you up, to tell you when you looked pretty, to pick you up when the car broke, to make dinner when you worked late.

  “It’s Escada,” Dot said.

  “Escada?”

  “A real designer. Not like The Gap or one of those other everyday dress shops.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call Gap a dress shop.” Lexie turned the dress back so the front was face out. “I’m sure it looks beautiful on you.”

  “Guess how much it was.”

  “A hundred?” Lexie had heard of Escada but didn’t know it well enough to know how much it cost.

  “More.”

  “More? If it’s more than a hundred you can no longer call yourself cheap.”

  “Outlet store, goddammit it! Only cheap people go to the outlet stores! Now guess.”

  “One fifty.”

  “More.”

  “Two hundred.”

  “More.”

  “More?”

  “More. Guess.”

  “Three hundred?”

  “More.”

  “Come on! This is Western Massachusetts. No one around here pays more than three hundred for a dress.”

  “Guess.”

  “Five hundred?”

  “More.”

  “You’re kidding me. What about the poor amortization?”

  “I know, but why the fuck not? I can look at it as poor amortization or I can remind myself that I can’t take it with me, so I might as well spend it.”

  “Okay. Six hundred.”

  “Yup.”

  “No way.” Lexie had spent $480 on her wedding dress. She knew that most people spent much more on wedding dresses but even when she had felt entirely confident in the decision to marry, she couldn’t bring herself to drop big money on some overly fancy frock she’d only wear one day. So she’d bought a simple, short, satin dress—something she could dress down and wear again and again. She loved it. Peter loved it. Amy, who had gone shopping in Boston with Lexie, loved it. Lexie was embarrassed that Dot had spent more than she.

  “It was originally eighteen hundred dollars. Can you believe that? What kind of an asshole would spend eighteen hundred on a dress?”

  “So you got it for, like, sixty-six percent off. That’s a great deal.” In truth, Lexie thought it was absurd to spend that kind of money when a hundred-fifty-dollar dress would surely look equally good (or equally bad!).

  “My sister’s granddaughter has a wedding coming in the spring and my great-nephew is graduating from medical school a week later. So if I wear it to your wedding, the other wedding, and the graduation, it comes out to two hundred bucks a pop.”

  Lexie pushed aside some blouses and sat on the bed. “Well, I’m glad you’re wearing it to my wedding first. You’ll be the star of the show.”

  “I want to look better than Amy!” Dot hooted big and crackly. She adored Amy but she pretended to compete with her in all things, including for Lexie’s attention.

  “When you’re in that dress, Amy is going to look like your scullery maid.”

  “That’s all I want, dear. Gonna put her to shame.”

  THAT NIGHT, LEXIE TOLD PETER ABOUT DOT’S DRESS. THEY WERE ON the couch, her legs across his lap, his legs up on the coffee table. Peter was watching a baseball game. Lexie had abandoned her book to the coffee table. Her computer sat on her belly.

  “She’s going to look like the grandmother of the bride,” Peter said.

  “Maybe I should ask her if she can act as grandmother of the bride.” Lexie loved the idea of having a grandparent. Betsy Simms had grandparents and they were, as the name says, grand. They brought Betsy presents. They thought everything she did was brilliant. They had watched Betsy and Lexie do dances to current songs that they’d choreographed themselves. Usually there was a double somersault in the dance—Lexie holding Betsy’s ankles and Betsy holding Lexie’s as they rolled together across the lawn. The Simms grandparents also liked to sit and listen to Betsy and Lexie play duets on the piano. Betsy would teach Lexie one part that Lexie plunked out with her pointer fingers while Betsy’s hands ran like spiders up and down the keyboard. Betsy’s grandparents acted as if there was nothing on earth they would rather do than simply witness Betsy being alive.

  Lexie’s grandparents, on the other hand, were more of a conc
ept than a reality. Mitzy’s parents had disowned her when Lexie was born. They were strict Catholics who had claimed they would rather not have a daughter than have one who had mothered a child out of wedlock. So Lexie never once saw them, even though they lived only a BART train ride away in Hayward. But she knew their faces well from a framed photo of them Mitzy kept in the bathroom. In saturated color, Lexie’s grandfather stood on a ladder at an apple tree. He was round-faced, blue-eyed, with blond hair shaved close to his head. Lexie’s grandmother stood at the base of the ladder: a brown-haired woman with tight curls, a tighter mouth, and a jacket with a fur collar that coiled around her neck like a ferret.

  Lexie’s father’s parents had lived in Omaha and had refused to enter the state of California because they thought it was full of “freaks and weirdos.” Twice Lexie’s father had loaded Lexie into his sleigh-back truck and the two of them drove eighteen hours to Omaha. During the night Lexie slept with a pillow propped against the window. On both trips Bert stopped once during the day, at the same rest stop, where he slept on a picnic bench. Lexie sat in the truck, as she’d been told, and read her book until her father woke up.

  Her grandparents were formal and distant on those visits. Lexie felt like she was a neighbor girl selling Girl Scout cookies to strangers who had invited her to come in the house and stay for a while. Bert, who vocally occupied every room in the apartment when he was awake, went nearly silent in the presence of his parents. It was a version of her father that Lexie never saw at home, and one that vanished as soon as they were on the road out of Omaha.

  Around the time Lexie was fourteen, before she moved into the Simmses’ house, Lexie’s grandparents died, one week apart from each other. Her father drove alone to Omaha for the funeral. Lexie had always believed no one would have told her about their deaths if she hadn’t run into Bert at the 7-Eleven where he had stopped to buy road food before taking off.

  “Hey, Dad,” Lexie had said, quietly. She didn’t want her three school friends to know that the guy with the stained T-shirt and skin hanging under his eyes like old, round tea bags was her dad.