The Wife of Reilly

by Jennifer Coburn

  “Absolutely,” I encouraged. “Tell me what you like best about yourself, Theresa.”

  She took off her blazer and rolled her sleeves up. “I don’t want to seem immodest, but my arms are really cut. I work on these guns four times a week. I can lift as much weight as some of the guys at my gym,” she continued.

  Then Theresa told me about her three best friends and how they do just about everything together. How she was once married, but fell in love with someone else during a weekend business trip. It was like looking in the mirror, and I hated what I saw. An imbecile of a woman. Not even a woman. A shell of a woman with beautiful arms and an expensive haircut.

  * * *

  When I shared this with Jennifer by the phone, she assured me I was nothing like Theresa. “Prudence, you’re tired and overly sensitive,” she said. “Get a good night’s rest and you’ll see the world in a whole new light tomorrow.”

  “I’m not a twit?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Jennifer, do you think I’m nuts for doing this?”

  She sighed. “Look, I’d never do it, but no, I don’t think it’s crazy. You’re doing the best you can given who you are and where you’ve been. You —”

  “Jennifer!” I interrupted with my accusation. “Have you been going to that New Age church again?!”

  She laughed, but admitted she had. “You should come sometime, Prudence. You might stop asking questions about what I think you’re doing and start asking yourself that and more.”

  “Holy shit, Jennifer. Are you stoned?”

  I could hear her smile. “You just caught me in a mood, Prudence. All I’m saying is that instead of wondering about what everyone else is thinking about you, you should take a firm position on it yourself.”

  “I’m not worrying about what you guys are thinking,” I defended. “You all keep telling me.”

  “We keep asking you,” Jennifer said gently.

  “You three are so damned self-righteous. I don’t need a therapist, much less three of them. What I need is a friend who doesn’t use my problems as a way to make herself feel smart, insightful and important. Goddamn it, Jennifer, haven’t you ever done anything crazy for love?”

  Then I heard the crunching of Cheetos. “Jennifer, you are totally stoned, aren’t you?” I heard nothing, but could see her scraping the cheese dust off her fingers with her bottom teeth. “Jennifer, don’t scare me like that. Next time I call and you’re getting stoned, just tell me. Don’t load all this bullshit on me.” I heard nothing. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” she crunched. “Look, it’s not just the weed talking. I’m serious, you need to take a look at your —”

  “Good night, Jennifer.”

  “Good night.”

  * * *

  That night I had a dream that I was on a date with Frida Kahlo and all I could think about was shaping her eyebrows.

  “Have you thought about waxing them?” I asked her.

  In Spanish, Frida told me I was a half-wit who was unable to appreciate the complexity of her paintings. It was the first time I ever had a dream with subtitles.

  Pamela stood me up for breakfast the next morning, so I had a croissant and nearly cried about how poorly I was doing in the singles scene.

  My faith was renewed when I met Yasmine for lunch that day. She looked like an angel with white blond ringlets of long hair, doe-like brown eyes and the lips of an infant. Her mouth was red and in a naturally puckered state. She wore a thin wool dress with small lavender flowers embroidered on it, and a scarf and beret that matched the flowers so perfectly they must have been purchased together as a set.

  Our lunch went on for nearly two hours. She was hands-down the best prospect I’d found yet. She was a costume designer for the opera, and played the piano at restaurants and department stores for extra money during holidays. Her real love was writing, though, and unlike Anna Weiss, Yasmine had actually written something. Her first drama, Diana, the Hunted, was scheduled to open off-Broadway this summer. “It’s the Princess Diana story done in Shakespearean style,” she started. “When she was killed in that car crash, I thought this story has such a Shakespearean ending. Then I realized the whole thing was a classic Shakespearian tragedy, from that huge wedding to the crash in Paris. Royalty, betrayal, vanity, adultery, it was perfect. Even modernized a bit with the anorexia thing,” she smiled. Yasmine told me about her never-produced opera, Trial of Orenthal. “My partner wrote the most hilarious aria for Johnny Cochran’s closing argument. ‘You must acquit,’ ” she sang in fluttering mock baritone, holding her right hand dramatically to the sky, struggling with an imaginary glove. “Never sold,” she scrunched her face. She said she just started writing a script called Taming of the Schmuck, a gender-swapped version of the classic. “When I read that in high school, I thought some guy wants to change a woman, good luck. And how likely is that anyway? Tell me the story about a woman trying to change a man — a shithead of a man at that — and I’ll show you a story that people can relate to. You don’t even need the whole explanation behind why she wants to tame the schmuck. No need to marry off the older schmuck brother to some mercenary tamer so the younger one can be with his true love. Just a good old-fashioned case of a woman who falls for the major emotional fixer-upper.”

  Suddenly I felt I’d done nothing with my life. I adored this woman. I wanted what she had. “So how does it end?” I asked Yasmine. “Does she tame the schmuck?”

  “That’s where I’m stuck. What do you think, Prudence? Should she tame the schmuck and live happily ever after with him, or do I have her realize that trying to tame the schmuck is an exercise in futility? I guess the latter would be the more feminist message. You know, like stop wasting your time taming schmucks. Do something with your own life. Figure out why you’d want a schmuck in the first place, tamed or otherwise. I don’t know.” She shook her head. “If I want to follow the Shrew, she’ll tame him. If I want to follow my heart, she’ll tame her own tendency toward self-destruction.”

  “Wait, I lost you. When is the woman self-destructive?”

  Yasmine laughed as though I were kidding. “Yeah, you’re right, I may have to really spell it out for people how this behavior is truly self-loathing. Good point. God, I really should be doing something for young girls, like the Cinderella story where the clock strikes twelve and she decides not to leave, her dress turns into a pile of rags, her carriage goes back to a pumpkin and the coachmen are mice again.” I didn’t know where Yasmine was going with this, but I was enamored with her ability to breathe new themes and twists into old ideas. “So the clock strikes twelve,” Yasmine laughed, “and Cinderella goes, ‘Okay, this is the real me. If you like me so much, keep dancing.’ ” She actually clapped for herself when she finished that thought. “I love it, I love it. God, I wonder what other fairy tales I could fix?”

  “You know, Yasmine, for someone who’s writing a play that espouses women shouldn’t try to change men, all of your work seems based on tampering with other people’s work.”

  “Prudence Malone, I like you,” she beamed. “Does your spunk run in the family?”

  The family. Shit. Reilly, Reilly. We’re here for Reilly.

  Before I could shift gears back to my wonderful brother Reilly, Yasmine asked forgiveness for monopolizing the conversation. “Tell me, Prudence, you seem to really have a passion for the visual arts. How did you end up as an accountant?”

  It seemed I would have known the answer to that question after more than a decade in the field, but all I could come up with was, “I’m not sure.” I wanted to be able to offer her something better, so I made the I’m-thinking-about-it face and tried to come up with a more thoughtful explanation. Nothing came to mind. No arias, no soliloquies, no ideas for a documentary on the road to partnership at Deloitte & Touche.

  “I never really saw art as something you could make a living at,” I said. “I guess I a
lways saw it as a hobby. Like money is serious business, but art is just for fun.” That was as much thought as I’d ever really given to my career choice.

  “Do you love accounting?” Yasmine asked.

  I laughed. “Oh, you’re serious. I like it. It pays well. Yasmine, do you think I’m a sell-out?”

  “Of course not, Prudence,” she said, reaching her hands over mine. “I’m just trying to get to know you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t get so personal when it’s really Reilly we’re here to talk about. Let’s talk about your brother, okay?”

  I found myself unable to lie to Yasmine. She was already like an old friend, and I just couldn’t sit there and tell her about my so-called brother, Reilly. “Yasmine, this is going to sound very odd, I’m sure, but there’s something I need to come clean about,” I began. I watched her face as I explained about Matt and Reilly, but she was unreadable.

  “Wow,” she said finally.

  “Do you think I’m awful?”

  “No, no I don’t, Prudence,” she decided. “I think it’s kind of sweet the way you’re going through all of this trouble to help Reilly find happiness after you’re gone. Yes, it’s rather nice of you, I think."

  Finally, someone who understands me!

  “I hope you understand, though, that I can’t meet Reilly now, in light of the situation.”

  “I see. Well if it makes you feel any better, it’s not you who’d be deceiving Reilly. It’s me. You’re not doing anything wrong here. It’s me who’s cheating on him.”

  “That’s just it,” said Yasmine. “Reilly’s going to be very hurt when he finds out about this. His wife will have just left him for another man. Reilly is going to be confused, bitter and angry. I don’t need damaged goods like that. Newly divorced,” she said, scrunching her face. “Those wounded puppies are high maintenance, let me tell you. I don’t need to know a thing about Reilly to tell you he’s not worth the trouble. No man is.” She paused. “You wouldn’t mind if I stole this idea, would you? I think it could be a fun concept to toy with one of these days.”

  Chapter 12

  Reilly was due to arrive back in New York that night so I only had time for drinks with Tina. She was fifteen minutes late, but I was so relieved that I was not being stood up again that I nearly leapt into her arms when she walked through the door. Tina looked very familiar, but I couldn’t recall where I had seen her before. Her lace-collared pink dress fit tight and a tendril of her curly hair escaped from the bun on top of her head. She walked unsteadily on her white patent leather heels and plopped into the chair, relieved that her arduous entrance had come to an end. Tina tossed her purse onto the floor then slid it underneath the table for safekeeping. She looked both ways, focused on me and smiled. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old but carried herself as if she’d lived a full life.

  “Tina Ellenson,” she offered her hand.

  “You look really familiar,” I said right away.

  “Oh,” she dismissed. “I’ve got one of those familiar faces, I guess. Everyone’s always telling me that I look like someone they know.”

  “So tell me, Tina, what qualities are you looking for in a man?”

  She shuddered as if I just offered her rat fondue. Then Tina took a deep breath and quietly recited a mantra that was spoken so softly I could not hear it.

  “Tina, are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Don’t I look okay?” she shot back.

  And then it hit me. The frilly dress threw me off, but I remembered where I recognized Tina from. Right before I left for Ann Arbor, Chad and I went to the Ivory Tusk, a gay bar on the Upper West Side. We accidentally stumbled in on lesbian night and Tina was our waitress. She bustled through the crowded bar that night in a black sleeveless t-shirt and denim overalls, efficiently delivering drinks to her patrons. I remembered her because Chad called me a “lipstick lesbian” after Tina threw a spicy one-liner at me when delivering our nachos.

  “Tina, don’t you work at the Ivory Tusk?”

  Her shoulders slumped forward and she made a gesture with her arms that reminded me of a young boy who just struck out in Little League. “I used to work there, but I had to get out of that kind of place.” She paused and looked at me as if she were trying to figure out whether to reveal herself or not. “I’m in recovery.”

  “We’re not talking about alcoholism, are we?”

  Our waitress bounced to the table, introduced herself and told us she was “really excited” to serve us. She listed the bartender’s specials and every appetizer the menu offered. Then she asked how we felt about the selection.

  “How do we feel about the appetizers?” Tina asked her.

  The waitress nodded eagerly, shaking her pancake-sized green button reading, “Go easy on me, I’m a trainee!”

  “I feel pretty damned good about them” — Tina squinted to read the waitress’s name badge — “Cecily. You’ve got a fine selection of appetizers, and I for one couldn’t be happier about it.”

  I hadn’t planned on ordering food, but Cecily’s enthusiasm made Tina and me both hungry. “Great, that’s a great choice,” Cecily said of our chicken satay selection. “You’re going to really enjoy these, I just know it,” she said before leaving the table. Cecily made a quick U-Turn. “Is there anything else you’d like this evening?”

  Your youthful enthusiasm and skinny little thighs.

  “So what’s the deal, Tina?” I said after Cecily took the rest of our order. “You’re a recovering lesbian?”

  Tina explained that a religious epiphany forced her to check into Straight Expectations, a church-run rehabilitation center that reforms gay people. I’ve seen their infomercials on late-night television where they parade reformed gay celebrities who all testify that being gay was just a bad habit they needed to break, like smoking cigarettes or nail biting.

  The infomercial starts with a well-known lineman from the New York Giants standing in his uniform in the locker room. “This used to be the devil’s playground for my impure thoughts,” he says. “But now it’s just a place for me to suit up and get ready to play ball.” Then the scene changes to his home, where he is grilling burgers in his backyard. His wife is parked beside him, nodding affirmatively the entire time, even when he’s not speaking. I have always been tempted to toss pebbles at her face just to check that she was really alive and not one of those dolls like the bobbing-head bulldogs that people put behind the back seat in their cars.

  “Being a sodomite is a choice,” the lineman continues. “Oh sure, a lot of people say you’re born gay, but take it from me, if you really want to change, you can.” Then, for a half-hour, the ad features rehabilitated gays and lesbians sharing their stories. The show ends with the lineman again, who tackles what’s supposed to be a quarterback dressed in a pink-skirted football uniform. “Straight Expectations,” he says in his most manly man voice. “It’ll sack the queer right out of you.”

  Tina said that God didn’t like gays and wanted her to stop her sinful behavior.

  “Really?” I asked. “And who told you this?”

  Tina looked a bit embarrassed as she focused on her fingers plucking peanuts from the bowl and dropping them back in. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but my mother said that God came to her in a dream and told her I needed to, you know, change.”

  “The epiphany was your mother’s?” I asked. Tina nodded. “You mean your mother had your epiphany for you?” She nodded again. “Now that’s a mom.” She laughed.

  “Tina,” I said, incredulous that this smart-mouth dyke was seriously attempting a conversion because her homophobic mother decided to turn her own discomfort into a personal message from God. “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Nineteen?! They let you work at a bar when you’re nineteen?!” I exclaimed.

  “I’ve got a fake ID,” Tina smiled.

  I’ll say.

  “Tina, let me ask you, does the pink dress make you fe
el any less of a lesbian?”

  “No, it makes me itchy.”

  I rested both elbows on the table and spoke softly but seriously. “Of all the horrible things going on in the world, where exactly do you think your being a lesbian ranks on God’s priority list?” I asked.

  “Pretty low, I guess,” Tina said.

  “How ’bout not at all.” I leaned further toward her, my eyes bulging for effect. “Look, I don’t know what they told you at that Straight Expectations place, but your mother is plain wrong. Think about it, Tina. If God had a really important message for you, why would he go through your mother? Is that an effective way to get your point across to someone? Think, Tina! Use your head. You’re God Almighty and you’ve got an important message for Tina Ellenson. Do you go straight to her, or go through a translator?”

  Tina defended, “Her heart is open to his message.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please, Tina. This is the same God that parted the Red Sea. You don’t think he can get you to tune in for an important message? Tina, look, I know you love your mother, but the woman has her own shit that she needs to deal with and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. If you really love your mother, you’ll give her the opportunity to really open her heart. Wait a second,” I said, holding my hand to my ear. “Wait, I’m getting a message from God right now, please be quiet.” I knit my brow to show I was listening intently. “Uh huh,” I said. “Hmmm, I see, very interesting.” I paused. “Yes, I see. Yes, I’ll tell her.” Tina grinned and nodded. “Okay, I got a message for you, Tina. God said that he really did visit your mother, but it was just to test her ability to love unconditionally. He says you can’t deny her this opportunity for spiritual growth, so please go home and tell her you love her but you’re still gay. Apparently you’re going to be a gay parable one day. Can you imagine that, our little Tina Ellenson? And I knew her when.”

  She laughed at the absurdity of my getting a message from God. “Okay, okay, I get it.”

  I loved my new role as lesbian avenger. I imagined myself grand marshal of the gay pride parade wearing a lavender cape and pink triangle sewn on my form-fitting black body suit, waving at the crowd from my float. As I rode by, people would go wild cheering for me. Lesbians blowing kisses, gay men throwing roses. “That’s Prudence Malone,” they’d say. “She’s the one who scales the walls of Straight Expectations, busting out inmates in the middle of the night. Isn’t she wonderful?”