The Arrangement

by Sarah Dunn

  “He can borrow Louisa’s white cords,” said Claire.

  “No, he can’t,” said Sunny Bang. “Tobias is wearing those cords.”

  “What about tights?” said Claire. “I’ve got a ton of Louisa’s old white tights from ballet. I’m sure they’d fit Wyatt.”

  Lucy let herself imagine the scene, trying to get Wyatt to put on Louisa’s white tights. These women have no idea what I’m dealing with, Lucy thought. They have such small problems, they need to invent them.

  Lucy made a semi-apologetic face and said, “I can’t really see Wyatt agreeing to put on tights.”

  “Forget the white clothes,” Susan said. “Wyatt can wear whatever he’s comfortable in. We’re looking for participation, not perfection.”

  Claire got a look on her face. Claire was generally looking for perfection.

  “I think we might have to skip the whole thing, actually,” said Lucy. “Wyatt doesn’t have a pet and I don’t want him to feel left out.”

  “You can borrow the Genslers’ turtle!” said Susan. “He doesn’t really walk, but Wyatt can pull him in a wagon or something.”

  “Why aren’t the Genslers bringing their own turtle?” asked Sunny Bang.

  “Because they’re Jewish,” Susan explained. “They’ll let the turtle participate for the good of the town, but they don’t want their kids to go to the church.”

  “Do you have a wagon you could decorate?” Claire asked Lucy.

  “Ah, no,” said Lucy.

  “I’ll loan you ours,” said Claire. “I’ll drop it off this afternoon. And I’ll put in a pair of white tights, just in case you get inspired.”

  “You’ll have to arrange with the Genslers to pick up the turtle. He weighs about fifty pounds, but apparently he’s very friendly,” Susan said. She grabbed her phone. “I’m sending you their contact info right now. There. Done and dusted.”

  Lucy could feel the situation slipping away from her. She thought fast.

  “You know what?” said Lucy. “I wasn’t thinking. Wyatt will want to bring his goldfish. Someone else can have the Genslers’ turtle.”

  “Are you sure?” said Susan. “The turtle would be pretty fun.”

  “Yeah, it sounds fun,” said Lucy. “But Wyatt will want his fish to get the blessing. He’s really into his fish.”

  * * *

  There was a bottle of Dom Pérignon on the Allens’ kitchen counter, gift-wrapped rather garishly in crispy green see-through plastic. Gordon glanced at the card. It was from a local property developer who was grateful he had taken care of the transvestite problem in the elementary school. Gordon had taken care of it. Gordon had arranged for the teacher to be placed on paid leave until another school could be coaxed into taking him. It had been several weeks, though, and the lady-man teacher still didn’t have a job, and before long the local taxpayers were going to feel the pinch.

  Gordon rubbed the starched white bow between his thumb and index finger. It made a zippy, almost crunchy sound like, well, like nothing Gordon had ever heard before.

  He touched the plastic wrap, oh so gently, with just the tips of his fingers. It was exceptionally, terrifically, unbelievably crinkly.

  Simka would love this, Gordon thought. Simka would go nuts for this.

  He tucked the bottle under his arm and headed up to his study.

  Seventeen

  The relatively large size of the human male’s testicles is often cited as proof that men are evolutionarily hard-wired for promiscuity. But it is perhaps more indicative of this: If prehistoric man, while off on a hunt, could trust his partner to keep her legs together, he wouldn’t have needed all of that excess sperm to do battle inside her when he got back.

  —Constance Waverly

  You know the ‘young’ thing presses all my buttons.”

  After about twelve hundred texts, Owen had finally agreed to meet Izzy at her house to talk. Just to talk. They were sitting at her kitchen table, somewhat formally. Owen was drinking tea, with his legs crossed, balancing the teacup on the inside of his left ankle. Izzy was deep into her wine and possibly still drunk from the night before.

  “The ‘young’ thing?”

  “You leaving me for a younger woman,” said Izzy.

  “I didn’t leave you for a younger woman.”

  “Semantics. You know what I’m talking about. And, by the way, that girl is not twenty-six.”

  Owen had figured out that Izzy had tapped into his communication systems. Text for sure, e-mail probably, possibly even his phone. He knew it and he knew that she knew that he knew it. He didn’t see the point of bringing it up.

  “How old do you think she is?”

  “Nineteen,” said Izzy.

  “There’s no way Madison is only nineteen,” said Owen.

  “She’s nineteen, Owen. I found her on Facebook.”

  Owen’s blood ran cold. Holy shit. Holy shit! Nineteen?

  “Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re fucking with me.”

  “I’m not. You big perv.”

  “I did not know she was nineteen,” said Owen. “I would never have touched her if I knew she was only nineteen.”

  “Of course you would have,” said Izzy. “Any man would have.”

  “Not me. Never. Not ever.”

  “Listen, Owen, I get it. It would be easier if I didn’t get it, if I could be one of those deluded women who think, Why would anyone want to be with someone that young? What would you talk about? What would you have in common? But I used to be that girl. Men went crazy for me.”

  “Men still go crazy for you,” said Owen.

  “Not in the same way.” She sighed a big sigh. “Something fundamental has changed. I was so young and so beautiful.”

  “You’re still beautiful, Izzy.”

  “But I used to be beautiful,” said Izzy. “And it is extremely hard to be a woman who used to be beautiful. You cannot begin to understand it.”

  “You’re hardly past being beautiful, Izzy. You’re only thirty-four.”

  “I’m thirty-eight.”

  “So? Who cares?”

  “I’m forty-two.”

  “You’re forty-two?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I lie about my age.”

  “You look amazing. Seriously, Jesus, Izzy, you look great.”

  “For my age, you mean. I look great for my age. That’s the best I’ll get for the rest of my life.”

  “You look great for any age,” said Owen. “And plenty of men will go crazy for you for a very long time to come.”

  “But not you anymore,” said Izzy.

  “That’s not true. But you have to get control of yourself,” said Owen. “What happened yesterday is not acceptable behavior.”

  “I know. I got a little crazy. It won’t happen again.”

  “Did you go see your doctor?”

  “Not yet,” said Izzy. “I had an appointment but I had to cancel it.”

  “I’m not even going to discuss having sex with you again until you see your gynecologist. I can’t keep waking up in the middle of the night worrying about having a child with you. I’m putting my foot down on this one, Izzy.”

  “Okay.” She sighed. “I’ll go.”

  Owen had no intention of sleeping with Izzy again. Never, ever, ever. Never, ever, ever! But he would cross that particular bridge when he came to it.

  So now Owen was lying to Lucy and lying to Izzy. Well, he wasn’t exactly lying to Lucy, but he had this whole entire part of his life he couldn’t talk to her about, and that felt like lying. She’d asked about the dent in the hood of the car and he’d told her it was the work of a tree branch during the storm. Even though it was the agreement they’d made, it felt strange to have all of this life in his life he couldn’t talk about with her. He was used to telling Lucy everything—almost everything, anyway, 85 percent of everything—and it was only now, now that he had a completely separate life, that he realized how much he missed it.

  He was ready for it
all to end. As far as he was concerned, the Arrangement had run its course. He’d dropped almost twenty pounds, he felt happier with his life—his real life, his Lucy-and-Wyatt life—than he had in a long time. What he had was better than what was out there for him. He did not want to have sex in seedy motels with emotionally damaged nineteen-year-olds. He was not that guy. He didn’t want to be that guy. Growing up meant saying no to some things. Life was a series of losses, some big and some small, and trying to imagine it was something else was folly.

  It had actually been interesting, this whole thing. Would he recommend it? If, say, a friend of his confessed to him, out on the deck late at night over a glass of bourbon, that his marriage had gone stale, that he was feeling the icy hand of mortality gripping his shoulder, that he had started to wonder if this was all there was, would Owen tell him what he and Lucy had done? He thought about that a lot lately. Would he suggest that other couples—couples who had hit “the hump,” as he liked to think of it—would he tell them to try this on for size? Try it the way he and Lucy had, with a list of rules and a cutoff date, with a steel foundation of “our family comes first and we’re never getting divorced”? With an understanding that this was just a quick, temporary time-out from the boring, middle-aged, soul-killing part of married life?

  That was an interesting question.

  He was able to see the potential land mines. What if he had gotten addicted to the Madisons of this world? Not the nineteen-year-olds but the vast pool of millennial women who seemed to have evolved past the rest of humanity in their approach to sex so that having sex with them was like being suspended in the middle of your dirtiest dream, a dream where you’re allowed to do anything you want, a dream where you never hear the word no.

  And Izzy. Well, Izzy had turned out to be a bit of a wild card, but, and this was the important part, he had handled it. He had let her vent at the motel, he’d let her fly her crazy flag with her twelve hundred texts—most of them were just long strings of threatening emoticons, bombs and knives and shotguns and dead people—and then he’d let her connect and feel understood and cared for over tea at her house. Just talking to Izzy honestly about her fears about aging was probably more of a genuine connection than she’d had with anyone in years. That, plus being calm and cool when she showed up at the motel, using his Wyatt-whispering skills, the blanket of otherworldly calm that he wrapped around himself whenever Wyatt launched into one of his freak-outs—the combination of the two were like cutting just the right wire in a mixed-up jumble and managing to defuse a nuclear bomb. If he had met Izzy when he was twenty-five, God knows what would have happened. He’d be either dead or married to her.

  But with age came wisdom. He was much more able to negotiate the female psyche at this point, undoubtedly because he’d been with Lucy for so long. And all of Izzy’s dire warnings—that this was just a divorce in slow motion—had turned out not to be true. In fact, he could feel that he was going to be more, well, present in his marriage from here on out.

  And, in the end, what was so wrong about discovering an unconventional way to realize that you really, really love your wife? Wouldn’t a lot of women, if they knew that this would be the outcome, be willing to go ahead and loosen the shackles on their husbands for a few short months? Owen was pretty sure they would.

  He was proud of himself. He was proud of himself, and proud of Lucy, and proud of their marriage.

  He decided he would bring up the subject with Lucy when he got home from work. Tell her he wanted to wrap it up, shut it down, pull the plug. The Arrangement had worked, better, really, than he’d expected, but Owen was ready to call it a day.

  * * *

  “I have to bring Fang to church on Sunday,” said Rocco.

  “And why is that?” asked Gordon. He was reading Drudge on his iPad, something damning about Chelsea Clinton’s little kid.

  “Everyone is supposed to bring their pets to church. They’re going to walk down the aisle. There’s going to be horses and donkeys and a real live camel.”

  “What for?” asked Kelly.

  “To be baptized by the priest,” said Rocco.

  “They’re baptizing animals now?” Gordon turned to Kelly and asked, “Is that some sort of Catholic thing?”

  “How should I know?” said Kelly.

  “I thought you were raised Catholic.”

  Kelly froze, and then a look of complete disgust came over her face. “Are you being freakin’-the-freak serious right now, Gordon?”

  Gordon realized he was in trouble. He did appreciate Kelly’s use of the freaks in front of Rocco. He knew that took restraint on her part. Considerable restraint.

  “Do you pay any attention to anything I say?” she asked him. “Anything? Ever?”

  “Honestly, Kelly, I thought you said that once,” said Gordon. “I have a lot of things I have to keep track of.”

  “I know, I know,” said Kelly. “You’re a very important man.”

  Rocco just watched as his parents talked, his head moving like he was at a tennis match, and when he found his opening he said, “We all have to go to church together, as a family, and we have to bring a pet.”

  “I can’t go to church, Rocco,” said Gordon. “I’ve got too much work to do.”

  “Maria can take you like she usually does, sweetie,” said Kelly. “I have too much to do around here.”

  “Can I bring Fang?”

  “Of course,” said Gordon, going back to the baby Clinton story. “Just make sure to keep him on the leash.”

  * * *

  Owen didn’t have a chance to talk to Lucy until they were getting into bed.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he started.

  Lucy didn’t say anything; she just reached for the tube of hand cream on her nightstand and squirted some into her hand.

  “I think I’d like to stop it. The thing. The Arrangement thing.”

  “Really,” said Lucy. “What brought this on?”

  “Nothing. Just, you know.” He pulled off his T-shirt and threw it across the room, missing the hamper. “Quit while we’re ahead.”

  “This is what we agreed we wouldn’t do,” said Lucy. She started rubbing lotion onto her elbows in a matter-of-fact, wifely way. “This is why we made the rules, Owen, so we wouldn’t have to have conversations like this.”

  “I know, but I thought you might want to know that I’m ready to stop it.”

  “Well, I think we should stick to what we agreed to. Six months. That was pretty much the point of this whole thing.”

  Lucy wiped the lotion off her palms and popped open her laptop. She started clicking around the way she did every night, searching for a podcast that would lull her to sleep.

  Owen got into bed and rolled onto his side and stared at the gray wall next to the bed.

  What the hell? he thought. What the fucking hell just happened?

  Eighteen

  It’s like my favorite T-shirt says: “No mud, no lotus.”

  —Constance Waverly

  WaverlyRadio podcast #11

  See that little kid right there?”

  Sunny Bang gestured toward a little boy who was walking across the church parking lot toting a guinea pig in a plastic cage.

  “Yeah?” said Lucy.

  “Dick.”

  Sunny and Lucy were standing outside St. Andrews, watching as a few cars pulled in from the main road. The bulk of the traffic was being diverted to the school parking lot across the street by a local cop who was dressed for church except for a reflective orange vest. It was the Blessing of the Animals day, and it was starting to look like just about all of the good people of Beekman were going to show up for it.

  “Total dick,” Sunny said again.

  “Sunny,” said Lucy. “He’s, like, four.”

  “You can tell by four,” said Sunny.

  The cop waved Edmund Chase’s pickup truck into the church parking lot, undoubtedly because it was towing a horse trailer. Apparently, Claire had tracked down s
omething big.

  Lucy and Sunny watched as Edmund started to open the back of the trailer. A scraggly brown llama poked its head out the window and made a series of frantic, disturbing, high-pitched squawks, like a bagful of turkeys being hit with a baseball bat.

  “Don’t worry,” Claire called out to nobody in particular. “The farmer told me he just does that when he’s nervous.”

  Claire tried to coax the llama out of the trailer and down the ramp, finally pulling hard on a rope attached to its harness. Just then, the Mulligan boys walked by, all three of them wearing identical button-down white oxford shirts over what had to be some of Louisa Chase’s surplus white ballet tights.

  Sunny Bang took in the scene and then said to Lucy in that way of hers, that way that sounded like she was taking a long, weary drag on her fourth cigarette of the hour, “Oh, this I can’t miss.”

  * * *

  Lucy’s Sunday morning had not started out well.

  “I want to bring the chickens,” said Wyatt.

  “We’re bringing Goldie,” said Lucy. Wyatt had won Goldie at the Dutchess County fair. Lucy had expected it to die in two days, which was about the amount of bandwidth she had available for a fish at the time. It was two years later, and Goldie was still alive, swimming around in a murky old ten-gallon fish tank that was cleaned basically never. “Goldie wants to come. You can carry the bag.”

  “I want to bring the chickens!”

  “We can’t bring the chickens, Wyatt.”

  “I want to bring the chickens!” He slumped to the ground and butted his head against the bottom step of the staircase as hard as he could. Lucy grabbed him and wrapped her arms around him and held him to keep him from hitting his head again. He started to writhe, trying to get free.

  “I want to bring the chickens!”

  “We can’t bring the chickens,” said Lucy. “We’ve got too many chickens.”

  “I want to bring the chickens!”

  “Okay, we can bring one chicken,” said Lucy. “It can bring the blessing back to the rest of the flock.”