So I haven’t had time to hear about the review. I fix him a plate and say, “So? How’d it go with the review?”
“Don’t ask,” he says. He holds up his hand to stop further questions. I feel a pit in my stomach. He’s loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. An upper-middle-class version of A Coal Miner’s Daughter. Grim. Beleaguered. Trapped. I feel sick with it.
“It didn’t go well, I’m guessing,” I say. I wince knowing he’ll bite my head off. I’m his wife, though. Aren’t we supposed to be talking about this stuff?
“What did I just say?” he says. “I don’t know what else I can do. They want the impossible. Everybody wants the impossible. Why are you staring at me like that?”
“I’m not staring,” I say. I’m careful now. “I’m listening.”
He forks a chunk of beef. He’s eating because it’s in front of him, not because he has an appetite. His elbows on the table. His head hanging not far from the plate. His mouth opening to take in the heaps of food.
“Fuck it,” he says under his breath. Looking at his plate. “Fuck the whole thing.”
“What’d they say?” I ask him, trying not to wince at the bite of his words.
“Sam, I told you I don’t want to talk about it. Drop it.”
I sip my wine. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed before that it was too bitter.
“Pass the salt, will you?”
The subject is closed. No raise again this year.
I hand the salt down to him over crumpled napkins and half-finished glasses of milk. He shakes it across the plate and shovels in another bite. He’s staring at a spot on the wall.
“Is there any rice left?”
I get up and pour the rest of the wine down the sink. The rice that’s left is gunky. Stuck to the bottom of the pot. He doesn’t care, pausing midbite for me to spoon it onto his plate.
I keep thinking I’ll stop getting my feelings hurt. I keep telling myself it’s not personal. But my feelings do get hurt. And it is personal. And this will keep on and keep on until I’m crying again. I’m so tired of crying. I’m exhausted by this.
I walk out of the room. I listen to him scrape the chair away from the table a few minutes later. The refrigerator door opens, closes, a bottle cap pings onto the counter.
“Has Cammy’s report card come yet?” Bob comes in holding a fresh beer. “Oh, I looked into her volunteering at A Foot in the Door, that place that gets old shoes to homeless people trying to find jobs. It’ll look really good on her transcript.”
“I can’t wait to hear you pitch that to her,” I say.
“Listen, we’ve got to round her out,” he says, “colleges want the whole package and so far she’s got nothing on her record but probation and semigood grades. At this rate she’ll be lucky to get into a junior college.”
“Put that on the list of things to talk to her about,” I say.
“Have you talked to her teacher about backing off of the whole thing so we could get it off her record?”
“What’s she going to say?” I ask him. “‘Oh sure, no problem … Your daughter can treat me like shit but I won’t ever do anything about it.’”
“Can’t hurt to try,” he says.
“Why don’t you try talking to Cammy,” I say. “I hate always being the bad cop.”
“She’s a teenager. No teenager likes to talk to her parents. Oh, by the way, can you take my car in for servicing?”
“Sit down,” I say. “Let’s curl up on the couch.”
“Don’t forget to remind them to change the oil this time,” he says, tapping the mail into a neat pile in the palm of his hand. “I don’t know how they managed to forget that the last time.”
“We could put on some Coltrane,” I say.
“I forgot to tell you, Sonny’s going to pitch my high-top design to the guys in from Tokyo.”
“That’s great,” I say. “Couch. Coltrane.”
“Dad! Where’s the plunger?”
“Oh, Jesus. I’ll be back,” he says. He sighs and yawns as he crosses the living room to the stairs. His feet clomp up to the second floor, slow deliberate trudging.
I squish one of the end pillows under my head and stretch out my legs, careful to keep the soles of my shoes off the seat cushions. I’d take them off, but they’re new, and Bob will notice the high heel, but before he starts on his lecture I’ll tell him they’re Aerosoles. We go back and forth on Aerosoles—he says they’re a crock but when he feels the inside of them like he did with my loafers he cocks his head to the side as if he’s impressed and when he doesn’t say anything I feel victorious. I arrange myself so my skirt doesn’t get wrinkled and I wait. Staring up at the ceiling I remind myself to call the painters to take care of that cracked and peeling corner where we had water damage last spring; I wait some more. While I’m thinking about it, I should make a list: I need to take the portrait of my mom to get reframed, I need to get my highlights retouched and I keep forgetting to get the plumber over here for the catch basin—I’m pretty sure it’s time for him to clean it out. Now my waiting is a test: how long will it take Bob to remember we were in the middle of something? Now the test has become an indictment—I will not leave the couch until he happens by and realizes his mistake. I know I’ll forget all the things I need to get done if I don’t write them down now but I don’t want all this waiting to go to waste now after so much time. I can’t risk getting up to get something to read because knowing my luck that will be the precise moment Bob will come back down through the living room and I want him to see me waiting. I’m not going to let him skate by that easily. Not after putting in half an hour. It seems like an hour has passed but it’s probably half that. Certainly the toilet has been taken care of in this amount of time. So I sit here and find myself daydreaming about Craig. I wonder what he’s doing. I wonder what his marriage is like. I wonder if he is thinking of me right now. Here comes Bob coming down the stairs. At the last minute I decide to sit up straight so I’ll look uncomfortable and he’ll feel worse.
“Hey. What’re you doing, just lounging around?” he says. He doesn’t even stop on his way to the kitchen.
“Remember Coltrane?” I call out. I don’t budge, hoping he’ll put two and two together that I’ve been waiting for him to return. He’s probably in the kitchen doing the “I coulda had a V8” hand smack to his forehead. But instead, “Hey, honey? Where’s that ruler that was in the top drawer, you know, the hardware drawer? Never mind. I found it.”
He passes me and heads back upstairs. I log on to the computer. Screw it.
Hey there. This is out of the blue but I’m wondering if you want to meet for coffee? I’m scoping out a nonprofit not far from you on Friday. What about Starbucks?
Sure, I write. I could do it Friday. What time are you thinking?
Friday comes and I change outfits four times. I settle on my jean skirt because it’s a skirt, but the denim keeps it grounded so I don’t look like I got dressed up for him. I put on my good push-up bra but then I take it off because it might make me look too busty and it feels weird wearing it during the day and also it’s black and the shirt I want to wear is yellow and I’m pretty sure the black would show through the fabric. So I have to wear my tired old everyday bra that doesn’t do much for me, but then I don’t want to look obvious. The yellow shirt is a button-down, pinched in at the waist, with little cap sleeves that make it girlie and feminine. The shoes take the most time to pick out. Flats make me feel dumpy but heels are way too much of a statement and I don’t have any that really go with my jean skirt, so that limits me considerably. It’s going to have to be ballet flats. The ones with little bows on top coupled with my shirt are too Laura Ingalls Wilder. The gray plain ones aren’t terribly flattering but they’re the only ones that go and I remind myself I’m supposed to be fitting this coffee into my busy day and gray flats are just what I’d wear on a busy day so gray flats it is. I spray on some light perfume that wears off in twenty minutes usually but the hin
t of it is all I want anyway. Who puts on perfume to run errands? Me. I put it on every day. It’s a little thing but it makes me feel put together and most days I’m not.
I get to Starbucks too early so I drive around the block a couple of times because I don’t want to look too eager. I want to blow into the room like I’m making a grand entrance. Then again it’s hard to stride in flats so maybe I should go in first after all. Also, tables get taken over by the laptop crowd, so I should definitely go in and grab one. I don’t want to have to sit on those bar stools facing the street. Not that we’re doing anything wrong, it’s just I don’t want to be nervous the whole time—it’d be just my luck to have Sally Flanders walk by and see me with this handsome man in the middle of a weekday when I’m normally rushing in and out with grocery bags and dry cleaning.
I go in and snag the last free table for two. I’ll wait to order coffee until he gets here. I can’t risk losing the table by going up to order. A Johnny Cash tribute CD is playing, stacks of them in a tree that also offers five or six other CDs, some indie, some jazz, some seasonal.
I forgot what he looks like. I forgot how gorgeous he is. How his thick hair makes him look masculine and virile and younger than most of the husbands in my group. And look how easily he wears his clothes. That’s a strange observation but it captures him perfectly. He’s comfortable in his own skin. He is so handsome I forget I haven’t eaten all day. I forget I have a million things to do. And this next thought makes me embarrassed for myself: I forget there is anyone else around us in this busy Starbucks. He strides in and owns the room without realizing it. His is a grand entrance.
“Hey. Sorry I’m late. I always forget how bad parking is on this block.”
“You better get in line now,” I manage to say. “There’s a group of about ten high-school kids and they’re headed this way.”
“What can I get you?” he says.
“Coffee. Black. Grande’s good. Thanks.”
I fumble in my purse for my wallet because that’s just what you do, you offer to pay even when you know the other person is going to. He doesn’t waste time with the formality of “put your wallet away,” he’s already up at the counter ordering, looking over at me and rolling his eyes at the crush of high schoolers. The baristas shout out orders like they’re landing planes.
He comes back within minutes, blowing on his cup.
Now that we’re sitting across from each other I have no idea what to say. It feels like a date. So I guess I do have something to say.
“Um, this is awkward to say,” I tell him. He looks worried but then I don’t know this guy. Maybe worried is his natural expression.
“I really liked talking with you the other day,” I start, “but is this weird? I mean us meeting for coffee? I’m married. You’re married.”
“Married people make new friends all the time.”
“True,” I say. “It’s just, oh, I don’t know.”
“Look, I know what you’re saying. I do.” He leans back and crosses his leg ankle to knee. “But it’s just coffee, for God’s sake. So I went to this nonprofit and listen to this, they’ve raised enough money to send a class of eleventh graders on an exchange program to South Africa. They’re looking for funds to bring the kids they’ve been writing to—it’s a pen-pal program—here. Two weeks of switching lives. Cool, huh?”
And just like that it’s easy. Normal. Enjoyable. Interesting to hear about. Nothing weird about it at all. He talks about traveling down to “Jo-berg” for a site survey. And how he ended up on a trek into Zambia and happening on another school with even more severe needs.
“I feel bad,” he says. “I haven’t asked about you. What do you do?”
Oh, Jesus, here we go. The conversational black hole.
“Nothing,” I say. “I mean, I’m a stay-at-home mom.”
“That’s not nothing,” he says. “That’s harder than what most people do.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, everyone says that. But I’m not exactly jetting around saving the world. Educating African kids. I’m so boring it’s sickening.”
“You’re not boring,” he says.
“How do you know I’m not boring? You don’t even know me.”
Then it occurs to me.
“If you’re so happy doing what you’re doing how come you said you thought about walking away from your life?”
He uncrosses his legs and sips his coffee.
“There’s always more to the story,” he says with a shrug. “You know that.”
“How are you so sure about a complete stranger? You keep acting like you know me.”
He locks eyes with me. We have the same eyes. Deep, wide set. Unveiled, open.
“I don’t know,” he says, again shrugging. “You’re right, I don’t know you. It’s nice talking to you, though.”
I look around. At a table for two along the amber-and-purple-painted wall is a silver-haired man hunched over a laptop, a weathered leather briefcase tilted on the empty chair across from him. He must feel me looking at him because he sits up and I can see his collar and I wonder why a minister is sitting in a Starbucks pecking at a keyboard in the middle of the day. I look back at Craig and feel his glow of energy and light and happiness and in being near him, close to him, I absorb it. What’s so wrong about that?
I feel at ease. My smile at him is natural. I get a prickly feeling like I did years ago when I saw the trailer for Steel Magnolias, knowing it was going to be my favorite movie of all time, which it was. Until I saw When Harry Met Sally. Then it was a tie.
He talks about how he used to be an adrenaline junkie but had to scale back once the baby was born. I take in the sound of his voice. I watch his lips as they form words that hang in the air like exhaled smoke. He talks about how he’d always wanted to go fly-fishing in Chile and I follow the line of his face with my eyes, noting his strong bone structure. Then there’s shooting the rapids on the upper fork of the Salmon River, he’s saying, but that went on hold when they decided to bump out the kitchen to fold the family room in so it’s more of an open-floor plan. His shirt is longsleeved and casual, like a sweater but not a sweater. Oh, my God, how long has he been silent? He has caught me checking him out. I look away.
“I’ve been rambling. Sorry,” he says.
I honestly don’t know what to say. What did he leave off with? Jesus, Sam, say something. Anything.
“Yeah, we haven’t taken a trip in a long time.” That’s all I can think of? We haven’t taken a trip in a long time? Pathetic. Say something else. Throw something out there. “I mean, without the kids. We used to talk about going to Egypt, a boat ride on the Nile. Somewhere along the way we forgot about it and now with the kids and all …”
“I know,” he says. “Funny how that happens, huh?”
We both smile.
“For me it’s not so much about travel, though,” I say. “It’s that connection. That closeness we used to have.”
“Exactly,” he says. “That’s exactly like us.”
“I just—this sounds horrible and I don’t mean it to be, but sometimes I look at my life and I can’t believe this is all there is. I always thought something major would happen to me, you know? I know it’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid at all,” he says.
“What did you want to happen in your life that hasn’t happened?” I ask him. “From my side of things I can’t pinpoint it. I just wanted something huge. I know, I know …”
“No, no, I know what you’re saying,” he says. “I thought maybe I’d go into politics. I truly thought I could change the world blah blah blah. Make a difference. You know the drill …”
He chatters on about some of the things he would’ve gotten involved in: welfare reform, education. He’s big into fund-raising now, for candidates who’ve become friends.
“Oh, jeez, look at the time,” I say.
“You can’t come up with a better one?” He laughs at me. “Please. I’ve been talking too much. Evie tells
me that all the time. Sorry.”
“I’m serious,” I tell him. “I’ve got to pick up the kids. It’s been great talking with you.”
He stands to help me with my coat.
“I’m sorry, I, um, I forgot today’s an early pick-up day. Okay, bye.”
I look at him and he has that same look on his face that he did on Michigan Avenue a few days ago. Searching. Serious. And yes, a hint of sexiness he can’t help.
“Um, okay, see you later,” I say.
“Bye, Samantha.”
A few hours later, after the kids are asleep, I decide it’s time to channel that commercial where the woman’s rubbing on body lotion and her husband’s watching and pulls her into bed before she’s even done. The takeaway: lotion is so sexy, good luck applying it in front of your man. I time it so right when he gets into bed and puts on his reading glasses, I perch, naked, on the edge of the foot of the bed, my Jergens at my side. Going to bed naked is out of the ordinary in and of itself, so I assume Bob will be turned on by that alone, but I keep my back to him so I can go on with the show. After my arms are good and moisturized he says:
“What the hell? Since when do you do that outside the bathroom?”
I half turn and make a point of pumping more lotion into my hands.
“You’re going to get that all over the comforter,” he says.
“Want to help?”
“You can’t put lotion on yourself?”
“Maybe we could do it together,” I say.
“I’ll pass,” he says. “You know how I hate getting lotion on my hands.”
I want to scream, You know what I hate Bob? I hate that you make me feel like I should cover up. Like my body repulses you so much you can’t even touch it with lotion. Or without, come to think of it. I want to yell, I want out! You hate getting lotion on your hands? Well, I hate how depressing my life is. How about that shit, Bob? I could throw stuff into a duffel and walk out and you’d never have to worry about fucking lotion ever again! Instead, I pull on my robe and go downstairs to the computer.
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