by Joy Fielding
“Counseling won’t help,” he said quietly.
“It might. We could at least give it a try. Whatever problems we’re having—”
“I got fired.”
“What!” Chris was sure she’d heard him incorrectly. “What are you talking about?”
“They let me go,” he said without further elaboration.
Chris saw the words bouncing around in front of her eyes, like the errant particles of dust hanging in the sunlight, and tried to grab hold of them, get them to stay still long enough for her to understand their implications, but they refused to be so easily corralled. “They let you go?” she repeated helplessly, the words making no more sense for her having said them out loud. “Why?”
Tony shrugged. “Dan Warsh said something about the need for fresh perspectives, new ideas.”
“But they’ve always loved your ideas. The ‘Cat’s Meow,’ the ‘Really Cheese Them Off’ campaigns, I thought they loved those.”
“They did-last year. This is 1982, Chris. We’re in the middle of a major recession. Everyone’s running scared.”
“But …” Chris stopped. Wasn’t Tony always complaining she didn’t know when to leave well enough alone? “When did this happen?”
“Friday morning.”
“Friday! Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tears filled Tony’s eyes. He turned away. “I tried to tell you last night.”
Chris took a deep breath, tried to recall the sequence of events of the night before, the precise order of everything that was said before things began spiraling out of control. But she’d worked so hard to suppress the angry words that they now refused to come forward, and she was left with snarled snatches of indistinct utterances, potentially potent images shooting toward her only to blur into passivity, like snow hitting a car windshield during a winter storm. Tony was always accusing her of not listening to him. My God, was he right?
“I’m so sorry,” she told him now, taking his head in her hands, cradling it against the towel at her breasts.
“We’ll be fine,” he was quick to assure her. “It’s not like I can’t find another job.”
“Of course you’ll find another job.”
“I don’t want you to worry.”
“I’m not worried. I just wish I’d known. Maybe last night wouldn’t have.…”
“I’m not trying to make excuses for my behavior last night.”
“I know you’re not.”
“I was way out of line.”
“You were upset about losing your job.”
“That doesn’t give me the right to take it out on you.”
“It was my fault as much as yours. Tony, I’m so sorry …”
“I love you, Chris. I love you so much. I don’t care about the damn job. I can lose a million jobs. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t lose me. You won’t. You won’t.”
And then they were in each other’s arms, and he was kissing her the way he’d kissed her when she was nineteen years old and he was trying to convince her to run away with him, the way he’d kissed her the first time they’d made love, the way he always kissed her when they were making up after a fight, short, tender kisses that barely flirted with the outlines of her lips, that seemed almost afraid to overstay their welcome. And then suddenly she felt him releasing the towel around her head, felt it collapse and drop around her bare shoulders. Damp hair fell about her face in careless waves. Automatically Chris reached up to tuck the hair behind her ears, but Tony’s hands were already pulling at the towel at her breast, throwing it open as he pushed her down on the bed.
“Mommy!” came the sudden cry from outside the closed bedroom door.
Immediately Chris felt Tony’s body tense, and she held her breath, waiting for his reaction. But Tony only laughed, and in that unexpected, full-throated sound Chris heard all the reasons why she’d agreed to run off with him so many years ago. The sound promised both safety and permanence, qualities missing from her childhood.
“Mommy’s a little busy right now, Montana,” Tony called out, his hand on the zipper of his jeans.
“I want Mommy,” the child persisted, jiggling the handle of the door.
“I’ll be there in a minute, pumpkin,” Chris told her, trying to sit up, feeling Tony’s unexpectedly firm grip on her shoulder as Montana continued pushing at the bedroom door. Why had Tony locked it?
“Mommy! Mommy!” Wyatt’s small voice joined his sister’s in the hall.
“Remember what we talked about at breakfast, kids?” Tony asked, his noticeable erection pushing at the front of his jeans. “How Mommy wasn’t feeling too well, and you were going to let her sleep real late? Remember that?”
“But she’s up now,” Montana persisted. “I heard you guys talking.”
“Yeah, but she’s still not feeling very well.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Montana’s voice carried more accusation than concern.
“Mommy! Mommy!” Wyatt cried.
“Tony,” Chris whispered, kissing his chin. “We can do this later.”
Tony’s grip on her shoulder tightened. “Go back to your rooms, kids. Mommy’ll be there real soon.”
“Now!” Montana insisted.
“Tony, please,” Chris said. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to relax.”
“This won’t take long.” Tony pushed his jeans down his thighs, drew her head toward him. “Come on, Chris. You can’t just leave me like this.”
“Mommy! Let me in.”
“Please, Chris.”
“Mommmmmy!”
“Why don’t you sing Mommy a song?” Tony suggested, guiding Chris’s mouth around him, his hand moving her head slowly back and forth.
“What’ll I sing?”
“Whatever your little heart desires,” Tony said, his fingers digging into Chris’s scalp.
“It’s a heartache!” Montana began singing at the top of her lungs. “Nothing but a heartache!”
Dear God, Chris thought. Was this really happening?
“Gets you if you’re too late. Feels just like a clown.”
Was she really going down on her husband while her six-year-old child sang about heartache outside their bedroom door? No, she couldn’t do this. It was too ludicrous, too bizarre.
As if sensing her growing discomfort, Tony picked up his pace. Chris grabbed the side of the bed to keep from losing her balance.
“Oh, it’s a heartache …”
“God, Chris, that’s so good. I love you so much.”
“Nothing but a heartache …”
“Tony …”
“Now, Chris. Now!”
Chris felt Tony’s body shudder around her, his hand in her hair relaxing as he withdrew. He quickly pulled his jeans back up over his hips. Chris swallowed, wiped her mouth, massaged her jaw as Tony went to the bedroom door and opened it. Immediately, Montana and Wyatt flew inside, jumped on the bed and into Chris’s lap, jockeying for position.
“You smell funny,” Montana said.
“Morning breath,” Tony said with a wink, lifting Wyatt into the air, holding him high above his head as the boy shrieked his approval.
“Yuck,” Montana said, sliding out of her mother’s arms and throwing herself against Tony’s legs.
Tony effortlessly scooped her up with his free hand, dangled her at his side. “Who’s going to win the Super Bowl?” he challenged.
“Bengals!” Wyatt shouted.
“That’s my boy.”
“Bengals, Bengals!” Montana screamed even louder, not to be outdone.
Good God, the Super Bowl, Chris thought, self-consciously covering her mouth with her hand. She’d forgotten all about it. She had so much to do, and she hadn’t even thought about what to serve for dinner.
“Chris,” Tony was saying as he ushered Montana and Wyatt out of the room. “Look, if you wouldn’t mind not saying anything to anyone about my losing my job …”
“Of course not.”
“At least not today.”
“Sure.”
“No point spoiling the party.”
“I understand.” Chris smiled.
Now I have two secrets, she thought.
Two
The women were grouped around the circular pine table that occupied much of Chris’s small kitchen. Several bottles of wine—one white, one red—stood open in the middle of the table, surrounded by at least a half dozen glasses in various stages of use. Between casual gossip and sips of chardonnay, Chris absently scraped the skin off a bunch of large carrots, Vicki played with the ends of a recent, ill-advised perm, and Susan and Barbara laughed over the contents of the most recent issue of Cosmopolitan. They were dressed casually in warm sweaters and jeans, except that Vicki’s jeans were leather. Only Barbara wore a skirt. It was royal blue velvet and reached the floor. “This is a Super Bowl party,” Vicki quipped when she saw her, “not a wedding.”
“I know,” came Barbara’s easy response, accompanied by fluttering fingers. “I know. I know.”
“She can’t help herself,” said Susan.
In the rec room immediately below, their husbands were drinking beer and alternately screaming their encouragement or bellowing their displeasure at an indifferent TV screen. In the living room, their assorted children—seven in all, five girls, two boys—were eating popcorn and giggling over their umpteenth screening of Pete’s Dragon, under the watchful, if tired, eye of Vicki’s weekend nanny.
“So what do you think her secret is?” Susan asked suddenly.
Chris’s hands froze in mid-scrape, feeling all eyes directed her way. How could they know? she wondered, feeling her cheeks blush orange, like the shorn carrot in her hand. She’d said nothing, confided in no one. Were they so finely attuned to one another’s needs? After a friendship of only four years, was their protective radar so intense? Could she keep nothing from them, no matter how personal, how shameful?
Slowly, Chris raised her head, the lies already forming on the tip of her tongue: Secret? What secret? No, of course there’s nothing wrong. And if still they pressed her, if they stubbornly refused to accept her heartfelt protestations, dismissed the lie for the obvious fiction it was, what then? Could she really tell them the truth?
But when Chris looked up, she saw that no one was looking at her with sad, questioning eyes. She saw that no one was looking at her at all. Susan and Barbara were still engrossed in their magazine. Even Vicki had stopped playing with her wayward perm and joined them in ogling a photograph of Raquel Welch spilling out of a tiny white bikini and practicing yoga on a sun-soaked Malibu beach.
“Her secret?” Barbara repeated. “Are you kidding me?”
“Don’t tell me plastic surgery,” Susan said.
“Of course plastic surgery,” Barbara pronounced.
“You say that about everyone.”
“Only because it’s true. Come on, guys, she’s over forty.”
“I heard she had a couple of ribs removed,” Vicki offered.
“I believe it,” Barbara said.
“Do you think she had her boobs done?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“If she did,” Barbara said, “I want her doctor. He did a great job.”
“Yeah,” Vicki agreed. “Usually when you have a boob job, you get these two big blobs in the middle of nowhere, with these nipples about three inches higher than they’re supposed to be. They look ridiculous. Everyone knows they’re not real.”
“Men don’t care,” Barbara said, as a great roar emanated from downstairs. “They like ’em no matter how fake they look.”
“Would you ever have plastic surgery?” Chris asked, letting go of the frightened air trapped in her lungs and joining the conversation.
“Never,” Susan said, closing the magazine with a decisive hand.
“Never say never,” Vicki told her, pouring herself another glass of red wine.
“I’m gonna have the works done.” Barbara patted the ample bosom beneath the pale blue silk of her blouse. “The minute these babies sag, I’m getting a new pair. First sign of a wrinkle, I’m on the operating table. And none of this ‘just make me look rested’ nonsense. I want to look like I just emerged from a wind tunnel.”
The women laughed. “You’re nuts,” Chris told her. “Why would you ever want to mess with that beautiful face?”
“Whatever happened to growing old gracefully?” Susan asked.
“Oh, please,” Barbara said. “What’s so graceful about growing old?”
“That’s why you all should have married older men,” Vicki told them. “That way you’re always the young one.”
“Yeah, but isn’t it a trade-off?” Barbara asked, raising one carefully tweezed eyebrow.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you may stay young”—Barbara winked—“but do they stay hard?”
A raucous squeal escaped Chris’s throat as the blush in her cheeks turned from orange to red. She jumped from the table, quickly dropped the carrot scrapings into the garbage pail under the sink and the carrots into the large wooden salad bowl on the white tile countertop.
“Chris, get your ass back here,” Vicki instructed. “This is very important stuff we’re discussing.”
“I don’t think we should be talking about this sort of thing,” Chris said, trying not to see Tony’s erect penis dancing before her eyes, not to feel it slamming against the inside of her mouth.
“We always talk about this sort of thing,” Vicki protested.
“I know, but …” Chris glanced toward the living room. “You know the saying about little pitchers having big ears?”
“Big pitchers are exactly what we’re talking about,” Vicki said with a laugh. “Besides, I’ve been challenged. You know I can’t walk away from a challenge.”
“So, there are no problems in that department?” Barbara asked, deliberately egging Vicki on. “I mean, Jeremy’s what … sixty now?”
“He’s fifty-seven,” Vicki corrected.
“And?”
“And everything’s working very nicely in that department, thank you very much.” Vicki took a long swig of the wine in her glass. “Besides, Jeremy’s pitcher isn’t the only one in the ballpark.”
“What!” the other women gasped as one.
“Oh, my God!” Barbara said. “What are you saying?”
“Hey, can you keep the noise down?” Tony called up from downstairs.
“You need some help up there, darlin’?” Jeremy’s voice rang out.
“We’re doin’ just fine, darlin’,” Vicki called back.
“What exactly are you doing?” Susan asked.
Vicki smiled. “Well, we all know that variety is the spice of life.”
Chris quickly returned to her seat at the round pine table. “You’re having an affair?”
“Don’t look so shocked. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“How can it not mean anything?” Susan asked.
“It’s just sex,” Vicki told the other women, as if this fact were self-explanatory. “Are you saying you’d never have an affair?”
“Absolutely that’s what I’m saying,” Susan said.
“Never say never,” Vicki admonished her again.
“What if Jeremy finds out?”
“He won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he never has before.”
“Oh, my God!”
“I don’t believe it!”
“What’s going on up there?” Tony called out.
“You’ve been holding out on us,” Barbara said, brown eyes narrowing accusingly.
“Timing is everything,” Vicki told her.
“Mommy!” one of the children called from the living room.
“Yes,” the four women answered in unison.
“Whitney’s head is too big. It’s in my way.”
Susan sighed. “Her sister’s head is too big,” she announced to understanding
nods. “Give it a kiss, Ariel,” she called back. “It’ll shrink.”
“Speaking of getting head …” Vicki said.
“You are so bad,” Barbara said, laughing as Chris lowered her gaze to her lap. “Look, you’re embarrassing our hostess.”
“Really? I love that. Chris, am I embarrassing you?”
“Maybe we should talk about something else,” Chris suggested again.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Politics, literature. Anybody read any good books lately?” Chris looked toward Susan. Susan was always reading something.
“I read the new John Irving over the Christmas holidays.”
“Any good?”
“I liked it.”
“Boring!” Vicki pronounced with an exaggerated yawn. “Come on, you guys. This isn’t the time for intellectual discussions. Let’s get to the good stuff.” She pointed to one of the headlines on the cover of Cosmopolitan. “Multiply Your Orgasms,” the words all but screamed. “So who here, besides me, of course, has multiple orgasms?”
“I don’t believe this,” Barbara said. “You don’t give up.”
“You have multiple orgasms?” Chris heard herself ask.
“Sometimes,” Vicki said with a shrug. “You don’t?”
Chris raised her glass of wine to her lips, took a long sip. What the hell? she thought. She was keeping enough secrets. “I’ve never had an orgasm.”
“You mean you’ve never had a multiple orgasm,” Vicki corrected.
“I mean I’ve never had an orgasm at all.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I haven’t either,” Barbara admitted after a slight pause, her voice a whisper.
“Get out of here,” Vicki said. “I thought Ron was supposed to be so great in bed.”
“He is,” Barbara said, rushing to her husband’s defense. “It’s not his fault I don’t have orgasms.”
“Whose fault is it?” Vicki asked simply. Then, she shifted her penetrating gaze to Susan. “What about you?”
“Time to check on the kids,” Susan said, quickly pushing herself off her chair and disappearing into the living room. “How’s everyone doing in here?” Chris heard her ask the assorted throng.