“To you, Bob Parsons,” she said, lightly tapping her glass bottle against his.
“And to you,” said Bob, taking a sip and loosening the tie that felt very tight around his neck. It wasn’t until he sat down on the other queen-size bed that he noticed the blinking red light on his phone. He hesitated just a moment before picking up the handpiece. He pushed the buttons matching his room number followed by the pound key and motioned to Bernadette with his index finger that he would be through in a minute. His hand started a slow descent to his lap when he heard Karen’s voice.
“Hi, it’s me,” she said. “I’m sorry for getting angry before. It’s just so hard to talk to you sometimes, especially when you’re several time zones away. Call me tomorrow if you get a chance. We all miss you.” Bob put the phone down and closed his eyes momentarily. He told himself again that Karen would never know if he had sex with Bernadette. He opened his eyes and looked at Bernadette, who was reclining on one elbow.
“You want to kiss me?” she asked, patting the space on the comforter next to her.
Bob shifted his body from his bed to hers. He leaned down and kissed Bernadette on the mouth, then pulled away. “I do want to kiss you. But I’ve got to go to sleep.”
“I sleep with you.” Even though her English was choppy, she was able to get her point across.
Bob ran his hand over his hair. “That would be lovely. But tonight I have to sleep alone.”
Bernadette sat up. “No sex?”
Bob shook his head. “No sex, Bernadette. I’m sorry.”
Bernadette stood next to the bed. “Because you are married?”
Bob turned his wedding band on his finger. “Yes.”
Bernadette opened her purse and took out a wadded tissue. Inside it was a gold ring. She slipped it on her finger. “Me too. My husband travels.” Bob guessed she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. What the hell happened? He lifted himself and her coat from the bed. He put it around her shoulders and led her to the door. He opened his wallet and took out enough money for a cab to take her anywhere in the city she wanted to go. He kissed her one more time on the mouth and then told her good night. He shut the door behind her. He played Karen’s message again before he went to bed, wondering, as from time to time he did, if she would ever fool around on him.
CHAPTER 16
NOVEMBER 2004
On the plane to Australia, Bob wrote down several personal resolutions on his laptop computer. Number one was to leave the girls alone. Spending time in bars only led to trouble. He should know that by now, especially with a friend like Billy. Say what he wanted about the dissolution of his marriage, Billy spent too much time at the bar, a problem for him as it had been with his ex. Of course, Billy wasn’t married anymore and could therefore do whatever he wanted to do in a bar, as well as after he left. But if Bob’s marriage was going to mean anything, he had to leave the girls alone.
Bob knew a couple of married guys through work who regularly had affairs. They talked about the excitement of sex with different women. Bud Taylor, a salesman on the East Coast, liked to describe sex with flavors. His wife was the standard vanilla, or, occasionally, French vanilla—good but repetitive and predictable. His sex outside his marriage he described as Pink Cotton Candy and Bubble Gum, Chocolate Rocky Road, and Caramel Fudge. Bud shared his extramarital activities in detail, making some of the guys envious, leaving them wondering if Bud made a good point when he justified his randy behavior. He made cheating on his wife sound almost reasonable. He thought she might know about his dalliances, but she said nothing, a key factor in what he called the Taylor Theory. His theory stated that men without exception wanted and thought about sex more than women. When women were first married, they put up a good front and had sex with their husbands a couple times a week. After children, however, their interest in their husbands dropped precipitously, as they were swamped with underappreciated child care and housework. The last thing they wanted, he said, was physical contact with something or someone else. This meant the number of nights the wife was open to sexual advances dropped to one or two a month, not nearly enough to satisfy a Forester man. After several years of squabbling about sex, Bud and his wife had agreed that other outlets might work. What he didn’t share with his wife was the progression of his digression, when he had made the switch from satisfying himself in the bathroom off their bedroom with a Playboy magazine to satisfying himself with a willing partner. He took precautions—always wore a condom—and his wife never questioned him. She was getting sex twice a month. He was getting some kind of release two or three times a week. Their battles over sex had ceased.
Bob’s sexual appetite seemed to line up with Bud’s. He had physical needs as a man that sometimes surpassed those of a faithful husband. Why couldn’t he have a little bit on the side? Why did marriage have to put an end to casual sex? Karen might very well be relieved by not having him climb all over her in the middle of the night. It hadn’t always been that way, with the pushing, the blocking, the turning of her back. In college and when they were first married, Karen had seemed as interested as he did. But now she often resented his advances, as if to say, Again? Didn’t we just have sex three days ago? If he had fresh, exciting sex once a week outside the marriage, perhaps he would be content to have vanilla sex just once a week at home. Bob thought about Angela and Bernadette, about how eager they had been to please him. What was wrong with that?
And yet, he wondered why they were so ready to have sex with him. Angela might have just felt like a romp with a willing foreigner. She could brag about shagging an older man, moaning like Bob in front of her secretary girlfriends at the pub, knowing she would never see him again. But Bernadette was married, just like Bob. Was she looking for another flavor? Did women care about flavors? Or was there some other reason? Had she fought with her husband? Had she discovered he’d been cheating on her and decided to get back at him? Whatever the reason, Bernadette fully intended to follow through and have sex with Bob. She had already made up her mind. It was Bob—the man who ought to have complied, who ought to have had his pants off less than a minute after he closed his hotel room door—who was the one to say no.
Clearly, Karen was behind this behavior. She was his wife, and he felt an allegiance and an obligation to her. But he didn’t think it was his wedding vows that stopped him. With Angela, it had been the terrifying notion that Karen would find out. And when she found out, she would divorce him and relieve him of half of his fortune. There would be no marriage counselor, no period of détente. She would leave him if he cheated, just as he would quickly dissolve the marriage if she sought affection elsewhere. While he didn’t think Karen would ever cheat on him, he couldn’t rule it out. What about her relationship with Ray McNamara in college? Had they been more than friends? Karen was as pretty and confident now, more so actually, than she had been at State. If Bob fooled around on her and she found out, she would do the same, if not for pleasure then for spite. And once that news hit the street, Bob would perish of embarrassment. It’s one thing for a man to step out on his woman; infidelity on the man’s part surprised no one. But if a husband couldn’t satisfy his wife? Bob would rather be anything, a liar, a drunk, a failure, than a cuckold.
That settled, Bob ordered a glass of red wine and put his laptop under his seat. He closed his eyes, and his wife’s face appeared in the darkness. He remembered how he felt when he first saw her, sitting next to the window in the student union. It was as if a tiny bolt of lightning pierced his heart. Where had that feeling gone? She was still beautiful, but she had changed. He couldn’t put a name to the changes, other than her diminished interest in sex, but, in general he decided, her values, motivation, and her steadfastness had inched their way away from his, a shift in her compositional tectonic plates.
It was the children, he suspected, who were primarily responsible for her change in attitude and behavior, the children he wanted so badly, the children he talked her into having before she was
ready. The day Rebecca was born was like an instant, silent coup. Bob was no longer on the throne. And whatever progress Bob had made afterward was swiftly eradicated when Robert was born. Bob slipped from number two to number three on Karen’s priority list without incident, without discussion. And yet, she had not been ready for this shift. Two nine-month pregnancies had not prepared Karen for being a mother. She felt like someone had stolen her independence, like a handbag from a shoulder, when she was looking the other way. Plus, she was tired all the time, too tired to go out to a nine o’clock movie on a Friday night, too tired for sex on a Saturday night. It went beyond fatigue in the sex department. She was afraid, too. She was afraid the children would need her, afraid they would be awakened by the thump, thump, thump of the headboard against the wall and walk into their bedroom when she and Bob were naked.
What, Bob thought, not for the first time, had been the rush? Why had he wanted children so urgently? Had it been a means to seal their marriage agreement, establish themselves as a married couple? Had it been expected? And if so, by whom? His parents had moved away from their son and grandchildren, visiting once in ten years. Bob and Karen and the kids stayed with Tucker and Janet in their Florida condominium every February vacation, but, outside of the weather, it wasn’t a particularly enjoyable week. Tucker had become increasingly meticulous about his property in his retirement, mowing the lawn every four days, washing his car weekly, and, oddly enough, Bob thought, washing and waxing the kitchen floor. Tucker reminded Bob and Karen every year to encourage the children to not touch the white walls of the condo. Fingerprints could be difficult to remove, and Janet’s allergies prevented the use of stringent cleansers. Tucker occasionally played a card game with Rebecca and Robert, or swam with them in the pool. But mostly he watched their movements with a wary eye. When they ate breakfast in the kitchen, Tucker kept the sponge at the table.
And Shelley and Phil? Sure, there had been a lot of excitement, a lot of talk at first about three-generational gatherings, Christmas mornings at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, that kind of thing. And for a while Shelley and Phil had been very attentive, driving to Karen and Bob’s a couple times a month for a “grandchildren fix.” But apparently that itch had been scratched. Phil, who was still working, spent the weekends puttering in his basement workshop, an amateur carpenter who had never made a stick of furniture for his daughter. And Shelley, telling Karen as well as herself that it was good for the nuclear unit to interact without the interference of the larger branches of the family tree, spent time with her female friends, frequenting garage sales and garden tours in the warmer months and getting through winter by listening to lectures at the library and going to the movies. Shelley made no secret of how difficult she had found child rearing and how relieved she was to be on the other side.
What had been the goddamned rush? Bob speared a cherry tomato from a tray hosting a beef filet, garden salad, white dinner roll, and a square of chocolate cake that had been lowered onto the table hovering above his lap. He finished his wine and decided against ordering another. He glanced at the nothingness out his first-class window and let his thoughts drift back to his childhood. He had known his parents loved him, even though they never expressed it verbally, because they cared about what he was thinking and doing. They asked questions. And they made time for him. For a few years, after his older brothers were out of the house, Bob and his father shot hoops in the driveway after dinner, the garage floodlight casting a milky glow on their makeshift court. His mother had been especially attentive when he was younger, reading him bedtime stories and bandaging his frequent cuts and scrapes. They had eaten dinner together, as a family. But there had also been many times that they sent Bob outside or to his room to play with his toys while they pursued their own interests. In the Parsons household, children had been seen and heard, but not nearly as often as they were now.
Before Karen had Rebecca and Robert, she had always been happy. She had a great job. They had a pretty good sex life. And Bob had been the center of her universe. They ate out. They slept in on the weekends. They watched movies and television together. They talked with each other. Then Karen got pregnant. She was nauseous all the time, which evoked Bob’s empathy—nobody likes to puke. But she had been negative and tentative, the opposite of what she had been before getting pregnant. And she wouldn’t let Bob touch her body until she stopped puking. She was afraid having sex would hurt the baby, if she didn’t throw it up first. She was afraid she wouldn’t be a good enough mother. She was afraid that having children would change her life. And she had been right.
Bob took the latest school pictures of Rebecca and Robert out of his wallet and studied them. Rebecca had his dark hair and blue eyes, but the delicate nose and chin of her mother. And Robert, again with the dark hair, had Bob’s wide forehead and full mouth. Maybe that’s what having children was about: reproduction. Prog-eniture guaranteed a continuation of the family name, the family mission. Was that it? Bob told himself firmly that there was more, that these children of his belonged to him and him to them, that they added value to his life by their presence. Robert, he told everyone, was a really good kid. He was happy, amenable to the wishes of others, a pleaser. Rebecca was more complicated. The fact that she was acting like a jerk at the moment made her more so. Even though their family doctor claimed her behavior was pretty typical for an adolescent girl, Bob knew that he would never have gotten away with some of the things that Rebecca did and said. He’d had his mouth washed out with soap as a child for disrespectful talk. If his parents were in charge of Rebecca, she’d have a cake of soap protruding from her mouth every day by breakfast time. And she was only eleven! Karen coddled, cajoled, ignored, and ignited, but Rebecca’s emotions still dictated the moods of those around her.
In spite of her daughter’s tantrums, Karen was a more comfortable mother now than she had been when the children were too young for school. Back then, she was miserable. And could Bob honestly blame her? While he had routinely told her she could do or be anything she chose, he knew she was the type of woman who would stay home with her kids. And he was glad; not glad enough to help her, just glad enough to tell others how adept she was at mothering. Back then, Bob had stayed at the office longer than required, mostly to get out of pre- and post-dinner chores. What he enjoyed was swooping in at about seven thirty to read bedtime stories and kiss his children’s clean faces. When they were sleeping, he would marvel at their existence, at his part in their creation. But he left everything else to Karen. When the kids were finally old enough for school, Karen finally had some freedom—one of her favorite and most strident words—and Bob finally got some attention, for a while. But now the distance between them had returned. In particular, since she had started working, she had retreated from him again. Was it the job?
When his dinner tray was cleared away, Bob reached under his seat for his laptop. Perhaps he needed to talk to Karen about where they were headed in their separate lives, as well as in their common life as husband and wife and as the father and mother of their children. He didn’t talk to her enough about anything but his work. It was something she always brought up in their arguments. It was something he could improve upon.
Karen and Nick often took a ten-minute walk around the block in the afternoon, after the paper was done, as a break from writing and editing. The afternoons were less hectic than the mornings, even though Nick’s day didn’t end when the reporters had filed their stories. He spent his after-lunch hours writing editorials; negotiating with Joe Harvey, the advertising head, for more news space; meeting with business and government leaders in the community; listening to complaints about what was in yesterday’s paper; and hearing suggestions on what should be in tomorrow’s edition. Since Karen sat close to his office, she could often hear him on the phone, patiently explaining newspaper procedures, calming irate readers, always keeping his temper in check. Everyone seemed to like him, including Karen, who told herself that what she felt for him was nothing more
than a desire to be near him. He was good to her, complimenting her work, featuring her stories prominently in the paper, encouraging her to take advantage of the newspaper’s spotty professional development opportunities. He was flirtatious, but in a clean, high school hallways kind of way. Karen sometimes thought he had stronger feelings for her, but he never said anything, until they had lunch together one Friday afternoon.
It was after one; the newsroom was quiet. Nick walked out of his office with papers in his hand and pulled a chair up next to Karen at her desk. He showed her an article he had received by e-mail from a colleague about the previous summer’s massive power outage and what was being done to shore up and end speculation about the frailty of the grid. Nick thought it might be interesting to see, three months later, what, if anything, was happening with the local power company. He explained to Karen how local stories can make people understand larger problems. Then he quickly switched gears, asking Karen if she’d had lunch. She said no, even though a tuna, sprouts, and tomato sandwich on whole wheat, one of her favorites, waited for her in the office kitchen fridge. Coats over their arms, they walked out of the newsroom and stopped at the front desk to let Amy, a recent high school graduate who answered the phones and took information for the classifieds, know that they’d be gone an hour. They took his car to Bill’s Diner, still busy with the lunch crowd, near the river.
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