The Slippery Year

by Melanie Gideon

  “That is so sweet,” says Anne.

  “Seems like a keeper,” says Sue.

  “My husband e-mails me little notes every morning, just checking in, have a good day sort of thing, but I don’t write back,” I say. “I read them but then I just delete them.”

  A woman I know walks by in a bikini. She’s got one of those recently-divorced-yoga-hard bodies. We all watch her settle into her chaise lounge with her pile of magazines and books. We are fascinated and threatened. We envy her freedom, yet all that space scares us.

  “Why did she get divorced?” asks Anne.

  “I think her husband cheated on her,” somebody says.

  “And she divorced him?” says Anne. “Why would she divorce him over that? Everybody cheats, and if they don’t cheat they want to. I mean at some point you have to say to yourself, Who cares? We’re all ten or twenty pounds overweight and have another thirty years to go with each other. I say do what you have to do to go the distance.”

  “Hmmm,” I say.

  I suspect Anne has touched on something all of us who are in long-term relationships wonder at one point or another. How the hell are we going to stay married? Well, not just stay married, but stay I can’t believe it’s been 24 hours since I kissed you married. That is the question.

  The next week my friend Alice comes to visit. Alice is ten years older than me and I’ve always looked up to her. She’s mothered two wonderful kids. She’s got a high-powered career and has been married for over thirty years. We’ve talked hormones and private schools, glasses and lip gloss. Now we’ve moved on to husbands.

  I’m still in my confessional mode. “I’m a very neglectful wife. I hardly ever cook. My husband sends me notes every morning and most of the time I don’t answer them,” I tell her, expecting her to say no big deal, this is 2008, she doesn’t cook or respond to e-mails either.

  “You might want to start answering them,” she says. “It hasn’t happened to you yet, but it will; in a few years women will start eyeing your husband. It doesn’t matter whether he’s married or not. That won’t stop them.”

  “But he drives around in that van.”

  “Some women love vans. Start being nice,” she says. “And just so you know, it doesn’t usually work in the other direction. Fifty-year-old men are not out there trying to steal away somebody’s fifty-year-old wife.”

  “That is so sexist.”

  “It’s the truth,” she says.

  When we get home I immediately send a little e-mail to my husband.

  It’s been 1,582 hours since we’ve kissed. Tonight can’t come soon enough. Xxx, Me

  He doesn’t e-mail me back so I call him. “Did you get my e-mail?”

  “Very funny,” he says.

  “It wasn’t a joke. I was missing you.”

  Silence.

  “No, I mean I was missing you,” I say. “Maybe we should go on a camping trip.”

  “You want to go on a camping trip?”

  “Well—kind of.”

  He snorts.

  “No, really. Let’s go camping. In the van.”

  “Hold on,” he says.

  I hear a woman’s voice in the background and then the distant sound of my husband laughing.

  “S’mores. Campfires. Boggle,” I say.

  “I’ll have to call you back,” he says and hangs up the phone.

  *

  These are dangerous times. It’s hard not to feel unnerved when couples all around us are divorcing. In my experience things follow a predictable pattern after these couples have sorted things out with lawyers and custody. First they lose weight. Then they train to run marathons. Then they learn to tango. Then they get highlights. Then they tour the hill towns of Italy. Then they buy new, fabulous clothes and ask us if we’d like their old ones before they haul them off to the Salvation Army, and all along the way they have lots and lots of sex and make sure to tell those of us who are doing our best to stay married to the same person for fifty years all about it. In detail.

  And because you don’t want to seem like a prude, or for anybody to know that you go to bed at nine p.m., you agree to do crazy things with them like go to see the midnight showing of Batman, and then when the reality of what you’ve signed up to do hits you, you cancel at the last minute.

  “Yeah, he came home from school with this sore throat. I think it’s strep. Cough. Cough. I probably have it, too. I wouldn’t want to give it to you, especially since you’re having so much sex these days and having something like strep would really put a damper on that sort of thing.”

  Here are the facts: I have been with the same man for nearly twenty years. Even though I love my husband dearly, sometimes the reality of this is shocking. How did I get here?

  * * *

  Here’s how I got here.

  N.B. Jesus was my first love and pen pal. I offer as proof these journal entries. I have replaced the word “Jesus” with “Phil” so as not to offend anyone.

  May 15, 1978

  Phil, what a beautiful day! I am filled with love for you, Phil. I am yours. I am here to serve you. Just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. Just don’t ask me to try out for track or eat lamb curry.

  I see you everywhere, Phil—in the lilacs, in my Big Mac, in my new Famolares. Thank you, Phil, oh, thank you for this glorious day. And for all you’ve sacrificed for me. I can’t wait to come see you in your kingdom. Well, actually, I can wait. Hopefully seventy years or so! Anyway, please, Phil, if I could just ask a little favor? If you could just see fit to do one little thing for me I would be forever in your debt. Could you send me a boyfriend? I really want to be kissed, and perhaps felt up. Please do not be insulted. You will always be first in my heart, Phil. But I’m fourteen now, and I want to have more, more, more joy in my heart, Phil, and in other places, too. So please, Phil, if you agree it is the right time—send me a boyfriend. Perhaps one named Kenny?

  August 1979

  Oh, Phil, thank you for sending me Kenny! I can’t stop thinking about him. My heart and other places are bursting, bursting, bursting with joy. I understand, Phil, what you mean about heaven on earth, for surely this is heaven, the way I feel when I see him. When I see him see me. When we see each other. We are the kingdom and the kingdom is us.

  PS. Do not worry. We have pledged to not have sex until we get married.

  July 1981

  Oh, Phil, my heart and other places are broken, broken, broken as Kenny is now dating my twin sister, Dawn. How can this be happening? How can such sorrow exist in one person? I am so sad I can’t feel you much anymore. I have been exiled from the kingdom and I am knocking at the door. Please, please, please let me in. If you have kicked me out because you think I have broken my promise about waiting to have sex until I get married, I need to tell you I didn’t. You know, sometimes you have to go right up to the edge and it might look like you cross over, and maybe you stick a toe in but you don’t go in, not all the way—do you get my meaning? Please, Phil, I have always loved you best. Forgive me and do not under any circumstances let Dawn into the kingdom. Hasn’t she broken a commandment? Dating her twin sister’s boyfriend? Shouldn’t she be justly punished?

  October 1984

  Phil, thank you for sending me Rupert. He is a bit older than me. More sophisticated. For instance he tends bar. And has a mustache. And yesterday he took me to the gun range and taught me how to shoot an Uzi. Afterward we read Hemingway to each other and then we had sex. I’m sorry, Phil, I tried, but I couldn’t wait until I got married. But may I remind you that all of us are your sons and daughters—even when we do bad things. We are all of us trying to make our way back to you. I’m very sorry to be so out of touch.

  June 1989

  Phil! Phil! Phil! This amazing man brought me to Singing Beach last night. We took the train from Boston to Manchester. I saw evidence of you everywhere I looked: in the lilacs, in our Amstel Lights, in his blue-green eyes. And when we stretched out on the sand, which was indeed sing
ing (or squeaking), and he asked if he could kiss me and I said yes, in those seconds before our lips touched, you said, Pay attention. This one. This one I made for you. I haven’t heard you that clearly since I was fourteen. Thank you, Phil. When I am with him nothing scares me.

  * * *

  I am taking Alice’s advice and being nice. This is what I’m thinking as my husband attempts to back the van into our campsite and I try to give him directions like a good wife should.

  “Go left. Left. LEFT! Okay, I meant my left.”

  “You’ve got plenty of room. Two feet. Eighteen inches. Six inches. You should stop now.”

  “Yes, I know the difference between one inch and six inches.”

  “Why are you looking at me like that? It’s a tiny scratch. Nobody can see it, unless of course you are looking for it.”

  “You want me to just sit here while you unpack? Are you sure? You would like some time alone in the van because you know where everything is and I know where nothing is? I’ll go check out the bathroom situation. Don’t forget to blow up my air mattress and set up the tent. I’ll be sleeping in the van with you guys, but just in case. It’ll be a great extra room, if anybody wants to take a nap or do a little reading.”

  Our campground is at Wright’s Beach, which is on the Sonoma Coast, a breathtakingly beautiful fifty-three-mile stretch of coastline famous for its cypress trees, fog, rugged headlands and long, sandy beaches. On my way to the bathroom I pass two signs that tell me of the hundreds of people who have died here, victims of rogue waves. DO NOT WALK PAST THE BERM AND NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON THE WATER, the signs advise.

  I run back to our campsite.

  “Where’s Ben?” I ask my husband, who’s inflating my air mattress. I cover my ears. “God, that’s loud. Can’t you close the van door? People are going to think we’re vacuuming in here. What kind of people go camping and vacuum?”

  My husband has the same look on his face he did when I was giving him directions on how to back into our campsite.

  “Where’s Ben?”

  “On the beach.”

  “Unattended?”

  “He’s nine.”

  “I don’t see him,” I say.

  “He’s right over the berm.”

  I sprint out of the campsite and onto the beach. He is indeed right over the berm, not more than ten feet away. Apparently there are two berms—the berm (actually more like a lip of sand) that borders our campsite and the berm that slopes down to the treacherous water.

  “Never, never turn your back on the water,” I yell.

  I reorient him so he’s facing the Pacific, which is five hundred feet away.

  “People have died here. Sleeper waves. Do you know what they are?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Waves that come out of nowhere,” I say. “And just”—I wave my arm—“sweep you out to sea.”

  He looks at me blankly. “Did you find the bathroom?”

  “I’m going now. Do you want to come?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll just go in the bushes.”

  “You mean the bushes right by the tent where I’ll be sleeping?”

  “I’ll just go in the van,” he says. “Like Dad.”

  “Dad didn’t bring the Porta Potti.”

  “Oh,” he says. “I don’t have to go, then.”

  The worst thing about car camping is the bathroom and the fact that you have to share it with a hundred other people. I have been worrying about this for a week and have a good strategy in place.

  Get up at five in the morning to beat everybody else to the bathroom.

  Don’t drink any coffee, or any beverage containing caffeine, thereby highly reducing the possibility of having to do nothing but pee for the next two days.

  If desperate, use the bathroom at off-peak times like 3:22 in the afternoon.

  “I told him about the waves,” I say to my husband. “I’m off to the bathroom.”

  He nods. “I gotta hit the head, too.”

  And as he turns his back on me, unzips and pees into a bottle marked, WARNING: THIS IS NOT GATORADE, I think of the millions of other women who love camping, who love everything about it, who would be happy to be married to a man who had figured out how to stop making wasteful trips to the bathroom so he could do things like blow up his wife’s air mattress instead.

  * * *

  An hour later our friends Kerri and Drew arrive. I am pleased to see they do their fair share of barking at each other, too, while getting situated. Setting up home, even a temporary home, is stressful.

  “Don’t put the tent up next to the bushes,” instructs Kerri. “They smell like pee.”

  I give her a hug.

  “Are the bathrooms disgusting?” she asks.

  I look at my watch. “I’d go now if I were you.”

  We are all so curious, hungry for the truth. If only we could ask the questions we really want to ask of each other and get the real answers. Like how many times a month do you have sex? What prescription drugs are you on? Are you happy? Really happy? Happy enough?

  I think about this as I look out at the aquamarine sea. I wish somebody could have told me the whole truth that long ago day on Singing Beach when my husband kissed me for the first time and some presence whispered in my ear that he was the one. That I would adore this man and at times I would hate him. That somebody would always want more and somebody would always want less. There would be days of boredom and irritation, days when life contracted and shrank and felt very, very small, but there would also be days of friendship, laughter and lust, when the world pushed us against its edges, when it nudged us somewhere new.

  A kid walks by me dragging a kite, followed by another kid and another.

  “Hey,” I say, “you’re walking through our campsite.”

  They ignore me.

  “Did you see that?” I say to Drew.

  Drew is a commander in the Coast Guard. I would like to be in an emergency with him. I’m dying to see him spring into action.

  His hands are full with a paella pan. “What?”

  “Those kids. They just walked right through our campsite.”

  “Well, there’s probably not another way to get to the beach.”

  “Of course there’s another way. Aren’t there rules about that sort of thing? Campground etiquette? It’s like a hotel room. This is our hotel room. Don’t they know that?”

  “Just tell them to walk around.”

  “You tell them. We’re at the beach. This is your jurisdiction.”

  Half an hour later the same kids traipse back through our campsite.

  “Commander,” I shout.

  He sticks his head out of the tent. “Walk around,” he growls at the kids.

  I imagine him on a boat, yelling into a bullhorn. Prepare to be boarded. I wonder what he looks like in his dress whites.

  “Where’s the TP?” he yells to Kerri and then I wonder no more.

  In the afternoon we drive to another beach so the men can go surfing. Kerri, Ben and I set up our chairs by the van. We’re too lazy to drag everything out to the sand.

  “I’ll be watching,” I say to my husband, waving a pair of binoculars at him.

  He usually surfs before work, so I never get a chance to see him in action. I know I need to make a bit of a fuss over him. Tell him how elegant and graceful he is riding the waves and how good he looks in his wet suit. And I would if only he didn’t insist on donning a yellow helmet and ruining it all.

  “They make helmets for surfing?” I say.

  “You bought this for my birthday,” he says.

  “I did? Oh, right.” This must have been one of those presents where he e-mailed me the link with a header that said Thanks for the birthday present!

  I glance at the waves. “It looks pretty gentle. You probably don’t need it today.”

  “I wear a helmet when I ski, I wear a helmet when I surf,” he says.

  “But nobody else is wearing a helmet. I mean, I’m so glad you
are. To protect your brain and all. But don’t people look at you funny?”

  “I don’t care what anybody else thinks,” he says.

  “I wish Drew would wear one,” says Kerri.

  “It’s not really my style,” says Drew, which is Coast Guard speak for no fucking way.

  As much as I want to commend my husband for his safety protocol, I find it very hard to carry on a conversation with a straight face while he’s wearing his headgear and I’m relieved when he and Drew tuck their surfboards under their arms and depart for the water.

  “They should make tankini wet suits for men,” notes Kerri, glancing at her husband. “A little mystery. That’s what’s needed.”

  It turns out I don’t need the binoculars to watch my husband. All I have to do is look for his bobbing yellow head. I watch him catch a few waves, but then a young couple diverts my attention. He’s surfing; she’s scampering around on the sand and videotaping him. Every time he loses his surfboard (which is often) she jumps up and retrieves it, wades into the waves, hands it back to him and then they kiss. This makes me think of my old boyfriend Kenny, my first true love. He called me a couple of weeks ago and told me he was leaving his marriage.

  “Are you sure?” I asked him. “Can’t you go to couple’s therapy? Try harder?”

  “It’s not a matter of trying harder,” he said. “The truth is I lost myself. We lost each other. I don’t know how it happened. But I don’t think we can find our way back.”

  “Oh, Kenny,” I said.

  I could hear him three thousand miles away trying to choke back his sadness.

  “For chrissakes,” says Kerri, nudging me. “Are you seeing this?”

  She points to the young woman running after her boyfriend’s surfboard.

  “How many times a month do you think they have sex?” I ask.

  “Sixty,” she says. “Possibly ninety. They’ve probably already done it twice today.”