by Autumn Piper
After forcing down a breakfast of flavored oatmeal, I call Aunt Clara. She answers on the second ring. I picture her still at her table, holding one of the three daily newspapers she reads cover to cover without fail.
“Hello?” she warbles, and I have to move the phone away from my ear a bit.
“Hi, Aunt Clara, it’s Mandy.”
“Amanda. I worried about you last night when you didn’t call me.”
“I’m sorry, I was out to dinner and I didn’t get back ’til late. Will you be home this morning, if I come by?”
“I’ll be here, honey. There’s a luncheon at eleven thirty, but I’ll be here ’til then. What time do you think you’ll be?” She has a very active social life at the senior center. She’s been living in the senior housing for only five years. Before that she was all alone on the ranch. She’s directing many of the center’s social functions now. As busy as she is, not to mention elderly, she always wants an exact time frame for everything.
“I can be there in a half-hour. Is that good for you?”
“All right, honey, I’ll see you then.”
* * * *
Washing and styling my hair, I debate whether to ask Aunt Clara for advice. She’s world-wise and quite liberal for a woman her age. Most old women would recommend letting men sow their wild oats and turning a blind eye, so long as they didn’t drink away the family money or lose the farm gambling. Aunt Clara has been widowed for the last sixty years, and was the subject of many a hot rumor in her day. Though she’s actually Mike’s great-aunt, I’ve known her my whole life, and am closer to her than he is.
Mike grew up near Denver and moved here after high school to work for his dad’s cousin, Clara’s son. My parents’ ranch was near Aunt Clara’s. It was she who introduced me to Mike all those years ago.
I was going into my senior year in high school the first time I met him, and I thought he was as close to a god as a carpenter could be. Mike has dark hair, and, by some miracle, peacock-blue eyes. He was buff, and hardly ever wore a shirt when working at Clara’s. I made it a point to ride by on my bike and observe him as often as physically possible. I had the legs of an Armstrong Racing Team member by the end of that first summer. Looking at Mike made me tingle all over, woke up sexual feelings I hadn’t ever had before.
After I’d graduated the next summer, I saw Mike a couple of times at bonfire parties, but I was always with my boyfriend. When we danced at his cousin’s wedding, it felt like he was upholding an obligation, and I was so nervous I barely talked. Then I went away to college.
By Christmas, I thought I had a lot of experience with guys. My boyfriend and I had called it quits before we left for our respective schools, and I made good use of my freedom that semester. Shy Mandy was history. When Clara hosted her usual Christmas party, I employed my sharply-honed flirting skills and carried on a smart, innuendo-ridden banter with Mike. We ended up all but having sex in the barn, and finished the job the next night after a movie date. We saw an awful lot of each other for the next week. It was all fun and games for me, though. I was proud to have landed him at last, but I had every intention of tossing him back in the pond.
Mike had different feelings, as I’d soon learn. He wrote letters several times a week, and showed up at my dorm in Fort Collins one weekend, to surprise me. When he found me sporting a hickey from another guy, he almost cried. He asked me for an exclusive relationship. Seeing how much it mattered to him, I agreed.
By spring break, he was coming up every weekend, at least for a night. He had the phone number to the local radio station, and every Wednesday evening he’d make the long-distance call and request Manilow’s Mandy for me. The DJs got a big kick out of it; I’m pretty sure it was the only time they ever played that song.
I almost didn’t go back to school the next August, but Aunt Clara talked me into it. At least I got a two-year degree. Poor Mike just about wore out the roads across the Rockies that year. I still have stacks and stacks of the letters we exchanged, and boxes of dried roses from the countless dozens he brought me. Mike had proposed before I left for school in August, but saved up for the ring until Christmas.
He lived in one room above his cousin’s garage for very low rent so he could save enough to buy the ring he wanted me to have. It’s a gorgeous ring, and I admit I was completely, utterly, in love. My wedding day was the happiest day of my life, until the days my kids were born.
* * * *
I’ve finished with my makeup, ready to go visiting. Aunt Clara loves cordial cherries, so on the way out I grab a box of them from the stash in the garage I keep just for her.
Clara’s apartment is tiny, like her. She has the world’s smallest recliner and a loveseat even Rachel’s narrow bottom takes up half of. I feel Gulliver-like, walking into this smaller-than-life apartment, like I used to in the kids’ kindergarten classrooms.
The apartment always, I mean always, smells like rose potpourri, as does anything leaving there. Clara buys the potpourri by the case from some mail-order catalog. Once when she was sick I did her laundry, and when I put it away, found several sachets of the stuff in every drawer! I don’t mind it, but the combination of the eighty-five degree temperature in here and the strong artificial rose smell makes it too much for Mike to stand.
He won’t come to her apartment to visit anymore, insisting we take her out or bring her to our house when he wants to see her. The kids still come with me to visit her, in part because of the Nutter Butter, peanut-shaped cookies she keeps on hand. Must be something about peanuts with her, because she also stocks those orange peanut-shaped marshmallows.
She’s watching for me, and throws her door open before I get a chance to knock. Maintenance got the Christmas lights and decorations up already, and they are all lit on this dismal morning. “Amanda! Look at you, child, you’re wastin’ away to just a whiff of a girl. Why, I think if you turned sideways, a person couldn’t see you. You’re not throwin’ up your meals like the girls do these days?”
I smile and shake my head. Although it seemed like a feasible shortcut to weight loss a few times, I could never bring myself to purge. “No, ma’am. Just using the legs the good Lord gave me, and walking off the extra weight.”
“Well, I know that works. Why, EllieMae Kessler walks five miles every day, and she’s seventy-five if she’s a day over forty. I heard talk that she’s lost over a hundred pounds! Isn’t that the darnedest thing?” She’s closed the door now. Can’t let the heat escape–it might dip down to a frigid eighty degrees in here.
I shed my jacket and lay it across the back of the miniscule loveseat, then turn to hug Clara’s tiny body. It always feels like I might accidentally crush her, until she hugs back and my ribs strain not to crack from her wiry strength. Today she notices I’m thinner than when she last saw me. After I assure her my ribs are not visible, and I’m not “anoremic,” we sit at her table. She’s laid out the usual peanut cookies, plus Fig Newtons. I help myself to one of each, so she can see I still eat. I better not use the bathroom before I leave, lest she suspect me of purging.
Clara’s smile tells me she’s patting herself on the back for getting me to snack. “Where’s that family of yours?”
“The kids had sleepovers, and Mike’s hunting.” While telling that fib, I concentrate on the cookie in my hand. Of course, Mike might be hunting this morning. I doubt it, with the hangover he must have, but there’s always a chance.
“Huntin’. Huh! What’s he done to get you so upset on Thanksgiving Day, of all times?” Small arms cross her chest to emphasize her indignation. “I called there and you had to be busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kickin’ contest, but he leaves you to answer the telephone. Men-folk just have no idea the work that goes into a meal like that. And there you were, so busy, but you took the time to visit with me.”
“Aunt Clara, I always have time to visit with you. Besides, you know me. Gab, gab, gab. I can mix stuffing and talk at the same time.”
“Sure, but yo
u don’t do much of a job of coverin’ up that you’re all topsy-turvy inside, now do ya?”
Excuse me? I did an exceptional job of pulling the wool over the eyes of Mike’s mom and sister that day.
“Doesn’t it hurt your head, Aunt Clara?” I ask, laughing.
“What’re you talking about, young lady?” She’s trying to be stern, but there’s a smile peeking out of her thin lips.
“Knowing what everybody else is thinking, and how they’re feeling?”
“I reckon it does hurt some people. You live a couple hundred years like me, and you start pickin’ up on things. Some people ain’t as tough as me, so they pretend they don’t know what’s goin’ on. That’s what they call Alzheimer’s.”
She has me in stitches. “You think Alzheimer’s is a ruse the old folks use to pretend they don’t know what’s going on? Why?” This has to be good.
“Folks with Alzheimer’s get taken care of by younger people. They got the easy life. Store your cottage cheese in your linen closet just once, and your kids order you Meals-on-Wheels.”
She’s serious, which cracks me up even more. I really don’t know how many of her crazy theories she believes, but Clara has plenty of them. She still professes that no one has ever been to the moon–it’s all a show put on by the government. Name a conspiracy theory, and she can give evidence to support it. If she had a website, she’d have an enormous following. “Now quit tryin’ to change the subject, girl. What’s got you out of sorts?”
I’d really rather visit and avoid this topic. It’s easier to ignore it, right? Her beady little eyes are trained on me as if she’s reading my mind. When I look away, she bossily clears her throat, ending my attempted reticence.
“This would be just between us, right? Because I can’t have it around town.”
She bobs her head impatiently. Right, her confidence is every bit as sacred as that of a priest.
“If a man was to, uh, stray, and it was a one-time thing, do you think it’s possible to get over it? Do you think it’s forgivable?” There, it’s out, and no doubt she’ll know I’m talking about my own marriage.
“I think you oughtta take a lesson from the black widda spider,” she says matter-of-factly.
I choke on a cookie, blowing crumbs against my palm. “Aunt Clara, the female black widow eats the male after they mate!”
“Aww, it was a man who made that story up. The truth is, the female only kills him if she can smell that he’s been with another female.”
Oh, that’s so much better. “So, you think we should kill a man if he cheats?”
“Nah, just know this–sooner or later, he’s gonna run into a nasty spider of a woman if he keeps foolin’ around in dark corners, but it’s time to kick him outta your nest. Let the other female kill him when she finds him cheatin’ on her.”
Hmm. “What you’re saying is that if he’s cheated once, he will again, and the one he strays with will find that out on her own?” When she nods, I have to carry on the what-if game. “But what if it really is only one time?” Why am I even asking? Mike was on his way to doing it a second time only two days after the first. Maybe getting some strange is addictive.
“You don’t believe that, child.”
I rub my eyes, aggravated she saw through me.
She’s put her arms akimbo and is staring me down. “You want Benjamin to grow up thinkin’ it’s okay to do that?” No! “You want Rachel to think she has to put up with it?”
My stomach tightens. Now I have guilt if I leave Mike, and guilt if I don’t. How did I end up here? I must be at fault for letting it get to this point, right?
“You take your beautiful young ’uns and protect them like a mama bear does, and they’ll grow up just fine, whether their daddy lives with ’em or not. Keep them from ever hearin’ you talk bad about their daddy, and tell Michael his Aunt Clara will see him gelded if he ever talks bad about you in front of your children. You hear?” A gnarled finger wags at me to stress her orders. No question where Aunt Clara stands on what my decision should be.
* * * *
When I get back to my house, Mike is home, sleeping, as I expected. I slip down to my office to write for a few hours until the kids show up. I hope I’ll get to see them a little before they leave for their Grandma’s. I need to see Ben’s unconditionally loving blue eyes under the dark hair he got from his dad. And Rachel, mini-me, with her sapphire eyes and blond hair, who still thinks Mom and Dad are an accessory to her, a satellite to the ten-year-old center of the universe. How would I make it if they were gone this much all the time? One day they’ll be teenagers, tearing around with friends and having part-time jobs, but that’s a long way off. I hope.
My cursor blinks mockingly in the same position. I’m having something of a dry spell, inspiration-wise. Probably with all the emotions and possibilities bumping around my head, there isn’t room for stories. I spend some time composing the family newsletter to send off in Christmas cards. This might be the last one.
A few times, we’ve taken a family photo in front of the Christmas tree to send out with the cards. Most years, it would be only the kids in the pictures. Since we got the digital camera, I take pose after pose until I get the perfect one, just before the kids go berserk from sitting still and smiling so long.
This makes me remember the day we came home from the hospital with Ben. Mike took an entire roll of film of me holding Ben. I thought I looked horrible in the pictures, but Mike loved them and carried one of them around in his wallet for years. He always insisted on having me in the pictures with the kids in his wallet.
Why doesn’t he love me like that anymore? I want to go upstairs and pummel him with my fists until he gets back to normal. I want to grab him by the balls and squeeze and twist until he cries like I am now.
Mike’s mom calls. She’s on her way to get the kids, which means I’ll have to go pick them up now from their friends’ houses.
My mother-in-law, thankfully, is the least perceptive woman I know–mostly because she’s too busy thinking of herself all the time–so she has no inkling I was sobbing my heart out when her call came in.
* * * *
I’m back with the kids in twenty minutes, and helping them pack for another night away. The ruckus wakes Mike, and he staggers out to the living room to watch whatever hunting or fishing program he can find on TV.
When his mom shows up, he doesn’t acknowledge her presence, and she refuses to speak to him. Just as well. No words means no hurtful words with them.
My kids both hug me and I kiss them. Dreading the upcoming afternoon, I watch them drive away.
It’s only noon. I have two hours to stall before I go on my walk, unless I just split now. Or maybe Mike and I could have it out and then I could go walk. That puts a time limit on it, but how will I get out of here if we’re involved in a heated discussion? How long can it take to tell Mike I’m not forgiving him for The Indiscretion, and I want to end our marriage? Twenty seconds? Thirty? Is it too early for me to drink some liquid courage?
Those rum-n-Cokes last night were pretty good, so I head into the kitchen to concoct one for myself.
While I’m standing on my tiptoes trying to reach the Captain Morgan, Mike is suddenly standing behind me, against me, reaching it for me. After he’s put the bottle on the counter, his arms come around me, and he nuzzles my neck.
At first, the familiar hug is welcome, comforting, but the Polo-scented nuzzling nauseates me. My nerves stretch. I want to pry his arms from me and run, screaming, away. Instead, I shudder, exactly the same way I do when I look for too long at a snake in a zoo exhibit. I’m enduring his touching only because I don’t know what to say to make him stop.
When he cups my breast, I know. I shove his hand away, and step past him. “How many other boobs have you had your hands on this week?”
He sucks in his breath.
My drink ends up half rum, but I guzzle it anyway.
Mike demonstrates an astounding grasp of th
e obvious. “You’re still mad.”
I slam my glass down, mostly only ice left, and turn to face him. “What the hell do you expect?”
Mike looks guilty, and penitent. Of course. His physical advances were his dumb male way of trying to make up. He often makes up by giving me an incredible massage, gradually pulling down my anger while building up my need for him. When we get up to the actual intercourse, it far surpasses the hype about make-up sex.
Damn, did he really think he’d get off so easily? My heart aches with the memory of how easy it always is for him to make me forgive him, no matter what he does. I guess that’s what love is. But not this time. My love isn’t unconditional. Surprise, Mikey!
Now he looks a little afraid. He must finally realize he’s messed up big-time, and it’s not that simple this time. “Mandy, I’m sorry. Really. Please, baby. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t know why. God, I love you so much. Anything, tell me anything I can do to fix this?” His eyes tear up. “I love you so much,” he repeats.
He hugs me from the front this time, and I let him. Why I should be standing here allowing my body to give him comfort, I cannot guess. But I am. Those damn tears are sliding down my own face now. “Imagine how I feel, when every time I close my eyes, I can see you, with her…” I’m sobbing too much to talk. How can I paint this picture for him? God, they couldn’t even be discreet when they did it! One of the kids could have walked in on them!
Their stupidity angers me enough to smother the hurt again and I’m ready to rip him a new one. “And then you talk shit about me to her. Do you have any idea how rotten she was to me yesterday? What right do you have to tell other people about our sex life? Which, I might add, gave you plenty of satisfaction until recently. Did you say those things to make her feel sorry for you, so you could score with her? Jackass!”
I yank myself away from him, and down what’s left of my drink. “And then,” now I’m on a roll, jabbing a finger at him, “that business last night. That was planned, wasn’t it? Even if I could forgive what you did Wednesday, your one shot was blown by what you did last night. I’m finished, Michael.”