It's About Your Husband

by Lauren Lipton

  “Very well. Your total today is four hundred thirty-seven dollars and seventy-eight cents.”

  Vickie looks unmoved. As for me, I have to bite the insides of my cheeks to keep from shattering the Bergdorf’s calm. Four hundred thirty-seven dollars and seventy-eight cents!

  Alouette eyes me. “You have lovely skin.” She indicates my baseball cap. “You take good care of it, I see, keeping out of the sun.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I stammer. “I think it’s pasty. And I normally wouldn’t wear the hat but—”

  “Porcelain, dear, not pasty. Have you experienced The Elixir?”

  “I, no. . . .”

  Alouette purses her lacquered lips. She reaches under the counter and sets a large pastel box onto the counter. Nestled inside are half a dozen lotions and potions, each, in its glass container, a perfect miniature of its full-size counterpart displayed on Alouette’s backlit shelves. Based on what Vickie has just paid for her two one-ounce jars, this box of samples represents a queen’s ransom in beauty products.

  Alouette slides the box into a tissue-lined shopping bag. “For you. Try, see if you like, and then, if you wish, come back. My card is inside.” When she gives me the lavender bag, I feel like stuffing it under my shirt to make it harder for her to grab back when she realizes she’s wasted her samples on an unemployed woman. But Alouette just smiles.

  Riding back up the escalator, I rummage happily through my shopping bag. “Look at all this, Vickie! I can’t wait to use The Eye Elixir. I’ve started noticing these crinkles . . .”

  Vickie scowls, and it’s clear she has no desire to talk beauty products, and zero interest in being my friend. It’s too ironic. If I weren’t trying to salvage her relationship, she’d be the last person I’d choose to spend time with.

  We arrive at the main level. Vickie heads for the door.

  “I talked to Steve on Friday.”

  Vickie stops.

  “I didn’t want to tell you before. I was in Central Park, waiting to follow him, and he noticed me.”

  Her jaw drops.

  “He doesn’t know I was spying. He just came up to me out of the blue and started chatting. He has no idea I was working for you.” I’ll be amazed if she believes me.

  “He started chatting with you out of the blue?”

  “That’s right.” Even I don’t believe me.

  “That dog! He’s hitting on you!”

  Fighting back a twinge of shame, I assure Vickie nothing could be further from the truth. Steve and I struck up a casual conversation, that’s all. I resigned on Friday because I knew I could no longer follow him. But what I’ve realized, I tell her, is that I might be able to spy on him in a different way. Vickie looks dubious as I explain how, if she were to rehire me at my standard rate, I could engineer ways to keep running into Steve and find out more about why he’s so unhappy at home.

  “He said he’s unhappy at home?”

  “He mentioned wishing you two got along better.” A confession: By now I can’t recall whether he said this or not. But it’s just one more half-truth piled on top of all these others: “I get the sense Steve might consider me a friendly acquaintance he can confide in. Let’s say once or twice more—like, how about, tomorrow and one day next week—I were to ‘accidentally’ cross his path in the park after his jog. I really feel I could get him to open up and reveal some intimate thoughts.”

  Vickie narrows her eyes at “intimate” but recovers quickly. “And you believe you can somehow do this without letting on that his wife is paying you for it?”

  I’d like to tell her to quit with the attitude; I’m doing this for her own good. “Leave it to me. He’ll have no idea what we’re up to.”

  I can hardly believe it, but by the time we leave the store, Vickie is convinced. Sure, she says. Bump into him in the park accidentally-on-purpose. Find out why he’s so unhappy at home. She flags down a taxi and waits for the elderly couple inside to pay their fare and inch out onto the sidewalk, while I steel myself for the twenty-block walk back to my apartment. Almost as an afterthought, Vickie removes an envelope from her purse and gives it to me. “This is for last week.”

  I practically take her hand off as I grab for the money. “Thanks,” I say. “And you won’t regret this new plan, either.”

  “I hope not,” she says. Then—story of my life—she steps into the cab, leaving me alone in the city.

  There are three messages on my machine when I get home. Three messages! They’ve got to be about my résumé. I hit the button without so much as taking the time to put down the Bergdorf’s bag.

  “Namaste! It’s your mother. I’m concerned that you’re never home, Iris. I know you’ve embarked on an exciting new journey, but I remind you to take time each day to rekindle your sense of Irisness.”

  She’s too much to take. Sense of Irisness? Let’s move on to message two, shall we?

  “Hey, it’s Teddy.”

  Teddy called? Why? Does he want me back? Is something wrong? I imagine various scenarios until I’ve missed most of the message, but tune in again in time to hear all that I need to.

  “. . . tax thing from the state,” he concludes. “Anyway give me a call.” Then, in a pompous newscaster’s voice, “Thank you and good night.”

  Tax thing? Tax thing? But I paid our taxes! Deep breaths. I can’t deal with this now. Now the third message really has to be for a job interview. Come on, job interview!

  But it’s Joy again, promising to call tonight at eight.

  I spend the remainder of the afternoon calling the marketing companies I’ve sent my résumé to—a task I had vowed to complete on Friday. In each case, I’m reassured that my résumé is on file. After dinner à la Kellogg’s, I unplug my phone as a preemptive strike against Joy and lie on my bed staring at the ceiling. Somehow, while wondering whether I can really pull off this business between Vickie and Steve, agonizing over how much I might owe in back taxes, and despairing over ever saving enough money to get back to California, I fall asleep.

  I’m shocked awake, who knows how much later, in the middle of a dream in which I’ve moved back into my childhood home in Encino. In the dream, someone is pounding on the door and yelling my name. I open the door. Steve is standing at the far end of a long stretch of asphalt, silhouetted against light so dazzling it’s painful. I cover my eyes with my hands. “Open up!” he demands. “Open up!”

  I awake to realize that Kevin is banging on my apartment door.

  I stumble out of bed and open up. “What are you doing here?” Stupid with sleep, I have to prop myself against the doorjamb for balance. Kevin gives me a quick kiss, squeezes past me into my apartment, thoughtfully scoots me back into position against the door frame, and studies me with a perplexed expression.

  “Did you change something? You look different.”

  “Not a thing.” I stumble back out of the doorway and drop back onto my bed, trying to clear the dream from my memory.

  It was a last-minute trip, Kevin explains; he called from JFK but the phone just rang and rang.

  “I unplugged it.” Never mind, though; Kevin’s surprise appearance is opportune. I get him up to date on my dead-end job search, ask him how he thinks I should proceed, and leave him alone while I find us something to eat. “How about an overripe banana with Hershey’s syrup?” I call from the kitchen. Kevin declines, but to a starving woman with bare cupboards the combination doesn’t sound half bad, especially accompanied by the single bottle of beer I’ve been saving for a special occasion. I emerge from the kitchen dunking a banana slice in a pool of chocolate, the bowl balanced on my forearm, the beer bottle dangling by its neck from between my ring finger and pinky. I set the beer on the floor and sit down with the bowl on my lap.

  Kevin looks up. “You had a game plan you thought was working. If you’re getting pushback from these marketing firms, it’s time for a paradigm shift.”

  My eyes alight on the phone cord snaking untidily across the floor. It’s long past ei
ght o’clock. I set aside the banana concoction and crawl over to plug the phone back in. As if it had been poised for the past several hours waiting for its big chance, it rings, interrupting Kevin in the middle of a sentence. Spooked, I grab the receiver and yelp hello.

  “Hello,” Vickie says.

  Kevin shakes his head and flips open his cell phone.

  “I’m surprised you’re up this late,” Vickie continues, and in the time it takes for me to ask myself, If she thought I’d be sleeping then why did she call? I realize it’s not Vickie but Val. “I have a surprise for you, Iris. Your passport to the exciting world of casual sex! I signed you up for Matemarket!”

  Kevin is deep into his own conversation: “. . . architect a scalable fulfillment model while embedding an adaptive protocol into the transport infrastructure . . .”

  I cup my hand over the receiver and hiss into it, “What are you talking about?”

  “Matemarket! My Internet dating service. They’re having a special offer—your first three months free!”

  Kevin snaps his phone shut and returns it to his pocket.

  “Do you have a photo of yourself we could download?”

  “Val, I’m not interested.” If it were possible to reach through the phone and shake her for emphasis, I would. “And this isn’t a good time to talk. I’m busy with something.”

  “Ohhh. Sure thing. Call me tomorrow.” She has such a one-track mind, you can just hear the wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I hang up.

  Kevin says, “As I was saying, you’ll need to realign your end-state vision.”

  I struggle to focus, but I’m infuriated at Val’s meddling, and there’s a sticky spot on the inside of my wrist. Chocolate sauce. I bring my arm up to my mouth to lick away the offending smudge. Something about the gesture makes Kevin reach for me.

  I let him pull me close. I have on a pair of Teddy’s old boxer shorts with one of those insubstantial ribbed cotton tank tops, the slightly sheer kind meant for sleeping in, and Kevin traces his finger across the outline of my breasts and murmurs, “No bra.” I can feel his muscles trembling, the tension in his arms and back.

  “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

  He pulls the top up and over my head.

  “I’m not really in the mood.” I’m thinking of a nice way to tell Val that if she doesn’t get me off this Matemarket, I’m going to kill her.

  Kevin slips his hand under the elastic waistband of my shorts. I’m about to push it away when he bends his head to kiss me, and my thoughts of Val and unemployment and bad dreams and Vickie and Steve and everything else give way to the soft, insistent pressure of Kevin’s mouth. And as he slides his hand farther down under my boxer shorts, I find, quite unexpectedly, that my end-state vision has realigned itself with his.

  THIRTEEN

  Wednesday morning, after Kevin has left, I sleep later than usual. When I finally feel like getting up, it’s past eleven. I dial Val at Hayes Heeley and recite the phrase I’ve practiced: “It’s sweet of you to sign me up for your dating service, but as you know, I’m not ready to get involved in any way with men. For one thing, I’m still married.”

  “If you weren’t ready to date, you’d be running back to Teddy to stop the divorce,” Val insists. “Besides, it’s too late. You’re signed up. It’s done. Now, do you have a photo on your computer we could download into your profile? Without a photo nobody will even consider you.”

  I look around my apartment. It’s a mess: clothing from last night strewn everywhere, the sheet half-pulled from the bed and drooping onto the hardwood floor like a discarded evening gown. It’s futile to argue with Val. I am aware of this. “Sorry, no photo.”

  “Not a problem. Come down to my place and I’ll take one.”

  I start to collect clothing off the floor. “I don’t want to meet men.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll never find more of them in one place. It’s so much fun.”

  I could never act the way Val does. I’m a stringent user of condoms who took to heart all that sex-education propaganda about how you’re sleeping not only with the guy but with every person he’s ever slept with. But I can see it will be easier for me if I just play along. Let Val sign me up for her service. I don’t have to accept a single date.

  “I’m doing something nice for you, Iris. The least you could do is be grateful.”

  Yes, right, grateful. “Thank you,” I say mechanically.

  It’s the placebo effect—or a miracle. I may have been part of the health-and-beauty marketing machine, but I’m still not entirely immune to cosmetics company promises. After one night of The Eye Elixir, my eye crinkles seem slightly less crinkly. To be sure it’s not a trick of the bathroom light, as I walk to the park for my first meeting with Steve I lift up my sunglasses and check again in the side-view mirror of a van parked along Central Park West, trying not to skew the results by squinting.

  I shouldn’t have pushed my luck. Even if The Elixir were working, who would notice? They’d be too busy pondering the way my taupe hair makes me look like a walking cadaver.

  Steve has asked me to meet him at the stretching area, and I climb the stairs to find him resting on a bench. From a distance there’s a melancholy quality to the way he’s sitting, staring out, it appears, at nothing.

  I greet him as I walk up, but he doesn’t move. I repeat my greeting in a louder voice.

  He looks at me as if he’s never seen me before, then recovers. “There you are. I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

  It seems I’m two minutes late. I apologize and turn on my moderator persona. “But you used that extra time to think of some great, wonderful, fascinating ways to help your wife be the best wife she can be, right?”

  Steve doesn’t respond.

  “But you’re having a fantastic morning so far, right?”

  “To be honest, this is one of the worst days I’ve had in a while.”

  This isn’t going the way it’s supposed to. Hayes Heeley says you should use the same handful of jokey “purposeful icebreakers” as you lead participants into the two-way-mirrored interview room: “Hi, there, my name is Iris, and I’m here to make this the most fascinating two hours of your life!” By the time the person responds with a courtesy laugh, you’re in the conference room showing him to his seat. Nowhere in my line of work is there room for anyone to have a bad day.

  “I’m still not comfortable with this.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t, Steve. You promised, and I promised Vickie, and now you have to keep your word.”

  “I made the promise under duress.”

  “Too bad.” My stomach starts to twist itself into one of the macramé plant hangers my mother had in the kitchen when I was a kid.

  “I’m curious, Iris. Why do you care so much? You and Vickie aren’t friends; you said it yourself. What’s in this for you?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “It’s not the money, is it? Vickie had better not be paying you.”

  “Actually, she is. It would have seemed suspicious if I hadn’t—”

  “No. Under no circumstances are you to bill her for this. Whatever fee you two agreed on, I’ll pay it myself.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. It’s your money, whether it comes from her wallet or yours.”

  “That’s the way I want it.”

  So I agree to his terms and promise to stop charging Vickie, even though, I explain, my interest here isn’t only financial. Broke though I am, I add silently. In my continuing quest for a real job I’ve just sent out another big batch of résumés. I now know that the mailman’s name is Art and that he owns his own home in Queens. I can tell how much postage an envelope will require simply by balancing it in one hand. I’ve even applied this time for lowly recruiter positions. I haven’t had the nerve to call Teddy back, but in my mind I hear him on the answering machine—“tax thing from the state”—and my stomach commences macraméing itself again.

  “If it isn’t just for money,
then why?” Steve presses.

  “I want to help Vickie. And you.”

  “But why?”

  “I just do.”

  Steve must realize I’m not going to budge. “All right, let’s get down to business,” he sighs, and hands me a wad of cash.

  On the way home I call Vickie to tell her I have some tidbits from her husband to share.

  “So share.” Couldn’t she try to sound grateful?

  “Sorry. I’ve got urgent business.” I climb the steps to my brownstone. I feel the urgent need to get to work with the L’Oreal Medium Ash Brown I just bought. Vickie grumblingly agrees to live without my information until tomorrow morning. She’s coming to my apartment. I make her promise not to act suspiciously around her husband tonight (Steve insisted I say that) and fantasize about taking her shoes.

  Yes. I know that by subjecting my hair to a third round of coloring, I risk ending up bald. But Val has summoned me to her apartment tonight to take my Matemarket photo, and I want my old hair back. In my Barbie bathroom I set out the bottles and jars from the box of hair color, follow the instructions to the letter, and this time manage not to let the mixture sit too long. I gingerly rinse out the color, preparing myself should clumps of hair start coming off in my hands, but nothing bad happens, and when I’m finished, despite that my hair feels a bit like wool, there’s the old me in the mirror.

  Miracle of miracles.

  Some music is in order. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like playing music, doing a little lip-synching with the hairbrush microphone, dancing, should the mood strike, around the room. What could be making me so happy? Is it being a brunette again? Is it that I’ve worn nothing but sweatpants for so long that the idea of dressing up, even if only to get my picture taken, is thrilling? Is it the tips I’ve extracted from Steve? All of the above?

  I now know precisely where my box of CDs is in the storage loft, so I scramble up the wobbly ladder in my bare feet and terrycloth robe—if there were people beneath me, they’d be getting a major show—stuff my pockets with as many CDs as will fit, and scramble back down. Teddy may have gotten the house, our friends, and all the wineglasses, but I have the stereo. I wipe the dust off my CD player and turn the volume all the way up—