Husband and Wife Read online

  Mattie I didn’t worry about waking, because she was a heavy sleeper like her father. You could lift her out of bed and stand her on her feet and she’d stay asleep, swaying with her hair in her face, her little pink mouth hanging sweetly open. When I went in her room she was asleep on her back, her arms flung open to her sides, as if she’d passed out in the middle of making a snow angel. There was plenty of light in the room, courtesy of a plastic lamp with rotating butterflies she’d insisted on having on at night ever since she entered the age of fear, since she’d stopped saying the fish-chasing sharks in Finding Nemo were funny and told me, indignant and accusatory, that they were, in fact, scary. As were monsters, the dark, the deepness, and, most mysteriously of all, “going closer to stuff.” Hard to say if she thought I’d known all this and kept it from her, or if she’d just thought I’d failed to realize it myself. I bent over her, kissed her forehead, whispered in her ear, “You’re never going to die,” and she took a long, snuffling breath and rolled over onto her side.

  I straightened up, caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror that hung on her closet door. It was the only full-length mirror in the house, and because I’d read that girls’ poor body images were a result of their mothers’ poor body images I’d tried to resist the temptation, when we were playing in here, to examine myself in that mirror in my ongoing effort to determine whether I looked fat, and if I did look fat, just how fat. I looked at Mattie again, still fast asleep. I went close to the mirror. No reason to resist that temptation now.

  I stared at myself from the front for a while. The thought of seeing Rajiv again, attractive as it sometimes seemed, became terrifying when I looked in the mirror. If only he were a little less beautiful—indisputably, objectively, terrifyingly beautiful. I was a poet and not a high-school or blog-post poet but a certified poet who should have had all the cliché scorned out of her in workshop, but I couldn’t look at his eyes and not think soulful, I couldn’t look at his body and not think sculpted and statue and Greek. And really, if you’re going to yearn toward someone not your perfectly acceptable boyfriend or husband, shouldn’t it be someone who can fulfill the surprisingly resilient fantasies inspired by the Brontë sisters, rather than a guy whose eyes don’t send you stumbling, all aflutter, into a mire of cliché?

  I liked to think that it was my own virtue that saved me, the night Rajiv kissed me, but it wasn’t, at least not entirely. I was right there with Rajiv—the tongues and the belly-to-belly warmth and the hands gripping at clothes and the little smacking sounds that are funny in certain moods but not in that one. His hands were on my rib cage, creeping up toward my breasts, and truth be told all that was in my brain was yes, yes! and then this other thought came swimming upward. A little, was the thought. As in, I’m a little in love with you. A little wasn’t very much, was it? If you gave one person a little, you had plenty left to give another, or multiple others, and wasn’t that the suspect thing about Rajiv, that his love had come so easy it was hard not to wonder how many other women had inspired it? That he was just a little too beautiful? None of that mattered if I was going to indulge my attraction for him, the lure of his for me, and then go back home like nothing had happened. But what if I wanted more, or he expected more? What would happen if I said I was a little in love with him?

  I stepped back. I meant to say, “Wait a minute,” and “I shouldn’t,” and “my boyfriend,” and all the other things you say—should say, Nathan—while you’re stepping back from the brink. Instead I said, “You’re a lot like Nathan,” which was true, perhaps, but not what I’d meant to say at all.

  He stared at me a moment, then gave a quick sharp nod. “How so?”

  “You have the same sense of humor,” I said. “And the same secret sincerity. And the way you were at dinner, making your friend tip more. Nathan would have done that.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. He shoved his hands into his pockets.

  “I just mean—” I stopped.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know.”

  Since that visit, Nathan and I had been back to Austin, but Rajiv had always found a reason not to accept Helen’s invitations to dinner. And so that had been the end. Staring at myself in the mirror now, I wished I hadn’t stepped back, hadn’t said any of that, and if I could have snapped my fingers and been in that moment again I would have finished what I started. I’m thinking of making a movie about a romance between a princess and a clown, he’d written me once. Don’t laugh. They’re in love. Love is serious stuff. That had been a message, hadn’t it? A message tucked inside a joke. But what would Rajiv think if he saw me again, as I was now? Was I considerably wider than I’d been before? Would his first thought be “Oh my God, what happened?” My breasts were again bounteously round, having rebounded, temporarily, from the deflating effects of breast-feeding Mattie. Of course, they also spouted milk. I turned to the side, lifted my shirt and examined my stomach. From the belly button up it didn’t look so bad, at least not when I stood straight, but from the belly button down it was flabby enough to make a talk-show audience gasp, and when I rounded my back my whole abdomen wilted into wrinkles like a deflating balloon. I rounded and released, poking and pinching my skin, and I must have done that for a while because I was still standing there when I heard the door open again and Smith’s voice calling, quietly, for me.

  He was standing in the kitchen with a milkshake in each hand. “I couldn’t resist,” he said when he saw me. We sat at the table facing each other. He sat in Nathan’s place—and, yes, I do mean to make something of that, because I couldn’t help doing so at the time. Was it so wrong to imagine how much easier my life would be if I could just slot one guy in for another? Was it crazy to compare the value of Rajiv’s beauty and Smith’s cooking, as though these two men were viable choices? Why did Smith want to know what my favorite flavor was?

  The milkshake was the kind that’s so thick you have to suck on the straw until your cheeks disappear, then give up and pull the straw out and suck what made it up the straw out the other end. That was the way I liked them, and this one was not only thick but delicious, the vanilla flavor pure and clean. Because it was so good, I took special pleasure in deciding not to drink it. I got up from the table after a minute or two, put the shake in the freezer, said a mental bye-bye to its blue-and-white cup and jaunty straw, and then sat back down.

  The look on Smith’s face beautifully mingled annoyance and astonishment. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You’re going to drink that.” He got up, retrieved the shake, and set it down in front of me.

  “You can’t make me,” I said, but then I started drinking it anyway. “It’s not like it would hurt me to lose weight,” I said, between sips.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped.

  “Hey, look, if you weren’t in the mood for maudlin self-pity I don’t know why you came over here.” I swirled the milkshake with my straw. “I’m an unholy mess of a girl,” I said.

  “That’s from something,” he said. “What’s that from?”

  “The Philadelphia Story.”

  “That’s right. Good movie.”

  “Nathan and I used to watch that together once a year.”

  “Like on your anniversary or something?”

  “No,” I said. “Actually, we didn’t. I made that up.”

  He stared at me. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I really don’t. Clearly I’m going crazy.”

  He seemed disturbed. Perturbed. Discomfited.

  “What’s the word for what you’re feeling right now?” I asked.

  “What?” He frowned.

  “Unnerved? Trapped? Agitated?”

  “Concerned,” he said. “How about concerned. Listen, is Alex back yet?”

  I shook my head. “She gets back tomorrow. Why? You want to pass me off to her?”

  “Well, frankly, yes,” he said. “I think she’d do a better job.” He frown
ed. “I think maybe it’s time you told somebody else what’s going on.”

  “I called my friend Helen.”

  “I mean somebody local,” he said. “Like Erica. Somebody who could, I don’t know, bring you dinner.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Look, I know you didn’t want anybody to know. But Nathan’s not here. If that keeps up, people are going to notice. Plus, you need the support.”

  He was right on both counts. I’d felt bad before he came, better when he was here, and when he was gone I’d felt bad again. Telling more people might make me feel better, but it would also mean that more people would know.

  “I can tell people for you, if you like,” he said.

  “Have it your way,” I said, picking my cell phone up off the table. “I’ll start calling people.” I dialed Nathan. At the beep I said, “Just wanted to let you know I’m going to start filling people in on our situation, as in you cheated on me and now you won’t return my calls.” I hung up.

  Smith sighed. He held out his hand. “Give me the phone,” he said. I thought about snatching it away from him, hunkering over as Mattie would have, but suddenly I was weary of playing the petulant child. I put the phone in his hand. He turned it off and we both listened to the chime as it powered down. “I don’t blame you for being angry,” he said. “But I’m talking about reaching out for support. I don’t know if making Nathan feel worse will make you feel better.”

  “Oh hell yes, it will,” I said. “I’m considering rampant promiscuity. The only problem is the mirror.” I was so, so tired. I let my forehead drop to the table.

  “Have you been sleeping?” Smith asked.

  I laughed. “No,” I said. “And that’s an understatement.”

  “Well, how about you go to bed now?”

  “What’s the point? There’s no one else to get up with the baby.”

  “I’ll stay,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “Will you breast-feed?”

  “I’ll give him a bottle. After yesterday I’m a pro.”

  I shook my head, my forehead turning from side to side against the table. “You don’t need to do that. I can’t go to bed. I’m afraid of going to bed.” I choked out a laugh-cry and said, “I’m afraid of going closer to stuff.”

  “I’ll go in there with you, okay?”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment. What?

  “I mean”—this time the embarrassment in his voice was unmistakable—“I’ll tuck you in. I bet that’s what one of your girlfriends would do.”

  “So you’re my girlfriend now?”

  “You got it, sister.”

  I lifted my head from the table and looked at him.

  “What?” he asked, grinning. “Don’t you all call each other sister?”

  He did tuck me in. He walked me into my bedroom, one hand hovering lightly near my shoulder in case I needed steering down the hall. I climbed into bed with my clothes on, and he leaned over me and pulled the covers up and then gave them a pat. I thought for a second he was going to kiss my forehead, but he didn’t. He said, “Listen to me. Everything is awful now, but it’s going to be OK.”

  I closed my eyes. “How?” I asked.

  “That’s the way of it,” he said, and then he turned out the light.

  I fell, for a while, into an alcoholic doze, and then I woke up, headachy and nauseated, and got up to get a glass of water. When I opened my bedroom door I saw the glow of the light from the living room. Smith was still awake, and I could hear the murmur of his voice. He was talking on the phone. I crept down the hall and stood just out of sight, like a child hoping for a glimpse into the mysteries of the grown-up world.

  “She needs me,” he said. “She’s having a hard time of it. She hadn’t eaten all day, she…No. No. No. It’s not like that.”

  It’s not like what? I wanted to ask. It’s not like what?

  “She’s scared,” he said. “She doesn’t want to be alone.”

  I was scared, he was right. I had two small children with a long list of needs, emotional and physical, and, apparently, no husband to help me supply them.

  “Give me a break, Holly. That’s not what I meant. I hardly think that’s what she’s after right now.”

  Oh, Smith, I thought. Innocent, innocent Smith. If you came down the hall right now and expressed willingness to keep the lights off I’d take you right into my bed, my marriage bed. Nathan said he still wanted me, but now I can’t be sure, and if he doesn’t, he whose children did this to my body, then who will? See, Smith, I thought some things belonged to the past—the moonlit night, the sound of a stranger’s rapid, anticipatory breath—and that was fine, that was OK, until my husband brought those things back into the present and reminded me of their pleasures, reminded me that those pleasures are sometimes enough to override the rest of your life. And I don’t even know if I want the first kiss, the strange body’s mysteries, desire’s sweep and surrender, I might be too damn tired for those things, but you can’t get to what I do want—the familiar, the shared—without having those things first, can you? Unless you want to go on living with me, just like this, I’m happy with this, and maybe Holly can get herself a dog.

  “I love you,” Smith said. Not, of course, to me. I retreated to my room, gulped water from my hand at the bathroom sink, and got back in bed to dream of poverty.

  In the morning he got up with my children, fed them, and made me pancakes. He didn’t love me, but two extra hours sleep followed by pancakes seemed superior to love. We were sitting in faux-marital contentment over coffee and the Sunday Times—Binx down for his morning nap, Mattie watching Max and Ruby in the living room—when we heard the crunch and rustle of a car coming up the drive. We’d been chatting about something on the op-ed page, but as the sound steadily increased in volume, Smith and I both fell silent.

  After a moment, I said, “That’s probably Nathan.”

  Smith nodded. “What do you want to do?”

  I shrugged. I took a sip of my coffee, looked into the cup, swirled it. Hot liquid sloshed on my finger. I stuck the finger in my mouth and sucked on it. It wasn’t that I had no answer to Smith’s question. It was that the answers were manifold, and contradictory, and therefore impossible to express in this brief, suspended time before Nathan walked in the house. I wanted to hide. I wanted to send Smith out to turn Nathan away. I wanted to rush outside and fling myself into Nathan’s arms. Outside, the engine stopped churning. A car door shut.

  “I wonder if he’ll knock,” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I wonder if he’ll knock or just come in.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Footsteps on the porch stairs. The creak of the screen door opening. The thud of a foot connecting with the door, propping it open. A hesitant knock, which neither Smith nor I got up to answer. Then the jingle of keys. I waited for the door to swing open, for some emotion or another to rush in. I might have imagined any number of possible reactions to the sight of Nathan, but I couldn’t have imagined what I did feel, which was that for the first time in our relationship, in my life, I had fallen in love at first sight. Look at him, that man, my husband, the startled, distraught expression, the hangdog posture, the scruffy chin, the disarrangement of his curls that told me he hadn’t shaved or showered in days. I was fairly certain the shirt he had on was the one he’d left in. What a reservoir of tenderness I must have had to fall in love, at that moment, with him. What did it were his contacts, which he was wearing despite his dishevelment. He didn’t like the way he looked in his glasses—like, he said, a middle-aged accountant—but in the normal course of our lives he’d wear them on a sleepy Sunday morning. He’d put them in this morning, in a small, pitiful effort to look good for me.

  “Hi,” I said. Smith said nothing. Nathan went on standing there at the door with his hand still gripping the keys, like a man who’d walked into the house he called his own to find the furniture changed, the children grown, hi
s wife at breakfast with another man. He looked beaten, bewildered, utterly lost.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. There was no disputing that he was.

  “Sorry for what?” I asked. I’d felt, as I said, a rush of love for him, and yet the question came out so light, so casual, as to be cold. We are many people, all at once, and all the time.

  “Sorry for interrupting,” he mumbled, dropping his gaze to his feet. He seemed to feel that I was having an affair with Smith, and that it was no less than he deserved.

  “Interrupting is the least of it,” I said.

  There was a sudden end to the murmur of cartoon voices coming from the other room, and then Mattie appeared in the kitchen. She didn’t seem at all surprised to see Nathan. “Hi Daddy,” she said, like he’d just gotten back from the grocery store.

  “Hi little goose,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. He released his death grip on the keys, squatted, opened his arms wide for a hug, and she went willingly, if with no special eagerness, into his arms. “I’m hung-gry,” she said into his ear. “Can I have a snack?”

  She was hungry, and he obliged her, letting her go so that he could stand and cross the room to the pantry and offer her a cereal bar—no, they were yucky—and an apple—no, it had a snaking bruise—and—jackpot!—a handful of Goldfish crackers, and while she and Nathan performed this ordinary back-and-forth Smith and I just sat there at the table, waiting. I don’t know for what.

  This is why once you have children you should live a staid and stable life, without affairs and disappearances or moonlight of any kind. For the children, of course, because it’s true what they say about them, they thrive on stability, they devote themselves slavishly to routine. But also because with the children there you can’t play out a scene like the one Nathan’s return should have been, the breast-beating, full-throated drama of betrayal, accusation, remorse. Or at least I couldn’t. We couldn’t. Some people do, I suppose, and it’s their children who go on to write the memoirs.

  Smith was the odd man out in this tragic little tableau, and so it was fitting that he was the one to shake us out of the positions we’d assumed. “Why don’t you two go outside and talk?” he said. “I’ll stay in here with Mattie.”