Tear You Apart (11 page)

“Some women,” he says when we’re disentangling ourselves and I’m reaching for a handful of tissues to clean up with, “like that.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I thought you might,” he says.

“What the hell gave you that idea? All the other times you’ve tried it and I’ve said no way? Stay the hell out of my ass, Ross.” I’d laugh, but I’m too annoyed. “Christ.”

“Sorry for trying to please you,” Ross says in that pouty, put-out tone that tastes to me like pickle juice.

“Pay attention to me for once!” I shout. “Just...listen when I tell you something.”

“I listen to you all the time.”

“Well, apparently, you don’t hear me.” I get out of bed on knees gone weak not with passion, but anger. In the bathroom, I pee, I wash my hands, I splash my face with water to relieve the burning in my eyes.

In the bedroom, Ross has put on briefs, while I have to find my scattered clothes, somehow lost although I didn’t toss them aside in anything like wild abandon. He’s in my way, digging through the pile of laundry on the bed. He doesn’t fold any of it, just tosses it aside while he looks for what he wants. Instead of waiting for him to move out of the way, I go instead to my dresser to pull on a clean pair of panties and a T-shirt.

“Did you wash all this stuff together?”

I turn to see him holding up a white dress shirt and a fleecy pullover, one in each hand. “Yes.”

There’s nothing on the white shirt but a few strands of fuzz from the fleece, but Ross stares at it as if it’s full of holes. “It’ll have to go through the wash again.”

“What?” I take it from his hand, look it over. I pluck the fuzz from the sleeve and a bit from the collar and shove it back toward him. “There. All fine.”

“I thought I asked you to wash my whites separately,” Ross says. His voice isn’t pickle juice now, it’s that softer, wrinkly tone, that patronizing and falsely calm voice he uses when he’s angry and trying to act as if he’s above that sort of thing.

“And I told you that I’d be happy to, so long as you separated them from everything else.”

He stares at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language. “I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

“The big deal,” I tell him, “is that if you’re going to ask me to do something for you, and I ask you to make it easy for me to do it, it would be great if you actually did.”

“Why can’t you just do it for me?” Ross asks.

There are always choices. Peace we keep with words we don’t say. Things we don’t do. But losing my fury just then isn’t a choice, it’s not something I decide. It simply leaks away from me, replaced by a bone-deep despair and utter exhaustion. I have no words. I have no actions. I have nothing left for him, and I push him gently to the side to get at the laundry on the bed. I sort through it, pulling the whites and tossing them into an empty basket while he watches. They fill barely a quarter of the space, and washing them again will be a waste of resources and my time, but I can’t fight with him about it again. If I do, I will say things I don’t want to say and do things I don’t want to do.

If marriage is compromise and working together, sometimes it’s also just biting the fuck out of your tongue to keep yourself from ending it all over a basket of laundry.

Chapter Seventeen

“It could’ve been worse,” Andrea says. She’s been my best friend for so long I think I know what she’s going to say, but she surprises me. “At least he was having some kind of sex with you, even if it was shitty.”

I pluck at the bread stick in the basket between us and give her a look. “Really? You think shitty sex is better than none? I don’t know about that.”

“Jonathan hasn’t had sex with me in four months,” my friend says flatly.

I don’t know what to say. Andrea shrugs and punches her salad with her fork until it submits to being eaten. She chews and swallows, washing it down with iced tea.

“He can’t keep it up,” she adds.

“Ouch. I’m sorry.” I ordered a half sandwich, but have no appetite for it or the soup that came with it. Will hasn’t called back since the day I deleted his voice mail. I was an idiot for not listening to it. I can’t stop thinking about what it might’ve said. But I focus on my friend now. “Wow. Can he take something for it?”

“He won’t.” Andrea lifts her chin, though her bottom lip wobbles. “He says it’s just a passing thing, stress from work, or that he’s tired. Or that I need to lose a few pounds. If I worked out more, he’d be more turned on.”

“What?” Outraged, I slap the table. She’s thinner than I’ve ever seen her. It also explains the salad. “What a dick!”

She shrugs again, not meeting my eyes. “I put on some weight. It happens. Everything gets harder when you’re over forty.”

“Except Jonathan’s dick, apparently,” I say before I can stop myself, and feel instantly terrible about making fun of what is obviously not a humorous situation.

We didn’t get to be best friends because we don’t understand each other, though. Andrea looks first surprised, then begins to laugh. In another minute we’re both cackling like grackles, turning heads at the other tables, but we don’t care. It feels good to laugh like this, so hard we both end up in tears.

“I tried to be understanding.” She wipes her eyes. “But it makes me feel like crap, Elisabeth. I mean...I’ve tried everything except wrapping myself in plastic wrap and greeting him at the door with a bacon sandwich.”

I twirl my spoon through the soup I don’t want to eat. “You shouldn’t have to. Have you at least tried to get him to the doctor? Maybe there’s something else going on?”

She shrugs. “He won’t go. He’s a stubborn asshole. His dad died of a heart attack when he was just a few years older than Jon is now. I think he’s just trying to ignore anything that could be bad.”

“Like that ever works.” Impulsively, I reach for her hand to squeeze it. “I’m sorry, honey, that sucks. A lot.”

“Yeah. It does. I haven’t had an orgasm in, like, a year. Even when he was still sleeping with me, it wasn’t very good.” She stabs her salad again, and I can’t blame her. I’d murder more than lettuce if I hadn’t come in that long.

I’m surprised enough to blurt, “You don’t take care of yourself?”

I’ve known this woman since we were virgins who thought French kissing was going to be gross. (Sometimes, it totally is.) We’ve shared stories about our periods, childbirth, boyfriends, husbands, our hopes and dreams and fears. There isn’t much I could think of that Andrea and I haven’t dissected and torn apart over the years, but all at once I realize that we haven’t ever talked about masturbation. I assumed she does it, but the look on her face tells me I’m way off base.

“Andrea!”

She shakes her head, looking embarrassed. “I...just...no. I just don’t do that.”

“Why?” As far as I know, she’s not religious or ashamed of sex or anything like that. She’s certainly had orgasms.

“It just doesn’t work for me. I mean, I’ve tried it, but it’s just not the same when I do it myself.” She makes a familiar face, the same one she’d make if I tried to get her to drink straight tequila.

It’s not nice to laugh at her, but her expression tips me into a giggle. “That’s terrible!”

“Right?” It’s good to see her smile. Better than the way she looked when we first got here. “I’m going crazy!”

“Don’t you have a vibrator?”

Another embarrassed grin. “No.”

“Andrea. You have to get one.” I lean forward to keep the conversation between us.

She gives me a raised brow. “Yours didn’t make it any better with Ross that last time, did it?”

“Ugh. No. But when I use it alone, it’s great.” I use it alone a lot more than I do with my husband.

“I like...you know. I need something—” she makes a discreet hand motion “—inside.”

Just like that, we’re laughing again. Snort-laughing this time, hard enough to turn heads. We laugh so hard the waiter comes over to ask us if we need anything, and all either of us can do is shake our heads and wave him away.

“You can get something for that!” I whisper through my guffaws. “Check Google!”

Andrea’s laughter fades. She wipes her eyes with her napkin, but they still glisten. “It still wouldn’t be the same, Elisabeth.”

My heart breaks for her a little, and new words slip out before I can really think about what I’m saying. “So, find yourself a man.”

Neither of us is laughing now. Andrea is quiet for a moment, toying with her fork but no longer eating. I cover the silence by taking a long, long drink of water.

“I could never,” she says finally. “I mean...first of all, who’d have me?”

I’ve never had much of an opinion about Jonathan one way or another, but right now I hate him for making my best friend feel she’s not fuckable. “You would have no trouble finding someone. None.”

She sighs. “Sure. Right. But even if I did, I could never cheat on Jonathan. It would be wrong. I’d feel too bad.”

What can I say to that? It’s not as if I disagree with her. Just a few months ago, if we’d been sitting across from each other like this and she’d been the one to suggest such a thing to me, I’d have responded the same way.

This time when the waiter comes back, to ask if he can bring me a box for the lunch I haven’t touched, I shake my head. “No, thanks. But we’ll take a dessert menu.”

“Oh, no,” my friend begins, but I wave her to silence.

“Shush. If ever there was a day when we needed chocolate lava cake and a shot of Bailey’s in our coffee, it’s today. And lunch is my treat.”

She protests, but I insist. I’ve missed her so much, it’s terrible and unbelievable we let it go so long. Over cake and coffee, she tells me about her job, boring but with great benefits, and how she could get a promotion if she applied for it, but there’d be too much travel to Europe involved.

“Wha-a-at?” I let the word drag out, the Bailey’s and laughter giving me a little boost. “Are you crazy? How cool would it be to get paid to visit Italy? Andrea, c’mon! Your kids are grown. What’s stopping you?”

Her look tells me everything. I feel awkward. She shrugs.

“I just don’t like to be away from him,” she says. “Even with the problems. I know you’ll probably think I’m crazy for that, too. But I hate it when I have to go to sleep without him. When he’s gone on business, I miss him like crazy, and that’s me being in my own house. I can’t imagine what it would be like to miss him and be homesick, too.”

I wish I could say I understand, but I don’t. I nod anyway, because how can I say out loud that I don’t miss my husband when he goes away? That, in fact, I’ve come to prefer it when he’s gone?

“But you,” Andrea says suddenly. “We’ve talked all about me. What about you? What’s going on with you? How were the girls’ graduations?”

“Both of them told us not to come. And they didn’t want a big party, either, since both of them had to be at work right away after graduation.” I’d wanted to have them both come home for a weekend, but it hadn’t worked out.

Andrea’s kids are a few years younger, still in college. She shakes her head. “I can’t believe they’re old enough to be out of college.”

“That means we’re old,” I tell her, though sitting here I feel as if we’re both still sixteen, scribbling notes to each other in class. “Remember our code?”

For a second she looks blank, then slaps a hand to her forehead. “Oh. Wow. Yes. Holy cow, that was so long ago. How did you remember it?”

“I guess I’ve been remembering a lot of things.” I can’t keep myself from sounding sad.

Andrea gestures for the waiter. “Bring wine.”

We sit in that restaurant for another few hours while I tell her about my frustrations with Ross. They are stupid things. I know it. Dishes in the sink, boots in the wrong size.

“I couldn’t even exchange or return them,” I tell her. The wine has made me eloquent with my hands, if not my words. “He got them on clearance!”

“He tried,” she offers helpfully.

“He tried,” I agree. “But he did not listen.”

Andrea is silent for a moment or so. Then she reaches to squeeze my hand. “It will get better, Elisabeth. You’re just in a rut. Maybe you should go away together, the two of you. Or try a date night...?”

I would have to plan a trip. A night out. With his schedule it’s practically impossible to do either, and when it comes right down to it, I realize something I won’t admit to her—I don’t want to. I do not want to go away for the weekend with Ross. I do not want a date night.

I want to tell her about Will so much. I want to unburden myself, not of the guilt I still don’t feel, but of the anguish over not having listened to his message. I want to tell her everything, not to lift it from my shoulders, but so that I can remember and relive it. But because Andrea is my friend and I love her, because I don’t want to put her in a position where she’d feel uncomfortable, I seal my mouth on my secret.

“Yes,” I tell her. “A date night. Sounds good.”

We part with hugs and promises to get together soon, though I think we both know it will probably be another six months before we do. In the last moment before we walk in opposite directions to catch our separate trains, my best friend since forever grabs me in a last-minute hug.

“Thanks,” she says against my cheek. “For listening.”

“Anytime.” I squeeze her hard. “Of course.”

Andrea pulls away with her eyes bright again, and I hate that she’s so sad. For that matter, I hate that I am. “You know I’m there for you, right? If you need to talk about anything, ever.”

“I know.” And my mouth opens again to spill out everything that happened with Will, how I can’t stop thinking about him. But I remember what she said in the restaurant, and I know there are some things even best friends can’t share. “Same here. If you need to talk, keep me updated, whatever. I’ll be thinking about you. It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, in a burst of optimism that feels utterly fake.

She makes that tasting-tequila face again. “It’s just sex, Elisabeth. Nobody ever died without it.”

It’s not the lack of sex that’s killing her, it’s feeling unloved and unattractive and unfuckable, and I’m so angry at her husband that I’d gladly kick him right in his inoperative junk right now.

“We take our cars to the shop when they need the tires rotated. We get our hair done when we want to look nice, get massages when our muscles are sore, and go to the chiropractor when our backs hurt. Why the hell can’t we go somewhere and just get laid when we need it?” I say, suddenly vehement without meaning to sound so harsh. “I mean, it’s just sex.”

“But it never would be,” Andrea says. “Just sex, I mean. It would always become something else.”

“Why?” I demand. “Why does it have to?”

Andrea makes that face again. “I don’t know. But it would. For me, I know it would.”

“Maybe not.”

She laughs and hugs me again, shaking her head. “It would be disaster.”

“Maybe,” I tell her, “it would be a beautiful disaster.”

“No matter how pretty it is,” Andrea says, “it would still be disaster,” and then we both have to run to catch our trains.

On the way home, I stare at the passing scenery and wish I hadn’t had so much to drink. My stomach is upset now. My head aches. My mouth is dry. I close my eyes but that makes it worse.

I pull my phone from my purse and thumb open Will’s contact information. I don’t have a picture stored for him. Just his number.

And then, because I’m stupid, I type in a text. My brain’s too fuzzy to make a sentence out of nonsense words. All I can manage is three letters, one for each word I want to say.

I M Y

And though I wait and wait, Will doesn’t text me back.