During our first day of the Tantra Yoga workshop, we were told to gaze into the eyes of our partner and try to see their soul. I actually saw a Knicks game in Jack’s eyes. Instead of focusing on my husband, I started looking at the other couples and, I don’t know, maybe I was jealous, but they looked rather silly to me. When I say I started laughing, I don’t mean a dainty little giggle escape. I burst into hysterical, uncontrollable laughter where tears rolled from my eyes. “What’s so damn funny?” Jack asked.
“I’m sorry,” I tried to stop laughing. “Let me catch my breath.” But the more I tried to stop, the more I laughed. It took a full three minutes to stop laughing, and while the teacher seemed sympathetic if not amused, she suggested that Jack and I take a class together called Orgasmic Laughter. We declined on that offer, but picked up a brochure for a lovely looking resort in the Berkshires. We rented a cabin with a cozy hot tub, fireplace and king size bed with a comforter so thick a couple could get lost in it. The full wall of glass window overlooked an overgrown forest of lush trees and giant-leafed plants. It was like Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs. The landscape was carpeted with dark moss, rocks and a stream. In the cabin, a small CD player offered Jack and me classical and jazz music, as well as one selection called “Nature’s Soundtrack.” There was a luxurious calm and a rustic sensuality about the place which was accentuated by the scent of freshly burnt fire wood and clean, pure rain.
Jack and my cabin at the inn was probably the most romantic place on earth. Until we arrived, that is. On our first night, I suggested we run a warm bath and set a few dozen candles around the rim of the tub. That always seems to work in the movies. My girlfriends and I just about died during the bathtub scene in the
Bridges of Madison County
when Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep slid out of their real lives and into unforgettable, eternal love. I had twice as many candles as they did, and my secret weapon – lemon oil.
When I was in Longevity Natural Foods the week earlier, I stared at the hundreds of tiny black bottles of aromatherapy that lined the wall. A nice woman who worked there approached me and asked if I had any questions. I told her my husband and I were taking a trip together, and confided that our marriage had been rather stressful for some time. “Do you have anything that will help us, you know, slide out of our real lives and into unforgettable, eternal love?” I asked.
“Why don’t you try this?” the woman suggested, handing me a small bottle of lemon oil. “Put two drops of this in your tub and you’ll be so mellowed out, you won’t remember what the word stress means.”
I figured if two drops was good, 20 would be excellent. She had no idea how much more stressed we were than the average, overworked couple. It might have been 30 drops of lemon oil I put into the tub. I don’t know. It was dark and I just turned the small bottle upside down and shook most of the contents into the water.
At first, Jack and my bath together seemed idyllic. “This is nice,” he said, reaching for my shoulders, pulling my back against his chest. I settled into Jack’s body like an old comfortable chair. Enveloped by warm water, Jack’s embrace was heaven. His arms reached around to the front of my body and he began to sweep my hair behind my back. As Jack’s firm callous hands moved across my stomach and moved toward my hips, I took a deep breath and tried to release my feelings of physical inadequacy. I had gained twenty pounds since Jack and I met in grad school. My stomach and thighs now looked as if they’d been spackled with dough. But chunky women could still be beautiful these days. All the magazines were saying so, as they trotted out articles about how my size twelve was the same as Marilyn Monroe’s. Besides, I wanted to let go of my body angst because I knew Jack would sense it. Zoe says that, like animals can smell fear, men can smell confidence, and that there was nothing in the world sexier than a woman who felt gorgeous. Silently, I repeated the mantra I learned from a Goddess Body workshop I took with my mother and cousin Kimmy last month.
I am a Goddess and my body is to be worshipped.
Easy for those two to say, but it took several repetitions before I stopped repeating
Yeah, right
after my positive affirmation. My attention snapped back to the present as Jack abruptly stopped touching my hips.
“Lucy, do you feel something tingling?”
“Honey, remember it takes me a little longer to get warmed up than — ”
“I’m not talking about being turned on, Lucy,” he snapped. “I meant does your skin feel funny?”
“Funny like —”
More frantic, he shouted, “It’s getting worse. The stinging! Doesn’t your skin feel like it’s burning?!”
As soon as he mentioned it, a thousand tiny pin pricks attacked my body. Then they spread to create an all-out burning on every part of my body that was submerged in water.
“Oh shit!” I said standing up naked in the tub. “It must be the lemon oil.”
“The what?” Jack demanded, now also standing scratching his arms frenetically.
“The lemon oil, the lemon oil,” I repeated, as if that would explain everything. “I put lemon oil aromatherapy in the tub to help relax us.”
“Well done,” he snapped and moved onto scratching his legs.
“I don’t think you should scratch it, Jack. You’ll just irritate your skin.”
“Irritate my skin?! Whatever the hell New Age snake oil you pt in this tub is irritating my skin!” And with that, things got worse. Jack fell into the tub and a tidal wave of unholy water splashed into his eyes and all over his face.
Like Audrey during her honeymoon kidnapping, I would be grace under pressure. Jack and I would one day tell the story of our lemon bath together and how Cool Hand Lucy saved the say. I grabbed his arm and took charge. “Jack, you’re going to be fine. Let’s get you out of this tub and get fresh water to rinse your eyes.” As I lead my blinded husband out of the tub, his foot knocked over one of the candles and set the bathroom rug on fire. It was a small fire, but big enough to burn part of Jack’s left foot. I didn’t know if the lemon oil would be flammable, so I filled a small bathroom glass and dumped water on the burning rug. Twice. Then a third time before it was fully extinguished and the smell of firewood and rain was overpowered by burnt wool and lemon.
After a few minutes, Paul’s vision returned, and I ran clear water through the shower for us to rinse our stinging bodies. “God, Lucy, that was awful,” he said, sounding much softer. “For a few minutes there, I thought I could be blind for the rest of my life. And all I kept think was I might never see my parents again. I might never see my family. I might never see another Knicks game. Fucking blind, Lucy! Do you know how bad that would suck?”
Jack picked up the bottle of lemon oil aromatherapy and read the back of the label. “May irritate skin,” he said. Subtext: You might not have nearly blinded me if you’d simply read the label, you idiot. Sub-sub-text: Can’t you do anything right?
That night, I stupidly asked Jack if he wanted to light a fire and snuggle under the cloud of a comforter. “Lucy, my dick has no top layer of skin. I’m not exactly in the mood right now,” he said rolling over.
Believe it or not, the next night we had amazingly passionate sex. It wasn’t making love. It was sex compliments of an excellent bottle of red wine our waiter insisted we try. Our night was release stress, really, but I wasn’t about to complain. I was so grateful for the contact that I just played the hand I was given and hoped it would grow into something better eventually.
I think that’s the night I got pregnant. In fact, I’m sure it is because it was the only time we’d been together in months.
Nearly five months later, I prepared Jack’s favorite meal — prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes and Caesar salad, and planned to tell him about the baby over a glass of red wine. Here’s how the fantasy goes: I look ravishing, stunning, really. As I put Jack’s dinner on the table, he says something lovely about my cooking, the effort I made and how much he loves me. I pour a glass of wine for him, and tell him that I know we’ve had a tough road of it over the last few years, but that I want to get our marriage back on track. My eyes well with tears of joy and I tell him I have some exciting news. He asks why I’m not drinking any wine then, in an instant, he knows. He jumps from his chair, this time knocking nothing over and starting no fires, lifts me in his embrace and tells me he’s overjoyed.
Here’s how the reality goes: I look pretty good. Not bad. I’m bloated but relieved that it’s because I’m four-and-a-half months pregnant, and not just a cow, as I’d originally suspected. I don’t have quite as much time to primp as I’d planned because I keep repeating the home pregnancy test and calling the people at Planned Parenthood, asking them to please check my test results again to be sure they hadn’t accidentally switched my results with someone younger and more fertile than me. The clinician assured me that since I’d peed directly onto the stick that we both watched turn pink, a lab mix-up was impossible. Anyway, just as I was about to tell Jack the news, he blurted out that our marriage has run its course and he wanted a divorce. “So what did you want to tell
me?
” he asked. It was a home pregnancy test commercial gone terribly, terribly wrong.
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