Wife Living Dangerously (12 page)

I am at the bookstore with the kids, who have installed themselves in various corners and crannies of the children’s section.
Caitlin, true to her habit of picking books significantly beneath her superior reading ability, is paging through a paperback
about a superhero who wears a diaper and rescues kids from evil cafeteria matrons. Lucy is on her belly, chin propped on her
hands, staring at a picture of a golden retriever. Jake is sprawled across the floor practically drooling over a book about
motorcycles. With the kids well ensconced, and after my usual warnings—don’t talk to strangers, don’t follow anyone into the
rest room, don’t believe it if someone tells you I was rushed to the hospital, don’t agree to help anyone find his lost kitten—I
go to the Relationships: Self-Help section to see if there are any books like
Women With Bad Perms and the Men Who Hate Them.

“Aren’t you Michael Flanagan’s wife?”

I turn to see Edith Berry, who is clutching a paperback called
Furious Love.
Her fingers are obscuring most of the picture on the cover, but I get the general idea. Busty woman ravished by dashing,
half-naked man.

Edith runs her hands through her hair. I run my hands through Vanessa.

“Yes, I’m Julia Flanagan.” Fulfilling my dirty deed of the day, I pretend not to recognize her. “And you are…”

She puts her hand to her chest. “Oh! Sorry. Edith. Berry. The paralegal? I sing in your husband’s band?”

I am immediately struck by her phrasing. “I
sing
in the band.” As opposed to “I sang with the band. Just that one time.” I decide to dwell on this distinction.

“Yes,” I say. “You sang with the band. At The Rock Barn once. You were wonderful.”

“Actually, I’m now an official member of Past the Legal Limit.” She puts her fingers around the word “official,” as if using
quotation marks would make her news any less sickening. “I’ve been singing with them for a while now.” Pause. “I’m surprised
Mike never told you.”

I recover quickly. “Oh. Gosh. Yes. Of course.” I thump my forehead with a fist. “I completely forgot.” I’m about to say something
about having a “senior moment,” then stop myself. No need to remind this nymphet that Michael’s wife is old enough to be her
mother. I am at the terrifying point in my life where Ethel Mertz doesn’t look nearly as old as I remember. Neither does Aunt
Bea.

“So,” I say, “how do you like it? Singing with the band.”

“Oh, I
love
it. The music, being onstage. Hanging with the guys. Your husband’s a riot, you know that?”

I run my hand through Vanessa again, but this time I manage to pull it loose. I feel it detach from the back of my head and
try to be inconspicuous as I reclamp it to my scalp, but Edith has already noticed.

“Oh, I
love
those things,” Edith says. “Marlena’s Hair Fantasies. At the mall, right? Here, let me help you.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got it.” A dull glint reflects off Edith’s black leather pants. The smell of something musky is wafting
in my direction. Her lipstick seems freshly applied.

“I bought one for my kid sister’s thirteenth birthday. She wears it
constantly.
I even think she wears it to
bed
!”

“She must like it a lot.” I wish she would stop being so nice. Doesn’t this girl understand that she is an abomination to
me? I wave vaguely in the direction of the children’s section. “The kids. I should get back.”

“Sure!” Edith clutches
Furious Love
a little closer to her chest. “Tell Mike I said hey.”

Mike?

In the category of living dangerously:
Today I look through Michael’s wallet. Big deal. If I need cash I take it from my husband’s wallet, and when he needs money
he picks through my purse, and I did, in fact, need a few dollars. But I had also convinced myself I’d find a little love
note from Edith Berry. So after I slip out a ten-dollar bill, I decide to probe more deeply, past the cash and into the little
flat slots where all I find is a dry-cleaning stub and school pictures of the kids. I felt like a cat burglar, my heart beating
so hard I wonder if I might propel myself into cardiac arrest. If I’d found something incriminating, I’d feel vindicated and
completely justified. As it turns out, I just feel guilty.

I
’ve told Michael that I want us to see a marriage counselor.

“Why do we both have to go?” he says. “I mean, if you think there’s a problem, maybe you can go first and just talk things
out. By yourself.”

“This isn’t just about me, Michael,” I say, trying not to feel demoralized by his resistance. “It’s us. Something’s not right.
I feel like, I don’t know, like you’re drifting away from me.” I choose not to mention Edith Berry and his failure to tell
me that she’d joined the band. Men don’t like jealous women, I hear my mother intoning. All needy and clingy and shit.

“Maybe we should save the eighty bucks and spend an hour in bed.” He slips his hand between my legs. “Better than therapy.”

I remove his hand.

Michael sighs, and in that weary expulsion of carbon dioxide I imagine him thinking, It’s always something, isn’t it, Julia?
It’s like your hair. Or the guest room, that was fine with white walls but you had to try painting a faux finish and now it
looks like something out of a shantytown. Or the backyard, which was fine when there was nothing but grass, but you just had
to have a
serenity
garden with a fountain, and a cutting garden with long-stemmed perennials, and a kids’ vegetable garden but the fountain
is full of algae and the only thing growing are prickly weeds that stain your hands yellow when you try to yank them out.
The truth is, Michael is patient with and supportive of all my projects, even my ill-fated attempt to refinish the piano (don’t
ask).

“Okay,” he says. “If it’ll make you happy, I’ll go.”

“Don’t sound so enthusiastic.”

“You want me to jump for joy? I love you, Julia. But, sweetheart, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with our marriage.”

“I do.”

Nine days later we are sitting in the spartan office of Dr. Milton Fenestra, who listens patiently behind his cherry veneer
desk as I describe the widening chasm between Michael and me. Dr. Fenestra has jolly eyes, silver slicked-back hair, and a
green silk ascot. His nose is red as a cherry, like the custodian who got drunk and urinated on the side of the school in
front of everyone in the schoolyard. Dr. Fenestra asks us if we are willing to try an “unconventional approach” to improving
our relationship.

Michael is circumspect. “What did you have in mind?” he asks. I know my husband. My husband is famously claustrophobic; I
know he’s starting a slow panic as he considers the possibility that our therapy might involve small, dark, enclosed spaces.
If Dr. Fenestra’s thinking of some kind of encounter session in a closet, he can forget it.

“What I have in mind, Michael, is square dancing.” A wry smile appears at the therapist’s fleshy lips. He watches for our
reaction.

Under the desk, Michael nudges me with the tip of his shoe, his signal for Oh, Jesus, get me the hell out of here. I ignore
him.

“I want you to think of square dancing as a metaphor for marriage,” Dr. Fenestra explains, cleaning his ear with the eraser
end of his pencil. “It’s joyful, but it’s also complicated. It’s not all do-si-do, you know. There’s the weave, and the wave,
and the squeeze. There’s square the bases, chase your neighbor, reverse explode. And here’s the beauty part. In square dancing,
you can change partners, but you always return to the one you started with. See what I’m getting at?”

“Not really,” Michael says, squirming in his seat.

I am not as irritated as my husband. I am intrigued, at worst I am somewhat disoriented; I’d come to Dr. Fenestra’s office
expecting—I don’t know—
psychology?
I’d expected talk of absent fathers and controlling mothers, maybe even a little pep talk about the natural ebb and flow
of long-term marriage, the idea that marriage is a journey with its roadblocks and potholes, et cetera.

I had not expected do-si-do.

Dr. Fenestra hands us a slip of paper. A schedule of square dance classes at the YMCA. “I recommend the Wednesday night class.
Myrna Delorio is a genius.” We agree to go Wednesday night, we pay Dr. Fenestra his eighty-five dollars, we walk toward the
elevator in silence. Michael folds up the slip of paper and puts it into his back pocket. He shakes his head and gives me
an anguished look. “Honey. I just can’t do this. Look. We’re two smart, insightful people. Can’t we figure this out on our
own? Seriously. You want us to spend more time together? Why don’t we leave the kids with my parents and go to the Caribbean?
Once this trial is over. And we’re done hosting the Saturday night rock jam at the Greasy Spittoon.”

“Since when are you hosting the Saturday night rock jam at the Greasy Spittoon?” This is news to me.

“Um, Joe just booked the gig last week. I was going to tell you, Julia. I’ve been preoccupied with the trial.”

“So this is every Saturday night? Every single Saturday night?”

“For the next three months, yeah. It’s a great gig, Julia. We were competing with some of the best bands in town.”

The Greasy Spittoon is one of only two topless bars in town. While it’s true that the place has a reputation for excellent
music, men who patronize the place under the pretext of hearing the band are like the guys who insist they read
Playboy
for the articles.

“So, basically you’re telling me that for the next three months I’m going to be spending my Saturday nights alone because
my husband is playing in a topless club?”

“I suppose you could put it that way,” Michael says, “but you could also say that your husband is having great fun—possibly
for the first time in his life—playing music, experiencing the camaraderie of being in a band, finding a safe outlet for the
stress and frustration he experiences at work—and maybe you could also come to hear us on Saturday nights, so you’re not alone.
We can make a date of it.”

“I think a date is when two people are actually together, in close proximity. Me being at a table and you onstage, I don’t
think that qualifies as a date, Michael.” And what did he mean, he was having fun possibly for the first time in his life.
Didn’t he have fun with me? With the kids?

I feel so hopeless and defeated that I can’t begin to articulate what I’m feeling, that I don’t want to compartmentalize intimacy
into a five-day vacation, that I wish he cared less about work and more about me, that I’m still scathed by the Susie Margolis
incident and jealous of Edith Berry, that I’m afraid of getting older and losing what little physical appeal I have left,
that I hate the way he becomes hypnotized by the TV, that I miss the Julie and Michael who made love until we could hear sparrows
herald the dawn.

We do not sign up for Myrna Delorio’s Wednesday night square dancing class, or any other class, and we never return to Dr.
Fenestra.

No pad.

That’s the first thing I notice when I arrive at Sotto Voce clutching my briefcase full of notes on the Mendelsohn mural,
but Evan has no pad or notebook or anything to indicate that he intends to work. He has nothing at his place but a glass of
ice water. I try to ignore the tendrils of guilt growing at the periphery of my conscience. I have my briefcase, I remind
myself. I am here to work.

When I told Michael that I was going to Sotto Voce for a committee meeting it wasn’t a total lie. Evan and I
are
committee members, and we
are
meeting on committee business. So this really is a committee meeting, isn’t it? In any case, Michael doesn’t seem to mind.
Past the Legal Limit is playing at the Brownsburg County Public Library, and as long as I find a sitter, he doesn’t much care
what I do with myself. I suspect he may even be relieved that I’m busy tonight; each of us carries an unspoken accounting
system in the head, a ledger where every favor is tallied, every IOU is scrupulously recorded, and every privilege is parsed.
If we each have an activity that takes us away from the family, one cancels out the other. Nobody owes anyone anything.

Evan and I are finished talking about the mural by the time the waitress appears to take our order and even though I’m fully
certain we won’t revisit the topic during the course of our evening together, I leave my pad and pen on the table to bolster
the pretext, flimsy though it may be, that we’re here on business.

We spend the next two hours traversing wide-ranging conversational terrain. I tell him about the Beach Babes, my fear of flying,
my fondness for chocolate-covered graham crackers, my problems with Leslie Keen. I learn that Evan Delaney played rugby in
high school, considered becoming a Jesuit priest until he kissed his first girlfriend, loves tangerines and Irish music, rarely
drinks, but when he does, favors bourbon over beer. He went to Northwestern for college, Princeton for his PhD. Between his
two degrees, he worked on a sheep farm in Australia and built drinking wells in Rwanda with the Peace Corps. He wasn’t popular
in high school and considers himself gawky. His only serious hobby is speedway racing, has competed in events in the Netherlands
and the Czech Republic, and has broken his arm twice doing something called “ice racing.” It isn’t until later that he tells
me he is a widower; his wife was killed nine years ago by a drunk driver who ran a stoplight as she was riding her bicycle.
(I check his face for signs of lingering grief but he describes the story as if all his mourning is well in the past, and
now it’s a matter-of-fact, albeit tragic, piece of his history.) Like me, Evan never knew his father. And, like me, there
are times when he feels unmoored and alone. He chose the academic life because he couldn’t imagine being burdened by a conventional
job. He had always wanted to study medieval literature, in particular, the poetry of courtly love.

“What
is
courtly love, exactly?” I have a vague notion of knights and ladies in towers, lyres, and paeans.