The Marriage Intervention (7 page)

She stood up, thanked Scott for the coffee and walked out, leaving Blair and her eyebrows in the doorway, Scott and her veiled acceptance of his invitation behind the desk.
 

***

Josie ascended the stairs to the third floor, turning the lights on as she went.
 

Blair Upton wanted Scott’s principal position. She wanted it badly. During the application process, she even started rumors about Josie sleeping with some greasy-haired pimple-faced teenager. Fortunately, those rumors had never taken root. They sprouted like tiny weeds and then blew away in the silence when their other colleagues refused to feed them.
 

But still. It was obvious that if Blair saw an opportunity to move in and snatch Josie’s career out of the air, she would seize it in one of her taloned claws. Josie had to be careful.
 

She turned on the lights in her classroom, and just as she did every morning, she took a deep breath and surveyed her surroundings. Everything neat and organized, just as she liked it.
 

The desks were grouped into tidy tables, each with a colored bin atop it. The students’ art, drawings of the life cycle of trees, hung on one wall in perfect rows. Vocabulary words—absorb, average, brilliant, clever—lined another wall. In one corner, fluffy pillows sat on the floor in front of book cases packed so full the kids had to pry books out of them.
 

Josie nodded. She was good. She had built her career from scratch to become the lead third grade teacher in just eleven years. Other teachers sought her out for advice on curriculum, discipline and wardrobe. She was indispensable. She’d be perfect as the principal.
 

And no one, not Scott Smith and his charming smile, nor Blair Upton and her fake eyebrows, would stand in her way.
 

For once, Paul arrived home early that evening. Josie took it as a positive sign. He texted her at six to let her know he’d be home at seven. She normally ate dinner at six, but she decided to wait for him. They could talk over dinner, just like old times.
 

Josie had learned, though. Just before seven, she dished leftovers onto plates and set them on the counter. She would heat them up when he was actually sitting at the table. To her great surprise, Paul walked in the door at seven sharp.

“Wow, you got dinner all ready for me? I feel loved.”
 

His movements seemed at once so foreign and so familiar. She walked toward him and put her arms around his waist. He froze, just for a split second, and then put his arms around her shoulders.
 

“Everything okay?”
 

I cannot believe he’s asking if everything is okay just because I hugged him. Wow. We really do have problems.
 

“Fine,” she said, her voice a little too bright. “I’m just glad to see you.”
 

He put a hand to her forehead, pretending to check her for a fever.
 

“Are you all right? Lately every time I see you you’re bitching me out about something.”
 

She flinched, but forced herself to brush off his dig.
 

Truth hurts, Garcia.
 

Instead of responding with a snide remark about his work, Josie patted Paul’s butt and headed to the kitchen. She waited until they were both seated at the bar and had gone through the usual how-was-your-day pleasantries before setting down her silverware and launching into her speech.
 

“Paul.”
 

“Josie.”
 

She giggled. “I need to talk to you.”
 

“Ah. I knew it. This isn’t just a regular, innocent dinner together. Tell me Summer hasn’t talked you into starting our own little football team.”

It was a running joke. Paul didn’t understand how anyone could raise more than two children. Summer and Derek, their fifth on the way, astounded him.
 

“No, no. It’s nothing like that. It’s just, I mean, I wanted to talk about us.”
 

Why was she nervous? Paul took a bite of spaghetti.

“Okay,” he said. “What about us?”
 

“Well,” she said, “things haven’t been very, you know, very intimate lately.”
 

“Like, we haven’t been doing it very often? I agree with you there.”
 

“No, although that’s true too.” She picked up her fork and twirled some noodles onto it. “I guess what I mean is that I feel like we never talk anymore. I know I blame you most of the time, but I could do more to fix things.”
 

“What do you mean you blame me?” he asked. Now he set down his silverware. Josie felt even more nervous than she had a minute ago. She took a sip of wine.

“I mean, I complain about how you’re always working,” she said. “And you’re always getting called out during family functions. You’re thinking about drug deals when we’re supposed to be having sex.”
 

“Oh, right.” Paul rubbed his forehead. “And you’re constantly bitching at me about everything, just like you’re doing right now. This is actually a bitching session disguised as a talk.”
 

Shit. That’s exactly what it sounds like
.
 

Josie took a deep breath. She wiped her palms on her legs. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant, we agreed you should pursue the undercover position. Living it is different than I expected, but I agreed to it. I need to accept it.”
 

Paul sighed. “It always comes back to me going undercover.”
 

Josie groaned. “This isn’t coming out how I wanted it to.
 

“I’ll say,” Paul said. “You’re not winning any friends here.”
 

“Look. I just wanted you to know that I know this … distance is partly my fault.”

“But mostly my fault?”
 

“Don’t do this, Paul. I’m trying to fix things, here.”
 

“Sorry. I didn’t know things were broken.”
 

“They’re not broken, Paul. But remember how things used to be? Remember how much fun we had? We did so much fun stuff together. Remember that time we sneaked into that outdoor mini golf place and played a round at midnight? Or that time we were both wide awake at two a.m. so we went to the grocery store and bought ice cream and made sundaes and then had sexy ice cream sundae topping sex? We ate dinner together every night. We were so nice to each other.”
 

He nodded. “You were lots nicer to me.”
 

“At least I admit it. Isn’t that the first step toward recovery?”
 

“Yep. You’re on the road to recovery. Bitchy Wives Anonymous will be glad to have you.”
 

She slapped his arm and returned his smile.
 

“Seriously, though,” she said. “I want you to know that I want to make this right. I want to get back to how we used to be.”
 

“To tell you the truth,” Paul said, “I didn’t realize anything was wrong. I mean, I’m definitely tired of you bitching at me all the time. But I guess I thought that’s how wives are supposed to act. All the guys say the same thing. I’m kind of offended that you’re sitting me down for this big talk about a problem I didn’t even realize we have. You’re blindsiding me, here.”
 

Josie was the one who felt blindsided. She felt her face fall and her appetite disappear. Unsure of what to do or how to proceed, she stood up and cleared her plate. Paul’s phone chirped. A text. Probably a drug deal needed tending.
 

With more force than necessary, Josie put her plate in the sink and stalked into the bedroom.

***

Alone again, Josie shot Summer and Delaney a text:
This Marriage Intervention thing isn’t going to work.
 

Summer:
What? Why not?
 

Delaney:
Sheesh. Way to be a pessimist
.
We’re just getting started, here. Give it a chance.

Josie flopped down on her stomach on the bed, and growled into a pillow before responding.

Josie:
Paul doesn’t even realize we have a problem.

Summer:
Of course he doesn’t. He probably just thinks you’re being bitchy.
 

Why did everyone feel like they could say that so freely? Was it common knowledge that she was bitchy? Maybe she really should join Bitchy Wives Anonymous.

Delaney:
Did you tell him there’s a problem? Wait. Who am I kidding? Of course you did. I don’t think you were supposed to reveal that to him just yet.

Summer:
She’s right, Josie. You weren’t. He probably thought you were blaming him.
 

Josie:
What the hell was I supposed to do? I was just telling him I wanted things back to the way they used to be.

Delaney:
You should have started with the sex. Always have important conversations right after sex. You know this, Josie. We should have covered this at our initial meeting.

“Are you kidding me?” Josie said to the empty bedroom. “I can barely get the man to sit down to dinner with me. Much less get naked with me.”
 

Josie:
That would have been really awesome
.

Summer:
So what did he say?
 

Josie:
He was offended I was sitting him down to talk about a problem he didn’t even know we had. He felt blindsided.
 

Summer:
Oh for goodness’ sake. He had to have known something was off. Men! Seriously.

Josie:
He probably does. Just doesn’t want to talk about it.
 

Delaney:
Hang in there. He’ll come around.
 

Josie:
I hate The Marriage Intervention. I quit.

Summer:
Go initiate some hot Latin sex
.

Josie didn’t respond. Instead, she rolled over and tried to find shapes in the texture on the ceiling. Her phone chirped.

Summer:
Stop procrastinating. Do it. Haha. Dooo it.

Again, Josie growled. But she knew they were right. She dragged herself to a standing position and walked to the bedroom door. She took a deep breath and opened it.
 

But when she got into the kitchen, Paul was gone. A note sat on the counter, in the spot where his plate had been. His messy, all-caps handwriting read:
GOT CALLED IN. DON’T WAIT UP.
 

“Thanks, Paul. I never do.”
 

A wobbly line exists between secrets and lies, Josie thought as she prepared for work the next morning. Paul still wasn’t home, and she found herself thinking about Scott Smith. Again. Especially as she applied a little extra eyeliner. His drinks invitation and his renewed interest in spending time with her had brought up all kinds of feelings she shouldn’t be having.
 

Stop it, Garcia. You’re just sexually deprived. Jump your husband tonight and all will be well.

It turned out Scott was full of secrets, and just as Mama had warned, he covered them up with romance. When they first met, Josie didn’t want to consider them lies, but now she wondered whether she should have. It would have saved her a lot of heartache.
 

For starters, he was not a newcomer to Juniper. He grew up in Juniper, but moved to Phoenix to teach, always fully intending to come back and become principal at Juniper Elementary School.
 

“And I always get what I intend to get,” he told her after revealing he’d be her boss.

The day they met at the downtown square, he had just moved back to town. But it’s not like the place was unfamiliar to him. Yes, some new restaurants had popped up and some old ones had shut down. But still.
 

“I played up the whole ‘stranger in a strange land’ angle so you’d take pity on me that first day,” he said later.
 

“So you lied to me?” She said it playfully, but he must have seen she was a little serious.
 

“No, I just kept it a bit of a secret,” he said. “I mean, I’m kind of new to town. But not really.”
 

At the time, she found it charming that he wanted her so much he put off dropping the bombshell that would keep them apart long-term. Now, as she pulled on a very serious, practical dress that did absolutely nothing for her figure (okay, who was she kidding? She rocked it in this dress!), she wondered if she should have backed off right then.
 

Or maybe she should have stopped seeing him when he told her he had a secret FriendZoo profile, so he could “lurk” (he actually used the word lurk!) on his friends’ and colleagues’ profiles without them seeing his.
 

Just like the other secrets, though, he explained it away.

“It’s just that I’m a very private person,” he said.
 

“Don’t you feel kind of like a stalker, though? Like they don’t even know you’re looking at their profiles?”
 

He shrugged.
 

“They accept my friend requests, so they know I can see what they’re posting.”
 

“But you’re making a friend request from a fake profile.”
 

“True. But it’s not like I’m a creepy bad guy or anything. I just want to see what people are up to.”
 

“Without them seeing what you’re up to.”
 

“I’m not up to anything interesting, anyway,” he said.
 

That was probably true. And anyway, it wasn’t
that
creepy. She might do the same thing. Of course, she wouldn’t do the same thing, but she was crazy in infatuation with this guy.
 

As she did with so many things, she laughed it off: “You could start posting post-coital selfies of the two of us.”
 

The modern-day Josie knew what she had to do: she had to turn her sexy dress into a power outfit, and there was only one way to do that. She went to the back of her closet and dug out the highest heels she owned. She stepped carefully into them before checking herself out in the mirror.