The Secret Desires of a Soccer Mom (3 page)

When we got home, I called Paul.

“Hey babe. What’s up?” I could hear his fingers tapping away
at the keyboard as he spoke.

“Chloe wants to change schools.”

“Why?”

“Her brother peed in front of the entire student
population.”

“What?” Paul chuckled, and then called, “Hey Mike! I’m gonna
need the costings for the Wellington project ASAP. Conference call at five-thirty!
…Sorry, Paige.”

“That’s okay.”

“So… yeah…,” he said, distractedly. “The kids had a good
day?” (Tap, tap, tap on keyboard)

“Not particularly,” I muttered. God, was he even listening
to me?

“Good… good...” (Tap, tap, tap)

Obviously, he wasn’t. I heaved a sigh of exasperation. “I
thought I’d get pizza tonight. It might cheer Chloe up. Is that good for you?”

“Mike! Call Monayim in San Diego! He should have half of
those numbers ready to go.” Paul turned his attention back to me. “Sorry hon,
but I’ve gotta run. “We’re having some problems with the Wellington pilot
install. The server was dead out of the box and the blah blah blah isn’t
interfacing with the blabbidy blah blah…”

I’d never understood Paul’s computer jargon. “Okay. So…
pizza tonight? Or I could pick up chicken?”

“Don’t count on me for dinner. I’m not sure if we can get
the blah blah in time for the blabbidy blab blah…”

I hung up, feeling annoyed with my husband for his obvious
distraction. Sometimes, it didn’t feel fair. I’d forfeited a promising career
in public relations to stay home and raise babies, while Paul continued to
thrive out in the business world. It was my choice, I knew that. But at times,
I really envied him his dynamic and exciting job—especially when I was stuck at
home with a surly adolescent girl and her exhibitionist little brother.

I decided a glass of red wine and a little quiet time was in
order. With Chloe pouting and blaring Avril Lavigne in her room, and Spencer
happily playing Bionicles on the family room floor, I moved to the front of the
house. Opening the French doors, I entered the formal living room. Intended to
host reserved gatherings or sophisticated cocktail parties, this room sat
largely unused. A thin layer of dust coated the antique furniture, handed down
from Paul’s maternal grandmother. I always felt slightly uneasy in here, like a
stranger in my own formal living room. But on the other hand, it provided a
wonderful escape from the rest of my frenzied household.

Taking a sip of Syrah, I wandered to the front window.
Through the sheer curtain, I could see that it was getting dark. My neighbors’
lights shone like beacons: a lone kitchen light signified that a wife was
busily preparing dinner for her husband; a darkened house with only the porch
light on meant that a couple would be arriving home from work, sooner or later;
a home ablaze with electricity meant a houseful, all going about the chaotic
business of being a family.

Pulling back the gauzy fabric, I peered into the street. At
the end of the block, I could just see Karen and Doug’s house. It was
completely dark. Obviously, Doug was still at work, and Karen was probably off
having multiple orgasms with Javier. Suddenly, I was overcome by an intense
feeling of loneliness. Dropping the curtain, I moved to the center of the room,
where I flicked on the standing lamp then perched awkwardly on Grandmother
Maple’s chintz sofa. I took a deep breath and tried to quell the malaise taking
over me. It was strange: this feeling of emptiness seemed completely
unprovoked. Paul worked late often; I was used to spending evenings alone with
the children. What was so different about tonight?

After another sip of wine, I was back at the window. Karen’s
house was still dark, but as I stared, I thought I sensed movement inside.
Maybe she and Javier were in there right now? Would she be so brazen? Could
they be doing it, at this very moment, in a myriad of exciting positions, in
Karen and Doug’s own bedroom? Or the living room? Or kitchen? Maybe that added
to the excitement—the fact that Doug could walk in at any moment. If I kept
watching, I might see Doug’s BMW pull up out front and Javier would scurry out
the back window half-naked. Or completely naked! I stared at the darkened house
for another few minutes, before realizing that my imagination had run away with
me.

“Enough,” I said, to the empty, austere room, shaking off my
melancholy mood. I had absolutely no reason to feel down. I had a good life! I
was happy! It was only natural to pine, just a little, for those early days of
passion, romance and a myriad of sex positions. After twelve years of marriage,
it was perfectly normal to fantasize, occasionally, about raking your
fingernails down some muscular stud’s back, or riding him like a young
thoroughbred. But those days were over for me, replaced by comfort, security, a
house in the suburbs, and an SUV. It wasn’t like I was
jealous
of
Karen’s affair. God no! And I certainly wasn’t
obsessed
with her love
life. I mean, of course I was interested: I was her sole confessor, after all.
But I hadn’t turned into some voyeuristic sex maniac, peeking out the window at
my friend’s love nest. I was curious, that’s all. Besides, I had many other
things to occupy my mind. Like my children, who needed me to order pizza for
them. I walked back to the kitchen to call Domino’s.

Every second Friday, Jane and I went power walking. Her
trainer said that she’d get the best results if she varied her work out
routine, so twice a month, she skipped her Pilates class, loaded herself down
with ankle and wrist weights, and went for a walk with me. I wore no weights:
keeping up with super-fit, arm-pumping Jane was enough of a work out for me.
She rang my doorbell at nine-forty-five A.M.

“Ready to go?” she asked, marching vigorously on the spot on
my front porch.

“All set.” We headed down the street, passing Carly’s, and
then Karen’s vacant looking houses. I peered, as casually as possible, into
Karen’s front window. You never knew what you might catch a glimpse of in
there.

“She’s not home,” Jane commented.

I blushed, as if she could have read my thoughts. “Uh, yeah…
no, I didn’t think so.”

“She’s been seeing this acupuncturist in the city. He’s
supposed to help her with her infertility.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, she has appointments a few times a week, for hours at
a time. Apparently, he’s very good… very thorough.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“Still,” Jane said, leaning forward slightly as we reached
an incline—her trainer had told her this position would help tone her glutes—“it
must be tough, not being able to conceive.”

“Definitely,” I agreed, copying her stance. A little toning
wouldn’t hurt my glutes either. “We’re really lucky to have gotten pregnant so
easily. It would be such a drag to have to have sex all the time.” Jane shot me
a bemused look. “I mean, it must take some of the fun out of it. It would be
kind of like… work.”

“True,” she agreed. “It’s much more fun to be spontaneous.”

“Oh, yeah!” I said emphatically, hoping she didn’t realize I
was overcompensating. I knew that Paul’s and my sex life wouldn’t exactly
qualify as spontaneous. We had sex once a week, on Saturday night.
Occasionally, during the week, if we found ourselves in bed together before
eleven, we’d get it on then too, but this rarely happened. On the other hand,
if Paul was going to be out of town for more than four days, we would usually
squeeze in a quickie before his departure. That would have to qualify as
spontaneous, wouldn’t it? Sometimes, we were really quite daring. Once, we even
did it in the master bathroom while the kids watched a movie!

“How is Spencer settling into first grade?” Jane changed the
subject.

I was somewhat relieved. “Great! He really likes his teacher
and he’s making friends.”

“That’s good. This is a whole new chapter for you, isn’t it?
Both your kids are at school all day. You’re home free!”

“Right…” I said, rather hesitantly.

“So, what do you plan to do with all this time you suddenly
have?

“Well…” I cleared my throat, and tried to match my
arm-pumping rhythm to my friend’s. “I haven’t really thought about it yet.
Spencer’s just started.”

“This is your time, Paige—time to think about yourself.
You’ve given those kids your love and devotion, you’ve made huge sacrifices.
And now, they’re out in the world, doing their own thing.” She made it sound
like they were in college, not elementary school. “What are your plans?”

“Umm… I guess I’ll have to think about it.”

“Good idea. You should make a list—you know, like your goals
for the next five years. That’s what Daniel does. He says that 87 percent of
people who write down their life goals, actually achieve them. He certainly
has.”

“True.” I mentally envisioned Jane’s husband’s list of
goals:

Make a squillion dollars.

Trade old wife in for younger model. Choose one who will
ensure she always looks incredibly youthful and beautiful, no matter how old
she gets.

Jane continued. “Of course, it’s different for me, because I
have Becca.” Becca was Jane’s ‘girl’, a freakishly tall, eighteen-year-old from
New Zealand who Jane employed to look after her two young daughters, clean her
house and generally run errands for her. Becca was never referred to as a
nanny, a housekeeper or a personal assistant; she was always referred to as
Jane’s ‘girl’. While I thought it was kind of pathetic that a woman of leisure
couldn’t manage to look after her own children, clean her own house or run her
own errands, I desperately wanted my own giant Kiwi to do my every bidding.

“You’re lucky.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without her.” Suddenly, Jane
placed two fingers on her neck. “Heart-rate check.” I followed suit, though I
had no idea what my heart rate was supposed to be. “Let’s step it up a bit.”

We walked in silence for awhile, each focusing on getting
our blood pumping. At least Jane was focused on it; my own mind was racing. She
was right: I’d reached a crossroads in my life. My children didn’t need me
anymore. Okay, they still needed me, but not as much as they had when they were
younger. And every year, they would need me less and less. It was time to think
about what I wanted. What would it take to make me feel fulfilled? Passionate?
Alive? Unbidden, my thoughts drifted to Karen’s love affair. I wasn’t obsessed
with it—really, I wasn’t. But lately, Karen had become sort of synonymous with
truly loving life. Before I could censor myself, I broke the silence. “This
might sound weird but…. Is your sex life with Daniel still satisfying?” There
was no might about it. It did sound weird.

Luckily, I had chosen the right friend to open up to. If it
had been Trudy, she may have pitched herself into traffic to keep from having
to answer. But Jane reacted like I’d simply asked about her recipe for apple
crumble. (Not that Jane would have had a recipe for apple crumble. Becca
would’ve made it for her.) “We have an incredible sex life, but we really work
at it.”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t expect sex to stay amazing without putting in the
effort.” She looked at me then. “Are you and Paul having trouble in the
bedroom?”

“No, I wouldn’t say
trouble
.” I could feel my cheeks
getting hot. “Sometimes, I just miss the excitement of our early days, you
know? Like when we were first together—the sex was so passionate and, so uh…
mind-blowing.”

“You’ve de-sexualized him,” Jane stated frankly.

“I’ve what?”

“
De-sexualized
.” She enunciated clearly. “It’s very
common with married couples—especially when there are children. You now look at
Paul as the family’s provider, the father, the one who does the yard work…”

“I wish. It’s like pulling teeth to get him to mow the
lawn.”

“And he looks at you as the caregiver, the cook, the
housekeeper…”

“
And
the one who does most of the yard work,” I
muttered.

“It totally happened to Daniel and his first wife. That’s a
large part of the reason he fell in love with me.”

Great. Now Paul was probably going to dump me for some hot,
young secretary. Jane read my dismayed expression. “You need to start looking
at Paul as a sexual being again. You need to
resexualize
your
relationship.”

“Okay… how?”

“Go back to a time before the kids and all the
responsibilities. Be more spontaneous, more adventurous, like when you were
first together.”

“Umm…?”

“Wear edible panties! Got to his office and give him a blow
job! Attack him when he comes home from work and make love to him in the grand
entryway!”

“The kids would love that.”

“You get the idea,” Jane said. “Our marriage counselor says
it’s the secret to longevity in a marriage.”

“You go to marriage counseling?”

“Preemptive measures,” she answered breezily, holding her
fingers to her pulse. “Daniel and I are committed to making this marriage work.
He can’t afford to go through another divorce.”

When I got home, I showered and washed my hair, reflecting
on my friend’s advice. Jane was right. I probably had desexualized Paul, and he
had likely desexualized me. I had been naïve to think that we would still be
having earth-moving sex without making any extra effort. A good marriage took
hard work, and Paul and I had been resting on our laurels for too long.

I toweled off, and then stood before the bathroom mirror,
naked. The woman who stared back at me still looked pretty good for a
thirty-eight-year-old mother of two. In fact, she could probably have passed
for—I don’t know—a thirty-six-year old mother of one? Other than the two popped
balloons hanging off my front, I didn’t look half bad. In fact, I was almost…
kinda… hot and sexy. Paul was lucky to have me! And I was lucky to have him.
Yes, he’d gained a few pounds over the years and the hair on his head was
receding nearly as fast as the hair on his back was advancing, but he still had
broad shoulders, strong, manly hands, and those warm, brown eyes that shone
when he smiled. Two such attractive people should have no trouble kick-starting
their love life! If Jane could have an incredible sex life with her
fifty-eight-year-old husband, I certainly could with mine.