I’ll take dead people for $800, Alex.
Chapter 14
On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up to the sound of my purse ringing. I groped the floor, found my cell phone and picked it up before realizing that Reilly was asleep next to me.
“Hello,” I said in a daze.
“Sleeping late, Malone?” Matt said. Equal parts thrill and horror. Reilly began to rustle, then rolled over. After having shared a bed with him for eleven years of our marriage and the eighteen months prior to that, I knew that I had another ten minutes or so before Reilly would wake up on his own. He lay on his shirtless back practically motionless and had a two-decibel conversation with himself using only the letter M. “Mmmmm?” Reilly asked himself if it was morning already. “Mmmm mmm,” he said, assuring himself that it was but that he didn’t have to wake up right that minute. “Mmmmm?” asked what day of the week it was. With another “Mmm” he reminded himself that today was a holiday. “Who’s that?” Reilly asked, jarring me with his unexpected inquiry.
“Jennifer,”
I mouthed.
“Big problem.”
I pointed to the kitchen to let him know I’d take the call there, then motioned that he should go back to sleep.
“Who’s that?” asked Matt.
“Hmm?” I stalled, walking into the kitchen.
“I heard a man’s voice,” Matt said, a bit annoyed.
“David Sedaris on NPR. My alarm just went off. Have you ever heard any of his essays?” I decided I would keep talking about David Sedaris until Matt changed the topic, satisfied that the only other man in my bedroom was a lisping, effeminate essayist sharing his experiences as an American in Paris. “I just finished one of his books and I was howling all the way through it. There’s this one where —”
“Only two more weeks till I’m there,” Matt interrupted. “You know what I want to do when I get there?”
Um, not talk about David Sedaris’ book, I guess.
“No,” I answered.
Matt laughed. “Okay, do you
want
to know?”
“Yes, that would be great,” I said like a bad actress reading a bad script.
I forgot that I’d put on a kettle for tea, so when it whistled, I startled, momentarily thinking a train was going to hit me.
He laughed again. “I want to make up for all the sex we’ve missed over the last six weeks. I had this dream that we did it on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
Get off the phone now! Find some reason to end this conversation right this second.
“Indeed,” I nervously laughed.
“Yeah, indeed,” Matt mocked my formality.
“So, Malone. You sportin’ that just-rolled-out-of-bed look?” Matt asked mischievously. “What’ve you got on?”
Shit! This is not a good time for phone sex. Think, think, think.
“Not much,” I returned. I heard Reilly stretching himself out of bed. I never noticed before how loud of an activity this was.
Get off the phone!
“You know what I got you? Matt asked.
Why do I have the distinct feeling it’s not going to be a food processor?
“What?” I asked, trying not to sound terrified.
“What do you call those sexy little numbers that’s like a bra but keeps going down all the way to your waist?”
A bustier?!
“Yes, I know what you’re talking about. I’ll enjoy that very much,” I said, proud of my comeback.
By the grace of God, Reilly motioned that he was going to take a shower.
“Can you hang on for a second?” I asked Matt. I waited until I heard the water running, then returned to my conversation a free woman.
“Malone, you know what I’d be really thankful for on this day of gratitude?” Matt asked. I could see his smile through the phone. “Tell me what you’re going to do to me when I get there.”
I silently thanked God for allowing me to get dirty with my boyfriend while my husband got clean in the next room. My entire body pounded like a conga drum being beaten by a tribe leader. I couldn’t figure out whether I was terrified of getting caught, or enthralled by Matt’s request for holiday morning phone sex.
* * *
On the cab ride to Penn Station, it was clear that Reilly suspected nothing, which I found both a relief and an annoyance. Before boarding, he stopped at the magazine rack and scanned the reading selection. “You want something to read?” he offered. I shook my head no. “Mentos?” He held up the candy cylinder. “Anything?”
Just out of this sham of a marriage.
Reilly and I boarded the late morning train and arrived at my mother’s and her husband Wally’s house a little after noon. In just an hour and twenty minutes, we would be in a different universe. Upstate New York. On the ride up, I questioned the wisdom of my plan to find Reilly a new wife.
This is getting too risky
, Common Sense advised me.
This morning was a close call. Too close. Just tell him you want a divorce, throw away the lonely hearts letters, and move on with your life with Matt.
That’s the easy way out,
another part of me argued.
Sure, this is hard work, but you’re doing something good for another person. It’s worth the effort. Reilly is a good man who deserves a fresh start with another woman.
Prudence, you had the impulse to shove a pack of Mentos up Reilly’s ass at the train station. How fair is that?
Common Sense chimed in again.
“Reilly?” I said to him tentatively as he read his magazine.
Don’t do this on Thanksgiving! Then, every year he’ll remember that he was the big holiday turkey. Wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, be nice.
Reilly waited for me to continue. “Happy Thanksgiving,” I smiled.
Home had not changed a bit since I left for college. Cab drivers stood at the train station, jovially engaging disembarking passengers, offering them rides in their station wagon “limousines.” Wally was leaning against his car parked outside the train station. He wore a light brown corduroy suit with western style seams that he almost certainly purchased at a 1974 rack sale at JC Penney. He held one hand in his pocket and struggled to lift the other one to wave. Wally and I get along just fine. He’s just exceedingly low energy.
I’ve known Wally almost my entire life, though he and Mom didn’t marry until I was nineteen years old. Wally is the town veterinarian and has seen our family through two dogs, six cats and a bunny. I always wondered what my mother saw in him. He is either unable or unwilling to speak in sentences that exceed two words. It’s almost as if he’s playing a game where he’d be penalized for three- or four-word responses. And Wally only responds. Initiating conversation is far beyond his social capabilities. Mother once confided that she knew that Wally wasn’t the most dynamic guy around. “But he’s kind and decent, and I really do enjoy his company,” she explained. “I don’t want to grow old alone.”
I remember the first time I met Wally. I was about five years old and our family dog was ill. Father and I took Bambi in to Wally’s office. When we got into the exam room, there was a long silence between the two men. Father waited for Wally to ask what was wrong with the dog. Wally waited for him to tell him. Finally, Father broke down.
“She’s just not her usual self, you know, Doc? She’s sluggish and she has no appetite,” Father explained.
I remember thinking Wally was some God-like figure who could bring sick animals back from the dead and make the world right again. Years later, my outlook had changed quite a bit, and Wally was merely a doctor. When I was fifteen and Bambi died, I figured Wally wasn’t even a very good doctor, either.
“Happy, happy turkey day,” Mom said as she greeted Reilly and me at the front door. She stamped us both with her lipstick, and took our coats to hang on the rack. “Prudence, why are your lips all swollen up like that?”
“They’re not swollen, they’re full,” I corrected.
“Prudence got injected with cells from a dead person,” Reilly told my mother.
“What on earth is he talking about?” Mom asked.
“Oh, don’t pay any attention to Reilly,” I said, swatting my arm in his direction.
“That reminds me, honey,” Mom began solemnly. “Mr. Flanhery, your gymnastics coach from high school, died last month.”
That was the first time it really hit me that the formerly living person who was injected into my lips had a name, a job and people who missed him this holiday. I was only somewhat comforted by the fact that it was highly unlikely that my overly flatulent gym coach had made his way under my skin. Who was this dead person Dr. Kaplan injected in me anyway? How much did we know about him? Or her? I thought about demanding a bio of the cadaver who was now resting in peace in my lips, but didn’t want to make Dr. Kaplan angry right before he cut my eyelids open.
In her own way, Mom was a slave to beauty too. She wears her dyed brown hair in a style you can only get by sitting in a beauty parlor every Saturday morning and sleeping with a hair net on. Her nails are always perfectly manicured in a festive color. She never, and I mean never, leaves the house without makeup. If the house were on fire, she’d be sitting at her vanity table painting on lip liner as the flames lunged at her. This Thanksgiving, she wore a gravy brown wool dress with a burnt orange Pilgrim-style collar.
Wally sat in the family room watching a football game and shouted at the television. He was so deep in his favorite old chair that he looked like a melted marshmallow on the top of Mom’s yam dish. Wally rested his crusty bare feet on a well-worn ottoman.
“Holding!” he shouted angrily at the television. He would stay parked in his chair until the absolute last possible moment before the meal. Often, I thought we should give him his silverware while he was still sitting so he could just run to the table, holding his fork and knife above his head when the plates hit the table.
Reilly looked around the house, noticing every new souvenir my mother had picked up from her travels. How could the man notice an ornamental plate hanging in the foyer, yet be completely unaware that I was having an affair? “Beverly, we brought you some pumpkin pies from that bakery near our place,” Reilly told Mom. What I loved about Reilly was also what I hated. He was just so damn nice.
“You kids are too good to me,” she said, taking the pies into the kitchen. Mom can never just say “thank you” when people extend themselves for her. She always carries on about how it’s too much, we’re too good, she doesn’t deserve it. Sometimes I just want to shout, “Shut the fuck up and eat the damn pie!”
Do I have any pills to help take the edge off? I am going to hurt someone very soon. Wine on table. Must pour.
Mom and Wally’s home is decorated in early American, with a spinning wheel in the living room and a large oak grandfather clock in the corner. The couch and love seat are striped and the walls are cluttered with family photos and sketches of animals.
Mother is so animated, her voice sounds like a dainty little minuet being played on the piano. Wally, however, sounds like one low note plunking down every so often. If a ballet company were asked to interpret the relationship, the performance would start out with a lovely little dancer twirling, leaping around the stage before someone dropped a dead cow from the rafters.
“So, Prudence tells me you were in Amsterdam recently, Reilly. Then it’s off to Tokyo?” Mom asked. “Wally and I are planning a trip to Hong Kong soon, isn’t that right, dear?”
“Yep,” Wally answered.
“Yes, unfortunately most of my time is spent locked up in a hotel meeting room somewhere, so I don’t get to see much of the culture,” Reilly said.
“Oh please,” I slurred.
All eyes turned to me. Except, of course, for Wally, who had more urgent matters to deal with. “Yams please.”
I passed Wally his yams and continued. “You’re so full of shit, Reilly. Who are you kidding here? You want to enjoy the culture? Please! I’ve been begging you to go to Italy for eleven freaking years, but you’d rather go to Aruba because you’ve already seen the inside of the conference room in the Rome Hilton. Let’s just have a bullshit-free holiday, shall we?”
Mom tried to keep an everything-is-normal expression on her face, but anyone could see she was thrown off by my drunken confrontation. After a moment of contemplation, Mom decided to continue on the topic of travel. Undaunted, she continued. “Wally and I haven’t been to Italy in years. We were just talking about what a magical place Florence is.”
That sounds just like something Wally would say, too.
On the train ride home, Reilly asked me if I wanted to take a trip to Italy this summer.
I will be taking a trip to Italy this summer
, I sniped silently before realizing that I had exceeded my own capacity for horrible that day.
“I’m sorry about that scene I made back at Mom and Wally’s,” I said. “It was just the wine talking. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“In vino verite,” he said.
How can I be such a bitch to a guy that forgives me in Latin? I am a very, very bad person.
* * *
The next week, I had my eye surgery after Reilly left for a short trip to Washington to testify before a Congressional committee meeting about a proposed House bill that could affect his clients. A small group of business experts was asked to support an amendment introduced by a Congressman who has an interest in the financial service industry.
I didn’t even tell Reilly about my lid lift.
Jennifer and I entered Dr. Kaplan’s office and announced my arrival to the megaphone of a receptionist. Jen just shot her a glare as if to say, “Fuck with her, you’re dealing with me.”
“Good morning, Miss Malone,” the receptionist said softly, glancing over to Jennifer for approval. “Dr. Kaplan will be right with you.”
They had a silent conversation with their facial expressions.
“Was that okay?” the receptionist’s forehead asked.
“Fine. Keep the volume in check and we won’t have any problems,” Jennifer’s eyes and lips answered.
In the procedure room, Nurse Sylvia put a needle in my vein and asked me to breathe deeply into a gas mask. “You’ll be out in about ten seconds,” she assured me. “Your lips look very sexy, by the way.”