Peter Applebaum is the first to react. He clears his throat and rises to his feet. “Well,” he says. “That was unexpected.” He turns and walks sadly to the door, his head bowed in defeat. He was up for the challenge, maybe even invigorated by it, but this . . . he is too old for this. I get up and catch him at the front door.
“Mr. Applebaum.”
He turns around, surprised. “Peter.”
“Peter. You didn’t need that kind of headache anyway.”
He shakes his head and smiles faintly. “I’m seventy-two years old. I drink my coffee alone every morning, and I fall asleep with the TV on every night.” He smiles. “There are headaches, and there are headaches.”
“There will be other widows. I mean, have you seen some of these husbands?”
He has clear blue eyes and the wry smile of a much younger man. “Your mouth to God’s ear.”
“They’ll be dropping like flies, I’m telling you.”
He laughs a little, then pats my cheek. “Don’t get old, kid. That was where I went wrong.” I watch him as he heads somberly down the street. At seventy-two years old, women can still run roughshod over your heart. That’s something that never occurred to me, and I find it terrifying, but oddly reassuring.
Chapter 45
M
y parents had an active and noisy sex life. Years of Dad’s puttering in our walls had rendered them porous and poorly insulated, and we could hear them, as we lay in our beds at night: the steady bump of their headboard, Dad’s low grunts, Mom’s over-the-top porn star cries. We tuned it out like all the other noises a house makes: the clanging of the old steam radiators, the creak of the stairs, the hum of the refrigerator compressor, the plumbing gurgling in the walls. Dad never talked to us about sex. I guess he figured we’d pick it up through osmosis.
I was six years old when I walked in on them. I had woken up with a headache and padded down the hall to their room, the attached slippers of my pajamas whispering against the wood floor. Mom was on top, her back to me, rocking up and down, and I thought she must be exercising. Sometimes she exercised in front of the television, in tights and leg warmers that made her look like a cat. “I’m trying to look as good as her,” she explained, nodding her head at the woman on the screen, who, like Mom, was on all fours, raising her leg behind her like a dog about to pee.
“She looks like a dog,” I said.
“That’s Jane Fonda, and she is no dog.”
Jane Fonda had her hair piled up in a headband, which made her look like Mrs. Davenport, my kindergarten teacher. Mom, in her high ponytail and sports bra, looked like the genie in
I Dream of Jeannie,
whom I considered to be the most beautiful woman on the planet and whom I intended to marry one day. We would live in her blue bottle, which would stay on a shelf in Mom’s kitchen, so we could emerge in a funnel of smoke every evening to have dinner with my family. When we were done Jeannie would blink and all the dishes would be done.
“You’re prettier than Jane Fonda,” I told Mom.
“Of course I am, sugar,” she said, grunting as she lifted her leg. “But she has a better butt.”
I laughed at the notion of a better butt. “But no one can see your butt.”
“Women like to have nice butts even if no one sees them.”
“That’s silly.”
“Isn’t it?”
On the TV, Jane lifted her other leg. When it became apparent that she wasn’t going to pee, I lost interest.
Mom was moving up and down on her bed, but there was no Jane Fonda on the television, just a steady panting. Also, she was naked. I looked at her butt and wondered if it was as nice as Jane Fonda’s.
“Mommy?”
When she turned to see me, I saw my father’s disembodied head, crammed awkwardly against the headboard, his hair mussed, his forehead dripping with sweat. He looked like he’d been buried up to his neck in the sand.
“Hey, Judd,” Mom said, still rocking slightly, each breast bouncing lightly to a different rhythm.
“Are you exercising?”
“No, sweetie. We’re making love.”
“Jesus, Hill,” my father said, trying to get her to cover up.
“My head hurts.”
“Okay. Go back to your bed. I’ll bring you some water and a drink in a little while.”
“Can I come in bed with you?”
Dad said, “Jesus Christ,” and pulled up their comforter, while Mom laughed the way she did sometimes at things I didn’t intend to be funny. Normally I didn’t mind—it felt good to make her laugh—but tonight I had a headache and I wasn’t in the mood. So I padded back down the hall to my bed and promptly blocked out the entire event, the way you do.
11:50 a.m.
YOU CAN SEE your parents have sex, you can see your wife in bed with your boss, and still, none of it packs quite the same surreal punch as seeing your mother kiss another woman. Wendy ushers out the shiva callers—
“Thank you all for coming. We hope to see you again under happier circumstances”
—while Phillip handles the stragglers and those who can’t quite take a hint somewhat less tactfully:
“Okay there, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper. Don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you.”
And then it is just us, Wendy, Phillip, Paul, Horry, Alice, Tracy, and me, sitting in the living room, coming to terms with the new reality.
Paul opens the discussion. “What the fuck?”
“You didn’t know?” Me.
“What do you mean? You did?”
“We had our suspicions.” Wendy.
“So Mom’s a lesbian now? Cool.” Phillip.
“Don’t trivialize it,” Tracy says. “That was actually a very moving thing to witness.”
“She can’t be a lesbian,” Paul says. “She was married for forty years.”
“Well, it’s a little late in life for her experimental phase, don’t you think?” Wendy.
“I think they prefer the term ‘bisexual,’” Horry says.
We all turn to look at him.
“And you know this because . . . ?” Paul says.
Horry shrugs, blushing slightly.
“How long?” Wendy demands.
“How Long is a Chinaman?” Phillip says, mechanically repeating an old childhood joke.
“Run and play, Phillip, the adults are talking,” Wendy says. “How long, Horry?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Ballpark it.”
“I think they should tell you themselves.”
“Holy shit!” Paul says. “Mom is a lesbian.”
“A bisexual.”
“Whatever.”
“Well, whatever, then,” Horry says. “Mine is too.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” Alice says. “I mean, they’ve been best friends since forever. What a deep bond they must have.”
“Jesus Christ, Alice! My father’s body is still warm!” Paul shakes his head. “Am I the only one who is having a problem with this?”
“A problem is something to solve,” Phillip says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”
We all turn to look at Phillip.
“That actually almost makes sense,” Wendy says.
“It’s something I learned from Tracy,” Phillip says. “Isn’t she something?” He leans forward to kiss her, and she turns away from his kiss.
“What’s wrong, baby?”
“Not here.”
“I just complimented you. What are you getting all pissy about?”
“I said not here.”
“And I said, what are you getting all pissy about?”
“This isn’t the appropriate time or place.”
“My mother just stuck her tongue down her best friend’s throat in front of her children and half the neighborhood. In case you’ve missed it, we don’t really do appropriate here.”
“I’m leaving,” Tracy says, getting to her feet.
“Since when do you walk away from a discussion? You live for discussions. That’s all you ever want to do is discuss the shit out of everything.”
She looks down at him and shakes her head slowly. “You are such an asshole.” Then she turns and heads back toward the den.
“But I’m engaging here, honey!” he calls angrily after her. “I’m taking ownership of my feelings.” He watches her go, then shrugs and turns back to us. “Don’t ever date a shrink,” he grumbles. “It’s like trying to read Chinese.”
Chapter 46
1:45 p.m.
J
en has checked out of the Marriott. I make the drive to Kingston in just over ninety minutes and pull into my driveway, like I have a thousand times before. Her white Jeep is parked, as usual, too close to the center, and I have to open my door gently against the stone retaining wall to squeeze out of mine.
She comes to the door in her college boxers and an old concert T-shirt of mine. Elvis Costello and the Attractions. We went to see him play a few times. When I have a cold, I can sing “Almost Blue” and sound just like him. It never fails to crack her up. We have history, Jen and I, a mess of artifacts strewn haphazardly in our wake. Her hair is down, longer than I’m used to, and she is pale and tired, her eyes swollen from crying, and she looks for all the world like she can use a hug. So I give her one and she breaks down, sobbing violently into my neck, her body convulsing to the point that I worry about the pregnancy.
The bedroom smells of Jen. She lies down horizontally across the bed and closes her eyes.
We’ll have to throw out the bed,
I think to myself.
There’s a lot we’ll have to throw out.
“Run me a bath?” she says.
She lies in the tub, in the slanted shadows of the afternoon sun through the blinds, while I sit on the edge, tracing letters in the surface of the water. We talk for a long time, long enough for her to have to add hot water twice. I don’t know what we talk about—the baby, the past, college, our honeymoon. She cries when she speaks briefly about Wade, not because she misses him, but because she’s humiliated. I remember what Tracy said about gathering up what’s left of her dignity. These are the facts: I am drawn to women like Jen, who are drawn to men like Wade, and it’s not healthy for any of us, but that’s just the way it is. The Tracys of this world will always fall for the Phillips, who can always be counted on to fuck the Chelseas. And round and round we’ll go, doing our pathetic little dance, denying our own true natures in the name of love, or something we can pass off in its place. I can feel myself getting angry again. I’m not sure at whom. I’ve been angry for so long it’s like a reflex now.
When Jen stands up in the tub, I watch the water cascade down her back. It’s a sight to behold, and one I can’t recall seeing before. We must have taken baths together, but I guess there’s always something new to see. Back in our bedroom, she collapses onto the bed, wrapped in a towel. “Judd.”
“Yes.”
“Will you lie with me?”
This is my bedroom. This is my bed. This is my wife. When I was a kid, I would flex my eyeballs to make everything go blurry. If I can just do that with my brain for a little while, flex until certain thoughts become blurred, this can be my life again. I strip off the sheets on my side of the bed and lie down on the bare mattress. Jen watches me and understands, then turns away, pulling my arms around her, wearing me like a cape.
“Do you think it can ever be the same?” she says. She is fading, her voice thinning out like the voice of a little girl.
“I don’t know.”
“Or maybe not the same. Something different, but good.”
“Maybe.”
She sighs and then shudders, pressing her back against my front as her breathing slows. I press my lips to her bare shoulder and take in the familiar smell of her. I slide my hands over her chest and then down past her navel, to where her belly is hardening, just above her groin. She takes my hands and slides them down a bit lower, just above the pelvic bone, pressing them into one spot on her belly then another.
“There she is,” she whispers. She leans her head back, her cheek lightly brushing mine.
“She?”
“Yes. It’s a girl.”
There is no reason I can think of that this should make me cry. Jen rolls over and wraps her arms around me, her damp hair falling over my face like a tent, and she rocks me back and forth, exactly like Mom will tell her not to rock the baby, or she’ll be rocking her to sleep until she’s five years old. She kisses my eyes. My cheek. My chin. My mouth, softly and with great tenderness. I can taste my tears on her lips. Sleep falls down on us like a heavy curtain.
4:40 p.m.
I WAKE UP with a start. The room is bathed in dusky shadows, and I am momentarily disoriented. I take a minute to sift through the facts and determine which are real and which the residue of dreams. I am in my house, in my bed, with Jen sleeping beside me. Just like that, the nightmare is over, the curse broken. Jen is snoring lightly. She never believed me that she snored, and I always threatened to record her, but, of course, never did. It was one of those playful arguments that we would carry with us unresolved into old age. I look up at the familiar brown swirl of water damage on the ceiling. If it is possible to feel affection for water damage, then that’s what I feel for that little brown swirl.
Jen’s towel has come unraveled in her sleep, and a lone breast peeks out like a sentry, standing guard. I run my finger gently across her collarbone, around her shoulder, and down her arm. The years fall away from her in her sleep, her brow smooth, her mouth slightly open, like a little girl watching a magic trick. I have loved her for so long. Our past trails behind us like a comet’s tail, the future stretched out before us like the universe. Things happen. People get lost and love breaks.
I want to forgive her, and I think I can, but it’s not like issuing a certificate. I’ll have to keep forgiving her until it takes, and knowing me and knowing her, that’s not always going to come easy. But at this moment, as she lies beside me, growing our baby girl inside of her, I can forgive her. I lean down to kiss her on the spot where her cheekbone meets her temple and let my lips rest there for a moment, inhaling the clean smell of her scalp. Then I whisper to her, my lips grazing the soft flesh of her earlobe. I hover in the doorway like a ghost, half-lit by the hallway lights, watching her sleep. Then I’m running, down the hall and then the stairs, which creak in all the familiar spots, and out the front door, where the cool evening air fills my nostrils like a drug.