I did not want to live a life without dessert. I did not want to live a life without those kinds of pleasures. I wished to be my old self again, but I did not wish to suffer to get there.
And so, as the boys and I continued on our walk, I set out a little list for myself of rules to live by: I was going to stop eating my meals standing at the kitchen counter—I was going to sit to eat like everybody else. I was going to go to the gym five times a week. I was going to drink water instead of juice and try to eat more vegetables. I was going to look through my old CDs, the ones that had been entirely replaced by nursery rhyme albums and counting songs, and boogie around with the kids to at least one 1970s funk song every day. I was going to keep an ongoing list of pleasures in life that were almost as good as food, things like back rubs and pedicures and going to the movies. And finally, come hell or high water, every single Saturday, I was going to go down to that insanely seductive little bakery at the corner of Huron and Archer—by myself with no distractions—and eat a giant piece of chocolate cake, bite by bite.
That didn't seem so hard.
Later that same night, Peter came up with a plan of his own. He decided that he wanted to go to the gym, too. He brought it up with me one night as I was heading out the front door. He had just seen a banner in the gym window that we could add a second membership for $19.95.
“We can afford that,” he said.
“No,” I said. “You can't go.”
Nora was using our shower that night, and, at that moment, was not too many feet away. It had been two weeks since I'd agreed to let her use it. Apparently Josh had lost some of his gumption for the project after finding out that she'd be using our shower instead of his. He had only started work downstairs that morning. When I'd asked her if she thought we'd be getting a new shower, too, she'd shrugged and said, “I pay a lot more rent than you do.”
I had heard Nora's water turn off just before Peter stopped me. I didn't want her to hear us talking, so I kept my voice close to a whisper.
“It would be fun for me,” Peter said.
“No!” I said. “The gym is my thing.”
“I'm sure there's more than one treadmill.”
“The gym is my one thing,” I said again. “My only thing.”
“I just sit around all day,” he said. “It's not healthy.”
“Here's what I have,” I went on: “The gym.”
“And the kids,” he added.
“Sure, the kids,” I said. “We both have the kids. But that cancels itself out.”
“Here's what you have,” I said, counting on my fingers: “Classes, professors, practice time, students who worship you, time to write—”
“Papers to grade,” he went on, “kids who don't practice, pressure to be the best, a giant piece due in January, carpal tunnel from practicing on that little keyboard, and writer's block.”
“You have writer's block?” I asked.
He nodded.
It was an opportunity for me to feel sympathy for him, to offer him comfort. But instead of sympathy, I just felt irritated. “Well, what are you doing all day, then?”
He looked a little irritated himself. “I am trying to write. And failing.”
And then Peter played his trump card. “I can't seem to write,” he said, giving me a little glimpse of how distraught he was. “And I read online that working out frees up trapped creativity.”
Now, suddenly, he ‘d raised the stakes. Now my not sharing the gym was putting his livelihood in jeopardy. In that moment, I lost the argument. I heard Nora knock something over in the bathroom. I rubbed my forehead with my palm and lowered my voice. “When would you even go?”
“I'll just go after you do.”
“That's not going to work,” I said. “They close at nine.”
That stumped him. “Maybe we could take turns,” he suggested.
And then I had my dander up again. Because I was going to the gym every weeknight. I was in a groove. I liked going. I did not want to give up any nights. I did not want to take turns. I did not want to change anything at all. Writer's block or no, he wasn't taking my nights.
But he really wanted them.
“Two. Just give me two.”
The gym closed at five on the weekends. Giving him two left me with only three, and I told him so.
He said, “That's still more than I have!”
“But it's not nearly enough!” My voice had gone up. I glanced over at the bathroom door, then moved Peter a little deeper into the living room.
“Peter,” I said. “You're really asking me for something I can't give you.”
He studied me then, trying to decide if I was really serious. He didn't understand, and I wasn't about to explain it. It wasn't that I wouldn't. I couldn't.
“Maybe,” Peter suggested in a louder voice than either of us realized, “we could ask the woman downstairs to babysit.”
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because she's a b-i-t-c-h. That's why.”
It's funny to me now, looking back, that I was so used to spelling things with Peter when I wanted to communicate something private, I spelled something like that to him so loudly with Nora only a few feet away—forgetting that she, too, like most adults, could spell.
Before Peter could respond, I heard her voice in the bathroom. She said, “I can h-e-a-r you!”
Peter looked at me like I'd really blown it.
The door opened. Nora, in her pajamas and bathrobe, with her wet hair combed neatly, was holding her refolded towel and a little shower basket.
“I'd be happy to babysit two nights a week,” she said.
We both stared at her.
Then I started to say, “No thank you, we're fine”—which, in retrospect, would have sounded ridiculous, given that she had clearly just heard our whole fight—but Peter beat me to the punch. He said, “Great!” and swooped his arms around Nora and gave a big enough hug to lift her off the floor.
The hug caught her by surprise, and she let out a little laugh as he lifted her. I had never seen her do anything other than scowl—and as soon as her feet touched the floor, the smile was gone. She smoothed her hair.
“Peter,” I said. “Can I talk to you in private?”
We moved into our bedroom, and I shut the door.
“She's not babysitting our kids,” I whispered.
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Because?”
“Because she's mean.”
“Offering to babysit doesn't seem so mean,” he said. “Maybe now she wants to be nice.”
“Or maybe she wants to light the place on fire while we're away.”
“I guess that's possible,” Peter said, in a give-me-a-break tone.
And I was acting crazy. Here Nora had just offered to solve this whole problem. What did it matter if I liked her or not? But I resented Peter for the whole situation. Didn't he have enough good things in his life? Did he really have to siphon off mine?
“Fine,” I said. What else was I going to say? Then I pointed right at Peter. “But she's up to something.”
Chapter 15
That night, Peter went to the gym to sign up and I stayed home to keep an eye on Nora. She ‘d set her shower things in a neat pile by the door and was now getting the tour of our house. I had a pot of tea brewing for us on the stove in hopes that it might make us feel like people who would have tea together.
“This apartment looks like hell,” she said, as I walked her through the living room. “The plaster is cracking, that light fixture looks like it's going to explode, and that oven's got to be forty years old.”
I cocked my ears. Was she going to criticize me? Did she possibly think she could point out one flaw in my apartment or my life that I hadn't already examined from fifty different angles? She had no idea who she was messing with. “It's not the plaster,” I said. “It's the toys everywhere, the fact that we can't afford curtains, the shitty furniture, the bad paint colors left over from the las
t tenant, the crayon drawings on the walls, the ground-in raisins in the rug, the pee stain on the couch, and the general sense of desperation.”
That got her. She followed me into the kitchen. “I just meant you should call Josh. Make him fix that stuff.”
“I have called him,” I said.
“Oh.” Then, “He has several other buildings,” she said, by way of excusing him.
“His grandparents do,” I pointed out.
“Right,” she said. “They sure keep him busy.”
I poured the tea and we sat across from each other. There were so many things I would rather have been doing at that moment. Me in my sad little exercise togs and her in her husband's bathrobe. After a pause, I finally said, “I'm just not sure why you're doing this.”
“I'm trying to be n-i-c-e,” she said.
“Right,” I said.
We each took a sip of tea. Then she squinted a little and said, “Too little too late?”
I shrugged. It wasn't quite enough of an answer for me. Not for a person who seemed so decidedly to enjoy being mean.
Nora was watching me with a look on her face like she could read my thoughts. She raised her shoulders in defeat. “And,” she added, “I really need a reason to get out of my apartment.”
The kitchen was very quiet after that. I could hear the neighbor's TV going, the hum of the refrigerator, and the faucet dripping. After a while, I figured I'd better say something. So I threw a good one at her, just to stir things up. I said, “Josh saw me naked in here once.”
Her eyes snapped open as if I had screamed.
“He did?” And there it was again, that smile from before, but now just at the eyes. She thought it was funny. Which it was.
I gave a little eye-smile back. “He was painting outside. And my kids had taken my bath towel.”
“Unbelievable!” she said.
“He was very polite about it,” I said.
“What did he say?”
“He told me he hadn't seen anything.”
“But had he?”
I made a little grimace and nodded.
She tilted her head at me. “I can count on one finger the men who have seen me naked.”
“Well,” I said, “my number seems to be growing.” There it was again: the eye-smile. The more I saw it, the more I wanted to see it. “We should go streaking one night and get your number up.” Then, a real smile, which she covered with her free hand.
“He really was very nice about it,” I said again.
“He's a sweet kid,” she said.
“He kind of adores you,” I said, following a hunch.
She looked up in a thoughtful way, and then started nodding. “Does he? Huh.”
After another little silence, Nora insisted that I go ahead and go to the gym. She pointed out that Peter would be home soon, anyway. If I left now, I could get my jog in before they closed.
It seemed crazy to leave the three most precious people in my life in the care of a person who had never said a nice thing to me until tonight. And yet, it also seemed crazy to stay home when I could so easily go. I hadn't seen it before, but now that she was here in my kitchen, her soft PJ collar too large around her neck, I saw something in her: a decency that had been hidden before. Suddenly I felt as certain of her as anyone ever is with the people they entrust their children to. For no tangible reason, I felt she would take good care of them.
She thought it was ridiculous for me to miss my nightly ritual when she was sitting right there in the kitchen. “You can't possibly need more than one person to look after your kids when they are asleep.”
I decided to level with her. “I'm nervous they might wake up.”
“Do they wake up a lot?”
“No,” I said. Then, “Sometimes. It goes in waves.”
She sized me up a little, and then said, “What's the problem?”
I took a breath, and then with a jolt of fear that I might be about to kill this new babysitting arrangement that really seemed to have some potential and destroy any possibility of seeing another smile from Nora, I said, “We all call you the Mean Witch.”
She was unfazed. “So?”
“So if Alexander were to, say, wake up and find you here with no parents anywhere to be seen—”
“He might think I had eaten you?”
I nodded. “Or turned us into mice. Or sold us to a troll. Or put us to sleep for a hundred years.”
“I see,” she said.
“He's been concerned about some of these things,” I said.
“You mean, living so close to a witch.”
I nodded.
“And why does he think I'm a witch?” She already knew the answer to this question. Maybe she wanted to see what I'd say.
“I'm not sure,” I said.
She knew I was lying, of course. Alexander thought she was a witch because I had told him she was a witch. Not thinking that he would take it literally. Not thinking that the fact of a witch in the apartment downstairs would become one of those truths that he hung on to that could never be disputed.
“Here's what I'll tell him,” she said, “if he wakes up. I'll say that you and his daddy caught me when I was flying on my broom and caged me up here and took away all my magic powers. Then you fed me whipped cream and magic strawberries that turned me into a good witch. Now you've gone to fetch the Golden Tiara from city hall, and when you get back, I'll put it on and can never be bad again.”
I blinked a little. She was good. “We'll have to get you a tiara,” I said.
“Oh, I have a bunch downstairs.”
I wasn't sure if she was kidding or not, but I didn't really care. This time, when she said, “Get going,” I went.
As I approached the gym it occurred to me that Peter did not know I was coming. He thought I was staying home the whole time with Nora. Something about surprising him at the gym made me anxious. What if he was flirting with someone? What if he acted differently when I wasn't with him, and I was only now going to glimpse it?
It was one thing to see him in his pajamas, padding around our house. It was another thing entirely to see him across a crowded gym of strangers.
Nora had solved our basic problem: I did not have to give up my nights. But she hadn't changed the fact that I still didn't want him to be there. It wasn't, as I might have led Peter to believe, that I was possessive of the gym. I was just self-conscious. I didn't want him to see me sweaty and red-faced in my limp T-shirt, panting for breath. I might not have looked like a supermodel when I first woke up in the morning, or ever, but I never looked as bad in everyday life as I did at the gym. And I knew this for a fact because there were mirrors everywhere. I couldn't miss myself.
I just felt that there were enough strains on the romance of our relationship—from Peter's work schedule, to general parental exhaustion, to crying children, to never having time alone together, to not even being able to get a sentence uttered without Alexander shouting, “Daddy! Don't talk to Mama! Talk to me!”—for me to want to add even one thing that might work against it. Like a fresh, nightly image in Peter's head of me looking terrible.
So when I stepped into the room that had all the cardio machines in it and I spotted Peter across the way jogging on a treadmill, I did not go over and say hello. I slunk to the back row at the opposite corner near the water fountain and, busily, as if I were any stranger, set about doing my own workout.
But I watched him the whole time. I watched his calf muscles flexing and releasing with each step. I watched the way he brought his right arm back a little farther than his left. I watched his floppy yellow hair—so much blonder under the fluorescent lights—and noticed how dark it was down near his neck, where it was wet with sweat. It was bizarre to see him from a distance. I was used to him close up.
It was also bizarre to compare him to the other people in the room—something I definitely didn't want him doing to me. Peter did well by comparison. Most of the guys there were just plain unattractive. Perhaps, du
ring the day, in their business clothes, they were okay. But here, in their workout shorts, with their furry legs and their red faces, they looked like warthogs. Pink, sweaty, cardiovascularly challenged warthogs.
It was fun to note that Peter was cuter than every single guy in the gym—including Ted Koppel, who was lifting weights in his flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt, and who was watching me watch Peter. Ted Koppel knew I was ogling Peter but couldn't have known that Peter was my husband. I wondered if Ted Koppel thought I had a crush on a total stranger at the gym. At some point, of course, Peter was going to notice me watching him. And then he'd come up and give me a kiss. But for now, Peter was as far away from me as anybody else in the room.
The vast majority of the women at the gym looked super-sexy, by the way, in contrast to the men. The women had their black spandex workout gear, their hair up in perky ponytails. They didn't seem to sweat so much as glow. They moved on their machines like little forest nymphs. Not all of the women were small, of course, but all of them, with the possible exception of me, seemed clean and put-together and fragrant.
I tried to think of what I'd say to Peter when he'd finished his jog. He couldn't walk out the door without passing right in front of me. And by this point in the workout, I was starting to feel a little like a sweaty warthog myself. I thought about going to get a sip of water from the fountain just as he was about to go by and hiding my face until he was gone.
As he slowed his machine to cool down with a few minutes of walking, I actually felt a tingle of fear in my fingertips. I hadn't felt nervous about Peter in years, but something about not wanting him to see me, and, at the same time, really wanting to talk to him, made things kind of intense in a way I hadn't anticipated. Something about the fact that he was right there, but I couldn't talk to him. Something about how handsome he was. I felt like a middle-school girl hiding by her locker as her crush walked by.
Everyone Is Beautiful Page 11
