On Second Thought

by C. Spencer

  But leave it to Elizabeth to fall silent after my tangent. Meanwhile, everything in the room dims in that brilliant blue-twilight sort of way. It accentuates the shifting candlelight now reflecting off a copper lamp, sparkling up a wall, as I finger-rip the envelope at the top of this long ignored stack of mail.

  “Party crashers,” I hear under the shriek of sirens.

  “Yeah, we’re not doing that,” I say. “But sure, I’ll let you swing by if you want.” Thinking, I could use the company. Though naturally, she blows this whole sit on the floor while we watch a few movies gig out of context by texting the whole gang. Avery, whose girlfriend is apparently off fighting fires. Add Tami and Rebecca, who can scarcely stand to be around one another.

  Which means maybe an hour later, when the air’s still brisk, smoky even, as I’m closing windows, I hear that rhythmic knock at the door.

  And as I’m drawing Elizabeth in, this messenger bag always getting in our way, I catch that cedarwood-meets-violet Le Labo scent. “I come bearing food substance for the sad girl,” she tells me, her gaze shifting to Avery, who, after our despairing kiss—or I should say hers—hands me a magnificent (or so I’m told) bottle of wine.

  And soon Rebecca and her wife are making their familial way toward my sink for a lengthy bout of silence paired with the restrained clanging of plates.

  “And Saturday evening,” Avery says, “is apparently the most popular night at the pizzeria. Who knew?”

  “I did,” says Elizabeth, who is always in need of some sort of a drink in their company. “But who didn’t call in advance?” As I pass a pie server, noting her technique leaves much to be desired. “Can you lend me a hand?” Still drawn to their customary, their well-acquainted that somehow morphs into a perfectly orchestrated serving system.

  “I could simply live on white pizza,” Avery says, “at least paired with a good Sangiovese.” And I’m wondering if that underhanded gaze might hint of something of an overture. Next she’s studying and subsequently crumpling a receipt that was taped on the box before tossing it in the bin. And bent to pull forks, she searches the drawer for my corkscrew, wearing that wide-necked shirt that slopes enough to bare too much skin, offering a glimpse of lace that’s supposed to lift a lot of what’s presently falling out. “I bought fudge brownies,” she’s saying, “store-bought but amazing. I wish I had an affinity for baking. Mine are always so sad, sunken.”

  “I wish I had an affinity for monogamy,” Elizabeth is saying, pouring a glass, make that two, before lifting hers. “A toast to the sad girl.”

  “Remaining single is not the same as being sad,” I say. But still, all eyes are on me for what, a toast? When there’s nothing to toast aside from that eternal bond of marriage, which apparently remains unbreakable even after one does the unforgivable. “To marriage equality,” I say.

  “To marriage equality,” Avery’s saying with a far-off gaze, drawing the rim of her glass to her lips as she gazes back across the room at Elizabeth, who’s now making her way toward the television where she balances on the balls of her feet, pinches trousers from just above the knees, and slips a disc into the Blu-ray tray.

  “So what are we watching?” I say in an attempt to edge away. And I scan DVDs that line the shelf. “Nothing sappy.”

  Rebecca, swirling, settles beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “The Way We Were.”

  “How sensitive of you,” I say, thinking starry-eyed and sadly ever after. I’d prefer something a bit less Madisen, which I admit eliminates everything right about now. Because even were it not in there, I’d find it. “Why not one of mine?” I say.

  “You do have quite the collection,” Rebecca says. And even after taking a bite, she’s careful not to smudge those ruddy lips, appearing winter-fair in a clinging black top, sleeves just above the elbow, chin raised like the upper-middle-class gentry she hopes to always be. “Blue Jasmine? Let me guess, this must be one of your midlife crisis flicks. Middle-aged woman quits her job, leaves her cheating spouse, can’t handle the void that is adulthood. So she packs up to make a new start overseas in Italy, or somewhere desolate like a range in Montana, where she meets some devastating twenty-year-old and they laugh, spin, fall madly in love, rose petals descend on their bed as credits roll.”

  “Because that’s clearly the kind of movie I’d watch,” I say.

  “No, but you clearly have a thing for Cate Blanchett. I only know Carol,” she says, taking another drink. “And Elizabeth: The Golden Age.”

  “When did that come out,” I say, “like two thousand six, two thousand seven?” I tote my plate, my drink, over to the couch. And take a seat beside Avery, who’s intent on me.

  “Two thousand seven,” Avery says, “the year I graduated high school, all too jazzed to study early child development at my local community college until I found out that I would earn poverty wages. So I dropped out.”

  “And now you’re a bingo coordinator,” I say. She crosses her leg, half facing me.

  “It beats poverty,” she says, leaning over her plate as she takes a bite, that diamond necklace swaying in the foreground of…ahem. I’m thinking she does this sort of thing to me on purpose.

  “And you happen to be very good at bingo coordinating,” I say, feeling antagonistic—or something like that.

  “I happen to think so.”

  “Where’s your dripping hot firefighter?”

  “She had a long day,” she says, “and didn’t feel up to it.”

  “So just like that, you let her off the hook?”

  “Just like that. She’s beat and, well, not much into our last-minute plans.”

  “I see. This one’s a scheduler,” I say. “Does this mean you schedule everything?”

  Then, as I lean across her lap to grab the remote, perhaps we share some sort of moment there. “Don’t insinuate,” she says.

  “I wasn’t insinuating a thing,” I say.

  Once the movie gets going, Elizabeth heads back to the kitchen. “Please tell her she was gravely missed by all,” she says, pausing at the island—the flat box, a stack of napkins, my Italian seasoning left out. “By the way, Rae, what is this thing that you have for Cate Blanchett? Really,” Elizabeth adds, “I’m intrigued, or maybe a bit jealous, one or the other.”

  “More like, who doesn’t have a thing for Cate,” I say, “or just about any woman in a tailored suit?”

  “Is that what you see in…well, dare I bring up the one who shall not be mentioned?”

  “Madisen?” I say. “She wears a suit well. As do you.”

  “Me?” she says, laughing, glancing. “Wait, have you ever complimented me?”

  “I don’t think I have,” I say, “so consider yourself now among the fortunate.”

  With that, Avery escapes to the fridge.

  Elizabeth: “What about you, Avery?”

  Avery: “What about me?”

  Elizabeth: “What’s your thing?”

  As she traces a palm along the back of Rebecca’s wide chair as if intrigued by their matrimonial charade, their carrying on.

  Rebecca, swirling: “Avery only cares if they’re a top.”

  As I follow Avery’s petite stride back to the couch.

  Elizabeth: “Does this mean you’ve settled? Or have you now become the top?”

  Avery: “I haven’t settled. And she’s not exactly a bottom. Besides, I like a good challenge. Don’t you?”

  Elizabeth, taking a seat on a floor pillow: “And how does that work?”

  Avery: “How does what work? It’s all I find.”

  Elizabeth: “Tops?”

  Avery: “And I happen to be an incredibly good bottom.”

  Elizabeth: “I’d love to see how good you are.”

  Me: “Don’t you think we should watch this movie at some point tonight?”

  Elizabeth: “By the way, Avery, how is cohabiting? Have I congratulated you? I happen to think it’s a fabulous turn of events.”

  Avery: “Of course you don
’t.”

  Elizabeth: “Why do you think I’m so awful?”

  Avery: “I don’t. I adore you. That’s all.”

  Elizabeth: “I have no desire to burst your bubble with realism.”

  Avery: “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Elizabeth: “Not tonight at least.”

  Me: “We’re never watching this movie, are we?”

  Elizabeth: “When do we ever get to hang out like this?”

  Avery: “If you’re so pleased with this fabulous turn of events, why so opposed to our buying a house?”

  Me: “Wait…you’re buying a house?”

  Elizabeth: “While you’ve been on the playground with tots, Avery’s hooked herself up with a Realtor and is signing her young life away. But here’s my issue, which some have already heard. Scenario one, hypothetically, say she one day marries this firefighter and maybe she grows tired of reminding her to hang the towel on the hook where it belongs, as opposed to the bar where it never dries. Or perhaps Erin—is that her name?—never quite materializes into the top of her dreams. Were they to simply marry, they could split at a moment’s notice. At least marriage offers divorce. But Scenario two, this white picket fence. And, well, what I’m trying to say is, too many end up like that. They stay—not for love, but for lifestyle. Think about that mortgage as a thirty-year commitment. Because who really knows how long it might take to sell in this economy.”

  Rebecca: “Spoken by a true authority.”

  Elizabeth: “All right, so I don’t speak from firsthand experience as do you. But you must admit. Haven’t either one of you contemplated leaving after one of those heated arguments the two of you have? And don’t tell me you haven’t because that would be a flat-out lie. But you can’t, can you? You own a house. And if you’re like every other red-blooded American, that mortgage is underwater. So you sleep on the couch or run off to the coast to get away…Oh, wait, you have Bar Harbor, don’t you? Well, there you go. You’ve purchased two. So maybe you can leave. Look, we all go out of our mind once in our lives, fall in love, myself included. The ridiculous Romeo and Juliet moment, which is no reason to throw logic to the wind.”

  Avery: “I forget sometimes how sentimental you are.”

  Elizabeth: “What little you know about me. I happen to be enormously sentimental.”

  Avery: “Do illustrate.”

  Elizabeth: “Are you finally conceding to come back to my place? Because I’m happy to demonstrate.”

  Avery: “I’m referring to the never-get-over-it kind—that’s love. I can’t see that ever happening to you.”

  Elizabeth: “High school. I carried her picture around in my wallet for years. I still have it. I think I have everything she ever gave me.”

  But what fascinates me is the way Avery can draw this stuff out of the most reserved of people. Stuff I didn’t even know. But she does this all the time. It’s intriguing to watch it all unravel.

  Elizabeth: “Does anyone besides me need a second glass?…Rebecca?”

  Rebecca: “Marriage is not a forever honeymoon. Who would even want that? That would be exhausting. And really, one drink in and Elizabeth is claiming to be sentimental. And I love how you think, what, that if you jump out fast enough, they won’t get hurt. As if that somehow makes it okay to hop around. As if it’s about length of time. Isn’t that always your excuse, why you can’t commit? It’s for them? So you won’t hurt them. But you do.”

  Elizabeth: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with averting heartbreak.”

  Rebecca: “But you don’t. Because the best way to avoid heartbreak is to let it run its course. There are no mistakes in love. And who’s at fault? We’re all at fault. You’re clearly not over this one.”

  Elizabeth: “How do you figure that?”

  Rebecca: “Isn’t that much obvious? She’s ruined you for everyone else.”

  Elizabeth: “Not ruined, refined.”

  Followed by the kind of air you just need to fill with conversation, but nobody will.

  Until, Avery: “Confession time. Tell me…what’s it like, sex I mean—and not in detail, unless of course you care to share—when you both don’t know what to do? Your first time. I’ve always wondered that. Like, is the sex really bad? It’s not like I’ve ever been with a virgin.”

  Elizabeth: “Your first time—”

  Me: “Is what, Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth: “It’s perfect. It’s the most perfect.”

  Avery: “I had no first.”

  Elizabeth: “How is that possible?”

  Avery: “No, I mean, my first wasn’t love. For either of us. She was, well, I just do what strikes my fancy at any given moment.”

  Elizabeth: “A promiscuous bottom.”

  Avery: “A promiscuous top.”

  Elizabeth: “I happen to love bottoms myself.”

  Me: “So Elizabeth, this girl, she was your first on both accounts?…And, now, why do I find that super sweet?”

  Elizabeth: “When did I become the poster child for super sweet?”

  And we don’t ever actually get to the movie. I mean we do, if you count talking through the gist of it, which segues into another bottle of wine and of course Avery’s fudge brownies.

  So the next day, after pizza and too many recent cheats, I hit the gym.

  Which would be day one of my new workout regimen, otherwise known as naive exhilaration. More like I am invincible, admiring lean biceps as I step in the shower, convinced I look nine billion times better than Jillian Michaels and Megan Rapinoe all wrapped into one glorious lesbian.

  That is until day two, which is sheer agony. But I show up, and sure, I’m famished at this stage. So I stroll down and grab another double scoop, eat at the park with pigeons, justifying every lick as a calories-already-burned sort of thing.

  Which leads me to day three, also known as immobility.

  So day four is a wash because, look, I got out of bed.

  Until tomorrow, which is Friday. And, no kidding, Friday is not the best start-over day. Nor is Saturday or Sunday. So…

  On Monday, I make a radical comeback. Because at this point, I truly have no excuse. And this becomes my new thing. My working out thing because it’s the only way I can not break down and call Madisen.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  How to Stop Feeling

  Madisen

  I’m beginning to realize something. That it doesn’t matter how many times Aline calls for fill-in-the-blank, the moment I see her name on the screen, my heart begins to race like emergency. The hospital kind of emergency where vending machines drop Doritos and M&M’s in waiting rooms filled with patients who are entertained by the latest on CNN. And where scrubs wander halls shoving dangling apparatus on stretchers—never a good thing. So I’m bracing to learn why my daughter’s being carted into room 201 as I accept the call.

  Naturally expecting…well, not this.

  “If you’re busy doing nothing,” I say, “then where’s Jordan?”

  “She’s at my parents’,” Aline says, “all weekend.”

  Truth be told, I sometimes wonder why I keep this up with her, engaging. Expecting cold and aloof when this is how she is. And she’ll continue to be this way indefinitely, drawing me in, until I’m able to respond differently.

  And here’s another thing she does whenever she’s holding something back. Or if she can’t come up with a suitable way of expressing whatever it is she’s trying to say. She’ll leave it all to me. She’ll expect me to carry the conversation, which is what I’m doing, sharing things that are completely irrelevant. And only after I’m beginning to second-guess my decision to answer my phone do I hear, “Tell me I’m not a screw-up,” which draws me back in.

  “And why would you say that?”

  “You’ll remember,” she begins, followed by a long-winded monologue about someone she met through one of Jordan’s things, her after-school things, those parenting things. A story I find reasonably amusing since who wouldn’t, or
maybe it’s just the way she tells the story that always seems so captivating to me. And I’m laughing for the first time all day.

  So I figure the least I can do is lend an ear because sometimes that’s the best way to deal with situations like this—put my issues aside and let her amuse me for a while and then we can get back to whatever it was we were doing before she interrupted, which wasn’t extraordinary, was it? Given there are only so many times I can sink into wallowing despair accompanied by the poignant strum of Ron Pope on his guitar.

  On the other hand, why am I offering her this courtesy? Sacrificing a highly productive night of wallowing, for what? To play therapist for a woman who left me for someone else? It’s not as if we’re still married, and besides, I have matters I’d like to deal with on my own. Why I feel I owe her anything is beyond me. I only wish I wasn’t adoring this whole sensitive side of her so much. That side I’d long forgotten.

  And not only that, I wish I hadn’t caught myself sinking back into our old familiar patterns right along with her.

  “You always make me feel better,” she says.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I say, hoping to find some semblance of neutral, unemotional middle ground.

  “So what else have you been up to?” she says.

  “Do you have all night?” I say. Yet even when I try to sound upbeat, it still comes across as flat, monotonous.

  “Sure I do,” she says, laughing, and afterward, “Why don’t I swing by? Do you have any plans?”

  But um, I hadn’t expected that.

  “Never mind,” she says, and somehow that snaps me back into reality before I say anything I might live to regret. “I’m sorry,” she says. The thing is, I still don’t trust myself around her, especially now, not like this. “But then again,” I hear, “it would be nice to catch up, you know? I could stay awhile, or not. There’s so much and…I’ve wondered…how you’ve been.”

  Wondered? “I don’t know, Aline.”

  Because logically I know she could stay five minutes or five hours and it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s the seeing her part that’s unbearable. I’m still trying to get over her getting over me. And this phone, right now, is the only willpower I’ve got.