Dirty Love

by Andre Dubus III

  Soon it was just the women. They sat in Nancy’s deep sofa and chairs in the living room. Outside the French doors, rain fell on the pool, empty lawn, and the trees and lake beyond. The room smelled like leftover barbecue sauce, five or six kinds of perfume and skin cream, fresh coffee. On her glass coffee table, Nancy had set out plates and forks and cheesecake right from the bakery box. Some of the women started talking about takeout food and how they hardly ever really cooked or baked anymore.

  “Who’s got time?” Nancy said, slicing wedges of cheesecake onto plates.

  “Exactly,” said another.

  “Frank does more cooking than I ever do.” It was Anna Harrison, the woman whose eyes had lingered on Dennis’s belly earlier. Lisa offered that Richard cooked better than she did, and she believed men were really better at it than women anyway. “Look at all the chefs. How many are women?”

  “Right,” Cheryl said. “But who do you think cooks at home?”

  “Good point.” Lisa grabbed her cigarette pack and excused herself to go smoke. Marla could hear the rain falling against the windows, the occasional joyful roar of the men downstairs. Nancy offered her a plate of cheesecake, but Marla said no thank you, and not because she didn’t want to draw attention to herself or her eating, but because she really felt full, satisfied. Her boyfriend was downstairs with Carl somewhere and she was sitting in this room as it fell into three or four conversations now, and even though she wasn’t talking, she didn’t feel left out of any of them. She looked past Cheryl and her incandescent blond hair as she leaned forward to give a woman named Bonnie tips on cross training. Marla could see Lisa on the other side of the French doors standing on the deck beneath the eaves out of the rain, her arms crossed, a thin stream of smoke shooting out in front of her: Marla wondered if she would quit for Richard, and even though he was probably right to make her do it, Marla was glad she had someone like Dennis, who, except for the thing about cleaning up, was content to leave her just the way she was.

  A while later he and Carl came upstairs for more beer. They both looked happy and flushed. Nancy asked her husband who won and Carl jerked his thumb at Dennis: “I can’t even get close to this guy.”

  Some of the women laughed. Marla smiled up at her big bushy-bearded engineer. She could feel the women watching her. She puckered her lips and Dennis leaned over, said hi, and kissed her quickly before he disappeared down the stairs with Carl. Marla raised her cup to her lips.

  She felt watched by the whole room, but she kept her eyes only on Nancy, who was smiling with all her teeth, her eyes moist behind her glasses.

  DENNIS AND CARL had hit it off so well that Nancy began arranging double dates for the four of them one or two Saturdays a month. They’d go to a restaurant downtown, then maybe a movie, or, once, dancing. At dinner Dennis said he’d rather go to a movie instead, but Nancy wouldn’t hear of it, and they drove over to the Marriott in Carl’s Mercedes.

  The Executive Lounge was dimly lit and full of people, loud DJ rock blaring from gargantuan black speakers. Carl paid the cover charge, then led his wife between dancing couples right to the center of the crowded floor. Marla could see just the top of Nancy’s head as she began to move fast to a song Marla had heard her whole life. She’d never really danced before, but the place was so full and loud and dark nobody would really see her anyway. Why not? She pulled on Dennis’s big hand, but he wasn’t moving. He shook his head at her, then nodded at a small table a cocktail waitress was just finishing clearing. They sat down and Dennis ordered a round of what they’d all been drinking at the restaurant.

  A new song began before the old one ended, The Rolling Stones this time; Marla knew most of their music from the radio. She leaned over the table to Dennis and shouted: “I want to dance!”

  Dennis shook his head. “I don’t dance.”

  “Never?”

  He smiled, then shook his head again, then sipped his Michelob.

  Marla sat back in her chair. The dance floor was too crowded to see Nancy or Carl, all those well-dressed bodies bobbing and jerking and swaying in the dim light, the music so loud she could feel the bass beat in her wineglass and under her fingertips on the table, too loud for her and Dennis to even talk. She sipped her wine and watched the crowd. She could feel Nancy and Carl out there, and she didn’t like it; Marla and Dennis should be there too, the same fun-loving couple who’d been laughing at Nancy and Carl’s jokes all night, who’d been swapping stories from work, raising their glasses to toast the good times, Nancy and Carl smiling at them in the candlelight on the other side of the table, smiling at their fun friends: Marla and Dennis.

  Marla glanced over at him now. He was watching the DJ up on the small corner stage, studying his microphone and speakers, the electronics of his sound system, it seemed. Always an engineer. It was that part of Dennis that Carl seemed to admire so much, but without Carl treating him with such respect for his engineering skill, without Nancy smiling at both of them for having found each other, Marla sat there feeling a little lonely. But why should she feel this way sitting next to Dennis? She reached over and squeezed his hand. He smiled at her behind his beard, raised his beer to her in a toast. She toasted too, though she felt like an actor backstage rehearsing for the next scene, and she couldn’t wait for the music to end and for Nancy and Carl to come back.

  AT HOME, AS ONE WEEK pushed into another, little things about Dennis began to bother Marla: the sometimes nasal way he’d call her “Marl”; how at breakfast every morning he’d skip the newspaper headlines and do the crossword puzzle instead; how he cleaned up so often the place never looked lived in; even their lovemaking needed something—it always seemed to stop just as things began to gather all warm and rising for her, and she didn’t like how he always took a shower after. It made her feel dirty and like what they’d done was slightly wrong somehow. He stopped wanting to go anywhere except on weekends, preferred instead to watch TV or go to his computer room and play games where the viewer entered a cyberworld armed with a shotgun, machete, and hand grenades. He taught her how to play it too, but sitting in that dark room staring at the simulated colors of bad muscular men bleeding to death from just the click of the mouse on Dennis’s desk, from the electronic blast of the shotgun or the swipe of the machete blade, Marla felt the same bruised emptiness that she did after an action movie, and she’d kiss Dennis on the forehead and leave the room while he kept playing.

  There was something else too—and she hated herself for this—but it was his weight: watching him walk naked into or out of the bathroom she often looked away, not out of respect for his privacy, but because she honestly did not like to see the way his hairy chest pushed out to the side like a woman’s, how his belly hung almost to his penis, which looked somehow boyish and outmatched in the great mass of all that flesh and hair. At first she thought this reflected his size and strength, his very manliness. But that’s when she’d allowed herself to think he’d been a wrestler or weight lifter in college, maybe even a football player. Not the sedentary man she now knew him to be and to always have been. He told her that he spent his childhood in his room reading and drawing robots and guns and galactic cities floating in fiery orbits, that college was one long period of book after book and a lot of hamburgers, pizza, and fries.

  She found herself judging him for this, especially at night after dinner, dessert too, when he’d bring a box of crackers and a jar of peanut butter to the living room with him, or a second helping of dessert, or a hunk of cheese and bowl of nuts. One night in late November, a couple of days after a Thanksgiving they’d spent at a restaurant, she had a cold and sat on the couch wrapped in a blanket, holding a hot cup of lemon tea. She glanced at the peanut butter crackers on his plate and said, “Are you really hungry?”

  He’d just sat down. He looked over at her, his cheeks flushed. “Obviously.”

  Marla didn’t know if he was angry or embarrassed, and she felt mean-spirited and small. For a long minute or two there was nothing but the
sounds of the TV, the forced laughter of the studio audience, slender actors with good skin and shiny hair looking naturally appealing.

  “You shouldn’t talk, you know.” Dennis bit off half a cracker and chewed.

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Marla’s face burned. It was as if he’d just overturned the couch and she was falling to the floor. “You’re talking about my weight?”

  Dennis swallowed and bit into another cracker, his eyes on the television. There were crumbs in his beard, and she hated him for it, and they began to blur, and she jumped off the couch and rushed upstairs to their room. His room, really. His bed and his bureau and bedside table. On the walls were framed his degrees and another boring graphic. On the bureau were his wallet and keys. Where was her room? She curled up on the bed and cried. She could hear the jingle of a commercial downstairs, and she wondered how long he’d stay down there without coming up to address what had just happened between them.

  And what did happen?

  She was mean and then so was he? But it was more than just that; Marla couldn’t help but notice that part of her was relieved to see another ugly side of him.

  The TV noise stopped and she heard the creak of the carpeted stairs, then the sinking of the bed, the smell of peanut butter and his perfumey cologne.

  “Marl?”

  “Yeah?” She sniffled, dabbed at her nose with two fingers.

  “Do you think I’m too heavy?”

  “Do you think I am?”

  “No.”

  “Then why’d you say what you said?”

  “To get back at you, I guess.”

  Marla sat up and blew her nose. He rested his hand on her thigh and she knew they were on their way to patching this up, but something had opened between them and she wasn’t sure she wanted it closed. She looked straight ahead at the dark window. “I’ve always been fat, you know.”

  “Me too.”

  Marla wiped her nose. “But I bet you had girlfriends.”

  “Two or three. Nobody special.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” Marla kept her eyes on the black glass of the window, the reflection of the lampshade in it. “You’re my first boyfriend.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” He nodded his head slightly. She wished she hadn’t told him but was also glad she did, as if this were some kind of test they could not avoid, though she did not know who was testing whom.

  “Are you surprised?”

  “No. I mean, yes, of course I am. What’s that have to do with anything?”

  Marla shrugged. “I’m not the best catch in the world, Dennis.”

  “Marla—”

  “No, really. I’m not pretty, all I know how to do is count other people’s money, I—”

  “Shh, stop that, Marla. You shouldn’t say that.” His voice was gentle but distant too, like he was already beginning to believe what she was saying and didn’t want to. He pulled his hand from her thigh and stared at the floor again. “You should never say that about yourself.”

  They sat quietly for a moment, then he stood and took a long, tired breath. “Want me to bring your tea up?”

  She shook her head and listened to him walk heavily out of the room and down the stairs.

  LATER, IN THE middle of the night, she woke up with him pushing himself inside her and he did it harder and faster than ever before. It hurt a little, but then felt good, and lasted longer too. He finally stopped and let out a moan, said into her ear, breathing hard, “I’m sorry, I was asleep.”

  “Me too.”

  He went to the bathroom first and Marla lay there in the dark. She patted the bedside table for the box of tissues, Dennis’s seed swimming freely inside her. What if it found what it was heading for? She heard the shower turn on, the jerk of the curtain, Dennis washing himself off.

  That night she dreamed she was sitting in a rocking chair on a screened-in porch overlooking deep woods, sunlight coming through in brilliant patches; there was something warm and soft in her lap, a puppy, she thought. She looked down at it and saw a baby—a baby with fine black hair and a sweet pinched face.

  The next day was Sunday, and on the way home from the matinee of a spy movie she hadn’t wanted to see, she told Dennis her dream. She studied his profile as he drove, the way he nodded slightly, his eyes narrowed as if he were listening to the radio report of news in a distant country. She took a breath. “Think we’ll ever have a baby, Denny?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Marla felt slapped. She looked out the window at large houses, one with raked piles of leaves, a swing set in the yard. She felt like crying, not because of what he’d said but how he’d said it, his voice adamant and final. Then his big hand was on her knee and she wanted to push it away.

  “You know I love you, Marl, but do you know how much kids cost? How much attention they need? It’s nothing personal, hon. I just can’t be bothered with that.”

  “Bothered? You make it sound like one big nuisance.”

  “Well, isn’t it?”

  “Did your mother think so?”

  He smiled. “I know she did.” Then he chuckled and began to reminisce about him and his brothers always destroying the house, chasing each other from room to room. He seemed to be done with the real conversation, but it had cleared a cold dead path through her head; it was the first time he’d ever told her he loved her, but hearing him talk this way about what she had always viewed as the highest gift God could give, his paw resting too heavily on her thigh, the sickening smell of vanilla air freshener in his car, another Sunday afternoon wasted at a movie where men shot or impaled or blew up each other, she began to suspect she was nothing more than an easy addition to his life, one he could penetrate half-asleep or go out with on the weekend, but that’s it—no one to start a family with, nothing like that. Her seatbelt was pushing into her hip, and she began to feel the possibility of an end ahead of them, the way the light of an August afternoon could sometimes cast the shadows of October.

  THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Dennis invited her to fly to Cleveland to spend the holidays with one of his brothers and his family. He asked her this before work as they were walking to their cars in the cleared driveway Dennis paid a man to plow. The air was cold in Marla’s lungs and her breath was a thin cloud in front of her.

  “What do you say, Marl?”

  She opened her car door and glanced over at him standing at his Nissan, his tie loosely knotted beneath his overcoat, his beard glistening in the harsh sunlight. “I don’t think so; I need to visit my parents. It’s been a year.”

  He nodded and looked only mildly disappointed, as if he were imagining the good times ahead of him anyway. “Well, think about it.”

  He backed out of the driveway first, and at the end of the street waved in his rearview mirror at her before he turned left and she turned right; and she didn’t want to think about it. How could she be the woman he was going to bring home to his family? All the smiles and gifts and polite passings of gravy would feel like one big lie, which is what she was beginning to feel like—a liar. Somehow she was becoming the kind of woman she didn’t like, somebody who felt one way but smiled it off in a mask of cheerfulness, the kind of woman who got very good at small talk.

  As she drove past all the identical ranch houses of their neighborhood, Marla’s face still felt swollen from her cold. If it weren’t for the Christmas rush, everybody in the world waiting in line to get their money, she’d call in sick and go back to bed. But again, it’d be his bed. Her comforter was on it, but that wasn’t enough. She missed her old apartment; she missed the bathroom that only had her things in it; she missed Edna curling up with her on the sofa in her living room with her framed prints on the wall—and no illustrations of perfect parallel lines; no dustless bookshelves full of paperback spy novels; no pressure to keep things clean and just where they belong at all times; and not this lingering feeling that her life was really no
better than it had been before when she was alone, an earlier unhappiness that now seemed preferable to this one.

  TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS Marla drove Dennis to the airport. He hugged and kissed her and told her not to get sunburned in Florida. She watched him hurry toward the gate and lift his suitcase onto the conveyor belt for the X-ray machine. He waved to her and she waved back. Her flight left the next day, but for the past week she hadn’t been able to picture herself on it. Whenever she visited her mother and father she always felt like a teenager again, a time in her life when she had no friends at all; she couldn’t bear feeling that way now, and just last week at the vault Nancy asked her to spend the holiday with her and her family if she wasn’t going anywhere. Marla watched Dennis’s back get smaller and smaller. Why not? It probably wouldn’t cost too much to change the ticket. When she could no longer see him in the crowd, she began thinking what she’d tell her mother on the phone, that she had the flu and would have to come see them sometime after New Year’s.

  Christmas Eve after dinner, Marla and Nancy sat on throw pillows in front of a gas fire under the lights of the tree. Carl and his sons, Luke and Kyle, were downstairs playing a new video game called Blood Conquest, a gift from Carl to his boys that he insisted they open that night. Nancy and Marla wore sweaters and slippers, and they sipped eggnog with just the right amount of bourbon in it. On the stereo Bing Crosby and David Bowie were singing “Peace on Earth.” Nancy sat with her eyes closed listening to the music, her pretty face tilted slightly. Marla could still smell the glaze from the ham they’d baked, the homemade rolls. Outside there was very little snow, but there was a cold wind, and the bare branches of the trees made a cracking sound as they swayed.

  They had stuffing and three pies to make for tomorrow, but Nancy just wanted to sit and rest awhile in front of the tree and its mountain of wrapped presents, four from Marla: slacks and a cashmere jacket for Nancy, a case of vintage red wine for Carl, matching wool sweaters from Ireland for the boys. She was looking forward to giving them their gifts tomorrow morning, though part of her felt like an intruder into this family’s Christmas. Dennis didn’t even know she wasn’t in Florida, and she could still hear her mother’s disappointed voice on the phone.