Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

  Whitney and Christopher had met three times now, always for an hour during the workday, when Christopher would tell his bosses he was taking a long business lunch and Whitney would tell her babysitter she was getting a spa treatment. The last time, they hadn’t even made it to the bed. The moment the door shut behind her, he’d turned her around right up against it, pushing up her skirt and pulling down her underwear and fucking her so hard from behind that she imagined all the women pushing their housekeeping carts down the hallway could see the door rattling. It was the good kind of being used, as if he’d recognized the trash inside her and wanted it anyway.

  And despite the fact that Christopher could be rough—that he twisted her hair around his fist and pulled it until her eyes watered—a miracle had occurred. For the first time since Whitney had given birth, sex felt good again. The stinging pain she experienced with Grant inside of her was gone.

  “Have you checked his texts?” Ellie asked. “That’s how my sister found out that her fiancé was cheating, and thank God, she got out of that relationship.”

  “Yes,” Meredith said, nodding. “Check his texts.”

  “What? Don’t check his texts,” Amara said. “If he’s not cheating on you, that’s a horrible invasion of privacy. And if smell is what you’re going on, that could be caused by a lot of different things.”

  “Maybe he’s just started a new workout schedule,” Whitney said. “Maybe he’s showering at the gym?”

  “Yeah, it could be that,” Amara said. “I wouldn’t necessarily jump to worst-case scenario. But if it is the worst-case scenario, let us know if you need us to kill him.”

  “You’re probably right,” Gwen said. “I’m probably being crazy.” She waved her hand through the air as if to clear away the expressions on their faces, the sympathy, but also the barely masked morbid curiosity. “Let’s talk about something else.” Gwen’s eyes lit on Claire, who had folded up into herself like she was trying to disappear, and Gwen startled. “Oh, Claire! I’m sorry. It’s not your job to listen to this stuff.”

  Each time their hour had been up, Christopher would retie his tie while Whitney sat on the bed, watching him. He’d leave first, and she’d wait five minutes. The moment the door closed behind him, leaving her alone in a room that smelled like their sweat, she’d promise herself that she’d never do that again. And then each time he sent her a new message, her heart started clattering against the walls of her chest and she could barely breathe until she’d answered him back.

  But now she looked at Gwen’s milky, tearstained face and promised herself anew. She meant it this time. Not again.

  * * *

  —

  Her resolve held all through the weekend. She was going to be the world’s best wife and mother. She wheeled Hope to Whole Foods on Friday afternoon and bought the most expensive cut of organic, grass-fed steak they had, then cooked it so that it still oozed blood when Grant cut into it on his dinner plate. He looked up at her in appreciation as the red pooled on his plate—they’d long had an affectionate argument going about how rare a steak should be. She smiled at him as she struggled to swallow the meat, cold and raw against her tongue.

  On Saturday, she coaxed Grant into a family outing to the Museum of Natural History. They walked like experts through the crowds of tourists. Grant was being especially charming that day, making little jokes about the ancient-animals tableaux, playing with Hope. Occasionally, Whitney noticed harried Midwestern moms, with their overstuffed tote bags, turn to look at the three of them in envy or admiration. She caught Grant’s hand in hers and kissed it and graciously gave directions to a family who couldn’t figure out how to find the big blue whale. Hope stared at the dinosaurs, and Whitney read her the descriptions from the museum labels. A baby’s brain could soak up knowledge like water into a sponge. Maybe, years from now, Hope would be studying for a history test on this topic, and the facts would come easily to her, and she would feel very deeply how smart she was despite growing up in a world that gave girls so many opportunities to feel less than.

  That night, after Grant and Hope—both cranky from the outing—had fallen asleep, Whitney posted a picture of the three of them on her Instagram. Then she sat and watched as the comments began to roll in. She’d started receiving the occasional negative comment as her following had grown: “out-of-touch rich bitch,” or “too much time on ur hands lol, go back to work,” or, worst of all, ones like “Ur baby’s gonna hate u when she’s old enough to see u whored out her childhood online.” From trolls, she told herself, or people who were jealous and miserable and needed to take it out on her. She always deleted them immediately, sending the judgments into the ether with a swipe of her finger.

  Posts with Grant in them usually did well among her primarily female following. He gave good camera. But now Whitney tensed, suddenly worried that some commenter in a Des Moines basement might have an unexpected flash of insight, steeling herself for a “bet they haven’t had good sex in years” or a “trying waaayyyy too hard.”

  No, the only comments coming through tonight were the heart-eye emojis, the “TOO CUTEs,” the “#relationshipgoals.” She exhaled, staring at Grant, and then at her own radiant face in the photo. Maybe she really was as openmouthed-smile-happy as she looked.

  And then on Monday morning, Christopher sent her a message, and she knew that she wasn’t.

  Looks like you had a busy weekend, he wrote. I’d recommend a massage on Wednesday.

  She let the message sit there. Underneath everything she did—the errands she ran, the games of peekaboo she played with Hope—it thrummed and rang in her mind like the telltale heart, the steady beat of Christopher, Christopher, Christopher. She felt like a tween mashing her face against a Justin Bieber poster—ridiculous-looking from the outside, but inside, filled with an almost holy, previously unknown longing.

  At Tuesday’s playgroup, Gwen brought up the subject of preschool, and when Whitney said that she hadn’t started looking into any of that yet, Gwen went off on a very earnest monologue about how you had to figure it out early, or else all the prime spots would be taken, and if a child didn’t get the right preschool spot, it put them at a disadvantage for elementary school, which put them at a disadvantage for high school, which totally screwed them over for college. “I started researching for Reagan weeks ago,” she said, and Whitney wanted to strangle her.

  As soon as all the women left her apartment, she ran to her computer. Yes, I think you’re right about the massage, she wrote back. I need it, badly.

  * * *

  —

  This time, when Christopher opened the door, he led her to the bed and took his time with her, unbuttoning her dress so slowly that it drove her crazy with anticipation. Thank God, all her residual flab had finally gone away, she thought, as he slipped the dress from her shoulders, over the long, lean muscles in her arms. Once he had her completely naked, he didn’t unbutton his own pants. Instead, as light from the window streamed in, he began to kiss his way down her stomach.

  Whitney’s heart started racing. A month after giving birth, she’d examined her vagina in a handheld mirror and had nearly cried at what she saw. She was disfigured, her delicate Georgia O’Keeffe petals now the swollen, split lips of a hockey player after a brawl.

  Grant had never been the most enthusiastic oral-sex giver anyway. On the infrequent occasions he did it, he treated it as a warm-up, a couple of minutes of cursory licking to get her wet enough for the main event. Since Hope’s birth, he’d never offered, and she’d never asked. Well, it had never felt that good for her anyway, so it was no great loss. But now Christopher was heading down there, and panic gripped her at what he might see or smell. What if she was sweaty or, God forbid, fishy?

  She propped herself up on her elbows. “You don’t have to,” she said. “Really. Here.” She reached down and tried to stroke him through his pants, to redirect the action, but he caught h
er hand and looked up straight into her eyes. Then, to her total surprise, he laughed.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “I want to.” He placed his hand on her chest, right in between her breasts. She looked down at his fingers. He’d taken off his wedding ring before she’d arrived. Something about the gesture made her flush. Was it a courtesy to Gwen or to her? Before she could figure it out, he pushed her back so she lay flat against the mattress.

  Above her, the light fixture in the ceiling glowed a warm cream color. No merciful, obscuring darkness to hide the wear and tear on her body. As Christopher studied the most vulnerable part of her, she tightened up. “Hey, relax,” he said as he ran a finger along the inside of her thigh. He waited a second. “You’re not relaxing.”

  “I’m afraid I might look like a drooping mess and smell like a rotting fish,” she said in a rush of honesty that surprised her.

  “Hmm,” he said, taking a sniff and then parting her lips and staring straight into her. “No fish smell. And actually, you’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, really?” she said in a teasing tone, despite the fact that, at his words, her legs had started to tremble.

  “Yes. Now, stop talking, and let me make you come already.”

  She let out a breath, fully sinking into the soft sheets beneath her as he began to flick his tongue up and down, so lightly at first that she shivered. As he grew more insistent, she glanced at him, expecting to see his face screwed up like someone performing a mildly distasteful task—a dog walker picking up poop, maybe, or herself when Grant was taking a long time to finish—but Christopher actually looked like he was enjoying himself. And not just in a “Well, this is fun enough” way. Like it was turning him on. That was what allowed her to fully let go, to focus on the feeling between her legs as it grew and grew, then narrowed to a radiant pinpoint of pleasure, then rushed through every part of her body.

  Oh, God. Sweet Jesus. This kind of orgasm was a revelation. Back in college, during a drunken game of “Would You Rather” with her roommates, someone had asked the classic “Would you rather give up cheese or oral sex?” question, and though she’d said she’d rather give up cheese when she realized that was the cool answer, she hadn’t understood the dilemma. Of course cheese was better than oral sex, she’d thought, assuming that everyone else was playing up their love of having a man’s face rooting around down there too. They were merely a group of girls in sorority sweatshirts pretending to be women.

  Well, now she was a woman, and she’d largely given up cheese anyway as her metabolism had slowed, and she was thunderstruck by the realization that College Whitney had given the right answer after all.

  Later, after Christopher finished too, they lay tangled together, beautifully spent, catching their breath in the minutes they had left. “What are you thinking about?” he asked her, and because she felt afraid to tell him that Gwen’s reproachful face had just swum into her thoughts—they had an unspoken rule that they didn’t talk about their spouses or their children in this hotel room—she said the next thing that came into her mind. She told him the story of the snow globe in her yard, all the gory details, even though she’d never told anyone about it before.

  When she was done, he looked at her like she was the most interesting woman in the world. “I didn’t come from wealth either,” he said. “My dad was a middle school science teacher. I can still name every bone in the body.”

  “No way,” she said, laughing, so he kissed her, clavicle to ulna, fibula to sacrum, naming them all as she shook with giggles.

  “God, it’s like I recognize you,” she said. “I wonder if we ever passed each other in New York when we were younger. If we were ever in the same restaurant or if we walked by each other on the street.”

  “Maybe we sat on opposite ends of the same subway car,” he said. “Or you got out of one side of a taxi while I got in the other.”

  Her life could have been so different if only they had seen each other then, if she’d gotten out of the taxi on his side and held the door for him, and he’d decided not to go to his destination after all, but just to walk with her instead, when they were younger, before they’d married the wrong people. Her throat started to tingle with the onset of tears, and she swallowed them away and kissed him.

  The fact that sex with Christopher didn’t hurt wasn’t the only miracle. The even greater miracle—greater and terrifying and so, so inconvenient—was that she was falling in love.

  Chapter 16

  A bag of fresh fruit—that was the first thing Claire noticed when she climbed into the twelve-passenger van that Sycamore House had sent to shuttle the women upstate. “Help yourselves,” said the driver after he finished putting their luggage in the trunk, carefully laying Claire’s black backpack atop a pile of designer suitcases. Claire reached her hand into the paper bag and pulled out a pear, ripe and unblemished.

  As they drove up into the Hudson Valley, Whitney made conversation with the driver from the passenger seat. Ellie and Meredith prattled away to each other in the back while, next to them, Gwen listened to an audiobook of a Jhumpa Lahiri novel. Vicki stared longingly out the window as the bustle of the city faded into treetops, as if trying to commune with her baby despite the miles between them. Claire’s leg jostled against Amara’s, and they smiled at each other.

  The past week, Claire had gone over to Amara’s apartment after both playgroup sessions, staying and talking until the sky outside started to darken. They didn’t mention their extra time together to the rest of the moms, so it had an exciting, illicit frisson, even though all they were doing was playing with Charlie and chopping vegetables for dinner. Amara had regaled Claire with tales of her late-night days, about which celebrities were secretly total pricks and which ones had been far too insistent that she do coke with them. Claire had made Amara laugh with stories of her various dating misadventures. But also, Claire had watched Amara tear up with relief as Charlie pulled himself to standing all over the living room. And Amara had wordlessly poured Claire a large glass of wine when Claire had come back in from the hallway, where she’d gone to endure one of her mother’s infrequent passive-aggressive phone check-ins. After ten minutes of questions about why Claire needed to stay in New York if she wasn’t in “that band” anymore, a glass of wine and a silent look of understanding from Amara had been exactly what Claire had needed.

  Now, as they sat next to each other in the van, Amara rooted around in her handbag. “Hangman?” she asked, pulling out a pencil and a pad of paper.

  “Yes, please,” Claire said.

  An hour and a half later, the driver stopped at a guard booth. “Whitney Morgan, party of 7,” he said to the man inside, who checked a list and then waved them through, down a driveway lined with sycamore trees (very on brand, Claire thought). Ahead of them, a mansion came into view—regal, made of gray stone, like something out of The Great Gatsby, except for the modernized wings flanking either side of it. In spite of herself, a giddy anticipation overtook Claire, and she grinned at Amara. How weird and wonderful, to be there, with those women. It was like she’d pulled off a long con.

  They walked into the wood-paneled lobby to check in. The woman behind the desk, an efficient ball of sunshine around Claire’s age, handed them all reusable water bottles emblazoned with the Sycamore House logo. “Welcome,” she said. “Now, I’ve got a room key for Victoria Elmsworth, who upgraded to the silent-retreat option?” The rest of the moms looked at one another, confused, as Vicki glided forward to collect a room key, waved goodbye, and disappeared off down a corridor.

  “Well,” Amara said, “I guess that’s the last we’ll see of Vicki this weekend.”

  “The rest of you will be two to a room, so pick your partner, drop off your stuff, and then you can get started on activities! We’ve got a great Vinyasa class in half an hour.”

  Ellie charged forward, Meredith in tow, and grabbed their room
key. Amara and Claire began to turn to each other right as Gwen reached for Whitney. But though Whitney must have seen Gwen’s overture, she turned to Claire as if oblivious, clapping her hands together with a bright smile. “Oh, room with me, Claire,” she said. “I’ve been dying for us to get to know each other better!”

  “Uh, sure,” Claire said. Well, this was an unexpected turn. Now she knew what it felt like to be the kid who got picked first for teams in gym class. She shot an apologetic look at Amara, then followed Whitney down the hall into a room with two double beds, each covered in a fluffy white comforter. A large window ran along one wall, looking out onto the forest.

  “Let’s change for Vinyasa,” Whitney said, unself-consciously pulling off her blouse and swapping it for a formfitting tank top made of some fancy athletic material that wicked away perspiration and probably cured cancer too. Claire dug a pair of sweatpants from Old Navy out of her backpack. Whitney glanced at them, then hesitated. “Would you like to borrow a pair of yoga pants?” she asked. “I brought a few.”

  “Thanks, but there’s no way I wear the same size as you,” Claire said. Whitney’s legs were those of a ballerina. Claire’s legs would have been more at home playing on the US Women’s Soccer Team.

  “Oh, please, that’s the beauty of yoga pants,” Whitney said, tossing over a pair of sleek Athleta leggings.

  Claire slid and wiggled her way into the pants, which vacuum-sealed her in. Goddammit, they really were good quality. And they had pockets? Already, she could tell how deflating it would be, the moment that she walked back into her own apartment after this charmed weekend.

  “We’re practically The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants right now.” Whitney beamed.

  Turned out that the magic of the yoga pants extended only so far. They made Claire’s ass look amazing (“Where have you been hiding that?” Amara asked when Claire walked into the yoga room), but they did not automatically make her into a yogi. As the mothers contorted themselves into a series of unfamiliar poses, bending and breathing deep, Claire got sweatier and sweatier, her hands slipping around on her mat. “Find your own truth in your practice today,” the instructor said, reaching out a hand to steady Claire as she wobbled. “For some of you, that means extending your stretch out further. For others, that may mean resting in child’s pose.” Claire snuck a glance at a woman on a nearby mat sinking back onto her haunches with a sigh, and copied her.