Secret Lives Of Husbands And Wives

by Josie Brown

  “No! No . . . he’s just walking his dog.” I untangle myself from Ted. Crablike, I crawl over to where my pants and panties have been tossed and grab them, then tuck and roll to the bed, where I’ve left my shirt. I’m not about to prance around and give Harry yet another cheap thrill. “I guess that damn loose pane caught his attention.”

  “Yeah, right. I wouldn’t put it past your new boyfriend to be some sort of Peeping Tom.”

  “Harry is not a Peeping Tom. And he’s not my boyfriend. He took his dog out, then heard the noise, so he walked over to investigate. Quit making a federal case out of it.”

  “Why are you defending that loser?”

  “You don’t even know him! Why would you say something like that?” I hope I don’t sound too indignant. Or, worse yet, guilty. I peek out the window, but Harry is long gone. Evidently having figured out the score, he is dragging Lucky back down the street.

  I’ve still got my back to Ted so I can’t see his smirk, but I can hear it in his voice. “Oh, sure, I know him all right. He’s one arrogant son of a bitch.”

  “You’ve got him all wrong. Frankly, he’s a nice guy. And despite what Tammy said, he’s been a total gentleman. There’s nothing wrong with being neighborly.”

  “How sweet. So he’s finally meeting the neighbors.” Ted stares out the window, but no Harry. “Well, I guess he’s hoping that ‘better late than never’ pays off.”

  “What does that mean?” It’s been a very long night. I toss him his boxer briefs in the hope he will take the hint and cover himself up.

  “Get real. Is he stupid enough to think he’ll get to keep the house, once the divorce is settled? Fat chance.”

  I don’t want to debate him on this topic. Not while he’s plastered and jealous.

  Not ever, really.

  Suddenly I feel guilty that Harry and I are friends. I glance over at Ted, only to see he’s turned his back on me and is already out the door.

  So much for snuggling.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, in the middle of our bed, a thought hits me:

  During our impromptu shed shag, I wasn’t wearing my diaphragm.

  I try to remember the number of days since my last period, but I’m so tired, and it’s too much like counting sheep. Not to worry, I assure myself. My ovulation rarely occurs during the only other constant in my life: league board meetings.

  Realizing how predictable my life has become, I cry myself to sleep.

  And dream about Harry.

  23

  “Love is a gamble, it’s a chance that you take.

  You lay your heart down and you bet it won’t break.”

  —Hugh Prestwood

  Thursday, 21 Nov., 4:08 p.m.

  We need a fourth for poker tomorrow night. Are you in?” Harry’s cheeriness seems forced. We haven’t talked since I last saw him. Or I should say, since he last saw me: through the shed window.

  Maybe I’m just reading him wrong. Maybe, like me, he’s catching his breath from another hellish week.

  Just maybe he didn’t see Ted and me after all.

  Of course, that’s it! Otherwise he wouldn’t be calling, inviting me over, just like one of the guys. And certainly he’d be teasing me unmercifully. . . .

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t really play, but I’m in.”

  “Great! Oh, and no need to worry. It isn’t strip poker.” He hangs up laughing.

  Yep, okay, he saw us.

  But he’s wrong. Strip poker is just what we need to even the score. . . .

  Or not. Seeing Pete without his skivvies and validating Masha’s excuse for catting around on him would not give me much joy.

  I’ll settle for a very large cash pot.

  Friday, 22 Nov., 7:04 p.m.

  The judge ruled that DeeDee is allowed to take the kids to her apartment on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays, while Harry gets them on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. They’ll rotate Saturdays. Since he won’t get to see his kids for the next three nights, they are allowed to stay up until the game ends.

  The kids accompany me. We wouldn’t be here at all except for the fact that tonight Ted’s company is playing a basketball league game. By the time he gets home, the kids and I are already in bed. Just once I want him to come home to an empty house. Then maybe he’ll actually bother to ask where we were.

  But I wouldn’t bet on it.

  Somehow Cal has convinced Sabrina and Duke to come along, but Sabrina’s scowl is proof that she’s here against her will. In order to avoid any human contact, she is concentrating on a tall wall of books in the Wilders’ living room. Finally she plucks a thick tome from one of the shelves: The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. I’ve no doubt she’ll get more out of it than the Wilder it was meant for.

  Pete came early for his pep talk with Jake about rejoining the team. It must have worked, because the two of them are shooting hoops in the driveway. And from the way Natassia is sizing up Jake, I’m guessing Pete didn’t need to twist her arm to tag along. Like mother, like daughter.

  Olivia runs off happily with Temple to her fairyland of a bedroom. At first Mickey and the middle-schoolers aren’t so eager to play nice. It’s like watching three Mafia families meet to divvy up a new territory. Natassia and Sabrina circle and sneer at each other. Tanner and Jake ignore them as well as Duke—that is, until they realize that Duke’s obliviousness to them and his fascination with his iPhone are due to the fact that, by some miracle, he is tuned to the video feed of the Golden State Warriors’ coaches while he watches the basketball game on the phone’s screen.

  “Wow! Is that coming from some new ESPN app?” Tanner moves in for a closer look.

  “No. I made it.” Duke ducks his head shyly. “The picture is coming from the stadium’s JumboTron feed, and the audio is coming off the licensed network’s mike.”

  Jake, too, is mesmerized. “Duke, dude, think you can make it work on my phone too?”

  Duke nods, but Harry shakes his head. “Remember the rules, kids: homework first. Jake, if you don’t pass your French test Monday, you won’t even own a phone.”

  Jake rolls his eyes. Something tells me he’s skipped that class more than he’d like to admit to his dad.

  Sabrina looks up from her book. “I’m in your class. I’ll quiz you if you like.” Her glare dares him to take her up on the offer.

  Either Jake is desperate, or he likes what he sees: another rebel without a cause, not to mention a 36C chest in a tight Grateful Dead T-shirt.

  As they head off toward Jake’s bedroom, Tanner suddenly realizes he has Natassia all to himself. “I’ve got a test on Monday, too. How are you at math?”

  “Lousy.” Her sigh is accompanied by a flip of her long blond hair.

  “Oh. That’s too bad.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.” She picks up his book and riffles through it. Am I the only one who notices that it’s upside down? “Want to study together?”

  “Yeah, sure!” He follows her into the kitchen.

  Harry laughs. “Natassia is a real boost to Tanner’s ego.”

  “Yeah, among other things. Well, here’s hoping she doesn’t decimate my son’s GPA.” I point to the deck of cards in his hand. “Now, shut up and deal.”

  9:37 p.m.

  “So, are you going to take a card or what?” Pete’s voice drips with venom. Well, what do I expect? He hates to lose, and for the past two hours I’ve been beating the pants off of him—and Harry and Cal, too—in five-card stud.

  “Sure, why not, I’ll take a card.” I say it as if I couldn’t care less, and for a good reason: I’ve already got two pair. Since the card I draw gives me three of a kind, I’ve got myself a full house.

  And the rest of Pete’s stack.

  Too bad it’s not wired into his bank account.

  Seeing my hand, the guys groan and fold. Harry looks over at me suspiciously. “Hey, I thought you said you don’t play.”

  “I lied.”

  All three men give involuntary
nods. It suddenly occurs to me that I’ve said the wrong thing to redeem their faith in women.

  So that I don’t completely wipe out my poker buddies, Harry uses a bit of psychological warfare to put me off my game: he asks me how the Thanksgiving food drive is going.

  I groan out loud. “Well, if it’s any indication, I’m exiled from the board’s morning coffee gatherings. Until I prove myself as a leader, Margot feels my mornings would be better spent, and I quote, ‘focusing on the task at hand.’”

  “What a bitch!” Pete frowns. “Seriously, how many cans do you need to get back in their good graces?”

  “More to the point, why would you want to be there anyway?” Harry says this just loud enough for me to hear him.

  I kick him under the table. “Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-one hundred. Even two thousand would be considered a respectable showing. With that, I’ll be within spitting distance of her record.”

  Cal blinks twice. “That’s doable. Between all three schools, there are eight hundred kids in the Heights. If every kid brought in three cans, you’d knock the smirk off her face.”

  “‘Doable’? Ha! You try wrangling eight hundred kids and their parents for a worthy cause.”

  Pete nods. “Okay, you’re on. I’ll tell my team that the guy who brings in the most cans stays off the bench permanently for the rest of the season.”

  “My partners and I own a vacation home in Tahoe,” says Harry. “DeeDee can’t get her hands on it, since it’s owned by the firm. If you want, you can offer a weekend there as a contest prize: everyone who brings in at least four cans is eligible, or something like that.”

  “That can go in the next online issue of the Bugle, if you want,” adds Pete. “It launches at midnight tonight.”

  “Wow! Both of you are awesome to do this for me, seriously.” I start to tear up. They barely know me, but they’re willing to do more than my own board.

  I have a new definition of friendship.

  “I can’t speak for Bev, but . . .” Cal looks helpless. He wants to offer something, but he can’t think of anything. “Well, to tell you the truth, Bev and I barely talk these days.”

  Pete smirks. “Welcome to the club.” He slings his cards so hard that they hit the wall some four feet away.

  We all sit there, stunned. Then Cal does the same.

  Harry takes the rest of the deck and, one by one, flicks the cards onto the table.

  Yeah. O-kay. I get it. I’m sitting in the midst of three very angry men. “I can imagine how hard it is, to want to get through to someone you love who doesn’t hear you. But you have to ask yourself: are you truly making every attempt to tell her how you feel?”

  All three men stare at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Harry spits out his words.

  “I’m just trying to say that women appreciate it when you verbalize what your feelings are—and when you ask them to express theirs too.”

  “Oh yeah?” Pete glares at me. “What, now we’ve got to model our lives on a Redbook cover? ‘Is He Giving You What You Really Want? Five Ways to Tell Him How to Do It Right.’ That stuff is such bull!”

  I laugh. “Well, if those headlines sell, then they must be hitting some hot button with women. Can you say the same?”

  He flinches. Ouch. I didn’t mean to hit him below the belt.

  So that it doesn’t seem as if I’m picking on him, I turn to Cal. “The one thing I’ve noted about Bev is that she’s a very hard worker. I’m sure you are too, but obviously something is driving her to accomplish even more than her fair share. Perhaps she’s expressed financial concerns, or she has a professional goal? Whatever it is, if you acknowledge this drive, show her you appreciate how hard she’s working for you and the family, it may make her realize that she’s already got what she’s looking for: your love and approval.”

  Cal looks at his feet. “I’m not great at saying ‘I love you.’ I know that.”

  “Well, admittedly, it is the first step. Even ‘Honey, thank you for all you do’ will go a long way.” I pat him on the shoulder. “Hey, better yet, call in a maid for a day to get the house shipshape. Anyone who works as hard as Bev would appreciate that. Then surprise her by taking her out to dinner, just the two of you. I don’t know what woman wouldn’t love that.”

  “I do.” Pete looks me in the eye. “Don’t you think I know what everyone—especially your girlfriends—says about Masha and me behind our backs? Okay, Oprah, since you have all the answers, what am I supposed to do, mainline Viagra?”

  “Viagra? No, I don’t think so.” He’s caught me off guard. “Look, I don’t have all the answers, believe me. I wish I did. But if the issue you have with Masha is, um, personal, then maybe you need to stop thinking like a guy and think like a woman. She’s a stranger in a strange country, and whatever issue she has with love—or for that matter, with sex—more than likely finds its root in some emotional pain she’s never even mentioned to you.” I take a deep breath. “Keep another thing in mind: as much as we women love sex, romance is our biggest turn-on.”

  Pete shrugs, but I know I’ve hit on something when he takes out his cell phone and texts a message. I’m hoping it’s to a sex therapist. Or some romantic B and B.

  The fun and games are over. Cal and I round up our kids and head out. Seeing that I’ve got a drowsy Olivia draped over my shoulder, Harry takes her from me, murmuring to Jake to get his sister to bed while he walks us around the block.

  The boys race home, but I walk next to Harry. Only when we reach my porch does he break the heavy silence that hangs between us. “I’ve never talked to a woman the way I talk to you. Ted’s a very lucky guy, in more ways than one.”

  He leaves it at that, and so do I. What can I say?

  Frankly, I don’t know how he’d feel to learn that I’ve told him things I’ve never said to Ted, and possibly never will.

  I talk a good game, but I’m just like him and the other guys. I can’t handle the truth if it means finding out that I’m living a lie.

  24

  “If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because

  it resembles friendship rather than love.”

  —Michel de Montaigne

  Tuesday, 26 Nov., 1:27 p.m.

  You know, right now Margot is pea green with envy! She never in a million years thought you’d get even this close to PULLING IT OFF!” Brooke’s whisper ends with a shriek, not for emphasis but of pain: Geraldo, her masseur here at Serenity Now, has found yet another knot in her neck and is pushing, pulling, and tugging it into submission.

  Or else the former Green Beret and black ops mercenary may finally have snapped and made good on his threat to shut her up once and for all. He claims her ongoing chatter defeats the purpose of getting a deep-tissue massage because she never gives her mouth a break.

  He also insists that her constant yammering is worse torture than what he inflicted on our enemies.

  For this reason alone, I forgo his flying fingers for those of a small Asian Zen master, Mr. Qi. Qi may be blind, but he reads muscles as if they were lines of braille, and he certainly doesn’t mind it when I converse with Brooke through the high partition that separates us. Granted, Mr. Qi may not be as strong as Geraldo; then again, I’ll never worry that what I say might induce a flashback that gets me waterboarded under specially oxygenated, rose-petal-infused water.

  “But I haven’t ‘pulled it off.’ At least, not yet. I still have another two hundred or so cans to go.” I flip over so that Mr. Qi can work my forehead. Nothing he does will remove the lines there, forged deeper from all my worry that I’ll blow this opportunity to show up Margot. We are in the last twenty-one hours of the food drive. Despite my efforts and those of Pete and Harry, victory is slipping from my grasp. “I know it’s petty of me, but I really, really wanted to beat her, just this once. Then Thanksgiving would be perfect.”

  Even without breaking Margot’s record, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. To start with, Mother is sp
ending Thanksgiving with her sister, down in Carmel.

  “Hallelujah!” said Ted when I told him that bit of news, last night while we—well, he—watched the last few minutes of the Lakers game in bed. “Do you know how hard it is to swallow with her sour puss staring at me from across the table?”

  “Hey, it’s not all that bad. . . . Okay, yeah, it’s a downer.” At his behest, I was straddling his back in order to massage his shoulders. But my nuzzling him behind the ears didn’t seem to arouse him half as much as Kobe’s two consecutive three-point shots, so I gave up and hopped off. “Best yet, with Mother out of our hair for the weekend, you won’t have to pretend you have to go into the office on Friday.”

  “Yep, we’ll get to sleep in for four whole days in a row.” He flipped over to face me. “When was the last time we did that?”

  “You tell me.” I turned and muted the sound using the TV’s remote so he could see I meant business. “You’re serious, right, about taking off Friday? You’ve been working so many nights and weekends lately that I can’t believe my ears.”

  “Cross my heart, babe, I’m all yours. Why, what did you have in mind?” He kissed me hard, but his eyes were following Derek Fisher down the court.

  “Absolutely nothing. In fact, I think we’ll skip the potluck open house at the club, too.” Really, I hadn’t planned on going anyway. Not if I had to hear Margot feign sympathy over my failure to lead the troops to victory in our Thanksgiving food drive.

  Now I realize that Brooke has given up on me too. Some pal.

  “Hey, you can’t say you didn’t give it the . . . ol’ . . . college . . . TRY! Ouch! Way to go, big guy!” Brooke caresses each syllable in sync with Geraldo’s smacks to her tush on the pretense of massaging her upper thighs. If he thinks he can beat her into submission, he’s sorely mistaken. She’s admitted to me that part of the thrill of going to him is coming through him. (Being married to a dentist says a lot about your threshold for pain.)

  “Your phone is vibrating.” Mr. Qi’s whisper tickles my ear like a sweet breeze. He’s right: my purse is dancing a jig on the small stand beside the massage table as my cell buzzes away. I flip it open to a cryptic text message: