Secret Lives Of Husbands And Wives

by Josie Brown

  —Ambrose Bierce

  Thursday, 28 Nov., 7:11 a.m.

  Olivia has found the king of all puddles in her journey from the driveway of the All Saints Homeless Shelter to its front door. Its depth can be measured from the muddy watermark left high above her ankles.

  She bursts into tears. “I’m wet! I’m cold! I’m sleepy! I WANT TO GO HOME!”

  This could all have been avoided if her galoshes weren’t buried somewhere in the back of the van, underneath the boys’ sneakers and sports equipment.

  Or if I had reneged on my promise to help Harry at the homeless shelter.

  But I couldn’t do that. Not after I saw the look on his face when he realized DeeDee was once again getting her way.

  Of course, he offered to let me off the hook. “Your kids won’t be as excited if their friends aren’t around. And besides, you’ve got a big meal to prepare—for your own family.”

  “Nonsense! This isn’t about them hanging with their friends. It’s about helping someone who needs it.”

  Like I’m helping you, Harry. If you’ll let me.

  “Besides, our whole meal is on autopilot. Everything will be done ahead of time. All I have to do tomorrow is stick the turkey into the oven and set the time to bake. Then, voilá!!”

  “Well . . . if you say so.” He watched as DeeDee drove out of the school’s parking lot with Jake. Soon Temple would be with them. He was returning to an empty home.

  An empty life.

  “Aw, fuck it. It’s just one day, right?” he said, more to himself than to me. “I’ll see them on Friday, and take them for leftovers at the potluck.”

  “You’ll have leftovers from our dinner too.” I gave him a look that said I wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  With all we have to do today, I’m not taking it from my kids, either. “Please Mom, can’t we just go home?” Tanner, who is still nursing a killer hangover, has yet to open his eyes since I roused him out of bed.

  “No, we can’t.” I snap my fingers in front of his eyes. “People are counting on us. Now, pick up your sister and carry her inside before she drowns in one of these puddles.”

  Only Mickey seems up for our grand adventure. He’s already bounded out of the van with one of my pumpkin pies. While I grab another bag of groceries, he counts the number of people standing in the line that snakes around the building. “Cool! Hey, what are the chances that I’ll catch scurvy from a homeless guy?”

  “More than likely it’ll be fleas.” Tanner lets loose with a prolonged burp. It is, I hope, the last vestige of his unfortunate incident. “Those guys sleep outside, and they never take showers.”

  “Yuck!” Olivia wrinkles her nose. As disgusting as her brother’s burp is, I’m sure she is referring to the thought of going without a bath. One of her joys in life is splashing around in her tub. For her, roughing it is doing without a Little Mermaid bubble bath for even one day.

  “Kids, be nice! Not everyone has a roof over their heads like us. This is why we give thanks today—”

  “Pecan or pumpkin?” yells a greasy-haired guy with one eye covered by a patch. “Hey, I’ll let you touch me if you hand it over!”

  “Whoa, cool!” Mickey starts over.

  I grab hold of his jacket. “No! I mean . . . he’ll get a piece of it when he’s inside.”

  Mickey shrugs. “Yeah, but then they’ll probably make me wear gloves.”

  “Listen up! This isn’t a petting zoo. These are real people—”

  Real people who want pie. Suddenly the line is moving in our direction. They chant “PIE! PIE! PIE!” as if calling for the head of a despotic king. Mickey looks at me helplessly. I take it from him and thrust it at their leader, One-Eyed Jack.

  Not one for formalities, he sticks a grubby paw in it before passing it down the line.

  The kids and I have almost made it to the door when I hear him yell: “Love the triple sec. Great touch!”

  I now have all the validation I need that this will be the most awesome Thanksgiving ever.

  12:19 p.m.

  Free food brings out the best in people, even those serving it. Olivia’s wariness disappears when she hears all the sincere thanks and “Aren’t you a little sweetie!” from those who take a piece of the sliced French bread from her serving basket. Mickey’s job, which is to hand out plates and plastic utensils wrapped in paper napkins, is done with a cheerful patter that earns him grateful grins. That many of his patrons are toothless doesn’t seem to bother him. Even Tanner loses his surly attitude when he realizes one of the kids lined up for the mashed potatoes he’s ladling is wearing a jacket he’d tossed in the Goodwill bin at school just a month earlier. It is too loose for the boy to button snugly around his skinny waist. Tanner gives him two helpings of the potatoes, having already given him the jacket off his back.

  I have now had my Thanksgiving and an early Christmas gift, too.

  I’ll thank the shelter’s director for any muscle mass I gain after this morning: she’s had me lugging large pans of collards to and from the stove for the past hour. Harry, who has been slicing turkey all morning, pauses for a moment. His eyes scan the room, looking for each of us. When he catches my eye, he wipes his hands on the full-length apron he’s wearing and saunters over. “I’m impressed. You and your brood have really gotten into the groove.”

  I shrug. “They’ve enjoyed a very soft life. It’s good that they see this. Already I can tell it’s changed their perspective.”

  He gives me a sidelong glance. “I’m guessing you didn’t have it so easy, growing up.”

  Despite the fact that we’re standing in a chilly room, I feel my face heating up. “We had our ups and downs.”

  “Really? So did we.” He puts his hands in the pockets of his apron. “DeeDee and I met on an upswing. My parents were dirt-poor, but I’d wangled a full scholarship—for basketball—to Berkeley: I majored in finance, then went to law school afterward. DeeDee was a women’s studies major.”

  I can’t hide my smile. Seeing it, he laughs. “Yeah, I know. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” He shakes his head in wonder. “There was a time when she would have been the one pushing for the kids to be a part of something like this, if you can believe that.”

  “Well, we all change. I’m not the same person either.”

  “Remember your chemistry? Change is a reaction to some event, usually one that’s beyond our control.” His eyes sweep the room. “Everyone here has had the rug pulled out from under them in some way, either financially or emotionally. Their response to it is why they’re here now.” He unties the apron and folds it into a neat square. “I guess the same could be said about DeeDee. The easier things got for us, the more emotionally aloof she became. It’s almost as if the fight went out of her, as if she quit caring.”

  “People get lazy, I guess. That’s when the little things seem big. We need the big things to remind us that they’re not, to put things back into perspective.”

  “No, I think it’s more than that. I never told her to give up on her dreams, her goals. On us. Before she did, I wish she’d talked it out with me first. I would have been open to counseling, if that’s what she had wanted.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “And certainly she could have volunteered for any cause that interested her. Hell, she got enough requests. This place, for example.”

  I wince. “I truly feel that there is such a thing as post-marriage depression. You know, like the depression that sets in with some women after a baby? Only it happens right after the ‘I do’s’ when we realize that marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Like buyer’s remorse, right? Only take-back’s a bitch. Especially in our tax bracket.” As he backs into the table behind him, I grab his hand and pull him forward just before he tips over a large pan of stuffing.

  He holds on to me, as if for dear life.

  For the longest time, he doesn’t make a move to let go. I pretend not to notice.

  Until it’s too obvious, to both of u
s, how good it feels.

  Finally, he lets his hand drop. “Hey, look, the second shift has arrived. I guess we can round up the troops. I’m famished! Think that turkey’s done by now?”

  “What time is it? Two o’clock? It’ll be crisp and golden. I owe it all to my Electrolux convection oven with all the bells and whistles. One of Paradise Heights’s many great amenities.” I pray my laugh doesn’t sound too giddy, too stupid. Too hopeless. “What more could a girl want?”

  That one little question is all it takes to wipe the smile off Harry’s face. “If I had the answer to that one, I’d still be married.”

  27

  “Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes

  better than the dinner.”

  —Charles Caleb Colton

  2:46 p.m.

  The turkey is raw.

  Yes, it was in the oven, and yes, I’d set the timer.

  I just forgot to set the oven temperature, and to hit Bake, is all.

  I am trying to think of a gentle way to break the news to my family and our guest that it will be another four hours before dinner is served, but nothing comes to mind that doesn’t include massive tears and hara-kiri.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if the kids weren’t already dead tired and starving.

  Or if Ted weren’t acting like such a dick.

  That is not to say that he isn’t being polite to Harry. In fact, if you didn’t know better, you’d think they were old college buds. It helps that they were in the same fraternity, if not at the same college: Chi Phi’s, within two years of each other, UC Santa Barbara (Ted) and UC Berkeley (Harry). There are acquaintances in common, and unshared memories of renowned gatherings that one or the other attended. For all of five minutes, they exclaimed over the discovery that they might even have dated the same woman. Ironically, neither of them could remember her name. But hey, how many philosophy majors from UC Santa Cruz with butterfly tattoos on their left butt cheeks could there have been?

  I hate to break it to them: more than they’ll ever know.

  Both schools are in bowl games this year. This gives Harry and Ted something else to talk about. They’ve compared players and coaches and scrimmages, and done so in a gentlemanly manner. But eventually Harry takes takes the hint: Ted’s force field is up. And it isn’t coming down anytime soon.

  Usually I’d be out there in the family room with them, massaging any and all awkward silences into bonding opportunities (“Oh, Ted, Harry’s got one of your competitors on his client list. . . .” or “Harry, didn’t you say your firm renegotiated the Lakers’ contract with the City of Los Angeles? Ted loves the Lakers. . . .”), but I’m too busy hyperventilating over my ruined meal.

  And thinking about what Ted will say to me the moment Harry walks out the door:

  “Hope your boyfriend was impressed with your Mother Teresa act, ’cause you blew it with your cooking.”

  He’d be right. I have been trying to impress Harry. Some guy shows me a little attention, and I’m just as bad as Colleen or Brooke. Or even Tammy.

  Harry walks in just in time to see the first tear roll off the tip of my nose. It stops him cold. Looking for a graceful out, he sniffs the air—

  But there’s nothing there. Perplexed, he says, “Something . . . smells good?”

  And that’s when I start to cry so hard that I’m laughing.

  When I’m done, I point to the oven. “I forgot to set it. I’m guessing we’ve got another four hours.”

  “Oh yeah? Watch this.” He picks up a couple of oven mitts. Opening the oven door, he grabs the pan holding the turkey and puts it on the kitchen island. “Got kitchen shears? If not, a boning knife will do.”

  I rummage through the knife drawer until I find a utensil that meets his approval.

  “Okay, very simple—although I’d suggest that, next time, you do it before you put the bird in the oven.” He takes the knife and saws through the turkey’s back on both sides of the backbone, then pulls it out of the carcass. Next, he uses the knife to separate one side of the bird’s rib cage from the meat, then does the same to the other side. The breastbone cartilage is next to go, all the way to the thighbones, but he leaves the wings intact. “We still want it to look like a bird, right?”

  “Oh, my God! Deboning the damn thing, that’s brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “It’s why I get paid the big bucks.” He takes a bow, then completes the last step: easing the flat bones of the bird’s thighs out of the carcass without breaking the skin.

  I can’t help but marvel. “Where did you learn this?”

  “I worked my way through college in the backs of a lot of East Bay restaurants.” He flips the bird back over into the pan and arranges it back into its form, then adjusts the temperature to the right setting. “Beats flipping burgers. This will be ready in two hours. What say we take some of those veggies and make a few appetizers? That should hold back the angry mob for another hour.”

  When he wipes his forehead, unknowingly he stripes himself with a thin line of turkey grease. I pick up a dishrag and motion toward his forehead, but he doesn’t get it. Standing on tiptoes, I swipe his forehead. His eyes don’t look up, but seek out mine instead.

  But I pretend I don’t see this. Because if I look at him now, he’ll get the wrong message.

  Of course, he knows this too, which is why he finally glances away.

  That’s when he notices the orchids on the windowsill. The candy cane amaryllis has two little blooms.

  “Wow! Is that the orchid I gave you? Well, look at that—”

  “You gave my wife flowers?”

  Neither of us heard Ted come in. How long has he been there?

  Harry looks up, but I can tell from the look on his face that his antennae have not yet picked up that he’s treading on thin ice. “Yeah. The last time I was here, I noticed that Lyssa has a real green thumb. I so admired one of these—”

  “You were here . . . before?”

  Ted is smiling, but Harry has just caught on: he has said something terribly wrong.

  Both of them turn to me, as if seeing me for the very first time.

  My friend suddenly realizes my marriage isn’t as happy as he thought.

  My husband has just learned how unhappy our marriage really is.

  5:22 p.m.

  “It must be nice, hanging out with all the hot MILFs in the neighborhood, right, Harry? That’s one way to get over the pain and sorrow of DeeDee leaving you.”

  Ted is tapping the larger piece of the wishbone on the table. He’s been doing it since the coffee was poured and the kids were excused from the table after each one had packed away pieces of both the pumpkin and pecan pies.

  He can see from my face that I wish he’d stop, because it’s ruining the table’s finish.

  Okay, really I wish he’d stop because he’s doing it to taunt me, even as he jibes at Harry.

  Still, I resist the urge to stab his hand with my knife, because that would send the wrong message to the children about the right way to hold their utensils.

  But Ted would certainly get the point.

  “Daddy, what’s a MILF?” Olivia looks up from the pillow house she’s making for Mrs. Wiffle.

  Tanner snickers. “You want me to tell her?”

  “You know?” I stop stacking dishes and glare at Ted, then give Tanner a warning glance. He goes back to humming gangsta obscenities in sync with his iPod.

  But Ted won’t back down. “It’s just a very pretty mommy, honey. There are lots of pretty mommies around, aren’t there, Harry?”

  Olivia puffs the pillow beneath Mrs. Wiffle’s head. “But Mommy is the prettiest of them all.”

  “That’s right, baby girl.” Ted glares at Harry. “What do you think, Harry? Is Lyssa the hottest mom in our little ’hood?” He wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me toward him so fast that I almost drop the dessert plates in my hand. “I do know how to pick ’em, don’t I?”

  To his credit, Harr
y has kept his cool through all of Ted’s little barbs during dessert: like when he asked Harry if he thought “Colleen’s were real,” or if he ever wondered why Brooke’s dentist husband hadn’t seen fit to fix her obvious overbite (“He must find it comes in handy for—well, you get my drift. . . .”), and how Tammy was clearly “all talk and no action.”

  But now, watching Ted mark his territory on my best holiday sweater, Harry leans back in his chair and stares Ted right in the eye. “I get hit on a lot more at work than here in the Heights. Isn’t that your experience, Ted?”

  Ted’s smile dissolves. “Yeah . . . I guess.”

  “No, but seriously: have any of Lyssa’s friends come on to you?”

  “Her friends?” Ted looks over at me sheepishly, his face now bright red. “No! Of course not. They wouldn’t be any kind of friends if they did, now, would they?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, no.” Harry smiles slyly. “But on the other hand, I’ve had women come on to me in my own office. And in a client’s office. Or at a convention. And certainly when I’m on the road. How about you?”

  Ted shrugs. “Yeah, sure. So? What’s the big deal?”

  “My point exactly. If you want to play around, it’s more likely you’d do it where you’re less likely to get caught. Like, say, the office. Doing it in your own backyard is just plain stupid.”

  Ted’s response is a frown and a shrug.

  But Harry is not through. “And if you’re smart, you’ll keep it in your pants altogether. Because you’ve got too much to lose. Hell, you lose if she walks out on you just because she’s bored. Or because she realizes she doesn’t like you anymore.” He stands up to stretch. “Hey, Tanner, how about shooting a few hoops? It’s getting warm in here.”

  Harry doesn’t know it, but he has just thrown down the gauntlet: there is no way Ted is going to lose at the game in which he was once king.

  It starts out friendly enough: Ted and me against Tanner and Harry. I am supposed to be Ted’s “handicap,” but I don’t see it that way. That is, I don’t want it that way, but soon I am being outmaneuvered by my madman teammate, who grabs every rebound and rushes every ball. Eventually I quit trying. What’s the use? Ted has something to prove.