Motherland

by Amy Sohn

  “What? Why?”

  “I realized I don’t love him anymore.” The Gottliebs were the last people on earth Rebecca ever expected to separate. CC was holy about family. She loved being a stay-at-home mom. All her Facebook photos were of the four of them.

  “You just realized all of a sudden?”

  “I’ve been muddling through for years, and I reached this point where I can’t do it.”

  The wine came and the waiter opened it. Rebecca sniffed and tasted. It was full on a level she had never experienced. The waiter poured, and they told him they needed more time to think about the menu. When he moved away, Rebecca said, “Why didn’t you tell me how unhappy you were?”

  “I was too embarrassed. For a long time I thought I had to suck it up and be unhappy because I didn’t want the boys to grow up with divorced parents, and I knew it would kill my parents. But then I decided that I don’t want them to grow up around a miserable mother. That’s not right, either.”

  The wine was strong. Rebecca felt a few beads of sweat on her brow and blotted them with her napkin. “Marriage is hard,” she said. “Kids are hard. You can’t expect it to be how it was at the beginning.”

  “It shouldn’t feel like death.”

  Rebecca wondered if CC was making Gottlieb out to be worse than he was. Most fathers were clueless; you didn’t just give up on them. “This sounds so sudden. Did you meet someone else?”

  “Not really.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  CC was blushing. It rose from her chin to her hairline. “Do you remember how I went for a massage in your building with that guy who uses your neighbor’s apartment?”

  “Yeah. You said he was really good.”

  “He was. But I didn’t tell you everything.” She leaned in, breathless, seeming to exult in a chance to tell someone the story. “His name is Seth. He was doing a really good job on my back, and then he did this reflexology thing and asked if he could put it in his mouth.”

  “Put what in his mouth?”

  “My foot. And I . . . said yes. And it felt so good that it made me come.”

  For the second time in recent weeks, Rebecca had the disturbing sensation that she was not the most rebellious member of her peer group. Her architect husband had turned out to be a closet drug dealer, and her friend was buying orgasms from a male massage therapist.

  “Are you making this up?” Rebecca asked, taking a swig of the Brunello. “It sounds like something on a Bravo show.”

  “It’s never happened to me before. Seth connected to some synapse that I didn’t know existed. It was such a weird orgasm. It felt much deeper, more whole-body. We talked about it after. He said it was common—that some women’s feet were erogenous zones as sensitive as the other erogenous zones.”

  “I don’t think it’s physically possible to have an orgasm without genital contact.”

  “It is definitely possible. I was shaking everywhere.”

  Was CC delusional? Was she just bragging? Rebecca didn’t like the idea that anyone could have better orgasms than she did. When she and Stuart had made love after shopping at Jeffrey, she couldn’t come. She stopped in the middle and blew him instead.

  She decided to make love with him later, when she got back from Maialino. She couldn’t expect their sex life to be easy so early. They were still strangers in many ways. The best sex they’d had was on that roof on Crosby Street two summers ago, when the thrill came from knowing she was doing something wrong. If only she could get to that feeling again. She would have to put her foot down about Benny co-sleeping in their bed. Out of all the worries she’d had about moving in with a movie star, co-sleeping had not been one of them.

  The waiter returned, and they gave their orders. CC got a salumi platter and the rabbit.

  “I went back a couple more times,” CC said, “and it happened again. One afternoon, when it was over and I had gotten dressed, we were talking. I could sense this very intense energy between us.”

  “Yeah, the smell of your toe jam in his mouth.”

  “I’m serious! He asked if I would have a drink, but I said it would be weird getting a drink with him after what we had done. Then he told this joke. There’s this successful artist, and he’s painting this nude model. It’s not going well, so he says, ‘Let’s take a break. Put on your robe and I’ll make you a cup of coffee.’ The model puts on her robe, and they’re having coffee when he hears his wife’s car in the driveway. He says, ‘Quick, take off all your clothes! My wife’s coming home!’ I thought that was the cutest joke. I said I would go for a drink. I met him at this bar called Weather Up on Vanderbilt, and we talked for hours and hours. The sex is so good.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-three. He lives in a share in Ridgewood. It’s been easy to see him with Gottlieb gone. I just get sitters.”

  Rebecca searched CC’s face for signs of insanity or secret misery. A midlife crisis wasn’t supposed to make a person look good, but CC looked beautiful and serene.

  “So you’re positive about this?” Rebecca asked. “You’re going to leave Gottlieb to be with some guy who shrimps for money?”

  “He hates that word. And he’s stopping. He’s going back to regular massage. I’m helping him find a space. We’ve been looking at options on Fourth Avenue, near your store.”

  “What makes you so sure he’s the one?”

  “I’m not, but I’m definitely going to keep seeing him. You know, I owe you an apology. When you first told me you were moving in with Stuart, I thought it was selfish. Selfish and reckless to go straight from one man to another. I thought the mature thing was to tell Theo the truth and go to couples counseling, figure it out, share custody of Benny with Stuart, but stay married to Theo. Now I understand that you wanted to be happy. Theo wasn’t making you happy. You felt ignored. It’s so hard for women to give themselves permission to put themselves first. That’s what Michelle Obama says.”

  “Is this because of what happened at the pond?”

  “What pond?”

  “Dyer Pond. Is this because I told you he was looking at a woman when Harry went in the water?”

  “I never really thought about it. I guess it is. In some ways, it made me stop trusting him.”

  “But you never trusted him.”

  “Deep down I believed he could handle the kids. That day was different. When I got the call, I could see the whole scene in my head. When you said that about the MILF, it made sense.”

  “But Harry was fine,” Rebecca said. “What does it matter why he went under?”

  “I know that logically, that he was okay. But . . . he might not have been okay. That’s the thing. If Theo hadn’t saved him, who knows what would have happened?” CC sighed. Rebecca felt that she had caused the end of the marriage. It was a frightening feeling. If she hadn’t said anything, CC wouldn’t have known, and if she hadn’t known, she wouldn’t be leaving her husband. Rebecca was more distressed by the idea of CC getting divorced than the idea of getting divorced herself.

  “How’s it going with Stuart, anyway?” CC asked, leaning forward on the table. “What’s it like living with a movie stah?” She was giddy. She wanted Rebecca to be complicit in her own midlife crisis, to tell her it was fabulous, that they had sex all the time.

  “Complicated.”

  “It must be exciting. Has he taken you to any premieres?”

  “No, he’s really busy with the show.” Rebecca’s move into Stuart’s loft had coincided with the most intense period of rehearsals for Diabolique, which was to open at the Public in a little over a week, Halloween night. “In some ways I feel like we were more connected before than we are now. He has these long phone calls with Kristen Stewart and Kate Winslet. He says they’re just friends.” Rebecca took another big gulp of her red wine. You weren’t supposed to drink good red wine this fast. You were supposed to savor it; it was probably five dollars a sip.

  “I’m sure they are his friends,” CC said
. “That’s his world.”

  “I know it is. It’s just weird, realizing it firsthand.”

  “When you had your affair, it was all a fantasy. Now it’s real. You’ll trust him more as you get to know each other better.”

  CC’s phone rang, and she whisked it out of her purse. She looked down at it and grinned wildly. “Take it,” Rebecca said.

  “Really?” She was already up on her feet. As she sped out of the dining room to take the call outside, Rebecca got hot in her silk dress. She’d had no idea it was so hard to breathe in silk. She looked down and saw a sweat stain under the right arm. The material felt itchy, and she wanted to rip it off. Was this perimenopause, a hot flash? She went to the ladies’ room and splashed water on her face. In the mirror she looked pale and unwell. She blotted her armpits with a paper towel and stepped back into the big yellow room.

  Marco

  It was Todd’s idea to go to Greenport with the kids for the weekend, to relax and bond as a family. They had taken the Long Island Rail Road from Atlantic Avenue and checked in to a motel, where the sixtysomething, cigarette-smoking proprietress adored Enrique and the rates were cheap. It had miniature golf and an arcade, and Enrique loved it.

  On Saturday Todd worked on the house he was renovating. It was part of the reason for the trip, and Marco hung out at the motel with both kids. Then they walked around town, rode the carousel, and ate lunch at Claudio’s. While he watched Enrique attack his lobster roll, Marco felt like he was dying.

  He was on Antabuse again. He fantasized constantly about fucking other guys or going off the Antabuse so he could drink. He could fantasize for hours—imagining himself buying the vodka, smuggling it home, sneaking it at night when Todd was at work.

  In addition to the Antabuse, he was going to A.A. meetings. He’d tried to do “thirty in thirty,” thirty meetings in thirty days, but things kept coming up. In under a month, he’d gone to fourteen. That wasn’t terrible. At his first meeting since the relapse, at St. Francis Xavier on President Street with Todd, just as he was sharing, they passed the donation hat and everyone got distracted. It made him not want to share again. But he kept going a few times a week. He tried out different meetings the way he used to try different gay bars. Some in the Slope, some in the West Village, some in parts of Brooklyn he’d never been to, like Greenwood Heights. Sometimes Todd came with him. The meetings weren’t all bad. Some were okay. He was trying to give it a chance, take a multipronged approach to sobriety.

  The one thing he liked about A.A. was the amends. He’d made a list of everyone he’d hurt because of drinking. Rebecca had agreed to an amends meeting. They went to Purity Diner on Seventh Avenue, and he apologized for hiding his drinking from her, not trusting her, and being inattentive as a friend. She had been surprisingly understanding and cried into her tea.

  The sobriety was proving easier than the sex stuff. A couple of days after the accident, he had gone back on Manhunt on his laptop. He’d figured out how to do private browsing. Todd had no idea. Though Todd had put a passcode on Marco’s phone so he couldn’t get to any “mature” apps, he hadn’t considered that iPhone apps were not Marco’s only danger zone. Marco had decided it was okay to chat on Manhunt, as long as he didn’t meet any guys in person. So far he hadn’t. It was chatting and a little jerking off, the same stuff he’d been doing before he found out about Grindr.

  He missed Grindr, though. He wanted to be in Manhattan right now, at the James Hotel, fucking a young guy. Cum a Sum Yung Gai. It was an old joke about a Chinese food menu.

  At Claudio’s he saw Todd staring at his scar. Marco wasn’t using a Band-Aid anymore, just white scar cream between his eyebrows, diligently every morning. Amazingly, it was already beginning to fade. One day it would be invisible as if the accident hadn’t happened. Marco met his eye and Todd looked away quickly.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Marco said, “Dr. Haber gave me the name of a couples therapist. Says he’s really good.”

  “Does he work with gay men?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  Todd sighed. He had been the one who’d said they should try couples therapy, but he wasn’t acting very gung ho about it. The whole incident seemed to make him uncomfortable. It was the Lutheran side of him.

  That night at the motel, Todd bathed the kids and read Enrique a chapter of My Father’s Dragon, a trippy book from the 1940s that had come back in vogue among hip parents. An hour later, when both children were asleep and Todd was snoring heavily in bed, Marco tiptoed into the bathroom with his laptop.

  He shut the door, put the toilet seat down, and opened Manhunt. Men online. Suffolk County. So-fuck County. He started to scroll. A dozen Greenport guys were online; it had become a second Fire Island to a certain subset of gay men, creative, artistic. On the street that day, they had passed another gay couple with kids. If he sneaked out to meet someone, he could be back before Todd knew about it. It wouldn’t take long. Maybe he could get the guy to come to the motel and go into the woods with him.

  There was a guy who showed just his cock in his pants and had a profile called Attilathehung. Marco kept browsing until he found Rick-Greenport. Old-looking but cute.

  Age:

  49

  Position:

  Top

  Height:

  6’1"

  Build:

  Muscular

  Ethnicity:

  White

  Hair:

  Blond

  Eyes:

  Blue

  Cock:

  6 (cut)

  Availability:

  Ask me

  Place:

  Ask me

  HIV status:

  Neg

  Intos:

  Sucking, fucking one-on-one, rimming, fuck buddy, kissing, safer only, no PnP

  No party and play. That surprised Marco. There were guys on these sites who weren’t into drugs. Maybe clean guys were on Grindr, too, and he just had to find them. He could stay sober but still hook up. It was a possibility he hadn’t considered.

  As soon as he got back to Brooklyn, he would buy a new iPhone, one unattached to Todd’s account. Then he could go on Grindr without Todd knowing. There was the problem of the phone bills. The family plan was cheaper. But what was ten or twenty dollars a month for freedom?

  There were a few nude pictures underneath the profile. Marco clicked on each. He took it out. Started to stroke. He could feel the stitches in his forehead pulsing in sync with the thrumming of his cock.

  He clicked on the profile and then he clicked the mail button, and an e-mail form opened up. He started to type.

  To: RickGreenport

  Subject: Meeting

  On vacation for the weekend. Looking to hang out. I don’t know Greenport well but

  There was a knock on the door. Adrenaline rushed through him. “You okay?” Todd asked.

  “Yeah, fine.” Had he seen the blue laptop light from underneath? He couldn’t have. Marco was being paranoid.

  “I gotta piss,” Todd said.

  “Just a second.” Marco shut his computer quietly so Todd wouldn’t hear. He opened the shower curtain and put the laptop on the bathtub floor, then closed the curtain. He ran some water in the sink and flushed the toilet, feeling like a teenager in one of those American Pie movies, trying to hide his masturbation from his parents. He was still hard. He splashed some water on it to try to make it go away. Then he unlocked the door.

  Marco brushed past, but Todd stopped him, kissed him. Marco squirmed away, not wanting him to feel the erection.

  “I love you,” Todd said, a hand on his shoulder.

  “I love you, too.”

  Marco moved out into the bedroom. Jason was in a port-a-crib, Enrique on a cot. Marco got in the queen as if to go back to sleep. Once Todd fell asleep, Marco would sneak back in the bathroom. Send the e-mail. Then he would wait for RickGreenport to write back and . . .

  Todd was coming out of the bathroom, Marco’s computer in his hand.
“Why was this in the tub?” he asked.

  “Why did you open the curtain?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I was going to take a shower. You’re lucky I didn’t turn the water on.”

  Nothing was worse than this. A million A.A. meetings weren’t worse than this. Todd’s stomach protruded over his limp cock. In the time Marco had known him, he had gone from Brad Pitt to Al Bundy. “Why are you lying to me?”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “Are you still talking to guys?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jesus Christ, Marco! Am I going to have to get Net Nanny? Because that’s the next step. You’re as bad as Enrique. You can’t be trusted.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I’ll stop. I promise I’ll stop. I’ll join S.A.A. I told you I want to get a couples counselor. It’s going to get better. I promise.”

  “What do you want, Marco? Just tell me what you want.”

  To go on Grindr and fuck guys. To feel sexy. To drink, do blow, all of it. He didn’t want to be in a motel with Todd and two kids, eating fried clams and wandering around a seaside port, living the gay bourgeois dream.

  Was it possible to feel two things at once, to feel split right down the middle? He felt obligated to Todd and hated him, too. He missed the sex they’d once had. He missed Todd being skinny; he missed the days when he didn’t feel the need to fuck other guys because their sex with each other was all that mattered.

  He loved Enrique but didn’t feel bonded with Jason yet, even though the colic had eased now that he was five months old. Marco couldn’t imagine a life without the kids, but he could remember it. He felt like his forehead was splitting along his scar lines. Something wet trickled down onto the bridge of his nose. The liquid dribbled down again, warm. For a moment he thought he was crying and was relieved because he hadn’t cried. He hadn’t cried since he was sixteen and crashed the car drunk and had to come home and tell his father.

  He went to the bathroom mirror. The scar was weeping something clear. His scar could cry, but he couldn’t.