The End of Men

by Karen Rinaldi

  “Yikes, does it hurt?” was all Beth could muster before she broke down into hysterical laughter.

  “Just tell me it isn’t your favorite shirt,” Isabel pleaded.

  Maggie laughed loud and hard so she wouldn’t cry. The shirt was new and from her favorite designer. She’d spent a small fortune on it as a reward to herself for simply getting through her days. “Easy come, easy go,” she said lightheartedly, as if by saying so she could make it true.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find you something in the store for you to wear home. You’ll get a nice breeze on your breasts since there’s no belly to support the generous cut of our tops. Want another white one?” Beth ran into the store before Maggie could answer.

  Isabel and Maggie made their way upstairs. Maggie hadn’t seen Isabel since she’d popped. “You look, as they say, radiant. How’re you feeling?”

  “Exhausted and slutty,” Isabel responded without further elaboration.

  “Yes, I remember it well,” Maggie said wistfully. “When are you due?”

  “Right after the New Year. But I can’t imagine waiting that long.” Isabel patted her neatly protruding belly.

  “Have a lot of sex and you won’t have to. You know, semen softens the cervix—a too-little-known tip for the ladies.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind . . . How’s darling Lily?” Isabel asked. “Has she hit her terrible twos yet?”

  “No sign yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that having two stepchildren and a useless husband with a self-righteous ex-wife makes me exempt.”

  Isabel giggled at the epic diss. Maggie gasped and covered her mouth with false modesty as if to say, Did that come from me?

  “I’m not sure I want to know more right now . . . I’m going to stop in and say hi to Anna. See you in October, if not sooner.” Isabel gave Maggie a quick hug and left.

  Beth came back and handed a shirt to Maggie. “Do you want to tell me what happened, or is it better left to my imagination?” Beth was clearly having too much fun seeing the normally impeccably neat Maggie in such a state of mess.

  “Remember that guy I saw a few months ago in front of the store—it was the day after the protests—I said I got hit by the thunderbolt . . .”

  “I remember, but I don’t think you told me much about him.”

  “I don’t know anything about him to tell. I mean, he’s actually a little creepy, but in a sexy way.” Beth raised an eyebrow, which Maggie ignored. “He must work around here or something . . . Anyway, I saw him in the park and I was about to say hello and bam! I got hit with a thunderbolt of chocolate ice cream. Needless to say, Blue Eyes and I didn’t speak.”

  “Blue Eyes?”

  “He has inhumanly blue eyes. It makes him a bit scary.”

  “I’d be careful if I were you,” Beth said. “There are a lot of crazies around . . . I gotta get back to work.” She pecked Maggie on the cheek and ran off to her office.

  Maggie ducked into the bathroom to change. In keeping with Beth’s vision for RHM, the office bathrooms were thoughtfully designed to accommodate the women who used them—with dressing room, shower, towels, and products to cure every beauty and hygiene need. It looked like a bathroom in a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel.

  Wearing the shirt Beth gave her from the store, a cap-sleeved cotton jersey tee with a satin-trimmed, plunging neckline—designed to show off those wonderfully engorged prenatal breasts—Maggie had the very definite desire to be pregnant again. Considering the state of affairs at home, she also knew that considering another child was insane. It would add stress to their marriage, not fix it. But Maggie wanted another in spite of John, which made the need even stronger.

  As an only child, Maggie wanted to give her daughter what she herself missed out on growing up. Now that Lily was over two years old, she and a sibling would be three years apart even if Maggie got pregnant soon. If she waited to see how things went with John, the gulf between them would be even bigger. And face it, Maggie thought, it isn’t going to be getting any easier to conceive after forty and that’s coming up fast.

  Maggie had loved being pregnant. She never experienced morning sickness, and while she was slightly tired during the first trimester, during the second and third she possessed inhuman energy. When she wasn’t working, she spent gloriously romantic days and nights with John. They ate home-cooked meals by candlelight and cuddled naked on the couch watching Italian films. They spent many weekends tucked away in a bed-and-breakfast at the beach, in the Berkshires, on the North Fork. They took road trips with no particular destination, just to be cocooned together in the car for hours on end. Once, after a picnic in a state park in Pennsylvania, they made love on a picnic table under cover of blue spruce rising above them. John doted on her every moment. She felt full and fortunate and happy.

  The sense of endless romance ended with Lily’s birth. As smooth as the pregnancy was, giving birth was equally as difficult. Maggie had heard the old wives’ tales predicting the course of events: If you have a bad pregnancy, delivery will go well. If your pregnancy goes without a glitch, count on something going wrong when you are giving birth. After five hours of pushing, Maggie still had the wherewithal to be curious. “Doc, can you tell me why I’m having so much trouble?”

  “It’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening.” The doctor’s matter-of-fact tone only served to further infuriate Maggie. “It doesn’t help that the vagina curves up. The baby has to go against gravity to come out of the birth canal, making it more difficult to push. I’m sorry to report that, but it’s true.”

  Maggie blew out a torrent of air. “God really fucked women, didn’t he? Couldn’t he have made it a little easier for us? What was he thinking?” she exclaimed in complete frustration. She also meant it to be funny, but she sounded more angry than comic. Truth was she did have a bone to pick.

  As soon as she said it, she regretted it. The delivery nurse who had coached her through much of the labor wore a small gold crucifix around her neck.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you . . .” Maggie managed through labored breathing.

  “Honey, I’ve been through it three times myself. You do have a point!” She let out a hearty belly laugh, making Maggie relax for the first time in hours.

  After twelve hours of labor, a reluctant Lily was coerced from her haven and into the world. She opened her eyes plainly and gave the doctor a scornful look. The truly scary part came afterward when Maggie, already exhausted from hours of laboring and pushing, continued to bleed. Her placenta would not disengage from her uterus and her blood pressure dropped precipitously to dangerous levels. Just as she was about to slip from consciousness, a doctor gave her a dose of something that pulled her back.

  As the pain threatened to absorb her, she felt the lifeblood slipping from her. Her only thought was to hang on so she could at least see her baby. After several unsuccessful tries, her doctor called on a woman intern who was walking past the delivery room. She was petite and her hands were small and nimble enough to reach into Maggie’s uterus to pull out the placenta, allowing the clotting that saved Maggie’s life.

  Maggie held Lily in her arms and cried from relief when she awoke the first time after delivery. She called Beth. “I’m holding her now. She’s asleep against my breast. She looks like John already, is that possible?” John, exhausted from the stress of watching what Maggie endured, slept in the reclining chair next to her bed.

  “Not only possible, but necessary,” Beth was quick to respond. “All first children look like their fathers when they’re born. That’s nature’s way of making sure they don’t eat them. How’re you feeling?”

  “Battered. Happy. I’m going back to sleep now. Talk later.”

  When she awoke, there was a beautifully wrapped package embossed with the Red Hot Mama logo beside her bed. Inside, a delicately designed nursing robe in jade linen with magenta silk piping. Beth had a prototype handmade just for Maggie.

  The year following the birth of Lily was unexpec
tedly sweet and mellow after the torrent of sexual activity that had marked the beginning of John and Maggie’s relationship and the violence with which their daughter entered the world. While difficult for them to get much time alone, they basked in the wonder of their baby girl. By the time Lily was six months old, her face seemed to magically transform into a mini Maggie. Assured of safety from suspicious paternity—at least according to Beth—Lily grew wide-eyed and developed dark curls of impossibly soft baby hair. John was smitten with his beloved pair of beauties.

  Maggie found comfort in John’s experience from raising his first two children. He wasn’t alarmed by any of the things that Maggie found terrifying. At first, Maggie appreciated John’s worry-free approach to child rearing. If Lily didn’t burp properly after nursing, if she slept too long or not enough, if she pooped too much or it was a different color from one earlier in the day—John assured her there was no need for alarm.

  Things had begun to change when Jules and Justine came to live with them. Georgette’s sabbatical in France to finish her book coincided with the school year. Maggie doubted the necessity for Georgette to be away the entire year. What kind of mother put research convenience before her children?

  With Georgette abroad, Jules and Justine needed to be ferried back and forth to school in the city every day. It fell to Maggie most days, since she was usually on the move between Jersey City and Manhattan, getting to and from RHM, taking Lily on their weekly outings. The more she did, the more she gave up trying to get John to pitch in. This gave her less time with Lily and absolutely not a single minute to herself. By the end of the school year, Maggie was ready to do anything to have Georgette home, much as she had wished her away at the beginning.

  AS MAGGIE LEFT RHM with Beth later on the day of her ice cream disaster, she spotted Blue Eyes across the street and grabbed Beth’s arm in alarm. “That’s him! That’s the guy!” she said too loudly, as she pointed him out to Beth.

  Once Beth actually spotted the guy Maggie was pointing at, she said, “He’s freaky.”

  On the way home, Maggie thought again about Blue Eyes. She was both compelled and repulsed by the man, and her attraction to him was more curiosity than action driven. Maybe, she thought, it’s just me avoiding dealing with John. Either way, he inspired her to reach for their collection of toys she kept in the drawer beside their bed. At this John took notice.

  “What’s this out for?” he tried to ask casually when he discovered the black vibrator left under the pillow.

  “I was using it.” Maggie offered nothing more.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. Jealous?” Maggie teased, feeling she was onto something. If John grew paranoid about Maggie’s fidelity, perhaps that would make him more engaged. Fear could be a highly motivating force.

  “No . . . should I be?” He tried to keep his tone light, but Maggie could tell he was unnerved, made all the more apparent by the intense revival of his sex drive. Maggie’s distraction acted like a drug on John, and she didn’t harbor as much resentment for him with Blue Eyes sifting through in her fantasies.

  In a moment of uncharacteristic initiative, John made plans for a weekend away at a beachside bed-and-breakfast down in Cape May, New Jersey. Rosie offered to stay with Lily in Jersey City, and while Maggie hated to leave her behind, she’d begun to harbor hopes that she and John might still be able to reboot their marriage. She realized it would be the first time they would be alone together for more than two or three consecutive hours since Lily was born.

  They left early Friday afternoon, taking a leisurely drive on the Harley through the small towns that dotted the Jersey shoreline, beginning with the Asbury Park of Maggie’s youth.

  “John, let’s drive by the Stone Pony. I think I can find it,” Maggie said. In the mid-1970s, scruffy rocker Bruce Springsteen performed his magic with the little-known E Street Band at the Stone Pony. It took a few circles around downtown before Maggie recognized the modest concrete building. On the nearest pier sat a once-beautiful carousel house, the painted clown faces barely perceptible beneath the grime. It had been more than twenty years since she’d last visited the seaside resort.

  As a teen, Maggie would flee to the Jersey Shore with her friends every chance she had, welcoming the escape from the oppressive silence of her home where she and her father coexisted as uncomfortable roommates. Maggie suspected those weekends away from the house were a relief for him as well.

  Springsteen’s songs of busting out and longing spoke to Maggie’s inarticulate sadness. She felt that he was singing directly to her. The solace his music provided made her feel that someone somewhere knew how she felt. She rarely listened to his music anymore even though she still loved it. To this day, it made her feel melancholic. Nostalgia often instigated a sadness for Maggie that she didn’t like to indulge.

  Maggie jumped down from the bike and pulled off her helmet to let the salty wind blow through her hair.

  “This place is strange . . . What happened?” John asked as he remained straddled across the seat of his motorcycle.

  “It’s had a checkered history and went bust in the late eighties. It’s still trying to recover . . .”

  Maggie wanted to plant herself right there and find a way to help resuscitate the decaying urban seaside town. But John seemed eager to get moving as he cranked the gears on the bike.

  “Never mind all that. Let’s go.” She feared if she tried to make John understand, either she would begin to sound maudlin and hate herself for it or, worse, if he didn’t understand, she would hate him for what he couldn’t know.

  From Asbury Park they rode south to the incongruously affluent Spring Lake, just a few miles down the coast. They had a lovely lunch on an oceanfront veranda amid other diners and staff throwing noticeably disapproving stares at their attire of leather pants and black helmets.

  After lunch, John hopped on the Garden State Parkway toward Cape May, skipping some of the shore towns Maggie was aching to revisit. She figured they’d catch them on the way home. Instead, he followed signs to Atlantic City. It became immediately apparent to Maggie that this was where John had been heading all along. Suddenly, John seemed to know exactly where he was.

  John pulled the bike into the parking lot of the casino and pulled off his helmet. “Let’s just run in and play one round of blackjack. If we lose the first few hands, we leave. If we win, we stay until we lose.” John’s challenge was irresistible. More, the simple fact that he was taking charge already felt like a sex drug to Maggie.

  “I’m all in.” She caught his hand in hers.

  The visit to Asbury Park had made Maggie feel old, but she felt young again by half in the company of thousands of blue-haired ladies and men with walkers. “Oh, let’s spend some time here. I think I might like it.” She gave a lopsided smile.

  John pulled Maggie over to a twenty-five-dollar blackjack table and pushed a stool under her butt. “Luck be a lady . . .” He stacked $200 worth of chips on the table like he had it to burn, flipping one expertly between his fingers. Standing by her side, he guided Maggie through four games of blackjack, winning every hand. They were the only players at the table. The dealer, a stern, boyish Latina, showed no emotion at all as she deftly dealt cards off the deck. She placed two nines on the table.

  “John, you look like you know what you’re doing. Do you know what you’re doing?” Maggie asked, noticing the girlish tone to her voice and not caring in the slightest.

  John upped the bet. “Double down.”

  The dealer turned over a Jack and an ace.

  John swiped two fingers above the cards to indicate that he would stick.

  The dealer broke. John smiled and kissed Maggie flush on the mouth as the dealer pushed a stack of chips across the felt.

  Maggie, mesmerized by the language and choreography of it all, wondered what other surprises John had in store for her.

  “Look, sweetheart, we’re up two hundred.” John shuffled the chips in front of her. “Let’s ke
ep two hundred and continue playing with the two hundred we started with. Sound okay to you?”

  “You’re the boss. Anything you say.” Maggie heard the words and nodded to herself to say, Yes, that’s the thing, that’s it! John needs to be the boss more often. That would change everything. The only thing Maggie felt like doing at that moment, besides continuing to win at blackjack, was to steal away for a quickie under the boardwalk.

  By the time they left the table, John had won more than $500. He stepped away when he’d lost two hands in a row. His restraint gave Maggie a second wave of admiration.

  They walked out of the casino giggling and flush with victory. Standing in the parking lot beside the motorcycle, Maggie kissed John as she pressed against him. “Where’d you learn to play cards, John Harting?”

  “Oh, around . . .”

  “So how far do we have to drive to that B and B? I’m not sure I can wait that long.” Maggie pressed the palm of her hand against his cock. He was already hard.

  They both laughed and flipped on their helmets. Maggie wrapped her legs around John’s backside, and strapped her hands across his groin. “I’ll take the fast route!” he shouted, and the rest was lost to the sound of the engine as they sprung from the casino lot and out to the highway heading south.

  THEY ARRIVED IN Cape May with plenty of time to make their nine o’clock dinner reservation—John had arranged it! After a long and sexy shower together, they dressed and headed downstairs. As they waited for their table to be set up, they sat together on a swinging double chair on the wide porch of the restored Victorian Lace Inn, sipping Pernod. Just a block away from the beach, the onshore wind brought the sound of the waves as they tumbled onto the shore with soothing regularity. The briny air was tinged with a fishiness—the smell of raw oysters and clams and the long days of summer—which Maggie loved.

  Spent from a day on the motorcycle, Maggie relaxed into John’s arms. She’d checked on Lily when they’d arrived at the B&B and could now give herself over to the evening. With warming pastis running through her veins, Maggie dared to feel hopeful as John held her tight and rested his lips on her head.