Something New (9781101612262)

by Thomas, Janis

  I think about a line from Titanic. A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets. Yes, I know. You cannot get more cheesy. But it also strikes me as very true. There are many things, ideas, memories, feelings that I have never shared, nor ever will share with Jonah. They don’t affect our relationship, but they make me realize that no woman is ever really known by her husband or partner. We feel things on every level of our existence and we connect to our feelings. Sometimes they are normal, sometimes overwhelming, and sometimes downright insane. But we own them. Men cannot understand these feelings, these interwoven connections we have to each other and the world around us. So it is better not to share them with the men in our lives. Men’s thinking is more simplistic, linear. The past is the past. Want food? Kill deer. Want sex? Club woman over head. They don’t tie emotions in to every situation and circumstance as women do.

  Anyway, this thing with Ben, whatever it is, will go the way of my other secrets, wedged into one of the few remaining empty compartments of my heart. I will be able to pull it out from time to time, dust it off, and relive the way it made me feel, but only for a short while before I place it back where it belongs. Hidden.

  I glance at my cell phone dispassionately, pick it up, and carefully delete each of Ben’s texts. My phone pings as each text is swallowed into the vortex, and I force myself to feel good about my decision. It’s the only sensible thing to do. It’s the right thing to do. Stop it before it has the potential to become more than a thing.

  My eyelids seem weighted with bricks, and when I close them, I instantly see a pair of warm chocolate brown eyes gazing at me. I want to melt into them, to be swept away…

  No!

  I open my eyes and see the faces of Jonah and the kids on my screen saver, smiling up at me. But even they, the most important people in my life, cannot overtake the image of Ben’s gaze, which is now burned into my brain.

  I quickly shut down and push away from the computer and make my way through a house full of shadows. Navigating blindly, I climb the stairs and move quietly down the hallway, stopping and looking in on my children, all of whom are clearly deep in REM sleep. Pushing through the door of the master bedroom, I hear Jonah’s snore, which is softer than usual tonight. I wonder if he, too, is dreaming, and what images might be floating through his slumbering mind.

  I head for the bathroom to do my ablutions.

  Three minutes later, I pull back the covers and nudge at my husband, not caring that it is well past midnight. He can sleep when he’s dead, right? He mumbles something that sounds like “I’ll check the tuna cage” but I can’t be sure. I give up nudging at him and slide my hand down his stomach, then slip it beneath his boxer shorts.

  “Wha?” he croaks, and then his eyes open partway. “Hi there.” His voice is a low rumble, heavy with sleep, but his cock is rock hard. “What’re you up to?”

  In answer, I mount him and ride him to within an inch of his life.

  • Sixteen •

  There is nothing going on.”

  My words ring hollow in Jill’s kitchen. I am seated at the counter with my cousin standing across from me, staring down at me like an interrogator from the CIA. I pray she doesn’t have waterboarding in mind.

  “Really,” she says slowly.

  “It was totally innocent.” The defensive edge to my voice makes me cringe, and I take a deep breath. “We ran into each other. We were both free for the evening. We grabbed a bite to eat.”

  “Sushi,” she states triumphantly. I shrug up at her. “Raw fish is a well-known aphrodisiac!”

  “You’re right!” I spout sarcastically. “That’s why we ended up humping on a side of mackerel!”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Jill, there was no humping or making out or anything else that I need to confess to you or anyone else.”

  She levels me with a knowing look. “Come on, Ellen. Something’s going on. Look at you. It’s eight forty-five in the morning and you’re not wearing sweat pants, you have makeup on, and your hair doesn’t look like you just went a round in the clothes dryer. This is not you!”

  I detect a bout of indignation rising from within. I try to suppress it but without success. “Haven’t you been paying attention? I am trying to reinvent myself. I am trying to look decent at all hours of the day. I’ve jogged off eight pounds! I’ve been making smarter food choices. I’m blogging every friggin’ day! Why does any of this have to do with your next-door neighbor?” As the words pour out of me, I realize that I am talking to myself as much as to my cousin.

  Jill looks appropriately chastised and taps a pink-lacquered nail on her coffee mug. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re looking great and feeling great and being creative.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But…”

  I roll my eyes. “Oh, here we go!”

  “No, seriously,” she says. “In all the years that you’ve been married to Jonah, have you ever had dinner alone with another man? Someone not related to you?”

  I don’t even have to think about it. “No.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest and regards me accusingly. “I read your blog this morning.”

  I lean back against the hard wood of the stool and release a sigh.

  “You say that nothing’s going on, but you devoted an entire post to the fact that you’ve been flirting with this man for, what, two weeks now? And you never mentioned it to me? I’m not just your cousin. I’m your best friend. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  A few seconds pass before I answer her, and she waits patiently. “I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to make it into a big deal. I didn’t even know we were flirting. I thought he was just being nice.”

  “But you know now.”

  I laugh. “Yeah. It was something about the way he fed me a piece of Yummy roll.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Oh my God!” she says.

  “And he kissed my hand,” I add, more for effect than anything else.

  “Holy s-h-i-t!”

  I can’t decipher her expression. Consternation? Shock? Disillusionment? I expect her to launch into a lecture about how terrible I am and how I need to get myself together because this whole thing is just wrong, wrong, wrong. For Jill, the moral dilemma of adultery is overshadowed by the idea of the chaos it would unleash, like opening the door to anarchy and disorder, things she despises. She would never have an affair because she is not tolerant or capable of handling anything so messy. I am expecting a reprimand, deserving of one, even. But my cousin surprises me.

  “I’m so jealous,” she admits with a grin.

  “Jill!”

  “I am! Do you know what I’d give to have an attractive man feed me sushi? Hell, I’d be happy if my husband fed me sushi. Or anything, for that matter.”

  “Oh, cuz…”

  “So what are you going to do?” Having now been let in to my confidence, Jill is bubbling with excitement and curiosity. I guess disorder and chaos are okay with her as long as they’re relegated to my life.

  “Nothing,” I tell her, then quickly amend. “That’s not true. I am going to keep as far away from Ben Campbell as possible.”

  She frowns. “Wow. Just when it was starting to get interesting. I thought I was going to be able to live vicariously through you for a while.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s the right decision.”

  “Yes, it is,” she says. “But the right decision isn’t always the best decision.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Her face is thoughtful. “It’s like you wrote in your blog. Life is short. And sometimes the wrong decisions can make the ride a lot more fun.”

  When I emerge from Jill’s house twenty minutes later, I move purposely to my Flex, not even allowing myself to glance at the house next door. Just as I reach the driver’s side, I hear a child’s laughter and I can’t help but look over. In the driveway of the Campbell home, Liam is pitching softballs to his little brother, Evan. Evan wears an adult-sized gl
ove that is almost as big as he is, yet he manages to maneuver well enough to catch Liam’s lobbed balls.

  I watch the two for a moment, scrutinizing their features for signs of their father. Liam definitely favors Ben, and Evan his mom. I fleetingly wonder what Ben was like as a child, then quickly banish the thought from my mind.

  “I’m gonna play for the Dodgers!” Evan yells at full kid volume.

  “You are not,” Liam chides. “You gotta be able to hit, you know.”

  “I can hit!” Evan shrieks.

  “Can not,” Liam fires back.

  “I can hit you!” And true to his word, the boy makes a mad dash for Liam and tackles him to the ground, then starts swinging.

  “Liam! Evan!” The sound of Linda’s voice propels me into my car, and I just catch a glimpse of long blond hair as I stamp on the accelerator and head down the street.

  Jonah, bless him, has made breakfast for the kids, and because of a slight culinary disability, breakfast means toaster waffles, a dish he only recently mastered. (I told him there were some microwave sausages in the freezer that I keep for emergencies, but he opted out, joking that he was considering becoming a vegan.) When I return from Jill’s at nine thirty, the kids are fed and clothed, and Matthew is already wearing his soccer uniform. All three of them are safely ensconced in the living room for their Saturday morning allotment of Wii. I wave to them, then head for the kitchen, where I kiss Jonah and hand him a thank-you cup of 7-Eleven coffee. (I know he prefers Starbucks, but I am planning to avoid all Starbucks stores for the next, oh, twenty or thirty years.) He is grateful for caffeine in any form and returns my kiss enthusiastically.

  “Thanks for taking the morning shift,” I say sincerely.

  He raises his eyebrows a couple of times and grins at me. “I should be thanking you. For last night?” He glances around to make sure none of the kids are within earshot. “You were a wild woman!” He sets his coffee on the counter, slips his arms around my waist, and peers down at me. “You were hot,” he purrs.

  “And you are to be commended for rising to the occasion even though you were dead to the world.”

  He winks down at me. “Anything for you, baby.”

  Suddenly, as I rest my head against Jonah’s shoulder and feel him run his hands slowly up and down my back, I am filled with a sense of contentment. This is the Jonah and Ellen of old: flirty and sexy and connected. Whether this reappearance stems from my vow to abstain from Ben Campbell, or the fact that last night Jonah and I fucked like we were eighteen years old, I don’t know. But I’ll take it no matter the reason.

  However, since life is, well, life, contentment lasts only so long. In this case it lasts about fifteen seconds.

  “I have to go to the warehouse this morning,” he says, giving my ass a double pat. As I pull away, Jonah drops his arms to his sides.

  “You’re not going to soccer?” I ask.

  “Can’t, Elle. One of my drivers screwed up a delivery and I have to go make it right. It’s Fluor Corp., babe.”

  “Jonah, we talked about this…” And we had, at length. When Jonah first started with the company, he’d been working 24/7 in order to secure his position. He’d given up precious family time on the weekends to please his superiors and to show his customers how invaluable he was. In the beginning, he’d maintained that as soon as he was on stable ground, he would reclaim his weekends as his own. But after two years, he was still in absentia at the Ivers home on most Saturdays and quite a few Sundays, too. The kids were older then, and noticed how Daddy never made it to softball or soccer or tennis and could never volunteer for Scout camping trips. And I was starting to feel like a single mom. So I finally put my foot down.

  I had tried for a civil discussion, but a heated argument ensued that prompted me to pull the kids out of school and take them for a spontaneous trip to my mother’s house in Northern California. After three days, Jonah, having been haunted by the echoes of an empty house, called and apologized, asking me to come home and telling me that he’d realized just how much he was missing out on. He went on to promise me that he would make sure that weekends were sacred family time and he’d simply get his lowly assistant to handle Saturday and Sunday emergencies, because, by God, that’s what they were paying him for.

  “Why can’t you get Shane to handle it?” I ask now. Shane of the high-top sneakers, bow tie, and Poindexter glasses fame who’d been to dinner once and was so flabbergasted by the frenetic energy of my three kids that he has never returned despite numerous invitations.

  “Shane can’t handle it. It’s a corporate account,” he reminds me for the thousandth time. “You know, the kind of account that allows you not to work?”

  “I don’t work?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, no, that’s right. You go out to the coal mines every day, and I sit around and eat bonbons.”

  “Ellen. That is not what I meant. I know how hard you work running this household and raising our kids. It’s the toughest job in the world.”

  All the right words are coming out of his mouth and in the proper order, but they sound more like a speech he’s reading from a teleprompter. I cross my arms over my chest in response.

  “But I work hard, too,” he is saying. “I bust my butt to keep us in this five-bedroom house and I—”

  “You want to move?” I snipe at him.

  “Elle, you’re missing the point! My job is what supports this family and we can’t afford to jeopardize it.”

  “You’re telling me that if you don’t go to the warehouse this morning you’re going to get fired?”

  “It’s a precarious time right now. You know what the economy is like…well, maybe you don’t.”

  I snicker. “Because I don’t listen to NPR?”

  “Because you’re not interested in anything going on in the world outside your home.”

  I feel my face go slack with disbelief. Jonah doesn’t notice, just keeps charging ahead. “Times are tough and if my accounts aren’t serviced properly, they’ll give their business to our competitors.”

  “Fine.” I try to infuse that one syllable with as much ire as I can.

  “Look, it’s one Saturday,” Jonah says, placating, but I am still stunned by his earlier comment. Since when am I not interested in the outside world? You should have seen me last night, Jonah, then you would have seen for yourself just how interested I am in things outside my home. But, seriously, his biting words have cut me to the quick. This is the second time in the last week that he has purposefully been nasty to me. Since when did I become such an object of disdain to my husband?

  My mother’s words ring in my ears. “Familiarity breeds contempt, dear,” she always says. Which is why, since she and my father divorced after twenty years of marriage, she has never allowed a relationship to extend past six months. (She is currently involved with her dentist, a nice man in his late fifties who happens to think the sun rises and sets with my mother’s smile—which is quite wonderful. He has no idea that in about three and a half weeks, his world will be completely destroyed.) But Mom has no compunction about her choices. She wants to make sure that she is never on the receiving end of the loathsome epithets that people who are supposed to be in love tend to sling at each other. And now, I can finally see her point.

  “I’ll try to make it quick so we can have family time this afternoon,” he adds.

  “Whatever.”

  “Maybe I can take us out to dinner tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  I turn away from him and head for the sink where the dirty breakfast dishes stare up at me from their sudsy soak. Instead of loading them into the dishwasher, I begin to wash them by hand, hoping that the mundane task will calm me.

  “You’re pissed, I get it,” he says from across the kitchen. I don’t answer, not even with a one-word sentence. Because I am more than pissed. I am hurt.

  “Look,” he begins. I am expecting an apology, but he doesn’t offer one. “I think yo
u’re being unreasonable, Ellen. I’m taking all of next week off to take the kids to Arizona.” I snort derisively and Jonah responds with his own brand of antagonism. “Just because you don’t want to come doesn’t mean it isn’t ‘family time.’”

  I keep my back to him, cannot bear the thought of looking at him. I slide the soapy sponge over a plate, then hold it under the faucet and watch the water rinse it clean. I set it in the dish drain and pick up another. I resist the impulse to turn around and fling the syrup-stained ceramic plate at my husband. He doesn’t deserve such a dramatic display of emotion. He doesn’t deserve a goddamn thing from me.

  As I finish the last of the dishes, I consider tomorrow’s blog post. This charming interlude with my supposed “life mate” has inspired a couple of choices for titles: I Hate Jonah or Husbands Suck Ass. Catchy, huh?

  Regardless of the many untoward circumstances and seemingly earth-shattering occurrences that often plague us, like recognizing that deep down, your husband thinks you’re an insipid freeloader, life marches on. Including soccer games. I have struggled to cast off the negative effects of my fight with Jonah for the benefit of my kids. I manage to keep from exploding all over Matthew for misplacing his cleats for the fortieth time, stay calm when Jessie breaks my favorite bracelet after insisting on putting it on my wrist, and merely shrug when Connor tells me he’d rather go to Jason’s house to watch videos than go to the game.

  It’s as though I am on autopilot. Jonah’s words are taking center stage in my head, and everything I am doing is by rote. Get kids in car, drop Connor at Jason’s, park at soccer field, unload kids and folding chairs, walk Matthew to his team. By the time Jessie and I have set up our seats next to the bleachers, I have the beginnings of a headache. Absently, I wonder if eleven in the morning is too early to start drinking and why didn’t I load my thermos with vodka?