Still Life with Husband

by Lauren Fox

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, turning back to me. “I never imagined it as a five-year-old. As a baby, yes, and even sometimes as a toddler, but I never envisioned an older child.”

  “Well, still and all, let’s move away from here,” I suggest, crunching through a pile of brown and red and yellow leaves.

  “I haven’t been out much since it happened,” she continues, as if I hadn’t spoken, and from deep inside this other place she seems to inhabit, “but every time I do go somewhere, all I see are pregnant women and little babies in strollers. You just start to think of yourself as someone who’s about to enter a new phase of your life, and then all of a sudden you’re not.” Meg chops her hand through the air, a gesture of finality. She’s moving just the tiniest bit faster than I am; she probably doesn’t even notice it. I take a quick extra half step, adjust my speed to hers.

  We walk along in silence for a while longer. The day is brilliant blue and warm for October in Wisconsin. We’re both wearing coats, but we hardly need them. I want to make a comment about global warming, which is one of my favorite subjects, but I decide not to. All around us birds are chirping wildly. I’ve never understood why people say that birds sing; to me it always sounds like they’re fighting. Which it turns out, of course, they are.

  Meg slows down as we reach the end of her block, and her speed becomes more companionable. “God, I’ve been so wrapped up in myself…”

  I cut her off. “Of course not.”

  “…I haven’t even asked you about yourself. What’s been going on with you?”

  “Hmm. Not much. A little work, this and that.” A few more steps. Our coats flap behind us. A slow, dulled-by-autumn bee buzzes around us and then careens away; it will be dead in a week, I bet. I make a split-second decision. And then just like that, there it is, my little private gem, the jewel I’ve been hoarding, exposed: “There is something.”

  For the first time, Meg brightens. “What?”

  “Well,” I say slowly. Now that I’m about to tell this story, I don’t know how to arrange the details. Not that I’ve done anything wrong…Still, isn’t a thing like this all in the telling? Especially given Meg’s strange tendency to leap to judgment about this issue. “Um, remember that guy we met at the coffee shop, the editor at The Weekly?”

  “Yessss.”

  “He e-mailed me. I mean, actually I e-mailed him. Because I decided that I might want to do some work for him. Things have been a little light on that front lately. We met for coffee yesterday.”

  Meg laughs. “You did what?”

  Encouraged by her laughter, I continue, “Yeah, we did. He asked me to meet him. We had a great time together. He wants me to be the paper’s ‘relationship expert.’ I’m going to have a regular gig with the paper. And it turns out he’s very cool; he’s a very interesting person,” I say, a little breathless. “He likes to travel. And he’s smart. He knows a lot about movies. Films. He gave me all these suggestions of old obscure ones, a couple of Hitchcocks I’ve never even heard of, and Bergman, I can’t believe I’m thirty and I’ve never seen a Bergman movie! Have you?” I hear how I must sound to Meg, but I can’t stop myself. “I have to tell you something,” I say, turning to look at her. “I have a little crush on this guy.” And Mount Everest is a little hill. “Not that I would ever do anything about that,” I insist; the strength of my assertion makes me believe it. Of course I wouldn’t.

  “Wow,” Meg says, visibly perked up, a facsimile of her old self for the first time today. “Crazy. What else did you talk about? Was it mostly professional? Did he blush?”

  “Oh, yeah. The whole time.”

  “Emily!” Meg stops, grabs my elbow. “Did you tell him you’re married?”

  I try to keep walking, to pull Meg along, but she’s holding tightly to my arm. “Well, it…well, I was going to, but…no. I didn’t.” Meg is standing stock-still, about to say something, but I’m determined to plow through, to make her understand. “Look, here’s the thing. You know this has never happened to me before. I like him. We could be friends. But I like him. I felt this attraction to him that was…intense. Do you think we could be friends?” I feel a knot inside me coming loose. Meg, my friend, will help me sort this out.

  Meg pauses, considers my question. “Do you remember Peter Johannsen?” She says it with a lilting Norwegian accent, Pay-ter Yo-han-sen? Before Steve, Meg’s last serious boyfriend was Craig, a sweet, curly-haired social worker who played the trumpet and adored her. He used to write songs for her. He’d give her a printout of his poetic lyrics and play the tunes on his trumpet, being obviously unable to sing and blow the horn simultaneously. Although apparently once he did try. After about six months, Meg started complaining to me that she was bored. Craig was sweet and loving, but things had grown predictable. She knew precisely what he’d order at the two restaurants he felt comfortable frequenting, exactly how he’d respond to every movie they saw. All his songs started to sound the same, she said, and romance seemed to be more or less incompatible with the brass instruments. Then eighth-grade social studies teacher Peter Johannsen entered the scene, a brawny Scandinavian from Minnesota with a surprisingly biting sense of humor. They met in the teacher’s lounge and started hanging out, going out for beers after school on Fridays, meeting for walks on Sunday mornings. Meg insisted that they were friends. Until they slept together. Craig’s heart was broken, Peter Johannsen turned out to be a commitment-phobic, anal-retentive control freak, and Meg was alone. For about ten minutes. But still. It was an ugly time. She learned her lesson.

  “Ja,” I say.

  “I don’t know, Em. I suppose it’s possible.” She turns to face me. “But I love Kevin. I love you guys. If I thought you were about to squander your happiness with him for something so…superficial, for a thrill, I’d tell you never to let another e-mail from this guy darken your in-box again. If you think you can handle it, then, yeah, I suppose you can have a friendship with what’s-his-name. And, you know, word to the wise. I’ll regret what I did with Yo-han-sen for the rest of my life!” She says the last part with such unexpected emphasis that a little spray of spit escapes from her mouth.

  “But, first of all, we were twenty-five when that happened. And second of all, that was you, not me,” I remind her, discreetly wiping my cheek where the splash landed.

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I know, but, do you think men and women can’t be friends?”

  “Sally, you know that’s not what I mean,” she says. “I’m just saying, watch yourself. Don’t get carried away by excitement. And don’t think that an affair is going to be the answer to some kind of creeping marital malaise.”

  “Well, Harry, don’t you think married people develop crushes on other people all the time?”

  “I’m sure they do,” she says. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?” She’s picked up her pace again during the course of this discussion. I’m practically jogging to keep up with her. I don’t answer her question. I wonder if Meg’s hormones are out of whack, postmiscarriage. Why else would she be so adamant? I can handle this. I’m resolved.

  Being married is like reading the same novel over and over again. You might discover new subtleties of language on the twenty-millionth read-through, a metaphor or two you’d missed before, but the plot is always the same. Kevin is in a bad mood, and there’s nothing I can do about it: chapter six.

  We’re driving home from Madison, where we spent the day visiting old friends of ours, Michelle and Tina. Michelle is a law professor and Tina stays home with their six-year-old son, Zack. Tina gave birth to Zack, but his actual conception is a mystery to us, and Michelle and Tina refuse to tell. One of Michelle’s male relatives? Sperm bank? Friend? We’ll never know, although we’ve tried for years to trick them into divulging. “Which family member does Zack most resemble?” I’ll ask, or Kevin will casually mention an article about sperm-donor babies who grow up and locate their biological fathers. They just roll their eyes
at each other, then at us. Zack calls Tina “Mommy,” and Michelle “Momichelle.”

  We walked around town, the five of us, made our way slowly up and down State Street, poked in and out of various stores full of various colorful trinkets, stopped for lunch at an Indian restaurant, ate orange chocolate chip ice cream at the Memorial Union…all in all, a lovely day. Except that, while we were all eating our dosas, while I was regaling Zack with fascinating details from my latest freelance editing assignment, a children’s book called Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Hamsters, Tina said something to Kevin. Kevin was telling her about his job, about the latest set of instructional pamphlets he was working on, and Tina said, “That sounds so dull! How can you stand it?” And then she threw her head back and laughed like a hyena and changed the subject. It was rude, but Tina’s like that—blunt and jovial, and she takes it as well as she dishes it out. And Kevin does have the tendency to go on about his work, oblivious to his audience’s eye-popping boredom. But he’s a fragile beast, which Tina knows: they’ve been friends since college. They even dated for a while, until they both realized that Tina was more interested in their young female English professor than she was in him.

  I heard the exchange between them at lunch, saw the knife inflict the mortal wound, but I was very busy discussing hamsters; Zack is particularly interested in animal-related details these days, and tends to blurt out a thing like, “A hippo can snap a person in two with its powerful jaws!,” so I had a captive audience. I was in the middle of explaining to an enthralled Zack that a hamster can carry, in its cheeks, half its body weight in food. I had stuffed my own cheeks full of bread as a visual aid. I couldn’t rescue Kevin. And the damage had been done. He retreated into his shell. He kept up appearances for the rest of the afternoon, but I knew how hurt he was; our couple-radar can be quite nicely calibrated. I knew he was sulking, a fact that settled uncomfortably into a corner of my brain for the rest of the day, like a popcorn kernel lodged in a molar.

  So by the time we’ve said good-bye and climbed into our car, headed for I-94 and the ninety-minute drive home, I want to gently ease him out of his mood, but I also want to shake him: he’s hypersensitive, an exposed nerve. I wish he would just lighten up.

  “You’ve been upset since lunch,” I announce as we turn onto the highway. My voice accidentally sounds a little bit sharp.

  “I have not been,” he says, hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead.

  “I know you,” I sigh, “and I can tell when you’re upset.” I stare at his profile as he drives, his straight nose, his pale cheek, pale eyelashes, his delicate, almost girlish mouth set in a tight line. Sometimes when he’s asleep at night I look at him, and I see the same expression on his face, the same tight-lipped, worried grimace: the midnight scowler. “So why don’t you just tell me what happened. It was what Tina said at lunch, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it. It was no big deal.”

  “I know that; that’s what I think. But it clearly bothered you, so why don’t you please talk to me about it?”

  He turns on the radio, tunes in a classical station. “I just need a few minutes of quiet. I’ll get over it on my own. I know it was no big deal,” he repeats. “Tina can be really harsh. It bugged me.”

  God, he’s such a baby. But I begin to soften. It’s not his fault. It’s just who he is. “Sweetie, I—”

  “—Emily, WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP TALKING? Just leave me ALONE for a few minutes!”

  Oh, boy. The car fills up with classical music. Jerk. Asshole. Prick. Jerk asshole prick. My God, am I going to cry? My face feels tingly and my eyes are suddenly pressurized from inside their sockets. But I won’t do it. I won’t cry and let him apologize and make it all right. I swallow hard, twice. Asshole jerk prick, the nerve of him to yell at me when I was trying to comfort him. I close my eyes, lean back against the headrest, tug at the seatbelt that has suddenly become uncomfortable across my chest. And then the strangest thing happens: the face of David Keller flashes before my closed, not-crying eyes. David Keller’s face calms me down.

  “Christ. I’m sorry,” Kevin says.

  “Whatever!” I can be very mature.

  “I am sorry!”

  He doesn’t actually sound sorry. “Now we both need a few minutes of quiet,” I say, in what I hope is a flinty tone.

  I wonder what this music is. I like classical, even have a few CDs at home, but mostly I can’t tell the difference between a moonlight sonata and an unfinished symphony. I grab hold of the idea of David Keller, the object of my crush, the man I barely know. He feels like an option. He feels like a clear light shining through the cloud of my anger at Kevin. My anger, my disappointment in…in…our relationship, our life, my disappointment in myself.

  You say, Yes, yes, yes, and This, then this, then this, and you find yourself: thirty, frustrated, adrift, and married to a teeth-grindingly tiresome man who suddenly wants to handcuff himself to you with both progeny and real estate. Why didn’t I do things better, more deliberately, more carefully? Why didn’t I think things through more thoroughly? Why am I not where I want to be? Do I even know what that place looks like? I think about seeing David Keller again.

  Ten minutes later, Kevin reaches over and strokes my head. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I let him.

  I WILL SAY THIS: I’M PROBABLY DOING SOMETHING WRONG NOW. Although, not very wrong. Not wrong like shaking a baby wrong, or cheating on your taxes wrong, or even really betraying Kevin wrong. But I can face the fact that taking a walk with David Keller is more wrong than right. I’m aware of the messy morality of all of this, which, I happen to think, kind of redeems me. Today I’m going to go for a walk with David Keller, which is not the most right thing I’ve ever done, but I’m going to tell him that I’m married, which will fix everything. Well, it won’t fix everything: it won’t fix me. But it will repair the situation I’ve gotten myself into.

  There was an e-mail waiting for me when Kevin and I got home from Madison. I knew there would be.

  I meant to ask for your phone number, Emily. But I suppose e-mail is a reasonable form of communication for people like us. If I have any hope of impressing you, it’s probably by writing rather than talking, anyway.

  Can we get together again? Would you like to go for a walk with me one day this week?

  (I’m trying to play it cool here…but I have to admit, I’d really love to see you soon.)

  —David

  If I hadn’t already been over the edge, the words inside those parentheses would have done me in.

  We meet at the War Memorial on Lake Michigan. He’s waiting for me on one of the uncomfortable brown benches, huddled against the autumn chill. As soon as I spot him, I’m yanked from side to side like a marionette, flipped upside down and then right side up, so fast that the human eye can’t see it. But I feel it happen.

  I told Kevin this morning that I was going to meet a friend for lunch. I decided that this one lie would be discrete, roped off from the rest of my life like a room in a museum. It was a necessity before I put everything right. I decided that it was no big deal, almost harmless.

  Anyway, I seem to be developing the odd ability to compartmentalize my life. So while I’m at it, I’ll box up this stomachache I’ve been carrying around, send it away, or at least ignore it. It has nothing to do with me right now.

  David stands as I approach and holds up his hand in greeting. I have a brief, blinding vision of him grabbing me by my coat collar and pulling me toward him, kissing me wildly. I have to snap out of it, focus, drag my wobbly self back to this planet. “Hey!” I say, walking toward him.

  “I have the day off,” he says. “I brought chocolate.”

  I can tell that he’s flustered. His non sequiturs are an advertisement for it. He pulls out a bar of fancy European chocolate from his coat pocket, holds it flat in his open palm.

  “I took a risk,” he says, “that you’d be a dark chocolate woman.”

>   “I am,” I say, smiling, still facing him, ten inches from him. I take a tiny step closer.

  “I was going to buy two kinds, but I had a hunch.”

  “Impressive.” I don’t know what else to say. I have turned into a Neanderthal. Ugh. Grunt. Take me back to your cave. He begins unwrapping the bar, breaks off two squares. It’s one of those chilly autumn days where the sun is so bright you can see every detail on a person, where every pore on your face is visible. I’m glad I bleached my mustache a few days ago. I’m glad I used the lint brush on my coat. David’s hair, which I would have described as dark brown, turns out to have many reddish strands in it. His lips are dry, but not chapped. The chocolate bar’s foil wrapping reflects the sun. Everything is heightened, magnified. He takes a deep breath.

  “It’s really great out today,” he says, looking around, squinting. I nod. We are, in fact, strangers to each other. Well, good, I guess; this makes my task easier. I pop a square of chocolate into my mouth, let it melt there.

  “Want to walk?” he asks, turning back to me, still squinting against the sun. There are a few lines at the corners of his eyes. He looks a little bit older than I’d first thought he was. Thirtyish? I wonder.

  I nod again. Nobody is around. It’s colder than it seemed when I left the apartment this morning. I adjust my scarf as we begin to walk. It’s almost noon. The day is surreal, and I am not myself.

  We walk in silence for a while, awkward, friendly.

  “So, what did you do this weekend?” David asks.

  “I—I went to Madison on Sunday to visit some friends. You?”

  “Oh, same thing I always do. Rented movies, read, hung out with work buddies, did my laundry. Pretty wild.” We’re walking in rhythm, arms swinging lightly next to each other. “I went to a fish fry on Friday night,” he continues. “In my five years here, I’d never done it, and I figured I couldn’t call myself a Milwaukeean—not that I necessarily want to call myself a Milwaukeean—until I experienced an authentic fish fry.”