by Lauren Fox
It’s two-thirty in the morning, the universal hour of bad judgment.
“Dear David,” I write,
I’m glad that you wrote back. I deserved it, the things you said. And maybe you don’t want to hear from me again, but I felt compelled to get in touch one more time.
I already told you how sorry I am for being such an idiot. I also want you to know that I’d never done anything like this before. I’m not like that. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but now that I have nothing to lose, I’ll just go ahead: hanging out with you was like being shown a new color, one I hadn’t known existed before. I looked around and the world was brighter, more vivid, and I just wanted that feeling to last.
My husband is a great person. We’ve been together for nine years. I think lately that we’ve veered away from each other, and I’m not sure we’re ever going to come back together. That’s the truth.
Well, it’s 2:30 in the morning, so I’d better go. I really will understand if I don’t hear from you again. If you do want to write back, maybe we can try to be friends. I know I’d really like that.
I’m going to go back to bed now…thinking of you.
—Emily
I send the e-mail. What have I done?
KEVIN CALLS MEG “NUTMEG,” AND MEG CALLS KEVIN “Testicle Writer,” or sometimes just “Testy.” My husband and my best friend enjoy a lively, jokey, independent friendship that I pretend to appreciate, but in fact it rankles me. Even before I met David, I sometimes felt vaguely threatened by the happy collision of my two worlds, the receptacles of my two distinct and distinctly private selves meeting and laughing and forming an exclusive bond. Now, I recognize the heightened stakes of it: what if I reveal to Meg everything about David, and then Kevin asks Meg if something is going on with me, and she feels compelled to confess to him? Separately, Kevin and Meg always tell me how much they like each other, and they invariably add to their declarations of mutual affection something like, “I’m so glad that I love your husband/best friend so much; it makes things so easy.”
On Saturday night, just before we’re supposed to leave to meet Meg and Steve for drinks, Kevin pulls me down onto the couch next to him. He smells like too much DK Trois cologne, which Heather gave me as a gift. I thought it smelled like cat pee, but Kevin liked the stench of it, so I gave it to him, which wasn’t very smart, because now I have to smell it all the time. He brushes a strand of my hair away from my face, takes my hand, and looks me in the eye. Although Kevin is never insincere, these moves feel slightly stylized, and it occurs to me that he’s about to say something momentous, something he’s been rehearsing.
“I’ve been thinking,” he starts, then laughs self-consciously and looks away from me. He drops my hand and clasps his primly in his lap. I stare, intrigued, as his knuckles whiten before my eyes. “I want to say,” he starts, then pauses. “I want to say, there are these things between us lately, and we’ve been fighting about them, and that’s okay.” He nods, encouraging himself. “I mean, if we have to argue to figure out where we’re going, well, then that’s what we have to do.” He’s staring across the room as he talks now, as if someone is crouched by the window holding up cue cards.
“Kevin, I—”
“Please don’t interrupt!” he says. His voice has a sudden, surprising snappishness to it, and his shoulders tense visibly. “I need to say this. I want you to know, Emily, that I’m very clear about what I want for our future. I know you’ve been having some…doubts, or insecurities, or whatever you want to call them. And I can’t say that this hasn’t surprised me. But I will wait for you.” He turns his whole body toward me as he says this, and he casts a benevolent smile down upon me. “I will wait as long as it takes for you to catch up to where I am, to be ready to begin this chapter of our lives together.” He unclasps his hands and places them on my shoulders. “Just don’t let it take too long.”
I feel my mouth drop open. His hands are like heavy warm rodents on my shoulders. “W-wait for me to catch up to you?” I’m starting to take this in. Kevin just keeps beaming at me. There’s a tiny, whitish blob of dry spit on the corner of his mouth. “To catch up to you?” I squeak.
“Of course,” he says.
The distance between what Kevin thinks he’s telling me and what I’m hearing is from here to Glen Valley, first choice innerring suburb of Milwaukee; it’s from here to the moon. He exudes self-satisfied munificence and expects gratitude. I want to throttle him. I blink a few times and rub my eyes. “But Kevin, how do you know you’re out in front?” I finally manage. “What if I just don’t want the things you want? What if I’m the one who’s in the lead? Should I wait for you to catch up to me?”
Kevin shakes his head, his smile stiffening. “Emily, now you’re just being selfish.” He tightens his grip on my shoulders. “Wendy says that most thirty-year-old women would thank their lucky stars for a man who wants to buy a house and start a family!”
“Most thirty-year-old women?” I sputter. I feel like a mynah bird. I’m capable only of stunned repetition. “Most thirty-year-old women? Wendy?”
“Yeah, Doug’s wife.” During better moments, we refer to Doug’s wife, Wendy Wetzel, as “Prendy Pretzel.”
“You’ve been talking to Wendy about me?”
“No! Well, yes. And Doug. They’re my friends, and this has been weighing on me. I’m sure you talk to Meg about this.”
No, as a matter of fact, I’ve been dating instead. I shove Kevin’s deadweight hands off my shoulders. “I’m not ready to have a child with you,” I say. “And I’m not ready to buy a house with you, either. I might be, someday, but I’m not now, and if you can’t respect that, or at the very least just accept it, then….” I drift off, unsure of what I want to say next, down what dark marital alley this is leading.
“Well, I am ready.” Kevin’s voice is cold and controlled. “And I will wait. I’ve made an appointment with Dr. Lu for a physical next week. I’m going to ask him to test my sperm count, just to make sure everyone’s swimming. I thought you should know that.” He gets up from the couch abruptly. I shake my head to try to clear out the swarm of bees that has buzzed into my brain. Kevin has already made his way to the front door, his keys jangling. “Are you coming?” he calls, as if the last few minutes haven’t happened. “We’re late!”
When we finally get to the bar, Meg and Kevin act like cousins who haven’t seen each other since last summer’s family reunion.
“Ike!” Meg yells, and throws her arms around Kevin.
“Tina!” Kevin yells back, the tension of the last hour vacating his stiff posture. Meanwhile, Steve and I give each other awkward pecks on the cheek and sit down at the small table, while Meg and Kevin are still hugging and cooing at each other. I haven’t seen Steve since the day at the hospital. He’s wearing the same rumpled shirt and pants, I notice; no novelty tie, thankfully.
We meet at Sullivan’s Pub every so often, the four of us, even though nobody, it seems to me, particularly likes the strange dynamic of the double date. Meg and Steve have brought a deck of cards. We like to play hearts; the activity of the card game fills up the conversational lulls and prevents Meg and me from veering off down our own, exclusive conversation highway, which, I admit, we have a tendency to do.
We get down to business after the greetings are made and the drinks ordered: Steve shuffles with a few showy flutters and flaps, then deals, telling us a story about a little girl, a new patient of his who had never been to the dentist before and brought along her stuffed shark, Bitey, for comfort. She was so scared of Steve and of the whole situation, the metallic hissing contraptions and the antiseptic surroundings unsuccessfully disguised with bright colors and bubblegum-flavored toothpaste and pictures of kitties, that Steve had to do an entire pretend dental exam on Bitey before the little girl would open her own mouth for inspection.
“Pretend dental,” Meg says matter-of-factly, “is a form of meditation.”
“You’re thinking of transcendental, sw
eetie,” Steve says, not getting her joke until a half beat later. “Oh!” he says, embarrassed. In response, Meg ruffles his hair and smooths his shirt collar with a surfeit of gooey affection.
“Sorry, Steve, but who can blame the kid?” I say, running my thumb up along the side of my glass, tracing a line in the condensation. “I myself haven’t been to the dentist in over a year. Maybe I could borrow Bitey for my next visit.” Steve nods. “Kevin,” I add, “has a doctor’s appointment next week. It’s important to get regular checkups, isn’t it?” I don’t know why this comes out of my mouth, but it does.
Kevin looks at me like I’ve just stabbed him in the arm with a fork. I drop my gaze from his and catch Meg and Steve exchanging a confused look. “It is,” Kevin says quietly, regaining his composure. “You don’t want anything to be amiss.” Bastard.
Nobody says anything for a few moments, and the din of Sullivan’s takes on a certain musical structure. Behind us and to the left, a table of girls, probably just barely of legal drinking age, gets louder and more raucous, the melody of their high, bubbly laughter like the mating songs of frogs. To our right, a wealthy-looking man and woman clink their wine glasses. A strain of conversation floats over from somewhere, a husky female voice saying, “You couldn’t pay me to fuck him!” followed by bawdy laughter.
I glance for the first time at the cards in my hand. It takes me a second to remember what game we’re playing, and then I begin absently organizing the cards into suits. I’m not good at hearts. I have no strategy, and, worse, no desire to create one. I like to think I’m lucky, and that this elusive quality will compensate for my inability to think ahead. I would not be a good military commander. Cigarette smoke curls over our table.
“Did I ever tell you guys,” Meg says awkwardly, then clears her throat, “speaking of doctors’ appointments, about the time a couple of years ago when I had the idea to get all my medical appointments out of the way in one day?” While I was listening to the sounds of the bar, Meg, it seems, was scouring her brain for a way to pick the mutilated conversation back up off the ground. Steve lays down the first card.
“I had my eye doctor appointment in the morning,” she continues, “and they dilated my pupils, and then I had a gynecologist appointment two hours later.” She slaps down a card. Kevin follows. Then me. Steve pulls the four cards toward him, keeping control of the hand.
“I had to fill out this questionnaire, but I couldn’t read anything, because of my eyes. So the receptionist had to read all these really personal questions out loud to me, in front of everybody in the waiting room, and I had to answer them. ‘When was your last period?’ ‘How many sexual partners have you had in the past year?’ ‘Do you use condoms to protect against STDs?’ Everybody in the waiting room knew me quite well after that.”
Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. Slap, slap, slap, slap. Meg takes the cards.
We play in silence for a while. Two cards lie on the table in front of me, and I realize I have no diamonds to set down. “Hey, everybody,” I say, pulling out my jack of hearts. “I’m breaking hearts!” I like to be the one who says it. Kevin quickly lays down another heart.
“Oh, crap,” Meg says, laughing, reluctantly taking the pile as Steve gives her a sympathetic smile. “Can we have a do-over? Does that turn count?”
“What about sperm count?” I ask. Meg and Steve both groan. Kevin shoots me another look.
We concentrate on the game for a while, the four of us finally settling into a pleasant rhythm, punctuated by the occasional comment, a refill of drinks, an observation about someone or something at a nearby table. I try not to ignore Kevin. I try to act like we’re okay. But I can’t bring myself to use the normal currency of our communication. I can’t touch his knee the way I would usually after he says something funny, can’t look at him for very long before I feel like turning away. I restrain myself from making mean comments and find that I am barely speaking to him at all.
The well-dressed, wine-glass-clinking couple at the table to our right gets up to leave. The woman’s hair has that deep brown sheen that you sometimes see on the coat of a really well cared-for dog. Three men in their twenties, who had been standing off to the side, barrel over to the empty table; one of them knocks into my chair. Another sets his beer mug down with a loud thunk, as if he were claiming the table for his country, and shouts, “Score!”
Kevin leans forward and does his best jock imitation, just loudly enough so that only we three can hear it: “Score!”
Meg tells us about a special on birds that she saw on public television. The lyrebird, she informs us, perfectly imitates everything it hears, including other birds and animals, but also car alarms and chainsaws. I think that I knew that once but forgot it. It seems like one of those things.
Steve says, “I heard a story on public radio the other day….” His face brightens, and he smiles, and I notice that there’s a small piece of food stuck between his two front teeth. The skin of a peanut? You’d think a dentist would be more sensitive to food between his teeth. “Aren’t we clever, my wife and I? Public television, public radio?” He reaches over and squeezes Meg’s hand, the brown morsel gleaming wetly as he smiles. “Anyway, a woman in Oklahoma is divorcing her husband and she’s using her parrot as a witness in court. Apparently she found out her husband had been having an affair when the bird started saying, ‘Be patient, honey, I’m going to divorce her. Be patient, honey, I’m going to divorce her.’”
And that’s the moment when I can’t take it anymore. I feel suddenly like the air has been vacuum-sucked out of my lungs; the sounds of the bar close in on me, pour into my ears with a painful, underwater pressure; the crowd of bodies feels like it’s bearing down on me, pressing against my chest, my back, my limbs.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, standing up. “I have to use the ladies’.”
“I’ll come with you,” Meg says, and she’s up and next to me before I can stop her.
We make our way through the throng, Meg in front of me. We sidle between people, twisting and turning like dancers to the far back of the building. I concentrate on breathing, on not panicking. As we approach the bathroom, I pull Meg off her course and direct her toward the exit. “I need some air!” I have to shout it so that she can hear me. We finally push our way out and emerge into the cool, dark night.
I take a few deep breaths. The patio, jam-packed during the warm months but deserted now, curves along the side of the building. Meg and I sit in uncomfortable metal chairs at a wrought-iron table.
“Thanks,” I say. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” I brace myself for her coming inquiry. She will have noticed something, the tension between Kevin and me, my strange, cold behavior.
“This is good,” she agrees. Then, “God, I can’t stand it.”
“What?” I stare over her shoulder, beyond her, at the few headlights beaming through the dark side street. The night is sharp and chilly, and the light wind blows right through to my skin, wakes me up.
“Steve. He can’t bear to see me sad, so he suffocates me instead.” Meg leans her head back and her hair drapes behind her. When I was little, I used to pretend to have long straight blond hair: I’d put a yellow turtleneck on, stretching its neck across my forehead, and toss the shirt backward, over my own frizzed-out mop of brown hair, over my shoulders, flipping it and prancing in front of the mirror. Meg’s soft veil of hair is the picture of the effect I was aiming for. She stretches her arms out to the sides, raises them above her head, brings them back down, her bracelets jangling. She straightens up, looks at me. “If he would just let me be miserable, I could get over it. I mean, I’m getting over it. But he’s treating me like I’m a hothouse flower, and it’s driving me nuts. Haven’t you noticed?”
“No,” I say, considering it. “Steve’s always so devoted to you. To tell you the truth, it hasn’t seemed unusual.”
“Mmph,” she snorts. “His devotion is a way of not understanding me! It’s the easy way out!”
> “Huh?”
“He reacts against my grief by being solicitous,” she says, lingering, snakelike, on the s. “Whenever I’m down, he tries to jiggle me out of it, instead of dealing with me! He couldn’t even stand it when I lost that last hand of hearts!”
“Like that would send you into a hormonal meltdown,” I say.
“Exactly! And he’d be left with a puddle of me at his feet!”
“So, what’s to be done? It’s only because he loves you.”
“That’s why I feel like such a jerk,” she concedes.
I’ve almost forgotten about my own problems. “Can you talk to him about it?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says, sighing. “I guess. Only, this makes me wonder about the future of our marriage. What will it be like when something really awful happens, when my parents die or something…” She sighs again, and her gaze drifts. She seems to be letting go of the topic, relegating it to the emotional back burner, where you set the perennial, unsolvable problems on simmer. We’re both quiet, enjoying being outside, close enough to our husbands, to the action inside the bar, but far enough away to feel like we’ve escaped for a while. “What about you?” she asks, coming back to herself. “What’s going on with you and Kevin? Seems tense.”
“You wouldn’t believe,” I say. Which part of this melodrama am I going to divulge? The last few weeks of my life are a collage of details, and I don’t know which piece of it to offer up to her. “Tonight he told me that he’s willing to wait for me to be ready to move to the suburbs and start a family, but that I shouldn’t take too long.”
“Jesus Christ,” Meg says, her hand covering her mouth.
“And that, apparently, most women my age would be grateful to have such a family-minded man as Kevin.”
