Marco works for a reputable PR firm, and Charlotte’s a stay-at-home mom. They have a lovely two-story home, complete with the white picket fence and red front door, in a safe, family-friendly neighborhood in Burbank. They’re active in their kids’ lives and take at least one big family vacation each year. They don’t yet have the dog to complete the picture-perfect family, but six-year-old George has made out his Christmas list months in advance, and there’s only one thing on it.
At first glance, the Millers are that picture-perfect family. Inside, though, Charlotte struggles with keeping up and being happy. Marco struggles with keeping it together and being present. As Charlotte says, they have their challenges, and every day they have to work at them. At the end of the day, she loves her husband and children, and she knows Marco loves her and the children, too. At the end of the day, you remember to count your blessings and not your frustrations.
However, though Charlotte no doubt has loads of marital advice and experience to offer, and is always a supportive ear and an encouraging voice, my baby trouble with Adam isn’t something I want to burden her with right now. She has enough going on with three young children. The last thing she needs is her big sister saying that she’s faced with a hypothetical child changing her life, that a stress is being put on her marriage. Charlotte will be torn between telling me to stay true to who I am and what I want, and telling me to do whatever it takes to keep my marriage strong. She’s Adam’s biggest fan, and as a mother herself, even knowing how strongly I feel about the matter, I can easily picture her telling me to just consider what Adam’s asking. I could imagine her saying, “It isn’t like he’s asking you to travel to Mars or something, Hals. It’s a baby. Millions of women have them. All over the world. Every day.”
Talking to Nina is out of the question. It isn’t that Nina would instantly side with her brother. It’s that she’s been riding the Baby Express for years, and I know, especially given her hormone swings lately, she’d say it’d be fantastic to be pregnant at the same time. How could I not want what she’s experiencing right now? Though she knows my staunch views on motherhood, there’s still a chance she’ll tell me to buck up and get knocked up, and that’s a chance I’m not willing to take. And I couldn’t prattle on about how much I don’t want a baby, when she so clearly would travel to Mars for one.
I decide to call up Marian Kroeber, one of my dearest friends from college. She isn’t my last choice, just my most sensible. Exactly the woman I need in my corner right now.
Marian is outgoing, honest, sympathetic to a fault, fun loving, and likes a strong cup of coffee. Sometimes a strong shot of whiskey. She may not have the greatest track record with men, and on occasion lets her bitterness about love color her opinion of them, but she’s never dishonest or mean spirited with her advice. She always does me a solid, even when I don’t necessarily deserve it; she always has counsel, even when I may not necessarily want to hear it. She’s the kind of best friend every woman should have. I count my lucky stars I have her, especially at a time like now.
Taking lunch in the office at my desk today, I balance research on the long-term effects of Kegels practice for my next Copper article with a call to my main girl Marian.
“Halley! How’s life at the top of the women’s magazine world?” Marian’s voice bubbles through the phone.
“Glamorous as ever,” I say with a laugh.
“Uh-oh.” Her voice turns down and thickens with concern in half a beat. “Troubs at work?”
“Troubs at home.” I sigh, then get right to it. Refraining from a dramatic buildup makes my problem less grave and less real, as does referring to it as troubs. “Adam thinks he wants a baby after all.” As soon as I say the words, though, I know that my problem is more than a troub. It is every bit real and grave.
“What?” Marian practically shouts into the phone.
“I know.”
As soon as Marian processes that what I’m telling her is not a terribly delayed April Fool’s joke, she sympathetically listens as I give her the details, inserting mmmhmms and ahas in her characteristic multitasking way. She’s on the road, making her afternoon rounds as a pharmaceutical sales rep. When I tell her that Adam’s acting distant, almost distracted, “like something’s really bothering him,” she interrupts with a throaty laugh and says, “Yeah! It’s called you being preggers with his progeny.”
“I know,” I say, deflated. “But when something’s bothering Adam, he tells me, and we work on it.”
“Like when you decided to paint your living room eggplant and he hated it?”
“Like that. Just . . . not.” I draw a circle with my highlighter around the graph at the bottom of the second page of research on my desk. “Bigger. This is a baby, not a bucket of paint, Marian.”
“Po-tay-toe, po-tah-toe, you know what I mean. He’s honest when there’s a problem, and you are, too.”
“Exactly. And he was open telling me he wanted a child, like I’m open in telling him I don’t.”
“The ideal couple. God, you guys make me sick,” Marian says in her teasing way.
“He’s obviously bothered about this baby talk, but he just broods about it.”
“You know I love you and always have your back?”
“I do.”
“His brooding and your trying to ignore things are one and the same. There’s a problem in the Brennan home, and it needs fixin’.”
“I just want this heaviness to go away, Marian.”
“I know you do, hon.”
“I’m so angry at him for doing this to us. So angry!”
“You have every right to be.”
“God, I don’t know where to go from here.”
“The way I see it, you can sweep it under the rug, try to forget it happened, and hope he does, too.”
“Yes, but how mature is that?”
“Eh. Works for a lot of couples.”
“Not for us.” Adam and I are bigger than that. Our openness is one of the things that’s made our marriage so strong. “Besides, that hasn’t exactly been working out so well.”
“So that leaves the other option. Dust off your balls and come out and talk about it, Hals,” Marian says, perky.
“I have only one thing to say to him about it.” I heave a sigh and drop my highlighter into the pencil cup on my desk. “And if he hasn’t changed his mind, then what? I guess we can just keep waiting and seeing and trying to work things out—him hoping I’ll give in, me hoping he’ll give up. Then we’re right back here, where we started. And god knows what kind of a wedge of tension will be between us by then.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Marian soothes. “Maybe he’s going through a phase.” Her tone is hopeful.
“I can’t believe this is even a thing,” I mutter, dropping my elbows to my desk.
“I’m surprised this is a thing. I thought you guys had this topic wrapped. Like, years ago?”
“We did. On our first date.”
“Men.” She makes a tsking sound. “Always complicating shit.”
“I love Adam,” I say, growing despondent as we talk about my marital troubles. Me? Adam? Marital . . . troubles? I cannot believe the words—the reality.
“I know you do. We all love Adam. Who doesn’t love Adam? And that tushy of his,” she trills.
I chuckle at the memory. Adam will never live down Marian’s tushy comment. Marian ran track in college with Nina and me, and during one of our meets, when Adam and I were just starting to date, he came out to watch a relay. Marian, exhausted from the run and dripping with sweat, must have hit the wall, because she had mistaken Adam for a guy she’d been seeing from the law school, who, like Adam, tended to wear dress slacks and shirts to even the most relaxed events, like a track meet. Before I got a chance to introduce Marian to Adam, she grabbed his ass and called it a tushy, and said something off color about her reward for running her hardest. When Adam turned around, Marian could have eaten her words, but she just came right out wi
th, “My apologies. Not for the fine tushy remark, but for grabbing what is Halley’s and not mine.” For a good year, every time Marian saw Adam she’d whistle and say, “Fine tushy you got, Adam.”
I appreciate the happy memory and say, “Maybe he will forget about it and move on.”
“The tushy comment? Never.”
“Marian,” I groan, and she laughs. “And maybe this grey cloud over us is about something else entirely.”
“Maybe.” Her tone suggests otherwise. I know as well as Marian that that isn’t the case, though it feels good to have a small ray of hope.
“It isn’t fair. You know?” I say.
“I know. Life and love ain’t fair.”
“Maybe you’re right, and it is just a phase.” I try to convince myself, clinging to any ounce of hope I can find. “I bet once Nina has the baby, he’ll see what hard work it is and forget all about it. He just doesn’t realize that part of it.”
“Or he’ll see how adorable it is and want one even more.”
“Oh, Marian. Always devil’s advocate.”
“Halley, give it time. Don’t expect the worst, but don’t plan for the best.”
“Marian Kroeber’s words to live by.”
“If you want my honest advice—” Before she can finish, the line clicks, and she says, “Sorry, incoming call I need to take. Just a sec.” Such is the life of a successful and busy pharmaceutical sales rep.
Straight out of college, Marian decided to give the pharma industry a shot. When she heard there could be a lot of money and perks in it, particularly for women, she put aside any feminist qualms and embraced the industry with open arms. As she once put it, if she could put her brains and natural saleswoman abilities to good use and let those long, trim legs of hers help her out, why not?
The truth of the matter is, Marian’s a workaholic, and her position as one of the leading sales reps in her company suits her well. She’s single; has no interest or time for a pet; loves to travel and meet new people; enjoys cocktail parties as much as any thirty, flirty, and unattached woman; and lives by the motto, “My thirties won’t break me; I’ll break them.” She’s doing a smashing job. She may lament her lackluster relationship situation from time to time, but honestly, where would she find the time for a boyfriend?
“Sorry,” Marian says, coming back on the line. “Never a quiet moment here. Look, my honest advice is that it’s either going to get fixed by Adam changing his mind—it’s just a phase—or by the two of you seriously talking it out and figuring where the hell to go from here. There’s no easy answer, babe. At least not right now.”
“I know. I’m hoping for the former.”
“I am, too. But you guys have always been open and honest. Talk about it.”
“I can’t remember the last time we had sex,” I say at random. All the research about Kegels and procreation remind me of the unfortunate reality in my bedroom.
“Dry spells happen,” Marian says.
I lean back in my chair. “Hey, do you do Kegels, by chance?” I ask.
Marian laughs loudly. “Is that a proposition?”
“I’m working on an article.”
“Aha. I sure do. Why?”
“Well then, you may be happy to know you fall into the sixty-seven percent of American women who do.”
“That’s a real statistic?” she says in disbelief.
“Apparently.” I shuffle my stack of papers into one neat pile. “Although we probably have an entire department solely dedicated to making up fluff reports like this.”
“Got to sell the mags.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, speaking of selling, I’ve got to run, girl.”
“Me, too.” I’ve got ten minutes before my first afternoon meeting and need to finish my prep.
“Keep the lines of communication open,” she adds before hanging up. “Don’t let words go unsaid, feelings unshared.” I know this advice is particularly hard for her to impart.
“I love you, Marian,” I say, appreciating another one of our heart-to-hearts. “Talk later?”
“Always.”
In an effort to blow away that grey cloud, and maybe even spice up our sex life, I start with tacos. I know, I didn’t think this through very well, but Tito’s Tacos are by far the best tacos in the world. And they’re our tacos. Good always comes of a night with Adam and me sharing a bag of Tito’s Tacos. Maybe the comfort food will loosen Adam up, remind him that the two of us are really good together, that we have something special. That we don’t need anything or anyone more.
I don’t know where to begin with the elephant in the room, and I kind of resent having to be the one to do so. Because after all, I’m not the one who wants to renege on a promise we made to each other when we got married. I don’t feel any different about our future. Of course, if I leave it all up to Adam, god knows how long this awkward distance and silence will carry on between us. Is he honestly waiting for me to change my mind?
So I have to step up to the plate. Somehow.
I figure I can start with tacos, and then we can talk about more than work. Maybe we’ll have sex. And somewhere in all of that, maybe I will find the courage to ask Adam if he’s still feeling as if the two of us are not enough. But what if he says he is? What then? And that possibility is why I can’t “dust off my balls” and bring up the B word on my own straightaway. Why I can’t think past the tacos, talk, and sex. This is why I need Adam. I need him to tell me that the distance and silence are all because of some stupid whim he didn’t really think through. That he’s sorry we even got to this weird point. That all he wants is me, that I’m enough, that he’s sorry for thinking of breaking the rules. That we can go back to being just the way we were.
Unable to stand the building tension and suspense about what will come of Tito’s Tacos night, I break open my ice-cold bottle of Corona before Adam’s home. The room’s filled with the spicy scent of the dinner still in the bag—cilantro, onion, and grease. It, like the memory of Marian and Adam’s first encounter at the track, makes me happy. I’m reminded of simpler times, back when Adam and I were just settling into newlywed life and we initiated Taco Tuesday. Back when cheap tacos were considered a splurge, reality TV was still relatively entertaining, and babies were never on the brain.
“Hey,” Adam says, startling me as he walks through the front door. “Smells good. Tito’s?”
I can’t help but beam as I watch him set his leather messenger bag on the sofa and walk toward me in the dining room. He undoes the top button of his pale-blue dress shirt. It’s one of my favorites for the way it fits as if it had been tailored just for him, and for the way the color complements his naturally golden-tanned skin and dark-brown hair. His eyebrows, a slight shade darker than his hair, rise expectantly once he eyes the bag of greasy comfort food. Even after ten-plus years of marriage, Adam can still make me light up by simply entering a room. Even a room that has a big grey cloud hanging overhead. I love this man with every fiber of my being. I’m suddenly hit with a deep longing for our old Taco Tuesdays, not tacos to try to solve a marital problem.
I love Adam. He’s still my home.
So why in god’s name am I nursing a beer because I’m afraid of dinner conversation with him? Because I’m nervous about what he may tell me, if he’s honest and open? Because I’m terrified of discovering what the truth might be?
“You did get Tito’s,” Adam confirms. He looks up at me, wearing a small, crooked smile. “It isn’t even Tuesday.”
We’ve long since turned Taco Tuesday into Tacos When We Feel Like Them, but his comment still warms my heart. Simpler times.
“Want to watch some TV?” Adam asks, a plate of tacos now in one hand, bowl of tortilla chips in another. He moves toward the living room.
I resume my seat at the dining table after fetching a spoon to serve the salsa. “Maybe later.”
“Okay.” He spins on his heels and joins me at the table. He pops open his beer and tips his bottl
e to mine in a mock clink.
“Actually.” I wince, wishing the Corona would do a better job of calming my nerves. “Maybe no TV for the night. Maybe we can play cards or go for an evening walk or something?” Anything.
Adam makes a puzzled face. “Okay.”
He’s licking his fingers after one finished taco while I haven’t done more than take a single bite. I was dying to sink my teeth into dinner before Adam came home, but now that he’s here, all I can think about is where to begin. Why this is so difficult, so awkward. How to say the words I don’t want to have spoken.
What little gumption I can find surges forth as I say, “Adam, honey, are you okay?”
He sounds an mmmhmm as he takes a large bite.
“Work good?” I’ve already resorted to the idle small talk I’ve despised this past week—the only kind we’ve managed to have.
“Work’s great. And you?” Before I can answer, he asks, “What’s going on with that feature proposal? You pitched it to your boss, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“And?”
I’m not particularly interested in talking shop, but I did pitch the idea to my boss, Chantelle, and I do have some news regarding it. News I would normally be ecstatic to share with Adam, but that isn’t what I want to talk about tonight.
Nevertheless, since it is something I’m happy about and know Adam will be, too, I tell him, “Chantelle loves it. She loves it so much she wants me to put together a sample piece, and she’ll toss the idea around with the editors to see what they think.”
“Congratulations, Halley.” Adam brushes the salt from his hands and claps them together in praise. “That’s my girl. I’m so proud of you.”
“It isn’t a feature yet, but hopefully.” His pride and joy are infectious. My shoulders rise as I think how encouraging the news I received this morning is.
Everything the Heart Wants: A Novel Page 5
