Thus the conversation ended.
But the next morning, as he thought about what she’d said, Brian knew she was lying. Both to him and herself. She would be working eleven-, twelve-, thirteen-hour days for years. Not just because she loved the job. Though she did. But because she wanted to win, and to win at a particularly male game.
Brian didn’t feel jealous, not exactly. Sure, the bureau had plenty of good-looking guys. But Becks knew an office romance would blow up her career even faster than asking for overtime. She wasn’t the cheating type. Too practical.
No, Rebecca wasn’t cheating on him with any agent in particular. She was cheating on him with the job. The real cost to their relationship came in what they didn’t do. They had no time to themselves, because when she was home she wanted to hang out with the kids. Brian understood. Honestly, she should hang out with the kids. Kira and Tony craved time with her.
So their marriage was an afterthought. Which didn’t matter most of the time. Brian was comfortable alone. He’d spent years by himself. Back then he’d distracted himself with one-night stands. Today he had the kids. If weeks or a month passed when he and Becks didn’t have a real conversation, hey, so be it.
But he couldn’t escape the realization that if they weren’t growing together, they were growing apart. Maybe it sounded all Oprah-y, but it was true. Marriage required compromise. A lot of compromise. Love wasn’t enough. You had to like your spouse too, or the daily frictions of living together could be maddening.
She constantly left the lights on all over the house. A small thing, but it drove him nuts. She wasted money on clothes, then complained about their credit card bills. On the nights she did come home on time, she always wanted to take the kids to restaurants. She justified going out by saying he shouldn’t have to cook, but he liked to cook.
He knew he did things that annoyed her too—beyond the big thing, the not making enough money thing. He cracked his knuckles constantly. He cooked mac and cheese too often. He let the kids watch TV more than she liked. Fine. Let her take care of them six days a week, see how often she turned on the television.
None of these complaints was a deal breaker. Even all together, they weren’t deal breakers. They were more like slow leaks, rotting the marital walls from the inside out. If a storm came, a bad one, they’d regret not having done the maintenance.
But as long as he didn’t think too hard, he could convince himself they were fine. And Becks was making the most of her career chances. She was deep into this undercover investigation. It dragged on for a while, but in the end she brought the case home. Mess with the Becks, die like the rest.
Brian sometimes wondered what had really happened at the dinner with Draymond Sullivan when everything clipped into place. When she came home the next morning she didn’t say a word, just hung on to him like a shipwrecked sailor grabbing a raft.
Then they decided to move. She pretended to ask his opinion, but he knew as soon as she raised the issue he didn’t have a choice. No matter that he and the kids liked Birmingham. Becks told him she had to go. The city was too dangerous after her work busting the Pablo Escobar of Alabama real estate.
He was almost sure the real reason she wanted to leave was because she thought she was too big for the Birmingham office now, needed to kick her career up a notch. He ought to be proud of her, but he couldn’t help feeling he was turning into a supporting actor in the movie of her life. Rebecca Unsworth, Crimefighter. He was the spouse who shows up in a couple of scenes to humanize the lead character and then disappears until the end.
Worse, he wasn’t sure Becks saw the movie any differently. Or that she cared.
* * *
Off to Houston they went.
There the rot started to break through.
Mainly because of money.
Rebecca and money.
They should have been able to live on her salary, with him doing the kind of half-time work he’d done in Alabama. Houston had plenty of universities that needed tech support.
But in Houston, Rebecca turned out to be a spender in a way he hadn’t understood before. Maybe she hadn’t either. She’d always made fun of her parents for the way they lived above their means, the way they’d let her grandfather subsidize them.
But now that she was into her thirties, the way Grandpa Jerome had paid for stuff didn’t bother her as much. She made sure Brian knew how much she missed the trips to Jamaica, the vacations on Cape Cod.
Unfortunately, Jerome wasn’t writing checks anymore. And so now, instead of asking him for help, Rebecca asked the friendly bankers at Wells Fargo. If she saw something she wanted, she bought it. Including a BMW. Worst of all, she didn’t even tell him about the car until he saw it in the driveway.
“You’re an FBI agent, not a stockbroker,” he said that night, the kids asleep. They kept it together in front of the kids.
“No one says stockbroker anymore, Bri.”
She had that tone in her voice he heard more and more. That superior tone. Ironic. Maybe she didn’t even know she was doing it.
He waited for her to say more, to at least justify the Bimmer. I’m in the car all the time, I got a great deal, we’ll both drive it. She didn’t even bother. Because she didn’t have to, right? She paid the bills. If she wanted to blow forty grand on a car she would.
“It’s a sedan,” she finally said. Throwing him a bone. “I can take the kids.”
“No, it’s cool.”
During their first years together, Brian had found Rebecca’s confusion about her class privilege endearing. She genuinely viewed her law school loans as a massive problem—when she had no other student loans to pay off and would be headed for a great job as an associate. She had no idea what it was like to be middle class, much less poor.
Now he had a darker view. The misunderstanding felt intentional, a way for Becks to get what she wanted without admitting her privilege. In fact, sometimes he felt he had to play along, to overestimate his own spending, just to hide the gap in their habits. Yeah, he took Tony to Rockets games in Houston a couple of times. But guess what? If you sat up high and didn’t buy merch, you could get in and out for fifty bucks. Less than a pair of Rebecca’s Lululemon pants.
Even so, he was afraid to call her on her bullshit. The subtext of any talk about the money she was spending would be the money he wasn’t making. He worked in software, at a time when Silicon Valley was minting the greatest fortunes ever seen. So how come they weren’t rich? At least rich enough for her to be able to buy a car without worrying?
* * *
He didn’t argue about the car. Instead he went to work for ConocoPhillips. In Birmingham no one cared if he was five minutes late or wore sandals. He could at least pretend he hadn’t turned into a total drone. Conoco wasn’t a university. It was an oil company. It had a top-down, hop-to-it culture. But he didn’t have a choice. Conoco paid better than an academic job would, and they needed the money.
Only good part was that his shift started early and ended by four. On the way home he could stop somewhere for a beer. After a while it was usually a beer and a couple of shots. Not more, though; he didn’t want to be drunk when the kids got home from their after-school stuff. He usually picked places like Hooters. His hair was slowly walking back from his forehead, but he was still in solid shape. And he hadn’t entirely lost his game. The waitresses liked him.
Still, he made sure to wear his ring. He wasn’t ready to go past flirting. Not yet. He wasn’t exactly sure why. Wasn’t like he had any big moral problem with screwing someone else. If he did he could always think of that three-hundred-horsepower middle finger in their driveway.
But the kids were still too young, both in elementary school. Divorce messed kids up. As much as he’d hated seeing his parents fight, he’d hated bouncing between them even more. He’d told his mom once, Just pick. I don’t even care which of you gets me—and he didn’t, not really, his mom stank of cheap vodka every night and his dad walked around with the cle
nched rage of a guy waiting for a zombie attack—Just pick.
We both love you and want to spend time with you, she said.
He knew better. He was just something for his parents to fight over now that they couldn’t scream in each other’s faces. Sometimes he found himself fantasizing about them dying. At the same time, please. A head-on collision, her wasted and him speeding. Whatever. The more horrible the better. As long as they both bit it.
So he knew, his kids deserved better than divorce. Maybe when they were older. He knew something else, too: Becks would not give him a pass if she caught him with his pants down and a Hooters employee nearby. Hundred percent chance she’d kick him to the curb. And play the righteous victim, Men are pigs. She’d make sure that Kira knew, Can’t trust any of ’em, especially not dear old dad.
Of course maybe he’d get away with it, Rebecca was busy. But he didn’t feel like taking the chance. Fact was, he loved Kira and Tony in a way he couldn’t have imagined possible before they’d arrived in the world. Watching them grow up, turn from babies into toddlers into real people who told jokes and practiced dunking on the adjustable hoop in the garage made him grin every day. He wanted to grin every day. He didn’t want to be in some crappy half-time custody arrangement. He knew Becks would never agree to less, no matter that he did most of the work. That he was, truly, the better parent. She might even tell herself that the kids needed her more and fight for more. What would he do then? Try to convince a family court judge that the until-recently-unemployed dad was the better parent than the FBI agent wife?
Not a chance. Not in Texas. Probably not anywhere. Even the fact that the kids were closer to him than Becks would work against him somehow.
Plus, if he was being totally honest with himself, he wouldn’t ever ask for alimony. He had some pride. Which meant he’d wind up working twice as hard and living in half as nice a house if Becks kicked him out.
So, fine, he split the difference. Stopped in Hooters for a couple of adult beverages and then went home to spend quality time with his laptop, take care of business. He checked out the hard-core stuff, gangbangs and bondage, it was all there, but in the end he was mostly into plain vanilla, the occasional threesome. College Girls Get Wild.
Maybe because it brought him back to his glory days. They’ll pass you by… in the wink of a young girl’s eye…
Screw Bruce Springsteen. Brian was way more into rap these days. Sublimating his rage with Eminem, especially. He’d turn the songs up until his windows shook. On the way to his job as a Conoco sys admin. The joke didn’t escape him, but he couldn’t do much about it. He was not so much trapped as triangulated. Sometimes he figured he should work harder, if he made more money he’d solve the puzzle. But a few thousand extra bucks a year wouldn’t matter. It hadn’t so far. Becks would just spend whatever he made. She couldn’t help herself. Poor little rich girl. She had champagne taste and the worst part was that she didn’t even know it. Every so often he’d realize she was wearing a pair of shoes he hadn’t seen before, a new bag.
Expenses rise to meet income. One of the few smart things his dad had ever said.
As for sex, he still serviced Becks when she needed a tune-up, every two weeks or three case reports, whichever came first. Far as he could tell, she still enjoyed it. For him it was mostly muscle memory.
Basically, they had a fifties-style marriage. Hubby made the money and the decisions, wifey took care of the kids and rooted for hubby at work and dutifully provided sex when requested.
Totally traditional.
Except she was the husband and he was the wife.
* * *
His dislike of Houston only made matters worse. The city was too hot, too big, too flat, too churchy. Too Mexican and too white at the same time. Too many guns and too many cops. Too rich and too poor. Houston was a black Silverado that would not get off your bumper. It was humidity that never broke no matter how much rain came. It was the strange sour smell that the ground itself exhaled in the summer. It was driving down to the Gulf of Mexico to get away, ha-ha, and realizing the Gulf was just liquid Houston, a dull chemical soup that stretched on forever.
Maybe if he’d made some friends. But why bother? In a couple of years Rebecca would put her hand up for another office and away they’d go. When they weren’t talking about Kira and Tony, their main topic was her career, so he knew enough to see she was turning into a star. Despite everything, he found himself proud of her. She’d sold him out, but at least she was getting full value. He figured they’d end up in Washington or New York, one of the real prestige jobs.
Then she started messing around at the border, chasing some serial killer who gave dirt naps to migrants. A crime that was in no way her job to solve. A crime that was not her problem. A crime that, as far as Brian could tell, no one at the FBI gave even a single crap about.
Before he even figured out what was happening, she’d turned it into a holy quest. Feminist nonsense. Brian was sorry about the migrants, but most murder victims were men. He didn’t see Rebecca pitching in with the Houston cops to solve the cases piling up in the Third Ward, the gangbangers dropping each other. No, she preferred to chase a ghost.
Which was not just unfair to him and the kids, but stupid. For her to come home late because she was busting her butt on cases that might help her career, okay. He didn’t love playing housewife, but he could deal. But he hated to see her wasting her time.
Even worse, she blew him off when he tried to talk to her about it. More proof she didn’t respect him. Like he needed any.
Then he realized she had another reason for running down to the border. She had a hard-on for the guy at the border who was in charge of this totally useless investigation. Ranger Ten-Gallon Hat. Brian didn’t know if she was actually having sex with this lawman, but she certainly liked his company. She’d slipped up a couple of times, talked about him in a way she never talked about any of her FBI buddies. How he “got it,” he knew these weren’t just a bunch of dead Mexicans. Not just what she said but the way she said it. Yeah, Brian knew.
And he was pissed. Because he had kept his side of the bargain, he hadn’t banged any of those waitresses or the Conoco admins who looked his way. He could have. Some would have turned him down. But some would have said yes.
What gave her the right to cheat on him, or even think about it?
Only thing he knew was that he couldn’t say a word to her. No way, no how. He would just embarrass himself. Boo-fucking-hoo. Whatever she wound up saying, he’d know what she thought, which was that he hadn’t earned the right to question her. Earned being the key word.
So he let her take her shiny red rocket down to the border whenever she liked. But on the weekends she went down there, he put the kids to bed and went out. Not to Hooters anymore, either. Houston had its share of first-rate “gentlemen’s” clubs—with oil at more than a hundred bucks a barrel in the last year of the Bush administration, the town was flush.
He never had sex, but he let them grind him until he came in his jeans. Never took more than two dances. He didn’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed at the speed. Well hello there, the girls would say, leaning close, rolling on his crotch in their G-strings while he was still spurting. And Good to the last drop. And Guess we don’t need to go to the back room. And, his favorite, from a blonde who reminded him of Birmingham Kaylee, Ain’t getting much at home, sweetie?
Is it that obvious?
Mmm-hmm.
Maybe he was fooling himself but he thought the girls liked it, proof of their skill. He handed over an extra twenty when they were done. Money well spent.
* * *
Then Rebecca’s conscience hit her. Or the charms of Ranger Redneck wore off. Or, most likely, she realized she wasn’t doing her career any favors, that she wasn’t getting any extra credit from the bureau for wasting weekends. Becks was too practical to let a holy quest interfere with her climb up the FBI’s ladder. Soon enough, she told him—no pretense of asking—that t
hey were headed to D.C., she’d taken a job at headquarters.
“Counterintelligence.”
“Being stupid? That’s an official desk?”
She didn’t smile. He couldn’t remember the last time she smiled at a joke he’d made.
* * *
The kids complained less than he expected about the move. They weren’t into Houston either.
But D.C.… In Houston Rebecca had whined about not being able to spend the way she liked. But in D.C. they really couldn’t live on her salary. Not anywhere that wasn’t at least an hour-plus drive from the Hoover Building. Exurbs, the real estate agents called them. Like if you lived there you didn’t even qualify for the suburbs anymore.
Of course, no law said FBI agents had a right to a fifteen-minute commute. The problem of their housing costs did have a solution, which was for them to move out to Germantown or Clarksburg, and for Rebecca to deal with the drive. But Rebecca insisted they be in one of the fancy close-in suburbs. For the schools, she said. Maybe. Or maybe Becks was just tired of driving. And of living in places where pickup trucks were more common than Volvo station wagons. You could take the girl out of Massachusetts…
Once again, what Rebecca wanted, Rebecca got. Instead of living in a town they could afford, they were stuck paying backbreaking rent for a dump in Chevy Chase. Stuck in a way Brian remembered from his childhood, when they had to choose which bills to pay and he dreaded the end of the month.
Worst of all, he knew what she was thinking. If you’d just make decent money everything would be fine.
She was wrong. They were way past that now, even if she wanted to pretend they weren’t. But whatever. He figured it would be easier to get a job than deal with her disapproval. So he did. At the National Security Agency, no less. Turned out that his résumé looked better than he expected to the government. ConocoPhillips was the kind of place the NSA liked to hire from. The fact that his wife was a senior FBI agent didn’t hurt either.
The Power Couple Page 22
