Remind Me Again Why I Married You

by Rita Ciresi

  “In real life, I used to work for Ebb,” I said.

  “But how can you be your husband’s lover—if you’re his wife?”

  I bit my lip. Raw. “I’ve been known to ask myself that same question.”

  “I mean,” Aye-Aye said, “this wife in your novel is such a nag and a half! I just can’t wait until Simon dumps her for Take-A-Letter-Maria.”

  “But he doesn’t dump her for Take-A-Letter-Maria.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  Read my synopsis! I silently commanded Aye-Aye. “To leave would be completely out of Simon’s character.”

  “Yes, but that’s your story. Make that your story and I’d fall for it in a heartbeat.”

  “Oh. So. Do you like . . . uh . . . want me? I mean, want my novel?”

  “My dear girl. I’m on the phone with you. I’m talking. Probably more than your husband—if he’s as emotionally constipated as this Simon Stern in your novel—has talked to you all week.”

  I nodded. Joyfully. Until Aye-Aye said something that made me gulp: “How quickly can you deliver the rest of this manuscript?”

  Years ago—while Ebb stood by the side of my birthing-room bed, methodically cracking his knuckles to release his nervous energy—I had grabbed the arm of the head nurse. After panting through a paralyzing contraction, I had asked her the very same question: “How quickly can you—the general you—I mean I—deliver?” The nurse had disengaged her arm from my death grip and resumed swabbing cold mustardy stuff all over my rotund belly. “Some women push their babies right out,” she said. “Others take anywhere between twenty-four to thirty-six hours.” I had turned toward Ebb. “Stop cracking your fucking knuckles!” I had bitched at him before begging the nurse, “Oh please, please, time has never felt so long, just put me under. . . .”

  “I think I can send you the whole manuscript around the start of next year,” I said.

  “And in the meantime—remind me—what else have you published?”

  “Well. Like. Um. Nothing.”

  “You need exposure.”

  I didn’t dare tell Aye-Aye that for years I’d been trying to expose my heart and soul to the slick pages of Cosmo and Vogue and Vanity Fair, only to sink into deeper and deeper funks when their editorial assistants (who undoubtedly were named Ashley, Tiffany, and Brittany) mailed my proposals back with form rejection cards attached. I’d come to translate We regret to inform you that your proposal isn’t suitable for our publication into this piece of catty advice: WE tweeze OUR eyebrows right, even if YOU haven’t got the knack!

  “What do you suggest?” I asked Aye-Aye. “I mean, I’ve tried sending off one or two proposals to the women’s magazines.”

  “Forget the women,” Aye-Aye said. “There’s more money in the men. Cut off all the fat from this first chapter and I’ll try to get you into one of the men’s.”

  I didn’t want to cut a single word from my chapter. But I really wanted my byline in Esquire or GQ, and so I went back to my desk and trimmed my prose as mean and lean and manly as I could get. I must have gotten too heavy on the testosterone, though, because six weeks later Aye-Aye called me back and told me, “Lisa D. Strauss. You are no longer a nobody.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You have been accepted. By Playboy.”

  I gulped. “I can’t publish in Playboy.”

  “Why not?”

  “What’ll my husband say?”

  “Whew,” Aye-Aye said. “What a relief. I thought you were going to say: ‘What will the feminists say?’ ”

  My head immediately began to hurt. I didn’t have to live with the feminists. I had to live with Ebb. But I also had to live with myself. And my self, quite honestly, had no quarrels with skin magazines. I knew for certain that if I were a man, I wouldn’t mind gawking at pictures of naked women—since I (as a woman) often sighed over the photos of buff, muscled men in much tamer publications (like the underwear pages of the Sears catalog, not to mention the already-mentioned Publishers Weekly).

  So I told Aye-Aye, “Okay, let Playboy have it, under one condition: that they don’t use my real name.”

  “Your name is what we’re trying to get out there,” Aye-Aye said.

  “Then let me use my maiden name.”

  “Then no one will know who you really are.”

  “But no one knows who I really am when I use my married name.”

  Aye-Aye clucked his tongue. “I don’t have time for these Ms.-magazine-like discussions. Call me back when you decide who you really want to be.”

  “I wanna be—me!” I said. “I wanna be—Elizabeth Diodetto.”

  Aye-Aye paused. “Could you spell that for me?”

  Well, that explained why I had taken Ebb’s last name in the first place. It really was tiresome having a last name that always prompted clerks or bank tellers to say “That’s a mouthful!” or “Repeat that again?” (Never mind that my real first name—Elisabetta—was impossible for most people to pronounce.) Five years ago I had convinced myself that my life would be easier if I just became Lisa Strauss.

  But who had I been fooling? I’d had second thoughts about taking Ebb’s name. Yet I’d had third (and fourth and fifth) thoughts about reverting back to my maiden name for Playboy—until I got the acceptance letter. And eventually, the check. I kissed the check. My heart bobbed with the same girlish joy I had felt when I held the first five dollars I ever earned—from an all-day baby-sitting job—in my hand. Then I had a thought: Oh shit. Now I’ll have to report this income on our taxes—and how in the world can I bribe our accountant to keep it a secret from Ebb?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  EBEN

  Every morning I tried to do twenty push-ups on the bathroom floor. And every morning I made it to nineteen and then fell to the tile, thinking, One more and Lisa will have to call an ambulance. When I grasped the counter and hauled myself upright, I took a glance at my bleary-eyed face in the mirror. I never used to look so wiped out in the morning, I thought. Or have so much gray—that didn’t even sparkle—clawing its way through my black hair. And my stomach. Much could be said about that stomach. But why waste the breath? I got down on the floor and forced myself to do that final push-up before I got into the shower. As I lathered up with soap, I tried to remember the dream I’d been having just before Lisa woke me. I had been on top of a woman. Who wasn’t Lisa. But who was she?

  She was . . . she was . . . Cynthia Farquhar. Sans that fetching pale blue suit. Sans pager!

  I reached over and absentmindedly turned the shower knob from HOT to COLD—then yelped and hit the knob with the palm of my hand. The blast of freezing water stopped abruptly. I slid back the frosted-glass doors, stepped onto the bath mat, and rubbed myself down with a towel. Then I wrapped the wet towel around my waist and reached into the medicine cabinet for my shaving cream and razor.

  As I shaved, I wondered where this fantasy about Cynthia had come from. I hardly ever saw Cynthia. She called me—perhaps once or twice a week—just to “keep me in the loop,” but I saw her only on Saturdays, when we visited the houses she and Lisa already had screened during the week. I always looked forward to these outings—after all, it was exciting to think of making a fresh start in a new home—but sometimes I found it draining to be in the same room with Cynthia (who wanted to conduct a reasonable conversation about mortgage rates) and Lisa (who wanted to hoot about a deer head hanging on the wall or a cactus-shaped lamp). Now my dream complicated this situation even more. I knew the next time I stood in the presence of both Cynthia and Lisa, I would remember this shameless fantasy and go walleyed trying not to look at both women in the same glance.

  Not that either one of them would have noticed. I guess it was inevitable that I would feel like the odd man out in this triangle. But Lisa and Cynthia had become so close that sometimes when all three of us were together I had to remind myself: Yes, you are a man whose thoughts and feelings (never mind money to pay the mortgage) really do exist. Lisa spent all of her free ti
me with Cynthia, touring Tudor homes, Cape Cod homes, Italianate homes, and homes in dozens of other architectural styles I had remained blissfully ignorant of until all this house-hunting began. And then the two of them went to that blasted Coffee Clatch, where they no doubt huddled over their cappuccinos, confiding their darkest secrets.

  Deep inside, I believed, Lisa was fiercely loyal to me. But when I tried to figure out if she would relate to Cynthia some of the low-lights of our marriage—You know, Ebb gets impossibly irritable when he can’t take a good poop. . . . You know, Ebb is such a slob that I have to leave little messages around the house commanding him to pick up after himself. . . . You know, there’s a reason why Ebb and I only have one child—I only ping-ponged back and forth between: She wouldn’t. She would. She wouldn’t. She . . .

  Well, whatever. I couldn’t control what Lisa told the whole world. Which only made me more determined to keep a strong grip on what I said myself.

  I finished shaving, set my razor down on the counter, then threw several handfuls of icy-cold water on my tingling face. Since Lisa slept later than I did, I always set the clothes I was going to wear in the bathroom the night before. When I pulled my clean underwear off the hamper, a pee-yellow pellet, shaped like a heart, fell to the bathroom tile. I leaned over and picked the heart off the floor. The shaky red letters stamped on the candy Valentine said:

  BAD BOY

  I laughed. At first. Lisa loved giving gag gifts, and ever since Valentine’s Day, she had been demonstrating her affection for

  me by planting these “contemporary” conversation hearts stamped with messages radically different from those on the Sweet Hearts of my childhood, such as LUV YA, NICE TIME, and KISS ME. Yet she planted the hearts in strategic places, so the messages often had a double meaning—rude as well as loving. After I made the mistake of telling Lisa that I had a constipation-induced headache, Lisa taped onto a California prune a yellow heart that said eat me. After I had abandoned my coat on the couch for the third time in a week, Lisa left a pink heart on the sofa cushion that announced HANG

  IT UP. After I failed to spray our stubborn front-door lock with

  WD-40 for the fourth weekend in a row, a puke-green heart taped to the doorknob commanded me JUST DO IT.

  Ordinarily I didn’t mind being henpecked by these hearts. However, this BAD BOY—which initially amused me—now confused me. What was the real message here?

  YOU’RE TOO GOOD?

  YOU’RE NOT BAD ENOUGH?

  GET RIGHT BACK INTO BED RIGHT NOW, YOU DUMB

  DUNDERING DUNCE, AND LET SOMEBODY ELSE WORRY

  ABOUT SHOVELING OUT THE DRIVEWAY?

  This last interpretation struck me as the most appealing. I held the BAD BOY heart between my fingers. Then I crept back into our dark bedroom. If Lisa were narrating the scene, she would have written, He advanced upon the marital bed, naked and ready for

  action.

  And then he/I bumped into the fax machine. And then he/I saw his wife had gone back to sleep and was deep in dreamland. Lisa stirred slightly beneath the sheets. Her hips came forward as she murmured, “Aye-Aye. Oh, Aye-Aye.”

  I frowned. Why should I feel guilty about having sex with Cynthia Farquhar in my dreams, when Lisa was having sex with a sailor? I left the BAD BOY heart on my pillow. Then, by the dim light seeping through the curtains, I reset Mr. Chanticleer to give Lisa a wise-and-shine wake-up call at six, instead of seven, A.M.

  That should send her fantasy man packing, I thought. Although another mythical man soon would step in to take his place. Sometimes I just felt like Lisa may as well have been conducting some hot, steamy daytime affair with the main character in her novel for all the energy she had left over for me. And thinking about it made me so crazy that I wanted to shake her out of her slumber and ask, What’s this fictional jerk’s name, anyway? And how can you love him more than me, when I’m the one who shovels out your driveway?

  After I downed two cups of coffee, I stuffed a sheaf of papers in my briefcase, put on my coat and rubber boots, and opened the front door. In the dark blue light before dawn, I could just make out a valiant daffodil peeking through the thin blanket of snow and a robin swooping down from the white-coated maple tree. The New York Times lay on the welcome mat; a headline visible through the blue plastic bag read WARMEST WINTER SLIPS (ON ICE) INTO HISTORY.

  I tossed the paper inside and crunched down the walk. Lisa’s Camry was in the garage, which meant that my Audi was parked at the end of the driveway next to our condo’s for-sale sign. That sign suddenly irked the fuck out of me. I lowered my briefcase between my feet and scooped up a handful of snow, which I packed with satisfying smacks between my leather gloves. Then I hurled the snowball at the sign, causing the sheet of snow covering it to instantly fall to the ground. When the sign finally stopped swinging back and forth, I saw that the snowball had dented the tony-toothed photograph of our seller’s agent, crinkling the words below:

  FOR SALE

  CALL MRS. JOAN ORDER

  EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES TURNS TO SOLD!

  Our condo had been on the market for six weeks and Mrs. Joan Order had yet to prove she had the Midas touch. Yesterday, however, she had proven that she could set off more than a few fireworks between Lisa and me.

  “Mr. Strauss,” Mrs. O. told me when she called my office, “I need to be very frank with you: We are not getting a good response to your condo from prospective buyers. So I wonder if you can talk to your wife. About her housekeeping. I specifically asked Lisa to keep each and every room extremely neat.”

  “Lisa’s very busy,” I said. “She’s very involved with . . . our son.”

  “I don’t doubt she’s a devoted mother,” Mrs. O. said. “But maybe she could bring in a maid? I really don’t say this to be judgmental. But your property is not showing well. I need you to declutter!”

  “Declutter?”

  “Tell your wife: declutter.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what decluttering involved. But I was positive Lisa would go right through the roof if I directly passed on Mrs. Order’s suggestion. So I waited until after Lisa and I had tucked Danny into bed and then retired to the living room before I said in my most noncommittal voice, “Hmm, it’s getting kind of messy in here.”

  “Kind of?” Lisa asked.

  “Maybe we need to bring in a cleaning service.”

  “And maybe,” Lisa said, “I’ve already told you—all of a million times—that I can’t tolerate another woman in this house. It breaks my concentration when I’m writing. Besides, I refuse to clean before the cleaning lady gets here.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I can’t let another woman see that I put up with this masculine mess. I mean, just look around this living room, Ebb.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “And what do you see?”

  I shrugged. “Looks fine to me.”

  “Then why did you say it looked messy?”

  “I just think we need to . . . um, declutter.”

  Lisa slit her eyes at me. “You’ve been talking to Law and Order.”

  “Law and Order?”

  “Don’t deny it! She’s the only person I know who uses that word. Oh! Doesn’t that woman realize that if I really wanted to declutter, the first thing I’d have to throw out the door would be Danny—”

  I laughed. Until Lisa said, “—followed by you, Ebb.”

  I was more than willing to move on to another topic. But Lisa wouldn’t let this one go without a fight. She pointed out that Danny tossed enough G.I. Joes and other combat action figures around the living room to wage World War III. She also claimed I never hung up my coat. Or recycled the Times or The Wall Street Journal. Or tossed my junk mail.

  “Which means I have to hang!” she said. “And I have to recycle! And I have to toss! All for love. Or personal sanity. If you can mention the two together and still make sense.”

  I—prudently—reserved judgment on that one.

&
nbsp; “Listen, Lisa,” I said. “I know you don’t want to be a hausfrau—”

  “Most observant of you.”

  “—but we have to face facts: You are the frau and you are in the haus all day.”

  “But I’m not in this house. Why don’t you get it? I’m in another, imaginary house all day, the same as you’re in your office.”

  This, I thought, was a stretch. But since the last thing I wanted was to find myself sitting on some couch in a marriage counselor’s office, staring down at my loafers while Lisa cried, “He does not support my professional goals!” I tried to let off the appropriate mm-hmm and ah-ha and I see kind of noises as Lisa went on and on about how important her writing was to her, etc., etc., etc.

  I guess I overdid it, because Lisa said, “Do you have something stuck in your throat?”

  “I was trying to demonstrate that my concerns were your concerns.”

  “Well, do you have to sound like Foghorn Leghorn while you’re doing it?” Lisa asked. She stared up at the ceiling. “God! What do you care? You love your work.”

  “I don’t always love my work,” I said. “Lately.”

  “You don’t?” Lisa said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Oh,” Lisa said. “Well, I know you have a weird thing going on with your secretary—”

  “I do not have a weird thing going on with anyone but you, Lisa.”

  “—but you don’t really complain about other stuff.” Lisa paused. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Do I look like I want to talk about it?”

  “If you don’t talk about it,” Lisa warned, “you’re going to get an ulcer. Or a heart attack. Or, I don’t know, maybe you’ll just spontaneously combust.”

  “Should combustion occur,” I said, “which I think is not likely, you’ll find my life-insurance policy in the bottom left-hand drawer of the brown file cabinet.”

  “Which brown file cabinet?” Lisa asked.

  “The one in the bedroom with the gray handles.”

  Lisa opened her mouth so wide I could see the fillings in her molars. “Hello? That cabinet is putty? And the handles are, like—silver?”