Remind Me Again Why I Married You

by Rita Ciresi

  Ebb leaned in the doorway and stopped to evaluate my chopped locks—which made me look like a shorn sheep. “It is kind of—”

  “All right,” I said. “I know.”

  “I don’t see why you cut it again,” Ebb said.

  “The cut was all wrong last time.”

  “Couldn’t you go back to the same stylist and ask her to fix it?”

  “You don’t get it. I trusted Ricardo. To make me look like Cynthia. And then Ricardo spent all of five minutes cutting my hair and charged me—well, you don’t want to know what I paid.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.” Ebb shrugged. “It’ll grow out, Lisar.”

  I bit down the urge to say, But it won’t grow back by Monday when I meet with Aye-Aye. I squeezed Danny’s shoulder. “So how was the birthday party?”

  “Noah cheated at Blind Man’s Bluff,” Danny said.

  “I thought you said it was Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” Ebb said.

  “No, Blind Man’s Bluff,” Danny said.

  I winced. Because I knew what was coming. Ebb just couldn’t leave well enough alone; he always had to prove himself right.

  “Danny,” Ebb said, “I distinctly remember you saying he cheated at Pin the Tail—”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You did.”

  “What does it matter?” I interrupted.

  In the silence that followed, I heard the freezing rain repeatedly tapping on the skylight. When I looked over at Ebb, he turned his back and put down his wallet and keys on his chest of drawers. He was standing directly in front of the tilted mirror he had yet to rehang in Danny’s bedroom, so I could still see his face. It kind of scared me. Not since his father died had I seen him look so weary.

  “I’m hungry,” said Danny.

  “I’ll make dinner,” I said. “In just a second.” I gave him a gentle shove. “Go downstairs and do something constructive with yourself.”

  After Danny disappeared downstairs, Ebb sat down on the side of the mattress, with his back toward me. His posture seemed to say: I just can’t bear another minute of this. Someone else will have to be me tonight.

  “I’ll make dinner,” I repeated.

  “You have a headache,” Ebb reminded me.

  I did feel my forehead throbbing. But Ebb clearly had bigger problems than that. I leaned forward and touched his arm. “Ebb.”

  “What.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing is the matter.”

  “But lately,” I said, “I can’t help noticing—you seem so moody. And your temper is short. And you’re going through Tums like crazy.”

  Ebb leaned his elbows on his knees. I knew he was having one of those moments when you look down at your hands and can’t believe they’re your own hands, and then your sense of who you are—and what you are doing on the earth—gets even more convoluted when you look down and think, But if these are not my hands, then what about my feet? my heart? my head?

  “Inside . . .” Ebb said.

  “Yes?”

  He put his hand on his stomach. “I just feel like . . .”

  I nodded.

  “There’s a war going on,” he said.

  I reached over and smoothed my hand over his back, slowly, the way I used to soothe Danny after he fed at my breast. “Maybe you just need to burp a wee bit more.”

  “I do not need to burp,” Ebb said. “Especially a wee bit more.”

  I immediately took my hand off his back. I knew I had made a big mistake by implying that all of Ebb’s problems could be traced to mere acid indigestion. Something obviously was tearing him up inside. But how could I not reduce Ebb’s issues to the need for a rip-roaring belch—if he refused to talk to me about them? Why didn’t he just spill? Was his tongue lashed to the back of his throat?

  If only! I thought, as he stood up from the bed and asked, “What’s for dinner?”

  I never went out of my way to cook on Saturday nights, so the dinner I fixed was just canned split-pea soup with carrots, and egg salad chopped with red onions and Spanish olives on sourdough bread. But the freezing rain tapping on the windows made the soup seem even warmer and the bread more doughy and satisfying.

  After dinner, the sleet suddenly ceased. I pulled back the blinds of the sliding glass door and switched on the outside light so we could watch the fat snowflakes fall on the redwood deck chairs we hadn’t bothered to store in the garage last autumn. Danny talked about making a Snow Child in the morning. I vowed to suck on an icicle. Outside, the world became so clean and white that even Ebb didn’t seem discouraged by the thought of shoveling the walk and driveway in the morning. I fixed us all big steamy mugs of hot chocolate, and the miniature marshmallows I dropped into Danny’s cup turned him into a saint. At eight o’clock, without being nagged, he put away his Lincoln Logs and Legos and announced, “I want morning to come faster, so I’m going to bed.”

  At the tender hour of nine-thirty, Ebb was nodding over the previous day’s Wall Street Journal. My own walrus-size yawns signaled it was time to admit defeat and collapse into bed. The whistle and rasp of Danny’s breath was audible even on the first turn of the stairs. He was asleep—probably on his back—with his mouth open again. I went into his room. As I flipped him over, I remembered how I used to lean over his bassinet and bolster him with rolled-up towels to keep him from flopping onto his stomach. As a baby—and even now—Danny always had reminded me of roadkill: a furry raccoon or unsuspecting possum turned on his side, his tiny paws brought up to his face to shield himself from harm.

  I went into our bedroom, opened the drawer that held some of my prettier nightgowns, and thought to myself, Why bother? I pulled out a pair of silk long johns, and with my back to Ebb, I put them on and crawled beneath the covers.

  I watched Ebb step out of his pants. He seemed to consider hanging his Dockers in the crammed closet before he tossed them on the ever-increasing pile of laundry on the chair.

  I gazed at the mess. “It’s late,” I said, “and I’m choosing to look the other way.”

  “Excellent decision,” Ebb said as he climbed into bed.

  I cut the light and snuggled further under the mound of blankets. “God, it’s cold in here.”

  “Even with those long johns on?” Ebb asked.

  “They’re called Cuddl Duds,” I said.

  “Sure they’re not called HANDS OFF, ASSHOLE?”

  “You could always take your chances,” I said.

  Ebb took my hand. “Come here.”

  I inched over.

  “No, closer,” Ebb said. “Come on. Closer. I’m not going to start anything. I’m too tired.”

  “What if I’m not?” I said.

  “Then shut up,” Ebb said, “and make your move.”

  I laughed as I put my head on Ebb’s bare chest. “I hear your heart.”

  “And what does it say?”

  I listened to the quiet, rhythmic thudding. “It says: Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me, talk to me.”

  Ebb put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “What did you really think of that house?”

  I sighed and curled my leg over his. “I loved that house so much I took something from it.”

  Ebb’s shoulder stiffened. “Lisar. What next with you?”

  “It was just one of the goose-egg stones that lined the front walk.”

  “But why?”

  “At first I just wanted to feel one up. They looked so round and full—but heavy and solid—and once I had one in my hand, I had to have it in my pocket.”

  “Thief,” Ebb said.

  “It’s just a rock.”

  “But you stole it.”

  “With the best of intentions,” I said. “I took the rock because I wanted a guarantee we would go back to that house.”

  “You could have chosen a less criminal method.” Ebb hesitated. “You could have said, ‘Let’s go back to that house. Together.’ ”

  “I was afraid you’d say no dice
,” I said. “That it was out of the question.”

  “Why didn’t you get the price from Cynthia beforehand?”

  “It completely slipped my mind.”

  “It’s a full hundred over the limit I gave her.”

  “But she said she thought the owners would come down,” I said. “She obviously knows something that we don’t know.”

  “Call her on Monday and find out,” Ebb said.

  “How?”

  “Since when are you shy? Ask her, point-blank, if she thinks it’s an acrimonious divorce—”

  “Like divorce is ever amicable?” I asked.

  “—and if there’s a custody battle going on—”

  “What else do you want to know?” I asked. “If there’s a third party involved?” I laughed. “The names of their lawyers?”

  Ebb—exasperated—said, “Keep it up, Lisar.”

  “Oh, I plan on it. ’Til death do us part.” I felt my forehead getting all wrinkly with worry. “It doesn’t bother you, does it, that the people who lived there split up?”

  Ebb shook his head. “Their loss is our gain.”

  Of course, Ebb didn’t ask me back: Does it bother you? It did, sort of. And Cynthia must have realized that the divorce of the owners would trouble me, otherwise she would have told me about it right off the bat.

  “I checked out this library book,” I told Ebb.

  “That one on feng shui?”

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “You left it in the living room. I picked it up last night when I couldn’t go to sleep.”

  “I checked it out,” I said, “strictly for research.”

  Ebb’s silence seemed to ask, Just like your Wild Women Wanna?

  “Anyway,” I said, “this book cautioned against moving into a house that has a bad ch’i attached to it. But I figure we aren’t Chinese. Plus we aren’t into the careful placement of mirrors, so I say fuck it. Let’s go for it.”

  “Okay.” Ebb patted my back. “Just get the pertinent information from Cynthia that will help me get that price down.”

  “What if you can’t get the price down?”

  Ebb thought about that for a long time. “We could swing it. I guess. But it would be a stretch if we end up doing all that in-vitro stuff . . . you know, with Dr. Goode.”

  “Ugh,” I said. “The shots.”

  “I’d rather not think about the shots,” Ebb said.

  “You’d rather not,” I said. “What about me? It’s my butt the needle goes into.”

  “Yes, but I’m the one who has to . . . you know . . . stick it in there.”

  “My sorrow for you knows no bounds,” I said.

  “But I don’t want to hurt you, Lisar. Really. Besides, I’m afraid I won’t get the needle in right—”

  “On my flab-ola butt? How could you miss?”

  Ebb reached down and put his hand on my rear end. “I know there’s something I’m supposed to say now.”

  “So say it. Say: ‘Your butt isn’t flab-ola, Lisar.’ ”

  “Your butt isn’t—”

  “And while you’re at it, say, ‘Your haircut looks fine,’ and then say, ‘Your novel is so spectacular it makes my heart stop,’ and then say, ‘I. I. Iforson definitely will sell it for six figures so we can buy that house and live happily ever after.’ ”

  Ebb—of course—wouldn’t say any of this. “I don’t mean to be a prude, Lisar. But if publishing in Playboy is any indication of where this Ifor wants your career to go, then he’s steering you in the wrong direction.”

  “Well, I’m crying,” I said as I rolled off Ebb. “All the way to the bank.”

  Ebb propped himself on one elbow. “Lisar,” he said, “when you first started at this writing business, you told me—and I quote: ‘The writer shouldn’t get rich writing a book, but the reader should get rich reading it.’ ”

  “So I’ve changed my tune: Why shouldn’t both get rich? The author has to keep a roof over her head.”

  “You have a roof.”

  “The author needs a pot to piss in,” I said.

  “You’ve got two bathrooms.”

  “The downstairs bathroom is only one half!”

  “And you don’t need the money,” Ebb said. “Didn’t I tell you, when you first started out at this, that I would take care of you?”

  “I’m not a dog,” I said. “Or a child. I don’t want to be taken care of. Besides, what would happen to me if something bad happened to you?”

  “There’s the life insurance.”

  “Every time you fly I get nervous—”

  “I buy the tickets on my platinum card. That’s a quarter of a million coverage right there. Besides, I’ve totally cut back on the travel so I can stay home. And argue with you. Just like this.”

  I stretched out my legs, then kicked, childishly, at the sheets that felt too tight due to all the blankets piled up on the bed. “You hurt my feelings today,” I said.

  “When?”

  “At the house. I saw you look at Cynthia and then look at my socks with . . . I don’t know what to call it but displeasure.”

  Ebb didn’t say anything. So I said, “I mean, I know I need new socks. But I don’t have time to get to the store. Not if I want to write all the way up until the minute I have to pick up Danny at school. And then Danny runs me ragged when I come home. And then you get home and then—” I felt tears spring to my eyes. “I look like shit compared to Cynthia.”

  “No one is comparing you, Lisar.”

  “What does it matter,” I asked, “when I compare myself? I wish I had Cynthia’s voice. I like the softness of it. She never hoots like a screech owl when something’s funny. She never says anything stupid or impulsive. She always seems so . . . I don’t know, polished—”

  “That’s because you see her only in her professional role.”

  “But she always looks better, Ebb.”

  “Of course she looks better,” Ebb said. “She doesn’t have children.”

  I pulled the blankets against me, as if someone had just socked me a good one right in the stomach.

  Ebb paused. “Let me take another crack at that.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “No, hear me out. You shouldn’t be envious of Cynthia. She doesn’t have it all together. She’s divorced. She goes home and sleeps by herself.”

  “She does not,” I said. “She sleeps with her boyfriend. They were going up to Bear Mountain tonight.”

  “In this weather? They probably got five miles up Route 9 and then had to pull over into a Motel 6.”

  I listened to Danny’s labored breathing, which was coming loud and clear from across the hall again. Suddenly, the thought of being stuck in a roadside motel room, in a deep and furious snowstorm, presented some interest to me—but not to Ebb, who said, “It’s much more comfortable to be snowed in at home.”

  “Right,” I said. “Where else can we get such an excellent read on Danny’s adenoid condition?”

  Ebb waited through half a dozen more of Danny’s snorts. “Those adenoids have to go.”

  “But I don’t want him to have surgery.”

  “It’s a routine operation,” Ebb said. “Half an hour long. If you want, I’ll take an afternoon off and bring him in myself.”

  “You don’t have to do it yourself,” I said. “If you would just do it with me—”

  “All right. Remind me tomorrow to call his doctor.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” I said.

  “Monday then.”

  “Mondays it’s impossible to even get through to the doctor,” I said.

  “Tuesday then. Whenever.” Ebb’s voice grew more tired by the second. I knew no good ever came of discussing scheduling when we were in bed. It made us both anxious during the night, as if the leaves of the calendar were flipping beyond our control and there was some appointment or meeting we both had to make but felt certain we were about to miss.

  Danny’s snoring grew even louder.
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br />   “Your turn,” I said.

  Ebb rolled out of bed and padded across the cold hall to flop Danny onto his side and prop him with a spare pillow behind his back. He shivered as he came back into bed. “He was smiling in his sleep.”

  “He probably was dreaming about killing us,” I said.

  “You know, he got into deep shit at that birthday party. He said fuck in front of all the other kids.”

  I drew in a quick breath. “The Foxes are lawyers! Their faces are on the back of the phone book! They’ll probably take us to court. For corrupting their darling Noah.”

  “I told you it wasn’t such a hot idea to tell him about sex,” Ebb said. “He got it all mixed up. He told June Fox you were pregnant.”

  “But I clearly explained to him how it works.”

  “He probably thinks it’s as fast as instant oatmeal.”

  “It should be so easy.” I rolled over. “Ow.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “That rock I put under the mattress is murder on my back.”

  I rolled out of bed, hoisted the mattress, and pulled the goose-egg stone out. I let it fall to the floor with a thud.

  “Is there a logical explanation,” Ebb said, “why you’ve stuck a boulder underneath the mattress?”

  “There is not.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Oh, think, think,” I said. “Why do you always have to be so logical?”

  “Why do you always have to be so unreasonable?”

  We both fell silent.

  Then Ebb dared to ask, “When are we going to start getting along with each other, Lisar?”

  I laughed and nudged him in the ribs. “When pigs fly,” I said as across the hall Danny gave an adenoidal oink as confirmation.

  MONDAY, MARCH 23, 1992

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  EBEN

  All of Sunday it snowed, and we shoveled. And it snowed, and we shoveled. On Monday morning, the rumble of the snowplows and salt trucks woke me at 4:48 A.M. By 5:25 my watch was on my wrist, the SB pager (which I had turned on at midnight) was clipped onto my belt, and two cups of French roast and another bowl of ineffective high-fiber cereal sat inside my bloated stomach. I had no real reason to dread the day ahead. But still, when I couldn’t break my fifth straight day of constipation, couldn’t find my car keys, and couldn’t bear the dampness of my boots after I slipped them on, I thought: Here we go again, another Monday.