Maggie read about how porn addicts withdrew from their real-life partners. After marathon-porn sessions with a bevy of gorgeous naked women engaging in ever-more-exotic behavior, sex with one’s wife felt like going from a wide-screen, 3-D blockbuster to circle time at the local library. Sexual withdrawal led to emotional withdrawal. The wife’s complaints went from a concern to an annoyance and—finally—an irrelevance. Some divorced porn users became so hostile to their “porn widows” that they hired online vixens to troll them. Maggie winced as she read of one freshly divorced porn widow who’d opened her desktop at work to find emails from a naked blonde splayed across a Ferrari, taunting her in giant type: “SORRY YOU COULDN’T PLEASE HIM.”
When Maggie confronted Richard, he went through the predictable stages of an addict: denial, contrition, vows to change, sincere attempts at change, followed by complete relapse. Meanwhile, Maggie trudged back toward her old self. She found herself a therapist, regained her figure, and started the brutal business of disentangling herself from her marriage.
Even as she rebuilt her life, Maggie scolded herself for having been so trusting, so stupid. She cringed when she thought of all the crap she’d tolerated. Only later would she realize that her marriage had been trench warfare. Day after day, she had given up a little ground, then a little more. And—bam!—one morning she woke up to find the enemy had taken Paris.
Now, as she pulled into her driveway, her divorce was two years old, a legal toddler. And here was Richard messing up her life again. Ruthlessly handsome in a button-down oxford and khaki shorts, he smiled down at her as she mounted the porch steps. He held up a bouquet of pink roses, saying, “For you.”
Maggie accepted the flowers. “They’re beautiful.” And they were.
Richard grinned. “Only the best for my wife.”
“Ex-wife.”
He nodded. “Ex-wife.”
Maggie smelled the flowers for a moment, then eyed Richard warily. “So what’s the big occasion?”
“It’s the first day of school. I always bring you flowers on the first day.” Maggie raised an eyebrow. Richard hastened to add, “Almost always, um, when I remember.”
Maggie countered, “You haven’t brought me flowers in years.”
Richard looked surprised for a moment. “Really? In my mind, I’m always giving you flowers.”
“As we both know, your complex inner life doesn’t help me much.” Maggie handed the flowers back to him while she unlocked her front door. They walked into the foyer, and she peeled off her high heels as unsexily as she could. She padded across the living room and into the kitchen, then retrieved a vase from the cupboard while Richard surveyed the room.
He said, “You’ve changed the place. It looks great.”
“Yes, I got rid of all the things I didn’t like.” She looked meaningfully at Richard as she said this. He clutched a hand to his chest as if he’d been struck by gunshot, and Maggie forced back a smile. Careful to sound disinterested, she asked, “So, what do you call home these days? Still at Plaza Luna?” Richard had moved into a seedy apartment at Plaza Luna after the divorce.
Richard sighed. “Yes, Mag. And it’s still a dump. There was an armed robbery at the pool there yesterday. It was all over the local news. The idiot robber didn’t realize people don’t carry loads of cash and jewelry with them in a hot tub.”
Arranging the flowers, Maggie said, “Sounds lovely.” She felt no need to tell Richard how she’d panicked when she’d heard about the robbery on the radio. She’d read everything she could about it until she’d confirmed his safety.
“How’ve you been, Mag?” Richard arranged his features into a soulful look.
Maggie’s defenses went on high alert. “Busy. The first day of school is always exhausting, and it’s not over yet. I’ve got a big meeting tonight. So, if you don’t mind . . .” Maggie tapped her watch with her index finger.
Richard cleared his throat. “I have some news I wanted to share with you.”
“Couldn’t you have just called?” asked Maggie.
“I wanted to tell you in person.” Maggie braced herself. She didn’t know what else Richard could do to hurt her, but the man had proven himself inventive. “I wanted you to know that I’ve gotten help.”
“A therapist?” Maggie was genuinely surprised. She’d begged Richard to go to therapy during the death throes of their marriage, but he’d always resisted.
Richard answered, “No, not a therapist.”
Maggie caught the glint in Richard’s eye, that it’s-my-birthday vibe she always sensed around the newly devout. “Please don’t tell me you found Jesus. Jesus already has far too much on his plate.”
“No, not Jesus. I’ve joined a support group, a secular support group.”
Maggie said, “That sounds promising, I guess. Do you go to meetings?” Despite all he’d done to her, Maggie still loved Richard, a begrudging, wounded love fraught with mistrust, but love all the same.
“No, at least no face-to-face meetings.”
Maggie’s brow furrowed. “So, how do you . . . ?”
“The group operates completely online.”
Maggie smirked. “You’ve joined an online group to kick your online porn habit? Isn’t that a bit like going to AA meetings at a bar?”
“No, it’s great. It’s just a bunch of guys, and some women, trying to recover from porn addiction. You get all that you-guys-understand-me sense-of-community stuff without ever having to embarrass yourself in person. It’s easier to confide in each other when you don’t have to actually face anyone.”
Maggie raised an eyebrow. “So you feel you can be intimate with these strangers online?” History was repeating itself.
Richard caught her implication. He shook his head. “No, no. Not ‘intimate’ like that. The group is more . . . Jeez, Mag, you’re such a technophobe.”
Maggie threw up her hands. “I wonder why!”
Unfazed, Richard said, “Point taken. Look, I don’t know why the group works for me, but it does. It’s been months since I went onto a porn site.”
Maggie was skeptical. “Months?”
“Ninety-two days to be exact.”
“Wonderful. I’d offer to send you a card on your first anniversary, but I doubt Hallmark covers this one.” Maggie folded her arms across her chest.
Richard smiled. “You never know.” He gazed down at her, allowing the silence to stretch out between them. And Maggie felt herself thawing. The heat rose to her cheeks.
She regrouped. “So, uh, have you returned to biking yet?” She knew the answer was yes. Richard’s indoor “sports” had made him pasty-white, but now, his biker’s tan was back. He was his old unnervingly attractive self.
Richard nodded. “Yes, in fact, I’ll be racing next weekend up in Carlsbad.” Richard looked at her hopefully, as if expecting a pat on the head.
Maggie obliged. “Good for you. That sounds . . . wholesome.”
“Yes, ma’am. A G-rated event, suitable for all ages. If you’d like to come watch . . .” He leaned in just a bit closer, and Maggie caught a whiff of his cologne.
Striving to sound brisk and efficient, she said, “No, thanks. But I hope you have a lovely time out there.”
Richard shrugged. “No problem. I just thought you might want to watch me struggle against the younger guys.”
Maggie said, “Time catches up with all of us.”
“Not you, Mag. You look beautiful.” His smile faded now.
For Maggie, like most women, this line immobilized most comebacks like a Taser. Picking a piece of imaginary lint off her blouse—anything to break eye contact—she said, “Uh, thank you. You look very nice as well.”
“I miss you.”
Maggie’s head whipped up; she must have misheard. “What?”
He repeated, “I miss you.”
“You miss me?” A hardness crept into Maggie’s tone.
“Look, I know I hurt you. But I want you to know . . .”
Maggie folded her arms across her chest. “Know what? That you’ve managed to take a three-month break from playing yourself like a trombone?”
Richard countered, “Hey, that’s a long time for me.”
Maggie exhaled, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “Great. But what do you want me to say?”
Richard flailed. “I thought, maybe with time . . .”
“With time, what?”
“We had so many great years together. I’d hate to throw all that away. You know, the group has a saying for situations like this—”
Maggie cut in, “Yes, regular human beings have a saying too: fuck off. But wait, I guess you’d enjoy doing that.”
Richard remained maddeningly calm. “I get it. It’s too soon. You’re still miffed at me.”
Maggie laughed. “Miffed? No, I am waaaay past miffed. Try furious. Try cutting your face out of the family photos and stabbing your voodoo doll. That’s where I am, Richard.”
Richard nodded. “Okay, I can see we’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of trust to rebuild.”
“No, Richard, there’s no we anymore. You killed we when you left me for your right hand.”
Richard raised his arms in surrender. “I got it. It’s too soon.”
Maggie balked. “No, it’s not too soon. It’s too late. We’re divorced now. We’re over. Got it?”
Richard shook his head. “No, Maggie. We’re just getting started.”
She answered him with a withering glare, then watched as he let himself out the front door. Before leaving, he winked at her.
8
DIANE’S LOW-BUDGET MENAGERIE
Meanwhile, a dozen miles up the freeway . . .
When Diane opened the front door to her run-down ranch house, Murray screamed. This didn’t startle Diane. Like most parrots, Murray screamed a lot. He screamed when the sun rose in the morning, when he was bored, when he was happy, and—of course—when Diane came home. Diane shut off the scream by calling out, “Hi, pretty bird.”
This cue set off a round of Murray chanting more quietly, “Pretty bird, pretty bird.” He said this as if agreeing with her assessment. She strode over to his cage and unlatched it. Murray kicked the door open and climbed up Diane’s arm to perch on her shoulder. Next, she bent to pet her ancient basset hound, Bob Barker (“Barker” for short). He nuzzled her hand and then collapsed gracelessly back onto the carpet. Barker would soon be going to that great game show in the sky.
She dumped the day’s mail on a table, calling out, “Hey, Dad, I’m home!” When her dad didn’t answer right away, Diane paused, feeling a stab of panic. Like Bob Barker, Diane’s father was close to shuffling off his mortal coil. She exhaled in relief when he called back, “Hey, darlin’ girl!”
Diane then walked to the back of the house, passing more than a dozen terrariums as she went. The glass boxes held turtles, the Burmese python named Snookums, a Goliath birdeater tarantula, an African bullfrog, two ferrets, four hamsters, and a hedgehog. These animals—like Murray—were souvenirs of Diane’s happy, but ill-fated, third marriage to Chaz Porter.
Diane had been thirty-one when she met Chaz. Burnt by two sleazy husbands, her customer satisfaction level with the opposite sex was at an all-time low. She’d been helping at a neighbor kid’s birthday party, and Chaz had been the entertainment. A bear of a man with a loud, contagious laugh, Chaz dazzled the kids with his animals and his patter. Diane’s neighbor invited him to stay around after his show, and he spent the rest of the party trailing after Diane with hearts in his eyes. Later on, he’d tell her that he fell for her on sight because she looked like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, only Diane was even better because she “wasn’t all gloomy.” After five months of dating, he persuaded her to “do the legal” and marry him.
Diane moved into Chaz’s cramped ranch-style house on the edge of a not-so-scenic canyon in San Diego’s parched far North County. Despite the coating of feathers and animal hair in the house, she was goofily happy. If she’d had to write a Yelp post on her marriage, she would have given it five stars: “Good conversation, great sex, and complete trust—I come early and often!”
Her domestic bliss came to an abrupt end when one of Chaz’s snakes, a cottonmouth named Shirley, bit through his protective glove. The bite didn’t kill him, but the antivenom did. The big man had an allergic reaction to the stuff, and his heart gave out minutes after he injected it. The doctor—an old guy with bushy gray eyebrows—told Diane that Chaz’s reaction was a one-in-ten-million fluke. He said this as if she’d feel some sense of accomplishment at the sheer rarity of her husband’s crappy luck. Diane nodded, tears coursing down her cheeks. She wept through the funeral too, a huge affair organized by Maggie. Maggie’d gotten hold of Chaz’s iPhone contacts, so she invited animal trainers from all over the Southwest, and they brought their exotic pets along. The subsequent wake looked like a sad, boozy boarding area for Noah’s ark.
Afterward, and again with Maggie’s help—that woman could haggle—Diane sold off the bulk of Chaz’s menagerie. What remained were the dregs. Waking up every morning in Chaz’s dilapidated ranch house to the sounds of her animal companions hooting and hissing, Diane felt like a white-trash Cinderella. In an uncharacteristic bout of self-pity, she had a T-shirt printed: “MY HUSBAND DIED, AND ALL I GOT WAS A LOUSY ZOO.” But she didn’t wear it often. She was grateful for every second she’d had with Chaz. Plus, the place perked up a bit when her dad moved in with her.
She found him sitting in his recliner, watching television at top volume. Thankfully, Lars’s doctor had made him abandon cable news. Politics had caused Lars to stroke out twice while ranting at the TV set. So now, a much mellower Lars binge-watched Netflix all day. His tastes were all over the map: World War II documentaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friday Night Lights, and so on. Downton Abbey had been the worst. It was surreal listening to a seventy-four-year-old Minnesotan with emphysema waste his breath, fretting over which suitor Lady Mary should choose (“Jeezum Crow, she’ll never learn!”).
Diane kissed the top of his head, and Lars said, “So, how’s Miss America doing today?”
“I dunno. Ask her.” Diane deposited Murray on his perch by the window, then settled down on the couch.
Lars craned round to smile at her, his oxygen line just under his nose like a thin, clear plastic mustache. “Seriously, Lady Di, how was it?”
Diane shrugged. “Same as usual. Kids and teachers and parents, oh my.” Diane knew her dad would catch this Wizard of Oz reference. Like most families, they spoke the same dialect of movie-ese.
“Any single dads?”
“Just one. He rode in on a white horse and handed me a red rose, but I think he does that with everybody.”
Lars pressed on, “Sounds promising. Any new male teachers on staff?”
Diane shut him down. “It’s not a singles bar, Dad.”
“Yeah. But ya never know where you’ll meet a fella.” After a silence, Lars added brightly, “Or a gal. You could try being a lesbian. Lesbians are big nowadays.”
“What do you mean ‘big’?” Diane had a mental picture of a giant lesbian, a Godzilla-sized woman in a plaid shirt and work boots, ripping off the roof of a Home Depot.
“Ya know, they’re real popular. They got Ellen, Melissa Etheridge, that frizzy-haired girl from Roseanne. They’re everywhere. It’s the new thing.”
Diane answered, “Lesbians aren’t new, Dad. They were born that way. They’re just coming out now because it’s safe.”
“Sure, whatever. But I’m saying, it’s okay to be that way nowadays. So if ya . . .”
Diane rolled her eyes. “I’m not gay.”
“I’m just saying I’ve noticed you’ve got whatchamacallit, um, chemistry with Maggie. A real simpatico.”
“For the last time, I’m not gay. And neither’s Maggie.” Hoping to quiet her father, Diane grabbed her laptop off the coffee table and switched it on. As her father turned back to watching House of Cards, Diane went straight to her
blog DOB.com, Doomsday on a Budget. DOB.com was dedicated to helping people survive the apocalypse as inexpensively as possible. It catered to blue-collar “preppers.” Preppers were what sane people preparing for Armageddon started calling themselves after kooks like the Unabomber disgraced the “survivalist” label. Most prepper websites shouted relentlessly at their readers about the forms their impending doom could take. Standard posts were: “5 Reasons Nuclear War Is Just Around the Corner!” and “10 Ways the World Will End, Number 6 Will Shock You!”
Diane, however, carved out a niche for herself by writing folksy posts about the best deals on canned goods, cheap-and-easy wind generators, and do-it-yourself hazmat suit repair. She made surviving the apocalypse seem almost cozy, like the long winters Laura Ingalls Wilder shared with Pa and Ma in the Little House on the Prairie books. Except there’d be cannibals.
Diane went through her readers’ questions, answering each as thoroughly as she could. After half an hour, her father pestered her. “So, hey, any men write to you on that there website today?”
“No, Dad. I guess I’ll just have to ride out the apocalypse on my own.” This was a lie. Several fanboys had already propositioned Diane, using the routine prepper come-on: “Your bunker or mine?”
Lars huffed, “Well, that’s no fun.”
“The apocalypse isn’t supposed to be fun.”
“Oh, frig the apocalypse.” He brought his fist down on his armrest, and the air hissed in his breathing tube.
Diane put aside her laptop. “Dad, we’ve gone through this. Don’t get yourself worked up.”
Lars laid his hand on hers. “I just don’t want to see you end up all alone.”
The Very Principled Maggie Mayfield Page 5
