Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married

by Heather McElhatton

  Christopher looks worried. “Is that good?”

  I touch my face to make sure it’s me in the mirror.

  “It’s . . . amazing. I look like I belong on Housewives of the GOP.”

  A huge cheer erupts in the room and everyone starts laughing and clapping. Christopher comes over and smiles at me. “I think we tamed you, little shrew.”

  I nod and tears start to well.

  “Oh no, honey!” Christopher says. “Blink it back now . . . blink it back! You cannot cry until those lash extensions are set. Understand me? Jeremy!” he shouts. “Jeremy, we need tissues ASAP! It’s an emergency!” I hold perfectly still until emergency tissues are flown in from the sidelines and he carefully dabs my tears away.

  “There,” he says. “All better.”

  “How did you do it, Christopher? What look did you pick?”

  “Looks,” he says. “This is three rolled into one. Callista Gingrich, Betty Ford, and Flight Attendant Barbie.”

  “I love it . . . I really do.”

  “Well, if you like this, then you have an entire new wardrobe waiting for you . . . a style I created and named just for you.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “You, darling, are ‘Elegantly Invincible.’ ”

  5

  Grace Under Fire

  Brad and I start going to church. His parents’ church, Grace-Trinity Lutheran. I’ve been dreading it and putting it off as long as possible, but I knew it was coming. We couldn’t put it off forever. Plus, I want to support my husband in his never-ending quest to convince his parents that we’re exemplary citizens and pillars of the community.

  Sitting in the pews, we certainly look the part. Brad has on a blue Brooks Brothers suit and I’m wearing a tailored plum peplum dress with pearls. So what if my pantyhose have duct tape on the crotch? I tried to dry them in the toaster oven this morning, when they were still damp from the dryer. Bad idea. It doesn’t matter though, because here it’s not what’s on the inside that matters, it’s what’s on the outside . . . because that’s the part people see, judge, and gossip about.

  Randomly Handy Church Rules

  • Look nice, but not too nice, or you look braggy.

  • Skinny women are suspicious. Chubby is cheerful.

  • Direct eye contact is an act of aggression.

  • Candles are wicked unless they’re apple-cinnamon scented.

  • Bring a hotdish or stay home.

  • Supper is served at five. Sinners eat at six.

  • Catholics are going to hell, but it’s impolite to mention it to them.

  • Unmarried women are discouraged.

  • Everyone over twenty-one should have children. No exceptions.

  • God likes: Minnesota, Canada, and Disneyland.

  • Satan loves: New York, New Jersey, and Florida.

  I make it clear to Brad that while I might attend church physically, I will never set foot in the door mentally. I have no intention of listening, learning, reading, understanding, engaging, growing, or participating in one single red-hot thing. Not an idea, event, or action. Not even a sesame-seed-size one. I’ll sit beside him in the sanctuary with a vapid expression on my face and think of nothing. I will consider it my meditative downtime.

  That’s the attitude I go in with anyway. I quickly discover, however, that I’ve underestimated the strength, fortitude, and sheer stubborn willpower those church ladies have. Mother Keller is cochair of the Trinity Committee, otherwise known as the God Squad, a highly organized group of frighteningly unfunny women who plan the church’s social functions. Nothing happens at Grace-Trinity Lutheran without the God Squad’s say-so. Not a bake sale or a charity drive or a bingo game goes down without their express consent. Nobody goes up against the God Squad. Peril awaits those who do. They’re like a terrorist cell with casseroles.

  The last lady who defied the squad was Edith Stanley, a strident woman who threw an unsanctioned bingo party in her basement rumpus room and lived to see the consequences. The God Squad discovered her insubo8rdination, and at the next church bake sale, a church elder found a pubic hair in one of Edith’s butterscotch brownies. Her humiliation was complete. Nobody ever saw Edith Stanley or her freewheeling, godless deli meats ever again.

  Who would voluntarily spend time with these people? Personally I’d rather get a root canal in a butcher shop outside Kazakhstan. The group is populated by orthodox Lutherans, descendants of hardscrabble Scandinavian pioneers and founders of the Finnish Temperance Society, the prim wives of church deacons, and an impressive roster of unkillable blue-haired widows, wealthy dowagers who’ve inherited fortunes from their dead husbands, all captains of various industries. Mother Keller is vice president of the committee. The president is the preposterously shaped Martha Woodcock, a woman whose oddly shaped body resembles a pile of sea lions that have been unjustly trapped inside a large bolt of floral-print fabric. She is Mother Keller’s best friend and ongoing nemesis. I don’t think Mother Keller has any other kinds of friends.

  On our first visit, after “Big Church,” we go to the Newcomers Welcome Party, where someone asks if Brad’s my “hubs,” as in “husband.” I learn most Christian wives refer to their husbands as “Hubs,” “Hubby,” or “Dr. Hubstable.” Pastor Mike greets us; he’s your average, run-of-the-mill Lutheran pastor: in his late sixties, friendly, smiles a lot, and believes women are good for making hotdish casseroles and babies. Pastor Mike is a widower, which ups the sexual ante quite a bit for the God Squad, especially for Martha Woodcock, who’s had her eye on him for years. She’d make a great pastor’s wife; she runs a tight ship.

  When she asks if I’ve picked my volunteer committee yet, I say I’d like to wait before signing up for anything. She smiles tightly at me and her eyebrow flinches ever so slightly and I hear a beep beep beep! Then she presses a little button on her wristwatch, which she says is actually a rage counter. “My doctor gave it to me for high blood pressure. Every time I get angry, I just push this little button down and the rage counter measures my skin temperature, my heart rate, and my blood pressure, and it keeps track of how many rageful events I have every day, week, and month. Then it tallies up my overall rage scores, so I can keep track of my progress . . . if there is any! See?” She beeps the little button again. “There it is . . . one hundred and fourteen rage events so far today.”

  I nod, wondering why she just hit the rage button again. Did she have some supersonic flash of invisible rage just while standing here, smiling at me? Good Lord, if there’s ever a sniper in the church bell tower, all my money will be on sweet, smiling little Martha Woodcock. “That sounds like a lot of rageful moments,” I tell her.

  “Mercy no,” she says. “You should’ve seen where I started. Back when I was writing the church newsletter with a typewriter . . . typos left and right. Once when our youth basketball team was playing I wrote, ‘Come out and watch us kill Christ the King!’ Mercy no, I have improved. I would’ve had three hundred rage events by now, just six months ago. My goal is to get the total number of rageful moments to under a hundred a day.”

  “Well . . . good luck with that,” I say.

  After we all have coffee cake, we enter the sweltering back garden, where we’re presented with a white Bible, a welcome packet, and a little clip-on air freshener “Travel Angel” for the dashboard of our car. The angel holds a banner that says SWEET FOR JESUS. She smells like peach. “She’s actually a real-life guardian angel,” one woman tells me.

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. My angel’s saved me many times.”

  “From unwanted odors!” I joke.

  “And sin,” the woman says flatly.

  I should let it go but I can’t. “So, you’re telling me this little piece of plastic, which is made in . . . the People’s Republic of China, is a real-life guardian angel? I just clip her on the dashboard and God won’t kill us?”

  “Jen . . .” Brad smiles at me warningly.

  “She abso
lutely is,” the woman says. “She’s heavenly and helpful!”

  “Not to mention heavily scented!” I add quickly, before Brad has a chance to pinch me.

  After church we have brunch at Hillcrest Country Club. The club is like the Keller family’s other home; Ed plays racquetball there almost every afternoon and Mother Keller attends at least two social functions there a week. Brad works out at the gym, Sarah plays tennis on the club team, and Trevor takes karate lessons.

  I go to Mother Keller’s bridge game, which she plays with a brittle coterie of octogenarian cronies every Thursday in the solarium. The powdered ladies sit on wicker chairs, sipping iced tea and nibbling sugar cookies as slow bamboo fan blades turn overhead. They volley back and forth across the table, tirelessly working together on vicious, iridescent threads, weaving gossip more masterfully than black orb spiders spin webs.

  I witness all this firsthand, sitting up straight in my prim apricot dress as I try to keep up with the mind-bogglingly complicated game. The ladies aren’t mean to me exactly; they don’t seem to even see me. I think I fall into a category of importance similar to that of a waitress or a sleeping infant or a potted fern. On balance I’d say the experience fits somewhere between Dante’s second and third levels of hell, but they do serve cake.

  I try to fit in with Brad’s club buddies. I join them a few times for a scotch in the clubhouse bar, a dark wood-paneled room with brass railings and deep upholstered wingback chairs. “Unpleasant” sums it up. Not only do I think scotch tastes like cat piss, I am bored beyond belief, caught between a mind-numbing conversation about football at the table and a soporific golf game up on the super-jumbo TV. The only thing worse than watching golf on TV is watching golf on a huge TV, and worse still, in high definition. I white-knuckle my way through the keen urge to stand up and scream, “For the love of God, why?” But I don’t, partly because I have no backup. I am in fact the only woman there. I know the clubhouse is sort of the guys’ hangout, and the women usually gather in the solarium.

  These aren’t rules, however—at least I didn’t think they were, but judging by the malocchio dagger eyes I get from several women on my way to the bathroom, maybe they are rules and nobody likes my breaking them. Nobody says anything to me . . . they just give me looks and without one word uttered, the message is conveyed loud and clear.

  Back off, BITCH.

  It’s like I’ve broken some sacred tribal law concerning gender roles or womanhood or menstruation or something and now my clitoris will need to be mutilated into the limp shape of a dick. Plus it never fails to amaze me how good women are at conveying information without speaking, using just their body language and/or facial expressions. We must learn it from each other, because it doesn’t work on men. I can shoot Hailey a look and she’ll pick up my transmission word for word. Like when she took the last bagel on our family camping trip and I made her cry after facially projecting to her this message:

  YOU TOOK MY FREAKING BAGEL? SERIOUSLY? STUNNING. I’M NOT TRYING TO BE DRAMATIC, BUT YOU’RE MORE SELFISH THAN HITLER. THERE ARE FIVE PEOPLE AND FIVE BAGELS. I HAVE HAD ZERO BAGELS. CAN YOU DO THIS MATH? JESUS. THIS IS JUST LIKE THE TIME YOU PROMISED TO WALK MR. BARKY AFTER SCHOOL AND THEN WENT TO MARYANN LEWINSKY’S HOUSE INSTEAD AND MR. BARKY PEED ALL OVER THE BRAIDED RUG IN THE KITCHEN AND THEN POOPED IN MOM’S KNITTING BASKET AND SHE YELLED AT ME AND WENT LIKE LEVEL-NINE NUTS BECAUSE THE CHORE CHART SAID IT WAS MY TURN TO WALK THE DOG, EVEN THOUGH I EXPLAINED WE SWITCHED, SO I CLEANED THE GUNKY DRAIN AND YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO WALK THE DOG, BUT MOM DIDN’T CARE BECAUSE HER CRAFT CLUB WAS COMING IN AN HOUR AND SHE BURNED HER PECAN BARS RIGHT AFTER FINDING POOP IN HER KNITTING BASKET. SHE WANTED TO KNOW HOW EXACTLY A DOG POOPS INSIDE A KNITTING BASKET WITHOUT HELP, LIKE I WAS IN ON THE DEAL OR SOMETHING AND NOT ONLY HAD I FORGOTTEN TO WALK MR. BARKY, I HAD SOMEHOW HELPED HIM POOP IN A BASKET. I HAD TO CLEAN UP EVERYTHING BY MYSELF, EVEN THOUGH I WAS GAGGING THE WHOLE TIME, BECAUSE YOU WERE GONE AND SHE HAD TO QUICKLY MAKE MORE PECAN BARS. THEN YOU CAME HOME, EATING A POPSICLE AND WEARING MARYANN’S BALLERINA TUTU, AND MOM ASKED IF IT WAS YOUR TURN OR MY TURN TO WALK THE DOG AND I THOUGHT, HALLELUJAH. HERE WE GO, THE TRUTH AT LAST. BUT YOU STOOD THERE AND LIED THROUGH YOUR TEETH AND TOLD MOM IT WAS MY TURN TO WALK MR. BARKY AND MOM DIDN’T KNOW WHO TO BELIEVE, SO SHE JUST SENT US TO BED AND THAT WAS THE END OF THE “INVESTIGATION.” I KNEW RIGHT THEN JUST HOW EVIL YOU REALLY WERE. WE WERE LIVING WITH A POPSICLE-EATING, TUTU-WEARING MONSTER WHO WOULD STOP AT NOTHING TO GET WHATEVER SHE WANTED AND STILL DOES TO THIS DAY, AS EVIDENCED BY YOUR NAZI BAGEL THEFT. THERE WAS NO JUSTICE THEN AND THERE’S NONE NOW. YOU LIE AND GET POPSICLES, I TELL THE TRUTH AND GET DOG POOP. THE END. (P.S. YOU WOULD MAKE A TERRIBLE MOTHER.)

  Yep. Hailey got the whole message. I could’ve given Lenny the same look and he probably would’ve just thought about bacon and farted. After some back-and-forth Hailey finally admitted she had promised to walk Mr. Barky and I scramble-ran to get Mom so she could hear Hailey’s full confession, but she just made a face and said, “We had a dog called Mr. Barky?”

  I feel awkward at the club and uneasy. Often mildly nauseous. I have zero friends there, because in order to make friends, you have to have friends, and nobody wants to be friends with somebody with no friends. At the club’s social epicenter are the Rathbone sisters.

  Addison and Eloise Rathbone, “Addi” and “Ellie” to close friends. They’re two of the wealthiest, most popular women in the whole club and they’re so cliquish, they only hang out with each other. If I could just get them to like me, everyone would like me. If they decide to include you in their machinations, you are also at the epicenter. If they don’t, then like me you basically don’t exist. It’s like high school all over again, but now everyone drives luxury cars and gets routine Botox injections.

  In an effort to win popularity points, I try to join the Hillcrest women’s golf team. I don’t really fit in with these stocky Republicans, who all have zero tolerance for arts and culture, or any other colossal waste of time, but who spend countless hours on the golf course, chasing around a little white ball. Still, when in Rome . . . I attend the club’s semiannual Ladies’ Golf Brunch wearing a brand-new pair of expensive all-white ladies’ golf shoes and an expensive perky canary-yellow ladies’ golf outfit, which consists of a piqué cotton canary-yellow golf shirt, a matching cotton canary-yellow-and-baby-blue plaid pleated miniskirt, and a thick canary-yellow headband. The headband pinches, the shirt feels too tight, and I think the skirt is definitely too short. I look like a preppy prostitute. It’s perfect.

  I even buy a new set of clubs, with Brad’s blessing. He knows there are only two types of golfers on the course: players who own their own clubs . . . and posers, who don’t. I want to be a player, not a poser, so I buy a set of expensive golf clubs after reading an article online called “What to Ask Yourself Before Buying Your First Set of Golf Clubs.” It asked what my golfing goal is, which is to bamboozle other golf players into becoming my friends. Then it asked if I’m in it for the long haul. What’s my level of interest? This, of course, is zero, but my level of dedication is high. That’s why I bought a titanium super-pro extra-deluxe set of golf clubs that cost five thousand dollars. The golf bag is made of white leather and has a built-in cooler for my ice water.

  Ice water turns out to be a real necessity for the Ladies’ Golf Brunch, which is held on a swelteringly sticky late August afternoon. I pour half a bottle of baby powder down the backside of my underpants and wear a pair of disgusting disposable sticky-backed armpit guards so I don’t sweat through my perky yellow shirt. Sweat stains on the golf course are a no-no—for women, that is. Men can sweat like pigs skewered over a fire pit, but ladies must remain cool and dry.

  I wish I could say that I did.

  My first mistake is eating biscuits and sausage gravy at the bruncheon. Why they’d serve us biscuits and sausage gravy before a long hot day playing golf is a good question, but an even better question is why I’d eat them. My stomach begins to gurgle on the
way out to the first hole, while I’m riding in a golf cart commandeered by two league captains, who both go on and on about how painful it is to play with amateurs and how everyone bets on which newcomer will be named worst player. This year they’re betting on the octogenarian woman with asthma or the clumsy brunette who knocked over the pancake trolley during the bruncheon’s welcome speech.

  I quickly realize my many other mistakes, like that I bought a nine-thousand-pound golf bag that has no legs. Everyone else’s golf bag has nifty little tripod legs that let the bag stand up on its own and be rolled merrily along without any effort. I have to haul my bag on my back. We only get to ride golf carts from the clubhouse to the first hole; for the rest of the time we have to walk. It’s like the Bataan Death March. When we finally get to the next hole, I have to lay the heavy bag down on the grass, then pick it back up again, which feels like repeatedly picking up and laying down a hot human corpse.

  I also forgot to wear sunscreen, and while everyone else is wearing a sun visor or a hat, I only have my canary-yellow headband on. Soon sweat starts dripping off my forehead and stinging my eyes so I can’t see anything but a smeary saltwater sun. I also forgot to buy gloves, which results in a massive blister forming on the web of my index finger and thumb; this happens about four holes into the game, forcing me to swing like a paraplegic, not that anyone’s watching me by then. They’ve already marked me as a phony.

  It happened somewhere between the first hole, when my nine-iron went whipping out of my hands on the very first swing, nearly bludgeoning the octogenarian woman with asthma, and the third hole, when I sent my golf ball whistling into the dense tree line along the fairway. To make matters worse, I try chipping the ball out of the woods and my wedge catches on something, causing me to stumble and kick the ball backward, shooting it right out of the trees and onto the fairway’s seventh hole, going in the opposite direction.