Time of My Life

by Allison Winn Scotch

  Maybe this is why my mother left. The thought startles me, shaking something inside. Maybe she couldn’t take the passive familiarity that comes from sharing a bathroom or swapping the same stories night after night over dinner or scraping bird shit off the Range Rover that was supposed to give you that shiny, picturesque life. Maybe it was all too much, or really, all too little for her. Maybe she dreamed of something more, and when I came along, and then Andy, my brother, came along, she couldn’t take one more fucking minute of the Stepfordian existence that she’d built with my father.

  Not that my life with Henry was Stepfordian. My life with Henry was perfectly placid. Ours was the marriage that people looked at and said, “They’ll make it. They’re not going to be the ones to split because he chased around his secretary or she slowly drank herself to death.” We were that couple in the Range Rover ad, only ours was the picture taken after five years of marriage, after we’d stopped noticing the other’s intricacies, after we’d already wooed each other and pledged ourselves to each other, and had, thus, in many ways, surrendered to complacency.

  I’d read about this in Redbook—that scientists have discovered that in the first year or so of marriage, your brain receptors still register chemicals that make you want to dry hump your spouse on every flat surface that you can find. Then slowly, these chemicals abate, and eventually, if you don’t find ways to jump-start them—I remember that the doctor who was interviewed suggested exhilarating experiences such as skydiving—then you’re stuck waddling around the vestiges of your younger libidos and memories of what you once had.

  I’d mentioned this to Henry one night when he was calling from San Francisco to say good night to Katie before her 7:30 (sharp!) bedtime.

  “Maybe we should go skydiving together,” I said, chopping a cucumber in our granite-countered, white-tiled kitchen. My head was angled to hold the phone between my ear and shoulder, and somewhere within one of my vertebrae, a cramp was beginning to form.

  “Where’s this coming from?” He laughed. “Besides, you’re scared of flying.”

  “I know,” I sort of whined. “But we need to relight the spark. And I read that this might do it.”

  “Our spark is just fine,” he answered. “Stop worrying about our spark. Can you put Katie on before I run to a meeting?”

  “Sure.” I set down the knife and wandered into Katie’s perky pink playroom, where she was pulling out the hair of a now nearly bald blond doll she’d insisted that I buy her during a two-minute trip to Toys “R” Us for a neighbor child’s birthday present. Henry blew her kisses over the phone, then rattled off a quick “love you” (to me), before he dashed toward his waiting clients.

  So now, with our spark nearly extinguished, I hardly feel bad about not missing him. It’s not like I didn’t warn him, I think. It’s not like I didn’t leave that goddamn Redbook article on his nightstand when he got home from his trip and asked him to read it so that he, too, could see the stupid signs that our marriage was a plundered ship that was slowly sinking under its own weight.

  “Hey,” Jackson says softly, rousing me from the memory. “Why are you still up?” His voice is creaky from sleep.

  I shrug, though he can’t see it in the darkness of the bedroom.

  “Come here.” He pulls toward me, and I inhale his scent of sandalwood and vanilla that even seven years later always reminded me of him, even when I was still close enough to remember why we’d come undone. As the years went on, those reasons, as they tend to do, became murkier, like a pond after a rainstorm, and after I got home from my power walk with Ainsley on which she broke the news of his upcoming wedding, I locked myself in the bathroom and heaved out purging tears for nearly thirty minutes. Then I splashed my face with water, dotted concealer under my eyes, and headed toward the market. I had dinner to plan, a family to feed, after all.

  Jack shifts himself on top of me and tugs down the strap of my tank top, fluttering kisses on my shoulder and across my collarbone. In response, my hips rise to his without question, and he presses back down on mine. Quickly, too quickly, I’m tossing my shirt over my head, and he’s making his way over my breasts, down to my belly button, then back up again, until the wait is almost unbearable, and I pull him inside of me.

  Jesus Christ! I’d forgotten all about sex with Jack, I think. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Holy Lord, Jesus!

  Jack and I find our rhythm easily, like it hadn’t been more than a half decade since I’d done this with him, like I hadn’t given myself to another man exclusively over the course of those years.

  Shit, Henry. I hope for a fleeting second that this isn’t considered adultery, but realize that I haven’t technically met Henry, so I push the silly, inconsequential thought from my mind. It’s not hard to do.

  Jack flips me on top of him, and I feel like my insides might explode.

  It’s never like this with Henry, I think. Hasn’t really ever been like this with Henry. And then, that’s all I think about my soon-to-be or maybe-might-not-be husband because a few seconds later, I am awash in white heat and I can’t think of anything at all.

  We collapse on top of each other, silent and sweaty. Enveloped in the security of his arms, his measured breath on my neck, I wonder if I really can do it all over again; if this time, I can do it right, and if so, what that might mean for my old past and, thus, for my new future.

  SLEEP REFUSED ME. I try every trick I can think of, humming Katie’s favorite lullabies to myself, mimicking Jack’s breathing with my own, but nothing can slow down the racing in my mind.

  It is clear, I realize once again with force, that there is no turning back from here. There is no trail of Katie’s Cheerios to chase around the house, none of Henry’s orange juice glasses to place in the dishwasher come morning. It is only me, this new life, and wherever it takes me.

  I push myself up from the bed, rattling off any lingering grogginess, and wind my way into the spare bedroom, the one that Jack pretended was an office for his writing, but both of us knew was essentially a waste of square footage.

  What if my other life was the one that I’d imagined? What if I never met Henry, never birthed Katie? What if this is all some sort of nauseating dream?

  I feel my pulse tangibly speed up at the base of my neck. Because, true, I didn’t miss Henry all that much and, more true, this small taste of freedom, of reprieve, was so glorious it was like inhaling barrelfuls of sunshine on an arctic day, but still. I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forsake the memories of who I’d come to be, even though I realize, fully, that my regrets were both enormous and plentiful. But still.

  And so, with a lucid mind and a shaking hand, I grab a pen from Jack’s Michigan cup and a notepad tucked away by his printer.

  And then, I begin to put it all down, on record, in case I can never get it back, in case, really, this isn’t all a dream. Because whatever laments I might have, they’re still worth holding on to, even as I’m trying to let them go.

  HENRY

  I met Henry at a bar in the East Village called The Tetons, which was both asinine (there was no hint of mountainous decor) and fortuitous, as it served as excellent small-talk conversation fodder upon meeting.

  I scurried into the dive and glanced around for Ainsley, who was training it in from Westchester at my behest. Jack and I were coming more than a little undone, and I needed a literal shoulder. Now, in retrospect, it’s hard to remember all the reasons we were unraveling, but I do remember the initial panic that nearly choked me upon the thought of walking away from him.

  Ainsley was late, so I slid onto a bar stool, ordered a cosmo, and wove my fingers through my hair, untangling knots brought on by the early-October wind and rain. The ends of my hair shook, and tiny droplets belly flopped to the floor, where they sank into beer-stained tiles. From the look of it, they were doing the floor a favor, really.

  Beside me, a man with a slim nose and a smooth complexion was cracking peanuts with elegant fingers and piling up the shells into
a neat, concise tower. I surveyed him as inconspicuously as I could and decided he must be an architect. A snap judgment, and I had no plan to investigate further, until he turned to me and said, “Have you ever been to the Tetons? I mean, besides this bar, which, obviously, isn’t much like the real Tetons.”

  He laughed with no self-consciousness at all, fully aware, yet entirely unembarrassed, at the forwardness of his pickup line. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d noticed me.

  “No.” I shook my head and smiled back, bigger, grander, than I’d meant to, but something about him made me not stop myself. “Camping isn’t really my thing.”

  “Me neither.” He shrugged. “Camping, that is. I did go to the Tetons in eleventh grade, though. Part of a wilderness trip. The mountains are beautiful. But that’s pretty much when I learned that camping wasn’t my thing.”

  We grinned at each other like this was some sort of secret, like some sort of inside joke that only the two of us got, even though, really, looking back on it seven years later, it seems almost insignificant, silly even.

  They say that you can tell everything you need to know about a person in the first few minutes that you meet them. In retrospect, I suppose that this is true. Henry was in control and meticulous even then, but warm, too, welcoming in his way. And we easily fell into each other.

  Ainsley called to say that her train had broken down, and a few minutes later, his friend also buzzed to say that he was stuck at work. But neither Henry nor I budged from our bar stools; instead, I ordered another cosmo, and he another beer, and we sat and sat and talked and talked, feeling like the luckiest people in the world, or at least, in The Tetons and the near vicinity.

  Chapter Five

  Nice work,” my boss, Josie, says on my first morning back in my old office, after our meeting with Coke management, and after I’d debuted my “It’s the zizz in the fizz that makes Coke what it is” tagline, complete with storyboards of regular folk rapping to their made-up tunes with bubbles floating above them. Just like I knew Josie would say when she’d swing by my desk fifteen minutes after huddling in the conference room, in which the Coke team would agree to hire our agency for their monster marketing push.

  “It was nothing,” I say, slugging back my second coffee of the day.

  My workstation, not unlike my closet, is in various degrees of disassembly and disarray. Post-it notes frame my computer screen, and tumbling stacks of paper cascade over one another and on top of pens, pencils, and stock photography, all of which neck their way close to my keyboard, which sits atop the only free space on my desk. Josie delicately displaces two tote bags that are clogged with freebies from potential clients from the chair opposite my desk and sits.

  She looks as I remember her to look: sallow, worn, like someone who was once striking and who still had the potential for pure beauty but who lacked both the adequate sleep and necessary time to transform herself. Her dull brown hair is pulled into a messy bun at the nape of her neck, and the wrinkles around her eyes age her at least five years. On first glance, you’d easily mistake her for midforties even though she is one month shy of thirty-nine.

  “So,” she sighs. “Your idea was fantastic, obviously. I’m impressed with how well you pulled it all together as one cohesive idea.”

  I press my lips together and smile. It was easy, after all. I started with my catchphrase—the one I’d conceptualized all on my own seven years ago—then I poached the ideas that we later incorporated once Coke had signed on. Ben, an account executive, was the one who devised the “people on the street” backdrop, while Susan, our whiz over in graphics, dotted in the floating bubbles that bopped from person to person. Originally, I’d thrown out the tagline like a blindfolded person might a dart: I’d hoped that it would hit something in the vicinity. This time, I wrapped up those darts and handed them over with a bow.

  “The plan is this,” Josie continues, rubbing her eyes. “Coke wants the completed storyboards ready next week. Which means that if you have weekend plans, you have to cancel. Pass it along to the team. And obviously, I’ll be here, too.”

  She stares at a stress ball that peeks out from under yesterday’s paper on the corner of my desk. I knew she was thinking about her kids. How she’d have to tell them that Mom couldn’t make it to their soccer match or play rehearsal or whatever eight- and ten-year-olds did on their weekends from which parents were supposed to reap complete joy. Josie’s husband, Art, was a set designer for opera houses, which basically meant that he was mostly unemployed and home with the children. And which also meant that she didn’t have a choice: that she sacrificed the opportunity to quit her job or take extended leave because, as she once told me after a happy hour filled with two too many chardonnays, “Someone has to pay the bills, and in my household, that person is me. Me! ME!”

  “No, no, no,” I say today. “You stay home. I have it under control.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, I’m the boss. Of course I’ll be here.”

  I hear the resignation in her voice and wonder if she worries that her kids hate her. I want to tell her that they mostly came out fine. Yes, that at sixteen, her daughter, Amanda, would break into her high school, falling-down drunk, and get suspended for three days, but that as of now, armed with my glimpse into their future, they weren’t in rehab and they weren’t wearing armbands to symbolize their hatred for their mother, and that mostly, her family unit was intact, even if still, when she e-mailed me, I detected that simmering tone of resentment for the time that she’d lost because she’d spent so much of it at work.

  “Josie, I insist.” I lean toward her. “Look, really, I have this all mapped out in my mind. One hundred percent. This is second nature to me, and I absolutely don’t need hand-holding this weekend.” Relief washes over her face. “Spend the time with your kids. I’ll call you if we run into a problem.”

  “You sure?” she says, standing to leave.

  “Positive,” I reiterate.

  “Okay,” she says. “I’ll make you a deal. You deliver on this account, and I’ll single-handedly prime you for my job.”

  “Deal.” I nod.

  I wait until she’s shuffled out of my office to break into a Cheshire grin. Because Josie’s crown, gold and shiny and so within my reach, feels like just the first of the riches that I’m here now to reap.

  FIVE DAYS LATER, a near eternity in my then-is-now-is-then warped world, my phone rings at work. I’m wrapping up the finishing touches on the storyboards, which, my bosses raved, had never been done more cleanly or efficiently, when the yellow light flashes on the phone and the ring bleats through my earpiece. I motion to my team to take a break and press “Talk.”

  “Jillian Westfield.”

  “Oh Jesus, Jill, I need help!” Megan sobs on the other end. I look at the calendar: I’d completely forgotten. Today is the day she miscarried. “Tyler is out of town, and no one else knows, and I can’t stop bleeding!” Her voice spins its way into hysterics.

  “Okay, Meg, calm down. I’m on my way. Will be there in ten.” I whip my headset off and go to hang up, when I hear her screaming through it.

  “You don’t know where I am!”

  Oh crap. I did, actually. We’d done this before. It hadn’t gone well the first time, either.

  “Where are you?” I say, just to placate her.

  “I’m in the bathroom of the Pierre! And there’s just blood . . . everywhere.” She hiccups as she tries to take a breath. “I was in a lunch meeting . . . and it’s just everywhere!” She dissolves into sputters, and I race off to save her.

  I find her crumpled in a corner stall on the first floor of the hotel. Her skin is pasty and moist, her hands trembling, and her pants are bunched next to the toilet, ruddied and soiled and drenched. I’d already thought to call 911 on the way: Last time, I hadn’t known the extent of the catastrophe and she’d lost enough blood to require a transfusion. This time, maybe I could change the wreckage that the miscarriage was about to wreak.

  A
fter the paramedics burst in and after I held her clammy hand in the ambulance and she wailed and begged the EMTs not to let her baby die, we sat in the solitude of her hospital room and waited for the doctors to come and explain what had gone so wrong that caused her body to purge its own flesh and blood.

  “It’s not your fault,” I say to her softly, with only the beeping of her heart monitor as our backdrop, just like I said seven years ago.

  “How can you know that?” she answers. Fat tears streak her cheeks.

  “Because it’s just not. Miscarriages aren’t anyone’s fault. They just happen.” She doesn’t reply and instead turns her face to stare out the window.

  “I wanted this so badly,” she says, finally, her voice breaking again. “Tyler and I have been trying for over a year.”

  “I’m sorry, Meg.” I reach to touch her free arm, the one that’s not hooked up to the IV.

  A sturdy-looking African American doctor with kind green eyes finally breaks our mourning.

  “The good news,” he announces, looking at her chart, “is that we’ve stopped your bleeding, and there are no signs of infection.”

  “Oh thank God,” I exhale loudly, even though I’d meant to keep it in. I’d gotten there fast enough. Last time I hadn’t. Maybe this time I had. Meg glances over with a look of surprise, but I just smile. Last time, the damage was more severe, so this doctor had delivered far worse news. Last time, he’d muttered things about possible internal scarring, heavy blood loss, unclear prognosis on future fertility.

  “But the bad news is,” he continues and I feel my face drop, because this, I had indeed heard before, “that we don’t know why you hemorrhaged. A normal miscarriage shouldn’t bring anywhere near this amount of blood, but because you were so early in your pregnancy, it’s very difficult for us to examine the embryo and assess what happened.”

  Megan’s face curls up at the word embryo, and tears trickle out all over again.