Back inside I find him sorting through mail. He looks up and says, “Sorry, it’s just I’m tired.”
“I’m tired, too,” I say. “I had back-to-back committee meetings at school this morning. By the way, Bill Wendel’s going to be calling you to see if you’ll join the audit committee. I had to get downtown for lunch.” Do you ever want to walk away from your life? “I had to pick Cammy up early. She was sick again. Then I had to drive Jamie to piano. I went on a Staples run, oh, yeah, I put those file folders upstairs on your desk. Then I drove the kids home and scrambled to make pot roast for dinner. I’m tired, too. But …”
“Another night, then,” he says. “We’re both tired. It’d be nice to have an early night.”
“Wait. I’m not saying I’m too tired. I’m just saying I’ve been going full guns all day and I still make an effort—”
“And what do you think I do all day, huh?” His mouth distorts and spits the words at me. “You think I’m standing around telling jokes at the watercooler all day, shooting the breeze? Sorry if I don’t feel sorry for you listening to the radio and bopping around town all day.”
“Okay, first of all, I never said you don’t work as hard as I do,” I say. “And for the record I don’t bop around all day. I ferry our children to and from about a million different things every day. Your clothes don’t exactly dry-clean themselves. And how do you think that food ends up in the fridge?”
“Forget it,” he calls over his shoulder on his way upstairs to help the kids with whatever the kids need help with. I know he wants to get away from this because he rarely helps the kids with homework.
“Hang on,” I call to him. “Come back for a second.”
“What?” He sticks his head back into the kitchen to keep from committing to a long conversation.
“It’s just …”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Do you? I mean, do you really, because … wait, can’t you just come into the room all the way so I don’t have to talk to a disembodied head?”
“What?” he says.
I almost ask him Craig’s question. Almost.
“Never mind,” I say. “Forget it.”
I feel a mix of relief and triumph, as if an invisible abacus has slid another point in my favor because I pursued sex but was turned down yet again. It makes me wonder if I keep asking Bob for intimacy knowing I’ll be turned away so I can keep racking up the points that will, in future arguments, be used as evidence of our decline. It’s entrapment and I’m seeing a meanness I never thought I was capable of. I don’t even want sex with him, now that I think about it. It’s not normal to go this long without it, but I don’t want him.
After dinner I’m officially off the clock, but all that really means is that I “get” to open mail, pay bills and balance my checkbook before I drag my body upstairs where there’s laundry on the bed that needs to be folded before I can crawl into it, which is maybe my favorite part of the day. Then I wake up and do it all over again the next day. By nighttime yeah, sex is the last thing I want to do. I know how he feels. But at least I’m trying to make an effort. Or if I’m going to be honest, I’m trying to look as though I’m making an effort.
The school-benefit committee has been eating up a lot of my time so I sit at my desk and clear papers off my keyboard to return e-mails. My desk is in a kitchen nook crammed with junk and piles of paper and Cammy’s old retainer. I’ve been meaning to organize the cookbooks on the shelf above the computer but there’s never enough time. I put the mouse on a stack of library books I need to return. Sliding it across Harry Potter’s face, I boot up.
I dig up the list of people I have to e-mail and when I log on there it is. Craig! My heart stops beating. My palms get tingly with sweat. This is silly. Ridiculous. I’m a grown married woman. But when I click on it and read his words I nearly faint. Six words:
I cannot stop thinking about you.
Cammy
I think Samantha is bipolar or something. I don’t know, maybe just depressed. Either way it’s weird how she’s so different now. Not that I care but whatever.
One day she’s all over me to get new clothes and have a mall day with me and once I agree to it she’s totally forgotten. I mean, I guess I wouldn’t have minded going shopping with her. We haven’t done that in like forever. Just so long as it was Old Orchard and not Water Tower where everyone I know goes to hang out on the benches near Hollister and Abercrombie. I don’t go there, it’s not my crowd. So Old Orchard would’ve been fine but whatever. She forgot.
I wrote this poem today in history, which is my least favorite class, and Ricky says that’s ironic since all I care about is my own history. Anyway, here’s the poem:
YOU
You think
You own me.
You think
You know me.
You think
You care about me.
You think
It’s all about YOU.
I think Ricky and I are stopping being friends. We’re so different now it’s scary and I’m sick of trying to act like I’m someone I’m not. Yesterday I was across from school in the park where everyone goes to smoke during free periods and he comes up to me and like freaks out because I’m on the swings at the playground part. He says ooooh, you’re such a rebel smoking your joints and fucking clove cigarettes and swinging like you’re dying to get kicked out by some mom. Maybe you’ll get arrested and then you’ll be like the queen of your new loser friends. He doesn’t like it when I smoke reefer but I don’t give a shit. I don’t like it when he drools all over Missy, so we’re even.
Ricky’s panties are in a wad over Paul and his group. Paul got kicked out of Lane Tech for setting off the fire alarm one too many times—at least that’s what he says. Everyone else knows it was pot. Which is so hypocritical because all our parents spend a shitload at Whole Foods where they buy hemp stuff and organic food and natural supplements and here’s pot which is the most natural thing in the world. It’s actually good for you—doctors give it to patients. Paul says doctor shit is the strongest you can find and there they are prescribing it.
Anyway, Ricky hates Paul but he won’t admit it. All he keeps saying is that I become like this weird person when I’m around Paul’s group. He wants us to stay like we were in fourth grade … best friends who wanted to get married (we never told our parents that part and Ricky denies he ever said it in the first place). I can’t believe I used to rehearse what we’d tell our kids: we sat next to each other in fourth grade and your father laughed at everything I said and I knew we’d get married. I used to think about how many kids we’d have and whether they’d look like me or him. I knew we’d never adopt.
Now it’s like we’re going in opposite directions, like the new preppy clothes he’s wearing have leaked dye into his bloodstream and gotten all the way to his brain and changed him into a pod person. He keeps asking me when I’m going to get my new clothes with my mom and yesterday in the park he said man your feet are so dirty. Why don’t you wear shoes? It’s disgusting. He’s such a priss now. Like a little girl.
He didn’t seem to mind it when I got the tattoo. He didn’t mind me squeezing his hand blue when the fat guy with a Mike Tyson claw tattoo on the side of his face started in with the needle. We’d hung out at his house and his parents were away in Cabo and they trusted him to be alone with his older brother Adam because they didn’t know Adam’s the biggest partyer on the planet. Anyway, Adam gave me two shots of Jim Beam before we left for the tattoo parlor. Liquid courage. Ricky said it was funny to see me drunk. A few minutes later I was leaning forward with the back of my shirt up feeling the cold wipe of an alcohol cotton ball just above my butt and I wasn’t sure if it was me being drunk or me being scared that made me throw up. The guy acted bored, like everyone does it. He tossed Ricky an almost finished roll of paper towels and said to call him when we were serious about pinning some skin. That’s what he called it. I was fine since I’d barfed up the Jim Beam so he
came back and had to sit with his legs wide apart because he was so fat his stomach had to hang between them. The bandage was thick. I couldn’t take a shower for two days and I had to sleep on my stomach for a week. My parents never suspected anything since it was on the small of my back right above my butt.
This was before Ricky the prep, when he was Ricky the normal. He kept saying I can’t believe you went through with it and the way he looked at me it was like I’d invented the iPod. Then one day he leaned in and I thought he was finally going to kiss me so I closed my eyes and tilted my head up because he’s like a foot taller than me but he was only bending down to get a closer view of it from over my shoulder because I’d been obsessing that summer was coming and if my mom or dad hugged me they could look down and see it. So he’s coming close and there I am about to reach up and put my arms around his neck. My eyes were even starting to close automatically. I’ll never forget it. He laughed and went, “What a dork! I’m not kissing you, you freak.”
I shook my head to get my face back to normal but I knew it was too late, I’d already fucked it up. We didn’t talk for like a week after that and we talk like fifteen million times a day so a week is like dog years. Then he came up to me in the hall and said, “I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve got an idea. Meet me after sixth period at the back stairs.”
Here’s the worst part of the whole thing. I thought he was thinking about how I wanted to kiss him and he’d changed his mind. Will never kissed me. We skipped that step. So I bummed a piece of mint gum off of Natalie from the south side because I remember I had something gnarly for lunch and my breath stunk. At the end of sixth period I crunched a zillion Tic Tacs I got from Sara with the backpack she wears all day until she’s hunched over like a National Geographic village woman. Sara never goes to her locker in between classes like everyone else because someone always sticks signs on it like Bloody Sara and To do: buy tampons! Sara got her period on a day she was wearing tight white pants and she didn’t know she had a bloody crotch until third period but the damage was done. Sara left at the end of the year. I heard she went to Payton but I’m not sure. Anyway, she had Tic Tacs in her backpack so I downed a fistful on my way to meet Ricky. I was all freaked because my hands were sweaty like a Judy Blume book.
“You want to find your birth mother, right?” Ricky said the second I pushed through to the outside landing.
I remember trying to act normal like that was exactly what I thought he’d say but I think he looked at me weird.
“I could help you find her if you want,” he said. “In science we were talking about DNA and medical history and bam I think we could fake a doctor letter like it’s from your parents and they’d have to give you the info on her. We could totally find her if you want. I mean, only if you want.”
I said I wanted to mainly because I wanted to leave and go back inside away from him. And it’s true I’ve always talked about finding her. I just never really thought about following through. That night Ricky Googled adoption agencies and then it was too late to turn back. Not that I want to or anything.
Samantha
“I’ve got a couple of names of people downtown,” Lynn says, “and one who’s kind of near us. I don’t know much about that one though.”
“Did you tell Sally who you were asking for?” I ask. The thought of Sally Flanders knowing I’m looking for a couple’s counselor mortifies me. “I swear to God if you told her it was us …”
“For Christ’s sake, of course I didn’t tell her,” Lynn says. “Listen, she doesn’t want anyone knowing about her drinking any more than you want her knowing about you and Bob. Do you have a pencil? Let me give you these names.”
I scribble down area codes 312 for the downtown ones, 773 for the one by us. I shove the paper into the front pocket on my too-tight jeans I can’t wait to change out of. I think this every time I squeeze into them. I need to put them in the Goodwill pile, but they’re finally soft and worn in and I’m terrible about throwing things out. I have a pile of old T-shirts dating back to grade school and I’d love the shelf space in my closet, but I’ll never get rid of them. They’re like a scrapbook of my life: Bee Gees concert T-shirts, Santana, the Dead. The half marathons, the charity runs, See Rock City, Niagara Falls, they’re a photo album I’ll never get rid of.
“Everyone goes through this, you know,” Lynn is saying into the phone. I readjust it on my shoulder while I snapshake a sheet still warm from the dryer. I halve it then quarter it and say, “It’s the loneliness that kills me,” I tell her again. “If he’d just talk to me about anything …”
“Be careful what you wish for,” she snorts. “I’d kill for Mike to shut his mouth every once in a while. The guy never stops talking. Ever. He wakes up talking and doesn’t quit until lights out.”
“What do you guys talk about?”
“I don’t know. The kids. People at work. He’s got the memory of an elephant so he’s always talking about something or other we did years ago.”
“I feel like we’re in this vacuum. It’s so quiet between us. You know how if you only open one window in the car there’s that pressure on your ears until you crack open another one? That’s what it feels like when we’re alone.”
I’ve put all the socks into one big pile and am holding the dark ones up to the light because the navy ones look black. Recently I’ve started folding them in half instead of balling them up, because I was watching a Bravo show on reorganizing your home and it turns out sock balls take up twice as much space.
“Then it’s good you’re seeing someone,” she says. “Hell, everyone should go.”
“You guys haven’t.”
“Yeah, well.” She trails off and I can hear her mind clicking for something helpful to say.
It makes me feel better having taken the first step but honestly I don’t know if I’m making too much of this. Maybe Lynn’s right: it can’t hurt to go to someone impartial.
The fact that I’m obsessing over an e-mail from a stranger I met on the train means we’ve got a problem. And boy oh boy am I obsessing. Those six words: I cannot stop thinking about you … six words and I’m literally floating. No. We’ve got to see someone, Bob and I.
In the meantime, it’s rude not to reply to Craig’s e-mail. Just something polite to show I’m not blowing him off. What if we ran into each other at a social thing—how awkward would that be if I had left him dangling out there having sent such a bold e-mail. What to write, what to write. It was great meeting you on the train today. No. Too sophomoric. I so enjoyed our talk on the train today. Our chat on the train? Our conversation … No. This is ridiculous. Maybe I shouldn’t write him. But then his question lingers in my brain. That question … I cannot stop thinking about that. He is walking around thinking the same thing I am.
I go to the bedroom to change out of my jeans and the second I lower the zipper and see the imprint of the button and the waistline on my skin convinces me I’ve got to get rid of them. It’ll be good for me. Cleansing. A new leaf. My sweatpants feel like a cloud. I fold the jeans and place them neatly on the floor of my closet so I won’t forget to add them to the Goodwill pile Bob’s started out in the garage. At the last minute I remember the slip of paper in the pocket and put it in my underwear drawer so I can remember to call in the morning. I could call today but.
When you think about it, I’ve already made a move toward marital counseling, what harm would it do to push the envelope now, since Bob and I are going to get fixed soon anyway? This guy doesn’t seem dangerous or like a stalker who won’t back off. I cannot stop thinking about you, he wrote. Do you ever want to walk away from your life? I cannot stop thinking about you. Here I go:
Nor I, you.
My finger slides the mouse over to the send button. What the heck. I double click and zip, it’s gone. It’s done. Nothing I can do about it now. Why not have a little harmless flirting? That’s all it is.
A day has passed and it’s taken all the willpower I can muster to st
ay away from the computer. I’m married to Bob. My husband, my family, comes first. When Bob gets home we’ll talk, really talk.
Beef stroganoff is the kind of meal that leaves a certain kind of mess. Rings from the bottom of the sour-cream container need to be scrubbed off the table. Dirty pots and pans tumble together in the sink like a dish-cleaner commercial. I survey the damage. Bob is late. My wine is still cold so I sit and sip and think about Craig.
I wonder what brought him to this same point. Is this a midlife crisis? I wonder if everyone feels this way. Lynn still sits on Mike’s lap from time to time. I’ve brought it up with her but she’s always pithy about it. Quick with the sarcasm. She says she feels the same way I do, but there’s no way. She claims she’s not but she’s happy. Happy people don’t feel like walking away from their lives.
The backdoor opens and Bob comes in. He smells like the outside air but somehow the sheen of work lighting is still there. Bob hasn’t gotten a raise in two years. He won’t talk about it but I know it stings and yes, it worries me. We’ve tightened our belts as far as they go (except for eating organic, but just the other day I bought a regular cantaloupe so there’s that). He had his performance review a couple of days ago but that night he’d been running late so we met at the Y rec center for the boys’ basketball game. With the ref whistles and clapping we couldn’t manage a sentence between us. George and Stacy Wilmot were sitting on the bleachers next to me. When Bob hurried in, stepping one, two, three over the benches to us, the Wilmots were talking about their recent trip to Napa. I keep meaning to make friends with them. They’re sweet and always have something going on. Easy to talk to. At the end of all the games, we do the dance “let’s get something on the books,” “we really should,” “call me and we’ll schedule something” and they shuttle their son, Jordan, out and we pile the boys and their backpacks into the car and I forget all about the Wilmots. Until the next game.
Sleepwalking in Daylight Page 12
