The Intermission

by Elyssa Friedland

  “Cass?” he called out. Puddles came running, yelping like Lassie with an urgent message.

  “Hey, bud,” he said, scooping up his beloved pup. “Where’s Mommy?”

  Puddles led him down the narrow corridor leading to their bedroom. As Jonathan moved farther into the apartment, stopping only to remove his winter gear and drop it on a dining room chair, he heard the shower in the master bathroom running. He made his way into the fogged-up room, Puddles tagging along.

  “Hey,” he said, opening the glass door to the shower a crack. “Want company?”

  “You scared me,” Cass said, one of those blasted Le Bristol mini bottles in hand. “I’m almost done.”

  “Okay,” he retreated. He tried not to take it personally. The joint shower literally left someone out in the cold. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Puddles, having uncovered the mystery of who had come through the front door, now refused to leave Cass, so Jonathan went alone to grab a beer from the fridge. He told himself again that Cass’s desire to shower alone was no big deal. A shower was a weird place to attempt to conceive a child, anyway, at least on their first try. From a scientific perspective, missionary seemed to be the most reliable method.

  Amstel in hand, he returned to the bedroom and mindlessly put on the Knicks game in the background. Puddles loved the Knicks; the sound of the announcer made him ditch Cass and jump onto the bed. Puddles also loved the Yankees, and it was a true testament to how much Jonathan loved Puddles that he could forgive him this transgression. A few minutes later, a robed and turbaned Cass came out, her face rosy and glistening. A gleaming Madonna.

  “Let’s go out,” she said, her voice oddly defiant. “I haven’t eaten dinner. Have you?”

  “Not yet. But are you sure? It’s almost eight thirty. Maybe we should just order in?”

  “No, I want to go out,” she said. “Is that okay?”

  “Yeah, of course,” he said, even though it was sleeting, one of the coldest Marches on record, and he barely had an appetite. Jerry had been on edge all day because his bearish call about Chevron had been wrong. Winstar had been bested by several of its competitors and the investor relations team was fielding angry calls all day. This was precisely why he never liked taking credit for the upswings. “Wa Jeal?”

  “Perfect.”

  Why he suggested Chinese on faraway Second Avenue when it was sleeting outside, and why Cass agreed to it, was beyond him. But she seemed to just want to get out of the apartment and he didn’t want to retread on their agreement.

  Cass threw on jeans, a tight black sweater and motorcycle boots. She was dressing differently since she wasn’t going into work anymore, younger, but still stylish—this was Cass after all, and she’d always had an eye for clothes. The rip in her jeans, though? He supposed they were in style, but it seemed strange for a grown woman. Still, he knew better than to share his opinion about the tattered denim or the studs on her boots. He’d noticed just the other day the slightest hint of varicose veins on the backs of her calves. And that was another thing he would never bring up.

  “Bye, baby,” Cass said, kissing Puddles on the mouth. “I promise we’ll be back soon with leftovers.” He let out a low growl, voicing his displeasure at being left out.

  They walked the entire way to the restaurant in silence, focused on anchoring their umbrellas overhead and keeping them from inverting. When they arrived, the restaurant was empty.

  “I noticed Luna hasn’t been by,” Jonathan said once they were seated. “Isn’t she supposed to come on Wednesdays now?” Finding the dishes stacked high in the sink and his dress shirts still in a pile on their club chair had really pissed him off when he got home that evening. He bit his tongue in the moment because he thought sex was imminent. Now that they were out for dinner, he didn’t see why he shouldn’t bring it up.

  “She’s in midterms,” Cass snapped, twisting her hair into a bun and clamping it with one of those giant clips that were scattered everywhere around their apartment. He thought of them sometimes as Cass’s claws.

  “Okay. But doesn’t she work when she’s in school? PhD Housekeeping and all?” He cracked a smile, to show that he wasn’t all that annoyed.

  “She probably had an exam today. I’ll text her and make sure she comes.” Luckily, Cass backed off her mercurial stance. On another night, his prodding about Luna could have erupted Mount Vesuvius.

  “How’s work?” she asked, popping a wonton dunked in orange sauce into her mouth.

  “Today was shitty. Everything was down. I heard Russell on the phone with his wife telling her to cancel their trip to Saint-Tropez. High-class problems, I know.”

  “Seriously. How’s that girl you told me about a while ago? She married yet? I’m dying to know what happened with the band-DJ showdown.”

  Jonathan had ended up telling Cass about Laurel during a weekend stroll through the park with Puddles when he and Cass were out of conversation, something that was happening more frequently than he liked to admit. Once they had children that would certainly change. Then they could analyze the wetness of a diaper or the cuteness of a giggle ad nauseam and never again face an awkward silence.

  When he told Cass about Laurel, he left out the juicy part where she expressed worry about being with one person for the rest of her life and him explaining that marriage is all about making compromises. Why open a can of worms? It was hard to see that kind of discussion with Cass going in a positive direction, no matter how cheery his wife seemed at the outset.

  “She’s on her honeymoon. I never did get to hear what happened with the band. I’ll be sure to find out.”

  “Please do,” Cass said, raising her Tsingtao. Jonathan felt like he detected a note of acidity, though he hoped he was imagining it. She seemed off tonight, but it might be him. Jerry’s foul mood could cast a spell on the whole office. The investor relations girls click-clacked their heels more quietly; the traders took the circuitous route to the bathroom to avoid passing by Jerry’s office. Jonathan suspected his boss’s mood went beyond Chevron—something on the home front was probably ruffling his feathers, like one of Jerry’s kids having trouble (drugs were rumored to be an issue with his oldest) or Ginny firing their driver—again. Something beyond gas prices was amiss for sure.

  “Can I take your order?” the waiter asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  Cass took charge, as per usual.

  “I’ll have shrimp dumplings and garlic broccoli. Honey, do you want the usual?”

  He nodded, feeling gratitude for the thousandth time in his life that someone knew what he wanted. His own mother wouldn’t have a clue what he’d like. He also felt his insides warm at the term of endearment, which rolled off Cass’s tongue like ice cream sliding down a cone.

  “He’ll have a veggie egg roll and beef lo mein.”

  The waiter scribbled the characters onto his green pad. “I’ll bring extra plates for sharing.”

  “No,” Cass said sharply. She hated to share, but not as much as she hated the presumption that she would be sharing. If Jonathan so much as reached for one of her dumplings, she could turn a chopstick on him. Tapas were literally Cass’s worst nightmare. He knew resources were scarce for her as a child, but she should have been able to get over it by now—to let someone have a bite of her cheesecake without fearing starvation.

  The food came quickly and they ate without much chitchat. A few comments about the new doorman who’d started working at their condo (Cass complaining he made too much small talk even if she was carrying groceries) and a question about where to go for vacation in July, leading to a brief back-and-forth about the merits of sightseeing versus beach. Then a bout of silence until the fortune cookies arrived with the bill. He guessed they really weren’t going to discuss the calendar appointment. Maybe Cass hadn’t even seen it. Without work, she wasn’t as attuned to things like times and dates. But no,
she had to have. It would have popped up as a bubble on her cell phone, which he was sure she’d looked at a dozen times today at least. And there were candles and jazz when he’d walked through the door.

  “I still can’t believe Dahlia’s getting divorced,” Cass said when he was paying the check. “We spoke again today for a while. She said the legal stuff is going to be worse than she originally thought. She needs me to write a character letter to the judge. Harris is asking for full custody, can you believe it? He says Dahlia getting involved with Brady’s assistant principal indicates her judgment is so poor that she’s an unfit mother. Obviously he just feels like a chump. Oh, and he froze their joint accounts. She’s trying to dig up some shady stuff on his investments to have leverage. Total mess.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said, sliding his wallet into his back pocket. He was anxious to get home. Baby-making had been slated for 9:00 p.m. They were already an hour behind. He wanted to make that joke to Cass but decided against it.

  “Shall we?” Cass asked, rising from her chair.

  “Let’s go.”

  The sleet had subsided and they walked home through the empty streets, umbrellas flanking them and poking the ground like walking sticks. Jonathan reached for Cass’s hand, but she slipped it into her pocket. “No gloves,” she explained. He dug his hands back into his pockets and felt the fortune cookies he’d taken with him. It felt like bad luck to leave a fortune cookie unopened, so he’d grabbed both his and Cass’s. Tonight was a momentous evening—he was curious to read what the little white scrolls of paper predicted for the would-be parents, even just for humor value.

  Upstairs, he watched Cass carefully remove her contacts and slip them into their case. He brushed his teeth alongside her, the buzzing of their electric toothbrushes operating in tandem. Why did he feel so nervous?

  They climbed into bed, both of them careful not to disturb a sleeping Puddles. He turned out the bedside lamp, the only light left in the room the glow from their two cell phones. Their screens would go to black momentarily.

  He reached for her face, cupping her chin gently, and pulled her toward him for a kiss.

  “Jonathan,” she said, her voice breathy and quivering. It was a big moment for them. From their first kiss outside Paragon, to running into each other on Park Avenue, to their wedding and the balancing of their families, to what they went through two years ago, to this . . . It had solidified them as the real deal.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to take a break.”

  9. CASS

  “I WANT TO take a break.”

  Her panties were on their way to her ankles when she said it. She and Jonathan were about three minutes away from potentially conceiving a child when the words escaped her lips.

  “Huh?” Jonathan rolled off of her. “A break from what?”

  She wanted to search his face, to see if he was in fact as clueless as his question implied. But Cass couldn’t make herself look her husband in the eye, to directly engage with the anger and confusion he must be feeling.

  In those crucial seconds that followed, she still had a chance to stop the madness she was setting into motion. She could say she just needed to get up to pee. Or ask for a break from their missionary rut. The point was, there was time to cap the mess before it unfurled and there was no turning back. She bit down hard on her bottom lip, considering how to proceed, weighing the options as she saw the linear trajectory of her life suddenly forking. The AC, which Jonathan insisted on running even in the dead of winter, cycled to blowing cold air on them and she hopped up to turn it down.

  “Cass? A break from what? If I’m not mistaken, we were about to try for a baby. I’d like to know what’s going on. If you want me to put on a condom, if you’re not ready, it’s fine. Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She walked over to their club chair and took a seat. Maybe that’s why the decorator insisted they have more furniture in the room. Because when two people are about to have a fight, it’s unnatural for them to be lying in bed together while they’re doing it. The distance, even if it was a measly eight feet, was critical for what she was about to say, though it might have been easier if she could have avoided the eye contact that her position across from Jonathan was forcing.

  “I know this is going to seem nuts and completely out of left field, but I want to take a break from us. Not a divorce or anything like that.” She paused for emphasis, to let it sink in. “Just some space. A refresher. A chance to think.” How many different euphemisms could she think of? And why did she turn down the AC? Now she was sweating like a marathoner, her armpits moist with musky tension. “It’s temporary,” she added, as though that qualifier should be enough to mollify her husband.

  “Are you kidding me?” Jonathan’s nostrils flared momentarily but he reined himself back in. With a softer tone, he added, “Cass, what is it you want from me? How can you not be happy? We have everything. Our health. Great careers. I know the thing with Percy was terrible, and you miss him, but you will find another job you love. Don’t let that temporary setback upset all the good. We get to make a family. We have Puddles. Friends. Family, for better or for worse. And I think I’m a pretty decent guy. Easygoing, I let things slide, I work hard. You want me to get a nose job, I’ll get one, for God’s sake. Just tell me where the hell this is coming from.”

  It was all true. Fact after fact upon which their marriage was built. Brick and mortar in spades: Puddles. Relative youth, sleek bodies, which should spell virility and desire. Their careers, especially his, which brought in enough that they had the luxury of fighting over nonmonetary things. Jonathan was, as he put it, easygoing, though that wasn’t necessarily a good thing when routine and boredom were among the culprits of her discontent. But then it echoed, what he’d said next: Let. Things. Slide. What things? Suddenly it was like the car she was driving was now coming at her in reverse.

  And why didn’t he ask her if there was someone else? When she had rehearsed the conversation in her head, back when she still never intended to say any of it out loud, that was his first question. Isn’t that why people left perfectly good marriages—to gamble on a happier life with another person? Or if not happier, at least steamier? She, Cass, was unique in that she was pulling away for different reasons. But how did Jonathan see that so quickly? Why didn’t he picture some greasy tennis instructor in white shorts wetting her whistle? Maybe he believed she was more complex than a cliché, though that was optimistic.

  Looking across the room at the new landscape of her life, she revisited in hindsight the options that were now unavailable to her. She could have suggested a wanderlust trip to someplace they’d never been—on a beach in Thailand armed with rum punches, nothing could possibly feel wrong. She could have confessed that her joblessness was stressing her and that she just needed to get a new job before feeling comfortable starting a family. Or she could have just stuck with the plan and let her concerns get eclipsed by the wonder of cells multiplying inside her. Instead, she was choosing an escape route. She was buying time. Time she very much needed to evaluate how she felt about her marriage, her deception, and the cold, hard knowledge that she wasn’t sure she was fulfilled despite having gotten everything she wanted. This was, in fact, the ultimate now or never. If she did decide that she had to come clean to Jonathan, it had to be before they conceived. He was a loyal husband, and she was certain he would be a devoted father, so if he came face-to-face with the truth about her after they had a child—well, he probably wouldn’t leave her. But she’d always wonder if he could see her the same way again—love her the same way again. Or if he did divorce her, then what? They would have a child bounced back and forth like a volleyball, spiked between two angry parents.

  So yes, her timing was terrible, but the terrifying horizon of parenthood was what pushed her to this place where she was literally in a corner, facing her husband like an opponent in a box
ing ring. She’d been a wreck all day since her cell phone buzzed with the reminder that today was her “Baby-Making” appointment. She’d reflexively clicked to dismiss the reminder. At the time she’d created the entry and invited Jonathan, she’d thought it was an adorable thing to do. Now it made her feel like a fool. Especially with her feeble attempts to get in the mood by lighting candles and playing Sade.

  The baby was definitely the central issue, flaming her guilt into a mass that grew bigger every day, but there were other centrifugal forces at play. Watching Jonathan’s penis rise like a flagpole in his boxers, knowing she would lie beneath his nearly hairless chest for maybe the five hundredth time in her life, or could it be the thousandth already, and the two of them would push and pull and click and churn against each other and then in five minutes they’d be up drinking water, peeing, flipping on the TV, talking about their upstairs neighbor’s penchant for rearranging furniture at odd hours—that might have been the nail in the coffin. The thing giving life to the crazy idea otherwise lying dormant in her subconscious. She suddenly wondered why anyone would name a jewelry company Pandora. There was nothing romantic about opening up boxes meant to be kept shut.

  “Calm down,” she sputtered, though he had every right to be upset, to question her. Blindsiding him like this was unusually cruel. If she really wanted to do this, she should have built up to it gradually. Picked a few fights back to back, acted distant for at least a month—the old “the cat’s on the roof” routine. Instead they went from nudging each other under the table when their least favorite waiter at Wa Jeal ambled over to take their order to breaking up—excuse me, taking a break—an hour later. There was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and this was clearly the latter. She wanted to backpedal—to make sure the relationship she was fracturing was intact enough that she could return to it. At the molecular level, she needed to make sure her husband didn’t start to hate her.