Hangovers & Hot Flashes

by Kim Gruenenfelder

  “Downtown Reno on a Monday?” I joke.

  Judging from my sister’s glare, the question was rhetorical. “One…” she begins menacingly.

  Several of us glance around the room at each other. Yikes. She’s mad. It’s hard to get Lauren worked up, but once she hits boil, she starts to turn green and shed everything but her purple pants.

  Zoe slowly, almost timidly, raises her hand. Britney smiles. “Yes.”

  Zoe takes a deep breath. “Okay, this is a real question. And I’ve thought about it for a long time, and it’s going to sound weird saying it out loud, but I’ll bet some other women here can relate. How do you get back the feeling you had from a first kiss? I mean that physical, knees giving out, feels like a wave hitting your face and making you almost dizzy feeling? Like, when his tongue slips into your mouth and touches the tip of your tongue and there’s an actual electrical zing that shoots all the way down to your crotch. And you get lightheaded, and every cell in your body is alive. How do you get that feeling when you’ve been married forever? And when no one looks at you the way they used to? Do you know the feeling I’m talking about, Britney?”

  Zoe watches Britney expectantly for an answer. Finally, Britney says, “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

  “Of course you do. You probably just felt it last night. With your boobs that defy gravity and your tight body that you have time to go to the gym to maintain. Most of us here are halfway through our lives. Some of us even more than that. So… how do we get that feeling again, even if it’s just one more time? Before eternity kicks in, and we have no more moments of immortality?”

  Wow. Way to shut down the room, Zoe.

  But I suspect, more than one woman here can relate. I certainly can. I lift my scotch glass to my mouth, suck in a whiskey flavored ice cube, and wait for Britney to give us her pay-by-the-minute advice. She takes a deep breath, and thinks about Zoe’s question. “I think that’s more of a question for a marriage counselor.”

  “I have a great marriage," Zoe tells her confidently. “My husband Carlos is perfect: he’s handsome, nice, funny, a good provider, a great Dad… But my clitoris hasn’t felt like it hit an electrical socket in years.”

  I’m surprised by Zoe’s confession. This is the woman who a few years ago floored us all by revealing that she had never faked an orgasm. (At the time, I almost threw a glass of wine in her face. Jealousy comes in all shades and sizes.)

  Britney shrugs. “I’m not sure I can help you," she answers sadly to Zoe. Then she looks around the group. “Does anyone else have a question?”

  “What Zoe said about immortality is so true," Michelle pipes up. “How do I get rid of this feeling that death is imminent? I mean, I used to feel like I had years of time in front of me. I really did feel immortal. And now…” She gathers her thoughts for a moment, then clarifies. “I used to have this sense of endless possibilities and excitement about all that was out there to be experienced and accomplished. Now, I’m just tired. I used to have complete faith that everything would work out. Now I’m equally sure nothing will. How do I get my faith back?”

  “First, I would suggest a dream board.” Britney begins.

  “I’m forty-four years old. I already know what my dreams are," Michelle assures her. “Or were. I know which dreams came true, but then accomplishing the goal didn’t look like what I thought it would look like. I know which ones only sort of came true: like I bought a house, but it’s nowhere near the beach. And I traveled, but not to where I most wanted to go. Things like that. And I definitely know which dreams aren’t coming true. Which dreams died a slow death.”

  Now even Britney seems deflated. “Huh.” Then she softly suggests, “Maybe it’s time for some new dreams?”

  Michelle shrugs. She doesn’t believe Britney at all, but decides not to continue the fight.

  Zoe raises her hand, Britney points to her, and she begins, “In my thirties, I added a bunch of family members: my kids, my nieces and nephews, my friends’ kids. Now, in my forties, I keep subtracting: I lose parents, aunts, uncles, old bosses and mentors, friends a little older, friends my own age. In the last two years, I’ve been to nine funerals, and no weddings. How do I keep subtracting, knowing that that’s all there is to look forward to? How do I bother to get out of bed in the morning?”

  Before Britney can answer, Lauren pipes in, “You have kids. You get up for your kids.”

  “And next year, they’re going to abandon me, too," Zoe points out. “For college. And they should, and that’s what’s supposed to happen. But that’s another loss. How do you keep dealing with the perpetual loss that comes with your forties?”

  Every member of our group turns to Britney, waiting in rapt attention.

  The silence is deafening. Britney takes a deep breath, looks Zoe in the eye…

  And answers, “I’ll see myself out.”

  Britney grabs her purse, and as she books out of my living room, yells back to my sister Lauren, “Mrs. Matenoupolos, I’ll refund your credit card the minute I get home.”

  My front door slams a few seconds later. Kayla returns from my kitchen with her full glass, looking clueless. “Wait, what did I miss?”

  Lauren narrows her eyes at Zoe. “Did you do that on purpose?

  “You told me I couldn’t have a cigar until she left," Zoe explains, smiling as she hops out of her chair to head towards my patio. “I was really getting antsy.”

  Two

  Zoe

  “Okay, you’re right," I announce urgently to Carlos as I happily burst into our house. I pop my head into our home office just to the right of our front door. “We need to have an open marriage.”

  Carlos, quietly reading in his favorite red leather chair, looks up at me through his bifocals. “I feel like I missed a meeting.”

  How is it that men can make bifocals look cute? I want to hate him for that: how his crinkly laugh lines seem to frame his clear brown eyes to make them look even more sparkly and glittery. We women, on the other hand, are encouraged to keep the skin around our eyes perpetually smooth by sticking needles a few centimeters from our eyeballs, then injecting the latest poison, filler, or newest serum made from a raccoon’s bladder into our creases.

  Anyway, Carlos looks very handsome tonight. He’s aging nicely, and I chose well.

  Of course, I don’t tell him that. I’m on a mission.

  “Michelle drove me home, and I’m a little drunk," I tell him instead. “Want to follow me to the kitchen while I get another glass of wine?”

  I can hear Carlos walk out of our home office to follow me as I walk through our aging, needs-a-little-work living room into our seriously-needs-to-be-gutted kitchen.

  I love our home, but honestly the whole place is a giant HGTV before. We bought the house as a fixer upper fourteen years ago, and still have not had the money to actually fix anything up. When some couples find their piggy banks getting deliciously plump, they reward themselves with a trip to Italy or a nice car. We have always thrown any extra money that comes our way towards paying off our mortgage early, beefing up our retirement IRAs, or stockpiling the kids’ college accounts.

  On the plus side, the mortgage will be paid off in a few months. (That’s one cool thing about Carlos: he is insanely good with money. He’s an accountant, but not like a boring one. Like a super cool, hot Latin one who would do a woman’s taxes in a porno movie before doing her.) On the minus side, sending two kids to college in this day and age will suck up our money faster than a Dyson sucking up confetti New Year’s morning.

  As I walk into the kitchen, I see our seventeen year old, David, staring at the running microwave. “What are you doing?” I ask in exasperation.

  He turns to me like I’m the weird one. “I’m cooking?”

  I push Pause on the microwave. “First of all, that’s not cooking. That’s reheating. Second, what have I told you about having the microwave on at the same time as the toaster?”

  “Circuits," Dave answers.

 
; “Circuits!” I repeat as the toaster pops up two Pop Tarts, and our other seventeen year old, Sofia, pops through the doorway. “Mom. Where did you put the graph paper?”

  “What graph paper?” I ask her.

  “The graph paper that’s on the list for school.”

  “There was graph paper on the list?” I ask.

  I get the teen girl groan, “Uh. Ye-ah. It is Calculus BC.”

  I look over at Carlos, who actually studied calculus. He nods. I let my shoulders slump. “Well, that seems like overkill for Day One.”

  “Do you want me to go out and buy some?” Carlos asks me.

  “Are these S’mores or Chocolate Fudge?” Sofia asks her brother.

  “Fudge.”

  “Ooohhh… can I have one?”

  “Go for it," Dave says, turning the microwave back on.

  “It’s the Sunday night before school starts," I answer Carlos. “You’re not going to find graph paper without hitting five stores.” I turn to Sofia. “Can you go one day without it, and I promise there will be graph paper by homework time tomorrow?”

  She sighs. “Fine.” Sofia throws one of the pop tarts into her mouth so she can carry it around like a dog with a bone, pulls out her phone, and leaves the kitchen as she texts.

  “I love you!” I yell out the kitchen door.

  “Love you, too," she answers back, almost by rote.

  Despite the sigh from one, and the lack of listening skills from the other, I know that Carlos and I really lucked out when it came to our kids. Dave and Sofia are good friends and good people. They’re good students too. Both in the top ten percent of their class at Echolake Charter school, and both off to college next year with completely different majors: Sofia is like her Dad: a whiz in math. She plans to major in Quantitative Economics. Up until last year, I didn’t even know what that was. Dave is more like me: a writer and performer. I feel really bad about passing on those genes, but what are you going to do?

  The microwave dings, and Dave, 6’3” and all of one hundred and sixty pounds, pulls out a giant, clear Pyrex bowl of noodle soup.

  “You just ate an entire chicken," Carlos says to him in disbelief.

  “I know. Right?” Dave jokes, carrying the bowl and spoon out of the kitchen, then grabbing the other pop tart from the toaster and sticking it into his mouth the way his sister just did, as he walks out of the room.

  As I open the refrigerator door I yell to him, “Can you please remember to bring the bowl back down from your room when you’re finished?”

  “Sure," he lies. (Bless his heart, he thinks he’s telling the truth. He’s not. I’ve retrieved plates from his room that dated back to the Obama administration.)

  “I love you!” I yell.

  “I love you, too,” I hear him call back.

  Carlos opens his mouth to speak, but I put my index finger up to my lips in the universal gesture for “Shh.”

  While I listen to Dave’s footsteps as they head up the creaky stairs, I ask Carlos, “Do you want some wine?”

  “Nah. But I’ll take an IPA.”

  I pull a bottle of India Pale Ale from our local microbrewery out of the fridge and hand it to him, then pull out an open bottle of Trader Joe’s finest Chardonnay, half-finished from dinner last night.

  I walk to the cabinet to grab myself a wine glass. The cabinet door drops at an angle as I open it.

  “We really need new cabinets," I tell Carlos for the millionth time as I get myself a glass.

  “Yes, we do," he agrees. “Meanwhile, Dave is applying to NYU.”

  I push up the cabinet door back up ever so slightly to close the cabinet (It’s a weird trick. You have to lift and push at the same time just so…) then pour my wine. “So back to what I was saying: You’re right. We need to have an open marriage.”

  “Are you leaving me?” he half asks/half jokes.

  “Please. Neither of us can afford to go anywhere. Besides, where would I go? All my stuff is here. Remember last year when that woman at that party suggested a ménage a trois?”

  Carlos pulls the bottle opener magnet off of our white refrigerator. “Oh, God.”

  “Why are you using that tone?”

  “What tone?”

  “You know the tone.”

  “I wasn’t using a tone.”

  “Please. I’m not tone deaf," I counter. “That’s your sighing, tired, She cray cray tone.”

  Carlos pops open his beer and returns the magnet to the fridge.

  He takes a sip of beer, then concedes, “Fair enough. I may have been using a tone. But, in my defense, only because you walked in, pointed at me, and said something in your, I’ve been thinking about this for five hours, and I’ve already had a fight in my head in which you called me fat tone.”

  I purse my lips and look up at the ceiling involuntarily. Then back to Carlos. “Okay, you’re right. I have been thinking about this, but only since the group tonight. And you didn’t call me fat in my head this time, you called me crazy.”

  “Apparently I called you ‘cray cray’," he clarifies. “But only in your head.”

  “Yes, in my head. But you were very mean about it.”

  Carlos willfully does not take his eyes off of me, giving me his I’m doing everything in my power to keep my eyes from visibly rolling stare. (Have I mentioned that we’ve been married for almost twenty years? We have some shorthands at this point.)

  “So, the ménage a trois…” Carlos reminds me. “Have you suddenly reconsidered?”

  “God, no. I’m not a lesbian, and I don’t want to see my husband cheat on me, so you can imagine how not on board I am with that idea. Anyway, remember how mad you were at me for saying no?”

  “I wasn’t mad…” he begins.

  “You were mad…” I interrupt.

  “Well, turn it around: what if some gorgeous guy offered to join us, and I shut that down without even considering it?”

  “You mean, what if I had to deal with not one, but two men’s orgasms, then have to listen to them talk about their lives… or worse, sports… afterwards? No thank you. But I have a new proposal: what if we have an open marriage?”

  Carlos narrows his eyes at me. “I feel like whatever I say in the next thirty seconds is going to give me trouble for the next thirty years.”

  “Seriously. Let’s be honest, you only wanted the ménage a trois because you wanted to be with the other woman…”

  “Okay, that is not true…”

  “Really? You needed to see me naked for the millionth time?” I challenge sarcastically.

  “I always want to see you naked," Carlos answers me with all kinds of sincerity.

  “Can I finish?”

  “No.”

  “No?!”

  “No. We are not having an open marriage.”

  I sigh. “I feel like I’m not selling this properly. This could be just like golf.”

  He furrows his brow at me suspiciously. I flash him my brightest smile and ask, “You like golf, don’t you?”

  My husband eyes me warily in response, then deadpans, “And like a moth to a flame, I can not help but ask, 'How on Earth would this be like golf?'”

  “You love golf. Enough to wake up early on a Saturday morning. Which I consider insane. Now I don’t hate golf, as a matter of fact in Hawaii it’s downright charming, so sometimes I go with you. But some days, I just don’t want to golf. I’d rather sleep in. Now, if society dictated that I was your only golf partner, most Saturdays, you wouldn’t get to golf either. But it doesn’t. So you can. And I don’t really care who you play golf with, I just care that you come home happy. This could be just like golf. And we could both be happy.”

  Carlos says nothing. I have no idea if that is good or bad.

  I see a bag of garlic pretzel thins resting on our chipped cobalt blue Spanish tile counter and open it, offering Carlos the bag first. He puts his hand in the bag and pulls out a handful, keeping his eyes trained on me the entire time.

  Still no
answer.

  I drive my argument home with my final selling point. “Michelle and Steve aren’t having sex anymore, and I can tell she really resents him for it. She told us tonight about all of the things she’s tried to get him interested again, and nothing’s working. I swear, I worry they’re headed for a divorce, and I don’t want that to happen to us. I love you. I want to grow old with you. The kids are leaving us next year, and when that happens, I don’t want you to leave me just because we don’t fuck the way we did when we were in our twenties.”

  Carlos still doesn’t answer, but he looks like he might actually be considering it.

  Sofia walks back into the kitchen, saving him. “Mom, the school just emailed me. You never filled out our vaccination forms, or our person to contact in an emergency, or the photography clearances.”

  Now it’s my turn to sigh. “I filled all of those out last year. And the year before. Why do they need them again?”

  “I don’t know. But as long as they do, the pledge drive forms are in the same packet. They need twenty-two hundred dollars per student this year to keep the school running, but they’re basically asking for twenty-five.”

  I turn to Carlos. He knows he got a reprieve. But a temporary one. Then I turn to Sofia. “Give me five minutes. I just need to finish something with your Dad”

  “Thank you,” Sofia says. “And as long and we’re talking about money, I need twenty dollars in cash.”

  “For what? I just gave you…”

  Sofia jokingly bats her eyelashes. “Mom’s so pretty.”

  I can’t help but laugh. “Fine. Purse.”

  “Oh, I need twenty, too!” Dave yells from upstairs. “Meaning ‘also’! Although I’ll take twenty-two!”

  “You’ll take twenty!” I yell, projecting my voice. “Tell me I’m pretty!”

  “So pretty!” he yells down.

  I turn to Sofia. “Grab twenty for your brother, too.”

  The second Sofia is out of the kitchen I turn to Carlos and lament, “Five thousand dollars this year?”