I decide to talk to everyone in the office later. Right now I have to get home.
I practically careen into my house, then race walk into our bedroom to see Steve packing clothes and toiletry items. He looks sad and worried.
Good.
“How are you going to get here in five minutes?” I ask him.
Steve looks up. “What?”
“Jason’s at least fifteen minutes from here," I point out. “What happens if we need you in five?”
Steve stops packing for a moment. He stares at his hands in silence.
I’ve known my husband for almost twenty years. That silence speaks volumes. He’s trying to figure out how to lie to me without actually lying.
Then he turns to his dresser, opens his top drawer, and assures me offhandedly, “It’ll be fine. I can be here in five minutes.”
I cross my arms and continue my trap. “So, during this trial separation, should we think about going on dates?”
His hand freezes for a second, hovering an inch above his underwear. “You mean with each other?” he asks, clearly buying time. “Or other people?”
“I think you know the answer," I say, my anger just starting to bubble to the surface.
I watch Steve furrow his brow and debate what to say next. Then he forces himself to grab a handful of Hanes briefs. “You know, if you want to go on a date, I can certainly understand that, and I won’t be mad.”
I narrow my eyes, continuing to watch him. Don’t show your cards yet… “You won’t be mad if I make out with some other man?”
Steve grabs one more fistful of underwear and slams his drawer shut. “Separations suck. Whatever you need to do to feel good about yourself, I understand.”
As I watch him toss the underwear on the top of his clothes and zipper shut his bag, I ask, “Will you be dating?”
Steve shrugs, uncomfortable and not looking me in the eye. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
Full House. Aces over Kings. Throw everything in the pot. “Will you be dating Olivia?”
I notice the smallest eye twitch before he looks at me and feigns ignorance. “Olivia who? From school?”
I slowly shake my head. “You bastard.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m not seeing anyone," he quickly lies. Then he doubles down. “But I don’t think it would be a bad idea for us to see what else is out here. Maybe it’ll bring us closer.”
“That‘s bullshit," I counter. “No man ever got closer to a woman by fucking another woman.”
Steve has no comeback. I snap, “Olivia’s not even that pretty. How could you make out with a woman who’s fatter than me?”
“Why are you focusing on Olivia Bates? What have I ever done to give you the impression…”
I show him my phone. “Because she sent me a really weird text. Except it’s not really weird: it just wasn’t meant for me. It was meant for you. And because your brother lives more than fifteen minutes away. But Olivia’s house is less than a mile away. Less than five minutes.”
Steve’s jaw slacks. Caught.
And at that moment, I realize aloud, “Oh my God… you’ve already slept with her.”
And his eyes dart away from me.
I shake my head. “Get the fuck out. I can’t look at you right now.”
And I turn on my heel and walk out of our room.
Steve races to follow me into the living room. “Can we please talk about this?”
Without thinking, I grab a vase from the mantle and hoist it at him.
My aim sucks. Steve doesn’t even have to dodge it as it shatters against the wall at least five feet away from him.
“You know that I’m afraid of you when you get like this…" he warns.
“When I get like this?! You mean when I realize my husband is fucking ugly women and lying to my face?!” I scream at him.
“Well, not women, plural…”
“Jesus! You ballless wonder, you should be afraid of me right now. You did something really fucking awful, and I will react to that however I see fit!”
As I try to get some space between me and him and escape to the kitchen, I can hear Steve behind me calmly agreeing, “Fine. You’re right. But please quit throwing things. I’ve already called in sick to work. Do you wanna go to the beach and talk? The beach always calms you down.”
“The b---“ I begin, stammering as I turn to him in confusion. “What?”
“That restaurant you like in Malibu. We could go there," he suggests, his voice desperate.
“You want to go to Paradise Cove now? Why would…” And then I stop, realizing the answer to my question before I can finish the sentence. He wants to go there so I won’t make a scene. He has way worse stuff to tell me.
“How long?” I ask in a deadly calm tone (since I might kill him).
“How long what?”
“How long have you been fucking Olivia?”
He looks down at our floor. Shrugs. “A month?”
Shit. He’s still lying. Steve will spend more energy avoiding a fight than Wile E. Coyote expends trying to catch the Roadrunner. So he’ll tell half-truths in order to make things not seem so bad. Lies of omission. Or he’ll lie a little, shortening the sin from, say, three years to one month.
And I have no energy for the barrage of misinformation I can see coming a mile away. “I’ll rephrase my question. When was the first time you guys made out?”
Steve focuses on our tile floor, trying to figure out how much of a lie he can get away with.
I wait, refusing to fill up his confession with my own words.
“No more throwing things," he negotiates, trying to sound firm.
“No more throwing things," I agree, mostly because I don’t want to clean anything else up.
“Three or four months ago," he admits. “Well, actually the first time was a year ago. Just once in my car. But then I stopped it.”
“How big of you," I say dryly.
“No, I really did. I told her I was married, and that we needed to stop.”
“But obviously you didn’t stop," I begin, then say almost to myself, “So when she was feeding my children fried chicken she made for the school’s end of the year picnic, and telling me how great I looked, she was already having an affair with my husband. That’s fantastic.”
“It just started in May. It might have been after the picnic. Well, except the times in April we accidentally had phone sex…”
I put up my hand. “Stop. Please. Just stop.”
“I’m trying to be honest with you. Don’t you want details?”
“No! I want for it to have never happened!” And then more waves of realizations crash over me. “Oh my God. She’s why you’re always on your phone and ignoring me.”
Steve has the nerve to sound exasperated. “You know Michelle, I’m not always on my phone.”
Then another realization smacks me in the face. “You’ve been planning this for awhile. You couldn’t fucking wait to get out of this house, but you didn’t want to be the one responsible for the decision. So you made yourself so fucking impossible to live with that I had to make the decision.”
“I’m not making any decision. But you have to admit, we haven’t been us in a really long…”
“You did make the decision, and you’re going to take responsibility for it. And don’t you dare put any of this on me. You are not going to somehow blame me for the fact that you fucked another woman.”
And now he gets mad. “You know Michelle, you basically kicked me out last night. Told me you couldn’t do this for one more minute…”
“Don’t try to turn this around! You were out months ago! Years. You are not making this my fault. And if you think…”
I stop talking as I suddenly seeing where this fight is headed. I immediately pivot my battle plan. I take a deep breath: one, two, three… and get centered.
Then I calmly nail him to the wall. “You know what? You’re right," I say quietly, channeling a Stepford
wife. “I kicked you out. I was wrong. This is one hundred percent my fault. Go unpack. We’ll work it out.”
Steve wasn’t ready for my change in battle tactics. He squints at me suspiciously. “Maybe that’s not a good idea right now. You’re clearly still very mad.”
“No," I counter calmly, “You were right. I was wrong. I like the house to be cleaner than you do, so I should be responsible for all of the housework. Clearly, you need phone sex, so I can learn how to do that. Olivia’s a red head: I can hit the salon and be that exact shade. I’ll change. Everything will be exactly like it used to be.”
Steve watches me for a minute. And then he gets it. “I see what you’re doing.”
I shrug, and give him the most innocent eyes possible. “I’m not doing anything. This was my fault, you’re not to blame at all. I drove you into that woman’s arms. You couldn’t help yourself. It just happened. I trust that it will never happen again, and I will never bring any problem I have with you or this marriage up ever again.”
Steve doesn’t say anything. We stand in the kitchen, ten feet apart, like the sheriff and the outlaw, each waiting for the other to pull their gun from their holster. Finally, he says, “I need to go.”
I cross my arms and threaten him, “You leave now, and it’s one hundred percent your fault. None of it’s on me. Which is exactly what I will tell the kids when I pick them up: Megan at 2:55, and Roraigh at 3:50.”
Steve looks sad as he assures me. “You would never do that.”
“Yeah? You just cheated on me. What makes you so sure?”
He looks me dead in the eye, and says something to remind me that he knows me as well I know him. “Because you love them more than you could ever hate anything. Including me.”
We both stand there in silence, neither of us flinching. He’s right, of course.
And he knows it.
Which is why, a few minutes later, he returns to our room, grabs his overnight bag, and leaves.
Six
Alexis
I open my bedroom door, and Tunny comes barreling in, his overgrown toenails clicking against (and possibly shredding) my reclaimed white oak floors. Fantastic. He immediately leaps onto my all-white bed.
“No, no, no, no," I say, grabbing him and yanking him off my bed, “Pratesi and dogs do not mix!”
As I put the mutt down (because – seriously, what is this thing? If even the vet doesn’t know…) onto the floor, I notice he’s covered in some sort of neon orange powder. “What the...” I mutter, opening up the palms of my hands. “What is this, Cheeto dust?” I say to myself, then yell at him, “Did you steal my Cheetos?!”
He looks up at me through sad puppy eyes, as though my yelling hurt his widdle feewings. I swoop him up, and whisk him over to my bathroom.
Once we’re in the bathroom, I close the door so the little Oompa Loompa can’t escape, then I put him down and take off my now orange-ish white robe.
Tunny scampers over to the toilet to drink. I open the shower’s glass door, turn on the water, and check the stream to make sure it’s warm, but not too hot. Then I pick up Tunny again to bring him into the shower with me.
And all hell breaks loose. How can a dog hate water so much? Don’t all dogs like water? Tunny tries to escape, scratching me with his talon claws the second he gets near the stream of water. I scream at him to stop, along with several other four letter words, which only makes him more anxious. He slips out of my hands, then tries to make a break for it. I manage to slam the shower door before he can get out, but that only leads to my chasing a bright orange seal around ten square feet of slick tile. Suddenly remembering my showerhead can also be handheld, I grab it, and point it like a gun at Tunny, following him around our little glass box.
He eventually stops running in circles, and just sits there, moping but resigned to the situation, as I spray him down.
By the time I am done soaping him up and rinsing him off, my beautiful white marble floor and pristine glass shower looks like the scene from “Psycho” if Janet Leigh was an alien who bled orange blood.
I let Tunny out, then watch him do the doggie shake and spray water all over my bathroom.
I’m sorry, how exactly do dogs lower your blood pressure?
At least he’s clean. And I will leave an extra fifty dollars for the maid today, along with a note of apology and possibly a bottle of scotch.
I give myself a few minutes to shower alone. I step into the warm spray, close my eyes, and mentally shake off the dog, Connor, and all of last night. For a brief few moments, I return to my normal, which includes relaxing aromatherapy shampoo and conditioner, and total silence.
I open one eye and think to myself, Silence. Wait a minute. Why is it so quiet?
It’s then that I realize that Tunny has managed to open my door and leave the bathroom.
I grab a fluffy white towel, and run out of my bathroom just in time to see Tunny, his bad leg lifted at a ninety-degree angle, marking not only my bedpost, but also the lower part of my mattress.
“NO!” I scream.
I lose my towel as I quickly pick up the dog, rush downstairs, slide open the glass door facing the beach and throw him outside. I try to quickly close the glass door, but despite his bum leg, Tunny lands like a cat, and immediately turns around to dart back in. As Tunny tries to bulldoze his way through the ever-narrowing door crack, I balance on my left leg while using my right foot to push his body backwards. The two of us engage in the opposite of a tug of war, and Newton’s Third Law of Physics pops into my head: every action has an opposite reaction.
I shove the dog away with a final kick, and slam the door shut.
“Now go pee out there!” I command through the door as Tunny runs back up to the glass.
Tunny looks at me all wide eyed, his eyes filled with betrayal.
“I’m serious," I warn him. “I am not letting you back in until you do your business. Go poop, too.”
Oh, that’s where the expression “puppy dog eyes” comes from. Huh.
I head back upstairs, put my towel back on, grab my phone and immediately break my promise to myself by texting Connor.
Come get your fucking dog. Now.
I wait. No response.
He’s probably asleep at home. Wait, no. He was paid to move out of his rent controlled place. He’s on some friend’s couch right now. Probably a female frie--- I can’t even go there right now.
BARK! BARK! BARK!
“Stop that! I have neighbors!” I yell as I race back down the stairs.
I see Tunny sitting by the door, wagging his tail and trying to emotionally blackmail me with his big brown dog eyes.
Ugh. So not going to work. And I suddenly understand the expression, “Barking up the wrong tree.”
“Did you pee?” I ask him through the window.
He just keeps staring up at me. I open the door to look for signs that he pooped, and of course the second the door slides open Tunny rams through the space between my left leg and the door and runs back in.
I walk out onto the beach. The tide is out so I have a pretty good view of the sand. It appears Tunny has not marked up the outside of my house nearly as much as the inside.
Where I have just stupidly left him alone. I turn back, and walk in to see Tunny’s back right leg lifted and pointed at my white couch.
“Stop peeing!” I scream, startling him midstream. He has the nerve to look up at me like I’m the crazy one.
I grab his new leash, click it onto his collar, and tug him back outside. Although I’m not the one doing the tugging: the second the leash is on, he’s racing out my back door like a suburban Mom at the Barney’s warehouse sale.
While Tunny and I walk around the beach, me still wet, cold, and in a towel, I call Connor. Of course I get his voicemail. So I leave a message. “Come get your fucking dog, asshole!”
Then I click off.
And immediately rethink my outburst. I mean, the guy makes me nuts, but he already ghosts me for wee
ks at a time: calling him an asshole just gives him a legitimate reason to avoid me for awhile.
After finally getting Tunny to do his business, spending several minutes tracking down the little green baggies you need to clean up after dogs, (then nearly retching as I pick up after him… Ew, ew, ew), I fill his bowl with the high protein, organic, super-expensive dog food that costs more than my sushi at Whole Foods, and realize I’m now running late.
Fuck it. I’m the boss. I text my assistant, Ashley, telling her that I have a breakfast meeting and will be in by eleven.
Then I decide to call my sister Lauren, who not only has a dog, but a mastery of all things that have to do with empathy and taking care of earthly creatures.
She picks up on the first ring. (Thank God.)
“I have three of the four kids in the car with me and I’m in the school drop off line," she tells me in a rushed tone. “You’re on Bluetooth. What’s up?”
“How do you get a dog to stop peeing in your house?”
“Quit answering his U Up? texts.”
“I don’t mean Connor. I mean an actual dog.”
Cue another high-pitched BARK.
I turn to the dog and snap, “I said be quiet!” Then I return to the phone. “He’s peed all over my house. My bed, my couch, God knows where else. He also snagged what was left of a bag of Cheetos that I had on the counter, and tore it apart like he was a seagull. So I also have orange dust all over my lovely white floors.”
“Okay, calm down. He’s marking his territory because he’s scared," Lauren tells me.
I look over at Tunny, dubiously sniffing his dog food, and debating whether or not he’s hungry. “He doesn’t look scared.”
“Well, he is," she assures me. “He’s been brought to a new home, he has no idea why, and he just wants to know the rules.”
“Well, welcome to the club," I snap. “You think I’ve figured out any of the rules?”
“Judging from your house on the beach, your successful TV shows, plural, and your five star trips to… well, pretty much everywhere, I’d say yes," Lauren counters dryly. “So when did you get a dog?”
Hangovers & Hot Flashes Page 6
