My Guys

by Tanya Chris

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Melissa. That’s what makes this hard.”

  That was when I started to cry. He ignored me, caught in his misery as I was caught in mine.

  “You could have talked to me first,” I choked out between sobs. “If things were bad, I didn’t know.”

  “If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that.”

  I tried to pretend I didn’t know what he meant, but one scene after another was surfacing from the depths of my memory—my hands stopping his as they moved down my body; the resistance in my shoulders when he tried to push me down his; my harried look when he kissed me during the day, flinching away from him because I knew where it would lead; the heavy sigh when his hands reached out to me under the covers.

  “It’s been that way for years. Beyond years. This baby thing was the first time you approached me for sex since Costa Rica.”

  Our trip to Costa Rica had been ten years ago. I remembered the night he was referring to. I’d had a few too many cocktails at dinner because they were free and I was on vacation. The cocktails had made me loopy and loose and I’d come on to my own husband like a barroom hussy, wanting his hands on me. The next day I’d felt stupid and hung over. And apparently that was the best sex we’d had in ten years.

  “Do you know how that’s made me feel?” he asked.

  “Maybe how I’m feeling right now.”

  “Maybe.” He sat up and took one of my hands in his. “It feels good to finally tell you this. I haven’t liked being dishonest with you, no matter what you might think. I do love you. I just need the other, too. More than I’ve been able to make you understand.”

  “I could’ve tried harder.” Right then, I’d have done anything to make him stay with me. It was only later that my pride would flinch at this, would ask me why I was feeling so guilty when he was the one who’d cheated.

  “You have tried. You’re just not interested, and even when we do it, it’s not ... interesting.” That was when he said it, the words that still repeated in my head like a sick mantra: “Uninterested and uninteresting.” He gave a short laugh like a cough and shook his head and repeated it. “Uninterested and uninteresting. Sort of says it all.”

  “Daddy wouldn’t,” I mumbled, re-surfacing. Daddy wouldn’t expect Mom to be some sort of burlesque act, to play the whore on demand. Daddy wouldn’t go elsewhere when she didn’t.

  “Your father is infallible—I get it—but to me he’s a husband, and a husband is a long way from infallible. Whether he ever cheated on me or not, I can’t say for sure, but he’s hurt me. And I’ve hurt him.” She dried her hands on a dish towel and started pulling dessert plates from the cupboards. “I remember telling you the day you got married that a marriage takes work. Did you forget?”

  “No.”

  She waited me out.

  “I don’t think I can forgive him,” I said at last. His last few voice mails had made it clear that he wanted to at least talk before we gave up on the marriage completely. That was why I’d been ducking him. On the one hand, it would be easy—forgive, forget, get my life back. On the other hand, it was impossible—the forgiving or the forgetting, and I’d never, ever have that life back.

  I clung to the feel of my phone vibrating against me like it was hope. I didn’t have to take Alex back. I had alternatives now. I had a new life now. Morgan had been right about that.

  “You can try to forgive him. That’s how you were raised.” My mother picked up a two-tiered chocolate cake and gestured for me to precede her to the dining room.

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “It’s not a birthday cake without you.”

  “I need a minute, Mom.”

  She didn’t argue anymore, giving me a kiss on the cheek as she walked past me with the cake. The moment she left I was grabbing for my phone.

  “Too long between shows,” Nate had written. “Miss you.”

  A pang of longing shot through me. I missed him too. I poised my thumbs over the phone, trying to craft a response. I’d about settled on “miss you too” despite the inanity when another message popped up.

  “See me?”

  “Can’t tonight,” I answered quickly.

  “Date?”

  “With Donna.”

  Nate and Donna had met at the auditions. I hadn’t enjoyed either’s reaction. Donna had been all wink and drool, undecided whether to tease me about my relationship with him or forge her own, while Nate had been friendly in a way that reminded me he’d been friendly to me too. They were going to do a show together, be in rehearsals night after night.

  “You two together sounds like a wild night,” Nate responded with a winky face.

  “I can’t talk now,” I typed. “At my mom’s for dinner.”

  “K” with a sad face.

  I smiled at his sad face, feeling better enough from the short exchange that I was ready to face the crowd in the dining room again. My family sang Happy Birthday to me in a mix of keys, the kids loudest of all. Then I blew out the candles and cut the cake while my sister passed it around.

  “Knock, knock,” Donna shouted from the kitchen.

  “Come in, come in,” I shouted back.

  She blew in like a thunderstorm, loud and suddenly bright, hugging everyone, even Alex, although he got a sort of “hmph” first.

  “Any of that left?” she asked, pointing to the wine bottle on the table.

  John picked it up and turned it upside down.

  “Then it’s a good thing I brought my own.” She reached into her pocketbook and brought out a bottle.

  “You know your pocketbook is too big when you can fit a wine bottle in it,” Alex said.

  Donna swung the bag at his head and he ducked with a laugh. The two of them had always gotten along. Even though I knew Donna was on my side, it hurt to see her laughing with him like nothing had changed.

  Alex opened the bottle and filled the glass my mother brought in, then topped off his own and Morgan’s glasses. He wagged the bottle at me and I shook my head. I planned to drive Donna to the Beltane celebration, expecting that this wasn’t her first drink of the night.

  “Where are you girls going tonight?” Alex asked. He sounded more than idly curious. Donna’s idea of going out was cruising for men. It gave me an inward smile of satisfaction to realize that the idea bothered him.

  “A celebration of sisterhood,” Donna said. “We’re going to worship at the feet of the female deity.” Yeah, she’d been drinking.

  “This is a pagan thing?” my mother asked, frowning.

  “It’s a May Day thing.” My birthday was May 1st and so was Beltane. I’d researched it online the night before. “Down at the Community Center.”

  “For ladies only,” Donna added.

  “I know what you call it when a bunch of women get together,” my father said. Everyone stopped and looked at him. “Trouble, that’s what you call it.” He got up, carrying his cake plate with him towards the kitchen. My mother followed him, shaking her head.

  “Sounds interesting,” Alex said.

  I could tell he was relieved. I wanted to pull out my phone and rub Nate in his face. As though Nate had heard me, my phone buzzed. I smiled and reached for it.

  “Later?” Nate had messaged me.

  “When I get home,” I answered. It gave me something to look forward to. The Beltane celebration loomed eerily in front of me. I didn’t know if it would be terrifyingly different or hokey and dull.

  Nate responded with a phone number and the word ‘call’ followed by a question mark.

  “K,” I answered, smiling at my phone affectionately. I saved the number under his name in my contacts, making it official. When I looked up only Donna and Alex remained in the dining room.

  “Something good?” Alex asked, the jealous tinge back in his voice.

  “Theater business.”

  Alex cocked his head questioningly and I realized that he knew nothing about my life anymore,
the way that I knew nothing about his. Once we’d known each other minute by minute: when the elastic wore out on his boxers, how long I’d be at the grocery store, what time his alarm clock was set for, the day I was expecting my next period. Now there were gaps big enough to cover weeks, even months of events.

  “Did you know Donna is going to act on stage?” I asked, deflecting. It worked. He turned his head towards her.

  “I play a sexy secretary.”

  “The script just said secretary.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make a very sexy secretary,” Alex said. The way he smiled at her had me wondering. He caught my glare and leaned away from her, looking at me as if to ask if I was crazy. I sighed. I was crazy. Before the betrayal, Donna’s cleavage and fluttering eyelashes were just quirks of Donna. Now I’d mentally hooked her up with both Nate and Alex in the space of a couple of hours.

  I’d had the delusion that it was safe, as someone’s wife, to not worry about being sexy because that competition was over for me. I’d won it by getting married. But that was a delusion, all right. I wasn’t out of the competition. I was losing it.

  “We should get going,” I told Donna.

  “You’ll call me?” Alex asked.

  “When I can.” Which left that door wide open.

  While Alex and Donna were saying their goodbyes, I went into the kitchen to give my mother a last hug.

  “I’m worried about you,” she said as she pulled back from our embrace. “Rock climbing, pagan festivals, theater people.” She said the last like they were the worst. I thought about Nate and smiled. She wasn’t wrong.

  “Just having fun, Mom. I promise not to convert to Wicca.”

  “If you can go to that Butane thing you can come to church with me. You didn’t even come for Easter.”

  “Beltane.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I’ll come to church with you.”

  “Sunday?”

  “Not this Sunday.”

  She pursed her lips at me.

  “I have to be at the theater this Sunday.”

  She pursed harder.

  “Next Sunday, Mom. Promise.”

  “And you’ll try with Alex? Not for the church or for me. For you.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “We’ll talk about it.”

  “That’s my girl.” She hugged me again, then hugged Donna who was toting the remains of her bottle of wine along with her.

  Alex watched us from the doorway, his forehead scrunched in that way that meant he was getting a headache.

  “You should take something before it gets worse,” I told him.

  “I don’t have anything with me.”

  I dug into the bottom of my bag and found the tin box I kept his headache medicine in. I handed it to him, then left before he could hand it back. I didn’t need it anymore.

  ~~~

  It was late before I got home. I crawled into bed with my phone, debating whether or not to follow through on my promise to call Nate. I ran my thumb over the tiny photo next to his name as though I could touch him through the screen. Knowing that I’d hate being left hanging if the tables were turned, I pressed the call button.

  “Hello?” His voice was thick with sleep.

  “Hi.”

  “Lissie?”

  “Yeah, sorry. You were sleeping weren’t you? I just called ’cause I said I would, but we don’t have to talk. It’s late.”

  “No, wait. Don’t hang up. I think I was dreaming about you.” He chuckled softly, a deep throaty sound. “I couldn’t figure out why you were on the phone when you were right here.”

  “I woke you up.”

  “I’m glad you did. Nice dream though. Mmm.”

  A picture formed in my mind of Nate stretching naked beneath the covers. He gave a contented sigh.

  “Tell me about your night. Did you and Donna have fun?”

  “It was weird.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “We went to this Wiccan thing, some kind of May Day festival. There was a maypole and a bonfire. Well, there was a thing that was supposed to be a maypole but it was only eight feet high on a narrow base, so it kept tipping over when we tried to walk around it—finally someone had to sit on it to keep it steady—and the bonfire was a circle of fake candles which they jumped over except for one lady who landed right in the middle and snapped the flames off of some of them. Good thing it wasn’t a real fire, I guess.”

  Nate laughed. “Did you jump?”

  “Yes, and Donna too. We both made it. We were the only women there not wearing long skirts, so that made it easier. I guess we didn’t get the dress code memo.”

  Nate laughed again.

  “It sounds funny now, but it was very serious to them and there was one part where they turned off the lights and there was just the circle of candles and one of the women recited this verse about fertility and nature and—oh, I can’t explain it but you could see why they were into it.”

  “Sure. Women taking back power from the patriarchy.”

  “I was raised Catholic.”

  “Very patriarchal,” he said. “It’s religions like that that make people turn to Wicca.”

  “I guess I never thought of it that way. Ideally religion is God, right? When I was going and believing, it was God. Now when I go it’s just familiar words.”

  “You go to church?”

  “When my mother makes me.” It was a ridiculous statement for a thirty-seven—no, thirty-eight—year old woman to make.

  “Now that I know you’re a good Catholic girl it explains a few things.”

  “Is anyone a good Catholic girl anymore?”

  “Not in my experience.”

  I could imagine Nate smiling at the thought of all the Catholic girls he’d had his way with. Wasn’t there a Billy Joel song about that?

  “What about you?” I asked. “Were you raised in a church?” I slid down under the covers.

  “No. My mom’s Jewish and my dad was Catholic so they compromised by giving up completely.”

  I laughed. Then the way he’d worded it hit me.

  “Is your Dad dead?”

  “Yeah, he died when I was about ten. How about you?”

  “Both my parents are still alive.” It struck me how little we knew about each other. “I was over there earlier, when you texted.”

  “Family dinner?”

  “For my birthday. I didn’t meant to tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because now I’m one more year older than you are.”

  “Makes you one year sexier. Anyway, it’s not for long. My birthday’s May 30th.”

  I tried to make a mental note of it but my brain felt foggy. “We should go to sleep,” I said. “I have work tomorrow.”

  “Me too, but I’m glad you called. I’m glad I found you. I was thinking about it being closing weekend this weekend and it made me edgy, like the show’s going to end and you’ll disappear.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’d been hoping,” he started, but he didn’t finish it.

  “There’s Donna,” I said.

  “Donna?”

  “She’s going to be your secretary in the next show. Out with the old and in with the new.”

  “Lissie.” He said it like he was shaking his head or rolling his eyes or maybe doing both at the same time. “Donna has nothing to do with what’s between you and me.”

  “No,” I half-agreed. Me, then Donna? Me and Donna? If not me, then Donna? I didn’t know how his head worked.

  “OK, you’re not ready to make any decisions and I promised not to pressure you. I should go back to my dreams.”

  “Sorry.”

  “We still have a few days to figure it out. And now I have your phone number. Better than a glass slipper.” That was my Prince Charming. “Night, Lissie.”

  “Nate?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you naked?”

  “Are you asking me wh
at I’m wearing?”

  “If you don’t want to answer, it’s OK. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “Maybe I’m debating how much you get without giving me anything back.”

  “I’m wearing pajamas.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” I said. “I’m ... picturing it.”

  “In that case, you can picture me naked. Sweet dreams, sweetheart.”

  Scrunching down under the covers, I thought back over the long night—from seeing Alex to Nate’s husky voice wishing me sweet dreams. In between I’d attended a pagan festival, though it was hard to apply the word ‘pagan’ to that assemblage of middle-aged women in earth mother dresses with flowers in their hair. The celebration had had none of the sexuality I’d expected and much more sweetness. For all that had seemed cheesy or gone wrong in their staging, no one had taken charge of anything or patronized anyone. The spirit had been overwhelmingly gracious.

  “It’s what a world without men could be,” I’d said to Donna as we left, my inner goddess awakening.

  “It’s all harmony until you want to get laid,” she’d answered. “Throw a man in there and see how fast sisterhood goes out the window.”

  Was it a female desire to fight off other women that made me shy away from Nate’s proposal? For what purpose would I need to possess him wholly? As children, we learned to share our toys.

  Then that thought—of Nate as a toy—made me angry. I wasn’t a virgin the day I got married, and Alex wasn’t my first lover, but I hadn’t taken sex lightly either. There had always been sufficient grounds to justify a possible future. Even that first time—his name was Scott and he’d talked me into going all the way in the backseat of his mother’s Buick after we’d dated for nearly six months—I’d had a hazy image of walking down the aisle towards him someday.

  Cultural shifts of seismic proportions had occurred since I’d been in high school, but even then I’d known myself to be on the prudish side of normal. Now my hesitance played out as a sexual hang-up. Alex wouldn’t be surprised that I was too uptight to sleep with Nate. I doubted he’d dither over sleeping with a twenty-five-year-old—the fewer strings, the better.

  If I used Nate as a toy—an entertaining, pleasant, ego-boosting pastime—well, wasn’t that how he was asking to be treated? I couldn’t cheapen what was being given away.