In Stereo Where Available (32 page)

He threw his arms out wildly. “Well, it’s not like that’s something I’d have any desire to do when I’m with you, so, no, I didn’t think you needed to know it. You don’t have any idea what it’s like, Phoebe. You’ve never been in a sexual relationship and then tried to be abstinent for
years
after it’s over. You get a little pent-up after a while.”

I swung my feet over the side of the bed, feeling the sudden coldness of the hardwood floor beneath them. “It doesn’t sound like it’s the only time you did it, either.”

He looked away again, and I grabbed my pillow from the bed. “Tell me how many times you’ve done this, Jerry.”

“I don’t know.” His voice sounded weary. “A few.”

“How many is a few?”

“Three or four.”

“Is that counting the cop?”

“No.”

I glared at him and stepped toward the doorway. “So—the night you gave me that whole line about not wanting to be too pushy, when you asked me to spend the night—did it feel special to you because you saved forty bucks?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Hey. That’s not fair.”

I could see his anger stirring, but I didn’t care at all. In fact, I wanted to get his temper going, set off a good screaming match, whatever it would take to put an end to him acting weak and whiny and defensive. “How could you
do
that?” I shouted at him. “How could you just ask some random stranger to do that for you?”

“I didn’t think I was ever going to settle down with anybody!” he yelled back, and for a moment the savage edge to his voice almost made me cringe. “I thought I was going to be alone for the rest of my life. I wasn’t sitting there getting blown and thinking, gee, I wonder if this is going to piss off my future wife?”

“And it also never crossed your mind that your future wife might want to know you’ve been
arrested?”

His face was turning a dark shade of pink. “Sure, it crossed my mind. And so did the fact that if I came clean about it, I wouldn’t have a future wife anymore.”

“So you decided to lie about it.”

“I didn’t
lie
, Phoebe. Sheesh, it’s not like you dug this one up on your own. And I knew you’d go off like this, which is a lot of why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Yeah, okay,” I replied, hearing the shakiness in my own voice. “So you just hoped you’d manage to pass yourself off forever as the nice religious guy who doesn’t let sex run his life?”

He laughed, surprising me. “To be who you wanted, because I wanted you? Yeah. And you’re one to talk about passing yourself off for that kind of reason.
Karen.”

One of the cats darted between us and down the stairs. I turned and followed it, the shadows leaping around me as I hurried down to the living room. The sofa where I’d snuggled with Jerry in front of the TV, warm beneath the fleece blanket, didn’t look nearly as welcoming as it did on our movie nights. But it would have to do.

“Phoebe, come back up,” he called, his voice pleading but tired. “I’m sorry, okay? Come on up and let’s try to get this worked out.”

I threw my pillow on the sofa and plunked myself down, swallowing against the lump in my throat. I knew if I came back upstairs, he’d grovel and apologize, praise me for my virtues and beg my forgiveness, all mixed in with urgent coaxing to make love. For all my anger, his efforts would probably work, and this was a matter too serious to allow him that opportunity. So I pulled the blanket up to my chin and closed my eyes, my hearing tuned to the room’s hollow silence, both hoping for and dreading his footsteps on the stairs. But he didn’t come down. He was considerate enough to take me seriously and give me my space. And that only made things even harder.

I woke up early from the light coming in through the big living-room windows, groggy and sleepless, my mouth feeling fuzzy from not brushing my teeth the night before. My mind had that nauseated, hung-over feeling that you wake up with when something terrible has happened the night before, something irreconcilable with no resolution in sight. I sat up, looking over the orderly living room and the cats asleep on the armchair and windowsill. Already I was homesick for the bed with Jerry, the warmth of his body and his hand on my waist, the murmuring conversations about dreams and the quality of our sleep. I sighed and got off the sofa, my muscles stiff and sore, the cats milling around my heels in anticipation of breakfast. A few minutes after I started the coffeemaker, he came downstairs, dressed for work in khakis and a red-pinstriped shirt and looking like he’d been out partying all night.

“Good morning,” he mumbled.

I took a yogurt from the fridge and said nothing back. Standing at the counter with his back to me, in his neat professional clothes and conservatively short hair, he looked as clean-cut as ever, yet somehow different in a sinister sort of way. His body under those clothes seemed hungry and unknowable, full of passions that I couldn’t understand. My mind threw out an image of him looking just like this in the front seat of his Jetta, in his button-down shirt and pleated khakis and leather belt, his head back against the headrest, unzipping his pants, pulling them open. I could picture it exactly. He poured a cup of coffee, and I imagined his hand buried in the teased-up, permed blond hair of whoever had been doing it for him. That was probably right, too.

He looked over his shoulder at me. “You want one?”

“No.”

He’d done it over and over again. Reaching into his worn leather wallet and handing them the money. He took his cup of coffee over to the table and sat in his usual place, looking over the newspaper he’d brought in from the doormat. I could see him with his eyes closed, his chest heaving the way it did right before he let go. I wasn’t the only one who had seen it. A lot of women had seen it. They did it for a living, making their money off of being good and fast. Next to them, I’d be an amateur. He’d known that the whole time, that I couldn’t possibly compare. It was a secret he had kept. All the things I had seen him doing, handing me flowers and changing Marco’s diaper and tossing his golf clubs in the trunk while wearing his funny-looking shorts, and this was something that had been there the whole time, the thing I hadn’t known about. It was something else he did.

I showered and got dressed upstairs, dawdling so he’d be gone by the time I came back down. His school started earlier than mine by half an hour. But he was still there when I came back down, standing by the door with his shoulder bag on the floor beside him.

He smiled crookedly. “Just wanted to kiss you good-bye.”

“Don’t bother.”

His smile went away and he sighed. “We’ll talk this evening, okay? I’ll try to get back early.”

“I really don’t have anything to say to you.”

“
Work
with me, Phoebe.” He looked at me imploringly. “We’ll talk. We’ll fix this.”

I hurried back after work and let myself in, gathering up some clothes, my toothbrush and shampoo, my journal, and a couple of CDs. I threw it all on the passenger seat of my car and loaded Pepper in the back, her food and dish in the trunk, her leash trailing across the floor. I didn’t leave a note or break anything or take anything that didn’t belong to me. I just drove home. My mother didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t seem surprised.

It didn’t take Jerry very long to figure out where I was.

“Is Phoebe here?”

I could hear his voice from where I lay in my room upstairs. It was a dumb question. He could see my car perfectly well, parked right in front of his along the curb.

“She’s busy,” said my mother.

“I need to talk to her.”

My mom dropped the charade. “I don’t think she wants to talk to
you.”

“Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I want her to come home.”

“She’s already home.”

“Look, can I just talk to her for a minute?”

“No. She knows where you live. If she wants to talk, she’ll come by.” I heard the door close. My mother was good at being hard like that. She’d brought up two teenaged girls by herself. She knew how to close a door in a guy’s face.

Ten seconds later, my phone rang. I let it go to voice mail. It rang again. And again.

“What do you want, Jerry?”

“Phoebe, don’t make me stand outside the damn window with a boom box playing ‘In Your Eyes.’ Come out and talk to me, all right?”

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Yes, you do. You’ve still got your engagement ring on. You want to work this out as much as I do.”

“You don’t know that I’ve got it on. Just because I didn’t leave it on the dining-room table with a sappy note. Maybe I threw it in the gutter next to your house.”

“You want me to go look?”

“Yeah, and while you’re down there, see if you can find your morals.”

He sighed. “Will you just come outside?”

“No. Go home. You can talk to me in a few days when I come to get the rest of my stuff.”

“Come on, Phoebe, work with me here. You’ve made your point, all right? I’m
sorry
. Just come home, okay?”

I hung up on him and dropped the phone on the bed beside me. Hearing his car’s engine turn over and slowly fade off into the distance made me even angrier, and I lay with my hands behind my head, fuming. The diamond of my ring dug into the palm of my right hand. I tugged it off and slapped it down on the night table. Then, impulsively, I picked up my phone and dialed, the same way I had when Carter had ditched me for the dog shows all those months ago.

He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, Carter,” I said cheerfully. “It’s Phoebe. Whatcha up to?”

Carter looked like his normal self again—all brown corduroy and farmhand-styled hair. When he opened the door to me, I noticed right away that he’d moved things around—the teeter-totter and flexible tunnel pushed over to the wall, the loveseat moved closer to the TV. There were drag marks in the carpet, as though he’d moved everything within the past ten minutes or so. Empress Ming, reclining on a jade-green velvet dog bed in the corner, looked up when I stepped into the room. Her mane of white hair flopped into her eyes.

“How’ve you been?” Carter asked, jamming his hands down into his pockets.

“Good. Busy. We’ve been doing standardized tests all week.” I hadn’t said anything about Jerry during the phone call. I’d hoped Carter would have either the intuition not to ask, or no intuition at all.

“That’s cool. The Empress won Best of Show in Tucson. I just got back in town the day before yesterday.” He stretched his long body to reach the remote and snapped off the TV. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Yeah, I’ll take a Coke, if you’ve got one.” I followed him into the kitchen. His pants weren’t intended to be baggy, but on his body they looked that way anyway. “Congratulations on your win.”

“Thanks. The Danforths were happy. They’re thinking about getting another Chinese crested from the same breeder. I’m kind of into the idea. It wouldn’t be much more work, but it’d be more money.”

I took the Coke he handed me. Empress Ming was sniffing around my feet, snuffling deeply. She could probably smell Pepper. “I’m surprised they aren’t worried about sibling rivalry.”

“They are, actually. They’re trying to find a doggie shrink in the area who makes house calls. There’s one, but she mainly deals in large breeds.”

“Is there a difference?”

He shrugged. “Beats me. Probably. Little dogs do seem to think differently from big dogs. And the Empress probably won’t like sharing the attention. Speaking of sibling rivalry, I heard your sister won that show. Congratulations.”

“Thanks, yeah. They’re getting married next month.”

“I know, I saw the promos for it on TV. Bet you can’t wait to gain a sleazebag brother-in-law. What do your folks think?”

I leaned against the counter while he poured himself a Sprite, trying to let the comment about Rhett roll off my back. “They’re just sort of going along with it. I think they expected that anyone Madison married would be…sort of a character.”

Carter laughed. “That’s putting it nicely. So did you ever hear back from the dud your roommate set you up with at Club Cabo?”

“Once, but I didn’t call him back. How about you?”