Live a Little (23 page)

“I can’t tell if he’s being so solicitous in bed because he’s afraid he’s going to hurt me or if he finds me repulsive,” I say.

Horrors.

“I mean, I know he doesn’t think I’m repulsive—I don’t know why I said that. What I meant was, I think the only reason he has sex with me since the diagnosis is that he’s afraid
I’ll
think he
thinks
I’m repulsive, which is not exactly the same as really thinking I’m, you know, repulsive.” More horror. “Maybe he’s just really tired,” I add weakly.

Kendall Calloway is looking at me knowingly. It makes me want to make excuses for Phil. See how competitive I am? I want Phil to win Best Cancer Husband 2005, even though we’re separated and I don’t even have cancer.

“My girlfriend stopped going down on me when I got it,” Jean the monoboobed, high-powered attorney says. “One day we got into it, and I had a complete breakdown and just started accusing her of all kinds of crazy shit—cheating, not taking out the garbage, favoring her daughter over me. We were both out of our minds. She admitted that the chemo made me taste funny, uh, down there.” Amazingly, Jean smiles at this, as if the memory brings real amusement. “I actually felt a lot better after she said it. I’d been hospitalized for a real shitty staph infection and was in a blaming phase. It was nice to have it validated.”

“Methotrexate and 5-FU should come in flavors!” someone yells.

“Just use chocolate suppositories!”

“We don’t have enough problems, now we’ve got to have sugar-coated pussy?”

“Who wants to have sex, anyway?”

“Me!”

“Not me, but I didn’t want to before, either—”

Before I realize I am laughing, I am crying, big, luscious tears that streak my face while I hiccup my way toward inevitable bladder failure. For the first time in months, I forget about everything that frightens or disappoints and revel in the emancipation of a hearty round of belly laughter.

“Oh! Oh, stop . . . oh God, oh, shit . . .”

Jean and I look at each other with watery, slitted eyes; it is enough to send us spiraling toward another bout of uncontrollable giggles. In this magical moment, I am convinced that the number—$245,325—is worth the lies if it makes these women’s lives any easier. Ain’t rationalization grand?

“We don’t . . . we don’t cobble, we hobble,” I manage to get out.

Jean grabs her giant untethered boob and proffers it in a rude gesture, the female equivalent of Michael Jackson’s crotch grab. “And bobble,” she says.

CHAPTER 17

And Cocoa Butter Prevents Stretch Marks

We are ostensibly grown-ups, yet anyone reading our communiqués would think Phil and I are estranged junior high sweethearts passing notes during class.

You can come pack your suitcase between eleven and three today. I’ll be out. I’d appreciate it if you leave me the green Samsonite in the event that I must travel internationally.

He e-mails back.
Raquel, please give me a chance to explain. I won’t lie to you—yes, I made a big mistake with Tate. But that was a long time ago, and I want to make things right between us. I love you and can’t imagine being with anybody else.

I let that one molder for a cruel, satisfying eleven hours before I respond.
I’m sure you can’t. Imagination has never been your strong suit, Philly.

He writes back immediately.
Raquel, let’s talk. Please. P.

In spite of my pledge to remain aloof, I feel myself soften slightly at Phil’s apparent passion for reconciliation. (Okay, so I set the bar low, but this is the man who bought me the same chintzy peridot necklace not once, not twice, but
three
times for our anniversary. And let’s not forget the time in the not too distant past when I squeezed myself into a black lace teddy complete with thigh-high stockings and feathery thong and presented myself against the backlit walk-in closet for my husband’s pleasure, only to have him take a rain check because—this is a quote—“I have papers to grade.” That’s the sort of crazed ardor we’re dealing with here.)

I decide to take the highish road.
Not yet. Need time to think. Did you put the Xanax somewhere?

In guest bath cabinet, behind flea collars. XXXPhil.

It occurs to me as I read this last message that I am being too hard on Phil. That there is something self-defeating and despotic about my attachment to the idea that I am the smart, sensitive, creative, wronged one. Maybe Phil’s right. Maybe our marriage does burn with the white-hot rightness of star-crossed love. Maybe we belong together for all eternity. Maybe we’ll die together, sexually satisfied and withered, as we spoon under a quilt patched together from our grandchildren’s recycled cloth diapers.

Sure. Maybe I will be recruited as a Hollywood butt double, too.

I quit out of e-mail. Before I can initiate a search for disappointment-numbing meds, the doorbell chimes.

“Rachel? This is your mother. I want you to let me in right now.”

Fuck. Ma. Here. As opposed to there. There being anywhere else. Like, for instance, Eliot’s House of Culinary Torture, at its flagship Woodside location.

I drag myself to the door and let Ma in without checking my mascara. There are only so many points you can lose for smeared mascara when you haven’t changed your underwear for forty-eight hours.

“Hey, Ma.”

“What’s this about divorce?” Ma says with her usual tact— none—as she muscles past me. Apparently, Taylor got to her before I could do damage control. I wonder if Ma and Laurie have had time to confer and decide upon a rescue strategy for poor beleaguered Raquel/Rachel. I wonder if the strategy in question involves anger-management therapy or— petite flare of hope—a destination spa.

I follow Ma into the kitchen and watch her refill her gigantic urn of water, mildly horrified to see that she is using what appears to be an antifreeze container. Equally driven by fear of weight gain and bladder infection, Ma gulps water by the liter. Apparently, there is no real water bottle big enough to flush the engorged kidneys of Minna Louise Schultz Abramson (which, in spite of their frailty, are mysteriously impervious to antifreeze residue). She pops a handful of Eliot-approved vitamins into her mouth and washes them down.

“So you and Phil had a little tiff, eh?” she says.

“I wouldn’t call it little. He cheated on me, Ma.” Part of me is ashamed to be the sort of woman men cheat on; the other is happy as pie to prove to my mother that this one, at least, is not my fault.

“Hmm,” she says, still managing to sound critical.

“What?” I open the fridge door and survey the remains of the breakup feast. At a loss for goals in the aftermath of Phil’s departure, I have decided to regain a mere five of the twelve pounds I’ve lost—enough to grant me the comfort and privilege of unlimited refined-sugar consumption, but not to demote me back into stretch-waisted mom slacks.

I grab a tub of hummus and a spoon and begin eating it without the interference of vegetable or grain.

“My poor sweetie.” Ma reaches up, careful not to break a bone against the marauding shovel of hummus, and strokes my cheek. This sort of empathetic gesture is unusual enough coming from Ma—who adheres to more of the marmot or ferret style of parenting—that I choke. “Do you want to talk about it?” she says.

I am surprised to realize that I do.

In between three-hundred-calorie bites of Dulce de Fat-ass, I detail the incidents that led up to the confrontation with Phil: the arguments, the sexual disinterest, the evasion, the sighting, and finally, the confirmation by Ren that my fears were indeed founded in something besides declining collagen production.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Ma says while I’m awaiting additional commiseration. It takes me a minute to realize the phone is ringing. Certain that it is Phil begging me to consider reconciliation, I let the answering machine pick up. Unfortunately for all concerned, Phil is too cheap to upgrade to voice mail, and Ma hears everything.

“Heeeey, Raquel. ¿
Como estás?
This is Duke. From Mexico? Got your e-mail and, uh, I’m actually coming up to NorCal in a couple days. Thought we could go surfing up in Bolinas or something. Call me.” He rattles off a Southern California exchange. In the background is the unmistakable gurgle of a water bong.

There is also no mistaking the youthful tenor of Duke’s voice or the sexual innuendo behind his words. Briefly, I am glad that Phil and I are splitsville, so I don’t have to answer questions about why a child called Duke wants to go surfing with me in Bolinas in between bong hits. I realize I must have given the boy the impression that I was single and shopping. How could I have done that?

Ma may have the nurturing instincts of a sharp-toothed rodent, but she is no fool. “Who’s Duke? Are you seeing someone?” she says.

“What? Of course not.” Unwittingly, my mind flings up a mug shot of Viggo Mortensen, and I feel myself blush. (Unfortunately, he is nude.)

Ma reads me like a NOW pamphlet. “So you
are
seeing someone.”

“Ma, I would never—”

“I’m not criticizing, hon. I think it’s great.”

“You do?” The words gush out before I can think.

“Does he have, you know, the skills?”

“Um . . .” I think Ma might be assessing the vocational pedigree of my lover: doctor, lawyer, or presidential hopeful. Inappropriate hilarity engulfs me and I almost laugh, recalling the many, many dates and a few boyfriends who were found wanting because they weren’t, in Ma’s words, “exactly MENSA material.”

A moment passes before I realize that my mother is actually talking about something much, much worse. She wants to know if he—Fictitious Genius/Lover—is good in bed. If, in between solving artificial intelligence conundra and negotiating world peace, he performs cunnilingus on me without my asking. If he contorts himself into mad pretzels in order to simultaneously stimulate my inner ear and rouse my G-spot, as per the instructions in
Today’s Kama Sutra
(to which he subscribes, of course). If I have, for the first time ever, multiple orgasms. Multiple orgasms so multiplicitous I’d have to date a mathematician to keep track of them.

I respond quickly, before she can scar me forever by raising the pressing issue of manual clitoral stimulation or reclaim the word “pussy” for the feminists.

“Ma, I said I’m not—”

“Rachel, don’t lie to your mother! I can see it in your complexion! You’re absolutely glowing!”

“I’m not—”

Ma grabs my hand. “He treats you right?” Shades of
La Cosa Nostra.

“Yes, he is extremely competent,” I finally lie in the soulless tone of a telephone survey taker, if only to get Ma off my back. This is all quite hilarious, since I am not presently having carnal knowledge of anyone, my husband, self, and Viggo included.

Ma smiles, exposing sharp, yellowing canines. “I’m damn glad to hear it. Damn glad. We didn’t burn our bras and fight for equal pay so you kids could lie down like the little wifey and let the man have all the fun.”

There are some things that move forward in the face of cancer, adultery, gluttony, pathological lying, and impending divorce. High school reunions are one of them.

“Oh God,” Sue says when I call to ask her to be my date for the event. “Why? Like having to go to my own isn’t torture enough?”

“It
is
the twenty-fifth. People always go to the twenty-fifth, don’t they?”

“Unless they’re morbidly obese.” Sue coughs discreetly, or maybe it’s a delicate dry heave. “That’s where you’re supposed to look for your second husband.”

We examine the unfortunate yet inarguable truth: that it is preferable to attend your reunion having been an executive at Enron or molested a deer than to show up fat. At this point I decide I hate most people.

“I wonder if Scotty Mulgrew’s still got hair,” I say to cheer myself up. I’d always thought he was cute in a Bigfoot sort of way, with that thick unibrow and big hairy arms. Nice, too.

“They never do,” Sue says.

“There’s a kid I should have dated. Here’s a story about Scotty: We had this biology teacher, Mr. Barry, who was a big drunk, and he always had this mug, but it had schnapps mixed in with the coffee. Everybody knew it.”

“Let me guess: popular?” Sue says.

“Oh yeah. But he was an acquired taste. The brains weren’t too keen, but the jocks and the rebels loved him. He was one of those great, anti-authoritarian pervy drunks who you could just tell the principal hated but couldn’t get fired. Mr. Barry once threw a penny in the air to show us some scientific principle, and it fell down a girl’s shirt. Another time Mr. Barry blew up the lab. But everybody liked the guy, so Scotty hid his drink inside a dissected shark when the cops came. I remember wishing I’d thought of it.” Instead, hating myself, I cowered and plucked at my arm hair while the firemen picked through the remains.

“Oh, and there was this other guy . . .” To my profound dismay, I find I cannot remember the name of one of my most Significant Crushes, a smart, punkish skater who decorated his backpack with safety pins and went to college somewhere elite and arty in the Pacific Northwest.

“Maybe I shouldn’t go. It’s going to be grotesque. All the popular girls are going to have husbands and disgustingly well-adjusted kids named Britney and Jaden and wear the same size they wore in high school because all they’ve done since 1985 is go to the gym while their husbands run the international marketing division at Oracle. None of the interesting people are going to come anyway. And it’s at some boring country club in Morgan Hill that’s basically a retirement community because the class treasurer co-owns it with her third husband, who I hear is ancient and loaded and has pec implants.”