Live a Little (36 page)

“We had a deal. Woman broke it.” He wipes a froth of Guinness off his lip.

“For the love, Arl, listen to yourself. You sound like a refugee from a fifties spaghetti western! She didn’t do it on purpose. These things happen. And we deal with it. We don’t run away and stick our head in a carburetor. Nobody’s perfect. Birth control isn’t perfect. Hell, self-control isn’t perfect.

You’re willing to throw away a whole
relationship
because of a mistake that reveals absolutely nothing about the way you really feel about each other? About how happy you can be while you get old together?”

“Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black,” Arlo says simply.

I freeze.
Dear God, he’s right.

This is the first thing I think as I ponder Arlo’s observation on the cesspool that is the Rose marriage. The second is:
What if, contrary to popular opinion, there are worse things than a ten-year-old affair when it comes to the survival of a marriage? What if
I’m
the one throwing the baby out with the bathwater? What if I don’t take Phil back and he turns out to be a genius at IRA investment?

Embarrassment makes me aggressive. “How could you possibly kick her out of her own house? With Fina? At a time like this. That is low.”

“I never said she had to get out of the house. Of course it’s her friggin’ house. I just walked out. I’ve been sleeping on the floor of the shop.” Arlo pulls a bag of chew out of his pocket and looks at it yearningly. I hope no other woman gets to benefit from Sue’s housebreaking methods. “Did she tell you that?” He looks pissed.

“Uh, not exactly.” She did. Maybe she was just lonely?

“Look,” I say, hoping he doesn’t resume the habit on my watch. “Let’s cut the crap. Do you know what Sue told me when she first met you? She said, ‘Arlo is the only man I’ve ever known who makes me feel like everything that came before was worth it, because it led me to him.’ ”

“She said that?”

“Yeah.”
What’s a little paraphrasing among friends?

Arlo wraps his huge hand around the sweaty stein. “My dad was the biggest shit of a drunk who ever lived. This”—he raises the beer—“is a problem for me sometimes. I like it too much. I don’t think I can give it up. I feel like I gave up enough for people, when I was a kid, in ’Nam, in. . . Fuck it.”

“No one’s asking you to change. If Sue didn’t think you were good father material, you wouldn’t have spent a day with Sarafina. You wouldn’t have spent a minute with her.” Of this, I am sure.

“I just don’t want any kid of mine to live with this.” He sloshes the beer.

I grab Arlo’s mitt of a hand. “Then he won’t.”

“Munchausen syndrome,” Sue says. She picks up the stack of printouts. “ ‘A so-called factitious disorder in which the patient repeatedly reports physical injury or evidence of disease, when in actuality, he has caused the symptoms. The illness is named after Baron von Münchhausen, an eighteenth-century German known for his pathological telling of falsehoods. Although its sufferers may injure or harm themselves, Munchausen originates as a mental illness and must be treated as such by health practitioners.’”

I cross my legs and try to levitate to my happy place. Sue has decided that I am mentally ill. If it is her cause du jour, there is not much I can do about it.

“Faking an attention-getting or chronic disease?
Check.
Engaging in behaviors that perpetuate contact with the medical establishment?
Check.
Going so far as to hurt oneself?
Check.
Reluctance by patient to allow family contact with health-care providers?
Check.
Extensive knowledge of medical terminology, including pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures?
Check.
Eagerness to undergo medical testing?
Check.
Oh my God, listen to this one: ‘Identity problems or low self-esteem.’
Check, check, check!
”

“All I did was fake a couple of doctors’ appointments and shave my head. I didn’t even nick myself,” I say.

Sue drops the pile of papers on her dining room table. “I think you have it. You need to see a psychiatrist right away.”

“Wouldn’t that just aggravate the condition because I’d be going to another doctor?” I tease.

“
Why
can’t you take this seriously? I’m just trying to help you.”

I lean over and flick off the kitchen TV before Laurie can come on and annoy me further. “Sue, I don’t have Munschnauzer, or whatever it’s called. Haven’t we talked enough about this already? I can’t come clean until I know for sure the telethon money’s been good and spent and Laurie’s job is secure and, you know, other stuff. Besides, I think you have to benefit from the attention you get from the illness itself. The way I see it, I’m benefiting from my own steam, from my own work, and the cancer only indirectly.” I inhale a quasi-furious breath. “I can’t very well claim to be a breast-cancer advocate and survivor artist if I don’t have it!”

“You don’t have to yell!” Sue yells.

I take it down a notch, my attempt to locate the happy place abandoned. “Look, I want to tell them the truth, but I can’t right now, because then what will happen to Laurie’s credibility? And the Breast Cancer Alliance budget for next year? And my gallery pieces? And my guest spot on Laurie’s show? And my column? And the book deal? I know this can’t go on forever, but a lot of people depend on me because of it. I can’t just let them down.” I think of Jean, of Doreen, of the other women from the support group, the women who watch me on Laurie’s show, and the money from the sale of my bust constructions that has funded, if not breast-cancer research itself, a nice chaise for the support-group lounge and a subsidy for member child care.

Sue pushes back her chair and hoists herself upward. “I can’t stand it anymore. I feel so guilty. I can barely look your mom or Phil or the kids in the eye. You’re out of your mind, you know that?”

“I tried to tell them! They didn’t listen, remember?”

“I never thought it would go this far.” Sue’s bottom lip quivers.

“This is the thanks I get for fixing things with Arlo and putting your family back together for you? For massaging your disgusting pregnancy bunions and running your baths and shopping for the goddamn black Perigord truffles and Tibetan saffron you want, even though I had to go all the way to Burlingame for it, and driving Fina to school forty-five miles away every damn day while you rail at Rachael Ray just for being cute?” Now that Arlo has agreed to give biological fatherhood a shake, I am here to help Sue move back into her house, I’m not here to get crucified for past sins, and I am pissed.

“Oh, you’re going to take credit for fixing my family, too?” She raises her eyes to the sky in appeal. “Thank you, queen of the universe!”

“
I’m
the one who went to talk some sense into Arlo! What were you doing while I was traipsing around fixing things up? Lying on your fat ass eating bonbons and watching soaps, that’s what! While Tamarind sinks into obsolescence because
la capitana
has decamped for some poolside moping.”

Sue points one of her short, blunt-nailed little fingers at me. “Don’t ever say that about Tamarind! I kept you in frittatas for more years than you deserve!”

“Is Tamarind all you care about? Your little”—I point my nose in the air— “ hoity-toity rabbit-food palace for the appetite-impaired?” I regret the words as soon as they come out. “Sue,” I say immediately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that—”

“Of course you did.” She clings to the butcher block as if faint.

“No, really, this conversation has gotten totally off track. Sue,
please.
”

“Quel,” Sue says tiredly, “we both know we’ll be friends tomorrow, and the day after, and probably next month and next year, so I’m not going to waste our time pretending otherwise. But here’s the deal: I am going to take a step back for a while. I’m going to grow this baby, and then I’m going to raise it. I wouldn’t presume to give you an ultimatum or anything, but this is how I feel: I don’t want to be around your family right now. I know what’s going on. They don’t. It sucks. I can’t do it. I don’t have the energy.”

She shakes her curly head and levels me with her clear gray gaze. “You’ve changed, Quel, you have. I’m glad you’re living your dream and all, I really am, but I’m not sure if the Raquel of your dreams is the one I would have become friends with, if I had met her first.”

CHAPTER 27

A See’s Candies Moment

I am awakened by pebbles hitting my window at 2:46
A.M.
Goddammit, Phil, can’t you just remember what day it is? Is that so hard?

I roll over and burrow under the blankets, willing the noise to cease. I had a terrible time getting to sleep, what with the fight with Sue and my children’s continued unexplained absences, which could point to all manner of scenarios, all of them bad.

Tat. Tat, tat, tat.

Shit.

Phil and I have maintained separate residences since the, well, separation. I think we both like it this way, the safety net of marriage unfastened but not as yet discarded and consigned to the Dumpster. That doesn’t preclude our biweekly midnight rendezvous, which are scheduled for Mondays and Wednesdays.

It is Thursday.

Tat. Tat, tat, tat, TAT.

What’d he throw, a boulder? Incensed and bleary-eyed with exhaustion, I extract myself from the tangle of sheets, stub my toe on the bedpost, yelp, and feel my way toward the window.

“Go away,” I hiss. “What do you think this is, the Mustang Ranch?” Nevada’s most famous legal brothel is, what, a mere three hundred miles away? Dear Hubby can go there to get his fix if he can still afford it.

“I think the feds seized the place a couple years ago,” Duke Dunne says. He is standing under my bedroom window, in my rosebushes, looking quite satisfied with himself, if a little out of place. He still looks like Gael García Bernal, but like GGB stuck someplace incongruous and unworthy of his greatness, like Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“What are you
doing
here?” We haven’t seen each other since the accident. As far as I’m concerned, the statute of limitations on our relationship expired along with Duke’s motorcycle. There are things that aren’t meant to be, after all. See how Zen I can be when I am pretty sure what I am doing is illegal in Alabama?

“I have to talk to you,” he says.

“How did you get here?”

“Drove.”

“A car?” It is strange, but he and his freewheeling persona are so linked to beachcombing in my mind that I cannot imagine him taking conventional modes of transportation.

“It’s Freshie’s,” he says, naming the friend he was staying with in Santa Cruz. “Hey, let me in, will you? I gotta take a leak.”

I let him in the front door, not even bothering to tiptoe around or make myself passably attractive. Why bother? Everything is unraveling anyway. Why not give the kids something sordid to tell Phil’s lawyer when the time comes? If Duke wants to spirit me south of the border this time, he can do it with me in my robe and night cream, sans support bra.

After showing Duke to the powder room, I lead him to the kitchen. The sight of Duke Dunne surrounded by the mundane trappings of my real life, the soccer schedules and overloaded trash compactor and commemorative plastic cups from McDonald’s, almost makes me laugh. Strangely, it does not diminish him; it’s the kitchen that looks fake and weird, like someone’s ponderous, mocking idea of a kitchen.

“I’m sorry I woke you up.” Duke reaches out to touch me and seems to reconsider. “I’m going back to Sayulita tomorrow.”

“Do you want some cereal?” He shakes his head, and I pour myself a heaping bowl of peanut-butter puffs and milk and dig in.

“How are you doing?” I say. I have to say, he doesn’t look well, sort of flushed, with matted hair and a hint of body odor I don’t recall from our earlier adventures. I wonder if he’d consent to a shower. We could take one together, to save water. California often has a drought on, you know. It can’t hurt to plan for the future. For the children.

He waves me off. “Whatever. I just wanted to. . . I came over ’cause we never agreed on”—his eyes rake me up and down—“Christ, I’m so fuckin’ into you,” he says.

I drop the spoon, which splashes some milk on Duke’s sleeve. Impulsively, I brush his arm; I feel it tremble under the worn denim. He grabs my face in his hands. My hands travel involuntarily to his arms again. The knotty ropes of muscle under my fingers make me a little dizzy.

“It’s you,” he says.

“What’s me?” I hope he can’t smell my breath. I brushed my teeth before bed, but I did have garlic scampi for dinner. Twice.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he says impatiently.

“Duke,” I say gently. “You’re conflating things. Boredom.

Change. Wanting something different. We don’t really know each other, do we? You were ready for something to happen, and I was there. I’m an idea, that’s all. A bad one.” I am on solid ground when it comes to bad ideas and escapism. In this matter, finally, I am an expert.

Duke kisses me.

As kisses go, it is sloppy and unstudied. Duke’s mouth is gamey with the taste of all-nighter and misconceived ideas. My hands slide into his wild thatch of brown-gold hair. It is thick and slippery, like seal coat. Our teeth slap together once, twice, before we gain traction and sink into the kiss. He is a grunter the way I’ve been told I am a moaner, his every inadvertent utterance a spark that sends flames licking up my belly. This (last) time, I am gratified to discover he is still Duke, still achingly unformed and problematic, not a generic force barging its way into my space with stubble and neediness bared.