Outtakes from a Marriage (16 page)

I walked home wondering why, in my youth, I used to get so terribly annoyed by the catcalls from workers on construction sites or from gangs of teenagers lurking on corners. I had no idea then that one day I would no longer be noticed by men at all. I would become, as far as most men were concerned, invisible.

But this didn’t happen, as one might suspect, when I became pregnant with Ruby. Actually, I discovered that there is a huge segment of the male population that finds pregnant women quite sexy.
“¡Hola! ¡Mamacita!”
these men would call out to me with accompanying kissing noises as I waddled across the street. Joe and I were still living downtown then (Alison had moved to L.A. and Beth had gotten married and moved uptown). They flirted with me in local bodegas and eyeballed me on subways and sang to me when I walked past their stoops.

And then, when Ruby was born and all my forays into the outside world included her, it was as if I suddenly possessed a hideous physical deformity. Men didn’t look at me—if anything, they averted their gaze as I struggled down the steps of my building or onto a bus with her stroller. Catching my eye would instill an obligation to assist, and most men in my neighborhood had their own women and kids they weren’t helping out. After Ruby was born, I only received attention from old women who descended on the stroller like pigeons, cooing lovingly at Ruby and scolding me in Russian or Spanish for not having her head covered or having enough layers on her.

Now, though, walking through an early-evening snow flurry with my fresh long locks cascading around my flushed cheeks, I felt beautiful, mysterious, blond, and young…looking. Nobody would ever find out who sent in those posts, I decided. Joe would never bring legal proceedings against Gawker—it would just draw more attention to the gay charges. At the corner, while waiting for the light, I noticed that the driver of a delivery truck was staring at me, and when the light changed he gave me a little honk and a big smile. I gave him a big smile right back.

In our lobby, I was greeted with startled exuberance by our doorman, Luis, and when I opened the door to our apartment, Sammy ran into my arms, as he always did. He galloped right into my open arms, and when I lifted him joyfully up onto my hip, he pulled back his little hand and slapped me across the face as hard as he could.

“You’re not my mommy!” he cried.

It was a reflex. His hand had connected with a part of my lip that was still agonizingly sore from the injections, and my own hand shot forward, landing flat on his little cheek with a crisp slap. He blinked, startled for a moment. And then he screamed.

Ruby stood, wide-eyed and motionless, at the end of the foyer.

“It’s okay!” I mumbled as Sammy thrashed hysterically in my arms. “It’s okay!”

Then I burst into tears.

[
thirteen
]

J
ust let it all out,” said Dr. James. He was holding fast in his large leather chair while I sat, hunched over, snotting and sobbing in mine.

I was in control when I nodded hello to the building’s doorman and felt a mild, almost pleasant sense of nostalgia when I saw the good magazines and hard chairs, but when I saw Dr. James, I lost it.

“He’s fucking somebody from his show,” I whimpered. “I hit my baby,” I cried. “I’m out of my mind!” I practically screamed, in summation. (And I wondered why Dr. James wasn’t attracted to me.)

“What do you mean, ‘out of your mind’?” Dr. James interrupted.

“You know what I mean. I’m crazy!” I was in snot city. I ripped tissues from the box on the table next to me, and a sizable discard pile of them had already formed on my lap.

“No, you’re not crazy,” said Dr. James.

“Please,” I said. “Look at me.”

“I am.”

“Tell me that you don’t think a lunatic who throws herself at her shrink, who sends him a stupid pen for Christmas, who cybers-talks and spreads rumors about her husband and abuses her children—tell me that that woman isn’t completely insane.”

“You sent the pen?”

“Yes!”

“Hmm,” he said. He looked down for a moment. “Did you also send the basket of cured meats?”

“What? No!”

“Oh.”

“Cured meats? What kind of nut would send you cured meats?” I asked. Then I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh a little. Dr. James was also smiling, despite himself.

“What else have people sent you?”

Dr. James shrugged the way he always did when I tried to ask him anything personal about himself. Questions such as “How old are your children?” “Are you happy in your marriage?” “Do you find me attractive?” “Do you think about me when I’m not here?” were always met with a little shrug and countered with a question about me.
Here it comes,
I thought, sniffling, and he said, “What do you fear most right now, in this situation with Joe?”

I had to think about that for a moment. Finally I said, “I guess I’m afraid of growing old by myself.”

“Why would you grow old by yourself?”

“I mean, if Joe left me for this chick Jenna, I’d be by myself.”

“More than you are now?”

“I’m not by myself now.”

“Exactly.”

What a field day my dad would have had with Benjamin James—a man with two first names.

“I really hate my husband,” I said. Sobbing again. “I hate his guts.”

“It’s okay to cry,” said Dr. James.

“You have to stop crying,” said Beth an hour later and you know, in my experience, friends always offer better advice than shrinks. Beth was right. I really had to stop. We were at Starbucks, seated at our usual spot in front of the window, but that afternoon, even though it was dark and shitting frozen rain outside, I wore sunglasses and wept.

Except for a few short intermissions at Dr. James’s office, I had been crying nonstop ever since I slapped my poor son the night before.

“What is it, PMS?” Joe had asked when he came home and found me weeping in bed.

“Yes, you son of a bitch,” I had sobbed.

Now Beth said gently, “Try to stop.”

My skin, which had been sensitive ever since the microdermabrasion, was raw from the salt in my tears, and my hand shook as I raised my coffee cup to my lips. The hardened glue that was attached to almost every strand of hair on my head cut into my scalp like a crown of thorns.

“Joe…could…take…the kids!” I whimpered.

“What?” Beth said. “Just for a little slap? Come on! My mother slapped us all the time. She still got custody when my parents split up—not that you and Joe are going to.”

“Things are different now. You should have seen the way Ruby was looking at me.”

“She was just upset. Didn’t you tell me that she calmed down once Sammy stopped crying?”

“Yeah.”

“And that Sammy kissed you and said he loved you when you put him to bed?”

Now my tears turned into sobs again.

“You need to talk to somebody,” Beth said.

“I just came from Dr. James’s office,” I said.

“No, I mean a lawyer,” Beth said. “Call Ivan Samsonoff. He’s the best.”

“But getting a lawyer seems so final. I mean, Joe doesn’t even know I know what’s going on.”

“Nor should he, until you get some good legal advice. It kills me that you’re sitting here feeling like the villain when you’re the victim! Joe obviously has no regard for your marriage, and as far as I’m concerned, that translates into having no regard for his children. But like you said, he could use something like the little incident last night to his advantage. You just need to protect yourself.”

Through the smeary glass windowpane I saw a Starbucks employee trying to shovel a path through the slush on the sidewalk, but it was too wet. It was like trying to shovel beach sand once the tide had risen.

“Let’s go,” I said, and when we arose Beth said, “Have you lost weight?”

“Yeah, I think so. I can’t eat. It’s the one good thing that’s come out of this. I’m thinner.”

We walked outside and then Beth grabbed my arm. “Look, I know it must be hard feeling like you have to compete with whoever this Jenna person is. But…I’m saying this as your friend. This cosmetic-treatment stuff is a bottomless pit. I see it all the time. The more stuff you do, the more you feel like you have to do.”

“What’re you talking about?” I said.

“I’m talking about you, Julia! When I first knew you, you didn’t even wear makeup, but you were always the one everybody noticed, wherever we went.”

“No I wasn’t. Alison was.”

“No,
you
were. Because you had so much to say, so many funny stories…”

“Well, I was eighteen. Of course I didn’t need makeup. And everybody has funny stories when they’re eighteen.”

“I’m just saying, maybe you need to start thinking about what you’re going to do with your life…no matter what happens with Joe. In the meantime, I’ll e-mail you Ivan’s number. Call him today.”

Beth grabbed a cab heading downtown, and as I stood on the corner of Broadway and Eighty-fourth Street waiting for the walk signal, I saw them. I saw them, but it was too late to do anything about it. It was Judy and Vicki, the Multi-Culti auction organizers, and they were waving gaily at me from the other corner. Once they’re waving gaily, it’s too late to duck into the CVS. The light changed and I swear they skipped across that intersection, they were so excited to see me. So, I stood there with my swollen, tear-stained face. I stood there, smiling broadly, and thought,
Fuck.

“Finally!” said Vicki. “We’ve been calling and calling. Did you get our messages?”

“Look at your hair! It’s so long!” said Judy. “How did it get so…long?”

The truth was that I actually hadn’t listened to my own voice mail in days—I only listened to Joe’s messages now. But of course I didn’t say this. Instead, I said, “My phone was stolen.”

I said it like that, without giving it a thought. Joe’s lying skills were starting to rub off on me.

“Oh my God!” said Judy. “Right out of your purse?”

“Yup!”

“But can’t you check your messages, anyway?” asked Vicki.

“No,” said Judy, “she had to stop the phone service!”

I hadn’t thought of that, but it was good, so I said, “Yeah, and I haven’t gotten around to getting a new phone and phone number and everything.”

“What a pain,” said Vicki.

“Wait,” said Judy. “I just called you this morning. Who’s your service provider? You must have the same shitty service that I do. I don’t think they shut off your service yet, because I just called you this morning and heard your voice mail. Whoever stole your phone is probably racking up thousands of dollars in overseas calls….”

Judy opened a pocket on the side of her Chloé bag and removed her cell phone. “Here,” she said. She held the phone at arm’s length and squinted at the front of it. She pushed a few numbers and then said, “Here, let’s call you now. Maybe the guy who stole it will answer it.” Judy handed me the phone and I could hear the ringing coming from the earpiece before I got it anywhere near my head. A millisecond later, my phone could be heard loudly ringing from somewhere in the dark fathoms of my oversized bag. It didn’t actually ring; it played a ring
tone
that Ruby had decided to surprise me with several months before. It was the song that broadcast:
I like big butts and I cannot lie…
Ruby had downloaded it onto my phone as a joke after I complained about my weight one too many times. I pretended I didn’t hear the song in my purse and Judy and Vicki pretended with me. When I heard my recorded voice through the earpiece and my bag stopped playing, I slapped the phone shut and said, “You’re right. It’s still on.”

“Right,” said Vicki. “Okay.”

“I’ll have to get that taken care of.”

“Well, in the meantime, we were calling about the auction,” Judy said. “We want to put a notice in next week’s Multi newsletter about Joe doing the auction, and we were wondering if we could get a head shot or something.”

I hadn’t asked Joe about the auction yet, but I knew what his answer would be. What had seemed to be a wonderfully vindictive move at the time—committing him to the auction—would have no effect on him at all, I realized now. Once I told him about it, he would just refuse and he would never have to see these women. But I would.

“Joe can’t do it. I’m really sorry. I just found out this morning. He’s…working.”

“What?” cried Judy.

“Oh, no,” said Vicki. “Eileen is going to have a nervous breakdown. The auction’s only five weeks away!”

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “I have to go.” And I started across the street just as a delivery truck was pulling away from the curb. The driver leaned on his horn and stayed on it, even after I stopped dead in my tracks and glared at him.

“Get the fuck out of the road!” he called to me.

“I’ve got the fucking light, you asshole!” I shrieked.

The driver motioned angrily at the pedestrian light, which steadily illuminated the
DON’T WALK
command.

“Fuck you!” I yelled, and I continued across, almost getting sideswiped by a Vespa in the process. I didn’t look back at Vicki and Judy, I just walked on across the street, trying not to think about the playdate lists from which Sammy’s name would soon be crossed off. Vicki and Judy were talkers, and I could just hear their reports about how “unbalanced” I seemed. How “unstable.” I had heard these words used to describe other mothers, and I have to admit I avoided playdates with their kids. Who wouldn’t?

When I got home, the apartment was empty. Catalina must have gone out to the grocery store, I thought, and then I started to tear the place apart. I was like an addict looking for a fix. I pulled out all of Joe’s clothes drawers, looked in his pockets and in his gym bags and in his medicine cabinet. I searched under his side of the mattress and on top of our tallest armoire. I had no idea what I was hoping to find, but I was feeling the adrenaline rush of the hunt and flew through the house like a madwoman. I dumped out the drawers of Joe’s desk and riffled through his receipts, looking for evidence of presents or hotel rooms—and I found dozens of receipts for presents and hotel rooms. Actors are always buying presents and they’re always staying in hotels. The receipts really told me nothing, but I was getting a second wind. His computer! I grabbed his laptop and was just about to open it when I heard the front door open.

“Hello?” sang Catalina from the front hall. I heard her set down a grocery bag on the hall table before wandering into the living room. I was seated at Joe’s desk with papers strewn all around me.

“Hi, Catalina,” I said. “I’m just looking for something.” I pretended I had an itch in my eye. I didn’t want her to see that I had been crying.

“I’ll help you,” Catalina said with a sympathetic smile.

“No, it’s not here,” I said. “It’s okay.”

“Are you okay, Julia?” Catalina asked.

“No,” I said. “I really don’t feel very well.”

“Is because you no eat!” Catalina said. “I bought the favorite chicken soup. From the Jewish store. I make you lunch.”

“No, thanks, Catalina, you go ahead. I’m not hungry.”

“No, come eat. You feel better after!
¡Barriga llena, corazón contento!
” Catalina had said this many times to the kids.

Full tummy, happy heart.
A peasant’s credo.

“Okay, let me put this stuff away first.”

I stuffed the papers back into the drawers. I pushed the file cabinet back under the desk and fixed a pile of books I had knocked over. Catalina had discovered this amazing chicken soup at a nearby kosher deli, and she and the kids and I ate it at least once a week. Sometimes with noodles. Sometimes without. Now the smell of the soup being reheated on the stove made me a little hungry and I walked into the kitchen, where Catalina was setting up a place at the table.

“Sit,” she said, smiling warmly, and I sat. Catalina had sliced a baguette, still warm from the French bakery, and placed it on a plate with some butter. I watched her ladle the soup into a bowl and I thought about her own children, as I often did when Catalina was taking care of me, as she was now, and as she had done right after Sammy was born. Her kids were grown now—her son managed a Days Inn in New Jersey and her daughter was getting her master’s in education from Hunter College—but I thought about them waiting when they were children, waiting just like me, for their meal, for their mother’s warm touch.