The Trouble with Lexie (9 page)

“Hey, Mom.” Lexie's voice was singularly toned. Flat and thin.

“You know what the worst thing about your father was?” Mitzy often started phone calls as if they were in the middle of a conversation.

“Mmm . . . his beer and cigarette breath?” The horrible ways of Bert were a topic Mitzy liked to revisit. Usually, Lexie only half-listened. She didn't find Bert any more offensive than Mitzy. If Lexie knew where Bert was, she'd certainly talk to him with the same sense of duty she felt when she spoke to her mother every week.

“Nope. And it wasn't the cheatin' either, but something like that.” Mitzy made a short breathy pop and Lexie knew she was exhaling the smoke from her menthol Kool.

“Are you going to tell me, or am I supposed to guess?” Lexie undressed to her panties and bra and got in bed. She shifted in close to Peter and put her cold feet under his legs. She'd barely had physical contact with him since the afternoon with Daniel. Peter's
legs felt foreign to Lexie, as if she'd forgotten the way his body worked and would have to learn the map of him all over again.

“Well, you're a psychiatrist, you can guess.” The sound of ice cubes in a glass punctuated this last sentence. Lexie wondered if her mother had switched from beer to hard liquor. Although, it was probably a Coke.

“I'm not a psychiatrist, Mom, I've told you that many times.”

Peter pulled down the covers, crawled to the end of the bed, picked up Lexie's left foot and started massaging. She shut her eyes in relief.

“Yeah, but if I say counselor it sounds like you work at a summer camp or something. Like you're the canoe instructor!” Mitzy snorted and laughed. Lexie couldn't even smile.

“Why can't you say
therapist
?”

“Isn't that an everyday word for psychiatrist?”

“Fine. Psychiatrist. I don't care.” Peter looked at Lexie and mimed a laugh. He put down her left foot and picked up her right.

“Okay, so do your psychiatry work and guess what the worst thing about your father was.”

“The hair in his ears?”

“What? He never had no hair in his ears!”

“His truck with the cab that always smelled like French fries and gasoline?”

“No! It's a mental thing. It's like a mental torture.”

“A mental thing, huh?” Peter stopped rubbing. Lexie gave him a pleading look and he picked up her foot and went at it again.

“Yeah. Mental games, you know?”

“He never made you feel pretty? Or loved? He never rubbed your feet?” Lexie said, and Peter looked up and winked at her. Lexie wanted to weep at his sweetness.

“Nope. Here's what it was: He had these flings with those women, see?”

“Yeah, at the bar.” Mitzy had bitched about this regularly over the years. When she was a little kid, Mitzy often screamed at Bert about “dipping his wick” and “forking his tuna.” Those metaphors, and others, made young Lexie wonder about all the strange candle-making and food-eating trouble that could befall a bartender. As soon as she was old enough to realize that her mother was hollering at her father about sex, Lexie would turn on the kitchen radio and do the dishes, or simply leave the apartment. Anything to avoid seeing images in her head of Bert doing things she'd rather not associate with the idea of
father.

“Right. And those flings weren't the worst part. The worst part was that I knew about it and when I said something to him, he acted like I was all crazy and out of control accusing, you know, and he was all normal. You see what I'm saying?”

“I think so.” Lexie watched Peter dote on her feet. How could she have wanted more than this? How could she have been so ungrateful?

“He was, like, brainwashing me into thinking that something was wrong with me, when, meanwhile, he's down at that bar sticking his wanger in anything that'll let him get close enough. Now you tell me who the wrong one was?”

“The wrong one?”

“Who was bad? Me or him?”

“I can see how his making you feel like you were the bad one would be its own sort of torture.”

“So you get what I'm saying?”

“Yeah.” Lexie pulled her foot from Peter and he slid up and lay
by her side. She didn't deserve Peter. “I get what you're saying. It's cruel-hearted to do something shitty to someone and then to act as if they're the one who's wronged you.”

“Exactly!” Mitzy said.

“It's like the person who's having the affair is trying to build a case against their partner. Like they're trying to gather evidence to support their case, to support their reprehensible actions.”

“Yup!”

“And then the adulterer shifts the entire framework through which they now view the relationship and their partner, and that in turn shifts their reality, while the person who's been cheated on is living in the old reality. It's a total mind fuck.” And Lexie herself, she thought, was a total mind fucker.

“Now you get me! Now you see why I was so cranky all those years! I was livin' a mind fuck!” Mitzy sounded elated to be understood. Lexie had never before clarified or reiterated her mother's thoughts. She had always believed it was service enough to simply allow Mitzy to talk about this stuff.

“Yeah, you were living a mind fuck.” Lexie looked at Peter and a bolt of terror shot through her. What if Peter found out about what she had done? What if Jen Waite found out? God, why wasn't there a rewind and erase button in life?

“Your father was a royal asshole.” More clinking ice.

“You can't define someone by a single action. People are more multifaceted than that.” Lexie hated that there was a way in which she and Bert were alike. Lust was lust was lust was lust. And it didn't matter if you were screwing a thirty-year-old divorcée on the sticky, beer-soaked bar after closing, or if you were screwing
a lawyer in Frette sheets at the Inn of the Lake. At their essential core, the acts were entirely equal.

“Oh, so Miss Psychiatrist is getting all sympathetic for her dad, huh?” Ice clink. Ice clink. Ice clink.

“Mom, I'm sorry he did that to you. Honestly. I am.” Lexie looked at Peter when she said this. She needed to apologize to him without letting him know she'd committed a crime against their relationship. Like her father before her, Lexie was a dumb-ass cheater. Which, in her book, was far worse than a simple dumb-ass. Lexie's actions, like Bert's, bordered on cruel.

When she got off the phone, Lexie felt relieved that she wouldn't have to talk to her mother again for another six days. Mitzy's birthday was on Saturday and Lexie would call her first thing, as she always did on her birthday (a necklace had already been ordered and was due to arrive soon). Lexie rolled onto one side and backed herself into Peter. He threw his arms and legs around her. A human blanket. Lexie shut her eyes and tried to release thoughts of both Mitzy and Daniel. She wanted to focus on being there with only Peter.

“I'm sorry I've been so bitchy about the car and everything else,” she said.

“You're not bitchy.” Peter kissed the top of her head. “You work hard, you're tired, you're entitled to feel a little fed up with things.”

Those words made Lexie feel even worse. To compensate for this bad feeling, or maybe to overcome it, Lexie turned so she was facing Peter. She reached down and shook hands with his dick, up down, up down,
so nice to meet you.
Peter responded appropriately. He tugged off Lexie's panties. Lexie opened the drawer in
her nightstand and took out a spermicidal film. It was around the same size and texture as a Listerine Breath Strip and Lexie couldn't help but equate her vagina to her mouth each time she inserted one. Before Peter could take charge, Lexie climbed on top of him. Her stomach was far too bloated for the weight of a body. Even one as reedy as Peter's.

When they were done, Lexie rolled off Peter, sucking in her stomach so tightly it felt as if there were a railroad spike pinned through her belly button. Peter remained on his back and fell sleep—instantly, like a man who'd dropped off a cliff. On her back, Lexie repeatedly jammed her toenail into her ankle until she felt a smeary droplet of blood. She'd fucked up big time and she needed to make amends.

L
EXIE GOT SEVEN TEXT MESSAGES FROM DANIEL DURING HER
drive to work. She read them by holding the phone above the steering wheel so she could see both the (nearly empty) road and the phone. Each time her phone pinged, the Daniel bell rang down her spine. It was amazing that she knew he was an asshole, she hated him for what he'd brought out in her, but at the sight of his texts, she wanted to be with him again.

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Lexie said aloud, quoting Woody Allen who had misquoted Emily Dickinson. Once upon a time Lexie had known the Dickinson poem from which that famous line was taken. But Woody put it more concisely, more simply. She preferred his misquote although she shuddered to think she'd have anything in common with a man who cheated on his partner with her daughter and then misquoted Emily Dickinson to justify it. Yes, Lexie's heart yearned for a liar and cheater, but she was not Woody Allen. Lexie was going to end this thing.
She was going to shut it off and shut it down so she could return to the person she was before she met Daniel Waite.

As if to prove how despicable she was, Lexie forced herself to answer the question of who she would pick if the world were about to blow to smithereens and she
had to have sex with one person
during her last hour on Earth. Daniel, goddammit. She'd be dead in the end anyway, so she might as well enjoy the one who made her feel like she'd live forever.

Lexie turned into the faculty lot at Ruxton. She parked the car, killed the engine, and then picked up her phone. Daniel's last text:
Must see the panties you have on today.
They were yellow, a color Lexie would wear only in panties, and they matched her bra. Everything lace with a tiny pearl at the center of the bra, and another pearl at the top center of the panties. Lexie exclusively wore stuff that she wouldn't mind getting caught in. As soon as there was a hole in the seam, a stain from her period, a wire slipping out, she threw the garment out. A continual attempt to obliterate the bad-underwear years.

Getting dressed that morning, Lexie had been aware of how the yellow looked against her suede-colored skin. She knew it made a striking contrast. But she also knew that Peter would be the only one to appreciate it. She'd even lifted her shirt and dropped her fitted slacks before walking out the door. “What do you think?” she had asked Peter. He laughed and kissed her between the breasts.

Lexie replied to Daniel's text:
We need to talk.

Daniel replied
:
We need to kiss.

Lexie wrote
:
Through various conversations at school it has come out that you are completely and truly married. Also, you've always had
your apartment in Boston. Don, Janet, and others use it from time to time. Do not contact me again.
Lexie hit send. She scrunched up her face in agony. Why did she want
him
to be her last fuck on Earth?!

The phone rang. It was Daniel. Lexie stared at his name, her heart flipping like a dolphin against the walls of her rib cage. With a half-conscious impulsivity, she lowered the phone to her crotch and held it there like a vibrator until it went to voice mail. “I've gone completely nutzo,” Lexie said aloud.

Despite her shame (Lexie saw the shame as a little fat-filled balloon sitting on the bottom of her stomach) and heartache (which sat, well, in her heart) Lexie deliberately pulled her head up and lengthened her stride as she crossed the campus. In changing her physiognomy she was hoping to change her soul. Yes, her body craved this motherfucker, but she craved marshmallow Peeps, too, and she didn't sit around and eat those all day. (Although maybe she would if they were right in front of her, stacked by the case in her kitchen.)

Lexie paused at the door to her office. She texted Peter:
Turning my phone off for the rest of the day so I can catch up. If you have to call, call the office phone. I LOVE YOU MORE THAN EVERYONE IN THE WORLD! Xxx
And then she added
xxxxx
so that there would be more kisses on her text to Peter than on her earlier texts to Daniel.

Lexie turned off the phone. Completely off, so that it would take a minute (eternity in computer and phone time) to start up again. She placed it inside the zipper pocket of her purse. As she was unlocking the door, Dot Harrison came charging down the brick walkway. For an eighty-year-old who looked like an egg in an orange dress, Dot moved fast.

“We need to talk!” Dot said, as she reached Lexie.

“Good. You're my favorite talker in this school.”

“You only like me because I hate that old prude Janet Irwin.” Dot barreled into the office ahead of Lexie and sat on the couch. “You got any coffee?”

“Yup.” Lexie went to the machine in the corner and made a pot.

“None of that girly stuff. The real deal. With lead in it.”

“That's what I'm making.” Lexie sat in the wing chair opposite Dot, crossed her legs and looked over at her purse containing the shutdown cell phone. Shit. She truly had a problem if she couldn't relax while the phone was off.

“I need some advice,” Dot said.

“Sure.” Lexie forced herself to look at Dot, to
be
there.

“My sister-in-law and I are going to the outlet shops at Wrentham Village this coming weekend and I want to buy a dress to wear to your wedding.”

“That's so nice,” Lexie said.

“So, two things I want to make sure of before I spend all that money.”

“Yeah?” Lexie recrossed her legs, left over right this time.

“One: Am I invited to the wedding?”

“God, yes! Amy's a bridesmaid.”

“I know, and I figured if Amy was invited I might be invited, too. I am one of the girls, as you know.”

“Yes, you are.” Lexie wanted to laugh. She and Amy frequently sat with Dot during lunch, the three of them gossiping about everyone from Janet Irwin to the Russian exchange student whose head was nearly the size and exactly the shape of a keg. But Lexie
would never put Dot in the same category as Amy. Dot was more of a fabulous grandmother than
one of the girls
.

“You're not inviting the assholes, are you?”

“No, no assholes. You, Amy . . .” Lexie paused as she thought she heard her phone buzz. She remembered it was off and refocused. “You, Amy . . . oh, Don and his wife because, you know, he's my boss.”

“Well, yeah, you gotta invite Don. Is that coffee ready?”

“I can pour midbrew.” Lexie got up and poured two cups into the blue ceramic mugs Peter had bought her at a craft show at the church near their house. Coffee sizzled and singed on the burner plate as it kept brewing. The smell reminded Lexie of rotted out, derelict buildings, like the one that backed into the apartment complex where she grew up. “So what's the other thing you want to be sure of before you buy a dress? By the way, you don't have to buy a new dress. It's a casual wedding.” At a certain point in life, when your body had reformatted into its last incarnation and your skin was so wrinkled that you resembled an apple doll, did it matter what dress you wore? Maybe, Lexie thought. Maybe what we hope for in our imaginary personae can be realized through what we throw on our exteriors. Elegant dresses, silky underwear, and good shoes might be the pathway to the ideal self.

“Oh, I'm dressing up. I'm getting my hair done and everything.” Dot's hair was comprised of thin, white dashes across her scalp. It resembled the blond hair on Lexie's forearms.

“Well, don't get your hair done this week. The wedding's not until December.” Lexie handed Dot her coffee. She sat in the chair and put her own coffee on the side table with the checkerboard leather inlay. Everything in Lexie's office reminded her of '80s
movies about rich people. She had never asked, but she assumed the furniture was castoffs from the redecorated homes of the board of directors.

“I know, I know. So, here's my second item of business. Before I spend money on this new dress I want to make sure you're going to go through with this and marry the guy.”

Lexie was taken aback. Instantly, she was visited by her old bunkmate, Anxiety. “Why would you ask that?” Lexie kept her voice calm so as not betray her internal turmoil.

“Because at my age, when you buy a dress, you only have a certain number of years to wear it. See, if you amortize each purchase over the time you have left on the planet, clothes are pretty damn expensive.”

“No, I mean, why would you think that I wouldn't go through with the marriage?” Anxiety turned on an electric teakettle in Lexie's stomach. She could feel the water heating up and prayed it wouldn't start to boil.

“Oh, that.” Dot waved her hand. “I think you probably will. But you never know. Sometimes the happiest-seeming couples are the most miserable people around.”

“But Peter and I are genuinely happy. Can't you tell we're happy?” They'd been deliriously happy until she slept with Daniel Waite. Before then, Peter was Lexie's final lover in the last hour of mankind on Earth.

“Honey, don't get all worked up. This is about nothing more than the dress and me wanting to be abso-fucking-lutely positive I'm going to wear the damn thing before I spend money on it.”

“So you think we're well matched?”

“Oh, well . . .” Dot paused.

“Well what?!” No one had ever doubted her pairing with Peter. Most people claimed they were perfect together.

“Let's see here . . .” Dot scrunched up her already contracted face.

“What?!” Lexie kicked out her leg, as if to tap Dot on the shin.

“Well, I see you as someone who is forward-moving, expanding. You won't abide this private school routine long—you're gonna bust out and see the world one day.”

“Yeah, I want to travel—”

“I'm not talkin' travel. What I'm saying is that you're not settled. You're not contained. And I'm not sure if you ever will be.”

“And Peter is contained?” Lexie knew the answer. That Peter wasn't searching for anything and was content with his life was one of the things that drew her toward him originally. But maybe it was a quality that flipped on you: What you love in the beginning, you hate in the end.

“Hell, yeah, he's contained. One job his whole life.”

“Aren't all artists one-jobbers?” The internal teakettle was simmering. Lexie eyed her purse on the desk and considered how to sneak a Klonopin without Dot knowing.

“I suppose. And he's been in Massachusetts since birth, right?”

“What's wrong with Massachusetts? You live here. I live here.” She could claim a headache and tell Dot that the Klonopin was a Tylenol.

“It's a fine state. Half the residents are box-brained assholes but the other half are pretty darn great.” Dot took another sip of coffee.

“Do you think I shouldn't marry him?” There was always the option of telling Dot about her anxiety and simply taking the damn pill in front of her.

“Hell no. Everyone needs a first husband. That's how you figure out what you don't want!” Dot laughed at her own joke. Lexie faked it.

“So you, who has had
three
marriages, think he's my first of more than one husband?” Lexie hoped this motherfucking anxiety would fade away on its own. She didn't want to be a pill-popper.

“I had three because I'm dumb. It took
two
first husbands to figure out what I don't want.”

“Peter is definitely what I want.” Lexie eyed her purse. “I love him.”

“I'm sure you'll have many wonderful years together. But if you don't, remember that the only life worth living is the one where there's been numerous fuckups.”

“Wait. Do you think I'm fucking up?!” What if Lexie punched herself in the stomach and manually killed the teakettle and its boiling bubbles of anxiety?

“For godsakes, I'm an eighty-year-old shriveled hag with a brain like a leaky outhouse. Shit just drips out!” Dot readjusted the string of pearls on her neck and Lexie suddenly saw her as vulnerable, too, like Lexie herself. It must be scary getting old.

“OK, I'm sorry. I was making a big deal out of nothing.” If it was nothing, why was Lexie so anxious? She had always believed that Dot possessed a third eye that peered into other dimensions.

“I shoulda kept my damn piehole shut.” Dot shot down the rest of her coffee, placed the cup on the table, then stood.

Lexie stood, too, and walked Dot to the door. “I totally love him. This marriage is going to be great.” Great, though Dot was right. Lexie
had
always yearned for a bigger life, anything to break apart the tight container of claustrophobic chaos she'd felt living
with Mitzy and Bert. Peter, the son of a soft-spoken music teacher (his mother) and an accountant (his father), had come out of warm stability and peaceful routine. He was programmed for and operated optimally within a small, simple life. For the past year and a half, Lexie had been perfectly content not being aware of her and Peter's essential difference. But now that she'd seen it, it was impossible to unsee, like a scar in the middle of her face that could not be avoided or denied.

“Listen, if you change your mind, don't go through with it. I can tell you from experience, it is a fuck of a lot easier and cheaper to cancel a wedding than to get divorced.”

“I'm not going to change my mind.” Instead, Lexie thought, I'll put all my anxious, chaos-based energy into embracing the small life and making it work.

“Alrighty my dear, I'm buying a dress and keeping my hair appointment.” Dot hoisted her pocketbook higher onto her shoulder and then exited with her signature age-belying speed.

Lexie locked the door and rushed to her purse. She took out the pills and her phone, setting both on the desk. Lexie dared herself to
not
open the bottle and
not
turn on the phone.

“Accept,” Lexie went to the first therapeutic step for anxiety. She would accept her thoughts, her anxiety, without judgment. “Accept . . . Fuck it.” Lexie took out a pill and bit it in half before swallowing both sides. It would take a few minutes to enter her bloodstream, but knowing it was inside her soothed everything immediately, like baby powder on sticky, hot skin.