Wife Living Dangerously (16 page)

“You really think so?” I hadn’t sung publicly since ninth grade, when I was in a girl band called Raspberry Sorbet. I played
electric guitar (passably) and sang (nicely) “Bennie and the Jets” and “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero.” With my best friend Jenny
Thurmon on drums and Carrie McQueen on bass, we won second place in Thomas Edison Middle School’s battle of the bands, and
then played in a variety show to benefit the animal shelter. The band broke up when Carrie got a boyfriend, I never forgot
how it felt to be onstage. I was in a
band.
People
applauded
me. I was a
star.

In the category of living dangerously:
I peeked at Michael’s e-mail box. Okay, I didn’t exactly peek. I hacked into his system and then sorted his messages by sender:
VeryBerry1979. I know that some people might be appalled at my spying but after that oral sex routine at the Crappie Festival,
I should be checking his e-mail every day as far as I’m concerned. No guilt whatsoever.

There were seventeen messages from Edith. All were related to band activity but as I read them more closely I could detect
an increasingly intimate tone and developing relationship.

E-mail #4: You sounded great last night!

E-mail #7: How’s your cold?

E-mail #14: Does Frank seem depressed to you?

My eyes rested bleakly on the last message from Edith: Want to grab lunch today?

I was about to check my husband’s Sent box to see how he responded to these queries but I hear the garage door rumble open
and quickly log off.

Lucy wants a Calico Girls birthday party. I do not. I have already spent more money than I am willing to admit on Calico Girls
and all their Calico crap. Lucy has eight Calico Girl dolls such as Donna, the rancher Calico Girl, and Alisa, the factory
worker Calico Girl. Her closet is packed with giant blue Rubbermaid bins full of Calico Girl accessories, most of which she
played with twice and abandoned. Now she’s at my elbow, haranguing me about a Kelani Calico Girl Hawaiian luau party.

“Look at all this cool stuff,” she says, pointing to the catalog. “You get grass skirts and flower necklaces, plates and cups
and those pink straws shaped like pineapples. And look at this, Mom, a real plastic Hawaiian tablecloth, and a tape that teaches
you how to dance the hula.”

I take a closer look at the catalog. The price of Kelani’s Hawaiian Calico Girl party? Just $175 plus shipping and handling.
“Oh, honey. I don’t think so.” My daughter doesn’t handle disappointment well. She is already starting to hyperventilate.
“This is an awful lot of money for a birthday party. Hey. You know what? I bet I could buy every single thing on this list
at that store in the mall, what’s it called? The Party Place?”

Lucy’s lower lip is already quivering. “But I want a
Calico Girl
birthday party.”

“But it’ll be exactly the same stuff, honey. The same grass skirts, the same flower necklaces. Just not so expensive. I bet
I can get all the same pretty luau things for forty bucks, maybe less, at the party supplies store.”

“But it
won’t
be the same. You’ll
never
find a tape of hula music.”

“I bet I can. I bet they have it at the library.”

“No they
don’t.
They don’t have
anything
good at the library. This is going to be a
horrible
party. This is going to be the
worst
party
ever
! I HATE YOU!”

Here comes the teaching moment. I hate the teaching moments. “You know what, Lucy?” I close the catalog and push it away.
“I’m sorry but you won’t be getting a Hawaiian party. Not a Calico Girl Hawaiian party, or even a party supplies store Hawaiian
party.”

“WHAT?”

“You heard me, Lucy Marie Flanagan. You’re acting like a brat and brats don’t get special parties. Look. If you want to have
a few friends over on your birthday”—at this point my daughter is screaming so hard the veins in her little face are bulging—“we
can rent a video and get a pizza and birthday cake. You can even have a sleepover if you want. But no Hawaiian party. I’m
sorry.”

Two weeks later Michael is greeting Lucy’s guests in a grass skirt and pink lei. But this is the only concession we’ve made
to the Hawaiian theme.

Eventually the last guest arrives and Michael directs her downstairs to the basement. Soon afterward Lucy races upstairs and
glares at me, little hands on little hips. “
Why
did you invite Mackenzie Taylor?”

“Because you asked me to invite her, sweetheart.”

“No I
didn’t.
I told you to invite Taylor
Mackenzie,
not Mackenzie
Taylor.
You invited the wrong girl!”

I try to make a joke of it. “Mackenzie Taylor, Taylor Mackenzie, what’s the difference?”

“There’s a
big
difference,
Mom.
I
hate
Mackenzie Taylor. She’s the meanest girl in my whole school!”

“Oops.”

I watch my daughter stamp back downstairs and decide that I have completely failed as a mother. I invited the wrong Mackenzie
because I’ve been distracted and inattentive. Worse than inviting the wrong Mackenzie, I’ve raised a child who demands Calico
Girl parties and screams that she hates me when things don’t go her way. My other daughter refuses to brush her hair and my
son is a couch potato. Why did I have children in the first place? Why didn’t I just buy a spider monkey like I’d wanted to?
Why did I even get married? I could be single, no whining children, no snoring husband, just me and a real pet, a dog even.
And Evan.

Evan Delaney is out of town all week, affording me one hundred sixty-eight hours with no phone calls or e-mails about the
Courtly Love exhibit, no possibility of running into him in parking lots or on the path to Volk Hall, or hearing him summon
me from his crankcase window with offers of Turkish coffee. I am a free woman with a new focus: dedicating myself to my upcoming
stage debut. I could do a tough rocker chick song like “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” or something folksy like “American Pie.”
Then again, I’d love to do a Doobie Brothers number, like “China Grove.” How would I choose? And what would I wear? It has
to be cool. Understated, but flattering. Black, obviously. Black and tight and sexy. Skirt or pants? Boots or stilettos? Should
I sparkle, shine, or go matte? I could wear that black tank top with silver bugle beads. Maybe the shiny black rayon top,
the one I bought last year for New Year’s Eve. Or I could go alternative with one of those vintage T-shirts like the Uncle
Bob’s All-Night Fish Fry top I found at the Salvation Army store. I’d wear Vanessa. Definitely. Or maybe I will buy myself
another ponytail. Or a wig. A black wig. Or a blond one. A long blond wig. Yes! Oh, God, I can’t wait to see the look on Michael’s
face when I join him onstage.

I have my song, I have my outfit, I have my wig, and I have practiced in my basement for three days. My voice is fine. No,
better than fine, it’s darn good. And yet. Something isn’t quite right. I feel tight and hunched, hesitant, inhibited. I want
to command the stage. But how? I haven’t performed in twenty-seven years. My arms just hang there like a couple of logs. My
legs are rooted to the spot. I know I should be shaking my hips or prancing about, but I can’t seem to remember how to move
my body.

The big cork board nailed to the back wall at Abundant Organics is plastered with flyers: apartment rental, used bikes, massage
therapy, lost cats, La Leche groups, French lessons, solstice celebrations, house painting, computer repair, women’s self-defense,
herbal healing, babysitting coops, cooking classes, knitting lessons, and this, right in the middle of the board, like a message
from God:
PERFORMANCE COACHING
. “Whether you sing for fun or profit, Candace Westfall will help you find your inner superstar! Improve your staging and
vocals. Be sexier on stage. A dynamic new you, guaranteed!”

There is a fringe of pull-off phone numbers at the bottom of the flyer. A couple of these have already been torn away but
I suspect that Candace herself did this as an inducement to others. I rip off a tab and slide it into my wallet behind my
Visa. Then I take another in case I lose the first. Already I feel different, anxious and eager.

As I pass Michael’s office I spot his Honda wedged in between two SUVs on Strathmore Road. Remembering a tip I’d read in
Cosmo,
I double park, whip out my lipstick, and scribble “I LUV U” on the windshield. As I’m slipping back into my van I see Michael—and
Edith
—crossing Strathmore. Edith is laughing and brushing the hair out of her eyes. She punches my husband playfully on the arm
and he punches her back. They don’t see me. I wish I hadn’t seen them.

I am online now, Googling these five words: “women suspect husbands having affair.” I click on the fifth option among 9,005
results: The Infidelity Forum: where women find solidarity as they share thoughts and feelings about their cheating husbands.

I scroll through the discussion boards until I locate what I’m looking for: telltale signs that indicate an affair. The list
is depressingly long. I’m almost afraid to read but I force myself. I apparently missed the signs the first time. I will not
let that happen again.

1. Lovemaking has come to a halt. (Not quite but close.)

2. He doesn’t say I love you anymore. (He says it now when he’s half-conscious, drifting into sleep. Does that count?)

3. He picks on you for little things. (Not really.)

4. Goes in to work earlier and stays later. (Yes.)

5. Starts working out. (No.)

6. Used to hate a particular music—rap, classical, opera—and now loves it. (He’s suddenly playing in a band. Hmmm.)

7. Takes two hours on errands that should take half the time or less. (As a matter of fact, when Michael said he was going
out to buy new tires, he came home three and a half hours later. And he looked too happy.)

8. Wears cologne when he never did before, or switches to a new brand. (No.)

9. Other woman leaves text messages on cell phone like 696969. (I’ve never checked Michael’s cell phone.)

10. Says he wants new underwear or buys it for himself. (No.)

11. Keeps cell phone at his side at all times, even when sleeping. (No. Michael hates his cell phone. Half the time he forgets
to charge it.)

12. Showers as soon as he gets home. (Sometimes.)

13. Caller ID always indicates no new numbers because they’re being constantly erased. (I don’t think so.)

14. Buys and uses a calling card so you cannot trace his calls. (I don’t know.)

Later, same night: I hear Michael rattling around in the garage. Some husbands are garage guys, puttering around with power
tools and little projects. Michael is not a garage guy, so when I hear him banging around in there, I figure either he’s looking
for an old triple-A Trip Tick or a tiny screwdriver to fix his eyeglasses. “We got any of that bug tar remover?” he calls
out.

“Check the clear bin with the Turtle Wax.”

“I already did,” he yells. He’s back in the house, pulling open junk drawers.

“What’s the problem?”

“Someone wrote something all over my windshield. Can’t get it off. For God’s sake, who would do something like that?”

In the category of living dangerously:
I took the kids to see
Grease
at the university theater. We moved to better seats during intermission, which had actually been Caitlin’s idea; she’d spotted
the seats before the house lights went down and when they were still empty at intermission she begged me to move down. When
I was a child, my mother switched us to the better seats at a Pacers game, right behind the bench. Twenty minutes later, a
man loudly insisted that we move before he called “the authorities.” His teenage son tittered as we slinked out of the seats
(actually, only I was slinking, my mother behaved like the aggrieved one, even as the man waved his tickets in her face).

I didn’t want to change my seats today. But Caitlin kept begging and I relented and once I felt I could be sure no one would
kick us out of the seats, I began to relax and enjoy myself. We were close enough to see the little microphones taped to the
actors’ cheeks. They all looked so young and happy and alive.

I thought about those performers as I made my way to Candace Westfall’s house, a low brick ranch in the TimberLand subdivision
that, incidentally, has no trees in the same way that the Roaming Deer subdivision on the north side of town wiped out all
the roaming deer by the time the graders came in to level the land.

With its immaculately swept but barren front steps and dull white shutters the house has a geriatric sensibility that worries
me; I’m looking for youthful vigor in this whole endeavor. Candace Westfall had better not be an old lady.

I press on the doorbell, releasing a cascade of chimes. The door swings open and there she is, smiling as if she’s known me
her whole life. Candace is a short, curvaceous woman in her early thirties with glossy dark hair and a Kewpie doll’s face.
She’s wearing black flowing pants and a stretchy crimson top with a ruffled collar and deep neckline, which instantly draws
the eye to her ample cleavage. When I reach out to shake her hand, she startles me by pulling me close for a hug.

“None of this handshaking nonsense,” she says. “I’m a hugger.”

Candace glances at the tape player I’m holding: Jake’s tape player, actually, the kind designed for toddlers in primary colors
with giant buttons and a bright red microphone attached by a springy red rubber cord. “I see you’ve come with your own sound
system.”

“Oh, this? It’s my kid’s. Obviously.” I am feeling crazy, ready to bolt. What am I doing here, a woman with three young children
and an overworked husband at home?

Candace leads me to the living room, a space that could only belong to a single, childless woman, a delicate, comforting room
with faded but beautiful Oriental rugs, a small varnished bamboo table bearing a floral porcelain tea set, fragrant candles
along the windowsills, and everywhere framed photos of Candace and her female friends. At the foot of a white-capped mountain,
on a corner in Times Square, below the Golden Gate Bridge. In every picture Candace Westfall looks absolutely thrilled.