Wife Living Dangerously (19 page)

“I’ll just take my cues from you, then,” he says.

“I don’t expect there will be any more cues.”

“Whatever you say.”

A
fter three grueling and exhilarating sessions with Candace Westfall, I am ready to make my debut at The Rock Barn, a fact
I’ve somehow managed to conceal from my husband and children, even after I sent a mass e-mailing to nearly everyone in my
address book. Publicizing my debut was Candace Westfall’s idea. “Show yourself to the world,” she exhorted. “Let them see
the real Julia Flanagan.”

She asked me to wear clothes that make me feel beautiful but also physically at ease, which ruled out stilettos, tank tops,
and tight anything. After trying on every possible clothing combination in my closet I finally came up with black boot-cut
jeans and my favorite shirt, a lightweight silk knit the color of a Noxzema jar. Candace forbade me from wearing Vanessa.
“We want to see the real Julia up there.”

In the meantime I am supposed to be gathering material for an exhibit on the cultural history of the human penis. All I have
so far is a fascinum (a replica of an erect penis worn by ancient Roman boys to remind them of their potency), and the beginnings
of a small subset involving cigars (Freud, Groucho Marx, Bill Clinton). I’ve decided to ask one of the graduate students to
take over. I need to focus on my debut.

Thanks to my shameless self-promotion, The Rock Barn is bustling. All my friends are here—and on a school night. The Beach
Babes have a table right by the stage. The staff at Bentley’s are also here (minus Leslie, who would never abide someone else
in the spotlight, not even as a favor). I see Jake’s teacher with her fiancé, Karen and Brad making out in the back, my dentist,
my cleaning lady, my aerobics teacher, and of course Candace Westfall, looking contemplative sitting alone on the upper deck,
a glass of wine in her hand.

I am standing at the bar sipping cool water and trying to breathe the way Candace taught me, deeply and deliberately, in and
out through my mouth. I’ve already been to the bathroom twice with stomach cramps. I try more deep breathing, then stop breathing
altogether and suddenly feel vertiginous. I had been fine—excited, even—until I realized everything that could go wrong. What
if I forget the words? What if my voice cracks? What if I pass out? What if I start in the wrong key, or hit a bad note, or
trip when I’m climbing the rickety plywood steps to the stage? What if I get nauseous and start gagging or actually throw
up? What if I asphyxiate on my own vomit?

As it turns out, none of these catastrophes come to pass. What happens is worse.

It is nearly 10:00
P.M.
and almost my turn to go. With heart palpitations and cold sweats, I have endured five acts before me. A seventy-year-old
toothless bluegrass banjo player. A middle-aged housewife who looks like a tax accountant and sounds exactly like Aretha Franklin.
A heavily pierced young man who plays classical guitar and sings through his nose. A slovenly drummer who does a fifteen-minute
tribute to Buddy Rich. A blues singer named Mamie Jean O’Henry, passionate and tone deaf. Missing from the lineup is Edith
Berry who is home, thank you, Jesus, with a stomach virus.

At last Joe Patterson picks up the roster and winks at me. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest making
her debut at The Rock Barn tonight. Let’s give it up for Ju-lie Flanagan!”

A wild cheer goes up from the Beach Babes table and I start toward the stage with unexpected confidence. Then I see Michael’s
face and realize that I have miscalculated. He unhooks his saxophone and props it against the amplifier. “I’ll sit this one
out,” he tells Frank. He turns and whispers, “Good luck, Jules.”

I don’t understand why he walked off the stage but I can’t think about that now. I’ve got a song to sing. I turn to Curtis
and whisper, “‘The Thrill is Gone.’ Key of D minor?”

“You got it, sweetheart,” he says, winking. He plays the first bar, then the next and then another as I close my eyes and
just breathe. After the twelfth bar, I step forward to the microphone and begin the song.
My
song. Just as Candace Westfall had wanted, I feel every word of that song in the deepest part of me. Then I see Evan Delaney,
leaning against the bar. He raises his beer bottle and smiles. And though I can’t hear him over the cheers and applause, I
can read his lips: “Beautiful.”

I step off the stage and absorb the compliments from everyone who has come to hear me. Michael passes me on his way back to
the stage and nods vaguely in my direction. I can’t believe this. My own husband is ignoring me?

On the way home I remember the excitement of hearing my own voice, strong and clear, and just as vividly I remember how Michael’s
departure from the stage sliced through me like an X-Acto knife. I have never been so fiercely angry with my husband. But
if I can be totally candid here, I also feel a spark of pleasure because Michael’s absence means that there is more room now,
in my heart and in my fantasies, for the man who did stay to hear me sing.

Instead of going straight home as planned, I make a U-turn in the middle of Broad Street and head for Brewster Park.

As if by tacit agreement, Evan Delaney is already there. The playground is empty and dark except for a shaft of silvery moonlight
illuminating the playground, where Evan sits on a low swing, dragging his shoes in the gravel beneath him.

“Be with me,” he says.

I move toward the swing beside his but he takes my arm and leads me toward him. “No. Here.” He guides me so that I am facing
and straddling him. “That’s better.” Evan eases up my skirt and as we sway silently I feel his fingers between my legs, gently
pulling the panties aside, and slowly sliding inside me. It feels outrageously good.

My breathing quickens with his rhythm and now he is staring into my eyes, watching me. It doesn’t take long to climax once,
then again, as I bury my face in Evan’s neck. He turns to kiss my head, my face, my lips. “I adore you, Julia Flanagan,” he
whispers.

He reaches down again and unzips his jeans, and now we are locked together, swinging slowly as Evan moves his hips almost
imperceptibly. He wraps his arms around me tightly, kisses my mouth, whispers my name, and looks into my eyes with such tenderness
and pain it makes me want to cry.

I’d pretended to be asleep when Michael finally came home, which was cowardly but easier than confrontation. My husband slipped
into bed and pulled me close and I curled in the opposite direction, unwilling to accept this gesture of reconciliation. Now
all I can do is lie here and listen to him snore and wait for the sleeping pills to take effect. I wonder what Michael’s sinus
cavity looks like, the whole thing, with all its crypts and passageways, and I wonder which wretched part of this cavity could
possibly make tonight’s insufferable clicking noise. Is it a flap of skin? A clogged airway? A bug?

Michael is in his study nuzzling Homer’s head with the tip of his nose and whispering in baby talk. “Shmoozy, shmoozy, who’s
the cutest Homeroozy?”

“Don’t you think we should talk about what happened last night?” I say, quietly. And by that I mean, don’t you think we should
talk about the fact that my husband refused to share the stage with me,
not
don’t you think we should talk about the fact that I had sex on a swing with Evan Delaney. I have consummated an affair that
probably started the night I dreamed of making love to Evan in the basement of the Bentley. It’s an affair I nurtured in every
waking fantasy, in every cute or coy e-mail, in my willingness to meet him at Soto Voce when I knew it was wrong. My cheating
heart took its shape as soon as I decided that my husband was more interested in his band than in me, and grew stronger as
I tormented myself with memories of Susie Margolis and nightmares of Edith Berry. And now, girded by a justification I single-handedly
built to propel me, justification made of bitterness and strong as steel, I am not thinking about my affair with Evan Delaney.
I am thinking only that my husband has disappointed me yet again. I intend to find out why he left the stage.

I survey Michael’s tidy study. Until he joined Past the Legal Limit, a small shelf was all he needed to hold his entire music
collection, a motley assortment of tapes and CDs he never listened to. The study was then an extension of his office downtown,
oak bookshelves with heavy volumes of state statutes, litigation forms, court rules, taxation guidelines. Today his bookcase
buckles under the weight of a sleek new stereo system and hundreds of compact discs acquired five, sometimes ten at a time.
His diplomas have been removed from the walls to make space for a Rolling Stones World Tour poster. Michael, who never bought
himself anything but shaving cream and condoms, is finally finding pleasure in his life and I cannot begrudge him this.

He gently lowers Homer in his exercise pen. “I don’t get this,” he says, picking up a bag of timothy hay. “The woman at the
pet store told me guinea pigs love this stuff. Homey won’t touch it.”

“Maybe he’s just, you know, a picky eater.” Or maybe he doesn’t eat timothy hay because he’s a
rat,
I do not say.

“Maybe.” Michael opens a CD case and begins to gently rub a Rolling Stones CD with a flannel square soaked in some sort of
solvent. “So what’s up, Julie?”

“What’s up? Are you serious?” I force myself to slow down. I inhale. I exhale. “Let me start again. What happened last night,
Michael, well… it made me feel very sad. I wanted to surprise you. I thought you’d be happy.”

He makes a face that is at once agonized and bewildered. “Why would
I
be
happy
?”

“Because I was part of your, you know, your thing. Your band.”

“I should be happy because you were part of my band? No offense, but why would I want my wife in the band? I mean, how would
you feel if I showed up at one of your staff meetings? Or if I decided to join you and the girls on your, whatever you call
it, your Beach Babes night out?” Michael shakes his head and sighs. “Sweetie, I love you with all my heart but sometimes I
really don’t get you.”

“Wait a second.” I squeeze my eyes to dam up the tears. “I never wanted to join your band.” What I don’t tell him, of course,
is that I’d secretly hoped that after they heard me, they’d beg me to join. “It’s just that since you started playing in the
band, I feel like we haven’t spent a lot of time together. And, well, I could see you were having all this fun and I guess
I wanted to be part of that. Is that such a bad idea?”

“Actually, honey,” Michael says, sighing, “I think it is. Look. Jules. You’re a beautiful, talented, sexy woman. And you have
a great voice. But you’re my wife. I don’t want you to be my bandmate. That would just be too weird, you know?”

“I suppose,” I say, blinking back more tears. “I guess you’re right. And I’m sorry.”

“Come here, you.” Michael reaches out to pull me into his arms but I step out of his reach. “Please, Julie.” He drops his
shoulders and looks at me with a sad, defeated expression. “I love you so much. And I feel like we’re just moving farther
and farther apart. I miss you, Jules. I miss your happy smile. You don’t smile anymore, you realize that? I miss snuggling
in bed with you—it seems like you’re always on the outermost edge of the mattress, or am I imagining it?”

I don’t say anything. He’s not imagining it.

“If it’s something I’ve said or done, Julie, I’m sorry. I love you. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

All I can manage is a feeble, “Thanks.”

Evan is the first thing I think of in the morning and the last when I slide into sleep. I pray that every phone call is his
and when my inbox registers new mail I silently whisper his name and pray for a message from him, then curse when I don’t
see one. I reload and reload and reload the page. I reread old e-mails, the ones he sent to me and the ones I sent back, just
to feel connected. The attraction to Evan Delaney cancels out interest in everyone else, as if some giant masking mechanism
has attached itself to all but this one man, obscuring every part and quality in every other person that would have, in the
past, piqued my interest.

Sometimes I feel like I’m dying inside. Maybe another woman would be thrilled by all this but I have never felt so tortured.
I can’t focus on my work. I can’t enjoy being with the kids. When I’m alone with Michael, I find myself in a constant state
of agitation and annoyance. His smallest habits are magnified a thousandfold. The pursing of his lips every morning while
reading the newspaper, the way he cracks his toes every night before switching on the TV, how he wears black socks with shorts
and sneakers, the way he eats ice cream (one teeny tiny bit at a time, licked off the very tip of the spoon). I force myself
to conjure what first attracted me to Michael but I can’t seem to remember a single thing. When I squeeze my eyes closed and
try to picture my husband, all I see is Evan.

I
can’t go on like this,” I tell Annie. She says that she isn’t sure she’s qualified to advise me after my singing debacle,
but we have agreed to meet again, this time outside the public library. “I’m an awful mother, the world’s worst wife. For
the love of God, Annie, you’ve got to help me.” I absently run my hand over the smooth, cool haunches of a new limestone deer
in the library’s courtyard. Fake deer seem to be springing up around town while the real deer are killed off by new development.
There are six wire deer outside the county courthouse, several topiary deer out by the mall, and now this, a trio of limestone
deer in the library courtyard.

“Okay.” She clasps her hands, and for a moment I think she’s going to pray for my salvation. “At least give yourself some
credit for catching this thing before it went too far. That’s good, Julia.”

I tell Annie that this “thing” has already gone too far.

“How far?”

“Far,” I say.