Wife Living Dangerously (25 page)

I awaken the next day with a blinding headache, my skin is scorched, and I feel like I’ve swallowed a paring knife. I call
in sick, crawl back under the covers, and when Michael’s alarm clock clicks to life—a smug NPR correspondent droning on about
a combination laundromat/Vietnamese restaurant in SoHo—I croak out my plight.

“Michael. You’ll have to get the kids up this morning. I feel terrible.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m sick. I think I might have the flu. I feel… horrible.”

He kisses my head. “Poor sweetie. I’m sorry. Can I bring home something for dinner? Maybe that hot and sour soup you like
so much from Beijing Kitchen?”

“Thank you.”

He raises himself up on his elbows and regards me for a moment. “Go back to sleep. I’ll take care of everything.”

As Michael showers I drag myself to the bathroom for Tylenol and a glass of water. There are no Dixie cups left, so I use
the red plastic cap from a can of shaving cream and try to ignore the “refreshing blast of menthol” on my tongue. I can see
my husband’s reflection in the mirror; he is lathering himself vigorously, according to the same sequential format he has
used as long as I’ve known him. First the left arm, then the right, across the chest, now to the groin and legs, the right
foot, now the left, onto his neck, butt, backs of the legs. He lifts the loofah brush from its suction-backed hook, passes
the bar of soap over its webby surface, scrubs his back. There was a time when we would surprise each other in the shower.
Are there any surprises left in this marriage?

I go back to bed and stay there until 11:45
A.M.
, at which time I get my first phone call of the day.

“Mom? They’re serving Salisbury steak and canned peaches. I hate Salisbury steak and canned peaches. Can you drop off lunch?”

“Caitlin, didn’t Dad make you lunch today?”

“No. He told us we should just get school lunch. But I hate Salisbury steak and canned peaches. Can you bring me lunch? Please?
I didn’t eat breakfast either and I’m starving to death. I feel like I’m going to faint.”

“Didn’t Dad give you breakfast?”

“There wasn’t enough time.”

I look at the clock. Caitlin’s lunch period ends at 12:30. If I move quickly, I can make her lunch and drop it off by 12:15,
giving her just enough time to gulp it down before literature circle.

“Thanks, Mom! I love you so much, Mommy. Are you feeling better?”

“Yes, sweetie. I feel so much better.” My eyes are sizzling like a couple of fried eggs in my skull. As I pull together Caitlin’s
sandwich—peanut butter and honey on whole wheat, no crusts—I see today’s newspaper scattered across the kitchen table.

Braless in a stained sweatshirt and hoping my black drawstring pajama bottoms will pass as workout pants, I make my way through
Twin Pines Elementary’s double glass doors and shuffle toward the main office. My hair is matted, my eyes are smudged with
yesterday’s mascara, and as I glance down at my feet I realize I’m wearing a gray New Balance running shoe on my right foot,
and a red-striped Reebok cross trainer on my left. Predictably, I see every single person I’d hoped to avoid. Geneaology snob
Kelly London. Matt Helms, the cute divorced dad who picks his son up every other Monday and Wednesday for lunch. Kristine
Haywood, president of the PTO and former
Glamour
magazine cover girl. The hated and heavily lipsticked Shari Tabor, who bought our first house, then told everyone that my
family had left behind the gift that keeps on giving—silverfish. Neva Brubaker, crisp and blindingly clean in a Talbots ensemble,
size four. Mr. Marker, the gym teacher who flirted with me at the science fair last year, right next to a simulated tornado.

Though Michael has promised to be home by five, it is 6:40 when I hear the garage door rumbling and by then the kids have
already helped themselves to dinner: Pop-Tarts, string cheese, barbecued potato chips, cold white rice, and Pecan Sandies.
I haul myself downstairs and watch him hang his jacket in the front closet.

“Do you feel any better?” He sets his briefcase down and slips off his shoes.

“Not really. You were supposed to be home early today. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, Julia. I was almost out the door when Scott Haines called and the guy would not stop talking. He tells
me his father was diagnosed with lung cancer. Poor guy was beside himself. I couldn’t just hang up on him, you know how that
is. Then I realized that I had to go back to my depositions and check on this one thing, and then—”

“I was
sick,
Michael. I’m
still
sick.”

“Oh, honey. Can I make you some tea? Or chicken soup?” He steps into the kitchen and freezes. “Jesus Christ. What happened
in here?”

“Hungry children, Michael. That’s what happened.”

“Shit. What a mess. I’m so sorry.”

“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m going back to bed. There’s a lasagne in the freezer downstairs. And there’s probably enough romaine lettuce
in the fridge for a salad.”

“I already ate.” Michael pats his paunch. “We ordered in Chinese and worked through dinner.”

“‘We’?” I prop myself against the wall for support.

“Me, Curt, Joe, Edith. It’s that same damn antitrust case I’ve been working on for half the year. It’s a killer.” He pushes
another chip into his mouth and it cracks apart at the corners of his mouth. “I would have rather been home, taking care of
my baby.”

I believe him but I also want to kill him.

A friend of mine said that every married man is destined for a midlife crisis, and it is our job as wives to hold on tight
like a rodeo cowboy and try to stay in the saddle. Jumping off is always an option too but if our goal is to stay married,
we’d better hold fast. At some point in a married man’s life, my friend had said, usually sometime in his forties but it can
happen earlier or later, the man considers the years behind him and the years he has left, and suddenly realizes every single
thing that he may never again experience, all the flirting and fucking, all the women in all their diverse physical forms
and sexual styles. He remembers what it was like to just take his car and drive with no destination in mind, to throw his
dirty socks wherever he likes, throw them on the kitchen table if he felt like it, he could play poker all night and come
home stinking of beer or not come home at all. No one bitched at him, no one implored him to talk about feelings, no one complained
that he wasn’t attentive enough or affectionate enough or nurturing enough or “fully present” in the relationship. He was
a free man. And the fact that he may never be free again overwhelms and horrifies like the diagnosis of a terminal disease.
“So he panics and does something really stupid,” my friend had said, “like asking his secretary out for drinks. And then,
well, you know the rest.”

The only way to avoid the rodeo is to marry an older man. A
much
older man. “I mean, a man who’s in his seventies. One who’s done with his stupid changes,” she said. Which is what she did.
Her second husband is seventy-two.

When I consider my friend’s insights I can’t help but feel guilty because I am the iron ball and chain that stands between
Michael and the life he’d prefer to lead, a life without the demands of children, breadwinning, and wife. But what about my
midlife crisis? Isn’t it possible that I, too, stand at the median of my life full of disappointment and despair over dreams
unfulfilled?

As I’ve said, I don’t make a fuss about my dreams, but I’ve had a nightmare I can’t ignore. I’m on an elevator with Edith
Berry. The elevator is claustrophobically tiny, mahogany paneled, and musty. The elevator is moving up slowly, creaking as
we pass the second floor, then the third and so on. Somehow I know that Edith and I are both on our way to the same job interview.
Edith is wearing a tiny pink Lilly Pulitzer dress and pink heels, and I’m barefoot, in my underwear. Edith’s legs are lean,
bare, and bronzed and mine are stubby, lumpy, and pale. Her hair is long and lustrous. Mine is a gigantic mass of tangles
sticking straight out from my head. The elevator stops abruptly on the fourteenth floor and suddenly there is a deafening
alarm, like a tornado siren. The doors open and a handsome young security guard appears. He points at me, scowls, and says,
“You.” He gestures toward to a sign on the wall.
MAXIMUM LOAD: 600 POUNDS.
He jerks his thumb backward. “Off.”

There’s Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes of Fame, and there’s Julia Flanagan’s Fifteen Minutes of Thin Thighs. Every woman who
has struggled with her weight is granted fifteen precious minutes where she can bear to see herself in shorts. Maybe she gets
her fifteen minutes in college on spring break, or maybe on her wedding day, or just in time for her ten-year reunion. She
can have several of these fifteen-minute segments at various points in her life, but they’re always time-limited, always on
the verge of negative reversal, like Cinderella’s coach. I had my fifteen minutes of thin thighs at my wedding, again after
Caitlin was born (joined Jenny Craig and bought a treadmill that, when folded flat, makes a great crafts table for the kids),
and yet once more for Michael’s company picnic (Weight Watchers and six months of brutal Thai kickboxing).

Until Edith, I didn’t worry about my body, just tried to cope gracefully with the extra pounds that come with motherhood,
age, and a desk job. But last month I bought a girdle to compress my belly so I could wear a great pair of low-slung pants
I found at Nordstrom. The tag said it was a “body shaper” but I know a girdle when I see one. My mother wore a girdle. In
my case, all the “shaper” did was redirect the flubber to my thighs.

Rather than delude myself into believing I’m destined for lifelong sveltitude, I have resigned myself to serial fitness, the
sporadic disappearance and inevitable reappearance of fat. The elevator dream has me convinced that it is time yet again for
Julia Flanagan’s fifteen minutes. Because I never start a new project without first assembling all the appropriate accoutrements,
I drive directly to the Wayfield Mall to buy myself a new scale. Actually, it is a solar scale. It never needs batteries.
The scale’s accuracy, according to the earnest young salesman at Brookstone, is guaranteed within one-sixteenth of a pound.
State of the art, he tells me.

After four days of eating nothing but eggs, cream cheese, baloney, and beef jerky, I remove everything I’m wearing including
my wedding band and step gingerly on my new solar scale. I peek at the reading. It says LOW. I have a hunch that this can’t
be a reference to my weight, so I check the user’s manual and discover that “a reading of ‘LOW’ indicates insufficient light
levels.” I switch on the exhaust fan over the shower, which has its own built-in light, and try again. LOW. I put on all the
lights over the sink and one more in the foyer. LOW. Now I’m beginning to wonder what kind of moron came up with the idea
for a solar scale? Why would anyone need a solar scale? So they can weigh themselves on the beach?

Wrapped in one of the kids’ Flintstones beach towel, I carry the scale into my bedroom, switch on my overhead light, the two
bedside lamps, and the halogen torchier. My bedroom is now as bright as a tanning booth. I step on the scale. LOW.

I try the kids’ bathroom, Michael’s study, the upstairs hallway, the laundry room. LOW, LOW, LOW, LOW. I find a flashlight
in the utility closet and shine it directly onto the scale. LOW.

I stamp downstairs in the Flintstones towel and set the scale besides my front door, the brightest spot in the house, the
one place plants will thrive because of the direct southern exposure that floods the windows framing the door. I drop the
towel and step on the scale. Finally, a reading. Very nice. I weigh eighteen pounds.

I am standing naked on a defective state-of-the-art solar scale, and I now have the creeping sensation that I am not alone.
In fact, I’m certain that I’m under observation. The children are in school, Michael is at work, and Homer is in his cage
upstairs. Out of the corner of my eye I realize with horror that there is someone at the window. I make myself look and find
Evan Delaney looking back.

I have several choices.

(1) I can scramble into the coat closet (but do I run backward or forward?).

(2) I can bend over (already a bad idea) and retrieve my towel.

(3) I can pretend I don’t see him and go about my business.

(4) I can answer the door completely naked, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I look again and see that Evan
is enough of a gentleman to have turned away from the window. I choose the third and first option. I retrieve my towel, shut
myself in the coat closet, then reemerge wearing the mink coat I’ve been storing for my mother.

The man I’ve assiduously avoided for weeks, the subject of every daydream and sexual fantasy, is now standing on one side
of my door while I’m on the other, naked beneath my mother’s mink coat. It seems hard to believe that only months ago the
most newsworthy thing in my life was serving jury duty on a shoplifting case.

As I reach for the door I pray that I don’t look as deranged as I feel. “Evan. Hi. How are you? What brings you to this neck
of the woods?” I’m steaming underneath the coat and I can feel myself splotching.

“I stopped by Bentley to drop off some books and your boss told me you were home waiting for a refrigerator to be delivered.
She also mentioned that you were behind on the Japan project, and asked if I’d mind dropping this off.” He hands me a bulging
interoffice envelope. “So you could work at home.” He eyes the coat and smiles wryly. “Do you always dress like this for delivery
men?”

“I lied about the refrigerator. I just needed to take a mental health day. Leslie Keen is driving me crazy.”

“Listen. Julia. Is everything okay? You just dropped out of sight.” He passes his hand through his hair. “I was beginning
to think I’d imagined you. Are you alright?”

“Yes. Of course. I’m fine. I’ve just been, you know, busy.” And I’m avoiding you, I scream silently to myself, because I don’t
want to have an affair, I want to be a good wife and good mother and keep my family intact and just the sight of you makes
me weak and I don’t want to be weak. It’s my own fault that Evan Delaney is standing here now. I could have been explicit
in ending the affair. I could have said, outright, Evan, it’s over. I never want to see you again. No visits, no calls, no
e-mails, no nothing. I could have slammed the door on Evan and his beautiful green eyes and amazing body and delicious smell
and the way he made me shimmer like a new penny but I didn’t, did I? No, I had left it open, just a crack, just enough for
him to get back in.