Secret Lives Of Husbands And Wives (3 page)

Or perhaps it would be better to seek out the other househusbands in the neighborhood.

I wince at this thought. There are just two of them. Calvin Bullworth is a software geek, and such a hermit that he’s rumored to be a cyberterrorist under house arrest. His wife, Bev Bullworth, is the Heights’s number-one realtor. (Her motto: No Bull, Just Better Service!) Unfortunately, this means that she is always in other people’s houses with strangers, and rarely home with Cal and their two children: Sabrina, who at twelve and a half is already a study in disaffected Goth; and Duke, her ten-year-old brother, who has the callow demeanor and social skills of his father. The poor kid gets crammed into a lot of school lockers.

And then there is Pete Shriver, the Heights’s househusband extraordinaire: a trust-fund baby—yes, he’s heir to the Shriver Tectonics
fortune—he has immersed himself in all things Paradise Heights. As coach of the Paradise Heights Middle School basketball team, he has led the Red Devils to three undefeated seasons straight. At the annual Heights Labor Day Blazin’ Barbecue Cook-Off, his melt-in-your-mouth brisket, prepared on a fifty-four-inch professional Lynx grill, brings home the blue ribbon every time. Under his tutelage, the Paradise Heights communal vegetable garden is shorn not only of errant weeds, but of any members who don’t work their plots prodigiously. And as the editor of the
Boulevard Bugle
, he ran an editorial on the aesthetic advantages of authentic antique gas lamps versus newer aluminum faux versions. It inspired the community drive that anted up the four thousand dollars needed to cover their additional cost.

Oh, sure, Pete is a dynamo. . . .

Although he’s rumored to be somewhat less energetic in the bedroom, which is perhaps why his wife, Masha—a Russian mail-order bride—is the neighborhood slut. And to everyone’s dismay, their thirteen-year-old daughter, Natassia, is rumored to be following in her footsteps.

I don’t have the heart to break the news to Harry about his new band of brothers. Not that he’d believe me anyway. No, it’s best that I ease him into this new world order.

As we round up the dogs and the kids and say our good-byes, I suggest that we make a playdate for Olivia and Temple for next Tuesday. Harry, grateful, promptly says yeah sure, then flips through the agenda on his BlackBerry and thumbs that in, along with my cell-phone number.

He is now officially a househusband.

His next task: file for divorce.

“I’ll never understand why this all happened in the first place,” he murmurs with a shake of his head. “I thought I gave her the life she always wanted. I guess I was wrong.”

“Don’t marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can’t live without.”

—James C. Dobson

12:14 p.m.

As I watch Harry Wilder drive away, I wonder if he’s ever considered that maybe it was DeeDee who was wrong about what she wanted out of life.

Or more to the point, their lives together.

I’m guessing no. But then again, I’m speaking from my own experience with Ted.

I accepted Ted’s proposal even though I wasn’t really sure that he was The One. I said as much to my mother, the day after he proposed.

“What is ‘The One,’ anyway?” The smoke from her Kool Menthol streamed out from the high corner of her curled smirk and floated toward the ceiling like a serene genie. “Hey, nothing’s perfect, right?”

It wasn’t a question but a warning. During the twelve years of her own marriage, she had assumed my father was The One for her. I had, too. He’d been my first and only love.

As it turns out, Father wasn’t The One for either of us. He proved it when I was ten. That was the year he left us both for his secretary, the giggly Patti-with-an-i, and the penthouse apartment where he’d stashed her.

Our consolation prize was our two-acre country-club estate in tony Atherton, with its overextended mortgage. But of course we couldn’t afford the house on our own. Within a year we had downsized to a one-bedroom rent-controlled walk-up in San Francisco’s Upper Tenderloin—a “transitional” neighborhood—where we crammed in as much of our large overstuffed furniture as we could fit.

The only good thing about that roach-infested hole was that it was a five-minute bus ride to the Saks Fifth Avenue on Union Square. My mother got a job at the cosmetics counter alongside the same women who, when she was married and flush, had showered her with Clinique and Estée Lauder samples as she swept by them on her way to the designer showroom. After the divorce, the Puccis, Guccis, Yves Saint Laurents, and Blasses she’d worn to the weekly cocktail parties at her country club either subbed as very expensive work attire or found their way to consignment shops, where they sold quickly at bargain rates. Whereas she was no longer living proof that you can never be too rich, she certainly proved that you could be too thin—if all you could afford to eat was canned tuna on saltines.

Like a good girl, I didn’t blame my father or complain to my mother. Instead I threw myself into my other love: painting big sad canvases that made people stop, look, and react.

The best reaction I got netted me a full scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute. Despite a few decent commissions, life as a starving artist was just as unsettling—just as scary—as life without Father. By my junior year I’d had enough of that and switched my major to graphic arts.

Within three years I’d parlayed a summer internship at a hot advertising agency into a coveted job as a senior art director, with a six-figure income along with a perk package that included four weeks of vacation time, an excellent 401(k) plan, bonuses, a shot at an equity share, and, oh yeah, the two-month “mind-cleansing sabbatical” that
was encouraged for all employees after three years.

My hefty paycheck gave me the one thing that had eluded my mother: financial freedom. It also granted me enough emotional security that I didn’t feel the need to jump into the arms of the first man who asked me to marry him.

Instead I played hard, making the club scene with my girlfriends. And I played hard to get, holding off from any commitments as long as I could while one after another my girlfriends found the men they considered their soul mates—or settled for guys who, at the very least, took them off the market.

Then Ted came into the picture.

Ted, the ultimate salesman, who pursued women with the same philosophy he used when wooing new business accounts: Go in for the kill. Win at all costs. Take no prisoners.

His pickup line wasn’t original, but that just goes to show you it isn’t the message that gets our attention, but the messenger. “See my friend over there? He wants to know if you think I’m cute.”

“I find that hard to believe.” I wasn’t lying either. With dark curly hair and sad deep-set eyes that contradicted his playful smile, Ted had the kind of lanky physique that invited women to melt into his arms. No, this guy didn’t really need my assurance at all. Every other woman in the bar would have gladly confirmed that for him. “Do you need my vote for it to be unanimous? Isn’t it enough that every other woman in the room is flirting with you?”

“No one else’s vote counts but yours.”

“You’ve got to be joking.” So that he wouldn’t notice I was blushing, I gulped down my drink.

“I’ll tell you what.” He leaned in and locked eyes with me. “Spend the night with me and I’ll prove it.”

Of course I didn’t. But I did give him my phone number. Then I proceeded to turn down his daily calls for a month or so.

In the meantime, he made sure his wingman buttered up my best friend to get a rundown of all my quirks and passions. Obviously he
wanted to be The One, even if I wasn’t so certain.

That is why, eventually, I took his call.

By quoting Mark Twain and wooing me with peppermint ice cream after a private tour of the Legion of Honor, did he win my heart? I convinced myself that only a man who was willing to love me forever would push so hard.

Then a year and a half later, I convinced myself that what he had to offer was good enough for me.

Slowly I found myself falling in love with a man who had a steady and lucrative job that he enjoyed as a sales manager for a software company, an undying allegiance to his hometown Lakers, an obsession with neatness, an allergy to strawberries, and a love for chocolate that matched my own. That he also had an aversion to any sexual position other than missionary style was something I hoped I could change in time.

Mother was right: nothing is perfect.

What made Ted perfect enough was his determination to turn all my noes into yeses, to whisk me away from the life I’d made for and by myself and into the perceived endgame of every woman approaching thirty: my very own picket-fenced cottage. Or in this case, a four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath shingled faux-Eastlake Victorian with a full basement, on three-fifths of a live oak–studded acre in Paradise Heights, a gated Silicon Valley community close enough to San Francisco to be worth the commute to any fast-tracking power ranger. In my mind, this posh enclave, with its broad sweeping streets, antique gas lamps, and well-manicured lawns, was as far from my father’s lies, my mother’s bitterness, and my own fear of loneliness as I could possibly get.

But Happily Ever After isn’t a place. It is a state of mind.

More to the point, it’s a state of heart.

Two hearts: his and yours, beating as one.

To be honest with you, our union has been fragile since day one.

He told me so himself, five years into our marriage, as we lolled,
naked, late one night in our new backyard hot tub, our inhibitions let loose by the roiling steam, a pitcher of frozen margaritas, and the knowledge that Tanner, then three, was fast asleep.

“Are you in love with me?” I asked casually. I guess I was anticipating a declaration of undying devotion.

Instead he paused—only a second, but even that was too long for a woman who is always waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under her.

“Yeah, sure. I love you.”

In spite of the hot water we were sitting in, a chill went down my spine. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. It means—it means just that.” Watching me blink my concern, he let loose a guilty chuckle. “Look, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m attracted to women who play hard to get. And you played the hardest. In fact, I lost a bet that night because of you.”

“In other words, if I’d said yes that night, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here now?”

Ted guffawed at that. “Well, I’m certainly not married to the girl who
did
take me home.” Then he kissed me on the forehead with frosty lips. “Come on, babe! You were a great catch, for sure.”

Go in for the kill. Win at all costs. And take no prisoners.

But nothing is perfect, right?

We didn’t talk after that. Later that night, as we made love (as usual, missionary style), I wondered:
Now that I’m “caught,” have I lost my appeal?

Nine weeks later, I learned that I was pregnant with Mickey.

Yes, I could have left him . . . but I didn’t. With one child and another on the way, I couldn’t see myself walking away from my children’s father just because my perception of the love I thought I deserved didn’t match up to what he was able to give me.

Besides, I thought, maybe over time that would change. People who are in love sometimes fall out of love, so why couldn’t the reverse be true too?

Now, ten years later, I’ve no doubt Ted loves me. And yet I know better than to presume he’s finally fallen in love with me.

I can live with that. If I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that it is more important to measure Ted’s loyalty than his love.

DeeDee and Harry Wilder are proof of that.

“A dress that zips up the back will bring a
husband and wife together.”

—James H. Boren

Saturday, 2 Nov., 2:16 p.m.

Each of the dressing rooms in the Collectors department at the local Nordstrom looks like the Apollo Room in Catherine the Great’s Winter Palace in miniature. Gilt-framed mirrors line the walls from floor to ceiling. The settee is thickly upholstered and covered in silk brocade. The tufted carpet tickles underfoot so that you float, not walk, on a velvet cloud. Indirect lighting of a rosy hue gives your complexion a healthy, girlish glow. The raised panels on the doors are meant to give the impression that you are secure in this plush sanctuary.

But it is only an illusion.

In fact, the walls are paper-thin, allowing the Nordy shopgirl—or, for that matter, anyone within listening distance—to hear the murmur of zippers or the frustrated sighs that come with the disillusionment that one designer’s size four is another’s size six.

I have just smoothed on a Marc Jacobs sweater dress that is perfect for the event I have this evening—the board meeting for the Paradise Heights Women’s League—when I hear the sobs: breathy gulps of heartache that no amount of expensive couture can muffle. They’re coming from the next dressing room where, just a few minutes earlier, this very demanding customer sent her sales associate
scurrying through the department in search of “whatever you have in Armani or Herve Leger, size zero, of course. . . .”

That alone would cheer me up, but not this poor soul.

Unlike my friend Brooke, eavesdropping is not my cuppa. And the very last thing I’d ever want to do is butt in when something is none of my business—

But
someone
needs to make sure this petite soul doesn’t drown in her own tears.

I tap gently on her door. “Hi, just wondering if everything is okay.”

She gasps before going silent. Then: “Yes, so sorry to have bothered you.”

“Oh, not at all. Please don’t feel you have to apologize. We all have our bad days.”

Slowly the door opens. DeeDee Wilder, eyes liner-smeared and glistening with tears, stares back at me. “Would you mind unzipping me?”

Speechless, I nod and close the door behind me. She avoids looking me in the eye or staring into the mirror because she knows she won’t like what she sees reflected from either point of view: pity from me, and her own despair. I made her soon-to-be ex cry yesterday. It must be Pavlovian. The Wilders get around me and they can’t hold back the tears.