The Actor and the Housewife (14 page)

She bristled.

Normally Becky would have hung up the phone and said to Mike, “Honey, can you help me reach something in the closet?”—their code for “Please come into the bedroom so I don’t have to yell at you in front of the children.” Did he think she couldn’t see the mess? He had to rub it in with that self-righteous little gleam? And after the day she’d had? While he was leaning back in his cozy office chair making calls and answering e-mail, did he imagine she had her feet up too, sipping cold drinks and watching
Oprah
? Well. She was revving up to throw some blame back at her quick-to-judge-an-untidy-house-and-blame-the-wife husband. Then her hand tightened on the receiver and she realized she held in her hand the ultimate weapon.

“Oh hi, honey,” she said casually, already leaving the kitchen. “Dinner’s in the oven. Mind cleaning up for me while I finish this call?”

Teach him to glare at me, she thought, plopping down on the couch, the long cord stretching the coils smooth. Teach him to judge my housekeeping skills. Let him wallow around in the mess for a bit.

“I’m back, Felix,” she said.

“That’s fine, darling, just fine,” he said in his best Cary Grant voice.

She laughed loudly enough that Mike was sure to hear from the kitchen.

Okay, so that was a little low, but she’d had
eleven
kids in that house. It’d been rainy, so they’d stayed indoors, blowing from room to room like a twenty-two-legged tornado, twisting blinds, dumping every book off the shelf, waking Sam early from his nap and putting him in a block-throwing and hair-pulling mood. And besides, her foot was throbbing.

When the oven timer chimed, she said good-bye to Felix and waltzed into the kitchen, gently clicking the receiver back on its cradle. Mike had managed to tidy up the dishes a tad, but the kitchen table still groaned under the weight of a hundred dead trees.

“We’re eating outside tonight, guys,” she said.

“But it’s cold,” Fiona said, frowning at the April night.

“Then put on a coat!”

They had to sit on towels because the patio furniture was damp from the rain. When Hyrum spilled his milk, Becky watched the white stream fl ow down the concrete patio into the grass and thought, we should eat outside every night.

“My lasagna’s cold,” Fiona said in the kind of high, tight voice that only an eleven-year-old girl can truly master.

“It’s not lasagna; it’s Pasta Chilla, a delicacy in southern Italy. To be really authentic, we should be eating it on a bed of ice. Anyone care for some?”

“I do!” Hyrum said.

Becky scooped some crushed ice from her water glass and sprinkled it over Hyrum’s lasagna. He dug in, crunching and grinning. Fiona rolled her eyes, so Hyrum took another bite, chewing loudly by her ear.

“Yummy!” he said.

Normally at such times, Becky would share a smile with Mike, but she still felt like a wounded bird, so she kept her eyes on her plate. She could feel him looking at her. She knew he was parsing through everything he’d done recently, clueless and searching for fault, deciding whether he needed to apologize or whether Becky’s mood was ignorable. All through dinner, he wisely kept silent.

When Becky trudged into her bedroom after tucking in Hyrum for the third time, was Mike out cleaning up the mess he so vehemently despised? No, he was reclining in their reading chair. Becky grumbled.

“You’re in a mood,” he said.

She grabbed the blinds’ cord and yanked it too hard. She startled as the blinds snapped on the sill like the drop of a guillotine. The cord lay disconnected and limp across her palm. She had a flashback to a southern Utah vacation as a little girl when she’d made a snatch for a small gray lizard, pulling back to find the lizard gone but its tail between her fingers.

“I broke the blinds,” she said quietly. “I guess I was mad.”

Mike was on his feet and out the door, muttering over his shoulder, “I’ll fix it.”

It took a while before he returned from his hunt for some tool or other. She sat on the edge of the bed and thought about putting on her pajamas, and thought about brushing her teeth, and even thought about just lying down, but she was suddenly too tired to do any of it. She stared at the bandage between her toes until her gaze relaxed and she wasn’t seeing anything at all. Zombie state. It was as close to meditation as she came, and it seemed to relax that spot in the center of her head that no amount of sleep ever touched, making her feel floaty and free, transcendent.

Then Mike was there, massaging her shoulders.

“Tough day?” he asked, and with those two words she knew that he understood and no “I’m sorry” would be necessary on either side.

“Yeah,” she said, gaze still lost and falling through rings and rings of zombieness. Mike knew how much she loved zombie state and didn’t try to distract her. When he finished his impromptu massage, he reattached the cord, picked her pajamas off the floor to lay them across her lap, and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

When he climbed into bed, she rolled over and tucked herself against him, their bodies touching at every point from feet to face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Might as well.

“Me too.”

She breathed in his scent before falling asleep.

The next time Mike came home grumpy or was particularly obnoxious or failed to notice how hard she’d worked on looking nice that day or how many hours she’d spent scouring the house to please him, she resisted using the my-best-friend-is-Felix-Callahan weapon. But once or twice she thought about it.

Usually their marital disagreements went something like this:

“It’s time to go-o,” Becky called out in a tight, singsongy voice.

Mike was downstairs, watching golf no doubt. “I know-ow,” he replied, his voice as tight and singsongy.

A minute later: “We’re going to be late, my precious. I’m sure what you’re doing is
very
important, but they’ll be waiting for us.”

And Mike trudged up the stairs, waving a pair of little shoes. “I was looking for Sam’s shoes.”

Here she could say one of two things:

1. “Oh. Sorry. Thanks for looking.”

2. “Then why didn’t you just say that in the first place instead of letting me think you were watching TV? Were you trying to annoy me when you know I’m already stressed to get there on time? Do you get some kind of plea sure out of seeing me upset?”

It depended on how loving she was feeling in the moment, if she’d had a good lunch, if her headache had gone away, if Mike had remembered to put his cereal bowl in the dishwasher—countless factors. But you see that for her there was no option three.

3. “Okay, then why don’t you load the kids in the car. I’m just going to call Felix real quick and tell him something soooo funny!”

She really did try to be cautious. There had to be a way to balance a friend like Felix with her normal life. But she didn’t realize how often the idea of Felix subtly intruded into their marriage.

For example, the night Becky was chuckling to herself as she folded laundry:

“What?” Mike said, peering over his New Testament study guide. “What’s provoking the sniggering? Did I do something?”

She shook her head. “No, I was just thinking about this story Felix told me. Last night he was at a charity dinner and Matt Damon and Kiki Frie were at his table. And Charlton Heston—”

“Who?”

“What’d you mean who?
Moses
. Soylent Green is people.”

“No, the other name, the one after Matt Damon.”

“Oh, Kiki Frie. She’s a . . . singer, I guess. You know, she wears little outfits and dances around and seems to have been seventeen for ten years now. Anyway, someone at the table—I can’t remember who—said, ‘Look, there’s Charlton Heston,’ and Kiki Frie stood up so fast she elbowed Felix in the head. Felix said, ‘What are you doing?’ and she said, ‘Aren’t we supposed to stand for the president?’ ”

“Felix is embellishing,” said Mike. “Or the girl was kidding.”

“No, she really wasn’t. Felix said, ‘You know that Bill Clinton is president—depending on your definition of the word
is
.’ And Kiki Frie said, ‘But my dad has a bumper sticker that says, “Charlton Heston Is My President,” so I think he must be mine too.’ Apparently Matt Damon had been taking a drink when she said that, and he started to laugh so suddenly he literally sprayed water out of his nose. Can you imagine? Matt Damon! Then right when he’d gotten a hold of himself, Samuel L. Jackson, who’d been at the next table, got up and walked behind Matt Damon humming ‘Hail to the Chief,’ and that was when Matt really lost it.”

Becky laughed again, and Mike shook his head in amazement.

“Honestly, you wonder if some people live with their head under a rock. That reminds me, today at work the funniest thing happened.”

Becky leaned forward, smiling in anticipation.

“So, Dan, a project manager, was leading a meeting, and he was projecting his computer’s desktop on the wall to demonstrate this new application, but he still had an e-mail opened. Someone using the name Yosemite Sam had sent him a message with the subject line ‘What up, Doogle?’ ”

Becky kept smiling, waiting for the punch line, realizing too late that the punch line had already come and gone. She quickly barked a little laugh. Mike nodded, as if his head wanted to encourage her that the laugh was on the right track.

“It was projected right up there for everyone to see. You probably have to know Dan to understand, because he’s a pretty serious guy, but apparently he has a friend who calls him Doogle.”

“Doogle,” she repeated, nodding her head too and smiling encouragingly.

“And everyone lost it, I mean, really laughing, and for the rest of the day, everyone was calling him Doogle.”

“Yeah, yeah, wow, that’s funny, isn’t it? Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, it is.”

She went back to the laundry. He picked up the study guide. Becky didn’t even dare look at him. The silence that followed seemed to scream, “Felix’s stories are funnier than yours! Felix’s world is better than yours!”

Though at the time she didn’t realize that Mike was hurting, she still suspected he didn’t love it when Felix phoned. But part of her stiffened into stubbornness. Everything was about the kids and her husband and her church duties and keeping the house. Wasn’t she allowed to be a tiny bit selfish? Once she tried to explain:

“I share everything with the kids.” She was sitting on the bedroom floor, her arms around her knees. “Sam takes half of my breakfast and most of my attention, and even when the others are at school, they’re in my mind, keeping most of me worrying and thinking and solving problems for them. And you’re always there too. I don’t have anything that’s just mine.”

“You should,” Mike said. “You absolutely should. I didn’t realize that you were feeling dissatisfied.”

“I wasn’t. I’m not, really. Just a little.”

“I knew that, I guess, but I’d hoped that your screenwriting hobby would be, you know, fulfilling.”

She shrugged. “That’s just fun, like decorating for holidays. But with Felix—it’s different from talking with my other friends. It’s a little gift for me to laugh with him—or at him, more often than not. It’s fun, but it also feels . . . important somehow. Like I’m exercising a part of my brain that’s been neglected. And I feel a little more excited to live the day.”

Mike was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees. It was his “attentive” pose. He was trying, but he still didn’t get it.

“It’s not just for my sake,” she tried. “I don’t think Felix talks to anyone besides me and Celeste. Everyone should have a friend other than their spouse, right?”

“Sure. He needs friends.”

“Yeah.”

They smiled weakly at each other.

Mike had golfing buddies, brothers and brothers-in-law, hunting pals, and guys in the ward. Friends were easy for him, and Felix’s lack thereof didn’t make Mike sympathetic—it made him suspicious.

Becky didn’t try to explain Felix to Mike again. She told Mike everything—no secrets from her husband, that was where she drew the line. And she never shared things with Felix that she wouldn’t tell Mike. Still, there were crinkles and creases inside her that she didn’t think Mike could see. It didn’t make her feel lonely. It made her feel mysterious, which for Becky, mother of four in Layton, Utah, was a miraculous thing. She held on to it.

She considered later that maybe she should have tried harder. Saying to your husband “When my guy friend calls, I feel excited” had to sound so, so wrong. Mike must have stewed on those words for several weeks, until one afternoon in May when Felix called with an invitation.

In which a relationship ends

Come on, summer, she chanted silently. Come on, you can do it.

Everything seemed to tick and tock, leading up to something big. She thought it was all about the change of seasons, until that Thursday when Felix phoned after lunch.

“I just got my call sheet and I’m off for the weekend. Three days. I bought you a ticket out here—”

“You what?”

“Don’t argue, darling.” He was calling her “darling” more and more often. She wouldn’t admit it, but she just ate it up. “I anticipated your aversion to ‘mooching’ so the ticket is economy class, a measly two hundred and nineteen dollars. You leave tomorrow at ten thirty. You have twenty-one hours to find someone to take care of your children, and with an extended family your size, I can’t imagine that would be a problem. My travel agent is on call, waiting to book Mike either a Friday-night or Saturday-morning flight. There’s nothing to debate here.”

“Where would I—”

“I booked you a room at a lousy three-star hotel nearby. I tried to shake you off , but you’re like one of those pesky burrs that stick to your sock when you accidentally step off the safe, paved sidewalk into the formidable weed jungles. I don’t fit in Utah, but let’s give you in L.A. another shot. So.”

another shot.

“So.”

“So,” his voice got softer, unsure, “will you come?”

She sighed and said in a high, enchanted voice, “I feel as magical as a fairy princess.”

“Also, there will be no princess talk whilst you’re here. I was trying to be nice before, but the truth is, I’ve had nightmares about those
Little
Mermaid
shams crawling toward me and stuffing themselves down my throat.”

“You said those shams were a dream come true!”

“I know. I’m a shameless, heartless, ruthless man. Also, I miss you.”

He’d never said anything like that before. Her heart jumped.

As soon as they hung up, she called her mother, who agreed to come over on Friday until Mike got home from work, and her sister-in-law Angela, who offered to take them Saturday. Becky hesitated but finally asked her youngest brother, Ryan, if he could swing watching the kids on Sunday.

“As long as you get me Felix’s autograph. And a signed photo of Celeste Bodine. And an interview with Steven Spielberg.”

Ryan was the only single one left in her family, his life undecided after college, but he’d always had a hankering for the movie business. She was careful that he never find any of Felix’s contact information. The boy had no comprehension of the word “tactful.”

“How does two out of three sound?”

Ryan considered. “Your terms are acceptable.”

The way everything was falling together, the jaunt seemed divinely blessed. Despite her delight, she did have a rolling sense of unease, but she attributed that to her reluctance in accepting Felix’s generosity.

She called Mike at work, full of naïve excitement. “We’re going to California this weekend! Do you want to come out Friday night or Saturday morning? Felix is paying for it—I wouldn’t allow it, but we really don’t have the money right now, and he seems so eager. I think it’s worth it to him.”

“I can’t,” Mike said, no trace of disappointment in his voice. “I promised to help Steve with his fence on Saturday, and it’s my turn to teach Sunday school.”

They discussed it for some time—or rather, she discussed it and he kept asserting that, no, it just wasn’t doable. In the end, she thought going alone might be for the best, giving her a chance to hang out with her pal without boring Mike to death. She was going to stay in a hotel, and Celeste was in town, so nothing shady.

She told the kids about it that night as she stuffed them into pajamas.

“I’ll bring you all something. Something small—don’t expect a bike or anything, Hyrum. And I’ll be back Sunday night. You all mind your daddy.”

Mike was brushing Sam’s teeth and didn’t look up.

“Felix got the three of us tickets to an opera on Saturday,” she told Mike in their bedroom that night as she packed. “And tomorrow night we’re going to a real Italian restaurant—not a chain. I haven’t had real Italian since we went to Chicago six—what was it? No, seven years ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

She rattled on as she sat on the floor, rearranging the items in her suitcase—he’d need to make a trip to the grocery store, they’d all go bowling Monday night after she got back, she’d call as soon as she got there, and wasn’t this crazy leaving at the last minute? How fun to be spontaneous!

Mike sat on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on knees, forehead resting on hands. His look was foreboding.

“Honey,” she breathed.

“Bec, I’m . . .” He sighed. “I’m having a hard time. With this.”

Becky froze, the sandals she’d been about to pack still in her hands. The air was gone from her lungs, and she actually shivered.
Having a
hard time.
Mike was never tired, never sick, never hungry, never sad. Sometimes the world around him showed irritating irrationalities or inconveniences, but Mike was always a rock. So when he said he was having a hard time, he meant he was about to implode with despair.

“Tell me,” she said.

“I’m trying not to. I’ve been trying. For months. Logically I think, why can’t my wife have a friend who’s a man? Then I think, a friend who’s a man, a celebrity, a Hollywood hunk or whatever, the star of her favorite romantic movie, who’s rich and likes to fly her out to Los Angeles for the weekend, and . . .” He looked at her again. “I’m having a hard time.”

She nodded. She was still gripping the sandals. Her arms felt cold and her legs light as feathers as her body realized before her mind did that something bad was about to happen.

“I’m sorry,” he said, coming to kneel beside her. “I’ve been trying. I’ll keep trying. I want you to be happy, but I can’t help . . . I worry, and I can’t help thinking . . .”

She nodded.

He took her hands. His voice was very soft. “I get to wondering—am I not enough for you?”

“Oh, honey.” She rested his head on her shoulder, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Oh, baby. I love you, honey. I love you so much.”

“I know,” he mumbled against her shoulder.

“He’s my friend. We have some bizarre connection, we like being together, but it’s not like you and me. You’re first for me, always. You and the kids. No question.”

“I don’t know why it should be different. Melissa is your friend too, and Jessie and everyone. But, Felix . . .”

“I messed up,” she said. “I let someone come between me and you, and that shouldn’t happen no matter who it is.”

“If only he were old or gay or smelled strongly of kimchi.”

She laughed softly, and so did he. They rocked like that, kneeling and embracing, repeating
I-love-you
s and kissing cheeks.

“I won’t do anything to make you worry again,” she whispered.

“Bec, I don’t want you to have to—”

“Don’t even think twice about it. It’s done.”

They kissed and smiled at each other, and she felt the tingle of adrenaline that spoke of having survived a marital crisis. The sandals were still perched on her lap. She tossed them back into the closet.

“Go on to bed, honey,” she said. “Don’t wait up for me. I’ll go call him.”

She was in a long white nightgown, her feet bare. Usually, wearing it made her feel pretty in a Victorian heroine kind of a way—but right now, she felt ghostly. She couldn’t hear her own footfalls as she walked across carpet through the sleepy house. She peeked into the boys’ room, straightening a fallen blanket back over Sam’s tiny body. He was so beautiful asleep. Just the sight made her heart ache. She could hear Hy-rum’s sleepy breathing from the dark corner. A sly light peeped from under Polly and Fiona’s door, telling of at least one little girl who was sneaking in a few more pages of her book past bedtime. Becky could visualize Fiona, asleep with her face pressed to the open book, her princess flashlight burning under the comforter. Let the flashlight’s battery go dead—tonight Becky wasn’t going to interfere.

Hyrum made another sleepy sound, and Becky put a hand to her chest. These kids were the four chambers of her heart. She loved them so much she couldn’t comprehend it, and she stood there in the dark house for some time, just feeling that inconceivable beauty.

Then she sat on the couch in the family room, staring at the buttons on the telephone. The lights were off . There was something about the anxious spin in her stomach that reminded her of waiting in line for a roller coaster. She dialed.

“Hi there,” she said.

“Hi yourself, you barmy girl. Ring off and I’ll call you back. You’ve had enough of our calls on your phone bill already.”

The phone clicked. Two seconds later it rang again.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?” he asked.

The sound of his voice stripped away the melancholy, and she curled up on the sofa. She started out by talking movies, slyly moving the topic to lead actors, pointing out which ones were the cutest, which had the most charm, asking his opinion of Pierce Brosnan, Brad Pitt, Dennis Quaid, Tom Cruise.

“I mean, Harrison Ford, huh?” she said encouragingly. “Han Solo? You have to admit, you’ve given him a long look once or twice in passing.”

“You’re getting wily somehow, but I’m not following.”

“Come on, why can’t you be gay?”

Felix choked. “Gay?”

“It would make everything so much easier. You’re already at thirty percent. Couldn’t you just hike that up to fifty-one? For me?”

“No.”

“Come on! Just a teeny bit gayer.”

There was a brief silence. “This is about Mike.”

“Yes.”

“He’s jealous.”

“In a way.”

“You’re not coming out to visit.”

“I can’t.

“This is rotten.”

“I know! So you see my desire for your general gayness. A little purple thrown into your wardrobe, a couple of sparkly handbags. I think you could pull it off .”

“And Celeste?”

Becky sighed. “Okay, fine, you can’t be gay. It was just a suggestion.”

They went quiet. She hung on to the receiver, listening to his silence, soaking up all the contact that she could. She was suddenly afraid. Maybe it wasn’t right to be so attached to a friend—any friend, but especially a man. Maybe this was for the best, even though it felt as wrong as swallowing chicken bones. It hurt in her throat, in her belly. She felt guilty that it hurt, that it was a sacrifice at all, and the guilt made the ache sharper.

When he spoke, his voice was quiet and a little scratchy. “When can we talk again?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Maybe never?”

“Maybe. I can’t think about it.”

“I’m going to be a tilting boat,” he said. “I’m going to be taking in a lot of water, and perhaps I’ll keel over or perhaps I’ll sink.”

“That was quite a metaphor.”

“I can’t talk about it straight. It hurts.”

How could it hurt both of them? She’d crossed a huge line, worrying her husband, putting her marriage and family in jeopardy. This breakup was Definitely for the best. But still they hung on in silence. She listened to his breathing.

Being with Felix, talking to him, having his being in her heart—it was as right as the marrow in her bones. But saying good-bye was right too. How could two opposite things be right?

“You can’t let him do this,” he said.

“Mike didn’t do anything. It was my call. I don’t know how to balance this. I don’t know how to be married and have a guy friend. And I won’t risk my marriage in any way. Would you risk Celeste for me?”

“Of course not. Right, so we won’t talk. It’s not such a to-do as all that. We’ll pretend we never met. We’ll just say good-bye and—wait, don’t ring off yet! Don’t go.”

“No,” she said, “I won’t.”

She was dazed by this moment, her whole body aching and prickling and seeming to drift as if in deep water. When had she become more to him than someone to laugh at? Still she hung on to that phone, the receiver warm against her ear.

She lay there all night. Sometimes she dozed, then Felix would say something that would wake her and make her laugh. Sometimes she’d say something and he’d be gone, then return shortly, having visited the bathroom or gone for a drink of water. Once she asked him to sing, and he did Paul Simon’s “Long, Long Day.” She shut her eyes and moved in and out of consciousness. It was unearthly. She stopped feeling the couch beneath her, stopped being aware of the phone receiver or the hum of the refrigerator in the next room or anything tangible. She felt buoyant.

Pale strands of light were leaking through the blinds. She realized she was cold and shivered. She must have made a sound because Felix said, “Get a blanket.”

“I don’t want to get up.”

“You’re freezing. Get a blanket.”

“Sam’s spare blankie is on the floor over there. Can you get it for me?”

He made a noise as though he were reaching. “No, sorry.”

She hooked it with her toe and reeled it in. It fit over her torso.

“That’s better,” he said.

“I want to hang up before Mike wakes. I want to start the day clean for him, so he doesn’t have to worry one day more.”

Felix sniff ed. “Do you want me to repeat my boat metaphor?”

“No, I got it. I remember every word.”

“Good.”

She wanted to say it, the last thing she’d probably ever say to him, to make sure he knew, even if she revealed too much, even if she took too much for granted. She said, “Felix, you were my best friend too.”