The Adulterer's Unofficial Guide to Family Vacations, A Novel (2 page)

I stared at him.
I toyed with asking if the reason he wasn’t going was another affair.
But he’d just get angry and deny it.
My head ached.
It was time to end this argument.

“Well, I want you to sleep on the couch tonight.”
Queen of the spleen-crushing last word, I ain’t.
But Mike picked up his pillow and left the room.
Slowly, I opened the three suitcases and began to take his stuff out.
I dumped his clothes into a pile, and then tossed them onto the closet floor, running the sliding doors over his shirts a couple of times.
Not very mature, but it made me feel just a tiny bit better.

I don’t want you to think I was feeling sorry for myself over Mike missing this trip.
Actually, I was feeling sorry for myself over a missed marriage.
It’s living day after day with that sick, hollow feeling you have in the pit of your stomach.
And worse, knowing that you’ll have it every day for the rest of your marriage.

There’s the elephant in the room everyone ignores.
But in our case, instead of an elephant, we had a pink, polka-dotted buffalo with a flatulence problem.
He screams for attention.
It’s impossible to ignore.

The buffalo (who I call Bob), was a metaphor for the fact we couldn’t talk about how his job affected us.
I wasn’t allowed to bring it up unless I want to endure hours or even days of being ignored.
So there it was.
The thing we must talk about or our marriage falls apart and the thing we cannot talk about or our marriage falls apart.

At first you think, okay, doesn’t matter.
We can get through our day without discussing the “subject.”
But it’s so bone-numbingly awful to ignore Bob.
I mean, he’s not housetrained and smells horrible.

Maybe it wasn’t that bleak, but that’s how it feels.
Day after day, I’m this invisible caretaker of two kids and a husband.
I just move through my week like a robot, or single parent, knowing I must cover for Mike every time he fails to come home, every time he misses something, and I can’t even bring it up.

I guess most people could justify it.
Find a way to do without.
But I’m not like that.
I want more out of my life and marriage.
I want the thrill back.
I don’t want to spend all my time waiting around for my husband to come home and notice me . . . make love to me . . . be a father to our kids.
Apparently, that’s too much to ask.

I don’t like what I’ve become – a spectre – a kind of a shadow.
Every night, I faithfully (and yet foolishly) prepared dinner for four, hoping this night would be different.
And every night, just as faithfully, my husband lets me and the kids down.
I end up stuffing his dinner into a plastic container and jamming it into the fridge.
In the morning, the same dishes are sitting, mostly empty in the sink, where I sigh and stick them into the dishwasher (he doesn’t even put it in the goddamned dishwasher), to do it all over again.

I don’t know how many times I told myself I just needed a hobby, more friends, religion, whatever.
Something to take the place of my spouse. . . the place of my marriage.
But I was the poster girl for why you can’t replace a man with a hobby.
How many times did knitting, model trains or playing a bassoon end in orgasm?

The day starts out okay, or so it seems.
This is the beginning of my denial ritual (which is kind of like yoga – without the toning and feeling of personal fulfillment).
I wake up, get ready, get the kids up and dressed, fix breakfast, all the while dodging Bob the buffalo.
Mike joins us for about five minutes, during which he acts the model but overworked and apologetic husband and father while Bob has a flatulence attack.

I take the kids to school and then drive to work, but Bob follows me there.
I leave the campus at two and run any errands (like picking up Mike’s dry cleaning) before picking up the twins at school by three.
The afternoons involve cleaning the house, grading papers, spraying air freshener to mask Bob’s existence and getting dinner ready.

Dinner is a great ritual of disappointment in my house.
The twins and I sit at the table for about twenty minutes before eating, always (and I mean always) to begin without Mike.
Here’s where I get creative, asking the kids about their day and coming up with yet another excuse for why Daddy wasn’t home.
I’m up to original excuse number four hundred twenty three right now.
And it isn’t easy to have a different one after ten, let alone past four hundred.
This is then followed by bathing, story time, and bedtime, which is also filled with promises (known in other households as
‘lies’) about Daddy being home the next night.
I spend the next couple of hours cleaning up, setting out clothes for the next day and reading in bed.
Bob sits at my feet.

On a rare occasion, Mike gets home before I fall asleep.
A-Ha, you say!
So there is time for a little banging of the headboard.
And you’d be wrong.
Instead, I get a little apology, and even littler peck on the cheek, and ten minutes about how Phil in accounting or Ken in marketing screwed everything up.

So there you have it.
The daily schedule of a totally meaningless marriage.
Woo hoo.
Alert the media.

Chapter 2

The tracks were rumbling, announcing the train before it arrived. She had no fear, no doubts, just a desperate need to end the pain. Black smoke filled the air as the giant beast approached. She didn’t hesitate for a second, throwing herself onto the tracks as the wheels crushed her soft body, grinding her bones against the steel rails, sending blood and entrails flying across the virgin snow.

Okay, so I’m a little dramatic.
I’m not Anna Karenina, making a suicide pact with a Russian locomotive.
Just stranded in Florida, on vacation with five-year old twins and no husband.
The bottle of beer felt heavy and cold in my right hand and I took another gulp.
The kids were asleep and the flight went fine.

There was a problem with our reservation.
Apparently, we were booked clear out in no-man’s land.
There would have been a twenty minute hike just to get to the bus each day.
So, I spent about that much time arguing with the staff, who smiled the whole time.
That is the one weird thing about this place – the constant, creepy smiling.
Anyway, I managed to upgrade to a much closer room.
It would cost a lot more (value resort, my ass) but at that point, I didn’t really give a damn.

It would have been easier if that bastard husband of mine hadn’t backed out of the trip at the last minute for work, but I was on my own . . . and it sucked.

As for the earlier suicide reference, no, I don’t really want to kill myself.
That would imply self-pity and I’m in complete denial about that.
After all, I wasn’t having an affair with a young, arrogant Count who would, in the end, ditch me after I’d left my husband and children for him.
I merely wondered why I was here alone.
I had no right to compare myself with Tolstoy’s heroine.

Instead, for the past year, I’ve been watching my marriage slowly dissolve.
Mike was quickly turning into a lousy husband and father.
It all started when he took this job a couple of years back.
That’s right.
Mike’s having an affair with his work.
You might think there’s no sex involved but I swear he has an orgasm every time he closes the deal.

Of course, then there was the actual sex.
One secretary and a copywriter.
But they meant nothing to him and I believed that.
The affairs ended a year ago.
We had some counseling – like you’re supposed to.
And I decided to stick with it.
My parents almost went through a divorce when I was the twins’ age.
It devastated me, even though they resolved their issues and stayed together.
I still have nightmares about them screaming at each other at three in the morning nearly every day.
I could never put Jenny and Ben through that.

But I’m not being totally honest about my reasons.
I don’t make enough as a part-time professor to support me and the kids.
Pathetic as that sounds, I don’t want to move back in with my folks and have the kids hate me for it.

Slowly I stretched the muscles that ached from sitting too long on the plane.
The hotel chair I dragged outside seemed to have been designed by the Marquis de Sade.
But the overpriced beer I bought in the gift shop helped.
So, here I was, feeling sorry for myself and denying that I feel sorry for myself, while my kids dreamed of princesses and pirates behind the green door.

I took another swig of beer as remembered how I thought this trip would turn our lives around.
The kids would have fun, and Mike and I would reconnect.
And under the fireworks I thought we might rekindle our romance.
There was even the possibility of sex (probably in the bathroom when the kids were asleep – but sex nonetheless).

For crying out loud, Laura!  You need to quit thinking about sex.
There wouldn’t be any on this trip – guaranteed.
Instead, the yawning, black hole in my marriage was growing larger, and I was in danger of being swallowed by it.

My mother always thought the wives of doctors complained too much.
That having them gone so often would be a blessing, not a curse.
She said it would be the best of being single and married at the same time.
It’s great when he’s home, and when he’s gone you can eat what you want, watch TV, read a book and go to bed whenever you want.
But believe me, it isn’t nearly as wonderful as it sounds.
Over the past year, I found myself desperate for romantic attention from a husband who was never there, and giving it to his staff instead.
Gee, my life sounds so glamorous, doesn’t it?
My mind peeled back to the conversation I had with Mike (on the phone, as most conversations with my husband are these days) once we checked in.

“Mike,” I started the conversation on the cell phone with a normal tone that quickly degenerated into fits of raspy sobs, “we’re here.”

“Everything go okay?” Damn it.  He didn’t sound emotional.

“Yeah,” I watched the kids jump happily from bed to bed, “no problems.”
I neglected to tell him about the hotel snafu.
It wouldn’t matter if he knew anyway.

A sigh came across the line, “Laura, you know I’m sorry about this.”

“Uh-huh.” Not sorry enough, you bastard, I thought to myself.

Silence echoed on the other end, “Maybe I can break free in a few days and join you guys.”

“I won’t count on it, Mike.”
I tried not to sound so tired.
I wanted him to think I didn’t have a care in the world.
Of course I also wanted him to bleed.

Another sigh came over the line, “I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t decide if he really was.
“I’ll call you in a couple of hours, ok?”

I hung up as he tried to say “I love you.”
I didn’t particularly love him back.

Jenny and Ben bounced happily from one bed to another.
Here we were at the “most exciting place on earth” and the beds held their interest as a thrill ride.
I couldn’t help getting a little caught up in their enthusiasm.
Still, it was late, we had just arrived and we had to unpack and settle in for the night.
Tomorrow the twins could inflict unknown terrors upon at least one of the four parks, but for tonight, I had to get them to bed.

The kids were reasonably good while I emptied the suitcase.
My heart wasn’t in it.
I opened drawers and filled them with every cartoon t-shirt, sweatshirt and pair of princess underpants we had.
It would have gone well, too, if I hadn’t come across the dress.

Why did I pack the dress?
A sleek Betsey Johnson number I picked up in Vegas.
I packed it for a night out.
My fingers ran over the embroidered flowers on black velvet.
When Mike cancelled, I spent a couple of hours unpacking to remove his clothes and re-pack mine.
That really pissed me off.
I’m a planner.
I start packing for vacation a week in advance.
It’s a good thing I didn’t come across one of his shirts or something.
I found a reason to curse Mike all over again.

Out here, at least the beer’s cold and the kids are asleep.
Given that it’s only eight o’clock, I was nowhere near ready for bed.
Mike had not called back.
I looked at the idle cell phone in my hands.
Yep, it’s on.
Damn him.

Another swig of beer and I tried to hold back from feeling sorry for myself.
This will be good, I lied to myself.
A chance for me and the kids to spend time together without Daddy.

I suppose that’s unfair.
But when you’re angry, you think and say unfair things.
Still, there’s no denying that our marriage was pretty much over.
We just celebrated our thirteenth anniversary.
That couldn’t be good.
Maybe it’s a jinxed year, like they say the seventh anniversary is.

No, it’s something else.
Mike’s job was a steady source of income, and a steady source of grief.
This vacation fiasco seemed to prove that he regarded his work with more respect than his family. Well, that and the secretary and the copywriter.

Tears started to form on the edge of my eyelashes.
No point in stopping now.
It’s dark and there’s no one here to see me.

Scratch that.
My body jerked in surprise as the door next to me opened and a dark figure stepped outside beside me.
There wasn’t anything I could do.
All doors on this level opened onto the same walkway.
I wished I was invisible.

“Dammit Susan!
I thought you said you were coming out here to join me and the kids later in the week!”

Unbelievable.
Is there an epidemic of abandoned spouses?
Did the staff know that when they relocated me?

“I know, but that case was over last week!”
Another non-refundable, Florida vacation that had to be acted upon.
I should’ve felt a bit embarrassed at my eavesdropping, but I was fascinated that my next door neighbor has the same exact problem as me.

“Yeah, I’ll keep my cell phone on.”
Something sounded a bit familiar . . . not just the situation.
I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“Whatever.”
I could hear a woman on the other end arguing as he clicked off the phone.
He stood with his back to me, leaning with his arms on the railing.
Obviously, he didn’t know I was there and had witnessed his little meltdown.
Now, I just felt uncomfortable.
Any second he’d turn and see me and think I’m some snoopy freak.
I should say something.