Wife Living Dangerously (5 page)

Soon after we’re seated beside a rice paper and black walnut screen, Michael spots Karen and Brad Merila in line near the
door.

“Hey, guys,” he says, waving them over. “Brad! Over here! Join us!”

“Sure beats waiting on line,” Brad says, pulling the seat out for his wife and casually kneading her shoulder with one hand
as she settles into her chair. Karen Merila is spry as an elf with short spiked hair and four diamond chip studs in one ear,
a gold hoop in the other. She has a wide, flat ass and floppy, unfettered breasts. She’s taller by a head than her husband,
who is built like a bear and is almost as hairy.

Brad and Karen had also gone to the movies, it turns out, but they saw the French film playing at the art cinema downtown.

“That was one hot movie.” Brad is fanning his face with his hand. “I didn’t think we’d make it out of there with our clothes
on.” Karen playfully slaps her husband with her napkin and he leans in for a kiss.

“I’m surprised you guys are here at all,” Michael says. “Shouldn’t you be home in bed?” The Merilas have never been shy about
discussing their sex life. Karen and Brad celebrated their fifteenth anniversary at Amoura, “the hideaway for lovers” off
the bypass. The last time Michael and I had champagne and sex in a heart-shaped bathtub was on our honeymoon. Karen and Brad
have no children, I feel compelled to mention.

“Why would we have to go home?” Brad throws a sideways look at his wife.

“Bra-ad,”
Karen whines in mock protest.

“Let me guess.” Michael spears a chunk of steak teriyaki. “The car?”

Brad winks a bushy-browed eye. “Bingo!”

I hold up my hands in protest. “Please. Enough.” This conversation is beginning to feel like group sex.

After dinner we cross the parking lot to Coneheads, where I order a double fudge sundae, extra nuts, hold the cherry. I could
have been virtuous with a cup of the stuff so totally devoid of recognizable ingredients that it must be labeled, by law,
“frozen dessert product,” but I want the real thing.

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like a white version of Whitney Houston?” Michael asks the young woman behind the
counter as he reaches for his sensible blueberry sorbet.

The girl smiles indulgently. “No, sir, I don’t believe anyone’s ever told me that.” She deftly hits a few keys on the register.
“And five-fifty is your change.”

In the car on the way home, Michael turns onto Belmore and now we’re stuck behind a spandex-clad cyclist who stubbornly insists
on riding along our narrow and heavily pockmarked road. How I resent these cyclists, and not only because they have such well-toned
thighs but also because they terrorize everyone else by putting themselves at risk cycling on roads meant only for cars and,
like this lunatic, by driving in the dark. Our town isn’t built for bike riders and despite the billboards urging me to “share
the road,” there’s just not enough road to share. What if I hit one? What if I kill one? How will I live with myself knowing
that I actually killed another human being and only because of his compulsive insistence on riding his stupid bicycle on a
narrow road in the dark? Why can’t these people ride on the sidewalks? Or join the real world and drive environmentally devastating
cars like the rest of us?

Later that night in bed I lie awake with Michael snoring phlegmatically beside me and reflect on the way my husband flirted
with the Conehead girl, the supposedly white version of Whitney Houston. It’s quite a gimmick he’s got, this look-alike thing.
The cashier at Kroger is Michelle Pfeiffer but shorter. Jake’s nursery school teacher is a dead ringer for Cindy Crawford
except blond. The comparisons are always directed at women and are always fabulously complimentary. He has not, for instance,
told anyone she looks like Eleanor Roosevelt.

But Michael’s real chick magnet is his ear. My husband is an attentive listener, one of those men who is at ease navigating
intensely emotional terrain. He consistently attracts women who are either newly divorced or seriously contemplating separation.
Women talk openly about their marital situations, though he insists that this is only because they know he’s a lawyer and
they’re simply fishing for free legal advice. Women I hardly know will stop me to say things like, “You’ve got a real gem
there.” To which I always answer, sincerely, “I know,” or “Does he have any single brothers?” to which I always answer, just
as sincerely, “Yes, but you probably wouldn’t like them.”

The thing is this: By the time Michael comes home to me, there’s often not a lot of listening left in him and it’s been a
very long time since he compared me to a beautiful celebrity.

Michael sputters in his sleep and rolls over, mumbling something that sounds like “I ate the king of New Jersey.” My husband
talks in his sleep a lot. Sometimes I’ll prop myself up and keenly listen, expecting to hear, I don’t know what, some profound
channeled message or intriguing tidbit I can tease him about in the morning, but usually it’s just garbled work talk, as if
he’s litigating in his dreams. Sometimes he rouses himself just enough to tell me he loves me, wraps his arms and legs around
me, then falls back to sleep.

In the frantic scramble to get ready the next morning, the kids miss the bus and skip breakfast completely and I’m pretty
sure Jake is wearing yesterday’s underwear and Lucy didn’t brush her teeth. I stop by the German bakery on Highpoint to buy
them each a giant bowtie cookie encrusted with sugar crystals the size of half-carat diamonds. As they shove the cookies gleefully
into their mouths, I feel like the world’s most negligent mother and look over each shoulder to see if anyone has caught me
feeding my children cookies at 8:45 in the morning.

On my way to work I get a call from Caitlin who wants me to know that I’d forgotten to sign one of her twenty-seven permission
slips and as a result she won’t be allowed to participate in the school’s Peace on the Playground peer mediation program.
I am drowning in permission slips. Permission to be photographed. Permission to use the Internet. Permission to go to the
public library. Permission to participate in sex education. Permission to eat a special ethnic dish that may contain peanuts.
Ten minutes later I glance in the rearview mirror and notice Jake’s black and red nylon Spiderman thermal lunch bag on the
backseat, which means that he has to eat school lunch, which means he probably won’t eat anything today because he hates school
lunch. I have already failed two of my children and it’s not even 9:00
A.M
. I am a hideously horrible mother. I must have been delusional to believe I could handle a full-time job and the full-time
demands of motherhood.

I stop at Kroger’s to pick up something for lunch. I want to be virtuous and get something from the salad bar, but I know
I’ll wind up with a seven-hundred-calorie heap of chow mein noodles, sunflower seeds, raisins, egg, cheese, French dressing,
and maybe something green and leafy somewhere at the bottom. I finally settle on frozen linguini with marinara sauce and head
back to produce for an apple.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” I look over my shoulder. It is the young produce guy, the one with the giant mole over his left eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, but…” He doesn’t continue. He just points to my back. I immediately assume that
there has to be something gross stuck there, a cockroach, or worse, a bat, which is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Two weeks
ago, a small brown bat had managed to squeeze through a crack in the roof. Shoppers all over the store ducked and dodged as
the bat jagged frantically looking for a way out. Cashiers scrambled to capture it, first with an empty wooden fruit crate,
then with a yellow nylon rain slicker they tossed futilely into the air, and finally, successfully, with a giant net attached
to two mop handles.

Now I am certain that this same bat is clinging to me now.

“Oh, God, get it off me!” I am shrieking and flailing my arms. “Get it
off
!”

“Okay,” the guy says, and reaches out to gingerly peel a brassiere off my back. Thanks to the magic of static cling (I ran
out of dryer sheets), my size 36B WonderBra had attached itself to my sweater. How many shoppers had observed this spectacle
yet said nothing? I’d already made it from frozen entrees to produce. That’s twelve aisles!

The young man hands me my bra. To his credit, he is not laughing. “Here you go.”

“Thank you,” I say quietly. The missed bus, cookies for breakfast, an unsigned permission slip, and now the bra: I try to
ignore the itching suspicion that the world I’ve worked so hard to structure and bridle is careening out of control.

In the category of living dangerously
: I take the cashier’s gel pen, which fits comfortably in my hand and rolls so smoothly across the paper that I must have
it. I tuck the pen into my purse and check the cashier’s expression who shows no sign that she cares. I suppose she’s accustomed
to this.

The bra incident notwithstanding, I must admit, I do love this sweater. It’s the only shade of orange that doesn’t clash with
my red hair. I actually thought I looked (dare I say it?) beautiful this morning and hoped Michael might notice. He didn’t.
Then again, he also failed to notice that I had a bra stuck to my back as I prepared breakfast. I am trying not to think about
this as I pull into the parking lot on University Street and start hunting for a spot.

On a campus where the average male professor is frail or fat, rumpled and frayed, the man by the parking meter is a magnificent
freak. He has the broad shoulders and muscular arms of a shipbuilder, taut haunches and long, solid legs. Most men around
here look as if they’d been dressed by their mothers—high-waisted pants, slick polyester blazers, and dated neckties—but this
one is wearing faded jeans, a white oxford shirt open over a white T-shirt, and well-worn hiking boots. The only professorial
thing about him are his glasses, smudged and horn-rimmed and not the self-consciously fashionable retro kind; I suspect he
has owned these since eleventh grade. Everything about his face is outsized, the nose, prominent and a little crooked, like
a fighter’s; full lips, strong jaw. Stubble suggests the beginning of a beard, his eyes are absolutely green and he glances
up at me and I wonder if this is what they mean by bedroom eyes because, well, you know.

I slip my coins into the meter and watch him rummage through his front pockets, muttering as he searches. “I’m pretty sure
I’ve got. Hmm. A quarter. In here. Somewhere.” As he talks he’s pulling various small items from his pocket and setting them
on the hood of his battered black Jeep. A crumpled dollar bill. A wrapped stick of Dentyne. A movie ticket stub. Two pennies.
I half expect him to pull out a pack of baseball cards and a frog. I will myself to look away from all this activity around
the front of his pants.

He glances at his watch. “My class starts in three minutes.” His glasses have slipped down his nose. His biceps bulge and
I feel my face redden. I strongly suspect that he has no idea how good-looking he is.

“I’m positive I’ve got a quarter in here somewhere.” He pulls something out of his back pocket, holds it up to the light,
and smiles. “I’ve been
wondering
where this went. Found it on Delray Beach. Visiting my mother.” He offers me the shell. It is smooth as gossamer, as soft
and pink as a baby’s fingernails and almost luminescent. “She lives in one of those gigantic retirement complexes. Last time
I was there I brought her a cat from the animal shelter but they don’t let the residents keep pets.
Bastards.
”

His mother, the cat, his resentment toward the condo association—these are small intimacies I wouldn’t expect from a stranger.
Is it arrogance or social cluelessness behind his presumption that I care about these details of his life?

“Wait a minute,” I finally say. “I think I’ve got some quarters.” Actually, I’m sure I do. I always keep several coin rolls
in my glove compartment. I give him three quarters and the pink shell. He isn’t wearing a wedding ring. He pushes up his glasses
and his eyes focus as if he is seeing me for the first time and he smiles. His teeth are white and straight, his lips a deep
rose. I am dizzy. He sticks out his hand, which causes a book to slip from his arms and onto the asphalt.
Early Works of Ovid.
He bends down to retrieve it, and on the way up extends his hand again. “Evan Delaney.”

“Julia Flanagan. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” He ducks his head so boyishly that I’m overcome by the urge to plunge my fingers into his hair. “Thanks again
for the quarters. Not that my students would mind if I didn’t show up. Midterms are due today. Half of them will wind up cutting
class anyway.” A sad look flashes fleetingly in his eyes, the look of a man forced to abandon idealistic notions about teaching
eager young minds. The few times I agreed to guest lecture in human sexuality, I faced a room full of disheveled slackers
who were sleeping, loudly chatting, or circling classified ads in the weekly
Trucks n’ Cycles.
The only motivated student was a thirty-six-year-old woman from a tiny village in Southeast Asia who planned to open the
first sexual dysfunction clinic in her hometown. She wore thin white anklets and clear blue plastic sandals. She called me
Mrs. Lady.

Evan Delaney tucks the book into his worn canvas briefcase. “That’s a great sweater, by the way. I mean, the color. Brings
out your, you know. Eyes.” He looks shyly away. “Well. Okay then.”

For the rest of the day I don’t think much about Evan Delaney, at least not consciously, but I am aware that his comment about
my sweater rests lightly in the background all day, favorably, like the afterglow of a good massage. I was just offering a
helping hand, that’s all. Anyone in my position would have done the same. By the following morning, I have forgotten him.

I lived with the idea of Michael’s cheating the way some healthy people live with the idea of cancer, that they’re destined
for it. So even in the flush of new marriage, when life was sunny and Michael was always kind, I was plagued by a morbid combination
of suspicion and dread and also certainty in defiance of all the positive barometers of a successful marriage. How I developed
this pessimism I can’t say considering that I grew up without a father and thus never experienced the reckless turmoil and
instability that cheating husbands or wives, for that matter, create for their children. My fear of infidelity was as ingrained
and as inexplicable as a five-year-old’s prodigious skill at painting in the impressionist style.