The fall after you fixed my washing machine—and you had fixed it, I told you that, right?—I got a call from Kate that I found unsettling. Darren was watching golf and the kids were playing in the living room. Annie was nosing under the couch, probably on the hunt for the Cheerios Liam seemed to drop everywhere. I was trying to get through a backlog of New Yorker magazines and thinking that I should just cancel my subscription because seeing the pile grow every week made me feel inadequate. And reminded me how little time I actually had to myself, time that wasn’t consumed by work or family.
“What are your thoughts on crotchless panties?” Kate asked when I picked up.
“Um,” I said, making sure that Liam and Violet were still building a tall tower before I walked into the kitchen. “I’ve never really thought much about them, but I guess they seem a little useless to me? Like lensless glasses or cupless bras.”
“Are those a thing?” Kate asked. “Cupless bras?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I was just making a point. Why are you asking about crotchless panties?”
Kate sighed on the other end of the phone. “Do you ever feel like . . . I don’t know. Do you ever want to spice things up?”
“You mean sex?” I asked. This was so unlike Kate. Until this point I’d never in my life heard her utter the words crotchless panties or talk about spicing things up. Her bachelorette party was at a spa. No penis straws allowed.
“I told Liz things with Tom just felt so . . . stale. She told me to get crotchless panties.”
This was starting to make a little more sense. Liz probably wears crotchless panties on the regular. And cupless bras, if that really is a thing. “Is it sex that’s stale?” I asked again.
Kate sighed. “It’s everything,” she said. “I take the same train into the city every morning, and the same one home each night. Tom asks me the same question every day when he gets home, two trains after me. I always wash my face while he brushes his teeth, and then while I brush my teeth, he pees. Every night. The other day I brushed my teeth before I washed my face, and it was like he didn’t know what to do. Is this forever?”
I hadn’t really thought about things feeling stale, but if I was honest with myself, sometimes they did feel a bit . . . rote, routine.
“I know what you mean,” I said. “Darren calls me every day at five oh two to ask me what time I think I’ll be home. My assistant jokes about it. We’ve been buying the same brand of toilet paper—Charmin Ultra Strong—for as long as we’ve been together. Last month I wondered what would happen if I bought Charmin Ultra Soft. But I didn’t do it.”
“You should,” Kate said.
“You should take a different train,” I told her. “Get a haircut. Or maybe take a trip, alone with Tom. You can leave the girls with us for a weekend.”
“Would you really watch them for the weekend?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Do it. Book a trip.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll buy some new toilet paper,” I said.
We both laughed. Tom and Kate did leave their girls with us and go away for a weekend. And I did buy Charmin Ultra Soft. But there’s so much to do every day, so many things that have to get taken care of, that it’s easier when there’s a routine, when you don’t have to think. Even using that smidgen of extra brainpower to choose a toilet paper brand can turn things from “manageable” to “overwhelming.”
But Kate got me thinking: Sometimes my life with Darren did feel stale. And stale can lead to something worse if it goes unchecked.