TO EVERYONE’S RELIEF, Bob’s biopsy in January had come back negative for malignancy. The test indicated a relatively benign case of prostatitis. Since he continued to have difficulty urinating and his enlarged prostate appeared not to respond to medication, however, his doctors had recommended surgery to shrink the offending gland. An appointment had been made for early March. And now Perri was being asked to take time out of her already impossibly crazed schedule to drive him and Carol to and from the hospital and, on the return trip, help wheel or walk Bob out to the car. At least, that was how it had seemed to Perri when, the night before, she’d spoken on the phone to Gus and Olympia. Neither had point-blank asked Perri to retrieve their father. But both had alerted her to the near impossibility of getting out of the city until midafternoon at the earliest. After much prodding, they’d both agreed to come out after lunch.
Perri didn’t necessarily mind doing a favor for her parents. Being the Good Daughter was as important to her as being a good mother. She might even have enjoyed the break from the daily grind. What she objected to was her sisters both assuming that she’d be there whenever it was necessary. Perri felt that, while Olympia and Gus were incredibly different, they had one thing in common: self-absorption on an epic scale. They take me for granted, Perri thought for the umpteenth time as she pulled into her parents’ driveway to pick up her father.
A three-note text alert interrupted her thoughts. She put the car in park, lifted her phone from her bag, and scanned the screen.
Want to see you—when?, Perri read in the front seat—and found her heart beating louder than it probably should have been.
The text had been sent by Roy Marley, her college boyfriend before Mike. The dreadlocked son of a dentist, he’d been the only African American member of the druggie fraternity, where he’d played the role of both token and totem, especially after someone spread the rumor, later proved false, that he was the son of reggae legend Bob Marley. He and Perri had dated for three months of her sophomore year, at which point he’d dumped her without explanation. Twenty years later, he’d found her on Facebook and sent her a message that said, Yo, Hellinger, what’s up? Still think of the GREAT TIMES we had together. Things had escalated from there.
In the past week, they’d texted or emailed at least three times a day. Perri couldn’t stop hitting Reply. She couldn’t stop checking to see if Roy had replied to her reply, either. She’d be in the middle of a business call to Mexico or China and, instead of concentrating on the manufacture of velveteen hangers, she’d be checking her BlackBerry. Every text of Roy’s felt like vindication, proof positive that he’d been crazy about her after all and regretted having split. Was that it? Or was Perri looking for affirmation in some larger sense—affirmation that she was still attractive, still young? Roy was now a doctor, divorced with two kids and living in Bethesda, Maryland.
Maybe not such a good idea, she typed. Then she pressed Send, only to be overcome by a wave of regret and fear that Roy would lose interest and/or give up, followed by guilt and shame that she didn’t actually want him to do so.
Here she had all she’d ever dreamed of. Not just a loyal husband but three beautiful and healthy children; her own company; prime real estate; a still bountiful if recently attenuated stock portfolio (thanks to the stock market crash of early ’09); and possibly the most organized shoe closets, toy bins, and flatware drawer in all of Westchester County. Never mind the Lexus she was driving, or the side-by-side his-and-her sinks in their renovated master bath. Except, suddenly, things weren’t that perfect anymore. Mike had lost his job at the beginning of the year. And while Perri could tell herself he was a victim of the Great Recession, she secretly knew otherwise. The mass layoffs had taken place the year before. In all likelihood, the bank was simply clearing out its least productive rung, just as a gardener clears dead wood in early spring. It humiliated Perri to think of her husband as fitting into that category. Her identity depended on them both being winners in the game of life. She found it especially unsettling to think that she might be the more successful one of the two. Perri considered herself to be a feminist—to a point. But for a marriage to work, didn’t the husband still need to be the chief breadwinner?
For another thing, it had been nearly three months since she and Mike had had sex. And the scary part was: Perri didn’t actually miss it. Vibrators, she’d found, made far more efficient partners than husbands did. They didn’t require you to look good; or produce vowel-rich soundtracks; or feel self-conscious about how long it was taking you to climax. Yet she feared the things that her abstinence portended. She’d once read an article in Vanity Fair magazine about a Greenwich, Connecticut, society family in which the matriarch had opined that the key to a happy marriage was lots of sex with one’s husband. The quote had stuck with her. Because while it had been a long time since Perri and Mike had had a lot of sex, until recently they’d at least had some. Which is to say, twice a month on Saturday night after their biweekly dinner date. It was a schedule that had seemed to suit both of them. It wasn’t as if they’d just met—far from it. And they were always short of sleep: if Noah didn’t wake up crying, his pacifier missing, Sadie would appear like a ghost in the doorway of their bedroom at four a.m., claiming to have had a bad dream and determined to climb under their covers, splay her limbs, elbow them in the face—and ruin any hope of a good night’s rest. (Aiden, god bless him, slept as if he were in a coma.)
Plus, while Mike had been employed by Credit Suisse, he’d had to be at his desk by eight at the latest. Which meant that he’d had to leave the house by six thirty. But ever since he’d been laid off—ever since he’d been able to sleep in—he’d only wanted to cuddle. And Perri hadn’t been able to find the words to ask him why. This was partly because she found talking about sex to be mortifying and partly because she feared the answer was that he no longer found her attractive. Not that she could blame him if he did. After three pregnancies and nursing marathons, she felt like a battered boat, its sail loose and tattered, its ropes frayed. Where her large breasts had once been a source of pride and embarrassment in equal parts, now they were only a source of embarrassment—especially since they’d begun to point south. She’d thought about getting a “lift,” but it seemed so desperate. Also, she was petrified of being unconscious. How could she control things if she weren’t awake? In her late twenties, when she’d had an ovarian cyst removed, Perri had needed a Valium just to enter the hospital.
In truth, Perri didn’t necessarily find Mike any more attractive than he found her. Though it wasn’t the early signs of middle-aged spread that failed to put her in the mood; it was the fact that he snored and refused even to discuss it with a doctor. It was also that he’d officially taken over childcare duties on Tuesdays. (The other four days of the week, the family employed a Colombian nanny named Dolores.) Though how Mike actually spent the nine hours that Perri was in her midtown Manhattan office was another matter. From what she could tell, he filled the morning by shopping for dumbbells and free weights on the Internet, while Noah sat at his feet, drawing on the carpet with ballpoint pens he’d found lying around the house—until it was time for both their naps. Later, Mike would take Noah to go pick up Sadie and Aiden from school. After that, the TV would go on and wouldn’t go off again until Perri came home—only to find a sink full of dishes and no milk in the fridge. And for this, her husband seemed to expect a medal! For this, he called himself Superdad and would tell anyone who’d listen that losing his job had been a “blessing in disguise,” allowing him to spend the “quality time” with his family that he’d always wanted to spend.
Not that Mike’s domestic failings were anything new. But when he’d worked longer hours than she did, Perri had had no expectations that he could possibly disappoint. He wasn’t there, so how could he be expected to have stopped and shopped at the Stop and Shop? The irony was that when Mike had first announced that he’d been laid off, Perri had been secretly relieved. He’d been gone so much the previous few years—had rarely made it home before the kids’ bedtime. Now, though, she couldn’t wait for him to go back to work. But he’d insisted that he was in no hurry, and that his severance package had been generous enough to buy them both time. He also said he’d rather get a live-in housekeeper and nanny than listen to Perri bitch and moan at him about babysitting for the next sixteen years. But she didn’t want some stranger living in her house!
It was also possible that she didn’t want to give up the right to complain about how much she did (that Mike didn’t appreciate), from making lunches, to organizing PTA Visiting Artist committee events, to packing and unpacking and repacking backpacks, to removing the plastic wrapping from juice-box six-packs, to applying Band-Aids to semifictional booboos, to spraying and slathering sunscreen, to photocopying birth certificates, to filling out permission slips in which emergency contacts had to be named four separate times and primary phone numbers another three. (As if the repetition alone would prevent anything bad from ever happening.) There were also stroller tires that needed air, and special soccer cleats, and ballet tights, and violin chin rests that were unavailable locally and had to be tracked down online. Laundry too—endless laundry, mountains upon mountains of balled-up socks and sweats. (Perri could press Warm/Large/Start in her sleep.) And while it was true that Perri didn’t have to make her own mayonnaise, Aiden preferred it to the store-bought kind, especially in his tuna fish salad sandwiches. And, of course, there were toys blanketing the floor space of the house each night—football fields’ worth of plastic gizmos that had been made in Chinese factories for the benefit of American children, who could apparently never have enough of them. Perri occasionally thought of a photograph she’d seen of Palestinian boys of eight or nine in the Gaza Strip, playing handball in a dirt lot. The boys hadn’t seemed bored at all. And what if the happiest kids on earth were the ones who didn’t have any toys?
Pulling herself together, Perri got out of the car and set off up the slate path to her childhood home. Her cell phone pinged again. She looked down, but it had started to flurry, and the precipitation made it difficult to read the screen. Hunching over, she wiped it with her glove, then squinted into the glare:
u know you want me, she finally made out—and nearly jumped out of her Wellingtons.
u r insane, she typed frantically, her fingers stiffening in the cold.
But as she rang the bell, she had to wonder if she was talking not about Roy but about herself.