My personal train of disaster left the station the day Petey borrowed his sister’s toy mop to scrub the bathroom floor. While disagreeing with his method of execution, I appreciated his logic. To a two year old, bothering with a bucket is ridiculous when one has a handy source of water in the toilet.
While he was thus engaged, I dozed, oblivious, with my cheek pillowed on the bills I was supposed to be paying. I’d been up all night with Emily who suffered from both a bad cold and a particularly nasty nightmare. While the children were napping snug in their beds, I mistakenly allowed my own heavy lids to close.
I awoke only when the splashing in the toilet reached the crescendo of a shark feeding frenzy. Not content with flooding the bathroom, Petey had enlisted the aid of his older brother and sister in cleaning the hallway carpeting.
When my husband arrived home, expecting the scents and sight of a sustaining meal, he found his wife clearing the dining room of toys and three children still sulking that their attempt to help Mommy had been so cruelly spurned.
Sighing like a man who’s just learned that the football game has been pre-empted by a televised presidential speech, Alan loosed his tie and pitched in to help. I stiffened at the implied rebuke in that sigh. My day had been as equally exhausting as his and not nearly as well compensated.
“It’s been a long day,” I muttered. “The children tried to help me.”
“Ah.” Alan didn’t say it like someone about to pour the balm of understanding on a wounded spirit. It was more of I’m-tired-of-coming-home-to-a-mess-again type of “ah”, the kind that always sets my lips in a firm line.
After the birth of our youngest, I’d deserted the hectic world of part-time real estate sales for the even more chaotic one of full-time parenting. Days like today made the problem of selling a luxury townhouse situated near an incinerator sound like a pleasant challenge.
Blessing casseroles that come in a box, I whipped dinner into the oven and then onto the table, which Alan had set. Conversation lagged over the uninspired meal like a kid with a pebble in his shoe; the children were sullen and feeling unappreciated and, frankly, so was I.
After the usual struggle, the trio of trouble was bathed, read to, and tucked into bed. Alan and I were stacking dishes in the dishwasher when he finally mumbled, “Tough day, huh?”
“You have no idea,” I said, rinsing the casserole dish. Hoping to prolong our little tete-a-tete, I decided to share an amusing incident that had happened today in the grocery store.
Before I could plunge into my story, however, Alan wiped his hands on a dishtowel and kissed the air in the vicinity of my cheek. “Pre-game starts in ten minutes. Gonna warm up the set.”
I’d rather he warmed up his wife. Slam-dunking a glass, I realized that the bloom was definitely off the marital rose. Alan’s a wonderful father and, when he can be induced to concentrate on me instead of a job, crabgrass, or televised sports, a thoughtful husband and lover. Musing on the urgency of adding spice to our stew of wedded bliss, I crammed the casserole dish into a space only big enough for a cup, added soap, and switched on the dishwasher.
I was wiping down the countertops and trying to come up with a plan to shorten the pro basketball season, when the phone rang.
Estelle’s familiar trill. “Rose, you bad girl! Fancy keeping it a secret! You are too smart for words!”
I made my usual witty response when accused of cleverness. “Huh?”
“Winnie called me. Peg called Winnie. Nancy called Peg—by now it’s probably all over town.”
I still was groping in the dark. “It? Estelle, what are you babbling about?”
“He’s so intense! A little short and on the chunky side, but I like a man to be solid. He seems so understanding—most mothers swear by his bedside manner.” A girlish giggle. “And those hands! Strong and slim, made to explore a woman’s most secret places. But then, I don’t have to tell you about that.”
Her sly emphasis, as well as her words, had me completely baffled. Was she describing a romance hero or a gynecologist?
When she paused for breath, I snatched the conversational reins away from her. “Estelle, would you kindly stop blathering and tell me who and what you’re talking about?”
Silence. Then, in a hurt voice, she said, “I thought we were friends, Rose. Don’t friends share things? Okay, keep the juicy details to yourself then. After all, it’s your affair.”
A click in my ear and I was listening to the dial tone. Deciding that Estelle needed a vacation from monitoring the gossip, I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl. Before I could sink my teeth into its firm flesh, the meaning of Estelle’s coy innuendos sank in.
I snatched up the phone and dialed her number, brushing aside her rather grumpy greeting. “Spill it, Estelle! What rumor has tarred my reputation?”
“It’s all over town, Rose. As your friend, I’m disappointed at being one of the last to know. But Nancy was actually there, in the grocery store with you. She heard what Petey said. Out of the mouth of babes...”
“But Nancy misunderstood—”
“Rose, I know how it is. I sympathize, believe me. I just should have put it together sooner. You’ve been complaining about all the hours Alan’s been spending at the office and then in the next breath telling me that you took poor Emily to the doctor again for a sore throat or earache or something.”
During this speech, I’d been frantically trying to break in with a refutation, but Estelle rolled on with the momentum of a ten ton boulder. “You should have told me, Rose. I can keep a secret.”
Dazed, I cut the connection, remembering the incident. I’d hushed Petey immediately, thinking we were alone near the frozen pizzas, but Nancy and her ferret-keen ears must have been lurking in an adjoining aisle. Close enough to hear the announcement uttered in a two year old’s most piercing tones: “This morning Mommy slept with Dr. Dee!”
Despite Estelle’s cutesy remarks about strong hands exploring a woman’s secret places, Dr. Dee is a pediatrician, and a good one. He’s probably five years younger than I am and wears heavy black glasses, the type Cary Grant used to flaunt in his more scholarly movie roles.
Dr. Dee is married, has tots of his own, and a thriving practice. Which may or may not continue to flourish now that a distorted truth is travelling the town informational super highway. Petey was correct—I did sleep with Dr. Dee this morning.
Since Estelle was out of reach, I bit into the apple. It tasted bitter. The phone chirped and I picked it up with a cautious hand.
“Hi, Rose.”
“Karen!” I nearly burst into tears of relief. “I’m glad it’s you.”
“You won’t be after I get through scolding you. We’ve got to talk, girlfriend.”
“Don’t talk about friendship—I’ve already been subjected tonight to Estelle’s twisted version. And, Karen, before you condemn, I’ve got an explanation.”
“Did you sleep with Dr. Dee?” my best friend demanded. “I’ve heard three different versions, including one where the two of you were caught grappling on the kiddie table in the reception area of his office. That account involved building blocks, but the details were just a little bit fuzzy ...”
This was a nightmare. “Karen, do you remember a couple of weeks ago when Petey cut his lip on the coffee table?”
“Sure. You hauled him in for stitches and it healed beautifully. Didn’t Dr. Dee come in especially to take care of him—Rose, is that when it started?”
“Nothing started! Dr. Dee was kind enough to come to the ER at night since poor Petey absolutely terrified of the doctor on call. He blew up a plastic glove like a balloon and talked in a Donald Duck voice until Petey giggled and only then were we able to get him strapped into the papoose board for the stitches—”
I paused for breath and Karen jumped back in. “Yeah. The doc made quite an impression on Petey on how he took care of his ‘mouff’ and your son told anyone who would listen.”
“Exactly!” I chimed in eagerly. “Petey started calling everyone Dr. Dee, including the dog. Last week he adopted Emily’s bald-headed doll and named it Dr. Dee. He slept with that doll, insisted it eat with him, and hauled it around in his red wagon. This morning, I woke up to find the doll tucked under the covers beside me. Emily was sick during the night and Petey beat me getting up—”
I had to quit explaining because of Karen’s loud chortling. “I can’t believe this,” she gasped. “You did sleep with Dr. Dee!”
“Except my Dr. Dee is six inches—not six feet—tall, has no hair, and doesn’t snore.” I massaged my aching temples. “Not that I know if the real Dr. Dee does. Snore that is. Anyway, Petey was trying to be kind by sharing his doll. He made a general announcement to that effect in the grocery store and Nancy must have overheard him. Stop barking like a hyena, Karen. This could ruin an innocent man’s practice, not to mention my reputation!”
Karen stopped gurgling long enough to acknowledge that, yes, I had a problem. The two of us batted various solutions around, but couldn’t knock anything over the fence (living with a sports nut has rubbed off on me). When I went in to break the news to Alan that his wife’s name was now inextricably linked to another man’s, I found him snoring in his chair.
I kissed his bald spot which, to Alan’s chagrin, had recently started growing faster than Petey. “Good night, sweet prince. If you don’t come to bed soon, I’ll call the hospital and see if Dr. Dee’s available.”
Grunting something unintelligible, my hubby’s eyes popped open. “Half time over already? Hon, move over, please. You’re in the way and Grant’s at the foul line.”
Whimpering “Foul!” I retired to a hot bath and some serious thinking. Athletes got compensated for cheap shots—why couldn’t wives? Although I was extremely concerned about Dr. Dee’s reputation—not to mention my own—I couldn’t banish the sneaking suspicion that Alan was taking me for granted.
I discovered over the next several days that squashing a juicy rumor is more difficult than killing the occasional flea that our cocker spaniel picks up in the yard. Rumors can leap higher and quicker than any insect and, like cats, they have more than one life. My attempts at damage control only uncovered several other versions of Dr. Dee and me giving way to our passions in his office, each more titillating than the one involving the blocks and the kiddie table.
Karen checked in occasionally to bray hysterically and report that the wisecracks were running rampant through our strata of friends. After three days of receiving tittering phone calls and cold stares and intercepting knowing glances, I concluded that even Dr. Kevorkian couldn’t kill this rumor.
That evening, I caught Alan staring at me over the dish of whipped potatoes I was passing him. “What’s the matter? Do I have spinach caught between my teeth?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said in a rather strangled murmur. “I was just thinking how lovely you look tonight.”
The moment would have been a tad more romantic if the kids hadn’t exploded in giggles. Alan continued to gaze at me as though he’d never seen me before. To my surprise, he insisted on helping me clean the kitchen, hovered like an attendant on a suicide watch while I folded laundry, and even kissed the back of my neck as I stood on tiptoe to stack towels in the linen closet.
I turned to confront him. “All right, Alan, what’s going on?”
“Going on? I don’t know what you mean.”
Mr. Innocence in the flesh. Still clutching my armload of towels, I leaned back against the wall. “Isn’t there a game tonight? Somewhere in the world some people engaging in some meaningless sport?”
He smiled. A sheepish, guilty grin, just as that kiss had been sheepish and guilty. I’m an excellent lip reader.
Alan chewed the aforementioned object, lower version. “I’d rather spend time with you.”
All my inner alarms were going off. “I’d rather you were frank with me. What’s going on? Are we broke? Is your Aunt Ada coming for another six week visit? Did you run over Mindy (the cocker spaniel with the occasional flea) in the driveway?”
“No.” Alan rubbed his chin. “Honey, we need to talk. I ran into Estelle and her perverted idea of friendship—”
Then the other shoe dropped. I widened my eyes in a disingenuous fashion. “And how is dear Estelle?”
“She said some rather disturbing things.” Alan’s skin had a greenish cast. “Things that made me realize we need to talk.”
I put my hand on his arm and said in my most sincere voice, “Alan, what is it? You can tell me. You can trust me to stand behind you, no matter what you’ve done. Forged checks, committed arson, slept with another woman—”
Alan gulped. He looked like a man who’d just taken a punch below the belt. “Uh, actually, she was talking about, about our marriage being in trouble ...”
“Oh, that.” I waved an airy hand. “She was probably referring to my affair with Dr. Dee.”
Alan was a man stuck in neutral, trying to shift gears while his mental engine raced. “I didn’t know—”
“If you count it as an affair.” I creased my brow in a pensive frown. “Technically, we only slept together once but I’ve seen him naked quite a few times.”
“Rose! You mean you and the kids’ doctor have been—” He groaned, sagging back against the opposite wall. “It’s my fault. I haven’t been home much and when I’m here I’m usually doing yard work or watching some stupid game on television—”
“True.” Grandpa used to tell me that a worm will squirm on the hook as long as you keep his head above water. Although I knew it was wicked, I added, “Petey’s really attached to him.”
“You’ve actually been having an affair with Petey’s doctor?”
One more squirm to make up for the annual New Year’s Day college football marathon. I murmured with downcast eyes, “Dr. Dee listens without interrupting whenever I want to unburden my heart.”
Alan raked both hands through his thinning crop of hair. “Rose, tell me the truth. Are you in love with this man?”
Studying my husband’s stricken face, I glimpsed the great gulf that yawned between us. Suddenly, the situation didn’t seem so funny anymore.
My tongue had somehow turned into a tongue depressor which I manipulated with difficulty. “Alan, if we were truly two souls become one, like we promised each other on our wedding day, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
He said nothing, his lips pressed in a pale line, fear filled eyes searching my face.
I couldn’t stop probing the wound. “Alan, we never talk any more. We haven’t just drifted apart, we’ve been swimming in opposite directions.”
Still he said nothing. The towels weighing down my left arm had turned to lead, heavy as my heart.
I studied Alan, trying to freeze this moment in my memory. The moment when my safe world crashed down around my head, when I realized that an unseen destroyer had crept in and chewed away the once strong foundations of our marriage.
Alan’s slacks and shirt seemed to hang on a body that within the last five minutes had become gaunt. His dear, handsome face was the haggard face of a stranger. Merciful shock held the pain at bay, kept me from falling to the floor and curling into a ball.
He touched my arm. The towels fell in a multi-colored heap at my feet. “Rose, you haven’t answered my question.”
I watched the warm rain of tears spatter on the backs of my clasped hands. “If you have to ask, Alan—” I choked up.
An eternity passed while we stood there in the narrow passage, inches apart in reality but miles emotionally. The central air sighed on, breathing cool air up through the vent behind me to caress the backs of my legs.
Alan said thickly, “If I have to ask, that means we don’t have an ordinary communication gap, but a Grand Canyon between us. I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know you any more, Rose. We’ve become separate people.”
“I’m not having an affair.” I spoke quickly, piling words like stones between us. “Petey named that doll he’s been lugging around ‘Dr. Dee’. He was talking about it in the store the other day, someone misunderstood and started a rumor—”
His hand reached across the yawning gulf, past my makeshift barricade and touched the nape of my neck, as gently as the cool air fanning my legs. “Ever since I talked to Estelle, I’ve felt as though I’ve been under a death sentence. Rose, I don’t want to live without you. You’re a part of me. I know words without action are meaningless, but I love you.”
The anguish in his eyes caught at my heart. In a mysterious process, Alan’s pain flowed into me, swaddling my bruised spirit and staunching the internal bleeding.
Our faces were a breath apart and we did what we usually did when our lips were in close proximity. But this was no perfunctory kiss, no peck in passing. This was a momentous, earth-shaking exploration, a first-man-on-the-moon venture, a kiss which conducted months of negotiations in an instant and sealed a peace treaty with a gesture more significant than any handshake in history.
We were snuggled together in bed when Alan confessed, “I never would have paid attention to that one woman rumor factory if I didn’t already feel so guilty about the way I’d been neglecting you and the kids. For taking you and our marriage for granted, I humbly apologize.”
He kissed the tip of my nose and then his lips travelled a penitent path down my throat.
Not fooled by the flowery language, I read sincerity in every caress and allowed his fingers to do the walking on the rest of my body.
Later, I said contentedly, “Estelle’s the first to claim friendship, but she has no concept of the real meaning of the word. At least you believe me. Now all I’ve got to do is come up with a way to save Dr. Dee’s marriage.”
Alan didn’t seem too interested. “Is it in trouble?”
“Wouldn’t you feel threatened if you were a woman and you heard that a femme fatale like me was after your husband?”
My lover’s hands were making another pilgrimage. “Rose, please say that you forgive me for being an absent husband.” He kissed me again.
Since my mouth was otherwise occupied, I knew he didn’t really expect me to say anything. I managed, however, to let Alan know that his apology was accepted. Lip reading isn’t the only form of communication in which I’m fluent.
The next morning, after Alan had left for the office and the kids were happily splashing in their cereal bowls, I called Karen.
“You’ve got a definite lilt in your voice,” she accused. “Are you sure you aren’t having an affair? Only a woman in the throes of new love sounds this happy.”
Mindful of listening ears, I lowered my voice. “Alan and I kissed and made up last night.”
“If you haven’t been involved in a clandestine romance, what exactly were you making up?” Her tone dripped suspicion.
“Lost time.” I chirped back. “Listen, Karen, does your friend Joan still write those cutesy feature pieces for the local paper?”
“Yes. But why do—”
“I’ve decided to go public.” I rescued my daughter’s cereal bowl, which was in imminent danger of flooding her lap. “I’m going to tell the world about Dr. Dee and me.”
Karen called Joan and Joan came through, with a sweet piece about my son’s devotion to the doctor who had sacrificed his evening to stitch up a little boy’s lip and the form Petey’s hero worship took.
The coverage included a photo of Petey with both Dr. Dees and a quote from me: “Petey’s been very generous about sharing his doll. We never know which family member will wake up and find it tucked in beside them. We’ve all slept with Dr. Dee.”
Dr. Dee had the article framed and hung in his waiting room. Several of my friends actually apologized to me for believing the worst. Petey soon abandoned both his hero worship and the doll, but “sleeping with Dr. Dee” is now a private code between Alan and me to remind us of what we so nearly lost.
Sitting in Dr. Dee’s waiting room recently with Emily, I was paging through a national women’s magazine and came across an article wherein a therapist made the controversial claim that a change of bed partners could actually be beneficial to a relationship.
Which brings me to yesterday. Hearing a rumor that Estelle Pendelton’s marriage is on the rocks, I went to the library, photocopied that article from the magazine, and mailed it to her. That’s what friends are for.
THE END