Still Life with Husband Read online

  “HBO?” I say.

  One hand on the steering wheel, he reaches across the seat and gropes my chest. “Not quite.”

  I know that he means it, that at this moment he sincerely plans on a weekend of fun and debauchery, but I also know that as soon as he sees the registration desk he’ll start salivating, and his wild, reckless sense of responsibility and duty will take over.

  We park and haul our bags inside. Kevin sets his on a big pink lounge chair in the lobby and motions for me to do the same. Poking out of a pocket of Kevin’s suitcase, I notice, is the book he brought to read during his free time: Sound Investments for the Careful Planner. I feel a familiar pang of love for my steady, staid husband. He’s like a brick wall you can lean against when you’re tired—immobile, rutted with predictable grooves, always there. “Emily, can you hang out here for a minute? I guess I’ll just go register and check out the main conference room. I’ll get myself sorted out and I’ll be right back.”

  Twenty minutes later, I’m lugging all of our bags up to our room. Kevin has decided to sit in on the first session (“Window and Floor Fans: A Better Blade, a Better Breeze”), but he promises that he’ll meet me in the room in a half hour. I should unpack, he says, and relax. He grabs one of the room keys and dashes down the wide hall, waving to someone in the distance.

  By the time Kevin comes back, I have unpacked both of our bags and hung up our clothes, showered, watched the news, flipped through the forty-two channels three times, watched an episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, unwrapped all of the drinking glasses, turned down our bed, pored over the room service breakfast options, called the front desk to request more shampoo, wandered up and down the hallways, and still had forty-five minutes to spare, sitting at the little desk and trying to read, but stewing, instead, about all the time I’m already spending alone. When Kevin walks in the door, guilty and on the defensive because he has left me alone for two hours, I am beyond testy.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, baby,” he says, plunking his new conference bag onto the chair. His voice is of a subtle caliber between edgy and placating; my response will determine its course. “I got caught up in the session, and then I had to mingle afterward. I couldn’t get away. Have you been having fun? What’ve you been doing?” He stands next to me and anxiously rubs his hands together, looks over my shoulder at the novel I’m reading.

  “I just don’t want to be on my own for the next two days,” I say sulkily.

  “I do have to attend some of the conference,” he answers evenly. “I mean, I suppose I can skip the early morning address on can openers, but I will probably have to spend most of the day tomorrow in the small-group small-appliance sessions…. And to night I do have to go back downstairs for the evening program. They’re unveiling their new bread maker. It’s half the size of the old one, with the same bread-making capacity!” Clearly, the man can’t help himself.

  “Great. Great, I’ll just watch TV for the next forty-eight hours. Or maybe I’ll swim by myself in the hotel pool. That should be fun. Or, no, I know, I’ll go back down to the lobby and just wait for you in that big pink chair until Monday.” I’m escalating. I can’t seem to stop myself. “Why did I come with you? What am I even doing here?”

  “Emily, for God’s sake,” Kevin says sternly. “You’re out of control!” I hate it when he accuses me of this, even though at the moment it happens to be true. It makes me sound like a lunatic, and him like an emotionless reptile.

  “No, I’m not!” I shout. “I just wanted to go on a little weekend vacation with you, and now I’m going to be all by myself for the next two goddamn days!”

  In the rhythm of our smaller-scale fights, this outburst indicates that we have just hit the zenith. Kevin wheels another desk chair around next to mine and takes both of my hands in his. “You won’t be alone,” he says. “I promise. I’ll skip out as much as I possibly can.” He rubs my knuckles with his thumb. “I promise, baby. Come here,” he whispers, moving his hands up my arms and around my back, drawing me toward him. “Come here.” He stands and pulls me up with him, presses his body to mine. He starts kissing my collarbone, my forehead, my lips. I feel him grow hard against me. He’s unbuttoning my sweater and covering my neck with kisses. His breath is hot on my skin, and I start to respond, to kiss him back. He’s murmuring in my ear now, and moving us together toward the bed. I had forgotten how excited he gets at conferences! He stops at the foot of the bed and kisses me again, slowly, his hands reaching inside my shirt. Heat begins to radiate from my center. My insides are turning into lava. I know that what we are doing is an avoidance of the issue, of my feeling abandoned, but what the hell; I don’t feel abandoned now. He guides me down onto the bed and kneels over me, unbuttoning my jeans. He slides his hands down my stomach, my hips, grazes the tops of my thighs, back up to my breasts. I’m pulling off his shirt, kissing him as he lowers himself onto me. We’re moving together, still partially clothed, with something halfway between urgency and familiarity, the particular landscape of our lovemaking. I’m letting myself be submerged in the easy waves of this, before I realize: a condom. We need a condom! Did anybody bring condoms?

  Kevin is on top of me, we’re both naked now, and I can feel his penis like a divining rod knocking about, searching for me. I run my tongue along the edge of his ear, lick the side of his neck. Is this Kevin’s sneaky way of getting me pregnant? Nod intently when your wife tells you she’s not ready for a baby, then seduce her? He moves his lips roughly against mine, his tongue inside my mouth. So do I stop this, abort the passion, force the issue? I need to say something. Does he remember what we talked about? Was he listening? He begins to move, slowly, slowly, and I forget what it is I was about to say.

  I do spend virtually all of the next two days alone. On Saturday, Kevin and I eat an early breakfast together in the hotel restaurant, during which he sips coffee and scans the day’s conference agenda, muttering to me about food processors. I spend most of my day in a chair in our room, like a retiree, reading and napping and watching mindless TV, and then at nightfall we meet for dinner in the main conference room, where he wears a name tag and I am his wifely appendage. He’s distracted, focused outward, socializing with his comrades, introducing me—sometimes actually forgetting to introduce me—and then getting wrapped up in discussions about the legal ramifications of appliance-related warning labels, or about the pitfalls of too much punctuation. I listen in, and it’s like I’m in an episode of Star Trek; minutes go by and I have absolutely no idea what has been said, or whether or not I’ve actually been present at all. There’s a good chance I’ve been temporarily whisked off to an alternate universe. I do seem to be nodding at appropriate moments, though. I hope that my eyes aren’t rolling around in my head.

  During the brief times we’re alone together, early in the mornings and late at night, we’re polite to each other, extremely cordial, but tense. We fall asleep with the television on and wake up to the chipper squawking of the early morning news anchors.

  On Sunday I drive back into town and wander around, poke my head in and out of the shops, and it’s warm enough, even though it’s early autumn in Wisconsin, to sit by the lake and read for a while. I buy some fudge. I buy a pack of condoms from a disapproving pharmacist at the Old Tyme Drug Store. (“I’m married!” I want to say to him as he hands over the package, frowning. “I wouldn’t even need these if the pill hadn’t made me so irritable and bloated. Seriously!” But I manage to stop myself.) I order a grilled cheese sandwich in a dimly lit diner, and I have ample time to consider just why it is, despite how much I love Kevin, despite how much he loves me, just why it is that I am going to get in touch with David Keller when I get home.

  It’s for work, I decide.

  KEVIN AND I MET DURING OUR SENIOR YEAR AT THE University of Wisconsin–Madison, at a political protest, sort of. Several days prior to the demonstration, a hapless employee at the most popular coffee shop on campus, Sludge, had noticed a couple locking
lips at one of the front tables. After it became clear that their panting was disturbing the other customers, he approached them, asked them to cool it, and offered them free refills on their lattes. When they refused and instead cranked their make-out session up a notch so that the people sitting nearby began to pack up and go, the young worker asked the couple to leave, which they did. The problem was, they were lesbians, and they called it harassment. They rallied their troops, and three days later, Lesbians Involved In Political Struggles To Improve Campus (LIIPSTIC) had organized a massive kiss-in at the coffee shop. “All are welcome!” their posters read. “Even breeders!”

  It was early April; who didn’t want to kiss someone? I went to check it out and found the place mobbed with students eager to protest intolerance based on sexual orientation and/or suck face with a cute stranger. I barely noticed the skinny blond guy standing next to me until the organizer of the protest, a gorgeous lesbian famous in Madison for converting straight girls and then breaking their hearts, announced that it was time to show the community that we wouldn’t stand for discrimination, that everybody had a right to cop a feel in public with whomever they chose. “Now grab your lover or the nearest stranger, and kiss!” she yelled inspiringly. That’s when my cute, scrawny neighbor turned to the girl on his left and swept her into his arms for a passionate embrace. I stood there staring at them. He bent her lithe body over his arm and leaned down to her, and long after everybody else had stopped, they just kept kissing. I felt myself blushing and wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. When they were done, the girl stood up, straightened her T-shirt, and shook his hand. Then she smiled and walked away. I was mesmerized. The blond guy turned to me and said, “I hope she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Or a girlfriend,” I added helpfully. He looked flushed and satisfied. I felt embarrassed and drawn to him. He was like a filled doughnut, conventional on the outside but full of possibilities.

  “Yeah, I don’t think she was a lesbian. It’s funny,” he continued. “I was just in here for a cup of coffee. Who knew?”

  “Who knew?” I echoed.

  “Can I buy you one?” he asked.

  Buy me a lesbian? I thought. “One what?” I was confused and couldn’t quite remember where I was or what I was doing there.

  “A cup of coffee.” He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shrugged. I wondered how many times in his life this guy had passionately kissed a stranger and then asked another girl on a date. I would later find out the answer: none. But I didn’t know that yet. I didn’t know that at all.

  We sat on a bench outside and talked for the next two hours. Kevin walked me home in the early evening, and at the door of my apartment building, he took my hand and brought it to his lips, lightly kissing it, leaving me wanting more.

  On Monday morning I wake up earlier than I need to, with a sparkly, electric feeling zipping through my body. I feel like I’ve had good dreams all night, although I can’t remember any of them. I bound through my morning routine and I even arrive at work before nine, something I’ve never managed to do before. Along with my freelance work, I’m the part-time assistant editor at Male Reproduction, a medical journal devoted to the study of the male reproductive system. I love this job, and not just for the opportunities it presents for rude jokes. One of my bosses is an elderly academic researcher named Dick. He says he went through life being called Dick, and he wasn’t about to change his name just because he took up the study of the penis. He’s paternal and dotty, and he treats me kindly, as if I’m his clever granddaughter. I’m not as fond of my other boss, Dr. Miller, a thin, nervous, exacting, workaholic urologist, but he’s rarely around, always removing gallstones or reversing vasectomies at one of his other two offices, so it doesn’t matter.

  This morning, Dick is rifling through my desk when I walk in. I suppress the urge to ask him what he’s doing rooting around in my drawers.

  “Emily, love, would you have a quarter to loan me?” He looks at me, wide-eyed. “Does the vending machine take quarters?” he asks. “I am desirous of a cola this afternoon!” It’s actually 8:54 a.m., but I don’t tell him that.

  “Dick,” I say, hanging up my coat. “I was just thinking the same thing. I would love to buy you a soda.” I dig around for change in my purse. “How was your weekend?”

  “Lovely, lovely. The wife and I took care of the grandchildren on Saturday. They really kept us on our toes. Elizabeth just runs around like a cyclone….” Elizabeth is the name of his thirty-six-year-old daughter, not his granddaughter.

  I want to hug him. Instead I just nod. “Mmmhmmm. Little kids can be exhausting.” I grab my wallet and head around the corner to the vending machine for two sodas. Our offices are on the second floor of the chemistry building at the university, and the dank hallways always smell vaguely putrid, like a dead frog, or an experiment about to go terribly wrong.

  I’m feeling efficient this morning, and I realize as I plug quarters into the machine that, although we usually chat for ten or fifteen minutes when I arrive, now I want Dick out of my office. I have six manuscripts in my in-box waiting to be logged and assigned to reviewers, and several rejection letters to draft left over from last week. I’ve been meaning to update our mailing list, and I have to send an e-mail to our publisher in Omaha. And I have two articles to proofread, a process that can take hours, scientists being notoriously subliterate. I’m inspired, and as I make my way back to my office with our two Cokes, I’m wondering how I can gently encourage Dick to meander back to his own office across the hall.

  “Emily, you’ll enjoy this,” Dick booms as I walk in the door. He’s standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by filing cabinets, his thumbs hooked into his belt loops like he’s a potbellied cowpoke. “Were you aware that turtles develop as males or females depending on the temperature at which they incubate?”

  “I wasn’t! That’s fascinating.” He told me this last week.

  “It’s common knowledge in the field of reproductive and spermatological studies, of course,” he mutters. “But how was your weekend, my dear?”

  I hand Dick his soda. I consider the hours I spent wandering around Lake Geneva on my own. I think about the vast amount of TV I watched by myself, about the cold pasta at the buffet dinners where Kevin spent his time talking about blenders with his colleagues. I think about the conversations we decided not to have. I think about our unprotected sex. “We went to Lake Geneva,” I say. “It was…it was fun.” I sit down at my desk and begin to sort through papers, separating manuscripts into piles.

  By the time Dick finally leaves, I am aware that what I have mistaken for my just-born work ethic is really an urgency of a different sort. My skin is prickly because I want to send an e-mail to David Keller. The scrap of paper he gave me at the coffee shop is somewhere in my bag. Although I haven’t looked for it, the knowledge that it’s there has been swimming around in my brain like a happy little fish since he gave it to me three days ago. It only takes me a second to find it: a torn-off corner of notebook paper, his number and e-mail address written in black ink. These are the first things I know about him, it occurs to me as I examine it: his phone number, his e-mail address, and his handwriting. His penmanship is legible but not neat, small and slanty, boyish. [email protected]. [email protected]. David, David, wasn’t there a decade a while back when every boy was named David? But not so much anymore. A name really dates a person. For example, you don’t meet many babies named Jennifer these days, but twenty years ago, all the girls in my grade school were Jennifers. Jennys. Jens. The boys were Davids, or sometimes Jeffs or Scotts. But really, not so many of those anymore. Emily is a timeless name, my mother likes to brag. But Heather, my sister’s name, is not. Why is that? David I could see coming back into fashion, though; it’s solid, with a nice biblical resonance.

  And what am I doing?

  If you think too much about a thing, it’s no longer innocent, even if, in truth, it began that way. So I will stop thinking so
much about this thing. I could call him, but that would be too personal, too much like I want to go out on some kind of a date with him, which of course I do not. I’m going to stop thinking now. I will dash off an e-mail to David Keller, and then, tonight, I’ll tell Kevin that I did. This is, after all, a way for me to make progress in my writing career, a way to get an article assignment from one of the editors at The Weekly. Nothing more. And if I admit it to Kevin, that’s all it will be. A spark between two people does not mean a fire will necessarily ignite. Not at all.

  Hi, David—

  Just wanted to send you a quick “howdy!”

  DELETE

  Dear David,

  You gave me your number at the coffee shop on Friday. I’m the girl with the brown curly hair standing in line in front of you. We chatted. I was with my friend Meg. I was wearing a red sweater. Actually it was more pinkish. Possibly you would call it salmon-colored.

  DELETE

  Hi!!

  I was telling my husband about you last night, and

  DELETE

  Hello there,

  I’m sitting here in my office at Male Reproduction, a journal devoted to the study of the penis and its related anatomical structures.

  DELETE

  Hi, David—

  Remember me? I’ve been thinking about writing for The Weekly. Any chance we could talk about it? It was great to meet you the other day.

  —Emily

  SEND

  “HOW DID WE END UP IN A FOOD COURT?” MEG SAYS, looking around at the sea of tables, the hordes of people inhaling fast food in the middle of Shorebrook Mall.

  “And doesn’t it always make you think you’ve done something wrong, nutritionally?” I add. “You’re under arrest for overeating, ma’am. See you in food court.”