“Please, please, sit down,” I say.
“Barry’s family is from Charlotte. They’re down visiting his folks for the weekend,” my mother says, as if this reunion is as casual and relaxed as an old chamois shirt.
“Who’s Barry?” I ask.
The uncomfortable look they exchange answers the question. Barry is obviously the individual responsible for this insult to Alice ’s once robust and healthy body. She’s the exception to the old adage that all pregnant women glow. She looks exhausted, with an unhealthy pallor, and the pouches under her eyes are as dark as mine. Her feet and ankles are swollen. Most shocking of all are the gray roots of her still stylishly cut hair. How long had she been coloring it before her obstetrician banned tints and rinses for the duration? Had she kept it a secret from me or had I simply not noticed?
“I really have lost track of the time,” she says to my mother with forced cheerfulness. “It’s good to see you,” she tells me. “Call when you can.”
Why? So we can chat about Barry?
“I’m so glad you came by,” my mother says as she and Alice embrace. I can see Alice is shaken. By me? By my mother’s condition? “I just know you’re going to have a beautiful baby,” she promises.
My mother has defected to the other side! She’s a pom-pom girl for Alice and her wonderful new life with beautiful, perfect Barry who would never be caught dead showing up like me, scruffy, rumpled, not quite clean, Jack Daniel’s on his breath. Beautiful Perfect Barry wakes up clean-shaven, rinsed, gargled, armpits shellacked, hair stylishly spiked. Beautiful Perfect Barry, the Princeton Man, has accomplished in record time the achievement my feeble sperm were incapable of producing. Alice must have pulled his photo out of her wallet so they could coo over this paragon of manhood with the piercing eyes and the Clark Kent cleft in his chin, her ultimate triumph, her reward for the years of humiliation and perseverance.
See, Ruth, this is my Beautiful Perfect Barry, my vindication, proof at last I wasn’t to blame for the failure of my marriage, none of it was my fault.
“I’ll be in touch,” she says to my mother. “We’ll be back in Charlotte planning the…” Her voice trails off, avoiding mentioning the sacred ceremony.
“I can’t wait to see the baby,” my mother says.
I’ve stumbled upon a conspiracy of estrogen! Why don’t we plan a big Sunday dinner together? My mother, Alice, Barry, the baby. How about inviting Barry’s parents? I bet they’re lovely people. While we’re at it we should ask Curtis to join us. Time heals all wounds. The two of us can bury the hatchet.
“I need to move the car,” I say, impatient for her to leave. “I’m blocking you.”
I leave the two of them alone for one last embrace and an opportunity to whisper their concern over the wreck I’ve become. He’s just not adjusting, they commiserate, we wish there was something more we could do than hope and pray it all works out.
“I’m glad I came,” Alice says, emerging from the house.
“Yeah, thanks. It meant a lot to her. I know this can’t be easy for you.”
My instinct is to hold her when she starts to cry; her instinct is to be held. We take one step toward each other and stop.
“Andy, she looks terrible.”
I refrain from commenting she’s doesn’t look so hot herself.
“They’re considering a bone marrow transplant,” I say instead.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No. No, it doesn’t.”
“It’s hard to believe that this time last year…”
This time last year. Is she rubbing salt in the wound?
“…she was so full of life.”
This time last year.
“I’d really like to help,” she says. “I can, you know.”
Last summer. The very recent past. Practically yesterday.
“You didn’t waste any time, did you?” I say abruptly, the words sounding harsher than I’d meant.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I’m talking about. It hasn’t even been a year and you show up here pregnant.”
She stares at me, not responding, not backing down, her body language challenging me to keep going until I go too far.
“You’re already knocked up by some guy you didn’t even know a year ago.”
“I knew him,” she says, quietly, deliberately.
She’s not even kind enough to look away. Her face is a mask, impassive, refusing to confirm or deny the awful, unbearable possibility of her infidelity and betrayal, her secret life. I regret the words before I can spit them out.
“You fucking bitch.”
She opens the car door, tosses her purse on the seat, and crawls behind the wheel. A blast of music assaults me as the engine turns over. “Girlfriend.” She’s playing my fucking CD in Beautiful Perfect Barry’s Princeton-mobile. She wouldn’t even know who Matthew Sweet is if it weren’t for me. She turns off the music, pauses, then looks up, mocking me with an indulgent smile.
“Andy, I feel sorry for you. I really do.”
“Don’t. Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want your fucking sympathy,” I shout, slamming my car door. The radials squeal as I back into the street. I press the accelerator, hitting the mailbox and crushing the post.
Thank you, thank you, God, thank you, Jesus, for sending me to that fucking interstate shithouse that oppressively hot summer night! Thank you for clapping on the cuffs, booking me, setting my bail, forcing me to call my loving wife and forcing her to rescue me. The poor little thing must have been torturing herself, trying to find a painless way to break the news to me, how to gently announce that she was ending our marriage. Of course, in the midst of all this angst, she still found plenty of time to call Beautiful Perfect Barry to invite him to my house while I was out of town, sharing a bottle of my champagne while they listened to her favorite bel canto recordings on my sound system. Chaste Goddess my ass, holding hands on my sofa, a roaring fire in my fireplace, making out in my great room. I wonder if she felt the slightest twinge of guilt when she took his hand in hers, led him to my bedroom, and fell back on my mattress, lifting her legs so he could slip off the lace panties I bought her, begging him to stick his fucking dick into her unfaithful pussy. She did it with him in my bed. My fucking bed. I know it.
It was poetic justice, you goddamn fucking bitch. The Lord has not forsaken me. All your best-laid plans torn asunder by that one phone call, denying you the opportunity to humiliate me, hurt me, reject me, pity me, cast me as the victim in our marital melodrama. I got there first and I have just one regret. I wish I had a photograph, irrefutable evidence of my insatiable hunger as I sucked that enormous musky cock with a look of pure and unconditional pleasure that you never, not once, saw on my face.
The voices on the radio are still babbling about the dead Kennedy. The host is repeating himself. The subject’s exhausted. There’s nothing left to say but no one wants to talk about anything else. I drive aimlessly for an hour, turning left, then right. I lived in this town for eighteen years. It’s impossible to get lost. I’ve got nowhere to go but back to my mother’s house.
Case Study
Adios!
Aloha!
Au revoir!
Arrivederci!
No, make that…
Addio!
Sayonara, Mothra!
Bring out the cake! Blow out the candle! Give me my present! It’s almost our anniversary. Our first and last. We’ll crack open the Veuve Clicquot and celebrate!
“I just assumed you’d be continuing in therapy,” Matt says, sounding disappointed, almost dejected.
Why would he assume that?
“You’ve got a lot going on, what with your mother and all.”
“I can handle it.”
“And there’s the question of medication.”
Can’t he just call in refills as needed?
Each of his arguments is swept aside, inconsequential, and he’s forced to accept my decision and concede he can’t hold me here any longer. Our work is nearly finished as far as the State of North Carolina is concerned. And I’m tired of not having a level playing field. I’m tired of not being able to ask questions or, more accurately, tired of asking questions he never answers.