“I’ll stop training at the store from now on.” I told the owner this before I headed home for the day, and she nodded, saying maybe that was for the best. In the staff room, no one spoke to me. The atmosphere was strained. I said, “See you tomorrow,” and everyone replied, “Take care,” but as I passed the back of the store, I saw the yoga mat thrown out in the trash.
After dinner, just as my husband was about to go back to the study, I said to him, “There was an incident at work today.” Witnessing the death of that Yorkie had shaken me more than I’d realized. I told him my worries, wondering whether I’d be able to keep working at the store, but he responded as usual with “Hmm” and “Right,” and then stood up to go.
I noticed myself feeling incredibly angry. Picking the breadcrumbs off the table and gathering the dishes, I said, “I went to the salon today.” Before I knew it, I was holding up a strand of hair and saying, “I got it cut pretty short.” I hadn’t been to the salon in months.
My husband paused in the middle of pushing his chair back to the table, and looked me over. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d looked at me like that. He had a few more wrinkles on his face, but other than that, he’d hardly changed since college. Just the same as when we met at nineteen. After a moment, he said, “Looks good.”
“Really? I thought you liked my hair long.”
“This isn’t bad either.”
“How much do you think I got cut?”
“Hmm. Around eight inches?” He scratched the side of his nose. Then, perhaps noticing my strained expression, he smiled, as though to placate me. This was the smile I’d once found so appealing that I’d given in to his earnest invitations to go out with him, despite having been interested in someone else at the time. Surprised at the tears that fell one after the other down my cheeks, my husband said, “What’s wrong?”
I went to wipe my eyes, but because of the tanning oil I’d slathered on earlier, the tears traveled smoothly down my arm.
“It’s nothing.”
“But you’re crying. Did you have a bad day at work?”
He’d completely forgotten that I’d been telling him all about it until just a minute ago. When I shook my head, he moved around the table to my side and awkwardly stroked my shoulder. But my deltoid muscles were beautifully filled in from doing rack pulls, and it felt less like him comforting me and more like me letting him admire my physique. No. I couldn’t do this anymore.
I took his little hand and said, “You only care about yourself. The longer I’m with you, the more unsure I become of myself. Am I really that uninteresting?”
My husband didn’t seem to understand why I was so upset. I pursed my lips to stop the flow of tears, and took off my knit top and skirt, right in front of his eyes. Seeing the micro bikini I’d worn for practicing my posing, my husband said tentatively, “What’s that? Lingerie?”
I left the house. There was still time before the gym closed. Coach. Coach, Coach!
Even though I arrived breathless and in my bikini, Coach let me into the gym with a smile.
“I want to train.”
“But overtraining has real risks. You’ve got to rest up on your rest days.”
“Just three sets of bench presses. They make me feel relaxed.”
I kept pleading with him, so Coach said, “Very well,” and let me get on the bench.
As I lifted and lowered the barbell in the deserted gym, the tears spilled from my eyes. “He just doesn’t understand.”
“Your partner?”
“Yes. He doesn’t understand anything.”
“Have you tried talking to him?”
“I can’t. My husband’s not interested in me.”
“You still have to talk. Bodybuilding’s lonely at the best of times.”
Lonely. Coach’s word caught in my chest.
“I don’t know how to get through to him.”
I let go of the barbell, covered my face with my hands, and let slip something that should never have been said. “I wish you were my partner, Coach.”
Coach took my comment in silence. I knew he valued me as a client, so I didn’t say anything more. But how many times had I thought, while training, that he was much more of a partner to me than my husband? He helped me achieve things beyond my own limits, and was even more passionate than I was about my progress.
After a while, Coach said, “Better now?”
Thanks to him tactfully implying I hadn’t really meant what I said, I was able to nod and take hold of the barbell again.
“Of all athletes, I most respect bodybuilders, because there’s no one more solitary. They hide their deep loneliness, and give everyone a smile. Showing their teeth, all the time, as if they have no other feelings. It’s an expression of how hard life is, and their determination to keep going anyway.”
“But,” I said, to Coach’s quiet words, “if you’re always smiling like that, don’t you lose sight of your true feelings? Is it right to smile when really you’re so lonely you could cry? I… I wish now I could have shown my husband all my different faces. There’s so much inside me he doesn’t know.”
I guess I won’t come here to train anymore, I thought. I’ll divorce my husband, go back to being an average, boring woman, and spend an eternity slowly dying while I wonder whether things would have been different if I’d gotten on that roller coaster when I was in middle school.
Thump thump thump. At the dull noise, Coach went toward the big glass window. I sat up on the bench too. My husband was on the other side of the glass, striking it desperately with his fists.
“Is that your husband?” Coach asked, and I said, “Yes,” in a slight daze.
How had he gotten here? He didn’t know about my gym. I’d never seen him so visibly upset before.
Coach said, “I’ll let him in by the back entrance,” and left the training room, and once he was gone I didn’t know what to do. My husband had caught me alone with my young personal trainer. He was so worked up. Was he going to shout at me? But part of me was ready for it. When I understood that this was the moment everything would finally become clear, the waiting seemed to take forever. My husband was still hitting the glass.
I stood up and went to the window, and nervously struck a pose at him. Both arms up and bent by my head, chest out, emphasizing my V-taper. My husband looked incredulous as I posed in my bikini. When I put my fists by my hips, striking another pose, he shook his head, looking pained, as if to say, Please, no more. I knew he’d never wanted to see his wife like this. But this was the real me. Still holding my pose, I showed him all the expressions I’d never shown him before. My lonely face, my sad face, my indifferent face. My face when I thought his technique was lacking. This is me, I tried to tell him. I’m not a boring housewife. I’m not the kind of wife her husband would ignore.
Coach must have called to him, because my husband went off toward the back door. My strength evaporated, and I sat down. I couldn’t think about anything until Coach knocked on the training room door.
“I’ve brought your husband. The two of you need to talk. You’re so much alike…”
As I wondered what Coach meant by that, my husband appeared from behind him. Instinctively, I was on my guard, but he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t crying either. He looked at me with a worried, uncertain expression and walked toward me until he was by my side.
“I didn’t notice, until I found your gym membership card… that you’d gotten so big.”
He held me tight and stroked my hair, over and over.
I still work out, and on sunny days I sometimes put on some tanning lotion and head to the park with my husband. We gaze at the dog park and eat chicken sandwiches, and even sometimes hold hands as we walk over fallen leaves. His hands are still as slender as an artist’s, and my arms are chunky like a wild beast’s, thanks to my training. Passersby always do a double take at the contrast between our physiques, but we don’t give it a second thought.