Second Chance

Suddenly all his detail began to fade and Art Instructor disappeared, as did as the grove. But the orange remained, and I could see each individual pockmark on it. I could even see the shadows in the tiny craters.

That was when I felt Neil slip back into bed, his hair still wet, his body smelling of soap.

I remembered with some dread that it was Saturday.

It wasn’t a given, exactly, sex attempts on Saturday. But over the years it was the one day we could pretty much count on all three kids being either happily mesmerized by cartoons down in the den, at a sleep-over, or, as they grew into teens, dead asleep, sometimes till noon or better. And over the years, in the mood or not, mostly not, I’d obliged. But not for weeks now.

I knew he was going to work on the clinic – a low-cost health clinic, his dream for years, but finally in its genesis – again this weekend; that’s why he’d showered. So he was clean. Teeth brushed. Shaved. But still, inside I cringed, a shriveled part of me shriveling further. I didn’t want to have sex. I wanted to paint an orange. Probably from watching Bob Ross the other day. I hadn’t painted in years. But lately, I’d rather have a root canal than have sex.

Neil lay quietly for a moment, then gently began stroking the backs of his knuckles against my upper arm. Sex knocking. And, once again, nobody home.

Was it my fault? Neil’s? Why was I turned on by a damn orange and not by my husband of over two decades? How and when had sex become one more duty? Part of my job description? Full-Time Homemaker: Be available at all hours to do all things for just about everyone. Must respond attentively to all demands for attention, physical and otherwise. Immediate supervisors include, but not limited to: husband, kids, cat. The pillow still over my head, I pulled the quilt up under my chin and rolled to the other side of the bed, trying to also pull back the cover of sleep.

‘Dee? Deena? Dee-deelicious ….’ A pause, then a whispered, resigned, ‘Shit.’ I waited, breathing silently. What was I supposed to say? I’d already said no in every way possible. I could write a book, like a cookbook, but with different recipes for how to deliver the news to your husband that it ain’t happening.

But I knew I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I was supposed to roll over. Make Love. Or at least Be Compliant. But I just couldn’t. Not anymore. The hasty retreat of estrogen from my body was making my breasts tender, my joints and muscles ache, and I was getting headaches at the drop of a hat. Or the raise of a penis. And I was irritated a lot. Really irritated. In a way I’d never been before in my life. A don’t-touch me -or-I’ll-yank-it-off-you kind of irritated. Although I never let those feelings out. Never. Just kept the lid on. Tight. Part of my job.

Neil exhaled sharply, muttering, ‘I wish you’d take some hormones. This isn’t good for us.’

He climbed out of bed and noisily dressed, banging drawers and cabinets. Then it sounded like he was putting every clinking, jingly thing from the dresser in and out of his pockets several times. Finally he left the room, his heavy footfalls down the stairs further conveying his feelings. I didn’t blame him. But I did. Neil was one of the good guys. Or was when we’d married. I supposed he still was, but we’d drifted apart the past few years, sailing merrily along in our life sailboats, our courses charted by the gale force winds of responsibilities, rarely by the gentle breezes of love. And as for me personally, as a woman, I felt like I’d recently looked up and realized I was in the doldrums.

I heard Neil downstairs, kitchen noises for several minutes, complete with slamming fridge door and cabinet, a few minutes’ pause, then going through his medical bag, opening the hall closet for his coat, then, Bang!

The doors and cabinets in the house were paying a price for our lack of sex.

Sex. It had once been so great. But now … If one person’s legitimate need is to have sex, and the other person’s legitimate need is to not have sex, whose need trumps? Why were women supposed to take hormones in order to be horny? Why weren’t men pressured to take hormones to make them able to have three thoughts and not have two of them be about sex? That way they might be able to think over the myriad facets of ‘good for us,’ like the fact that working seventy-hour weeks, even for a good cause, was a kind of infidelity.

The garage door went up, his car started, then backed out. The garage door went down, and, even though it was a remote, I swear it too landed with more of a thud than usual. I exhaled, my eyes still closed.

But I was solidly awake, and still wanting to paint an orange. And yes, when I pictured myself holding a paintbrush, there was that feeling again. Arousal. What is it about nearing fifty that one’s life becomes steeped in irony?

I climbed out of bed and raised the blind. It was another spring day in January. Colorado was famous for its quickly changing weather and seasonal confusion. It was forecast to hit the upper fifties today. From our second-story bedroom I looked over my quiet suburban street. A few withered designs of snow held stubbornly to the shadows of trees and houses. But those too would meet their evaporative demise today in the warm chinook winds that were already whistling down the canyon. Across the street and two doors down I saw the Kellermans’ shepherd-mix, Melba, tied up to a tree in their front yard, her fur blowing in the wind. I watched her for a long minute. Since the divorce, Melba spent too much time tied to a tree.

I briefly thought about going out for a walk. Maybe I could take Melba. I could head up the mesa trails, get some exercise. It’d been years since I’d done that. Not exercise, the trails. Well, the exercise in the past few years had been pretty sketchy, too. I felt the tips of my breasts touching my ever-protruding stomach. It was like a race – breasts down, stomach out. Hard to tell who was winning. They were both doing pathetically well. But I wanted to paint. For the first time in years.

I pulled on my ancient gray zip sweatshirt and matching pants, both patterned with the set-in stains of motherhood, and headed down to the basement. I paused in the kitchen, a note on the counter catching my eye.

D – out of tea bags. Call Sondra O’Keefe about dinner Friday. – N.

Damn. I’d completely forgotten about the O’Keefes’ dinner party. A benefit for seed money for the clinic. The dinner was going to be a fancy, dressed-to-the nines affair, and my total wardrobe added up to maybe five and a half. But it was yet another duty. The O’Keefes were nice people, it’s just that I didn’t even feel like being with my family, much less with a bunch of people all decked out and hobnobbing for a cause, even a good cause. I just didn’t have the energy. I looked down at the note, noticing the absence of an x and o where Neil signed off, a usual given in notes from him. When had he stopped? Maybe this morning. I pushed the note into the pocket of my sweat jacket and went down to the basement.

First, the laundry. I shoved in a load of whites, scooped out the detergent, then tipped in the perfect amount of bleach, watching as the agitator sucked the socks, underwear, and T-shirts into its spiral abyss. But I was smiling when I finally walked into the storage room. I had seen the large Art Department shopping bag when I’d put away the Christmas things last week. I started moving the precisely labeled boxes. Glass Ornaments & Lainey’s Ornaments I gently set on the floor. Garland for Bannister I set atop another stack. We hadn’t opened some of these boxes in a couple of years. Teenagers neither require nor admire festive stairways.

It was behind Fireplace Wreath and Red Candles that I found the bag, stuffed into a crevasse between the Christmas boxes and the spring holiday boxes (Valentine’s through Easter). I gathered the paper hoop handles and lifted. The handles broke free of the paper, no doubt rotted over the years. I was holding the two loops when Lainey’s cannonball bellow shot through the house.

‘Maa-ahhh-ammm! Where are you?!’

Loops still in hand, I climbed the stairs. The paints were almost certainly dried out anyway.

Lainey was just coming around the corner into the kitchen, yelling again when she ran into me.

‘MA— oof! There you are. Where were you?’ She said it as though I’d been deliberately hiding from her. Hairy was yowling on the desk chair, wanting some canned food in addition to his overflowing bowl of dry kibble.

‘Lainey, it’s Saturday. What do I always do on Saturday? And on Wednesday?’ Her puzzled face stared back at me. ‘Here’s a hint: We all magically have clean clothes every Sunday and Thursday.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Fine. Whatever. You need to drive us to the mall at eleven. Sara can’t now.’

Lainey and the neighbor girls, Nan and Sara Kellerman, had planned to spend the day at the mall, shopping and ogling boys. Matt was going to hitch a ride with them, to meet his friends, maybe catch a movie. I was going to have the house to myself on a Saturday. But apparently not.

‘What happened?’ I asked, walking past her to the kitchen table. I began gathering up her breakfast dishes.

She leaned dejectedly against the doorframe, arms folded over her ever-growing chest. ‘Kurt,’ she said rather dreamily, seeming to think this would explain everything.

I stared at her while still holding her cereal bowl, juice glass, and toast plate in a stack in my arms. I shrugged and began loading the dishes into the dishwasher. ‘Am I supposed to know who Kurt is?’ My slipper stuck to a tacky spot on the floor. What was that? I’d just mopped yesterday afternoon.

‘Oh, Mom! Kurt!’ The juice glass still in my hand, I looked at my daughter. I felt my own mother’s clueless expression on my face, and hated it. Lainey drummed her fingers on her arms, giving me that fifteen-year-old’s look of, ‘Are you naturally this stupid or does it take effort?’ I remembered that, too. I mentally apologized to my mother. Lainey pushed off the door-frame with her shoulder, flipped her long brown hair over her other shoulder, and took a step toward me, her hands now on her hips. ‘Sara’s boyfriend?!’

‘Oh,’ I said. I put the juice glass in and closed the dishwasher. Ah, yes. The fabulous Kurt. I vaguely recalled that last month sixteen-year-old Sara had also canceled on a ski trip with the girls because Kurt ‘doesn’t like to ski.’ I grabbed the cleanser from under the sink and shook some into one side of the aged white porcelain sink. When we’d redecorated the kitchen several years ago, I’d wanted one of those high-tech composite sinks, but couldn’t justify the expense. The porcelain was still perfectly good, albeit chipped and dulled. I stopped scrubbing. One of my good dish towels lay in the other side of the sink, a wet orange wad.

‘Did you use the dish towel to wipe up orange juice?’ I asked, barely keeping my voice calm in my rising tension. So that was the tacky spot.

‘No, it was there. Dad must’ve.’

‘Goddamn him!’

‘Mom! You owe me a dollar!’ Lainey said, looking first stunned, then gleeful. Shit. Shoot. She was right. I was trying to curb their use of expletives and so charged them a dollar each time. I never swore. Until recently. And although I usually didn’t actually collect from the kids, just warned them that next time I would, I felt compelled to pay up.

As I walked to my purse and handed her the dollar, I got back to the subject at hand. ‘And this Kurt said Sara can’t go shopping with you and Nan? Does Sara want to go?’ I asked, scrubbing at a stain left by Neil’s tea bag.

‘Oh, jeeze, Mom!’ Course she does. But guys don’t like shopping. And, you have, like, certain responsibilities when you’re boyfriend and girlfriend. So you need to take us now, okay?’

I knew I should make her rephrase that, put in a ‘please’ somewhere. Instead, I scrubbed harder at the stain, partially regretting that Neil and I had revoked Matt’s driving privileges when, backing out of our one-car garage, he’d smashed the side-view mirrors on my old Camry wagon. Both of them. First he’d scraped the driver’s side nearly off, leaving it hanging by just the wires. But then, in his panic, he’d pulled forward into the garage, then backed out again, overcorrecting, and cracked both the plastic casing and the glass of the other side mirror. Poor guy. I think he was almost relieved to be absolved of the responsibility of driving. It wasn’t a complete surprise. When he was three he’d practiced riding his new tricycle in the garage for a week before he would head out onto the wilds of the sidewalk. I guess he was doing the same thing with my car.

With Sam’s tuition at Stanford, I was, more than ever, pinching every penny. So the mirrors of my car were decoratively held on with half a roll of duct tape. And Lainey was already agitating to get her learner’s permit. Oh, Lord.

‘Mom! Will you drive us or not?’

I rinsed out my sponge, pleased with the clean spot where the tea-bag stain had been. ‘I guess. Okay. Maybe I’ll do the walking course. Get a little exercise.’

‘Yeah. You should.’ She must have heard how that sounded because she came over and hugged me briefly before she turned and headed back upstairs to gather her things.

I was stopped at a red light with Matt, Lainey, and Nan all sitting in the backseat. I remembered when my kids used to fight over the front seat and who would get to sit next to me. It wasn’t that long ago. But it was.

All three were now engaged in a lively game of rock, paper, scissors. As I watched the light, listening to their repetitive counting to three then bursts of laughter, the hot flash began. Streams of perspiration started from my underarms and slid down my sides. I didn’t have to check the rearview mirror to know that my face was flushed to nearly purple. I could feel my scalp moisten. Then the rivulets started down my face.

‘Whew!’ I said, unlatching my seat belt, pressing the window button down. ‘Warm in here.’ Now I couldn’t help glancing in the rearview mirror. Matt and Lainey exchanged knowing looks with each other, rolled their eyes and turned toward Nan.

‘She does this a lot lately,’ Lainey said. ‘You might want to put your coat on.’ Matt, his long sandy bangs shaking back and forth with his head, blushed.

I was struggling to unzip first my fleece vest, then my sweat jacket, having worn a thin tank top beneath. I’d learned to dress in layers. The vest was easy, but I wrestled with the jacket zipper, which was stuck at the bottom. The light turned green and the car behind me immediately honked. A kid about Matt’s age in a red Mazda Miata.

‘Mah-ahm! Go!’ Lainey cried. In the rearview mirror I saw Matt looking out the window, suddenly very interested in the look-alike condominiums springing up like a bad rash on what used to be rolling farmland. I had one arm in a sleeve and one arm out. I grabbed the wheel with my free hand and pulled into the intersection, slowly, because I had not yet rebuckled my seat belt. I stuck my sleeved arm out the window and leaned my head out too, the delightfully cool air rushing over my face, blowing my ponytail out behind me as I picked up speed.

‘Mah-ahm!’ Lainey said. ‘You look like a dog!’ The backseat erupted in a different kind of laughter.

Miata kid honked again, then sped around me, cutting off a woman in a yellow bug in the other lane, then pulling back in front of me. Yellow bug honked and Miata kid gave me the finger out his window.

I quickly redid my seat belt, still half in and half out of my jacket, my heart pounding from being assaulted by a sixteen-year-old’s middle digit. And the laughter from the backseat.

As I pulled into the main drive of the mall, the kids started gathering their things for a quick getaway. Matt was meeting friends and knew he’d be safe from me at Scourge of the Underworld, or whatever the arcade was called. But as I pulled into a parking space, Lainey felt the need to lay down the law about my proximity to her.

‘Mom, just so you know, we want to hang out alone.’ I pictured the girls floating deliriously in and out of various teeny-bop clothing shops, and those olfactory overload candle and body-liquid emporiums; I assured them it would not be a problem. I’d go for a good walk, then buy myself a skinny latte and go sit on the leather couch in Pottery Barn and stare into space. A middle-aged woman’s nirvana.

As the girls clamored out, I yelled, ‘Shall we meet back at the food court at twelve thirty?’ Lainey waved without looking back as they ran off.

‘See ya,’ said Matt. He ambled off, careful to affect the loose-kneed, slumped-shouldered australopithecine walk of teen boys.

‘Twelve thirty! Food court!’ I said to his back.

I found the beginning of the mall walking course, strategically located next to Godiva chocolates. What were they thinking? Well, selling chocolates to fat people is obviously what they were thinking. But I was motivated and strode right past. I successfully made it past the Orange Julius, too. But it did remind me of the dish towel, and that nameless anger surged through me again. Still striding along, and getting increasingly breathless, I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and punched in the direct dial to Neil’s cell phone, which I was pretty sure would be off. As I’d hoped, I got his voice mail’s brief greeting, then the beep.

‘Neil. For the hundredth time (puff, pant) in our marriage, please do not use the dish towels (gasp) as floor mops. We have paper towels, or an actual floor mop (wheeze), for just that purpose!’ I hung up and kept walking, stuffing the phone back in my purse.

My stride slowed somewhat at the Popcorn Palace, but I kept moving. Three assaults and still standing. Maybe starting my new exercise program in the mall wasn’t the best choice given all the temptations, but my anger was like a fuel, propelling me forward.

Ten minutes later, however, I was again panting with fatigue, but the anger had somehow morphed into desire for the almost visible waves of cinnamon, sugar, and butter wafting over me from CinnaMania. And right across the corridor was the Coffee Cauldron. I was being mugged in the mall by three out of the four American food groups: fat, sugar, and caffeine. And there was undoubtedly the ubiquitous salt in the bread dough, rounding out the Fab Four. I pulled up, holding on to a nearby brass railing to catch my breath. It might be misinterpreted if I breathlessly ordered a cinnamon roll. Or worse, it might be correctly interpreted.

Ten minutes later I was near Victoria’s Secret, licking the last of the hugely and delightfully excessive cinnamon roll frosting from one hand, my coffee in the other. I had my index finger entirely in my mouth when I looked up and saw my reflection in front of a tiny, seemingly magically suspended floral bikini bra and panties in the display window. I had frosting on my cheek and nose.

My ears burned with embarrassment. Even though this new mall was not in Fairview, its sprawling largesse drew the masses from there, Denver, and beyond. I could only hope that no one had seen me, or rather ‘Dr Munger’s wife.’ Neil was much loved in our little community, being one of the older and last remaining independent family-practice docs in town. He was starting to deliver the babies of the now-grown babies he’d delivered. I didn’t want my lack of willpower to strike a blow to either his practice or my pride – the former being quite healthy, the latter in tatters.

My fingers were still sticky so I tossed my empty cup in a trash can and fished out my little packet of hand wipes from my purse. Despite my embarrassment, or maybe to assuage it, I felt a smack of satisfaction: If you needed it, this purse contained it. Early in our marriage Neil used to affectionately tease me about my purse, saying I carried a diaper bag long before we had babies, prepared for anything from a medical emergency to an auto breakdown. But, to his credit, he never balked about holding it for me if I needed to try something on, or just tie my shoe. I couldn’t help but smile, remembering Neil holding my purse at a carnival. It was before we had the kids, back when we still took just ourselves to fun places. We’d gone to the county fair and I’d wanted to ride the Ferris wheel. Neil had trouble with vertigo and would rather do boot camp than an amusement park ride, even a Ferris wheel, so he’d offered to hold my purse, a big red straw bag that I adored. It had rolled leather straps, a large gold fastener, and, the pièce de résistance, half a dozen multicolored daisies embroidered on each side. The ride had been fun, but what had made me laugh riotously as I sat by myself in my gently swaying, ever-rising chair was watching Neil holding my big red purse, walking back and forth below me, hips swaying, blowing me kisses and waving like a beauty queen. He’d then insisted on carrying it the rest of the day, laughing good-naturedly at the people trying to hide their smirks behind their cotton candy.

Neil no longer carried my purse. It embarrassed the kids. Holding your water glass wrong could embarrass teenagers. But, as in most things, we accommodated their tender sensibilities. Then again, it wasn’t really even an issue any longer. Neil and I rarely went anywhere together these days. As our kids outgrew their jeans at record pace, so too did Neil and I seem to be outgrowing each other. But like those jeans, I wasn’t aware of any particular seams of our marriage giving way, just that they had rather suddenly begun to feel terribly binding.

I tossed the used wipe in the trash can and put the packet back in my purse, carefully tucking it in its spot between the travel pack of Kleenex and the tin of mints. I grabbed an open pack of Doublemint and pulled a stick out with my teeth, then returned the pack to my purse and wrestled with the broken zipper. I looked up, once again self-conscious.

With the tip of the foil-wrapped gum still between my teeth, I turned to the left, then slowly to the right, the silver stick pointing at the myriad passersby.

No one noticed.

No one saw me.

Good.

That was good. Wasn’t it?

I sat heavily on a nearby bench and took the stick from my teeth. When had I … disappeared? Somewhere along the line, a cloak of invisibility had dropped down and covered me from head to toe. It wasn’t just here in the mall, I realized. I was invisible in the grocery store, in my neighborhood, to my family. When had this happened? My forties? My thirties?

Maybe I wasn’t just invisible. Did I, Deena, even exist anymore? Not Deena mother or Deena wife but Deena, formerly Hathaway, formerly a person with thoughts, feelings, dreams and a life ahead of her. That Deena?

I looked around again. The crowd bustled by; no one met my eye. I looked back toward the storefront again. It was probably because I’d moved a few feet, so the light was different here, but I could no longer even see my reflection in the window.

THREE

I wandered toward Victoria’s Secret, feeling physically struck by my newly acknowledged lack of existence. But if you want to challenge the notion of invisibility, try heading into a Victoria’s Secret in the body of an overweight, middle-aged woman in dingy sweats.

I tried to appear as bored as if I’d been in here just yesterday. In fact, I wasn’t absolutely certain I’d ever been in a Victoria’s Secret. I’m more the Sears type. Highly convenient to get your Cross Your Heart and Crock-Pot in the same trip. I stepped over the threshold feeling like I was slipping into a brothel.

‘Can I help you find something?’ the teenaged wraith asked, her dark eyes looking me up and down. Was she wearing black contact lenses? She continued to once-over me in a way that used to alternately flatter and infuriate me (sometimes in the same moment) when young men did this to me a lifetime ago. Now, I just felt blood pulsing into my ears.