Chapter 16
Mr. Korgy’s wife is not beautiful but she’s waiflike and linen-clad which is close enough.
“We’re just so happy to have you, Waldo,” she says, gracefully wiggling her wrist so her bracelet falls farther down it. “I know eight’s a little late for dinner, but we just wanted to make sure Greggy was in bed so we could actually be present with you.”
“Thanks for having me.”
She sets two big wooden bowls on the table—one filled with rice, the other with meatballs—and a gust of her aura hits me in the face.
The feminine simplicity. The tranquil domesticity.
The calm. It’s foreign to me, this level of okayness.
Even in someone like Frannie, who tries to pretend they’ve got it all together, I sense the thread they’re hanging on by, the anxiety ticking under the hood. But not with Gwen.
Gwen’s ease is real. It’s in her gestures—the fluid way she sets down a bowl or fiddles with the stem of her wine glass.
It’s in her voice—the soothing, buttery tone of someone who meditates twice a day and knows how to set a boundary without triggering the person on the receiving end of it.
It even carries through to her skin—makeupless, gleaming like a rich lady on vacation who just finished an expensive facial and perused the gift shop on the way back, dropping a mortgage payment on a vitamin C serum and a ceramide-packed eye cream that she’ll only dab under her eyes with her ring fingers to ensure optimum delicateness.
I envy her ease. It makes me feel stupid for trying so hard. For putting in so much effort. I zip my sweater up higher and pretend to scratch my cheeks so I can rub out my blush.
“Let’s dig in,” she says as she sets down a plate of steaming dinner rolls and a salad bowl.
I hang back to watch her first, to gauge how big of a portion is appropriate, how many meatballs or scoops of rice a graceful person goes for.
It turns out to be five and two, respectively, so I follow suit while we make small talk about the weather and the drive over and how hectic it is to have a young child.
Korgy is surprisingly quiet. Subdued even.
Only chiming in with occasional tag-ons to whatever Gwen says.
At first I wonder if he’s having an off day, in a bad mood or whatever, but after the ninth or tenth tag-on I realize that this is just who he is around her.
This is their dynamic. She’s in charge and he’s second-in-command.
“The meatballs are amazing,” I say at the first lull. Gwen thanks me, touching her heart in earnest.
“It’s Teddy’s favorite of my specialties, right honey?”
“That’s right.” He chuckles, but I detect a fleck of embarrassment. Does it unsettle him that I’m seeing him this new way? Not as a passionate, authoritative man, alternately theatrical and composed, but as a submissive, emasculated one, shriveled and passive. His light dimmed.
“It was our third date,” Gwen says, puckering her lips as she launches into a story she’s clearly excited to tell. “Teddy tried cooking for me, sweet thing that he is. He was trying to make—oh what was it you were trying to make, Teddy?”
“Chicken piccata.”
“Chicken piccata, that’s what it was,” she says, snapping her fingers as if she didn’t know, but I have a feeling that she did, that this is one of their most heavily rotated stories, the kind that every couple collects after they’ve been together for a while.
The kind that can carry them through social gatherings without either of them having to do the grunt work of reflection, or forming a new opinion, or really seeing each other.
Instead they just pop a coin in the jukebox and let it rip, one of “their stories”—the lines rehearsed, the beats memorized, even the shared glances a part of the act.
“That thing was burnt to a crisp,” she laughs. “Gave ‘blackened’ a whole new meaning, right babe?”
“Sure did,” he says, knowing his line, only there’s a little heat on it. Maybe he doesn’t like this story anymore. Maybe he’s tired of it. Or he’s outgrown it. Or he wants to tell a new one.
Gwen doesn’t pick up on his heat, or she does but she chooses not to acknowledge it, and I’m not sure which is worse.
“So I go, ‘Teddy, I like you a lot, but I don’t like you enough to eat this,’ ” she says.
“We laughed and laughed. Then I told him he should let me make something for him instead. And I made him these meatballs. He ate every bite. Nearly licked his plate. I said, ‘How long has it been since you had a decent meal?!’ ”
Gwen laughs. Korgy laughs. I laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha, so funny.
“But enough about us, we’re boring,” Gwen says. “I wanna hear about you, Waldo. I’m curious about you. Where you’re from, what you’re passionate about…”
“Uhh, born here in Anchorage to some high school sweethearts. Or, my mom thought they were high school sweethearts. My dad thought of her more as a fuck buddy.”
“Oh,” Gwen says, her eyes widening like she’s never heard the word fuck before.
“Then I was born and my mom guilted my dad into sticking around for a bit until, after a couple years, the guilt stopped working and he left. Since then, it’s just been me and Mom.”
“Okay, okay,” Gwen says in that overly polite masking tone meant to ward off discomfort and keep ushering the conversation forward the way it’s supposed to go, on the safe path of small talk and social niceties—What shows have you been watching?
And Any fun weekend plans? She takes a bite of a meatball.
“So what does your mother do?”
“Bags groceries at Safeway. She aged outta stripping.”
Gwen takes a long sip of wine and for the first time I sense a nervousness bleeding through.
There is no safe path with me, no path that allows us to gloss over the uncomfortable realities of my life, or better yet, avoid them entirely.
She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
A strand of bone straight, limp hair, the kind that somehow reads chic in its lifelessness.
I know it should be on me to dig us out of this hole, but I don’t want to.
A sick part of me is enjoying watching her squirm.
Not know what to do with this moment. The woman of ease, uneasy.
“Well I love Safeway,” she finally says. “The bakery case is quite tasty, right honey?”
“Yep.”
She throws an almost undetectable glance of “help me out here” agitation at Mr. Korgy, but he doesn’t pick up on it, or he does but he chooses not to acknowledge it. And I’m not sure which is better.
I ask where they met, and they answer in unison.
“College.”
“I was a senior, he was a sophomore. I really robbed the cradle with this one!” Gwen says, clearly hitting another punch line she’s hit before.
Now I’m squirming. Mr. Korgy gives me a discreet look that feels reassuring, like he’s trying to tell me that he’s uncomfortable too.
That he sees this moment the same way that I do, that he shares in my judgment.
And what is connection, really, if not shared judgment?
“Wow, since college,” I say. “So you guys have been together for—”
“Twenty years, believe it or not,” Gwen nods, covering her mouth as she chews.
I say “wow” again, embellishing it in a way that I know I’m supposed to, and then ask the follow-up question I know I’m supposed to ask.
“What’s your secret?”
“Communication,” Gwen says, as if she believes it’s something noteworthy and poignant even though it’s the most stock answer I’ve ever fucking heard. Communication? That’s it? How about a modicum of perspective, Gwen? How about a teaspoon of point of view?
“Anything else?” I ask directly to Mr. Korgy, egging. But he doesn’t answer.
Gwen wipes her mouth with a napkin as she thinks.
“Well, yeah actually,” she says. “The whole ‘opposites attract’ thing helps us out a lot. We complement each other, you know? I’m the practical one, he’s the dreamer.”
She gives the faintest eye-roll on the word “dreamer,” an eye-roll meant to come off as good-natured teasing but that I can sense the wisp of resentment underneath. Mr. Korgy nods, trying to force an unbothered acknowledgment, but he shifts in his chair.
“Why do you ask, Waldo? Do you have your eye on a boy at school?” Gwen asks.
“Not really.”
“Nobody?” Gwen asks. “Come onnn, pretty girl like you? There must be somebody you wanna get to know a little better.”
“Well, I guess there is somebody…”
I look down at my fingernails, then up again, involuntarily right at Mr. Korgy. He quickly averts his eyes, but not quickly enough for the shared millisecond of a look not to have happened.
“Mommy? I woke up…”
Gregory’s tucked behind the staircase banister in his striped pajamas, clutching a worn-out stuffed dinosaur plushie with a missing eye.
“Aww, sweetheart, I’ll come tuck you back in,” Gwen says. She sets her napkin on the table and gives me an apology face. “I’ll be quick, you wait to answer till I’m back. I don’t wanna miss anything good.”
She gets up and crosses to Gregory as he extends his arms up to her. She heaves him onto her bony hip and whispers in his ear until he starts to giggle, then heads with him up the stairs.
“We’re happy we could have you over,” Mr. Korgy says.
Step. Step. Step.
“I’m happy you invited me.”
Step. Step. Step.
As the steps grow quieter, we just look at each other.
Neither of us saying a word. Just staring.
Until the footsteps disappear completely.
And we keep staring. What should be an uncomfortable moment is strangely intimate.
A silent agreement made with our locked eyes.
We don’t need to engage in small talk, you and I. We have a real connection.
The tension is strangling. I want to be bold, to crouch under the table and crawl toward him on my knees and rub my hands up his legs until his cock starts to stir.
I want to unzip his pants to free it, and watch it spring up toward me like it needs me, like he needs me.
I want to trace it up and down with my tongue, teasing it, and kiss it until he starts to shake with pleasure.
I want to look deep into his eyes while I suck him off, sucking the sadness from him and turning it into something better.
But instead I take a bite of meatball.
“Gwen’s great,” I say.
“She is, isn’t she?” he agrees.
“She is,” I say. “She really is.”
And then her footsteps start again as she comes down the stairs, and finally we break eye contact. Mr. Korgy clears his throat.
“Now where were we?” Gwen asks, taking her seat. “Oh yeah, you were telling us about a cute boy at school, right Waldo?”
“Right.”
“Well you gotta go for it, girl!” Gwen says, playfully swatting me on the shoulder.
“I-I can’t exactly…”
“Oh, he’s got a girlfriend?”
I hesitate. “Sort of…”
Mr. Korgy pays special attention to his salad.
“Good thing is, in high school, girlfriends come and go,” Gwen says, her eyes glistening. “You’re next in line, I bet.”