Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Jenny, please put the damn phone away.
He’s back on the bed, legs outstretched. She’s hovering by the window, watching another video. She looks troubled.
He wishes the fire department guy had been more reassuring.
I’m sorry, she says,I—
Look at these fools. He points at the television, where the two studio anchors are yapping about the Oscars. They haven’t cut back to the fire for twenty minutes. Because nothing’s happening. It’s a waiting game at this point.
He hopes he’s right. He plumps a pillow for her. She takes a seat beside him, setting the phone on the nightstand.
Let’s talk about something else, he says. Do you and the Crypto King still sleep together?
Nick.
Let me rephrase. How’s your marital sex life?
Good, she says. It’s very…solid.
Solid. So, you enjoy it? You don’t ask him about the tuckpointing?
Oh, I ask him about the tuckpointing all the time, she says. It’s our dirty talk.
Is that right?
All those crumbling bricks, and tight crevices? She wiggles a little. Ooh, baby.
Nice, he says, heading for the minibar, not to get a drink but so that he can covertly adjust himself, because fucking hell if she hasn’t made him hard by talking about tuckpointing.
Tight crevices!
You do all right then, he says, stooping to peer into the fridge. You never need to fake orgasms with him, or fake faking orgasms, for utterly obscure reasons?
Is there something you’d like to talk about, Nick?
Nope! He pulls out a can of ginger ale, looks for a fresh glass. He meant what he said about wiping the slate clean. Though…it’s slightly infuriating that she’ll jerk him around to no evident purpose, but when it comes to her husband and their apparently quite satisfactory love life, she doesn’t play games,or—
Let itgo.
He sits in the desk chair, propping his feet on the bed and crossing his ankles.
A solid sex life, he says. That’s great. So, no problems. No complaints.
I didn’t say that, she says.
Ha! He knewit!
It’s nothing major, she adds. But Tom can be a little…
Inept? he suggests. Impotent? Microphallic?
Nick, she says.
What?
I know you don’t like him, but you don’t have to be mean.
Tom’s fine, he says. I like Tom.
She laughs. Sure youdo.
Go ahead. I won’t interrupt.
But she waves him off. We shouldn’t be talking about this. We’re breaking the rules.
What rules?
What rules? she scoffs. You know what rules. We don’t talk about our spouses.
We just did! he protested. We took turns.
That was a one-off.
Fine, he says. We’ll stop. Right after you describe Tom’s massive failings in bed.
She only laughs at that. She reaches for his phone again, notices him watching her, gives him the finger. Flipping him the bird—what’s that about? There’s a fizzy energy between them. Is it the fraught situation, or all the things they’ve been telling each other? He shouldn’t have asked about her sex life. He’s still hard from the tuckpointing thing. He’ll probably never be able to look at brickwork again without getting aroused. Will the torment ever end? His penis doesn’t care about her lies and evasions, their shouting match, her great anxiety, even his own concern about the fire.
His penis does not care.
They’re still dressed from their attempted flight. He could take off her clothes again. All those little buttons. He loves to strip her naked. He doesn’t usually get to do it twice in one night. Actually, this would be the third time, thanks to her first, Herve-driven effort to flee.
A third disrobing. Glorious!
Would she let him? Is she game?
You asked why I don’t make a change, he says. Why did you stick with Tom when he cheated on you? Was it the kids? A religious scruple?
She gives him a wry look. You mean obedience to my international crime syndicate?
What? I never called it that.
Nick, she says. You’ve called the Catholic Church that literally dozens of times.
Sorry. But is that the issue?
He shifts in the chair, uncrosses his legs to ease the pressure. Why is he bringing up religion? Jenny’s Catholicism, the faith that’s so wonderfully, voluptuously specific concerning its carnal proscriptions. Concerning lust.
Such a great word, lust. It sounds rich and dirty, feels exactly as it should in the mouth.
Lust. Lust . He mouths the word.
Lust.
No, she says. It was more personal than the church.
The church. Jenny in a church, confessing her sins in a whisper. Her erotic crimes. Getting aroused, starting to touch herself, right there in the shadowy confessional—
I made a promise, she says. To Tom. And to the family we planned on having. It was a commitment, you know? It was—is—very important to me. To stick to it. No matter how much either of us screwsup.
He nods, trying to listen, but he’s distracted because in his head he’s taking her from behind in front of a baroque altar, the scent of candles is overpowering, chanting echoes through the cathedral from some nearby monks.
Monks? He needs to stop. He needs to pull out of Sister Jenny right now and—
So it’s more about the social contract, he says. You agreed to a set of terms and conditions, mutual rights, and you feel honor bound to abide by them.
Well, except I haven’t been abiding by them for years, she says.
Maybe not all the terms, but that doesn’t mean you’re in breach of the entire agreement. Or that you’re willing to terminate.
This is becoming very legalistic, she says.
It is, because he thought using dry, analytical terms like terminate and mutual rights might quell his now-raging horniness. Instead he finds himself in a courtroom, fucking her on a file-strewn counsel’s table in view of the jury, she’s wearing a skirt suit, and her legs are—
To recap, he says. You won’t leave him, but you’ll cheat on him. Why?
Well well, she says, smiling at him. Look who’s attacking the bulwarks.
Bulkheads, he says, smiling back at her. And look who’s deflecting.
Me? Never! She stands. But I do have to pee.
Back to the old throne room. In and out this time, though, no loitering. Because she’s really not deflecting—she has a small bladder! She’ll tell him whatever he wants to know.
Does he really want to know anything, though, or is he tit-for-tatting, maintaining the balance between them? As if there’s ever been a balance.
Okay, maybe she’ll loiter a little. She brought his phone with her—she scrolls through the latest videos taken outside the building. So many fire trucks. But the crowd seems thinner. Gawkers getting cold, and bored—that’s a good sign. She’s certainly not bored, though she’s felt surprisingly calm this last little while. Flares of panic few and far between. The call from the fire department helped.
She should check on Edvin. She dials her number. Sorry, Norman’s number. What was Nick’s suggestion for a new phone pseudonym? Aphrodite of the what?
Also, Best Sex Partner Ever? Is that true?
The phone rings and rings.
Then it goes to voicemail.
That’s unfortunate. That’s unsettling. She rises and flushes and goes to the sink.
Caroline doesn’t enjoy sleeping with him. Does she find him too demanding? Maybe it’s gotten stale, too familiar. But she and Tom are familiar, and she still enjoys sex with him. Though it’s different. She’s different. Tom would probably love to meet Best-Sex-Partner-Ever Jenny, Aphrodite of the Whatever. But he never has.
How could he? She can’t be that Jenny with him. They have a completely different relationship—longer, deeper, encompassingalmost every aspect of their shared lives. If she was better in bed, she’d be worse in other ways, the ways that make them work. And she wouldn’t even know how to be different. There’s Jenny-with-Tom, and Jenny-with-Nick—women who don’t just fuck differently, but talk differently, or at least about different things. Who move differently, probably even think differently.
Which one is real? Or are they both just roles she’s playing, and once again there’s some baseline Jenny lurking inside, unified and coherent? A just-Jenny, no male modifier required. No lies necessary.
Who knows? Even if there is some primal Jenny, the Jenny out here will never find her. She’ll remain a mystery. Like Caroline. So poised and cool. Does that explain her lack of interest in Nick? She could be cold, one of those women who doesn’t enjoy okay now you’re being sexist. It could be some fundamental physical mismatch, a pheromonal thing. Or maybe Nick is kind of a doofus in Caroline’s eyes, the way Tom is a doofus in hers.
There must be a reason. Caroline has a side of the story, after all, her own narrative of their relationship. Full of small grievances, battles not picked. Hills not died on, which nevertheless dot the landscape, reminders of all the accommodations necessary to a functioning marriage. What did he call theirs? A good partnership. One that, if they are found out, will be wrecked.
She doesn’t want to touch me. She’d never seen him so undefended. He didn’t seem to mind it at the time, but is it bothering him now? Is he this moment being racked by a vulnerability hangover, she’s going to go back out and be grilled about whether she made out with an Amtrak conductor on her way into the city and caught herpes?
She scrolls through a few more videos, but they’re a waste of time. Like everything on the internet. And like worrying about what Nick is thinking, whether he’s uneasy, whether he’s this, he’s that. His reactions, what’s really going on in that big brain of his, have often been her preoccupation. But they’re not actually her problem.
She washes her hands and leaves, barely glancing in the mirror.
When she comes back into the main room, he’s rifling through the minibar again.
Am I the best sexual partner you’ve ever had? she asks.
Absolutely, he says. He holds up a bag of chips. Can you believe they want twenty-two dollars for this? It’s five ounces of potatoes!
She’s about to inquire further—absolutely?—but the television distracts her. The reporter is speaking intently into her microphone.
Juliana looks worried, she says.
He tears open the chips. She’s probably just constipated. Unlike you, she hasn’t taken a bathroom break for hours.
She unmutes the television.
—and after a significant amount of time with no apparent progress, the hotel is demanding more information from the FDNY, who, they say, have not been forthcoming regarding their initial difficulties in locating the fire.
That’s not good, she says.
It’s fine. Our ace reporter is manufacturing a controversy to keep people from changing channels. He holds the bag out. Truffle chip?
When are you going to admit you don’t know what you’re talking about?
Jenny, come on. I just think—
I know what you just think. It’s what you keep just thinking, and saying. It’s fine, it’s fine! But you have no idea. We’re stuck in here, and there are fire trucks surrounding the building, which doesn’t seem, to me, to be the definition of fine.
He sighs. She has vexed him. You know what? Too bad. No—it’s good. Let him be vexed. Let him be wearied by her legitimate concerns.
She’s done letting him rest easy in his delusions of safety.
Employees of the hotel have told us that the slow preliminary response to the fire stemmed from the FDNY’s decision to send only one unit to investigate the initial alarm, after multiple incidents over the weekend were determined to be false alarms. A source at the FDNY strongly denied this claim, insisting instead that unaccountable delays on the part of the hotel’s third-party alarm monitoring service ledto—
Let’s not fight, he says. We’ve been doing so well. And much as I’d love it, we can’t expect Dame Helen to barge in and separate us if we start going at it again. So let’s be friends, okay?
As suddenly as it came, the irritation leaves her. The urge to bicker. Friends. Sure. Whatever.
She scooches up the bed to lean against the headboard. He takes the chair.
Where were we? Right. You were about to tell me why you cheat on your husband.
You don’t really care, do you? You’re only asking because—
You are deflecting, he says. Fascinating.
I’m not! But it’s not like I’m used to talking about this, either. I opened up to one friend, years ago, thinking she wouldn’t judge me, and, wow. Was I wrong. Don’t look so terrified. I didn’t tell her your name.
She needs a minute to gather her thoughts. She has many. She’s been thinking about this for six years. But talking about it? No. Not since Diane.
You described not being touched, she says. The loneliness of it. Which I get—and it sounds awful. I have—had, really—a different problem. We’re talking six, seven years ago, when you and I…when this started. You weren’t touched? All I was, was touched.
By the boys, he says.
By the boys, yes. Two wonderful, amazing, also exhausting and clingy little boys. They were always on me. I was this mother ship. Hugged and pawed and hung off of. Loved, too, of course, but it was like…I belonged to them. My body did. To be clear, it was wonderful sometimes, and above all it was the deal, you know? But I didn’t expect it. And I couldn’t help but think back—no, really feel back—to being alone. A single person, living in the city, my time, my body, everything my own. I could walk down the street and I wasn’t weighed down by strollers and bags and small articles of clothing. I wasn’t this docking station.
You’d lost your autonomy, he says.
I’d given it away! And I was happy to. Mostly. But I did start feeling this occasional, intense irritation. At the end of a long day, after I was mauled and used up. I’m not the only mother who feels this way. It’s a big thing online, women who feel overtouched. But for a long time I wasn’t even aware it was bothering me. Until one day. Night, actually. I’d put the boys to bed, and I was on the sofa, just zapped, you know, wiped out. After a while, Tom came home—
Cue ominous music, he says.
She laughs. Right. He’d been out somewhere, or working late, I don’t remember, but he came home, plopped down beside me, and…
She gives her thigh a good, hard slap.
It was a greeting, a friendly thing. But it made this resounding…I don’t know if the jeans I was wearing were too tight or what, but it made this loud whack! And I saw his hand spread there on my leg, pressing down on it a little, and it was like he’d smacked a mare’s flank. The sound, the ease with which he did it, so familiar, like, ah, here’s my trusty nag! Jenny the Pony.
And I was stunned. Remember, I was exhausted, my brain was goo at that point, and so this was probably a complete overreaction, but I felt like I didn’t matter. I didn’t exist, aside from the parts that could be patted and handled.
So you needed to reclaim your body, he says. Infidelity became an act of feminist rebellion.
Yeah, she says. That’s…yeah. Basically.
She picks up a half-empty glass of champagne on the nightstand and takes a sip. He’s not getting it. She wasn’t making some grand statement. She was…God, it’s impossible to explain. Maybe she doesn’t get it either.
She reaches for his phone and calls her number.
It rings and rings.
I don’t like that Edvin’s not answering, she says.
Try again, he suggests.
She does. Still no answer. They turn to the television, where indefatigable Juliana is doing her damnedest to make compelling news out of the fact that nothing is happening.
He goes into the bathroom and returns with two tumblers. He finds a small ceramic jug of tequila on the liquor shelf and comes to sit beside her on the bed.
You think we should get drunk right now?
Not at all, he says. But I do think we should each have a shot. To relax us. It can’t hurt. We probably have hours togo.
Her heart sinks. Hours?
Better they take their time than rush, right?
He cracks the cap and pours. They drink.
Oh, that’s nice. It spreads right through her, warming her.
I can’t believe that fucker stole my phone, she says. Just took it. Like he was entitled toit.
Men, he says. Am I right?
She holds out her glass. Give me just a splash more.
He does. Tell me, Norm. How is my number saved in your phone?
Under the name Farthead Buttinski, she says.
He laughs. You really are the mother of boys, aren’t you?
I really am. But saving you under a name like that would be a terrible idea. They’d find it and start calling you constantly.
They already do, he says. I was talking to Ben the other day, telling him what an astonishing lay his momis.
Nick! You’re disgusting!
That’s what Ben said. Should we have more tequila?
Yes, she says. No. Just a little.
He pours. She sips it, savoring it. Mulling over her inadequate explanation. Describing the Tom thing, the thigh slap—that implies the fault was Tom’s, when it wasn’t.
Poor Tom. Deceived. Disparaged. She’d said he was a good cook. That was her bit of praise. How is that any more meaningful than Nick loving Caroline because she’s beautiful? It’s worse, in fact, because it was a setup. She knew she was going to drop the crypto bomb, and that Nick would lose his mind over it. She thought amazing cook made a nice contrast.
That’s classy. Mocking your husband for the amusement of your…of a man who makes no secret of his disdain for him. But Nick’s wrong. So wrong. Tom is a gentle, sincere, generous soul. And an awesome cook. He’s sweet and playful. Not so much lately. Lately he’s been a bit down. A bit dark. The crypto thing devastated him. She’d had no idea it was happening, not until he came to her one night with a white, strained face. Jen? We need to talk. And her stomach flipped. He knows. Oh God oh God he knows. Then he started talking about money, and her relief was immense.Until he started sobbing.
She lied to Nick when she said she’d been upset about it. She’d never truly cared, not even at the time. Tom lost some of the money she’d earned from books inspired by her love for another man? That’s not a screwup. It’s justice.
But it happened ages ago. He can’t still be down about it. Has he done something else? Should she log in to their accounts?
No way. He’s just in a funk. Frustrated with her. You’re never home, he’d complained, as she was leaving to go upstate. Even when you’re here, you’re not here. It wasn’t true—she works so hard to be present, to be there for him. He was being shitty and unfair. Still. She should reach out to him. Say hi, tell him she loves him. She’ll send him a quick text. She picks up the phone and opens her messages.
But they’re not her messages.
Because this is still not her phone.
Panic surges up, quick and hot. She stands, feeling helpless. She can’t reach out to the ones she loves. For how much longer? She plugs the phone in to charge, then swings by the door and takes a good long sniff. Still no smoke. She returns to the end of the bed and stares at the television. She finds the remote and starts flipping. No other news channel is covering the fire. That’s a good sign, right? That’s promising.
Promising, promises…she’d made a promise to Tom. What did Nick call it? A social contract. Whatever, Vocab Man. It was a vow. I do. Or maybe I will, she can’t remember which terminology they ultimately settled on for the ceremony, she had a sinus infection that day and was completely zonked out on antihistamines. I do, I will—I promise. And it matters to her that she did that. It means that unless something truly dire happens, she will not call it quits. Because if you buy into the whole marriage thing—which she does, obviously—it’s for life, and you have to try. You don’t have to be flawless. Marriage is…well, it’s a challenge. It’s an AP course. The most you can hope for is a B. Maybe a B-minus. And that’s fine! The semester could last fifty years or more, so you can bomb one test. Or an entire unit! And still pass. Still succeed.
But no dropping. No switching majors. Unless you absolutely must.
Plus, people improve with age. Sometimes. They flower. She flowered. Herve said so. He said she was like a fine wine. What a goof. Maybe Tom hasn’t hit his prime yet. (You must always recognize the years of your prime, girls.) She has to wait for that. Because she promised. Promised to be there. Even though she’s not really there much anymore. With him. For him.
Is she just like Caroline? God no. She touches Tom, she doesn’t flinch, she…she’s trying.
He’ll be so hurt, if Nick’s right and they’re about to be busted. But they’ll get through it. Not as easily as they got through Tom’s lapse, but they’ll survive. Will he leave her? Surely not.
Probably not.
How did you get my number? Nick asks now.
What?
Way back. After the party. Who gave you my phone number?
Caroline, she says. I introduced myself for the fortieth time at Pilates and said I wanted to make out with you some more. She handed it right over.
Their infamous New Year’s Eve. What a shock that had been. This guy? The one she always noticed, who she glanced around for when they showed up at a party? He’d barely said ten words to her in two years. There he was, right up in her business. And so drunk! She worried later that she’d taken advantage, dragging him out onto the porch. At the time, though, she didn’t care. She was so pissed. Because it had happened again.
A few hours earlier, she and Tom had walked through the door and were set upon by a sky-high Marla Park, who started raving about how great Jenny looked. Cocktail attire! the evite had said, and for the first time in a long time, she’d made an effort. It was New Year’s, she’d lost the last of the Natey weight, so she put her hair up and crammed herself into an LBD from the old days. Tom stood beside her, listening to Marla’s compliments. He grinned, put a hand on the back of Jenny’s neck, and squeezed. Gave her a little shake.
And she dropped dead.
Right there in the Parks’ foyer.
Not because what he’d done was controlling, or possessive. No, she died because she’d seen him do the same thing to their golden retriever. Grab her around the collar and give her a shake, like, you scamp! It was friendly. Love ya, cutie! Trixie didn’t mind, Trixie fricking loved the attention. But Jenny minded. She didn’t want to be a dog, or a horse. She wanted to be a woman. Clichéd as it sounded it was what she wanted and what she hadn’t been for years. She longed to be Jenny again. Walking down a city street, arms swinging. Free and full of possibility.
So a few hours later, when she turned and found Nick standing behind her with her necklace in his mouth, well, it wasn’t exactly a gesture of grand romance, but it woulddo.
It would have todo.
Was it revenge? On Tom, and his pats and shakes? No. But it was a reaction. Tom put his hands on her. Nick had only touched her pearls. She’s the one who pulled him outside. Kissed him. A few days later, texted him. And a week after that, took a train into the city to meet him.
She walked from Penn to a hotel near Gramercy, a place that’s closed now. I am on my way to an assignation, she thought, and laughed at herself. Idiot! But she felt different. The world looked different, too, tinted by her secret knowledge. I am on my way to meet a man. A man who has no right to me, nor I to him.
It was a terrible idea. She barely knew the guy! But it would be just the one time. One adventure, one slip. Hardly a slip—Tom always said it would be okay. If you ever feel like you want to get even, I’ll understand. Like betrayal was a game, with a score to be balanced. She brushed it off. She never wanted to get even. But she did want this.
So Tomwise, she was in the clear. As for Nick’s beautiful, forbidding wife, well, Jenny felt awful, but again—it would be just the one time! And Nick said he would be discreet.
Thus did she push her qualms aside and do, for the first time in a long time, something purely for herself. The fact that it was wrong, well, that was unfortunate. Or maybe it was exactly why this was the thing she had to do. What better way to assert her freedom, her right to her own body, than by using it in a way she was absolutely not supposedto?
To be an individual again. That’s what she wanted. Not part of a family unit, not mother or wife, but her own, owned self. That’s why she didit.
Feminist rebellion? Please.
She just needed a little fricking privacy.
The hotel bar was crowded when she slipped in. He was ordering a drink, his back to the door. When he turned, she was looking right at him. And she sawit.
The terror.
He was terrified!
Then they were upstairs, kissing and undressing each other. She had forgotten what it was like to unbutton a man’s shirt. To pluck up the crisp cotton, feel it in her fingers, push the thick, translucent buttons through their holes one by one, exposing the chest underneath. A new body. And she was new, too. To him and to herself.
He was far unsteadier than her, that first time. But it didn’t take him long to pull himself together. As they kept meeting (just the one time? oh you sweet innocent!), they became themselves. He grew bossy and secure. She retreated a little, lost that heady feeling of control.
Still, she never forgot what a boy he was, that first time. How uncertain. And out on the porch, too, the way she’d had to practically show him what todo.
Does he remember? He’s probably told himself a different story.
She says none of this to him now—it’s too much, too complicated—but he’s obviously still thinking about what little she did tell him as he flips through the channels.
So you were slapped, and pawed, you missed being the person you used to be, he says. Why didn’t you let Tom know? Wouldn’t he have understood?
He might have, she says. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him. Maybe because that would have been one more thing I had to do. Not only experience the problem, but have to communicate it, then manage his feelings about it. Why should that be my obligation, too?
If he didn’t know something was wrong, he couldn’t help you.
Kind of you to be defending my husband right now, she says. Why didn’t you tell Caroline you needed to be touched, and not just when other people were watching?
Fair point. Seems like a little honest communication might fix all our problems.
Maybe we should try it, she says.
Right now?
Sure. Let’s call them.
He smiles, taking up the challenge. Now there’s an idea. Who goes first?
We’ll tell them at the same time, she says. Have a little group therapy.
I’m in. Where’s the phone?
They both turn to the nightstand, see it and lunge for it. She gets there first, grabbing the phone and swiping it awake.
Let’s see…favorites…oh, look! Caroline is listed under her real name. How nice for her. Here. She holds the phone out. You dial.
He takes it. When she answers, we’ll loop Tomin.
And tell them the whole truth, she says.
Every bit of it, he agrees.
Their eyes meet.