Chapter 4
CHAPTER
“HELLO? IS ANYONE there?” More breathing. I hang up just as the front door opens.
“Forgot my phone,” Bruce calls, his Italian leather shoes clopping down the front hall.
“You got another spam call,” I say as he rounds the corner.
“Did you answer it?”
Invisible fingers pluck at the back of my neck. “Yes.”
Bruce grimaces. “Penny.”
I hate when he uses my full name instead of the shortened version I chose when I left for college.
It’s like being shoved in the chest, stumbling back into the past. He knows that.
He’s the sole person in my life who does.
But he still calls me Penny when he’s annoyed.
I sneeze three times in a row. Bruce is wearing a new cologne with hints of patchouli.
“Sorry. Thought I could ask them to stop calling you. But the line dropped.”
He takes his phone. “Never answer. That just spawns a dozen more calls from different numbers.”
“So, how do you stop the calls?”
Bruce pockets his phone. “I block the number.”
It’s not worth telling him that his plan doesn’t make sense. He no longer thinks of me as the promising PhD candidate he met at grad school, head stuck in books, parsing data as I battled through my thesis.
What are you working on? Bruce had asked when he neared my library carrel late one night.
An interactive program that allows the user to detect lies.
Impressive, Bruce said.… but am I lying?
I laughed. Bruce was geeky—oversized glasses balanced on a narrow nose, outdated jeans, and no-brand sneakers. I recognized a fellow traveler. Plus he had beautiful green eyes.
A few weeks later, he left a scavenger hunt in my carrel on paper burned at the corners to look like old parchment, rolled into a scroll and tied with a gold ribbon.
I followed the hunt all over campus, picking up prizes along the way—a plastic snow globe with sailboats that rocked in waves of glitter, a pair of navy-blue socks dotted with white rabbits, a small box of chocolates, a dozen cherry lollipops wrapped like roses in green tissue paper, vouchers for the local laundromat, a bottle of Chianti, and a pen that, when tipped, went from the SF skyline at night to dawn breaking over the Golden Gate Bridge.
The final stop was the student union where Bruce was waiting with two hot chocolates and gingersnap cookies.
I’d never been pursued before. It felt like standing in a sunbeam.
Now Bruce pecks my forehead with chapped lips. “Sorry for being short, hon. Lots on my mind. Have a good day.”
I can’t recall the last time he kissed me like he meant it and wish we could wind back time. “No worries. See you tonight,” I call out as the door slams.
The memory of our first conversation in the library fades and my mood slips.
I’m Penn Stone, not Penn Roberts, who was once on a full-ride scholarship, both undergraduate and grad school at San Francisco Polytechnical Institute.
I’ve been a wife and mother almost half my life.
And my husband has long forgotten that I was anonymously nominated for the Henry Johnson Fellowship only six months into my PhD work, given to students in financial need, for exceptional creativity, promise, and the belief that the nominee’s work will lead to future advances important to the world at large.
Sometimes, I do wonder what I could’ve accomplished with the no-strings-attached award.
But I dropped out of the PhD program before I had the chance to find out.
When the kitchen is clean, I head upstairs for a quick shower and shampoo with the citrus blend Kiki gifted me this past Christmas.
After toweling off, I study my reflection in the mirror—something I rarely do.
My breasts are small, legs long, middle a little soft.
I do Pilates, spin, and hot yoga when Kiki drags me to the classes, but lately I’ve begged off.
In college I owned a pair of Hoka running sneakers, a castoff from my freshman-year roommate, and loved to jog in Golden Gate Park, listen to the pound of my heart until I was carved-out.
A nameless anxiety pinches. Maybe I need to start running again?
Turning away from the mirror, I pull up Dr. Beth’s podcast. She always makes me feel better. She’s talking with a married lady embarrassed to have sex with the lights on after gaining weight during pregnancy. Her husband is frustrated, and she’s worried he might leave her.
“Go for morning walks or bike rides,” Dr. Beth advises. “That will provide endorphins. Then buy a new dress, cook your husband’s favorite meal, and act like his girlfriend. He loves you, not the number on a scale. Tonight, leave those lights on and blow his mind!”
While Dr. Beth sounds like a 1950s housewife—out of date and politically incorrect—some of her advice is pragmatic. It doesn’t hurt to remind your husband how he felt when you first started dating.
I focus on the present. My program might be wrong—it’s not foolproof yet.
Bruce still could’ve forgotten our anniversary.
Last week I recorded the statement “I have four children,” and the program told me that was true.
Just in case it’s mistaken now, I’ll plan a late candlelit dinner, cook all Bruce’s favorite foods, have the freshly ironed sheets on the bed that he’s loved ever since he was delighted by them at a small family-run hotel on a vacation we took to Greece. Then I’ll do my best to blow his mind.
I spin through my photo album, pull up a nice shot of us from a fundraising dinner at Circe’s school. Bruce’s arm loosely circles my waist. I upload the photo to LivLoud and write beneath it: 15 years today!!! Happy Anniversary to my best friend, soulmate, and darling husband.
Now I feel better. I really do. But my nerves still rustle like an intruder creeping up the back stairs.