Amanda Bright @ Home (7 page)

Amanda didn’t know, frankly, what to think. Part of her was too horrified to react. Why would Christine carve herself up to fit some male fantasy of how she should look? Wasn’t this akin to other barbaric practices foisted upon women by patriarchal societies, a North American version of genital mutilation? Yet it was difficult to imagine Christine as being anybody’s dupe when Amanda contrasted her indignant opinions with the composed figure of Christine herself—smiling, inviting them all to join in her plan to triumph over age and gravity.

At last Amanda found her voice. “Does Brian want you to do this? I mean, is he pushing you to do it?”

“Oh please.” Christine waved away the very suggestion. “Brian supports whatever I do. He thinks I look great now. He’ll be happy when I look even better. No, I’m doing this for
me
.”

Christine’s finality of tone hinted that it was time to move on to another topic, but Amanda couldn’t let it go. “Because sometimes women, if they’re insecure—”

“Oh, honey, I’m
secure
,” Christine said, with a flash of irritation. “My fate doesn’t rest on Brian’s opinion of me. Look, I do the bookkeeping in the family, and let me tell you, if he left, I’d be more than secure. I’ve taken care of that.”

“So have I.” Kim giggled, and Ellen nodded.

“Heck, I’ve got an entire investment portfolio that Steve doesn’t even know about,” Patricia remarked lightly. “I built it up when I was working. I think of it as my ‘disaster-relief fund.’”

“You know, a friend of mine gave me the name of a terrific lawyer—just in case. She just went through a hellish divorce.”

“I have one, too, but quite frankly, Steve doesn’t stand a chance if he walks out. Not that he would
want
to walk out, of course.”

“No. But you’ve got to be prepared,” Christine acknowledged. “We can’t be like our mothers’ generation. They went into marriage practically blind.”

“You can say that again.”

“A few months ago I walked into a Starbucks, and there was the mother of my best friend from high school—working behind the counter. Her husband left her after thirty years.
Thirty years!
”

Amanda, subdued by this turn of the conversation, took a cracker from the untouched cheese plate and marveled at her own blindness. For all her professed independence, what steps had she taken to protect herself? When she gave up her job, the thought did cross her mind that she was surrendering what her feminist professors used to call “economic power.” But somehow it hadn’t felt that way. Amanda and Bob continued to divide the household tasks, viewing their new arrangement as simply a change in the form of their partnership. They were still equals, making different contributions to what remained a joint enterprise, the Bright-Clarke household. Or so Bob had characterized it in his typical attorney fashion, and she had agreed. It had seemed like an enlightened, egalitarian approach to a situation that was otherwise unthinkably traditional. Now it all struck Amanda as mad. Even Ellen and Kim had the wit to prepare themselves, while she, Amanda, had blithely thrown her lot in with Bob in every way, relying—so carelessly!—on the tenuous power of affection to carry her through these years of unemployment. Suddenly she felt like a tightrope walker who looks down and notices that she has been crossing without a net.

“Well, I think you’re courageous, Christine,” Kim was saying. “I’ve sort of been thinking of getting my eyes done.”

“Gosh,” exclaimed Ellen. “Maybe we should all go together. Make a field trip of it. I’ve always hated my nose.”

Amanda struggled to pull herself up in her chair. “I don’t know. It just seems a lot to put yourself through—surgery.” She knew it was a retreat.

“Spoken like a thirty-five-year-old.” Christine smiled. “You don’t have to worry yet. You have great skin.” She cast her eyes over Amanda appraisingly. “But have you ever thought about doing something with your hair?”

That evening, Amanda toweled herself off in front of the bathroom mirror and studied her body from every angle. She turned sideways and backward. She raised her hair and let it tumble down. She moved in so closely she could see the grayish pores of her nose and then stepped back to judge the effect of her features as a whole. She tried to do this all without flinching, in the detached manner of an accountant logging assets and deficits. Perhaps it was the lighting—the unflattering brightness of the overhead light that cast some parts of her in high relief and others in shadow. Or maybe it was because she was focusing upon herself all at once, instead of in pieces, as she usually did, so that she could appreciate her nice calves and ignore her thighs. But the longer she looked, the worse her body appeared. When she finally turned away from the mirror Amanda wished she could wrap herself in a chador rather than this thin towel.

Bob lay on their bed in his boxer shorts, reading legal briefs. He was frowning slightly and marking passages with a highlighter pen. He did not look up when Amanda padded past him to fetch her pajamas. Crouching self-consciously behind the open closet door, Amanda pulled on her night uniform (an oversized T-shirt of Bob’s, a pair of cotton sweatpants). What was Bob’s real opinion when she passed by him like she did just now? Did he quietly revile the sight of her loose buttocks? How often had his eyes traced the faint tributaries of stretch marks that riddled her belly? And what did he think of her breasts? … During their courtship, when Bob had greeted every newly unveiled attribute of hers with surprise and delight, he had been captivated by her young breasts. Years of being put to utilitarian use feeding babies had toughened her nipples and caused the breasts themselves to hang charmlessly, like week-old party balloons.

She went to the bed and curled up uneasily beside him. Amanda waited for a single warm gesture that would banish her fears, that would make them seem hysterical and crazy. Bob continued marking his briefs. His bare chest rose methodically with his breathing; his gut, which had been firm when they met, rolled over the rim of his shorts. Occasionally Bob would announce that he needed to lose ten pounds, but he did nothing about it. Was Bob indifferent to the shape of his body—or indifferent to Amanda’s opinion of it?

“Do I look okay?” she asked him.

“Hmm?”

“Do I look okay?”

He paused his highlighter pen. “Don’t you feel well?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, do I look—do you still find me—attractive?”

Bob adjusted his expression to one of lawyerly inscrutability, as he always did when he suspected Amanda of asking him a trick question. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

“Really. I want to know.”

The files were whizzing behind Bob’s eyes as his brain searched for the correct answer.

“I think you look beautiful,” he said, not altogether convincingly. “I always have. Really.”

She laid her head upon his prickly chest. She heard him sigh and place his papers on the bedside table. He draped his arm across her.

“What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing.”

“Have I done something to make you think I don’t think you’re attractive?”

“No—”

“Then why do you ask?”

“Because—” It seemed too humiliating to explain.

“Because?”

“Because I just looked at myself in the mirror, and, I don’t know, I look older.”

“You are older. But then, so am I.”

“With men it doesn’t matter.”

“With you it doesn’t matter.” Bob grasped her chin and forced her to look at him. “Christ, Amanda, you’re still young. Your face looks the same as the day we met.”

“And the rest of me?”

“So you’ve had two children. So you’re a bit fuller. It doesn’t make you less attractive.”

But I will get older and less attractive. Then what?

She got up to brush her teeth.

“Are you coming to bed?” he asked. He sounded hopeful.

“In a minute.”

In the mirror above the sink, Amanda saw a drab woman with blue ditches under her eyes, a brush listlessly marking time between bared lips. She spat and turned away.

Bob was waiting for her. She could sense his eagerness across the room. How long had it been? She couldn’t remember exactly—a couple of weeks, maybe. Admittedly, making love to Bob these days felt like one more thing she had to cross off her to-do list.

On the dresser lay a candle and a book of matches. Her fingers moved toward them, hesitated, and then flicked off the lights instead. As she made her way to the bed in darkness, she experienced again that dizzying feeling of stepping upon a wire with nothing below to catch her if she fell.

Chapter Six

“I NEARLY FORGOT,” Bob called out the next morning, while descending the stairs. “Are we free next Thursday?”

Amanda was nagging the children to put their shoes on.

“Gee, let me think.” She placed her index finger on her chin. “Monday—you’ll be working late. Tuesday—you’ll be working late. Wednesday—you’ll be working late. Thursday—I don’t know. Are you planning on working late?”

“Okay, okay.” Bob took a sip from a mug of tepid coffee waiting for him. “You won’t be sarcastic when I tell you this. We’re invited to a cocktail party at Jack Chasen’s house. Do you want to go?”

Amanda blinked. “Jack Chasen?”

“Yes—you know, he’s the CEO of TalkNet.”

“Yes, I
know.
We’re invited to Jack Chasen’s house—
and you almost forgot to tell me
?”

“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly. “It was a busy day.”

She sat down on the hall floor to help Ben with his sneakers. “Good God, Bob, how are we supposed to go to that? We won’t know anyone there.”

“We don’t have to go. I thought it might be fun. Chasen’s a down-to-earth guy. I’ve been dealing with him a lot lately, and he just asked.”

Amanda pounded at the heel of Ben’s shoe until it slipped onto his right foot, and started on the second.

“I have nothing to wear.”

“So go buy yourself something.”

Amanda looked at him skeptically. “With what?”

“We can afford a dress, for God’s sake.”

“Not the kind those women wear.”

“You’re not those women. You don’t have to compete with them. Anyway, it’s just a cocktail party.”

She raised herself, sighing, and said, “Ben, Sophie, get your backpacks. It’s time to leave. You’ll make Daddy late.”

Bob handed Amanda his mug and hustled the children toward the front door.

“Look, think about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“What are you up to today?”

“I have that appointment with Ben’s teacher.”

“Oh yes.” He kissed her quickly. “I’m sorry to miss it. Let me know how it goes.”

Ben’s teacher, Ms. Burley (“That’s
Ms.
not Miss”), was the sort of person with whom it was impossible to have a light exchange of pleasantries. A quick hello might be greeted with, “Ben forgot to bring in his coins for math again yesterday.” A fast dash into the classroom to deliver a forgotten lunchbox could provoke a five-minute discourse on personal responsibility. Amanda wasn’t her only victim: Ms. Burley regarded parents generally as barriers to education. On the first parents’ night, shortly after the term began in September, Ms. Burley had lectured the assembled adults on such matters as the correct tools for learning (“pencil cases must be twelve inches by four inches—nothing else will be considered acceptable”) to instilling proper work habits in nursery students (“this year the children will receive a minimum of thirty minutes of homework per evening—this will prepare them for the increased workload they will face in kindergarten”). The ideal parent, Ms. Burley noted, perceived learning opportunities in every daily activity. Bath time offered “the perfect chance to demonstrate specific gravity, using simple toys that sink or float.” A walk through the neighborhood could easily be turned into “an exercise for identifying grid patterns.” Cooking dinner was, of course, basic chemistry. To prevent slacking, Ms. Burley would send a “suggested” exercise home every day for parents to complete with their children, such as counting all the clocks in the house or adding up the change at the bottom of Mommy’s purse. Amanda was dubious of the benefit of these exercises to Ben, but she was certain they accomplished Ms. Burley’s main objective, which was to make a mother feel that however much she was already doing for her children, it was still hopelessly inadequate.

Amanda entered Ms. Burley’s classroom that morning at the agreed-upon time. The room was dark; the children had gone to recess and the lights were switched off. Amanda thought she might have made a mistake—maybe the appointment was the next day—but a rustle behind an open supply cabinet indicated the presence of Ms. Burley.

“Come in, come in,” the teacher said, emerging with a sheaf of papers. “I’m here.”

Physically, Ms. Burley was unprepossessing. She was slight and short and dressed in the dowdy but practical clothing of a nursery school teacher—baggy blouse, leggings, and scuffed leather flats. Her personality expressed itself in the sharpness of her movements and the permanent expression of dismay pinched upon her face.

“The lights were off—I wasn’t sure.”

“I don’t believe in wasting power. We can see well enough. Please sit down.” Ms. Burley invited Amanda to pull up a child’s chair that was three sizes too small for her. She settled herself in the upholstered swivel chair behind her desk.

“I want you to look at these.” Ms. Burley handed Amanda a stack of Ben’s crayon pictures.

“Oh yes, he loves drawing.”

“I can see that. Just look at them closely.”

The first picture showed some childishly scrawled airplanes with bright orange and yellow explosions bursting around them. Ben had labeled the drawing “WW1.” Amanda turned to the next one, which was similar, except that it was labeled in the same uneven writing “WW2.” Continuing through the stack, Amanda came across “WW3,” “WW4,” and “WW5.” This last was especially bloody, with little stick figures strewn on the ground, red crayon spurting from them. Amanda placed the pictures back on Ms. Burley’s desk.

“So, what do you think?” Ms. Burley asked her.

“Ben’s an optimist?” Amanda said, hoping to elicit a smile from Ms. Burley.