Creatures of Habit (15 page)

If you never experience any of this, then probably you are
living on the surface and will have to come back in the next life as something like a newt or tadpole to improve your status. Or that's what Will thinks. That's what we say to make ourselves feel better, and it works like a charm. We choose the analogy, since Will is a swimming coach, that a marriage that never takes a dive is like skimming the surface of life. You might zip right along but it's shallow, the journey of a simple water bug. We believe sooner or later you have to suit up and dive to the bottom. It's only down there that you can appreciate the light on the surface.

We are relieved to have made it through with only a few scars. During the grievance sessions of the Dark Ages, I typed: “Do you need to go to husband school? Do you need to have your hearing checked? Do you have a learning disability?” I was looking for explanations everywhere. The women's magazines suggested that if I made myself more available sexually everything would be hunky-dory. Seems to me, I'd heard that song before. Like back before the light-bulb. A pop-psychology book said I must first understand his mother and the first months of his life, when he was totally dependent on her. Darwin said that marriage was not the natural state anyway, that the family unit only came about so that the males who needed to be out hunting for food would not fight over sex. And the Bible said—well, forget
that
one.
Clearly there was a common theme emerging. The descent of man.

He was descending all right, and I have never been angrier. I descended, too. My cuspids grew, the fur on my neck stood up. I was afraid to look in a mirror.

That same year, he typed: “You are a bitch.”

I wanted depth and details. Why was I a bitch? What kind of bitch? When did he first begin to think of me as a bitch? A bitch compared to who? Didn't he think that he contributed to the bitch factor?

He could not offer a better example, he said, than the one I offered every time I opened my mouth.

It makes me feel sick and shaky all over just to recall. Now, three years out of the cave, I am elated when at the last minute I just grab some little Post-it notes and jot down my grievances. I write “Charlton Heston.” I write “nosey friends.” Then I write “cellulite” and I am about to write “yeast infections” when I think I better write the confession that I didn't get myself spayed or tied or put out of commission. Then Barbara walks in; she is
the
nosey friend I had in mind.

Now first of all, Barbara
knows
that this is our quiet night at home and that I have been planning it ever since I packed the kids' footlockers and hauled them up to Camp Skyuka.
She is the very reason we have to turn the phone off. But here she is, more hyper than usual even with no apology for busting in.

“Tried and tried to call,” she says and flips her hair back from her shoulder. If she does this gesture once she does it forty times. Her hair is black with a streak of gray in the front like Lily Munster or a skunk. Someone in a salon in Charlotte told her it looked sophisticated that way and she believed it. I once counted her doing the hair flip thirty-two times over dinner. Will counted thirty-four.

“Thought you must have been on the Internet.” We shake our heads. I glance at the little Post-its on my lap. Will has note cards and I can see he has written “prayer in school” as his first grievance. I am always worried that he will turn our night into a major political rally so I am relieved to also see that he has written “toe fungus” and “swimmer's ear” and “old men in Speedos.”

“Oh,” Barbara says with perfect fake pity. “Is this your little night all alone? Am I interrupting you?”

Will makes no comment and I—against my better judgment—tell her that it's okay. We just finished eating. I have not had enough to drink to be blunt. This is a grievance I write down right in front of her: “I have trouble being rude even when circumstances merit it.”

She would be rude. She is one of those women who really has little interest in other women unless they can be of assistance to her. She would never, for example, join with the sisterhood. She is a man's woman, the kind who would have no problem sleeping with whoever gave her the green light. Her subjects are herself and her family and she reiterates details of those topics a minimum of two times and usually three. Will and I take bets on this, five bucks a hit. He says she does triples most often and I say doubles. When Will is correct, he does his hand like he's opening a cash register and goes
“ka-ching, ka-ching.”

Barbara keeps looking at her watch as if she's about to go somewhere but then she doesn't. She talks about her kids, her Ellen, who is mature beyond her years, and Matthew and Paul, who recognize the brutality of contact sports like football and have chosen to play the clarinet and French horn. As if one means you can't do the other. I want to laugh every time she says Matthew and Paul, because I want to ask where Mark and Luke and John and all the other New Testament dudes are, but I pour myself a glass of wine instead.

“Paul says, ‘Mom, the clarinet is my weapon of choice.'” She flips her hair, nails flashing sparkly red in the glow of the citronella candle. “He says, ‘Mom, the clarinet. Weapon of
choice.'” She grins great big at Will and motions that she would love some wine. “‘Clarinet. Weapon of choice.'”

“Ka Ching, Ka Ching,”
Will says. He scribbles a grievance but I can't read it.

“Three on a match,” I say.

“What?” Barbara is jumpy tonight which means she is probably about to ask a big favor of me. Will I go have a root canal for her? Will I sit by her side and listen to her for the rest of my life? Will I give her my husband, who she is constantly asking to talk to about his work and how
can
she improve the muscles of her upper arms—could he ever help her put together a workout program?

“Three on a match. Bad luck.” I hold my hand out to the side for Will to refill my glass. I make a face to let him know how pissed off I am getting. “First guy in the trenches strikes a match and lights his smoke, passes it to the next guy, who passes it to the next guy, which has given the enemy time to become alert, aim, fire.”

“Where did that come from?” She laughs. “You remind me of Ellen's opera teacher, who is always changing the subject.”

“Opera?” Will asks and if I could I'd kick him.

“A fabulous program,” she says. “I don't know if your kids are the least bit inclined toward the arts but it's a . . .”

“Fabulous program,” I say.
“Ka-ching, ka-ching.”

“What?” She puts her legs out on the chaise like she plans to stay awhile.

“Where is Ed?” Will asks.

“Who knows,” she waves her hand. “First he said he had to work late; then he tells me that he's planning a hunting trip at five o'clock in the morning with some of his partners.” She looks at me with her look that says
you know what I mean.
She tells me often that she is convinced that Ed is having an affair. She has been convinced of this for many years. It is what has given her “permission” to have the affairs that she has had, details of which I have pleaded bloody murder not to hear. And there have been many affairs and not very discriminating ones if you ask me. But then, of course, she sees herself as the victim.

“You should have told him to stop by, you know, since you're here.” Will looks at me and smiles slightly. Now we're in cahoots. We are a couple. We are beyond the Dark Ages; we are evolved. I have told him everything, even how Barbara once said that she hated Ed so much that she wished he'd die. Even telling such a thing made me want to knock wood and cross myself even though I'm not Catholic.

“Yeah, why are you here anyway?” I ask. “I mean, you and Ed could have a romantic night all to yourselves.”

“Well yes, that's true.” Then she is silent.

Here she is. Miss Water Bug, who for whatever reason decided way back to attach herself to me and never let go, to wrap and choke like kudzu or wisteria gone awry. She's a cobra, an octopus. She has suckers beneath those nails. She is a parasite ready to hop on any host that passes by. She is a snake slithering into the strike zone.

As I said, Barbara talks only about herself and her family and how everything affects them; this alone would be enough to drive the sanest and nicest person to lock the door and buy a Doberman. Barbara would have driven Jesus to distraction.

“You all go ahead with whatever you were doing,” she says. “I just want to relax a minute before I go home and face all the work that I have. I need a wife!” She laughs. “That's what I'm forever telling Ed, ‘I need a wife.'”

“You've got a live-in,” I say.

“Yes, but what I really need is a wife,” she says again. “Not a housekeeper, a wife. But you all go right ahead with what you're doing. I'm not even listening.”

“Five bucks to you, baby,” I say and Will comes out of a deep thought to do his
ka-ching
s.

“We were doing television theme songs,” I say. “We have dedicated this evening to our favorite television programs
and we are going to discuss them fully and at great length. Then we're going to sing songs from the seventies.”

“Oh, you are so funny,” Barbara says. “Did I tell you what Ed and I are planning for Ellen's sweet-sixteen party?”

Will starts whistling the background music to
Mister Ed,
which I guess immediately, but it doesn't make her shut up. I say, “Gee, Wilbur,” and I snort like a horse.

“We have rented one of the big rooms at the Marriott. Ed knows a deejay who is agreeing to handle everything. Leave it to Ed to know a deejay. Ed, knows a deejay. Who would ever guess that? Ellen said, ‘Dad, he's such a hotty. That deejay is a hotty. Who knew?'”

What I know is that she'd leave Ed in a flat second if she could; but then she'd have to work so of course that will never happen. “Who knows this?” I ask and I do the music from
Maverick,
which is very hard for Will because he didn't grow up with the Westerns the way I did. I do
Big Valley
and
Rawhide
and
Gunsmoke
and
Branded.
I go for
F Troop
and
Hogan's Heroes,
and we keep going without a break because Barbara can't play and I love how it feels to exclude her—Miss Opera—Miss Piccolo—Miss Get a Life Why Don't You? She keeps trying to go back to Ellen and Matthew and Paul, but we don't let her. We talk about the
Beverly Hillbillies.

“You watched that?”

“We still do,” I say. “Nick at Nite. TV Land. We have the video of the one where Granny thinks a kangaroo is a giant jackrabbit.”

Will says that Jethro has come out and is building a casino in Las Vegas. Also, Jethro is Jewish. Who knew that? I look at Barbara and I say “Who knew that Jethro was Jewish? Who knew that his dad was a famous prizefighter.”

“Who cares?” Barbara asks. “Even my children don't watch things like that.”

“How sad,” I say. “Poor things.” And then I do my hand like Thing from the
Addams Family,
beckoning Will, until he does the theme song complete with background music. We act like Barbara is really deficient for having never heard of Uncle Fester or Lurch.

“It's never too late to learn,” I tell her before continuing the litany of television trivia. Mr. Brady died of AIDS. Darrin number two of prostate cancer. Darrin number one, who I read was quite the philanthropist, died of emphysema. Bob Denver, aka Maynard G. Krebs and Gilligan, got busted for pot. And years ago there was that urban legend that he died when a radio fell into his bath and electrocuted him. False. Perry Mason/Raymond Burr was gay, which would have just killed my grandmother.
I Dream of Jeannie
married
a real estate agent and still looks great. Poor Tony Nelson (in real life, Larry Hagman, son of Peter Pan, aka Mary Martin) needed a new liver
after
becoming J.R. and getting shot. Bob Crane really did die, though. Murder in a Phoenix hotel room. Poor Hogan. They say he was far right of center before he turned to wild sexcapades. Those most rigid and far to the right are always the ones who fall hardest. Jerry Falwell for example. Jim Bakker. Barbara's husband, Ed.

Barbara is getting fidgety. She wants to talk about what she read in the
New Yorker
or the
New Republic,
which we could do but we choose not to. It's our party; our home turf. I say, “When in Rome.” Now she has to choose between us and a husband she despises. Every time she tries to interject with Ed this and Ed that, I try to catch her eye to remind her that I know better. But she doesn't look me in the eye; to make eye contact would be a threat to her whole world. Instead she concentrates on Will; she wants to talk about when he swam butterfly in college. She wants to talk pecs and abs and the muscles of her calves.

I tell how Will loved Barbara Eden. He found Mary Ann and Ginger (especially Ginger) attactive, but Barbara Eden was love at first sight. He wanted to live down in that little genie bottle with her. So did I. I wanted to
be
Jeannie. This
is the kind of mutual desire (not unlike severe neurosis) that can hold a relationship together.

“Must have been because her name was Barbara,” Barbara says and pauses with eyebrows raised to get Will's attention. I watch eyes and brows and foreheads because I read this is where the truth is revealed. The mouth is nothing but a decoy, nature's distraction from the soul. I say, “Oh, are you still here?” We laugh and laugh. Will opens another bottle of wine.

“No, I think it was her belly button,” I say.
“No offense,
Barbara.”

I tell how my first crush ever was on Dick Van Dyke. I loved him as Rob Petrie and I loved him as Bert in
Mary Poppins.
I loved everything about him. “He still looks good,” I say.