Fathermucker (15 page)

Is this game of spousal musical chairs played in towns all across America, I wonder? Are housewives everywhere this desperate? Or is there something in the air up here, some peace-love-and-happiness/anything-goes Woodstock state of mind that has made New Paltz a veritable Divorcerama? Certainly I don't see residents of my buttoned-up New Jersey hometown cruising the same-sex highway (
bi
cycling, if you will). But it doesn't matter what they're doing in Livingston, or Peoria, or ports of call even more starboard-listing. Nor do the exploits of Cynthia Pardo or Gloria Hynek or Meg or anyone else amount to a Bogartian hill of beans. It's what Stacy's up to that counts.

Speaking of which . . .

Active bisexual.
Could the affair be with another woman? Stacy's never gone that route—although she's kissed girls before, on stage, in plays, and at parties, on dares, in college—but she's not adverse to the idea, as she's told me on numerous pillow-talk occasions (she can be quite inventive and exploratory in the bedroom, befitting her actorly talents). And, as evidenced by the melodramatic plotlines of
The Real Housewives of Ulster County
, anything's possible. I can totally imagine Gloria hitting on her; in fact, I'm convinced Gloria's been wanting to get in Stacy's pants since the day we met; all it would take is Stacy to give her the green light. It's easy to picture: they're at Bacchus, they've had a bit too much to drink, the conversation takes a kinky turn, as it tends to do when Gloria and alcohol are involved, and the next thing you know . . .

The Stones roll mosslessly off, and the bombastic announcer comes on.
You're in the middle of a rock block
, he informs me, in the sort of voice that implies the Rapture has come and I'm one of the Chosen Ones.
Nine songs in a row! Every hour! Guaranteed!
Like my optioned screenplay, this sounds like a pretty sweet deal until you do the math—nine songs times three minutes per song equals twenty-seven measly minutes; not quite half an hour of guaranteed music every hour, plenty of space left over to trumpet the once-in-a-lifetime sale going on
right now
at the Poughkeepsie Price Chopper.

Usually they lead off with a decent song after the nine-songs-every-hour boast. Not this time.

Shot through the heart and you're to blame . . .

My finger goes for the preset button so quickly it's almost involuntary. Half the reason I left my native state was to escape the well-manicured clutches of Jon Bon Jovi. Also, I'm not in the mood to hear about the tarnishing of love's good name. The next station is the one that plays
the best of the eighties, the nineties . . . and today
. The fawn-like Taylor Swift, the Romeo and Juliet song, whatever the hell it's called, the one that sounds like a book report that fetched probably a C+. Maude digs it, but she's asleep. Too bad for her. And on the third preset—

Good love is hard to find . . .

Same song. Same
spot
in the same song.

Coincidence . . . or the Universe is trying to tell me something?

I hold with the latter.

Score another point for Eugenia Last.

INT. BACCHUS, NEW PALTZ, N.Y. – NIGHT
STACY and GLORIA, both dressed for a night on the town, are tucked into a dark booth at this, their bar of choice. Six empty bottles of La Fin du Monde ale sit on the table; both women are a bit loopy.

O-R-D
IS ALL THAT REMAINS ON THE REAR PANEL OF THE BATTERED
pick-up in the driveway. An “F” used to precede the trio, making the letters into a harmonious quartet, just as the truck itself was once white, and not a mishmash of faded eggshell paint, gray putty, and brown rust. A sign is attached crookedly to the driver's-side door—
PALADIN PEST CONTROL
, it reads, in boldface Comic Sans, above a cartoon termite being dispatched by a cartoon knight in armor that is no longer shining. Leaning against the front fender, fiddling with a BlackBerry, is the owner and sole employee of Paladin Pest Control—the paladin himself, you might say—one Joe Palladino, a shortish guy about my age with linebacker shoulders and a ballerina waistline, his triangle-shaped torso suggesting something from the
Baby Einstein
“Shapes” video. His form-fitting black shirt is tucked into his white painter's pants and cinched by a weave belt, and in the center of the mess of Brillo about his mouth that might generously be called a goatee, a toothpick teeters this way and that, chomped between a set of crooked yellow teeth.

When he sees me, he tucks the BlackBerry into a clip on his belt. I'm not even out of the minivan when he starts talking, his voice as loud as a TV set at a nursing home. “So the mousies are back, huh?”

Maude hears him in her sleep, starts. The pacifier falls out of her mouth, but she doesn't wake up. I alight and close the door gently behind me.

“Yup.”

“Good to see you, Josh.” Joe gives my hand an authoritative shake, like he's the commander of a battleship and I'm his new XO. He spent time in ROTC, I think, although he never saw active duty. “You know, if you'd let me put those traps down, like I wanted to last year . . . ”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “You were probably right.”

“Don't worry,” he says, patting me on the back. “We'll do a number on those little critters.”

“Great.”

We stand there for a moment in silence. Joe likes to talk, and his line of work doesn't allow for many opportunities to chew the fat. He notices the sleeping Maude in the carseat.

“Wow,” he says. “She's getting big.”

“Yeah.”

“How old is she now?”

“Three.” I'm about to add, “and a few months,” but Joe doesn't really care, so I withhold that detail.

“Wow.” He takes the toothpick out of his mouth and grins. “So, just you and the kid on a Friday afternoon. A little Mr. Mom duty today, huh?”

In the five years that we've been here, Joe Palladino has been to the house more than a dozen times, to do battle paladin-style with wasps, carpenter ants, and, on one occasion, a plague-sized swarm of ladybugs that turned our front porch into a Hitchcock set. On every visit, without fail, he makes a reference to that ridiculous and dated Michael Keaton picture—his subtle way of asserting a claim to alpha male-hood. Because, you see, it's much more manly to cavort with insects than spend time with your daughter. But I indulge him. I laugh at his sorry excuse for a joke. It's either that or knock the fucking toothpick down his throat.

“Yeah, I'd like to have kids someday,” Joe tells me, as if this sentiment is one that no one else has ever before considered. “Have to find the right gal first.”

I twirl my keychain around my index finger, hoping he takes the hint. “You'd be a wonderful father,” I tell him, and Stacy would be proud of the acting it takes to sell the sincerity of the line. I move toward the front door.

“Well,” he says, “you would know, right?” He follows me, peacocking his chest. Joe is the sort of guy who feels the need to constantly project his manhood, especially around an obvious inferior like me. Usually I find his compulsion toward machismo amusing. But today I'm in no mood. He derides my fatherly duties, the implication being that I'm less of a man than he is, because his line of work is predicated on my primal fears . . . but it's more than that: he owns his own business, draws an income, makes a decent living—and I don't. No matter how certain I am that stay-at-home fatherhood will benefit my children more than a few extra dollars in the bank, no matter how evolved and twenty-first-century my thinking, the fact remains that masculinity—and by extension virility—is inextricably linked to money. We men are
supposed
to bring home the bacon. Whether this role is innate or learned, nature or nurture, Stanislavski or Stella Adler, we've been playing it for millennia. A few piddly decades of Women's Studies programs, of CEOs in skirts, of Sandra Day O'Connor and Sally Ride and Sarah Palin, can't undo a million years of rigid, inveterate gender dynamics. Money begets power, power begets sex appeal. No one wants to fuck Mr. Mom—not even Mrs. Mom. And yet, taken in strict biological terms, what is more manly than procreation? Animals fight to the death for the right to sire brood, to continue their bloodline. I have kids; Joe Palladino has bugs. Scoreboard, Joe. Scoreboard.

“So I'll let you in,” I say, “and then I have to, you know, take care of my daughter.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Joe scratches his scruff as he watches me fumble with the lock. “So I went on a date last night that was kind of promising.”

I don't say anything.

“Match.com,” he continues. “Slim pickings up here, but she seems pretty cool.”

“Good for you.”

“I'm not one of those guys who operate well in bars, you know? I'm not down with that scene. I mean, I have a beer here and there, but I'd rather do other things. Hiking, climbing, fly-fishing. We went to a bar for the date, though. A wine bar, actually. New place. 36 Main? Down by Snugs? Her idea. She seemed to know the bartenders really well. I think it's where she, like, hangs out.”

Finally the lock gives, and I push the door open. As soon as it does, Steve bounds out, dashing through my legs and down the steps.

“He's not doing his job,” Joe quips, watching my cat vanish into the woods across the street. He's a barrel of laughs, this guy. A date with him sounds like a fucking Sartre play;
of course
the girl met him at a bar; she'd have to ply herself with cosmopolitans to get through it. “He's gotta earn his keep.”

“You know where the basement is, right?”

But the Comic Sans paladin won't take the hint. “She's pretty hot, though. You know, for an older chick. Great legs. I'm kind of a leg man. Not bad upstairs, either. She knows her way around a cocktail dress, that's for sure. And she puts out. On the first date! Not all the way—she probably would have, but you know, I didn't want to push it. Maybe I should have. I don't know. She gives great head, though”—his voice gets softer, like a stage actor's
sotto voce
, even though there's no one within five hundred yards of where we're standing other than a napping three-year-old—“and dude, she
swallows
.”

The urge to knock the toothpick down his throat returns. In addition to being contemptibly crude—be grateful you found someone to take you in her mouth, you scumbag, and keep yours shut!—the spit-or-swallow dialectic has always struck me as ridiculous. How could any man, in the throes of hummer-fueled climax, so much as ponder the final resting place of his manufactured goods, let alone genuinely care?

“She's divorced, is the only problem. Not that it's a problem, really. I mean,
I
don't care. We all make mistakes, right? The guy lives in New Paltz”—he pronounces it
Nu Paul's
, like the natives do—“though, so it could be a bit awkward. He's an artist or something. One of his murals was hanging over the bar, she said. Bunch of squiggly lines, looked like to me. Modern art, you know. I don't get it. Was pretty funny, though. ‘I can't get away from the guy,' is what she said.”

Felicia Feeney. Paul Feeney's lush of an ex-wife. As many notches as Paul has on that legendary bedpost of his—Gloria is not his only lover—Felicia has even more. It's like they broke up and now try to out-slut each other. Like rival siblings, vying for the bigger pile of toys, the more voluminous Christmas-morning haul. Which is curious because the Feeneys, alone among adults in our extended social circle, don't have kids. Paul shoots blanks, is the word on the street. An impotent Don Juan; oh, the irony. I decide not to relay any of this information to the gallant beneficiary of Felicia's swallowing, who, if the rumors are true, may have to contend with bugs of a different kind in a few days.