Fathermucker (32 page)

My lips have worked their dilatory way south, and I'm now nibbling on her neck, sucking on the supple skin, working my tongue around and around. She tastes as good as she looks. Her head is flung back, warm wet breath on my earlobe, and she's moaning, “You're so hard . . . you're so
hard
for me . . . you're so fucking
hard
,” as she plies her prestidigitational magic, and all that's preventing me from shooting all over her dainty fingers, from oozing spent desire onto her multi-carat marquise-cut wedding ring, is the erection-killing image of the distended pink face of Senator John McCain.

But how quickly the close-up of McCain on the TV screen of my mind pans to his comely running mate—who would be gazing at Russia from the portico of the gubernatorial mansion in Anchorage still if he'd gone with Romney—and while I abhor her politics and her opportunism and her choice of baby names, I must concede that the image of Sarah Palin's hot-librarian glasses, her attractively bitchy face, her long slender legs, combined with the smooth rhythm Sharon's fingers have now found on the instrument of my longing, is insufficient to ward off a potential sticky mess in my sweatpants. Only a matter of time.

Sharon, sensing this, releases me. She pulls away, stands up, turns around—affording me a lovely view of the tattoo on her lower back; the same place Vanessa has hers, but unlike Vanessa's deformed butterfly, Sharon's intricate red-and-black scorpion inspires drool—unzips her skirt, and lets it slide to the floor.

The stockings don't come all the way over her panties, but stop at mid-thigh, and are held in place by a garter belt.
A garter belt? She was wearing a fucking
garter belt
to a gallery opening?
This has now become a scene from a porno I decided not to watch on Cablevision.

But it's gone too far, way too far, and I'm starting to have second thoughts.

There is a line between fidelity and infidelity, a line I am dangerously close to crossing. Necking is one thing; nuzzling is another; fondling could conceivably be excused, under the circumstances; but the marital-vow Rubicon will be crossed, no doubt about it, if I come. Sharon can play at semantics all she wants. Secrets, schme-crets: if another woman makes you spooge . . .
that's
infidelity.

On the other hand, I mean, Stacy
is
fucking Soren. Why exactly am I clinging to our hollow vow of monogamy when she isn't? Like poor John McCain, I'm making a
heroic sacrifice
in the name of
honor
. I'm
doing the right thing
. Feh. Honor and heroic sacrifice seem not so important next to the tangible bounty of Sharon's C-cups.

But it's my temptress who pulls away. She leans back on the other side of the couch, her legs spread. “Oh my God I'm so . . . ”

“ . . . wet.” The same hands that so skillfully kneaded my cock Sharon jams down her black silk panties. Her head rolls all the way back, her yogic abs as buff as a nubile starlet's in the
Us Weekly
“Beach Bodies” issue, her neck exposed like a vampire victim's (Did I make that mark on her neck? Oops). Her voice, already breathy, is an Enigma album. “I'm so
wet
. I'm so fucking
wet
for you. Oh, Josh. I'm so fucking
wet
for you.”

If you'd told me at five thirty this morning that in less than twenty-four hours I'd have a MILF Getting Freaky in my living room, declaring her wetness for me, I would have laughed in your face. The whole situation is so absurd, in fact, that it almost makes me laugh out loud even now. The funniest part—or, if you will, the most absurd—is how closely Sharon, in the throes of (real or imagined) ecstasy, resembles Stacy.
Ecstasy, ex-Stacy
. I'd never noticed this before, but in Sharon's half-naked, take-me-I'm-yours pose, they look eerily similar. I am in the larval stages of cheating on my wife with a woman who could be easily taken for her sister.

Easily taken.
Too easily.

Wait a second . . . did she
plan
to do this? Did she make up the whole thing—Stacy's affair, Soren, even the gallery opening at G.A.S.—just to seduce me?

I can't do this.

Just as that flash of insight cuts through the darkling muck in my thick, wine-addled skull—with Sharon lying before me wearing only stockings and a garter belt, plumbing the depths of her desire with ready fingers; with the tent in my sweatpants so tall Ringling Brothers could use it for a sideshow; with the temptation to ix-nay my decade of fidelity at its absolute zenith; with matters about to escalate to the point of no return—
that's
when the dulcet soundtrack of white noise, steam train, baseboard-heater clang, cricket-chirp, owl-hoot, and seductive I'm-so-wet-for-you incantation is cleaved by an awful scream, like when the feedback-thick guitar comes in heavy over the dreamy synth at the beginning of “My Heart Is Hydroplaning.”

One of the kids is awake.

U
SUALLY WHEN
M
AUDE WAKES UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT,
she flips on the light switch and stands by the door, sometimes pounding on it, until I rescue her from the prison of her bedroom. So I'm surprised to open the door to a dark room, the dull incandescent glow of the nightlight losing its battle with total blackness. Closing the door behind me—don't want Roland to wake up, too—I turn on the light to find Maude on the futon, sitting up but otherwise just where I'd left her, crying hysterically, her entire body convulsing with each tortured breath. Tears stream down her face, and her curly hair is a wet mop of sweat, which indicates fever, nightmare, or both.

“Maude, honey. What's wrong? What's wrong?” I scoop her up, embrace her; her legs wrap around my body as I rock her back and forth.

“I . . . I . . . I . . . ”

“It's okay. It's okay.”

I ease into the rocking chair, taking care to arrange her body so that it doesn't come anywhere near my still-semi-erect penis. I run my hand along her cheek. Her skin, while damp, is not any warmer than usual; she doesn't have a temperature.

“Did you have a nightmare?”

She tries to say yes but can't find the words, instead expressing her affirmation in a long, low wail.

“It's okay, honey. It's just a dream. It's not real. It's just a dream.”

The night of the Academy Awards, Maude woke in a similar state of hysteria. Her nightmare involved Roland throwing up in her crib—a vision so real that she never again slept in that elevated baby cage. She wound up staying up and watching the show with us—Hugh Jackman hosted, and Maude was riveted by him; his demographic extends, we joked at the time, to two-year-olds. That began a rough sleep patch in which we tried toddler beds, real beds, and even the Pack-N-Play of her infancy, to no avail. The only place she would sleep, other than our bed, was the floor. And Stacy or I had to lie there with her until she conked out. After a fitful night of floorsleeping, I dismantled the crib and put down the futon mattress, and she's slept there more or less comfortably ever since.

So I know she's not going back down easily, not after this sort of night terror. Resigned to spending the rest of the night in here, I fall into a gentle rhythm on the glider, and work my way through the second set of lullabies: “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin',” “Winter Wonderland,” “Hotel California,” “Chicago.” Her breaths start to slow, and she calms down, but does not fall back asleep. I can feel her eyes moving, alert, terrified. Like mine when I hear the mice. When I tire of singing, I fall silent, rocking back and forth, patting her back, and watch the slow progression of numbers on her clock: 11:35 . . . 11:41 . . . 11:53. I am conscious of Sharon Rothman down in the living room, perhaps drinking more wine, perhaps eating more cheese, perhaps asleep herself on the sofa, but hopefully gone.

I was so close to ruining this, to destroying everything, and for what? One night of drunken pleasure? A weeklong fling, perhaps? What the fuck was I thinking? Thank God Maude woke up!

“I love you so much,” I whisper in my daughter's tiny ear. “I love you and Roland and Mommy so much.”

Maybe her nightmare wasn't random. Maybe there were metaphysical forces at work—ESP, some father/daughter mind-link, a subconscious cry for help that Maude . . . perceptive, sensitive, nurturing Maude . . . somehow picked up on, as she slept. Maybe my internal distress call manifested itself in her bad dream, and rang out in her cry. I mean, it's been more than half a year since her last major nightmare; why tonight, why at that precise moment, did she wake up screaming?

Maude picks up her head, looks at me. “I know, Daddy,” she says through her pacifier.

“Do you want to go back to bed now?”

This scares her. Her leg begins to kick involuntarily, like she's being electrocuted. “No,” she says. “
Your
bed.” And her half-cry returns: “I . . . want . . . to . . . sleep . . . in . . .
your
. . . bed.”

“Okay. My bed. Fine.”

I'm a bit concerned that Maude might notice Sharon on the couch; if she sees Iris's mommy here, she might mention it to her mother, and I'd rather keep this visit under wraps, for obvious reasons. Holding her in such a way that her face is pressed against my chest, I carry her carefully down the stairs.

Sharon isn't in the living room. I'm hoping she's gone, but when I round the corner, I see that the bathroom door is closed, the light on. The coast, as they say, is clear. I bring Maude into our room—she crawls happily into the dead center of the bed, where she will occupy as much space as her small body allows—cover her with blankets, and kiss her goodnight.

Glance at the alarm clock: 11:58. Two minutes left in my two-star day.

Friday, 11:59 p.m.

F
ULLY CLOTHED
, S
HARON SITS ON THE COUCH, FLIPPING THOUGH
the new copy of
Us Weekly
she found in the bathroom—the one with yellow-gown'd Fergie and black-clad Josh Duhamel on the cover.

“Is she okay?”

“She's fine.” My buzz is gone, devolved to stout headache. “She had a nightmare.”

“Poor thing. I hate when Iris has bad dreams.” She closes the magazine, taps the cover. “Stacy and Josh. Just like you guys. Weird.”

I want to counter with,
That makes you
THE STRIPPER
, but all I can muster is, “Yeah.”

We hold our positions for a moment, Sharon sitting on the couch, me standing in front of her, not really looking at each other. Once again the house is quiet.

“I should probably go,” Sharon says. But she does not move. “If you want me to.”

She says this so I can stop her, reassure her, implore her to stay, to finish what we started. Soap-opera dialogue, just like this morning. What she doesn't realize is that I also don't want her to stay.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “That's probably for the best.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, tossing the magazine on the stack of Roland's catalogs—it opens to the page about the cheating Josh Dumbbell—and slipping back into her four-inch fuck-me pumps. “I shouldn't have come. I shouldn't have told you.”

She moves toward the door, toward me. She hugs me—a different kind of hug than the one she offered when she arrived; a lover's hug; a hug that bespeaks of intimacy—and kisses me again on the mouth. This time I don't kiss her back.

“Are you okay to drive? We drank a lot.”

“I'll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“I'll take the back roads. It's not that far.”

It
is
far, everything up here is far, and the police are as ubiquitous as they are overzealous, as I well know. I should probably insist that she wait, that she sober up more, that she have a cup of coffee, a glass of water, a handful of Altoids, but Sharon is a grown-up, responsible for her own actions, and by now, frankly, I'm ready to be rid of her. “If you say so.”

“We can pick up where we left off,” she says. “Whenever you like. David won't mind. We have an arrangement.”

Well, well. That explains Old Man River, doesn't it? For once,
I'm
the one armed with gossip, with fresh grist for the mill. David Rothman, the willing cuckold, the
mari complaisant
. Another version of Dennis Hynek. Not quite as shocking as sex in an art museum, but juicy gossip just the same. This particular tidbit, however, I'll keep to myself.

“Well, Stacy and I don't. She's not having an affair. No matter what you say.”

“I hope you're right.” She kisses me again on the cheek and is gone, leaving in her wake two empty wine bottles, a tray of cracker crumbs and cheese rinds, and the faint scent of whatever wonderful product she puts in her hair.

From the living room window, I watch the BMW X-5 back out of the driveway, watch the red tail-lights vanish over the hill. Quiet descends on Plutarch Road, and I feel like I got away with murder. Like I dodged . . . more than a bullet—an airliner screaming toward the tall steel tower of my life. I fall on my knees on the hardwood floor by the front door, and I offer up a prayer of thanks to whatever Unseen Hand has steered me clear of the potential plane crash.

“Thank you,” I say aloud. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Not that I'm blameless. I realize that. One day, I'm sure, I will feel guilty about my misadventure with Sharon—I'm hardly innocent; I returned her kiss, I nuzzled her breasts, I did not shy from her expert caress down below—but now I feel charmed, like I passed a test. I feel like Vincent and Jules in
Pulp Fiction
, when that kid bursts in, gun blazing, and every bullet misses them. Given the choice—and that's what tonight represented: a choice—I doubled down on my marriage. I kept my chips on Stacy's number. And I feel good about my decision. Lady Luck was on my side. And from the looks of things, she's going to hang around for a while. I don't need to check Eugenia Last's column to know that today (it's Saturday now, a few minutes past midnight) will bring five stars.

One more thing: for all the circumstantial evidence, for all the cogence of Sharon's argument, the thing is,
Stacy's not having an affair with Soren.
She's not. I know this now. Even
if
she'd cheat on me, which is unlikely, there's no way she'd also betray Meg, one of her best friends. But even if it were all true, even if she was fucking Soren in art installations like Cynthia Pardo, that doesn't make it kosher for me to mess around with Sharon. It just doesn't. If sharing is a virtue we teach our kids, so is the notion that in life, things don't always divide evenly down the middle; there are days when Roland will eat one more cookie, days (like today) when Maude will partake of one more lollipop. The wisdom of King Solomon. It's not a fucking contest (nor is it a
fucking
contest). John McCain was right about that—fuzzy and intangible though the concept might be, honor is what separates us from lesser life-forms, be they animals or Feeneys.

But I'm not in the clear just yet. Time to make like Winston Wolf (speaking of
Pulp Fiction
) and clean up the scene of the crime. That's what the living room feels like—a crime scene. Class A felony: attempted adultery. Hide the evidence. Invent an alibi. Take a long cold shower. Pray for the best.

I close the
Us Weekly
, stack it with the lighting catalogs on the coffee table. I bring the wine bottles outside—Steve tries to door-dash, but I stop him; coyotes prowl at night—toss them in the recycle bin. They land with a loud glass-crash, momentarily deafening my left ear.

Cassiopeia is directly overhead, its five brightest stars limning a celestial “W.” Dubya has his own constellation; oh, the irony. I take a moment to drink in the night sky—one of the many boons of life in the country, away from New York's eternal daylight, is the vault of stars on pristine nights—and am searching vainly for the Seven Sisters when a car comes over the hill and slows to a crawl, blinding me with its high beams.

Sharon returning, to sober up some more, to try her hand again at seduction? No—it's not an SUV. The roof isn't high enough.

Panic seizes me. What if this is an intruder, a team of thugs hell-bent on butchering me and my family,
In Cold Blood
in upstate New York? It's not like terrible things don't happen now and then; witness the unspeakable horror of the home invasion and murders in Cheshire, Connecticut, last year. And here I am, outside, caught in the headlights like a scared deer, unarmed, vulnerable.

But no, it's not an intruder. Once my eyes adjust, I recognize the car: a 2003 Outback. And I
should
recognize it; I'm the one who bought it, used—excuse me;
pre-owned
—at Colonial Subaru in Kingston, when we first moved here.

Stacy.

She must have taken an earlier flight.

A sobering though hits me: had Sharon stayed . . .
my wife would have walked in on us
. Thank God thank God thank
God
that I turned her down, that I sent her away! I try to quiet the noises in my head, to appear calm, but Stacy is very adept at noticing when I'm acting funny. Which I'm obviously doing right now, because it's after midnight, and I'm standing in the driveway for no apparent reason. A suave and seasoned philanderer might explain this away with ease, but I feel like she caught me presiding over a bloodied corpse, murder weapon still in hand. And I have one of the worst poker faces in the English-speaking world. I'm the anti–Lady Gaga.

Stacy gets out of the car, slams the door shut, and comes to me. She's wearing her travel clothes—oversized college sweatshirt, jeans, red Sauconys, her hair pulled back in a red bandana—and a big smile.

“Hey you!”

“Hey!” I squeeze her tight, drinking in her familiar scent—God, I love how my wife smells!—and hope that she doesn't detect the strong fragrance of Another Woman on my clothes. She feels so right pressed against me; even dressed down, tired, after a long flight, she looks perfect.

“They let us out early, and I was able to hop an earlier flight. I was so psyched.”

“I missed you. Man, did I miss you.” But my brain is still in detective mode—it's harder to shift mental gears than emotional ones—and I find myself asking the question that pops into my head. “Why didn't you call?”

Hard to tell out here in the driveway, but I'm pretty sure her face blushes slightly. “Don't get mad.”

I grin. I'm happy to keep the tone playful. “What did you do?”

“I dropped my cell phone in the toilet.”

“Again?”

Stacy goes through cell phones like they're tampons. It's a running joke.

“It wasn't my fault.”

“I'm just giving you shit. Really. I'm so glad you're home. You have no idea.”

I move away from her and to the trunk, where I collect her bags. With a night of sleep—or at least a shower—separating me from the Sharon imbroglio, I could better disguise my culpability. As it is, there's not enough time. I feel like the guilt is a second head that's sprouted on the back of my existing one, like Voldemort in the first Harry Potter movie. How can she not notice something so obvious? There's a fucking
head
on the back of my head!

“You're acting funny,” she tells me. “Have you been drinking?”

“I had a few beers. To relax.”

“You don't seem relaxed.”

“I'm just surprised to see you. And I'm really tired. It's been a long day.” I'm walking toward the house now, carrying the bags, and thus able to avoid direct eye contact.

“So why aren't you in bed?” She's half a step behind me. Literally and figuratively. “Why are you outside?”

“Maude had a nightmare.” This is the truth, but it sounds like I'm improvising an elaborate ruse, like Jon Lovitz on that old
SNL
sketch. No way she'll buy this, even though it's true
she reads my she reads my yes she can read my lame poker face
. “She's in our bed, and I wanted to give her time to conk out. So I figured, it's a clear night, why not come look at the stars.” We step through the door. Steve, happy to see her, arches his back; Stacy leans down and pats him. “It's hard to spot those constellations. I suck at it.”

“You should try it without the lights on.” She kills the driveway flood lamps.

This is a decent set-up line for a bawdy rejoinder, but I'm not feeling it. The clever part of my brain—if, in fact, there exists a segment of my gray matter that can generate something approaching cleverness—is in panic mode, trying to cover my bloody tracks.

I let the bags drop on the floor. Stacy immediately notices the magazine on the coffee table. “Ooh. Is that the new one?”

If I can make it to the morning without her giving me the third degree, I'll be in the clear. I still have to confront her about Soren, tell her what I was told and who told me, but that will be a difficult conversation, and I don't have the energy for it right now. All I want to do is pass out on the bed with my wife and daughter.
Get to bed, and we'll live happily ever after.

“Yeah. With Josh and Stacy on the cover.”

Will she notice the remains of the cheese and crackers on the coffee table—the smoking gun of near-adultery—as she takes the
Us Weekly
? Nope. She grabs the magazine and heads to the bathroom. I move to clean up the mess, but before I can get to it, she returns, the rolled-up mag in her fist.

“Was someone here?”

I try and make my voice as nonchalant as possible, which does not work well. She's a much better actor than I am. “Yeah. Sharon Rothman stopped by.”

Four quick words, a magic spell. The floodgate damming All Hell bursts, and just like that, the Pandemonian contents break loose.

“Really.”

“She was on her way to Poughkeepsie. To a gallery opening. So she stopped by.”

“She stopped by.”

“For a drink. She brought a bottle of wine, so we had some. Some wine.”

“In addition to the beer you drank to relax.”

“What's that?”

“You said you had a few beers, to relax.”

“Oh, right. Yes. In addition to a few beers.”

“That explains why your breath smells like a garbage dump.” Stacy's face contorts as she processes this information. Then she crosses her arms over the
CARNEGIE
on her college sweatshirt—her attack pose. “I don't know if I like the idea of you entertaining other women in my house when I'm not here,” she says finally, indignity and accusation creeping into her voice.

Stacy and I rarely fight. Not that we don't ever have cause for quarrel; it's just that I will go to great lengths to avoid outright conflict, because I suck so royally at one-on-one, out-in-the-open debate. My arguments, however well-thought-out before the clash, and however correct, degrade to emotional grunts the minute I'm attacked. In short, I avoid rows with Stacy because Stacy always wins. Always. She's Jerry to my Tom. I find it easier to acquiesce
surrender surrender but don't give yourself away
than to take up arms. The Neville Chamberlain route, peace at all costs.

Yet tonight, I have no choice. I've already ceded the Sudetenland, and now the tanks have rolled into Poland. I have to fight. I have no choice. The very future of our marriage depends on it. I can't just laugh this off (although I probably should). I have to have out with it, all of it; to defend myself, and by extension my marriage, or die trying. “Well,” I counter, “I don't know if
I
like the idea of you meeting
Soren Knudsen
for lunch and not telling
me
.”