Is This What I Want? (5 page)

She was holding the bottle of liquid margarita mix over my glass, waiting with patience for my response.

“Nah, I like ‘em strong too.”

Her face lit up.

An hour later, we were all out in the backyard. The pool area was just as spectacular as Sam had described, with cascading waterfalls, a Koi pond and a state of the art barbecue. I felt as if I was at a fancy resort rather than in a neighbor’s yard.

The kids took turns flying down the slide as they screamed and shouted with joy. I kept a close eye on Jack since he couldn’t swim yet, but with his arm floaties and a flotation vest on, I felt pretty secure. Jill and I were stretched out on teak lounge chairs with soft, light brown cushions under a large umbrella that provided just the right amount of shade. With a nice warm buzz flowing through and between us, I got the sense that we were both about ready to move on from small talk. She started.

“So how are things with Rick?”

I told the truth. There was no reason to hold back. I shared the ups and downs of the last few months. I even felt bold enough to tell her about Rick’s recent request for a little education. She listened with interest. I knew I was going on for longer than I normally would, but the tequila prevented me from caring.

Finally, I got bored with my own story and gave up the floor I had been greedily hogging for so long.

“Okay, your turn.”

She took a long slow sip of her margarita and leaned back, stretching out her flat stomach, which seemed so disproportionate to the extra-large breasts filling her white string bikini top. I looked more like one of the boys in my one-piece blue Speedo suit and board shorts.

“Where do I start?” she asked as she watched the kids spraying each other with large super soakers. Though I knew she was thinking out loud, I had an answer.

“How about with Kent?”

She turned to face me. I kept my eyes on the kids, hoping the battle brewing between Sam and Jack would resolve itself.

“Mom, tell Jack this one’s mine,” Sam demanded.

“Jack, there’s a huge bin of water guns, pick another one or you’ll have a time out.” Thankfully, he complied.

I turned back to Jill, not wanting to wait another second for her answer.

I saw some pain in her face when I looked at her. There was sadness in her eyes.

“I don’t see Kent anymore.”

I tilted my head to the side, questioning.

“His wife, Marlene, caught us. She came home from work early. We, we weren’t expecting her.”

My mouth fell open for several seconds. I forced myself to shut it and rested my fist on my chin to keep it closed for what was to come.

I couldn’t believe it. They were literally caught in the act. The image of a woman coming home to find her husband having sex with another woman was almost too much for me. My head swirled with alcohol and horrified fascination. I missed bits and pieces of Jill’s story, but what chilled me to the core was the intensity of the reaction of Kent’s wife.

Even in my fuzzy state, I felt a stabbing pain in my chest as Jill talked about how Marlene screamed and sobbed, looking from Jill to Kent, repeatedly asking, “How could you do this?” Jill was paralyzed in the bed next to Kent, desperate to get dressed and run out of the house, but Marlene held her captive.

Tightly gripping the sheet held up over her chest, Jill was mute at first and couldn’t bring herself to answer any of the questions being hurled at her. Kent was no help at all. He sat there in stunned silence.

Jill tried to get out of the bed but Marlene lunged toward her and pushed her back down. Jill didn’t react.

Finally, Marlene started to answer her own questions out loud. She seemed crazed as she began to explain the situation.

Jill became more animated as she told me this part of the story.

“So then she starts pacing back and forth, saying things like, ‘This doesn’t mean anything. It was just one time. People make mistakes. We’ll get through it.’”

Jill and Kent continued to sit in silence.

Marlene walked up to Jill, who pulled the sheet up higher and braced herself in case she was about to take a blow.

Looking into Jill’s eyes, she pleaded, “It was just this one time, right? It didn’t mean anything, right? It was just sex?”

“I figured she’d tell Connor she found us together and everything would all come out anyway, so I looked right back at her and told her the truth.”

“No. It wasn’t just this one time.” Jill looked to Kent. He disappointed her by not looking her way. He was staring out the window, which seemed very odd. Still, she went on.

“We’re in love with each other. We have been for over a year. I’m sorry, Marlene. We never meant to hurt you.”

Marlene fell in a crumpled heap on the floor and sobbed into the sleeves of her dark blue business suit.

Then Kent surprised Jill by shoving her clothes in her face and saying with force, “It’s time for you to go.”

“But Kent, we talked about this possibility. We agreed…”

He cut her off. “I said it’s time for you to go. Now.”

That was the end of Jill and Kent.

Jill couldn’t help but wonder if it was just the free ride Kent didn’t want to part with. Marlene was the breadwinner and Kent was the kids’ caregiver. It was the same situation with Jill. Jill hadn’t worked since she had kids and never went to college or had much of a career to speak of prior to having kids. So how could it ever work for the two of them to leave their spouses and be together? Jill was willing to consider figuring something out, but Kent wasn’t.

“For a while, I thought she decided not to tell Connor. Then one night he came home and I knew something was different. He told me Marlene had called him while he was driving home from work and told him everything.”

“How did he react?”

“Not too badly, actually. He understood.”

She seemed so nonchalant. It didn’t make any sense to me.

“Did you go to therapy?”

“No, we worked it all out ourselves.”

“Already?”

“Yeah, in fact, it’s brought us closer.”

“Closer how?”

“We realized we both wanted something more and now we’ve found it.”

“Found it where? How?”

For a moment, I actually hoped she was about to report something I hadn’t heard or thought of yet, something that could provide a magic solution for Rick and me.

“Well…” she checked to make sure the kids couldn’t hear.

“We have a great new, um, group of friends, a new community that we’ve connected with.”

Images of pyramids and dollar signs popped into my head.
Oh no
, I worried,
she’s going to tell me I have to invest $300 in a bunch of cleaning supplies that I can start selling to friends and family and ultimately make millions if I just join her team.

But when I looked into her eyes, I saw something mischievous. It felt similar to the day at the park, months ago, when she confessed her affair with Kent while Jack and James played in the sandbox.

“Okay, Jill, just tell me. What are you talking about?”

She took a large gulp of her margarita and bit the inside of her lip before answering.

“We’re swingers.”

STANDING IN FRONT
of
the full-length mirror in my bedroom, I studied myself in my nude bra and underwear, amazed that I was reasonably happy with what I saw. A pile of rejected outfits lay in a heap on the bed. I tried each one on again as my mind went back to the day at Jill’s pool two weeks earlier. The extra-strong margaritas she fed me buffered the shock I should have felt hearing the stories about her swinging lifestyle. We couldn’t talk about it at great length with our four kids running around nearby the entire day, but whenever they were out of hearing range, she’d give me a little tidbit about her escapades.

I listened intently and Jill reveled in my enthrallment. Maybe it was because I had been exposed to sexuality at an early age, or maybe it was just my personality, but my close friendships had always involved sharing graphic details about sexual encounters. It all started when my aunt Jamie taught me how to give a blow job on a cucumber while showing me pictures of how it was done in magazines. I couldn’t be sure, but whenever I reflected back on those lessons, I estimated that they started when I was about ten.

Reliving some of my childhood experiences during my sessions with Carly was opening up wounds I thought had healed long ago. I tried to tell her that I was grateful I had never actually been sexually assaulted, as so many of my friends had. She tried to tell me that my early exposure to sexuality and the overt sexual invitations I received from family members, though I managed to be strong enough to reject them, likely had adverse effects that we should explore.

I removed a shimmery black floral top and pulled the bright blue fitted shirt out of the pile again. But this time when I put it on, a sweat ring began to develop and I knew anything cotton was out of the question.

Jack started singing and banging on toy drums in his room next door, which bought me a few more minutes before I needed to check on him.

Sifting through the mound of clothes, I was totally uninspired by every item, even though each was new and significantly smaller than everything else in my closet. My mind drifted to the scenarios Jill described, as it had so many times since the day we spent together.

I pictured Jill and Connor swapping partners with another couple as they all watched each other and took breaks to kiss and touch their own spouse. Then I imagined Jill’s husband watching as she and another woman pleasured each other with fingertips and mouths. And I didn’t know whether to think their goal of having encounters with as many different cultural groups as possible was racist or enlightened. Part of me was grateful that Jill hadn’t made any contact since that day and another part wanted to hear more, a lot more.

Time was running out. I had to make a choice, so I settled on a sleeveless, multicolored blouse that would camouflage my body’s reaction to the three-digit degree temperature. At least the pattern had a little black in it to match my Capri pants and simple ballet flats. My heart raced with anxiety.

Jack sat on the bathroom floor playing a Little People game on my iPad while I applied my makeup with a small fan blowing on my face. I decided to go for a more natural look than usual, fearing the embarrassment of melting eyeliner in front of my new students. I checked the time on my phone again and spoke a text message to Rick.

“Almost here? I need to leave in ten.”

No response. My responsible husband was good about not texting and driving, even hands-free. At least that confirmed he must be in the car.

In the kitchen, I sat Jack at the table with a bowl of blueberries as I packed up my own snacks for the four-hour shift, which included an office hour from 3:00-4:00 and class from 4:00-7:00.

“Mama, where you going?” He seemed to know that whenever Mom was busy packing up things like almonds, a granola bar, and a banana, she’d be gone for a while.

“Mama’s going back to work today, sweetie.”

“I wanna go with you.” I turned to see the entire area around his mouth as well as his teeth smeared with purple stains and felt the corners of my mouth turn up. Rick’s going to have quite the time cleaning that up, I thought.

I brushed the silky blond curls on Jack’s forehead to the side and kissed him right between the eyebrows.

“I’m sorry, honey. Mommy can’t take you to work. I have to teach the college kids, remember. You’re a little too young to come with me, but someday I’ll bring you, when you’re older.”

“But I want to go to school with Mama! Sammy go to school. Not fair.”

I removed the empty bowl in front of him and replaced it with a plastic Dora the Explorer plate sprinkled with Goldfish crackers.

“Sammy goes to his school, not my school. You’ll have your own school soon too, remember? You’re going to start preschool very soon, when you turn two.”

He pushed his plate away, pouting, which made his full bottom lip look almost freakishly huge for his face. I knew what was coming.

“No! You’re not true. You said Sammy could go to school with you.”

Wanting to correct his grammar, I restrained myself. I also hid the frustration on my face by turning back to the task of packing up my supplies. I regretted having the conversation in front of Jack about how Sam could come to a class with me when he turned eight. All of a sudden, Jack was listening carefully to everything we said and we were unprepared for this new accountability.

“Jack, honey, Mommy teaches at college. It’s a very different kind of school. The students are grown-ups, not kids. I said Sam could come visit because he’s older. You can come with me when you’re older too. But first you have to learn about what school is like. You are going to love preschool. It’s so much fun.”

“When I start?” he asked with excitement. I felt my shoulders tense up at the thought of his first day. Jack was excited about going to school like his big brother, but I knew the truth of what we were in for. I could barely stand to think about all the crying that went on the week Sam started preschool. Though I wasn’t sure who shed more tears, him or me.

“In just a couple of months, sweetie.”

The garage door that leads to the kitchen swung open, saving me from the current conversation and all the feelings it stirred.

“Finally. I’m going to be late for office hours. I really need you to get here by 2:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, okay?”

A bead of sweat sat on his left temple as he loosened his tie and carefully draped his suit jacket over a chair at the table.

“Yeah, I know, sorry. Gotta get back into the swing of leaving work so early again. It’s only the first day. No one comes for office hours, right?”

“Let’s hope not.”

My car’s air conditioner made a valiant effort but was no match for our desert climate, so I stuffed wads of tissues under each bare armpit and tried to keep them in place as I drove. Please, please, please let the air in my classroom work better than this, I prayed.

As I walked toward the office I shared with about fifteen other part-timers, who all were in and out at various times during the week, I saw five students lined up outside the door.

“Are you Professor Thomas?” one asked in the pleading tone that I knew so well.

It was hard to hear in the office with all the adjunct faculty members and students packed into it. The first day was always the worst. All the desks were taken, so I grabbed two empty chairs and pushed them into an open corner to meet one-on-one with each of the students who were there to see me, while the others waited outside. They each shared their stories about why they desperately needed to be added to my class. One was an international student who would be sent back to China if she wasn’t able to enroll in twelve units. Another had been ill all last semester and only recently got clearance from his doctor to go back to school, when all the classes he needed were already full. Each story was more heartbreaking than the last.

I expressed regret for their unfortunate situations, but had to deliver my standard speech at the end of each mini-therapy session.

“I would love to help you. But I’m not allowed to go over the limits of my classes. The best I can do is allow you sign up on the waiting list and see if a space opens up. I’ll add students in order of the highest number of units if and when any openings become available.”

They always expressed understanding, but the disappointment and anxiety they walked away with left me heavy-hearted.

When the last student left I looked at my watch, assuming I still had time to get online and print out the most updated version of my class roster.

“Shit.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud. The other students and professors in the room looked my way.

“Sorry,” I said with an unapologetic smile as I grabbed my things and raced to the elevator.

Standing in front of the door to the classroom where I would spend three hours every Tuesday for the next fifteen weeks trying to teach a group of fifty youngsters about business communication, I took the time to inhale deeply and exhale slowly several times. I reminded myself that I had done this many times before. That it didn’t matter who the kids were this time around. That we’d have fun and great conversations and they’d appreciate my passion for teaching and genuine interest in their thoughts and ideas.

I breezed into the room with a well-rehearsed easy smile. Brushing the hair off my shoulder I surveyed the sea of faces before me. I recognized about four of them. Myra Lipton smiled and waved a tiny, shy wave right in front of her chest. I mouthed, “Hi, Myra.” I knew it was just my hungry ego feeding off the junk food high of repeat students, but still I allowed the feeling to soothe the first day nausea burning my stomach.

I unpacked my briefcase slowly, laying a neat stack of folders containing syllabi and various other handouts on the desk in the front of the room. As I pulled out my laptop and began the process of hooking up the cables, students realized they had a few minutes before we would start and began chatting quietly. With their attention taken off of me momentarily, I felt my heart rate slow a little.

The old classroom clock high on the wall above me struck 4:00 and I began to move more quickly to set things up so that the students wouldn’t think it was okay to show up late to my class because I didn’t start on time anyway. The door opened and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the silhouette of a male student scurrying to grab an open seat in the front row.

With everything in place and my introductory PowerPoint slide filling the screen, I stood next to it and looked out at the class again. The large welcoming smile on my face was almost impossible to maintain as I became aware of the identity of the student who had just arrived. This can’t be happening, I thought. This must be another nightmare. I stood stunned as I looked at him. His eyes moved from side to side as if to tell me I’d better get started or the other students would notice something was wrong.

“Just a second. Sorry.” I started ruffling through my stack of folders as though I needed to find something very important.

I can do this, I told myself. I have to do this. I have no choice. He can’t be in the class, I thought. He wasn’t on the roster. It was calming to think that he must be trying to add the class, because I could easily reject his attempt. Then it occurred to me that the last roster I printed was two days ago. Someone could have dropped the class and he could have added it online when the space opened up.

My shaky hands lifted the list of student names and I carefully tried to pronounce each correctly to check attendance. When I finished, I asked for a show of hands to see how many people were not enrolled in the class and wanted to be on the waiting list. His hand didn’t go up. I hoped my face didn’t look as red as it felt.

“Okay,” I said, “and I didn’t get a chance to print an updated roster today. So is there anyone who added the class online in the last day or two and didn’t hear me call your name?” I thought my heart would leap out of my chest as I waited.

One hand went up. Dave was officially a student in my class.