Love in Mid Air (14 page)

I phone him each time I leave counseling. Jeff always ends our sessions by reminding me I should do something for myself.
A little something for myself every day, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean calling Gerry, but that’s the only thing that
soothes me after the impossibility of a therapy session. Fifty minutes of trying to describe what I wanted at the beginning
of my marriage and trying to describe why it’s no longer what I want. Fifty minutes of realizing that I’m no longer sure exactly
what I want but that I’m pretty sure Phil will never be able to give it to me. Fifty minutes of admitting that I’m using the
wrong language and that really, of course, of course, it’s my job to give things to myself. Fifty minutes of Phil looking
at me in exasperation, Jeff nodding eagerly and telling me to go on. Because, after all, the more confused and inarticulate
I am now, the greater the adulation he will receive when he saves me. I am the lost sheep whose return will bring about more
rejoicing than the others who are now safely munching arugula in their pastures.

Behind Jeff’s head are rows of marriage manuals crammed from every direction and angle into an overstressed bookcase. Jeff
has a hundred guides, each with a hundred theories on how marriage should work, and he won’t rest until we have explored them
all. “Each marriage is its own country,” he said at our last session. “The married couple are the king and queen of that country
and they can decree whatever rules they want.” I felt a momentary flash of pride when Phil said, very calmly, “That’s got
to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” Even Jeff had to laugh. Never mind. If we don’t like that analogy, he’s
got plenty more. I wonder how many people leave therapy because they’ve really figured something out and how many leave because
they’re so worn down with the steady drip of words that, in the end, they’ll agree to anything just to get out the door.

So each time in the car, on the way home from Jeff’s office, I hit number 3 on my speed dial. This is not the time for talking
about small things. This is time for a conversation that propels me to the mall or the airport or the track where I sit alone
in a remote section of the parking lot and listen to this man explain how he will run his tongue down the furrow of my spine
and press the arches of my feet to his forehead. Gerry never asks me what I want.

I
t can’t happen,” I tell him.

“So why do we keep talking about it?”

“Because we like to torture each other.”

“Okay, torture me now.”

“You know I bought some lingerie.”

“Great, great, wait a minute. Service stinks in this area. I don’t want to lose you.”

“I can’t talk long. The ladies and I are getting ready to walk.”

“Tell me about the lingerie.”

“I didn’t get it for you. I got it for my husband. He’s going to take one look at this new underwear and everything is going
to be totally different. He’s going to say, ‘Hallelujah, I see you as both a wife and a mistress and this marriage is absolutely
forever one hundred percent saved.’ ”

“What did he say? Give me a second. I’m on a bridge…”

“He didn’t say anything. I haven’t worn it yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid. He has this way of being sarcastic, I think he’s trying to be funny…”

“Poor baby.”

“I know. I keep taking it out of the bag and spreading it across the bed and looking at everything.”

“Tell me about it. Describe every piece.”

“Well, there’s a camisole, do you know what that is?”

“Yeah, that’s great.”

“And on the bottom are these black hose with elastic tops that are supposed to stay up by themselves, and high heels.”

“That’s really great.”

“When I tried them on in the dressing room, I imagined my legs sliding around your neck with the hose on. I imagined that
sort of swooshing noise the hose would make against your skin if I…”

“Wait a minute, damn, trucks everywhere. I’m going to take one of the exit ramps and find a place where we can really talk.
Wait a minute. Hold that thought. Are you trying to kill me?”

“I’m trying to kill something.” I’ve just pulled into the elementary school parking lot and my car is the first one there.
I tell Gerry not to find an exit ramp, that the other women are bound to show up any minute and I’ll have to hang up. He says
he wants us to meet. He has told me this before. I haven’t said yes but I haven’t said no. This is dangerous, he tells me.
It’s stupid, I tell him. He says he just wants to make sure we’re clear about everything. On the plane I told him that marriage
was a door people walk in and out of and I need to understand he’s not going out that door.

“So all we would be is sex,” I say.

“Friendship and sex,” he says. “Can you handle that?”

I tell him I can handle that.

He figures maybe it would be best if we meet somewhere neutral, at least the first time. Somewhere other than his town or
mine.

“New York,” I say immediately. I have a friend there. Nobody would think anything if I went up to see her. It’s good for him
too—there are a million reasons for a person to be in New York. He says there are ways to set up a business file in my name
so I’ll look like a client and he can pay for my ticket. The client thing seems a little double-edged. Maybe he’s done this
before, and that’s not good. But if he’s going to the trouble of setting up a file on me, he must be planning for us to meet
more than once, and that is good. My system is flooded with something—adrenaline, endorphins, some liquid that I imagine to
look just like vodka, running clear and straight to my brain.

“Can you hear me?” Gerry asks. “There’s so many fucking bridges here.” He’s breaking up.

“I heard you. This is never actually going to happen.”

“So what will you be wearing in New York?”

“You’ve already forgotten what I look like?”

“I know what you look like. I’m trying to talk dirty.”

“I’m going to wear the lingerie tonight.”

“Yeah, I guess you might as well give it a stab. Call me tomorrow and let me know how it went.” Nancy’s van has pulled into
the parking lot and she is driving toward me. Gerry’s voice is nearly lost in an ocean of static. “If it goes well I’ll never
hear from you again, will I?”

“You’ll have the consolation of knowing you saved a marriage,” I say, watching Nancy get out of the van and tighten the ties
on her walking shoes. “You can tell all your friends that meeting you was what turned me into the greatest sex kitten of Charlotte,
North Carolina.”

“You’re right. That will be an enormous consolation.”

“Besides, cheer up. The odds are it won’t go well.”

“If it goes badly will I see you in New York?”

I say goodbye and hop out of the car, slamming the door and walking toward Nancy. She is strapping her heart rate monitor
around her chest and she looks up, squinting in the sun as I approach.

“I can see right through you,” she says.

“What?”

“That top is a little thin.”

“It’s that new breathable fabric. I have a sports bra underneath.”

“Oh yeah, well, I didn’t mean anything bad. As long as you have a sports bra. It looks comfortable. Want to start?”

“Sure,” I say, and we head down the steps toward the track.

“Is it okay if I run something by you? It’s kind of big.”

“Sure,” I say again. “We tell each other everything.” I’m still a bit unnerved by the seeing-right-through-me line, but the
lie comes to me easily. Nancy’s big news is that she’s thinking about putting down hardwood floors in her kitchen, and I murmur,
acknowledging the enormity of the decision. It’s not entirely rational. We work so hard to create a façade and then we blame
each other, just a little, for not being able to see past it.

She tells me the exact dimensions of the space and how much the laminate costs per square foot versus how much the real wood
costs and she tells me what Jeff said and how, if they go with the real wood, the price could cut into their vacation plans
and she tells me, in detail, the three places they’re talking about going for fall break. Kelly’s car pulls into the lot with
Belinda’s right behind it. I help Nancy do the math in her head. Three hundred and twenty square feet of laminate equals a
whole week in Cancun and is this or is this not greater than 320 feet of hardwood and four days at Hilton Head? Telling someone
everything is just another way of telling them nothing.

T
hat night after Tory has gone to sleep I go into the bathroom and put on the camisole, stockings, and heels. Phil usually
comes into the bedroom just before the ten o’clock news begins and, right on schedule, he walks through the door and sees
me there, draped across the bed.

“What are you doing?” he asks, smiling faintly.

I feel foolish at once, lying on the bed with high-heeled shoes on. I struggle to pull the camisole down over my belly.

“What exactly are you trying to be?” Ah, the question that has no answer. “Really,” he says, “where’d you get this stuff?
Did you borrow it from Kelly?” I bolt from the bed and teeter my way into the closet, my face burning with shame.

“Don’t be mad,” he calls after me. “Just let me watch the weather and then you can come back in here and be that little thing.”
But I have already pulled the camisole over my head and the stockings down around my ankles, I am already beginning to cram
the evidence of my stupidity back into the pink Frederica’s bag. “You’re not taking it off, are you?” he calls again. “Because
really, it’s kind of cute.” I pull on my loose gray sleepshirt with the big UNC on the front and pad back into the bedroom.

“I guess you’re pissed,” he says.

“At least now you can’t say I never try.”

“Okay,” he says, making an imaginary notation in an imaginary notebook. “Let the record show that on October 27 at 9:56 p.m.,
Elyse tried.”

T
wo days from now, when we tell Jeff this story, Phil and I will remember it differently. I will tell Jeff that Phil had smirked
at me and asked me what I was trying to be. Phil will say that he didn’t smirk, he only smiled because he was surprised. “I’ve
never seen her wearing anything like that,” he will say to Jeff, but Jeff will not be looking at us. When we get to the part
in the story where Phil describes my outfit, Jeff will swivel his chair away from the desk and shut his eyes.

“Okay, so maybe you surprised him a little too much,” Jeff will say. “The important thing is that you not read so much into
this one reaction…”

“She spent the night on the couch.”

“He made fun of me.”

“The important thing is that you realize this was just one little hiccup,” Jeff will say, his voice muffled because he’s facing
the wall. “A tiny misunderstanding. The important thing is that you remain open to the sexual possibilities between you.”

“You don’t know her,” Phil will say. “Elyse is the kind of woman who’s capable of making a very big deal out of something
like this.”

T
hey think I’m going to New York to see a friend named Debbie. Debbie is my escape chute—every married woman has one. The friend
from your single days who stayed single, the friend in another city, the friend whose life you can periodically disappear
into without raising alarm. My mother agrees to stay at our house. She’ll get Tory after school and make sure she has her
homework done, and I suspect that she’ll also have her fed and bathed by the time Phil gets home. It’s only three days, she
tells me, don’t worry about it. I sound like I could use a break.

Phil is not concerned either. “Have fun,” he says. “Tell Debbie hello for me.” Debbie doesn’t like him. He doesn’t like Debbie.
But I’m surprised that getting away is this easy. I’ve already begun to wonder how long I should wait before I try it again.
But no, I’m getting ahead of myself. A couple of kisses and a few giddy phone calls don’t mean that Gerry and I will hit it
off in the real world. Not that a hotel room in New York necessarily qualifies as the real world.

I’m going up on Tuesday afternoon. I will spend the night in a room he has reserved and paid for, in a hotel that he says
is very nice. He will be there early Wednesday morning. This is best, we decide, since his plane lands at 8:15 and otherwise
we would have to wait until three to get into the hotel room. We can’t afford to kill most of the day walking around and having
lunch. Time is too important, we have too little of it, so I will come up a day early and check into the room.

On Tuesday I wake up at five. I feed the cats twice. When Phil kisses me goodbye he misses my mouth and the kiss stays, a
damp smear on my cheek, until I wipe it off. I drive Tory to school and hug her too hard as I say goodbye. “Have a good vacation,”
she says. “Break a leg.” She is taking drama for the first time this year and she loves that phrase, loves the idea that it’s
bad luck to wish for good luck and you should always say the opposite of what you mean.

I have allowed a full two hours to get to the airport. At the last minute, as I am backing out of the driveway, I look down
at my wedding rings, then cut off the car and run back inside to take them off. I start to put them by the bathroom sink,
but that seems risky, like I’m practically begging somebody to knock them down the drain. That’s the curse of the women of
my family. Over and over again, through the generations, we keep managing to knock our wedding rings down the drain. My mother
did it multiple times, my grandmother too, and both of my aunts. My earliest memories are of plumbers frantically summoned
in the middle of the day to fish rings out of sink drains before the husbands got home. We can’t let the men know how stupid
we’ve been. How careless. It’s almost as if we want to get caught. If you didn’t know us better, you’d think we’re the kind
of women who enjoy trouble. Oops, there they go again.