Opening Belle (27 page)

Nothing.

The ladies are positively hysterical for some unknown reason, laughing and shrieking, and I presume it has nothing to do with me. I reach down for my phone in an attempt to call the store. I first call directory assistance to get the number and a computer voice asks the name of the business I'm inquiring about and I realize I have no idea what the name of this place is. I look at the $15K price tag, but no name is printed on it. I get switched to a human, a supervisor. Pathetically, I attempt to tell some sweet, unsuspecting operator my story, and tell him approximately where on Madison Avenue the store is.

“It's a dress shop,” I say.

“Ma'am, I have several listings of dress shops on Madison,” he says patiently.

“But it's in the East Seventies,” I say. “Some French name.”

“Ma'am, it's hard for me to find this place without a name or an address, and I don't speak French.”

I'm starting to blubber when Directory Assistance Guy offers to call 911 for me. I say it's okay and hang up. Again, I sit and try to calm myself. I see that Henry has sent me an email and for lack of anything to do at the moment, I open it.

We cannot be what we promise to be, which is something, someone real, not just a beautiful idea in a secret place.

I'm not rational enough to stop myself, so this time I write back. With one finger I slowly type my metaphor-filled message, feeling anger well inside me.

Last time I checked I was real. It's you who are unreal and me who fell into your little fish fantasy for just a moment, me who got tangled in some mermaid dream disguised as a dress. Well, the dress doesn't fit, the dress is too small and now I'm locked and tangled with no way out.

I attach the photo from just seconds ago and let emotions get in the way of my carefulness. I hit the send button. It's the first personal email of his I've responded to.

After a few moments, I hoist myself up again and wiggle my way to the door and begin to pound. The French ladies are quieter now and I'm surprised they can't hear me, nor have they checked on me. I keep hitting the stupid door with the brunt of my palm. Tears that come from nowhere now roll down my face and feel so relieving.

“HEY!” I yell.

Instead of a response, I hear the buzzer that indicates the front door is opening. I'm terrified, thinking they may be leaving for the night, that they forgot the almost middle-aged hag upstairs trying on a dress for someone ten years younger. Finally I hear footsteps, pounding up the stairs, letting me know that at last someone, somewhere, has remembered me. Without so much as a knock, the lock clicks and the saleslady comes into the room, followed by Henry.

“Zees is your girlfriend?” Franco Lady asks as if it's incredible the gorgeous Henry would be caught with someone like me.

“This is her,” he says, searching my splotchy face. “I can take it from here.”

“Henry?” I frantically try to cover my back, which is exposed now in a three-way mirror. “You said I was your girlfriend?”

“She didn't understand that I was using the past tense.”

“Look, Henry, I didn't mean to go all damsel on you. I . . . I . . . ,” I sniff to him.

Taking charge, Henry turns me around and expertly begins unhooking me. “Belle, it was just fun to say the
girlfriend
word again. It's no big deal.”

“Don't think I tried this on for you,” I say as I grasp for composure.

“Oh, sure. I know that,” he says. I see him grinning in the mirror. “Anyway, I was only five blocks away when I got your email.”

“I probably could have done it myself . . . eventually,” I say while thinking that Henry has taken off my clothes a hundred times. He must have been thinking the same thing.

“Yeah, but I know what I'm doing here,” he says. “I'm familiar with the territory.”

“There's more terrain now,” I say.

“Slight changes in topography,” he quips. “A real improvement, if you ask me.”

Women who have children really like being told they still have a nice body. I feel a rush of happiness flow to my heart while Henry's hands linger for a moment at the nape of my neck.

When I look in the mirror, he looks like he's still in his twenties, like we're the couple who once went to Australia. The flush of exertion or embarrassment in my cheeks makes me look better too.

“I was just wondering if it fit,” I say weakly, still sniffing a little.

“And did it?” he asks as he unhooks the last eye, releasing me from my bondage and letting me take a whole breath of air again. I tug myself out of the sleeves and hold the dress up in front of me, grasping for modesty.

“It did not,” I finally answer.

“And”—Henry fake-coughs to hide the fact that he's now laughing—“what have we learned from this lesson?”

I don't know if I'm laughing or crying and breathing is a little hard again. I fall back onto the tulle-filled floor, my dress falls forward, and I sit there in my matching black lacy bra and panties that somehow found themselves on my body at the same moment of the same day and, in this trick lighting, make the person in the mirror look borderline stupendous. And there's Henry in this perfect light, pulling the dress from under me, holding it in front of him, hanging it carefully on the four-inch-wide hanger, holding his hand out to me, lifting me from the floor, holding my hands up, pulling my work skirt over my head, zipping it back onto me, buttoning my blouse up, kissing me deeply on the cheek, and leaving.

I
GET HOME
from my dresscapade to find that Bruce has left the place like a crime scene. His message seems to be, “I'm leaving every overturned sippy cup, every empty wine bottle in exactly the position it was left in. I want you to see what you missed and then I want you to clean it up.”

I sit in the dark for a long time, trying hard to regulate my breath and to stop gasping. Something is smothering me with what feels like giant gobs of felt in my throat. I try some feeble form of meditation to calm myself and get this imagined gauzy film off my face and out of my nostrils. I need air. The only visual I can focus on, the only thing that my heart will listen to, is the scene where Henry's hands are on my neck, unhooking that fish dress, releasing it from my skin an hour before. His fingers were so manlike, he was so in charge and responsible when things didn't go as planned. With Henry I didn't have to be the only one doing everything, all the time. What would that be like with a family? It's the first time I think that I would be happier, that it would be easier to be with someone like him. It's the first time I have let my thoughts go to a dangerous place.

My heart starts to slow. I have to fix this. I have to reclaim control of the situation that is my life. The obvious place to start is the chaos in my living room. I have to kill this thing that threatens to smother me and I'm going to do it with Pine-Sol.

Fumbling in the low light, I remove my shoes and methodically begin picking up raisins, rice crackers, and bits of masticated apple. My stocking feet stick in some half-dried liquid and I raise the lights a bit and thrash and fluff at the pillows. I spray a vinegar/water combo on every wood surface and clean with an assured, angry energy. It's all I can do to not vacuum and wake everyone up. In ninety minutes the place sparkles and in the morning I hope Bruce will never even mention the lost night.

I unpack and then repack my bag for my trip and print out the schedule for everyone for the next two days. I put out cash for Caregiver and playdate notes for Brigid. I don gloves and sanitize the hamster cage that smells like the end car of the 6 train and I let the rodents run wild in their exercise balls the entire time. I lay out clothing for all three kids in three sections for school, play, and night. I chop up apples and raw carrots and bag them in fifteen little snack bags because I do not forget I am Healthy Snack Mom for Brigid's class tomorrow. I wake Woof Woof and shampoo him while he looks at me with questioning eyes. I do not forget anything. I just can't get to everything the exact moment the world says I have to.

By 1 a.m. I attack the last item on my mental list: I need to amp up my husband's happiness. He doesn't get to be angry with me for things I can't control. While he isn't exactly lighting my fire and what I really want is to sleep, I force myself to want the guy. I find a bottle of Victoria's Secret bubble bath, crusty and hard at the top but still usable. I pour the whole thing in the tub and take a bath that makes me smell like a French hooker. I shave my legs, my armpits, and put on some Italian lacy thing that still has the price tag on. Not bothering to snip it off, I jump on my angry husband's sleeping body. He smells like body odor and alcohol.

“What?” he asks, squinting at me and not being sure he likes what he sees.

“Queek, before za wife ees back in zee haus,” I say, going with what I imagine works for Rudolph Gibbs, Eastern European.

His hair stands straight up and he has a fuzzy hangover face on. It isn't sexy but I force myself to think it is.

“Ugh, I have a headache,” he says.

“Zas ees a line for dee ladies, not for real man,” I return.

“C'mon, Belle.”

“Eees impordant to know I also a doctor?” I say. “Specialty ees vee fix dee headache for free and also vee do, how you say, house calls. Eees your night of the luck.” I keep kissing my way down his body.

“You think everything gets repaired by screwing. It doesn't work that way.” Bruce speaks to the ceiling and makes no eye contact.

“Screwing fixes many sings,” I chirp as I kiss him behind his knees. His body is getting ridiculously perfect from all his gym time. He appears to have no body fat left at all.

“Stop,” he says, pushing me away from his shoulder. “Stop.” He really means it.

I flop over next to him and try to tear the price tag that's digging into my side. Instead I manage to tear a huge hole in the corset.

“Dammit,” I say, waiting and hoping for him to mimic one of our kids and say in a pretend baby voice that Mommy made a swearword, or anything that'll make this moment funny.

He rubs at his head like he's thinking of just the right thing to say. I don't want some heavy discussion right now and Bruce has never, ever refused sex. It's the one thing that hits our reset button every time and it's not working. I have no more remedies in my doctor bag. I look at the ceiling too.

“Don't you want to save this tenuous thing we have together?” I ask softly, surprising myself with what I just said. Mentioning a troubled relationship is a tough thought to put back in a drawer. This is the part where I expect him to say that we're fine, that he's just tired, that he needs a day to recover from hosting a bunch of strange ladies and their wild offspring. But he doesn't.

“I don't do guilt sex,” he mutters, and turns away.

G
UESS YOU'RE
not working today?” I had asked Bruce gently, two days ago. He hasn't spoken to me since. Bruce has mastered the silent treatment that's big with the four-year-old set.

Regardless of Bruce's limited earnings power, he used to be a man who got off the couch and rolled up his sleeves but now seems like a boy to me, careless with responsibility and fixated on his appearance. The search engine history on our home computer lists all self-improvement sites, and he buys protein shakes by the case. I don't mind the low-earning-working-guy thing, but the deadbeat dad from a bad sitcom, who flexes his muscles in every mirror he passes, does nothing for my libido. I desperately want to know what's up with him but every word out of my mouth is taken as an insult. We are roommates who barely tolerate each other.

Before I left the apartment this morning, I came upon a scene of mismatched pajamas, kid hair that seemed whipped in a wind tunnel, and my husband doing a Sunday-morning-chef routine with no regard for time management. It was clear they'd all be late for school.

Eminem songs rapped in the background. Plates containing eggs and pancakes were placed around a vat of syrup that Owen was drinking from with a straw. Bacon, hash browns, and fresh-squeezed orange juice were spread about while Kevin lay sprawled across the banquet with his hands down his pants. Brigid dabbed syrup from Owen's hair with a wet paper towel and nobody was actually eating anything.

I think Bruce has made some decision to be at home, to be with the kids and maybe just let me earn the money. I'm fine with that but wish I had been consulted. Am I really fine with that? I'm not sure. I think I like telling people my husband has a job only because I also have a caregiver, a dog walker, and an occasional housekeeper, so I need to know what his role is. The stay-at-home-dad scene this morning should have warmed my somewhat frozen heart but lately I'm in a semipermanent state of anxiousness and Bruce isn't helping that at all.

Looking at that kitchen scene, I wanted to be the cool mom, a relaxed, fun lady who throws up her hands and shakes her booty along to repulsive lyrics no three-year-old has any business listening to. I wanted to be the hip-bumping wife who high-fives everyone, kisses their foreheads, and boogies on out the door. But instead I frothed over the immaturity of a husband pushing forty years old. It made my heart race and my mouth want to say things I'd regret. I swallowed my comments like acid and silently turned and walked out.

Henry has been distant ever since the night of the mermaid dress and I blame the slowing mortgage market. He owns a tremendous amount of inventory that has few buyers. He has sent me exactly zero flirty emails and dozens of business ones. I'd like to say this relieves me but mostly what I feel is loneliness. He seems troubled and aloof but I can't exactly reach out to him without crossing that zone of intimacy.