Ordinary Life (10 page)

“There’s something wrong with him,” Ursula says. “All he does is drink water. I
gave
him a drink right before he went to bed. I’m going to get him tested!”

“Relax,” Jack says. “I’ll go.”

Ursula sits glumly on the sofa until Jack returns. When he sits down, he says, “You know, it’s been a long time since we had a nice dinner together. This weekend, let’s go somewhere. Do you think Ruthie can sit?”

“Jack,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“We are taking a quiz.”

“I know,” he says.

“So why are you talking about this weekend? What is your chronic resistance to finding
out
about yourself?”

“First of all,” he says, “I don’t have a
chronic resistance
to anything. Secondly, if I did, a
magazine
quiz would not be my preferred method for illumination.”

“I think this could help you, Jack. If nothing else, it’s something you could do for
me
. I’d appreciate it.”

He is quiet for a moment. Then, “All right, Ursula. We’ll take the damn quiz.”

“Number one,” she says again.

“I remember the question,” Jack says.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“You go first,” she says happily.

Jack takes the magazine from her, looks at the cover. It features an openmouthed model with a deliriously vacant look on her face. Blurbs for the stories inside surround her. “Where’d you get this, anyway?” he asks.

“At the
grocery
store.”

Jack stares critically at the magazine, his lips shaped as though he is smelling something bad. Then he hands it back to her. “So what’s
your
answer?”

“What do you care?” she asks.

Jack snaps on the television. Ursula takes the remote control and snaps it off.

“My answer is yes!” she says.

“Fine,” he says. “So is mine. More or less.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, there are no qualifiers allowed. ‘Does your romantic partner satisfy your needs?’ Is your answer yes, or no?”

“It’s yes, Ursula. Okay? It’s yes.” He rubs the back of his neck, looks away from her.

“Good,” she says. She is heartened by his discomfort. Now they’re getting somewhere. “Number two,” she says. “ ‘How often do you fantasize about living another life altogether?’ ”

“A lot,” Jack says.

Ursula looks at him. “You do?… Why?”

“I don’t know. I just think about other kinds of lives, that’s all.”

She sniffs. “Like with your twelve-year-old secretary, I suppose.”

“No,” he sighs. “Not with my secretary. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I fantasize about being a trapeze artist?”

She looks at him for a long moment. Then she says, “No, you don’t.”

“Well, I do think about other kinds of lives,” he says. “Ones I’ve missed. I mean, I really wanted to be a doctor. Did you know that? I had a medical kit when I was a kid, went around the neighborhood bandaging things, even broken limbs on trees. It was … magical, thinking I could help heal. But I never took the MCAT, never bothered pursuing it. I don’t know why. And sometimes now I think, Wow, it’s really too late. I’m never going to get to be a doctor.”

“Well,
I
don’t fantasize much about another life,” she says. “I don’t know why
you
do. What do you suppose that means, that you do?”

“Look. You’re the one who wanted to take this stupid quiz. If all you’re going to do is get aggravated, let’s forget it.”

“I’m not
aggravated
. I
like
doing this. It’s interesting. And it’s good, you know, to do a little self-analysis. You can’t be afraid of a little discomfort, Jack! That’s what makes you change, makes you grow. It’s how you find things
out
! I mean, look: I’m finding out that I’m pretty happy. I didn’t really
know
.” She rearranges herself, reads, “Three. ‘Are you more than ten pounds overweight?’ ”

“Now, what the hell is
that
in there for?” Jack asks.

“It happens to be very important what you weigh,” Ursula says. “Overweight people are not happy.”

“Bullshit,” Jack says.

Ursula sits up straighter, turns to Jack. “You may pretend not to worry about it—”

“I
don’t
worry about it!”

“You may
pretend
not to worry about it,” Ursula says, “but it does affect your self-image.”

“
I’ll
tell you what affects my self-image! Sitting around taking some ridiculous
magazine
quiz that purports to tell me whether or not I’m
happy
! You think
MotorWeek
is stupid? Next to this, it’s Feynman’s lectures on quantum electrodynamics!”

“Maybe,” Ursula says quietly, “this quiz is just bringing up some things you need to think about, Jack. Maybe it’s time to stop working so hard at keeping your blinders on. You deny
everything
. Your life is a lie. You need to
see
things!”

“Why,” he asks, “when you see them for both of us? Why don’t you just go right on telling me how I
really
feel, what I’m
missing
, Ursula? You’re so good at it. You seem to enjoy it so much. I’d hate to deny you.” He leaves the room. She hears him going down to the basement.

Ursula straightens up the family room, finds a fire truck and several Legos stuck behind a chair cushion. She feels an odd numbness as she picks them up; it’s as though her fingers aren’t quite touching the toys, as though some invisible lining is between them and her. She carries the toys into the boys’ room, then goes to stand beside their bunk beds. She straightens their covers, inspects them in the dim light. They are so beautiful. No matter how exasperated she has gotten with them during the day, when she sees them sleeping at night she aches with love for them. Jack is right, she thinks. They have a good life. Why does she analyze, question so much? They are lucky. They
are
happy! She will go downstairs to get him. They’ll watch
Nightline
together. She’ll make some dip for the chips. Maybe she’ll wear something special to bed. The red nightgown with the slit cut up high. Not that Jack ever needs incentive.

She goes into the basement. Jack is at his workbench, sanding the edges of a toy box he is making for the boys. He looks up when Ursula comes in, then away.

“I’m sorry I made you take that quiz,” she says. “I just … Sometimes I wish we could feel things more alike. It could make us closer, you know? I thought if we talked about whether or not we were really happy—”

He stops sanding. “I’ll tell you something, Ursula. I never saw much point in asking yourself if you’re happy, never saw the reason for that obsessive kind of self-inventory. It bores me. I’m a simple guy, Ursula. I love you and the kids, I like cars. I don’t ask for a lot more than for us all to be together and healthy. That makes me happy. I’m sorry I can’t be a malcontent for you. What do you want me to do? Tell you all my regrets, my failures?” He looks at her, takes in a deep breath. “I hate my job, Ursula. I’m sick to death of always being the one to initiate sex. You turned out … sillier than I expected. I believe nuclear war is inevitable, that existence is inherently pointless, that it’s too late to save the environment. Is that what you want to hear? Is that the kind of romantic prelude you long for?” He puts down his sandpaper. “I’m going to bed.”

He squeezes past her out the door, treads heavily up the stairs. Ursula stands before the toy box for a moment, then turns out the light and heads upstairs herself. She is aware of a sudden and profound fatigue.

After she is ready for bed, she climbs in beside Jack, nestles up to him. She is wearing perfume, the red nightgown. She moves closer, whispers, “Are you awake?” She hears his breath go evenly in and out. The familiarity of it calms her. “Jack?” She moves her hand across his stomach.

“I don’t want to talk anymore, okay?” He takes her arm from around him, moves away from her. A first.

“Okay.” She lies still, her eyes open, thinking. She is remembering the time she was nine and took apart a jewelry box she loved, to see what made the ballerina turn around. Though she paid careful attention to each step, when she tried to reassemble it, it didn’t work the way it had before. No one else could fix it, either. The ballerina stayed in place, permanently turned away, oblivious to the music she had danced to before.

Dear Nan,

I feel like a fool, writing this. Not knowing if I’ll ever give it to you. Wondering what the hell I can say on a page that I can’t say to you in person when you get back. But reading your letters has made me think that maybe there’s something to this writing thing. Maybe it’s easier to say certain things when you’re alone and thinking about a person, rather than being with her. At any rate, I’ll give it a try. I’ve got your pile of letters here beside me, I’ve got a cigar and a glass of scotch. Here goes.

First of all, I am angry. Not as much as I was when I first found your note, but I am still angry. How would you have felt if you’d gotten out of bed, come downstairs, and found some note saying I was leaving and I didn’t know when I’d be coming back? You’d have been furious, Nan, admit it. You’d have been on the phone to your damn girlfriends, telling them not only that I had left, but other things you’re pissed off about as well. These would be things you would never dream of telling me—oh yes, I know you do that, because I’ve overheard you. You usually start with, “He is
driving
me
crazy
,” and then you reveal something very personal about me. I want to say right now that at least I never do that to you, Nan. I don’t go running off with my male friends and say terrible things about you. You remember that week or so when you were having trouble with gas? We didn’t know what it was, but Jesus Christ, you were farting to beat the band. We were going to take you to the doctor and then it all of a sudden stopped. You think I ever told the guys about that? But you talk about me to your women friends all the time, carry on about things I can’t help any more than you could help farting. My
level of cleanliness
. My
denseness
. I don’t see the flower the way you see the flower, okay, Nan? I’m
wired
differently. Most men are. And the ones that aren’t, I don’t think you’d be much interested in.

I wonder sometimes why men and women persist in living together, especially after the kids are gone. You can understand the biology of it, the need for us to be together to have and raise children. But after that, isn’t it just a trial? The way we’re constantly accommodating each other? The way, for example, I never get to smoke my cigars in the house unless you’re off on some trip to “save” yourself. The way I feel I must ask permission to put on a CD that
I
like. Why don’t people just organize same-sex colonies? I wonder. Visit each other if you girls can tear yourselves away from talk, talk, talking and if we can leave the ball games. Think of it, a group of people all living together who share the same opinion about what should be done with the toilet seat. About whether or not you should put on some tight-ass outfit and drive into the city to see the opera—hmmm, now there’s a hard one. About whether it will cut your life expectancy in half if you eat a piece of beef jerky. About whether a bed must be made every morning, the wet towels removed immediately from the floor, the
whites done with the whites, the newspaper thrown away the second we’re done reading it—or before! Why
don’t
we separate—keep each other in our wills, attend graduations and weddings and funerals together, date, even, but live apart? I don’t know, I guess it’s because love works that way, that the person who bedevils you is also the one you need.

Well, I have read what I’ve written so far and it’s a bunch of crap. But you know what? I don’t care. I do not care. That’s what a good dose of a good scotch will do for you.

So let’s just see. Let’s just see what you wrote and let’s see what I have to say back. But first, my dear, another drink. Cheers.

In your first letter, you mention Kotex. Now, what in the hell am I meant to do with information like that, Nan? And you say you sat at the breakfast table with me, acting like nothing was wrong, when there was a hurricane inside you. What I want to know is, why didn’t you say anything? I sensed what I thought was a kind of restlessness in you, but I let it go. You are often restless, darling. You are often a pain in the ass. I let it go because of the times when you are not.

But you might have said something. In a way that would let me know what was
really
going on. For example, when you were hurting at the thought of our daughter being gone after she graduated, how hard would it have been to say to me, “Will you miss Ruthie?” I might have told you something.

Well. I write that and then I sit back and read it and think, if truth be told, I probably would not have said much. I probably would have shrugged. I probably
would
have said, “Well, she’ll visit.” And so what? It is not my job or obligation to process things the way you do, Nan. But it is your obligation to try to tell
me why things are a problem for you so you’re not always walking around with this dreamy, tragic look on your face. So that you’re not waking up and clutching at rocks you keep in your bedside table drawer, for Christ’s sake. There you are, a married woman, lying beside her husband in their bed at night, turning to
rocks
for comfort! Should you not accept
some
of the blame for that?