Ordinary Life (11 page)

Now in the second letter you tell me about a dream you had. The truth is, and I say this in the kindest of ways, Nan, I am just not interested in dreams—yours or anyone’s. They don’t matter to me, they matter only to the person who had them. And every time you tell me your dreams, you stand hawklike before me, watching to see if I’ll “get it.” And I don’t
want
to get it. I don’t want to
hear
it. If I said urgently to you, “I had this
dream
last night,” would
you
be so interested? Maybe you would. But only so that you could take it apart and psychoanalyze me some more. Or so that you could see where
you
figure in, in my dream. You are like a kid that way, Nan, always needing so much to be in the center of everything. More than other women I’ve known. And I have known my share. You don’t know about all of them. You think you do, but you don’t. Some things weren’t worth telling you. Some things were too hard to tell you. I loved a girl when I was fifteen and she was fourteen, and she died of leukemia. That, for example. Which I still don’t want to talk about, but there, you never knew that, did you? Or the time I went to my thirtieth high school reunion and you didn’t want to come and Sandy Miller offered to

Well, suffice it to say you don’t know everything. You are not the only one who runs deep, Nan, who does not say everything because of the feeling that you will not be understood.

I know I’m being tough on you, okay? It is my right and my privilege. It is what you owe me, the opportunity to state my
piece. You felt you had the right to leave. I now have the right to respond to your leaving. I hope you will read this all the way through. Please read this all the way through. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I’m not through yet. I am warming to this.

Ah yes, now we come to the side roads portion of your correspondence. Your old complaint of how I never want to take the side roads. How many times will I have to tell you this? The side roads take five times as long, and you expect me to
get
you places. You sit beside me looking out the window, making up your little fantasies about everything you see, wanting to stop at every peach stand and every antique store, and I’m the one who has to drive, drive, drive. And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say you
offer
to drive and I hardly ever
let
you. Right. Because if you drive you get on your beloved side roads and you get behind a tractor and then you’re afraid to pass. So there we are, off to a place five hundred miles away and driving eighteen miles per hour. It makes me feel like I could tear off the roof of my car with my teeth and eat it. If we go on a trip, it’s to
get
somewhere. The side roads are all right for a mile or so but then you’ve got to get going or you’ll never
get
there. Easy for you to be the romantic artiste, the sighing sufferer, when you know that good old Martin will be taking care of the practical things, such as getting you where you need to be when you need to be there. And Martin will lock the doors at night and turn off all the lights you left on and if the dog starts puking at 4
A.M
., it’ll be Martin who gets up to let him out. A noise downstairs that wakes you up? Why, just send Martin down to take the bullet.
Then
call the cops.

I’ll say one thing about your letter about the bed-and-breakfast—at least you sounded cheerful there. At least you got off yourself and onto something else. You’ve been so self-obsessed
lately, Nan, worrying about how you’re getting older and losing your looks—oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to say a word to me, I know all about it. I know too that you’re worrying about the wrong things. Instead of your thighs, worry about the fact that you’ve lost your sense of sexual self-assurance—to put it plainly, Nan, you’re no fun in bed anymore. Trying to cover things up. Not wanting the light on. No interest in trying anything new, or doing any of the wilder things we used to do with some frequency. When will you women understand that what turns men on isn’t what you think? Sure, I look at the beautiful girls who walk past our tables when we’re having dinner out. But not as much as you do, Nan! And don’t you know that I’d take a lusty, happy, overweight fifty-year-old woman over one of those skinny, miserable, navel-gazing twenty-year-olds anytime? I don’t know if all men are like this but I think most of them are: what we want is someone who likes herself, who finds herself attractive. It gives us ideas. Makes us think maybe we ought to like her and find her attractive, too. A woman who knows how to find the music, Nan, that’s what we like. You don’t seem to find the music anymore. You seem to spend your days standing at the window. At least that’s what you were doing before you left. Maybe you’re better now.

I wonder if

Phone just rang. Marion Kirshner. You know, the divorcée who moved in a few doors down a couple of months ago. Always out in her garden half naked. She was wondering if you’re home yet—she’d heard from our neighbors that you were on vacation, that’s what I told them. Nope, I said, she’s not home yet. Well, she said, how about dinner tonight? I said fine. I said we’ll go on over to Roger’s and have him burn us a couple of steaks and we’ll knock back a couple of martinis. Do I say this to make you jealous? Why,
yes, I do, Nan. I don’t have any intention of doing anything but dinner. No interest, to tell you the truth. For one thing, that woman puts on makeup with a trowel. But you should know that on the open market, I wouldn’t last long. And what better thing to drink a toast to, won’t you excuse me.

Finished the bottle with that one. Hadn’t realized we were so short. Guess you’ve been the one to keep us supplied in liquor, too. Yesterday I ran out of toilet paper at a most inconvenient moment. Looked in the drawer for the extra roll and
nada
. Shit! I said. And then had to laugh, of course. Sat there awhile and thought about the fact that it’s been nice to have things
there
. That I may fix everything that breaks, including things that you should know how to do, it’s just obvious, for Christ’s sake, but you do keep the house well supplied. There is not a goddamn thing to eat here now.

Well, you say in this next letter that you passed a field and the cows standing there looked like chess pieces. I would have liked hearing that if I’d been with you, Nan. As I too like the taste of so many things we’ve eaten together, but I never say so because you always get there first. Oh, Martin! you say. Taste this!
Taste
it! Isn’t it
good
? And you’re so insistent, Nan, that the joy leaves for me. You make me feel contrary. You make me want to say, NO, okay?
No
, it is
not
so good. No, I do
not
taste it. I know, I know, I can hear you saying how hostile I am, how HOSTILE MEN ARE. You women say that all the time, and you’re always making fun of men. Just how do you think you’d react if men did that to you? If a man put a sticker on his bumper saying
A man without a woman is like a fish without a bicycle
, some woman lawyer would come along and sue him. Oh yes, Nan, when you’re on your little road trip I hope you give that one some thought, about how men have taken just as much bullshit as women have. If not more!

But anyway, the point I was trying to make about the tasting thing is I wish you would just let me have a chance to say something first. Let me be the one to say it first. Oh, Martin, look at that painting! Look at it! Oh Martin, listen to the violin,
listen
to it. It’s like you’re a culture Nazi. I see it, Nan, I hear it, I taste it, I fucking smell it, I just do not need to TALK TALK TALK TALK TALK about it!

Well, I’m sorry. But I needed to make that point. If you’d just let me go first, once in a while. Or if you could just stand quietly beside me, trusting that I do see things, if only in my own way. And what is wrong with that?

I’ll tell you something, Nan. Sometimes I want to say something to you about myself but I just don’t. Sometimes it’s because
you’re
usually talking, but sometimes it’s—well, I don’t know what. Maybe shyness. Maybe I’m ashamed that if I tell you, you’ll think I’m weak. But I had dreams just like you as a child. I had plans and adventures that were interesting, too.
Like what, Martin
? I can hear you saying. Well, like this.

When I was eight, there was some newspaper article speculating about where the winter Olympics would be held. And I thought—I don’t know why, but I thought, well, how about I invite them to use my backyard? The idea just grew and grew. I thought about it every night before bed. I wanted all the details to be worked out before I wrote to the Olympics committee and offered my place. I figured I’d ask the neighbors to pull their cars into their driveways so as to leave room on the street for parking. The ski jump could be off the garage roof. I worried about there being enough snow, so I was going to also ask the neighbors if I could shovel their walks and driveways and then use their snow. I saw a picture of the queen of England on the front page of the paper and I thought maybe she might like to come, and I was
going to invite her to have dinner with the family. But I wanted to make sure the little kids ate in the other room—no spilled milk or nose picking in front of Her Majesty. Every night I lay in my bed and thought about it and got myself so excited I couldn’t sleep. And when I was finally ready to send the invitation, it was announced where the Olympics would be held. And it was not my backyard, because I was too late in asking—that was my feeling, that if only I had asked in time.… And I went into my bedroom and lay on my bed and punched the pillow over and over. And then I went out to throw the baseball against the side of house, because things do not last with me like they do with you. You don’t get over things quickly, as I do. I wish you would, as long as we are being so honest here. I wish you would not hold on to anger the way you do. And also I wish the house would not be so crowded with crap, so that I could
move
. And I wish you would stop buying fat-free EVERYTHING. Eat a real hot dog once in a while, knock yourself out.

Well, now I have read the part about your sleeping in the woods by yourself and I wish you hadn’t done that, Nan. It’s not safe. It’s one thing to take some time to go on a trip and another altogether to sleep alone in the woods when you have no idea where you are. You are not a strong woman, you know. Carrying in one grocery bag at a time. You are not a strong woman. And you don’t know how men can be when a woman is alone and vulnerable. It makes them get ideas. Even a good man might think to himself, Well, what the hell? That was stupid and I intend to talk to you more about it when you get home. Remind me.

You say you used to get up and watch Ruthie sleep in her crib when she was a little baby. Well, so did I, Nan. And you know what else? I watched her sleep all her life. When she was seven
and she slept with all her stuffed animals all lined up, when she was eleven and slept with her Barbies, when she was fifteen and slept with her diary. The night before she left for college, I watched her sleep for a good fifteen minutes, I swear. Just stood there, the moon so bright it was like sunshine. And then I went outside into the backyard and onto the patio where the swing set I built for her used to be. I sat in a chair and leaned back and looked up into the sky and I thought about her whole life with us, and then damned if I didn’t start to cry. I thought about the first time I held her, scared shitless by how light she was, I thought a breeze would lift her right out of my arms. I thought about the time she was three and she got those patent leather shoes she loved so much all full of mud, and I realized I was not going to be able to protect her from everything after all. I thought of her sixth birthday party, how dressed up she got in her favorite pink dress, pink ribbons in her hair, I think you even painted her fingernails pink, and then all the other girls came in jeans. I thought of the time she was fourteen and I came into her room and she didn’t see me, and she was standing before her mirror using her hairbrush to be the microphone and lip-synching with Madonna. Her braces were gleaming and she was trying so hard to look sexy and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I thought of the time I got up late at night to take a leak and I looked out the window and saw her sitting in some guy’s car, kissing him, and I wanted to go out and bust the guy’s head in. I didn’t tell you any of that, Nan. It didn’t seem necessary. The difference between you and me is that I don’t need someone to validate every thought I have, and I wish, frankly, that you were more like me that way. The weight of having to affirm everything for you is nearly unbearable sometimes. I have often wished for a mannequin Martin I could sit at the dinner
table who would be programmed to say, “Oh, uh-huh,” in the properly
engaged
manner every ninety seconds. And I’d take a beer and a burger and extra-fat potato chips down to the basement to watch the Red Sox.

Now, I remember that day when I was leaving for work and you started in with something and yes, I did tell you to have an affair. But it wasn’t because I really meant it. It was because I was so tired of trying to please you when there was no pleasing you. “Martin, I need romance,” you said, as I was
walking out the door to go to work
, Nan. What was I to do? I had a meeting with thirty-five people in half an hour and I was running late. What was I to do? Call and say, Listen, I need to talk to my wife, she needs romance? Or say, How about you just fly all those people who came in to meet with me back to where they came from, my wife is too lonely? You were in your robe, Nan, the whole day before you. I was in my suit, headed out the door to go to the office. Quit, then! I can imagine you saying. I never wanted this lifestyle! Money means nothing to me! Well, you just think about that one, Nan. Think really hard about that one. If you really don’t mind not having a lot of money, yes, I will consider retiring. Don’t you think I have my own trials to consider at work? Do you really think
you
have to tell
me
about stuffy conference rooms? Yes, you come home and we’ll talk about my retiring. I would like to live in a house such as the one you have described to me, but I’d like a little input too, Nan. Such as I want a pool table and a flat-screen TV the size of North Carolina. And a vending machine, which I told you about once and you just started laughing. But I want a vending machine, I think it would be cool. And hold on to your hat, Nan: I want to smoke my cigars INSIDE. We can figure something out, as long as we’re going to be building a new house anyway—we can make
the basement extremely well ventilated, whatever, but I want to smoke cigars in there and I want a refrigerator to hold beer and
only
beer. Want an opener built onto the side. I want leather furniture soft as butter and I do not want to see one, not one,
not one
“decorator” pillow or afghan anywhere. Nor any flowers. Nor any artwork beyond the dartboard I’ll put up.