Still Life with Husband (16 page)

I suddenly feel like I should be home, working on something vastly important. Oh, yes, me, too; I myself am writing an article about challenges to the Constitution.
A think piece.

“Oh,” I say instead, looking back down at my shoes. This is going nowhere. My throat feels tight. I’m about to say that I’ve just remembered another appointment, something I have to do, somewhere I must be immediately, when he reaches over and touches my arm.

“Emily,” he says with a little shrug. “I want to hang out with you.” I meet his eyes again. He’s smiling. This time the kindness in his voice has traveled up to his eyes, lightening them. “Should we explore?” he asks. I nod. We make our way over to the big map of the museum and stand, gazing at it. First floor, Peoples of the World, Our Living Oceans, and my favorite, the Streets of Old Milwaukee. Upstairs, the Butterfly Wing, Native American Powwow, and Aztec Market. The Milwaukee Public Museum has a charming, small-town, amateurish quality about it, which includes its excess of lifelike mannequins. Virtually all of the exhibits feature model people going about their papier-mâché business, as if history would be inscrutable without fake Guatemalan villagers selling plastic acorn squash. Which, come to think of it, it might be. At the Powwow, Native American mannequins revolve around on a giant lazy Susan, accompanied by tape-recorded drumming. On the Streets of Old Milwaukee, you wander around, peeking into shop windows where a mustachioed mannequin barber shaves his mannequin customer, a glass-eyed butcher hacks away at a bright orange sausage. If you’ve been here once, you’ve been here a thousand times. And I’ve been here a thousand times.

David leans in toward the map, squinting. “Peoples of the World,” he says.

“Is that where you want to go?” I ask.

“Not necessarily. I just thought it said ‘Beagles of the Wild.’ Until I looked more closely.”

“Beagles of the Wild,” I say. “I’ve heard of them. Famously undomesticated breed. Known for stealing children and then licking them to within an inch of their lives.”

“Not as savage as the wild golden retriever,” he says, shaking his head.

“Really?”

“Oh, the puppies are the worst. They wield their cuteness as a weapon and can throttle you with their waggy tails.”

“Their waggy tails?” I say, laughing.

David gives a grave, exaggerated nod. “How about the Streets of Old Milwaukee?”

“Good.” We head toward the exhibit, down the quiet hallways, past Peoples of the World, past the Buffalo Hunt, a diorama of nineteenth-century Native Americans on horses, their spears held aloft, chasing frightened taxidermy buffalo. The exhibit is particularly surreal to me; I’ve been coming to this museum since I was a small child, and the scene has never changed: the stuffed buffalo are in a perennial state of terror, the hunters’ expressions fierce but vaguely sad, too, as if they know they will never make their kill. On the edge of the exhibit, there is a small stand covered in real buffalo hide, which you can touch; the patch of fur has been rubbed almost bald, like a beloved teddy bear. It gives me the shivers now, this opportunity to touch the soft skin of something long dead.

David keeps his distance from me. I think of our walk by the lake, just a few weeks ago, but somehow seasons ago, eons ago. I think of the way we leaned toward each other then, the physical space between us a gap to be bridged. We were like two magnets drawn together, but I’ve altered the force field, and now we’re pulled apart, repelled. I
feel
repellent, unbeautiful in the face of this change. I’m suddenly aware of every flaw: my frizzy hair, my short-waistedness, my ungroomed eyebrows. Being desired, like a makeover, had made me pretty. Its absence uglifies me.

We wander around the corner to the tunnel-like entrance of the Streets of Old Milwaukee. “I remember coming here as a kid,” I say, absently trying to smooth my hair. “I was a little bit scared of this exhibit.”

“It is dark,” David agrees. “And there’s some resemblance to a haunted house.”

My memory of this place is fixed and sensory. The cobblestone streets, the working water pump, Olinger’s Sausage Company and the knife-swinging mannequin butcher, it all washes over me like a strong scent. David strolls over to the butcher shop, with its grotesque hanging plastic animal carcasses. I peer into the candy shop two doors down, the jars of bright sweets gleaming. The cobblestones are bumpy beneath my feet.

“That was my niece, by the way,” David says. It takes me a second to figure out what he’s talking about, and then I remember, the little girl he was walking with outside Meg’s school. The girl with the untied shoes.

I turn to face him and nod. “I wondered. Not that it was any of my business,” I say.

“Yeah.” I don’t know if he’s confirming that the little girl is his niece, or agreeing with me: yeah, none of my business.

“I was helping my friend,” I say. “She’s just getting back into teaching after a break, and she needed a hand. She teaches kindergarten,” I add.

“Rachel’s in first grade.” I wait, peer intently back into the candy shop as if discovering something: oh, look, a fascinating nineteenth-century lollipop! David walks over to me and faces the glass, looks inside. I hear him exhale. He’s next to me, close, but I don’t look at him. “So,” he says.

“So.” Prices are handwritten in frilly script on the outsides of the jars.
Mints, one cent. Fudge, two cents.
We’re alone on the Streets of Old Milwaukee. “There’s no excuse for what I did,” I say softly. I’m talking to the shiny glass window. My breath makes a cloud of fog on it, dissipating and reappearing. David doesn’t answer. I finally turn to him. “I know you’re over it, and I’m grateful for that, but I want you to know…” I trail off.

“I do,” he says. “And I still like you.”

Still likes me? Still likes me how?
Stop it.

“I guess my marriage is sort of troubled at the moment.” I feel sunken, admitting this. Flattened down like there’s a weight pressing on my head.

“Troubled doesn’t mean doomed,” he says.

“No.”

David clears his throat. “How about the butterflies?”

Huh? I smile as if I know what he’s talking about. An obscure Zen reference to struggling marriages?

“How about we go see the Butterfly Wing?”

“Oh, sure.” As we head toward the elevator, some of the space between us closes. I begin to relax into the day, into the actual, surprising friendship we just might make work. I feel grateful and happy. Being with David is starting to feel comfortable, practically like hanging out with Meg, I think. And I almost manage to convince myself of it.

A child’s screech echoes from down one of the hallways, followed by a short silence and then tragic sobs. “When you’re thinking about kids,” I say to David, without really considering what I’m about to tell him, “about having them, or not having them, they’re suddenly everywhere.” The wailing gets louder as we walk, then slowly diminishes, the toddler Doppler effect.

David looks at me, surprised. “Really?” he says. “Is that something you’re thinking about?”

“Oh,” I say, my stomach suddenly tightening. He must think I’m a freakish collection of neurotic symptoms, first dating him, then confessing that I’m married, finally admitting to thoughts of childbearing. Lovely. There should be a wing for me in this museum, a mannequin Emily lounging in a replica of my apartment: Twenty-first-Century Psychological Mess. This species of American female was known for muddling her love life beyond repair. Fortunately, she did not reproduce. “Not really,” I say. Backpedal! Backpedal! “I mean, no.” Then I remember: we’re trying to be friends. “It’s one of the sore spots of my marriage,” I admit.

“That must be rough,” David says. I note that he makes no effort to offer advice or try to fix this problem, the way every other guy I’ve ever been friends with has done when confronted with some murky emotional detail, as if it’s a busted carburetor. We’re standing at the elevators now, waiting. “I went out with a woman for four years,” he says, “and we ended it over that very issue.” He looks at me, waiting for a clue that I want to hear the rest. I nod. “She wanted kids, and I wasn’t ready.”

“Maybe she just wasn’t the right person,” I say.

“Probably not.”

The Butterfly Wing is the most crowded spot in the building. A small collection of people huddles around, waiting to enter the room full of live exotic butterflies. This may be an actual line. David and I take our place at the back of the group. To get in, you have to walk through one door, let it close behind you, then wait in a short hallway for a green light and a buzzer to allow you to go through the next door. This is so no butterflies escape. It makes me feel like I’m in butterfly prison.

The room itself is a sauna, a good twenty degrees warmer than the rest of the building, and so humid I begin sweating immediately. Steam pours in through the vents. I peel off my sweater and tie it around my waist.

One night last fall, Kevin and I attended a party at the home of our friends Rob and Karina. We spent most of the evening talking to Monica, a friend of theirs, an American who’d just returned home after a decade in Paris and was now a high school French teacher. Monica was funny and adorable, delicate and perfectly coiffed, of course, and she exuded a fish-out-of-water quality that made Kevin and me both want to take care of her. Monica and I sat on the couch, plates of hors d’oeuvres perched on our knees, and Kevin pulled a wooden kitchen chair in front of us. The three of us talked for hours, ignoring party etiquette, forgoing polite mingling in favor of this real connection we were making. Kevin’s head swiveled back and forth between Monica and me. We got along so well, the three of us, I was certain a friendship match had been made. I imagined us meeting for Saturday morning coffees, strolling along the lakefront, going to obscure independent movies together and having stimulating arguments after. At midnight, as Kevin and I were walking the four blocks back to our apartment, he tipsily slung his arm around me and said, “If I’d met her before I met you, I’d have wanted to date her.” He was effusive and clueless, and he leaned into me, probably waiting for me to agree, to confirm my own affection for, even attraction to, Monica. We had both fallen a little bit in love with her.

That, of course, was not the point. I didn’t talk to Kevin for the rest of the night and half of the next day. And the one time Monica called, a few days later, to ask us out for a drink, I told her we had other plans and that we’d call her again soon. We haven’t seen her since.

Only, now, this is exactly what I understand about David, this simple fact. He fits into a closed room inside of me. The Butterfly Wing of my heart. After much ineptitude on my part, it’s finally clear that nothing will happen between us, and that I’m obliged to slog through with Kevin. But if I’d met him before I met Kevin…

David is standing in the corner, intently reading about various species of butterflies, and I perch myself on a cement rock nearby, looking around at the flying creatures. In such profusion, these butterflies are strangely frightening. They don’t just flutter around whimsically, they zip and zoom, like the flying insects they are; occasionally they seem to be aiming for my face.

This corner of the room is secluded, sheltered by hanging tropical plants and trees. Four young boys in brown Cub Scout uniforms, accompanied by two women who don’t look old enough to be den mothers but must be, pass by. David comes over and sits down next to me; the fake rock is realistically slopey and uneven, so, as he sits on an incline, we’re the same height. He points to an electric blue butterfly with black polka dots. “I think that’s an Indian something-or-other,” he says.

“Really? An Indian something-or-other. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that kind.”

“Well, I can tell you for sure those are monarchs,” he says, pointing with his chin to a cluster of five of the only obvious kinds of butterflies here. I turn to him, roll my eyes. A drab brownish butterfly zooms past us. It looks like a moth interloper in this exotic world. It pauses midflight, then dive-bombs toward a mass of foliage. A large placard a foot away tells us that if we sit very still, butterflies may alight on us.

“I’m sitting here,” I say, “and I’m hoping nothing lands on me.”

“They’re kind of like colorful bats,” he agrees.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, watching them. I shoo one away from my nose with a shudder. Is this place benign or dangerous? David stares at a yellow butterfly poised motionless on a branch beside us, then turns to me, just looks at me and smiles. There’s a trace of sweat on his upper lip.

Propelled by a combination of longing and recklessness, I lean toward him. Beautiful insects fly close to our faces. My eyes are open. I kiss him. After a second, he closes his eyes and kisses me back.

Here is how Kevin asked me to marry him: I had been editing a manuscript all day and was taking a break. I was sitting in the rocking chair, biting my cuticles, rocking back and forth, flicking through the TV channels, edgy. Kevin walked in from the kitchen, nibbling on a bagel.

I looked up and glared at him. “Could you please use a napkin for that?” I snipped. “I’m the one who ends up cleaning the crumbs off the floor. You don’t even notice.”

“You’re in a good mood,” he said, cupping his hand under the bagel.

“I hate my job. I hate editing. I hate testicles and semen and premature ejaculation and prostates! And the apartment’s a mess! I had to throw out a ton of rotten vegetables this morning. They were expensive! Why don’t we ever eat vegetables? Why don’t you ever vacuum? I hate everything.” It was a beautiful warm spring Saturday, and Meg had invited me to go to the park with her, to lie on a blanket and read trashy novels and eat potato chips. I had had to decline, in order to edit a lengthy, stultifying, practically unintelligible manuscript on erectile dysfunction in aging rabbits.

“You’re a barrel of laughs,” he said sulkily. “I do vacuum. And I cleaned the bathroom last week.” He plopped down on the couch. I was about to say something even snottier about using a goddamn napkin, when he looked at me.