Wife 22 (4 page)

This is easy.
Too
easy. Who knew that confession could bring on such a dopamine rush?

Suddenly the front door is flung open and Peter yells, “I call the bathroom first.”

He has a thing about not using the bathroom at school, so he holds it all day. I close my laptop. This is
also
my favorite time of the day—when the empty house fills back up again and within an hour all of my de-cluttering is for naught. For some reason this gives me pleasure. The satisfying inevitability of it all.

Zoe walks into the kitchen and makes a face. “Tuna casserole?”

“It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

“I already ate.”

“At volleyball practice?”

“Karen’s mother stopped on the way home and got us burritos.”

“So Peter’s eaten, too?”

Zoe nods and opens the fridge.

I sigh. “What are you looking for? I thought you just ate.”

“I don’t know. Nothing,” she says, closing the door.

“Dang! What did you do to your hair?” asks Peter, walking into the kitchen.

“Oh, God, I forgot. One of my kids was playing hairdresser. I thought it was kind of Audrey Hepburnesque. No?”

“No,” says Zoe.

“No,” echoes Peter.

I slide the elastic out of my hair and try and smooth it out.

“Maybe if you combed it once in a while,” says Zoe.

“Why is everybody so comb crazy? For your information, there are certain types of hair that should never be combed. You should just let it dry naturally.”

“Uh-huh,” says Zoe, grabbing her backpack. “I’ve got a ton of homework. See you in 2021.”

“Half an hour of Modern Warfare before homework?” asks Peter.

“Ten minutes,” I say.

“Twenty.”

“Fifteen.”

Peter throws his arms around me. Even though he’s twelve, I still occasionally
get hugs. A few minutes later, the sounds of guns and bombs issue forth from the living room.

My phone chirps. It’s a text from William.

Sorry.

Client dinner.

See u 10ish.

I open my laptop, quickly reread my answers, and hit Send.

“A
lice!” William yells from the kitchen. “Alice!” I hear his footsteps coming down the hall.

I quickly close the Netherfield Center questionnaire window and log on to a celebrity gossip website.

“Here you are,” he says.

He’s dressed for work: khakis and a pale purple dress shirt. I bought him that shirt, knowing how good he’d look in that color with his dark hair and eyes. When I brought it home he’d protested, of course.

“Men don’t wear lavender,” he told me.

“Yes, but men wear
thistle
,” I said.

Sometimes all you need to do to get men to agree with you is call things by another name.

“Nice shirt,” I say.

His eyes dart over to my laptop. “Gwen Stefani and the Sisterhood of the Terrible Pants?”

“What do you need?” I ask.

“Oh, those
are
terrible. She looks like Oliver Twist. Yes, I need something but I forgot what.”

This is a typical response—one I’m used to. Both of us frequently wander into a room bewildered and ask the other if he or she has any idea what we’re doing there.

“What’s up with you?” he asks.

My eyes fall on the bill for the motorcycle insurance. “Well. I wish you’d make a decision about the motorcycle. It’s been sitting in the driveway forever. You never take it out.”

The motorcycle takes up precious space in our small driveway. More than once I’ve accidentally tapped it while pulling in.

“One of these days I’ll start driving it again.”

“You’ve been saying that for years. And every year we keep on paying the excise tax and the insurance.”

“Yes, but I mean it now. Soon,” he says.

“Soon what?”

“Soon I’ll be driving it,” he repeats. “More than I have been.”

“Mm-hmm,” I say, distracted, going back to my computer.

“Wait. That’s all you want to talk about? The motorcycle?”

“William, you came looking for me, remember?”

And no, the motorcycle is not all I want to talk about. I want to have a conversation with my husband that goes deeper than insurance policies and taxes and what time will you be home and did you call the guy about the gutters, but we seem to be stuck here floating around on the surface of our lives like kids in a pool propped up on those Styrofoam noodles.

“And there’s plenty of things we can talk about,” I say.

“Like what?”

Now is my chance to tell him about the marriage study—oh, you wouldn’t believe the ridiculous thing I signed up for and they ask the craziest questions but it’s for the good of science because you know there is a science to marriage, you may not believe it but it’s true—but I don’t. Instead I say, “Like how I’m trying, completely unsuccessfully mind you, to convince the third-grade parents that the geese are the most important roles in the school play, even though the geese don’t have any lines. Or we could talk about our son, Peter, I mean, Pedro, being gay. Or I could ask you about KKM. Still working on semiconductors?”

“Band-Aids.”

“Poor baby. Are you stuck on Band-Aids?” I sing that line. I can’t help myself.

“We don’t know if Peter is gay,” says William, sighing. We’ve had this conversation many times before.

“He may be.”

“He’s
twelve
.”

“Twelve is not too early to know. I just have a feeling. A sense. A mother knows these sorts of things. I read this article about all these tweens coming out in middle school. It’s happening earlier and earlier. I bookmarked it. I’ll email it to you.”

“No, thank you.”

“William, we should educate ourselves. Prepare.”

“For what?”

“For the fact that our son might be gay.”

“I don’t get it, Alice. Why are you so invested in Peter’s sexuality? Are you saying you
want
him to be gay?”

“I want him to know we support him no matter what his sexual orientation. No matter who he is.”

“Right. Okay. Well, I have a theory. You think if Peter’s gay you’ll never lose him. There’ll be no competition. You’ll always be the most important woman in his life.”

“That’s absurd.”

William shakes his head. “It would be a harder life for him.”

“You sound like a homophobe.”

“I’m not a homophobe, I’m a realist.”

“Look at Nedra and Kate. They’re one of the happiest couples we know. No one discriminates against them and you love Nedra and Kate.”

“Love has nothing to do with not wanting your children to be discriminated against unnecessarily. And Nedra and Kate wouldn’t be happy if they didn’t live in the Bay Area. The Bay Area is not the real world.”

“And being gay is not a choice. Hey, he could be bisexual. I never thought of that. What if he’s bisexual?”

“Great idea. Let’s shoot for that,” says William, leaving my office.

I log on to Facebook once he’s gone and check my news feed, scrolling through the status update chaff.

Wait,
what?
William has a new post and he’s not quoting Winston Churchill or the Dalai Lama? Poor William is one of those Facebook posters who has a hard time thinking of anything original to say. Facebook gives him stage fright. But this post has an undeniably ominous ring to it. Is
that
what he came to talk to me about? I have to go ask him what he meant, but first I’ll send out a quick post of my own.

Suddenly my Facebook chat pops up.

It’s my father.