There are eight of us here tonight, which is uncommon. Typically it’s four or five but we’re reading The Kite Runner this month and everyone wants to weigh in. Last month someone recommended A Hundred Years of Solitude, but no one got past the first fifty pages so we canceled. Actually that’s not true. Kerry Kendricks read it and fought the cancellation, but she’s a show-off and no one wanted to sit there and listen to her lecturing us about South American literature.
We’re in Sally Flanders’s living room. I hate being in Sally Flanders’s living room. It’s like walking into Pier One through a curtain of the smell of potpourri and scented candles. I’m pretty sure I see a Glade plug-in across Sally’s living room, next to a grandfather clock that’s got an irregular tick. Sally favors floral design and needlepoint animal pillows. She tells us where to sit—that’s weird enough as it is—based on what pillows are there. She calls them her “cute critters.” Tonight I’ve got “Lucky Lassie” wedged between my lower back and the spires on the back of this, the most uncomfortable chair in the world. Lynn is rolling her eyes at something Leanne’s saying about the snickerdoodles she brought—she always wants a medal for her cooking, saying stuff like, Oh, it’s so easy, and then rattles on about how much trouble she went to for all of us. Special ingredients blah blah blah. Her cooking’s not even very good and Lynn usually finds a way to point that out. Tonight she eats one tiny bite of the cookie and leaves the rest on her empty plate, which she puts on the coffee table where Leanne’s sure to see it. I don’t know why Lynn lets Leanne get to her.
“I just read this article in MORE magazine or something—maybe it was O—that said forty-year-old women are just getting started,” I say. “It said something like we’re secure with our bodies and vocal about our needs. I can’t remember the exact wording but that was the gist.”
The laughter interrupts me.
“What?” I look around at them. “I’m being totally serious. Don’t you worry about this?”
“No, she’s right,” Lynn says. “There was something on the Today show about it yesterday. They showed one couple who had sex on their honeymoon and that was it. Guess how long they’ve been married? Just guess. You won’t, so I’ll tell you. Twelve years. Twelve years and no sex. I don’t know how she pulled it off, but I’ll have what she’s having.”
More laughs.
“What’s all the fuss about anyway?” asks Ginny. “We still have sex.”
“You’re in your thirties!” Lynn says. “Of course you’re still having sex. Wait’ll you turn forty.”
Paula, who complains anytime the conversation becomes social, mutters “off topic” in a tsking tone, hoping it will steer us back to book talk, but it rarely does. She usually sits there with her arms crossed and her lips tight. Tonight, though, she weighs in: “I’m so tired all the time.”
Everyone stops and looks at her. It’s an unspoken assumption that Paula’s asexual. She’s got a Dorothy Hamill haircut and what a doctor would definitely term morbid obesity. I’ve never seen her with anyone but her three-legged English bulldog, Freddy. I think Paula is about fifty pounds away from being housebound. She’s all business but I kind of like her for that. In the blackout a few summers ago she organized a candle drive so the elderly neighbors would be okay. She puts together a neighborhood newsletter on her computer. Birth announcements, who’s moving in or out. Want ads you can e-mail to her. A ten-speed for sale. Babysitters needed. Does anyone know a good plumber? That sort of thing. She’s the kind of person neighborhoods don’t realize they need. She’s the one who goes to the monthly Neighborhood Watch meetings and writes up safety information we already have. Lock your doors. Keep your front light on all night to discourage burglars. I respect Paula. In an emergency I like knowing she’s at arm’s length in her house with gray vinyl siding she hoses off every spring.
“I don’t know what you’re worried about.” Ginny looks at me and rolls her eyes. “You’re always so together, you know? Like you’ve got it all figured out. Plus, you and Bob are like the golden couple. I bet you have sex, like, every other day.”
I open my mouth to say, “Are you crazy? You can’t be serious!” but Lynn interrupts.
“As far as Michael knows, I have my period every day of the month,” she says. The laughter bounces off the cuddly critters or whatever they are, mixing with advice for what to say to get off the sex hook and then a juicy story about a sex-addict husband of someone we all know very well, according to Kerry Kendricks, who, when Lynn asked her if she still has sex, says:
“Who has the time?” Kerry Kendricks is on every committee at school and not once have I heard her called by just her first name.
Ginny: “Let me ask you something.” She looks at me. “Do you all think it’s the women or the men? Do women want sex and the men don’t or is it the other way around?”
Everyone’s talking at once so it doesn’t matter that I don’t answer. I don’t tell them that neither of us wants sex. Only Lynn knows I haven’t stopped trying with Bob because I think it could still save us from being total strangers to one another. I haven’t stopped trying for sex even though I don’t want it any more than Bob does.
The next morning after the kids are off to school Lynn pulls up a kitchen chair and shakes a packet of Sweet’n Low into the tea I put in front of her.
“Before I forget, will you sponsor me for the breast cancer run?” I slide the form to her. “I know, I know. I swear this is the last time I’ll hit you up this year.”
“Breast cancer, Go Green, Save the Whales …” She sighs, fitting her name into the allotted space. “Sheesh, is there anything you don’t raise money for? Here you go.”
“Thanks, and for the record it was a Greenpeace fund-raiser not Save the Whales and it was about ten years ago.” I laugh. “Thanks for this. I really do appreciate it.”
“You should’ve taken it to book club last night,” she says. “I would’ve loved to have seen how much Paula gave, since she loves breasts more than anyone, I bet.”
“I don’t think she’s a lesbian,” I say. “You heard her.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Lynn says.
“So how about what Ginny said?” I settle across the table from her and just to make it seem like I’m bringing it up casually, I brush nonexistent crumbs off the table.
“What, you mean how they still have tons of sex?”
“Yeah, that,” then I pretend to remember something else Ginny said, “Oh, and then there was that comment about me … what was it?”
Lynn narrows her eyes at me. “You actually think I’m buying your little show? You really want to talk about Ginny’s sex life?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I barely finish the sentence without laughing. “Okay, okay. You’re right, you’re right.”
This is the best part about Lynn. She’s pretty much always right. The worst part about Lynn is that she knows it.
“You know why everyone thinks you’re so together? Because you act like you’re so together,” Lynn says. She’s blowing on her tea, waiting for it to cool.
“Everyone really thinks I’m so together?”
“Yup.”
“I’m not so together.”
“I know that and you know that but I’m telling you, people think you’re so together.”
“Wow.”
“Yup—” she takes a sip “—little do they know. Shoot! There’s the recycling truck and I forgot to put the bins out. Got to go.”
“Don’t forget dinner tomorrow!” I call out to her. At a school fund-raiser/silent auction last spring, I bid on dinner for two at a new sushi place downtown thinking it’d be a good date-night thing to do with Bob. SushiMax is the hardest reservation to get according to Chicago Magazine. I forgot all about it until they called to reconfirm, and of course Bob found some excuse to get out of it until I came out and asked if it was just that he didn’t want to go and he shrugged and said, “You know how I feel about sushi,” so I asked Lynn
and told Bob he had kid duty.
I have been acting. Of course. I haven’t thought of it as acting but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. But doesn’t everyone put on a good face? Is anybody my age really happy? I’ve stretched my mouth into a smile for so long it’s become natural. And sometimes it is natural … with the kids, especially when they were smaller. With Lynn. I know there are other times, too, I just can’t think of them off the top of my head. Oh. After yoga, when I make it to Imogen’s class. That’s another genuine smile. On the rare nights just Bob and I have dinner, it’s so silent I restrain myself from upending the kitchen table just to jolt us out of this stupor.
Bob once said, “The only constant in our marriage is the edge of the cliff we’re hanging on to, killing time until we tire ourselves out and give in to our inevitable collapse.”
It was fairly early in our marriage. We were reading in bed. We’d been married probably three years by then. I think it was during the fertility nightmare, but that’s a whole other story. I remember it was summer and all the windows were open because the air conditioner didn’t work. When we’d moved in, Bob had said, priority number one was central air, but the months ticked by and two, three years later there we were with a broken window unit and air so humid I was sweating just lying there.
“Listen to this,” he said. I put my book down to wipe my palms on the white sheet while he read a sentence aloud.
“‘The only constant in our marriage …’” He recited more while I was staring up at the ceiling thinking a ceiling fan might not be such a bad idea after all.
“Are you listening?” he asked. Then he read it again and that time I heard it.
I turned on to my side and flattened the pillow so I could see him, his expression. I remember wondering if he was simply impressed with the writing—sometimes he read passages aloud to anyone within earshot just to marvel at the sentence structure. Or was it something else? He’d put the book down and was staring into the room so I only had his profile. Then, almost to himself, he said:
“So I guess things could be worse.”
I waited for a laugh but there had been no sarcasm in his tone. It was as if he was comforted knowing at least we were doing better than the couple hanging on to the cliff, if only a little bit better. That’s the way he said it. Like he hadn’t realized anything could be worse than what we were living through.
I couldn’t think of what to say. I remember struggling to find words but none came. After a few minutes of dead silence, both of us lying there, our books splayed facedown across our chests, he said, “We should get a ceiling fan.” He paused to consider the idea. “I don’t think they’re that expensive. It wouldn’t be so hard to install. Probably only take me a day. Victor could come over and help me with the electric. What do you think?”
I’d shut my eyes and when he glanced over for my opinion I pretended I’d fallen asleep. I faked a few random muscle twitches. I heard him sigh then felt him shift to reach the lamp. His book fell on the floor, more shifting, and I thought maybe he’d gently lift my book off my chest, but soon there was snoring. I realized I’d been tensing every muscle to stay still until I had the night to myself to think about what Bob had just said. It was a bombshell, no doubt about it.
Around the time my eyes adjusted to the dark—I remember this part because I was staring at the ticky-tacky drapes I’d never gotten around to replacing, when it hit me. It wasn’t a bombshell. Things could be worse but not by much. I just hadn’t wanted to see it.
But here’s the rub: once he said it out loud, after that night, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I still can’t.
Cammy
This is so stupid. I’ll read this back later and it’ll be totally gay and I’ll just end up throwing it out but whatever. I’m supposed to be writing an essay on who I think is the most helpful to the environment in today’s world but fuck that. I have no idea who’s good for the environment and I don’t care anyway. Nothing’s ever going to stop the planet from going to shit so what’s a stupid essay supposed to do but show the waste of time put into writing it. Oh, and by the way, it wastes paper on top of it so isn’t that just perfect. Write about the environment and kill a tree in the process.
Will came by the other night at like two in the morning. He climbed up the tree that’s right up along the house—the tree Dad says is wrecking the foundation. I told him my mom would shit bricks if she caught him in my room but he said “she should just chillax. It’s not like we’re doing anything.” I wanted to say “oh, so putting your dick in my mouth isn’t doing anything? Then get the hell out.” But I didn’t say it and he left as soon as I finished.
This whole thing with Will makes me feel small like I want to crawl into a cave. Or onto my mom’s lap. Like I want to be a little kid again and this time do it right. I look at faces in every crowd like I’m gonna see myself staring back at me but that’s so ridiculous. Like I’m really going to see a mirror image of myself. This whole thing is ridiculous but I can’t stop looking at faces in crowds. At the mall. In line for a movie. It’s just weird knowing my real mother is out there somewhere, maybe looking for me too. I bet she’s beautiful. Graceful. Elegant. I wonder if she regrets having me. I wonder if she regrets giving me up. I picture her out there searching for me, trying to find me. Like she knows she made a terrible mistake. Pinning up Have You Seen This Girl posters on telephone poles. It was probably an impulse. Maybe it was me crying too hard. She couldn’t handle the pressure. She had postpartum depression I bet and she didn’t know where to turn so she gave me up to have some peace and quiet. I bet she changed her mind the next day but it was too late. Samantha and Bob Friedman took me away and didn’t tell her where. And she’s lived with a hole in her heart ever since. In my mind I find her and she pats her lap and even though I’m much too big for it, I crawl onto her. I want to start over with her. From the very beginning.
My parents are freaking out about me. They think I can’t hear them through the walls but in this house you can hear everything from everywhere so it’s like they think I’m deaf or something. Maybe that’s part of it like maybe they know my birth mom was hard of hearing and so I probably am too but they don’t want to tell me. Who cares. Last night I heard them through my iPod. They’re all Cammy this and Cammy that like they aren’t screwed up enough they’ve got to use me to keep from going insane in their boring lives.
I’m never getting married. Maybe I’ll be gay. In front of his friends Will calls me a dyke and I know it’s because I don’t have boobs yet, not like the sparkly cheerleader types that suck off the football players but I wouldn’t want boobs if that put me in their category. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be that pretty. Those girls can pick and choose and not have to worry about grades or being ignored. They’re never ignored. The guys all treat them like they’re made of glass, they’re all gentle and nice to them like they’re Princess Diana. Or no, idiot, she’s dead. So not Princess Diana but someone alive who’s like that, looked up to. Like Missy Delaney.
Missy Delaney’s the first one who said I don’t match my family. That’s what she said in her squeaky ferret voice: you don’t match your family. Like I’m a purse and they’re the shoes. It was like eight years ago I think and because she was around other people she made it sound like it was a compliment like I’m prettier than my family or something but she and I both knew it wasn’t meant to be nice. I think she was the first person who didn’t like me. And I really don’t know why she picked me not to like.
Now I get it. I mean, if we met today I wouldn’t blame her. It’s like we’re from different planets. Different galaxies. When I dyed my hair black she told everyone I was a dyke in training and then when I got my nose pierced she said I passed my graduation and was now a card-carrying lesbian. Not the lipstick kind, either, she squeaked to all her little worshippers. I can’t wait to forget her after graduation.
I’m totally used to the fake cough–blow job–fake cough thing they all do w
hen I walk into a classroom. I’m used to everyone laughing. I’m even used to the knob of tongue pushing back and forth from the inside of Max’s cheek every time I walk by him to my desk. I mean, it used to bug me but whatever. They used to call me Marilyn Manson but then Monica said at least Marilyn Manson gets laid and they shut up after that. I hate my life.
Monica’s the only one who gets it. She moved here in time for the start of freshman year but since no one knew her from elementary school she had like zero friends. The thing about Monica is she doesn’t care if anyone likes her. If she does she hides it pretty well. Even then, two years ago when we were fourteen, she was talking about stuff like self-expression and artistic integrity. She’d sleep over and we’d stay up late talking about the stuff I think about all the time. Like how what we look like on the outside never matches what’s inside. She goes well, at least I’m not a hypocrite. I wear all black because that’s who I am inside: dark. I don’t buy into all this shiny happy shit. We went shopping one weekend back then and I spent all my allowance on new clothes kind of like hers even though I wasn’t copying her. I was just ready for a change. She still thinks I copy her but I so don’t. Her parents aren’t around much … I’ve never seen them … so I think she likes having someone to talk to about everything. Like at school and stuff.
It’s like my parents don’t care what I think. It’s more like they care who I come from, which figures since that’s kind of what I care about, too. I know I don’t belong to Samantha and Bob anymore. It’s so hilarious how me calling them by their first names makes them all mad. Like “oooh, Cammy’s acting up again” when it’s just their own first names. Everybody else not related to them calls them by their first names so why not me. I didn’t mean for the boys to start doing it so I can’t really do it to their faces anymore. It’s not the boys’ fault I don’t belong. They don’t care what color my hair is or what’s pierced or how much makeup I wear, they treat me normal. Like I’m their sister. I don’t want them to find out about me for a while. They’re too young for it now and whatever, like they’d really care anyway? The only people who notice the difference are Robert—Bob. Dad. Whatever.—And me. Oh, and Missy Delaney.