He walks over toward the kitchen, tosses his wallet and wilted dollars
on the coffee table, crumples a piece of notepaper and tosses it in the
trash with a series of credit-card receipts.
"That's a shitty thing to say, Nick."
"It's a shitty way to feel, Amy."
He walks to our bar – in the careful, swamp-wading gait of a drunk – and actually pours himself another drink.
"You"re going to make yourself sick," I say.
He raises his glass in an up-yours cheers to me. "You just don'd get it,
Amy. You just can'd. I"ve worked since I was fourteen years old. I
didn'd get to go to fucking tennis camp and creative-writing camp and
SAT prep and all that shit that apparently everyone else in New York
City did, because I was wiping down tables at the mall and I was mowing
lawns and I was driving to Hannibal and fucking dressing like Huck Finn
for the tourists and I was cleaning the funnel-cake skillets at
midnight."
I feel an urge to laugh, actually to guffaw. A big belly laugh that
would sweep up Nick, and soon we'd both be laughing and this would be
over. This litany of crummy jobs. Being married to Nick always reminds
me: People have to do awful things for money. Ever since I"ve been
married to Nick, I always wave to people dressed as food.
"I"ve had to work so much harder than anyone else at the magazine to
even get to the magazine. Twenty years, basically, I"ve been working to
get where I am, and now it's all going to be gone, and there's not a
fucking thing I know how to do instead, unless I want to go back home,
be a river rat again."
"You"re probably too old to play Huck Finn," I say.
"Fuck you, Amy."
And then he goes to the bedroom. He's never said that to me before, but
it came out of his mouth so smoothly that I assume – and this never
crossed my mind – I assume he's thought it. Many times. I never thought
I'd be the kind of woman who'd be told to fuck herself by her husband.
And we"ve sworn never to go to bed angry. Compromise, communicate, and
never go to bed angry – the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted
to all newlyweds. But lately it seems I am the only one who compromises;
our communications don'd solve anything; and Nick is very good at going
to bed angry. He can turn off his emotions like a spout. He is already
snoring.
And then I can'd help myself, even though it's none of my business, even
though Nick would be furious if he knew: I cross over to the trash can
and pull out the receipts, so I can picture where he's been all night.
Two bars, two strip clubs. And I can see him in each one, talking about
me with his friends, because he must have already talked about me for
all that petty, smeared meanness to come out so easily. I picture them
at one of the pricier strip clubs, the posh ones that make men believe
they are still designed to rule, that women are meant to serve them, the
deliberately bad acoustics and thwumping music so no one has to talk, a
stretch-titted woman straddling my husband (who swears it's all in
fun), her hair trailing down her back, her lips wet with gloss, but I'm
not supposed to be threatened, no it's just boyish hijinks, I am
supposed to laugh about it, I am supposed to be a good sport.
Then I unroll the crumpled piece of notebook paper and see a girl's
handwriting – Hannah – and a phone number. I wish it were like the
movies, the name something silly, CanDee or Bambie, something you could
roll your eyes at. Misti with two hearts over the I's. But it's Hannah,
which is a real woman, presumably like me. Nick has never cheated on me,
he has sworn it, but I also know he has ample opportunity. I could ask
him about Hannah, and he'd say, I have no idea why she gave me her
number, but I didn'd want to be rude, so I took it. Which may be true.
Or not. He could cheat on me and he would never tell me, and he would
think less and less of me for not figuring it out. He would see me
across the breakfast table, innocently slurping cereal, and know that I
am a fool, and how can anyone respect a fool?
Now I am crying again, with Hannah in my hand.
It's a very female thing, isn'd it, to take one boys" night and snowball
it into a marital infidelity that will destroy our marriage?
I don'd know what I am supposed to do. I'm feeling like a shrill
fishwife, or a foolish doormat – I don'd know which. I don'd want to be
angry, I can'd even figure out if I should be angry. I consider checking
in to a hotel, let him wonder about me for a change.
I stay where I am for a few minutes, and then I take a breath and wade
into our booze-humid bedroom, and when I get in bed, he turns to me and
wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my neck, and at the same
time we both say, "I'm sorry."
