“Yeah. Why? Should we do it . . . less?” she asked. “Maybe save it up for the best few days of my cycle? Could that be the problem?”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. “You have sex four times a week? As in, every other day?”
“Well. . . yeah,” she said, suddenly reverting to her old self-conscious self, the girl I worked so hard to bring out of her shell when she married my brother, with the hope that we would someday feel like sisters, something neither of us had growing up. “Why?” she asked. “How . . . often do you and Nick?”
I felt myself hesitate, then nearly told her the truth—that we have sex three or four times a month, if that. But a basic sense of pride, and maybe a little competition, kicked in.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe once or twice a week,” I said, feeling wholly inadequate—like the kind of old married women I used to read about in magazines and couldn’t imagine ever becoming.
Rachel nodded and went on to bemoan her declining fertility and whether I thought Dex would be disappointed never to have a son, almost as if she knew I was lying and wanted to make me feel better by pointing out her own worries. Later, I raised the issue with April, who quelled my fears, likely along with her own.
“Four times a week?” she nearly shouted, as if I had just told her they masturbate in church. Or swing with their upstairs neighbors. “She’s lying.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“She totally is. Everyone lies about married sex. I once read that it is the most skewed statistic because nobody tells the truth—even in a confidential survey . . .”
“I don’t think she’s lying,” I say again, feeling relieved to know I wasn’t alone, and even more so later when Cate, who loves sex more than most pubescent boys, weighed in on the subject.
“Rachel is such a pleaser. And a martyr,” she said, giving examples of such behavior from our girls’ trips before we had children—how she always took the smallest room for herself, and defers to everyone else when it comes to dinner decisions. “I can totally see her stepping up to the plate even if she’s not in the mood. Then again . . . your brother ? pretty hot.”
“C’mon. Stop,” I say, my automatic response when my friends start going on about how hot my brother is. I’ve heard it my whole life, or at least since high school when his groupies emerged. I even had to jettison a few friends in those days on the suspicion that they were blatantly using me to get to him.
I went on to tell her my theory that looks actually have little to do with attraction to your spouse. That I think Nick is beautiful, but on most nights, it’s not enough to get past my clichéd exhaustion. Couples might fall in love based on looks and attraction, but those things matter less in the long run.
In any event, I am mulling all of this over when Nick finally rounds the corner into the family room, greeting everyone and apologizing for being late.
“No problem,” my mother is the first to say—as if it’s her role to absolve my husband.
Nick gives her an indulgent smile, then leans in to peck her cheek. “Barbie, dear. We’ve missed you,” he says with a trace of sarcasm only I can detect.
“We’ve missed you, too,” my mother says, giving her watch an exaggerated, brow-raised glance.
Nick ignores her jab, leaning over to plant a real, full-on kiss on my lips. I kiss him back, lingering for a millisecond longer than I normally would as I wonder what I’m trying to prove—and to whom.
When we separate, my brother stands to give Nick a man hug as I think what I always think when my husband and brother are standing side by side—that they could pass for brothers, although Dex is leaner with a green-eyed preppy look and Nick is more muscular with dark-eyed, Italian flair.
“Good to see you, man,” Nick says, smiling.
Dex grins back at him. “You, too. How’re things going? How’s work?”
“Work’s good . . . fine,” Nick says—which typically is about the extent of their professional conversations, as Dex’s understanding of medicine is as cursory as Nick’s grasp of financial markets.
“Tessa told me about your latest patient,” Rachel says. “The little boy roasting marshmallows?”
“Yeah,” Nick says, nodding, his smile receding.
“How’s he doing?” she asks.
“All right,” he says, nodding. “He’s a tough little kid.”
“Is he the one with the single mother?” Rachel asks.
Nick shoots me an irritated look which I take to mean either, Why are you discussing my patients? or Why are you getting sucked into this petty gossip? Or likely both.
“What?” I say to him, annoyed, thinking of the harmless conversation I had with Rachel right after the accident. Then I turn to Rachel and say, “Yes. That’s the one.”