11 | WORKING AT THE CAR WASH
December 8, 2005
JULIA ROLLS ON HER SIDE WITH HER BACK TO ME, though I know her eyes are open and staring. Before ten minutes ago, we hadn’t had sex in more than a week. This is our canary in a coal mine. It is the first thing to die when there is something poisonous in the air.
I was home when Julia returned from tennis, and I maintain that no one has yet created the outfit for strippers that is as sexy as the tiny white pleated tennis skirt. It was enough to bring us together, like a beacon through lethal clouds. But the sex was flat. It wasn’t savored or varied the way that in a good meal the food is interrupted by wine to make the taste, the pace, and the experience even better. This was medicinal and businesslike. We now lie in the uncomfortable effect of a failed physical connection and the unspoken acknowledgment that comes with it.
“I’m sorry I’ve been working so much lately.” I feel I need to say something. I like happy silences but not uncomfortable ones. I’m a child that way.
“What are you talking about? This is the same way you’ve worked for six years.” Her eyes are still straight ahead away from me.
“Well, there’ve just been some late nights.” Before she can respond that this is also the same way it has been for six years, I add, “And I’ve missed you.”
She still doesn’t flinch but I know that this time it is because her mind is working to process my comment.
“You look beautiful, Julia. You’re even more beautiful today than the day we met.”
This prompts her to roll over and face me, and I’m startled to see that her look is angry. Not a hurt form of angry but an indignant look that says, How dare you? “You wouldn’t have it any other way. Nick, you have a phobia of fat people. It’s very hard to live with.”
I can see this feels good for her to say. But like a slow leak of a great volume of pressure, a tiny leak cannot give real relief. Relief would have to come in another form. “And if you miss me so much, try coming home. Sober. You can send some other drinking buddy to your boondoggles.”
The anger rises and the indifference wanes. Her eyebrows knit down farther under the weight of the creases in her brow, and her upper lip rises on one side in the beginnings of a snarl. More anger has lurked in her than I realized.
“It’s like you’re caught up in the bad crowd of an eighth-grade class. Some of the people you run around with at least actually are almost adolescent. You’re thirty-five, Nick. Thirty-five!” She’s screaming now. This feels out of nowhere and I wonder what cue I’ve missed. She takes a breath and hesitates. “You were a better man when we met than you are today. How do you like that? You think I’ve gotten more beautiful? I think you’ve gotten more ridiculous.”
The anger reaches its peak and is focused right on me like I’m looking up the barrel of a gun. Just as quickly it vanishes and she seems to recognize the transformation of her own features and is ashamed of them and sweeps them away. Julia gets up and walks to the bathroom. I hear the sink run and water splashing. In a moment she walks back into our bedroom, her bathrobe pulled tightly around her. She sits sidesaddle on the edge of the bed to face me. Her expression is wiped clean of emotion.
“I’m so unhappy, Nick.” Her tone is flat, as though she is just stating the obvious facts or reading the instructions of a baking recipe. Two eggs, one cup of flour, and I’m very unhappy. “I have been unhappy. For a long time now.”
“I know.” Those two words are my first real acknowledgment of our condition. An acceptance of responsibility on my part that I need to address. For a moment it feels like it could be the beginning of a way back, of a plan for us. But my words are left hanging in the air like a coin flicked over a well. Julia looks at me, waiting for more. Hoping for more. When nothing comes, my words fall empty. They sound hopeless and resigned. I know I’m closed off, but I can’t cure it yet.
“Nick, the way things have become, I feel more like a stranger to you every day. Like we’re locking ourselves deeper in separate prisons and I resent you for it. It makes me want to be cruel to you. And I resent that even more.”
Her eyes fill with tears but don’t actually form one. All I can think to say is I’m sorry, and I don’t want to say it because it feels like an insult to her.
“Nick, I love you. I have always loved you. From the very first moment I saw you.” She smiles remembering, and I remember too. We were at a birthday party in New York of someone neither of us knew directly. Along with every other man and woman at the party, I noticed her the moment she walked in. She had on a black tank top and perfectly fitting jeans and her hair was long and straight and simple. The first time our eyes met, they locked. First curious and unafraid, then laughing and interested, the head making slight movements and the mouth stretching to a smile, but always the eyes holding the gaze while we came together. By the time we touched and spoke, we already knew.
I wonder how it even happened then. Love at first sight seems like a romantic, silly notion and I know it to be true only because I lived it. Now if a friend had just told me it happened, I would believe he was being dishonest with me, or maybe just not honest with himself. Because I no longer feel any capacity for it.
“I love you too.” I hear my own words as sounding weak and merely reciprocating. Julia doesn’t seem to mind. She needs to tell me something.
“You’re smart and funny and beautiful. You’re your own man. That’s what I noticed about you first and what I love and respect the most.” She pauses and looks more intently at me, the way a person would look through a small porthole, as though her look could physically take hold of me, and I do sit up in bed. “I love the way you handle my father. He’s a pompous big shot who’s intimidated everyone I’ve ever known, including me. But he knows he can’t intimidate you because you don’t need anything back from him and it makes him uncomfortable around you.”
“He is an ass.” I’m not joking or serious. I’m just glad we’re on the same side for a moment and I want it to continue.
“You don’t care what other people think about you. That makes you immune to people like my father, and your immunity drives people like my father crazy. Your indifference fills up the room and it’s Kryptonite to him.” She tightens a grip on my hand and her smile beams, celebrating a triumph of mine. “You’re so good for me. In some ways I’m my father’s daughter, but you’re not Kryptonite for me. He’s too far gone, but I can be saved and you save me.”
Her memory seems to progress through our years together and I watch the beam in her eyes fade. “Twelve years ago when you were first at your job, that lifestyle seemed okay. You were right out of college and living in the city on your own for the first time, going to bars and staying out late. That you could do it for work and on an expense account even seemed exciting. When we met, I loved you and I thought that part of you was coming to an end. I don’t know why I didn’t object then and talk to you about it. You’d come home drunk in the middle of the night from a dinner and a strip club, where you were talking about God knows what with your trader friends from the office. But now is worse because I don’t have any reserves left. I don’t want more reserves to keep this going either. I want it to be different.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do. You’re too good a person and I don’t know why you’re stuck in this lifestyle. I don’t think you know either. Maybe it’s okay when you’re twenty-five and single, but you’re thirty-five and you have me. This isn’t fair to me. You have to grow up.”
“It isn’t a matter of growing up.”
“It is, Nick. You must know you’re not an adult.”
This one hits home. Direct hit on my front door and I’m silent.
“Maybe you should see someone. It could help you to talk about it.”
“That’s stupid. I don’t need to see anyone.” Most of Julia’s friends are in some kind of therapy, along with everyone else with money in New York.
“No, it’s not stupid, Nick. You don’t like your mom. That’s cliché for a reason. Don’t you think it could have anything to do with this?” She waits. Apparently this question is not rhetorical.
“My parents have nothing to do with this. I don’t need a shrink, I just need to make some changes.”
Tears had come down her cheeks, first one making a slow, jagged path, then others following exactly behind so that you couldn’t see the tear itself but just another pulse in the trail left by the first one. I brush it from her face. I can’t remember the last time I saw her cry.
“Honey, you’re right.” I say this as softly as I can, almost a whisper. “I’m not happy at work. I don’t like the lifestyle out of the office. I don’t like the job in the office. It’s not what I want anymore. I haven’t wanted it for a long time.”
“Then leave it, Nick.”
“You want me to quit? Just walk out? This is my career, Julia. This is the only career I’ve ever had.”
“Yes. Quit tomorrow. We have some money saved up. My dad has some money if we ever need it. Quit, Nick. We can go somewhere else.”
“Quit and do what?” I feel my pulse quicken. “Julia, I’ve sold bonds for more than thirteen years. Do you know what skills I’ve acquired in that time? The ability to sell bonds. These are not transferable skills. This is the only way I know how to make money, certainly this amount of money. Do you think I should start painting houses or mowing lawns?”
“I think you can do anything you want to do.”
I make a loud, frustrated exhale through my nostrils as though it is a word that can sum things up. An image passes through my head of me standing at the end of a car wash cycle holding a drying towel in one hand and wearing navy coveralls that say “Nick” in cursive on the front. “Julia, quitting is not the answer.”
“Then what is?”
“There are some changes I think I can make. I can shift some responsibilities around on the desk and I can make it clear that I’m not going to be involved in the entertainment side of things as much. Or there are some small boutique firms popping up. If I jump to one of them, I’d have a different role. More strategy and management. I could leave Bear for one of them.”
I can’t tell if she thinks there is merit in this or not, but she stops pushing. I put my arms around her and pull her in close, each of our chins resting on the other’s shoulder. “Julia, let’s take a trip. Just the two of us, let’s fly down to the Bahamas for a week and we’ll find a deserted stretch of beach and do nothing but swim, sleep, eat good food, and do crossword puzzles.” I feel her head nod against my shoulder. “I’ll look into flights tomorrow.”
“Okay.” The conversation is over and we’re still hugging, ear to ear, each of us looking at the wall behind the other, both knowing that we haven’t really addressed anything. It feels like a layer of paint over rusted metal.