He saw her in two ways, both as a woman who’d spent years fucking other men, and then as a woman somehow separate from her sex appeal, purely maternal, a woman who spelled words out for children, who strangely had started baking her own bread, whose hair had gone coarse and dull like she lacked vitamins. Her breasts hung from her chest, joggling lasciviously when she brushed her teeth. How many men had grasped and kissed and chewed and sucked on those beautiful, ruined breasts? Not ruined, exactly, but tainted. You were supposed to fuck sluts, not marry them, he realized. He was tired of trying to blot out all those other men, his own just another flag, and hardly the biggest, planted on a littered mountaintop.
There in the dark he was sweating. His clothes felt too tight. His knees hurt. She was always demanding that he talk. “Just tell me,” she would say. “Whatever it is, just say it out loud.” Where to even start? I resent your past. They’ve invited me to take a leave of absence from work. I caught Buster jerking off to cartoon porn. Who invented cartoon porn? You aren’t mine anymore. We are too broken. All of us.
He still loved her, her thoughts, her jokes, her voice, her lips. There were days when her body seemed unchanged from their first night together, and that was almost worse. Her body lying to him like that. They still found each other under the blankets, across the dark plain of their king-size bed. But less and less. When she asked why, he couldn’t exactly tell her. He couldn’t say “because you have ruined your breasts twice, first with men and then with babies, because there’s no space for me, your past is full, your future planned.” I will stay in my cold corner of our too-large bed, he told himself. This will not change, this mattress, this torn spot of wallpaper by the table; this will stay, and I will forever be able to satisfy my pillow, desperate only for my sleeping head.
Tom cried there in the dark closet. He couldn’t satisfy her. Someone else had to. If he could fuck her mind with his mind and leave their bodies out of it. That was what he always wanted, pure mind fucking. The body makes it all base, all so rife with potential betrayal. She knows this, ask the Elf, she lied to him. She said she loved him as she backed away from the bed with plastic sheets. “You’re wonderful, I’ll be right back.” She tells this story, laughing, a cautionary tale, a commiseration with their single friends. She has been there. And he? He was only in the closet with his wife, who wouldn’t be his wife much longer.
Melissa had her arm around him, her forehead on his shoulder.
“We haven’t told the kids. Nothing’s set in stone,” she said. But they had been over this too much to turn back. He couldn’t find his footing; he was being pulled away by the force of this current. He loved her still. But he had already consulted a lawyer, three actually, informational interviews, screening them as he had the prospective nannies for their children and prospective specialists for his mother. The first was too bloodthirsty, used to shouts and refusals exchanged across a conference table. His watch seemed to have rates instead of hours. The second’s office smelled of canned minestrone and instant coffee; Tom almost expected to find carbon copies and electric typewriters on the lone receptionist’s desk. The last, somber and straightforward, like a funeral director for the royal family, was the obvious choice. As Tom left the office, the lawyer said to just leave the retainer with his assistant. Suddenly it was done, before he had even meant to do it. The current was taking him out. But Melissa wanted to keep trying. Which, to her, meant therapy. She wants them to go, together, separately, everything. She keeps talking about outlets and support.
“Things could change,” she whispered, “if we work at it, if we get some help.”
“We’re out of options,” Tom said. “People go to therapy to get divorced.”
“Well, then, if we’re getting divorced, why can’t we go to therapy?” asked Melissa.
“Because the job is done; you don’t go to a doctor for an appendectomy if you’ve already taken it out yourself.”
“This does kind of feel like amateur surgery.”
“Which one of us is the amateur?” Tom whispered. They were still trying to keep their voices down.
“I’m just kidding. It’s all awful; nothing about this feels good. I just thought we could use support.” They couldn’t see each other in the dark of the closet; she put a hand on his knee. He moved it away.
“Say what you mean. You really want me in therapy.”
“We need both. Together and separately. We need to figure out what is our shit together and what is our individual shit.” Melissa slid closer to him. He could smell the suntan lotion on her skin.
“So it’s all shit.” What did she even want to save then?
“Maybe getting a diagnosis would be helpful.” Her hand was back on his knee.
“Is there a medical term for slut?”
He felt Melissa twitch and then shift deeper into the closet, away from him.
“There’s one for depression”—she stopped whispering—“clearly professional help is in order.”
“That’s what lawyers are for,” he said.
“Jeez, just kill me now.”
“Look, I’m doing the best I can.” Tom’s whisper was growing louder, more raspy.
“Really? Because it feels like you’re not even trying.” She sounded tall and bright, even in the darkness.
“You think if we fuck more everything will be fine.”
She leaned close to him; he could feel her hair brush his arm.
“I think,” she whispered, “if we fuck at all we might have a chance in hell.” She said this into his ear, her breath burned.
There were footfalls in the great room. They stopped talking. Someone was coming. The door opened and a hand pushed the slickers out of the way.
“Ah!” said Libby before flinging a hand over her mouth and craning her neck to see if anyone was on the balcony above. She then stepped quickly into the closet and squeezed between the two of them.
“I can’t believe we all forgot to check this closet. Nice choice, Melissa.”
“Thanks.” She looked past Libby at Tom, who reached forward to pull the door shut, putting them all in darkness.
“Where are Danny and Gwen?” asked Melissa.
Now that Libby was hiding with them, now that he couldn’t have her, Tom wanted Melissa alone, back on his lap, her face between his hands. He wanted to answer her questions.
It’s not like this at home because I am afraid. Because if I don’t leave now, you will beat me to it, because if I fuck you the way I want to, I will disgust myself, you, the memory of my mother. I’ll be no better than he was.
He could smell the wine from dinner on Libby’s breath. She elbowed Tom to move over, giggling at the clatter of a tennis racket to the floor. Footsteps on the main staircase. Ten bucks says it’s Gwen. And there she was, opening the door and pushing past the raincoats, not even reacting to them, as if she knew they were in there all along.
“Shhhh,” she said. “Dan’s in the rug room; he heard me coming down the stairs.”
They were silent, holding their breath, pressed together, hot skin and the cold rubber of raincoats. There was nothing. Nothing. And then the sharp tap of a Ping-Pong ball on the paddle, fast, tap tap tap. The door yanked open. There he stood, paddle in hand. “Alright, everybody out of the closet. Libby, you first.”