“Why is my wife sending her underwear to Jim Lowry in Daytona Beach?” His voice was soft.
“Because…” Where to even begin? If she really wanted to tell him why she was sending her underwear to Jim Lowry in Daytona Beach—one of her best customers—she would have to start way, way back, with that very first $125 perfect white cotton Acne T-shirt that she ordered from Barneys. Because when it came time to check out, a message popped up on her screen offering her 10 percent off her purchases all day if she got a Barneys credit card, which seemed like the logical thing to do, and then it seemed to only make sense to add a few more items to her cart to take advantage of the discount, and by the time she finally clicked purchase, her grand total for the afternoon was $2,617. She winced but also felt a rush of joy, and it was that rush of joy that she was trying to replicate every single time she bought something. But it was getting harder and harder to find it, and now, selling her underwear, she was getting that same charge, that same rush, that she’d felt originally.
How was Dan ever supposed to understand that?
Whatever. Dan didn’t need the backstory. Actually, Dan didn’t deserve the backstory. “I needed some cash,” she said. What are you going to say to that, she thought.
“Does this have anything to do with the credit cards?” he said. Sabrina felt sick. This was when he would piece everything together. He would piece everything together, and then—she was sure of it—he would leave her. He would just walk out the door and leave her, and their life, behind. And for all the times she had wished that she wasn’t married to him anymore, she suddenly, clearly, didn’t want him to leave. “Does this have anything to do with the credit cards,” he said, louder. “Are you doing this to pay off the credit cards? What the fuck, Sabrina?”
“Shhh,” Sabrina said. “You’ll wake Owen and Amelia.”
“Excellent point,” Dan said. “What if it had been one of them who walked in on you just now?”
“Oh, come on, Dan. They’d have no idea what was going on.”
“They’d know that something was fucked up.” He sat down on the bed, facing away from Sabrina. “Jesus. Really? You’re selling your underwear?” His voice sounded normal now. “Who’s even…who buys this shit?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t actually met any of them, but they seem normal. Ish. No one’s gotten super-creepy.”
“Wait.” He turned around. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Just a couple of weeks.” Plus a couple of weeks, she thought. Close enough.
Dan shook his head. “What a world.” They were both quiet for a minute. “Really? This is how you decided to make some cash? It’s just so…gross.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I read about it on this Facebook moms’ group I’m in. It seemed relatively painless. Someone—not me!—asked if anyone knew a good way to make some quick cash working from home, and someone else responded and said she’d been selling her underwear.”
Dan whistled quietly. “Wow,” he said. “The secret life of moms.”
“I guess.” She glanced at him. “I thought you’d be more pissed. Not that I was hoping you’d find out, but, you know.”
“I mean, I’m not thrilled about it,” he said. “But I do wonder…” He paused. “Nah.”
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s a dumb idea.”
“Tell me.” She couldn’t believe she was actually sitting here having a somewhat normal conversation with her husband about the fact that she was selling underwear on the internet to strangers. She hadn’t really allowed herself to think about what Dan’s reaction would be if he ever found out, but it wasn’t exactly…this. Had she been secretly hoping he’d find out? Had she wanted to provoke a confrontation with him, something that would end in screaming and tears, something that would jolt her out of her constant low-grade misery?
“Well…I’m just thinking, you know…this is kind of a fascinating way-we-live-now story, right?” Dan said. “Like—you used social media to find out about it, in this world of private Facebook moms’ groups that I didn’t even know existed.”
“You’re barely even on Facebook.”
“I know, it’s kind of a time suck,” Dan said. “Anyway. I’m just thinking…what if you wrote something about it?”
“Huh? You mean, like, post about it on Facebook?”
“No, no,” Dan said. “An essay. ‘How Selling My Underwear for Cash Improved My Marriage.’” He smiled. “Or, you know, something along those lines.”
“That’s rather premature,” she said.
Dan shrugged. “I mean, things couldn’t really get worse, could they?”
So he had noticed, then. “If you thought things were so bad,” she said slowly, “how come you never said anything?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I thought things would just get better on their own. They used to before. Or maybe it took catching you selling your underwear for me to realize how bad things had actually gotten.”
“How bad have things gotten?” She couldn’t look at him.
“Well,” Dan said, “you’ve stopped being interested in all the stuff we used to love to do. We haven’t gone out to eat with another couple in months. We haven’t gone away together in probably two years. We never have sex. We barely even speak to each other! It feels like we have nothing in common anymore. We even work in the same fucking building and it just feels like we’re operating in different universes.”