The Arrangement by Sarah Dunn
For Peter,
the only arrangement
I’ll ever need
Really to sin you have to be serious about it.
—Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
One
You people with your “evolved” marriages, the ones with the fifty-fifty housework and shared earning power, the ones who tell each other everything, always, and don’t believe in secrets? Does that describe your marriage? Show of hands? I have a question for you: How’s that working out for you in the bedroom?
—Constance Waverly The Be Gathering, Taos, New Mexico
After it was over, all of it, Lucy found herself making the point again and again that it had been a mutual decision. To her aunt Nancy, who was disgusted by the entire business and decided to pretend it never happened. To her sister, Anna, who was fascinated and demanded all the details. To the ladies of Beekman—the quiet few who envied her freedom and her daring, and the bigger, more vocal contingent who would have nothing more to do with her, who wanted her to Stay Away from Their Husbands—Lucy always said it had been a fully conscious and completely mutual decision. Nobody believed her, of course. These things are never mutual. One person always wants it more than the other, one of you is keeping a secret, somebody has a plan. But Lucy always said this about the Arrangement: it was a mutual decision, she and Owen both went into it with eyes wide open, and it had brought certain unfortunate things to light.
It was a Saturday evening early that July. The leaves were bright green and the fireflies were out in force. Lucy and her old friend Victoria were in Lucy’s kitchen prepping food for the grill while their husbands were out on the deck drinking wine, but it could have just as easily been the other way around. Beekman was a town where men cooked at dinner parties. The men of Beekman not only cooked, they made things like pickles and cheese and beer and sauerkraut. They ground their own spices to rub on their pork tenderloins and made their own mayonnaise, just to see if it was worth it (it wasn’t). Even inside Lucy’s head it sounded affected and awful, worse in a lot of ways than the Brooklyn so many of them had lived in before, the Brooklyn they’d either been priced out of or willingly fled, the Brooklyn that Victoria and Thom still called home.
Victoria was painfully thin, and her skin was pale and already crepey under her blue eyes. She teetered around on her trademark vintage heels, which made her look like she might trip and fall straight into late middle age. Thom, with his wild dark curls and two-day stubble that sparkled with flecks of gray, still looked good.
“I called Frank the other day to see if he wanted to go hear this new band with us,” Thom said to Owen—Thom and Victoria still had new bands they went to see, even though they had a five-year-old—“and he couldn’t, because he was going out to Hoboken to learn Japanese rope tying.”
“All I heard was ‘Japanese rope tying,’” Lucy said as she pushed the screen door open with the plate of cheese and grapes she was carrying.
Victoria followed with two bottles of wine. “Oh my God, Thom, are you telling him about Frank and Jim?”
“Frank and Jim?” Lucy asked.
“You met them at our wedding.”
“Your fabulous gay friends.”
“They’re a little less fabulous these days,” said Victoria. “They got married and had two kids and moved to the suburbs.”
“They’re still pretty fabulous,” said Thom.
“I just mean they’re not jetting off to Milan for the weekend anymore. They coach peewee soccer together instead.”
“That’s sweet,” said Lucy.
“Yeah, it is sweet,” said Thom. “What they have is sweet.”
Victoria looked across the table at her husband and rolled her eyes.
“What?” Thom said to her. “What did I say?”
“Thom is a little obsessed with this ‘arrangement’ Frank and Jim have.”
“I wouldn’t call it obsessed,” said Thom. “Okay, yes, I am a little obsessed. I just find it fascinating.”
“Tell us,” said Owen.
Thom reached for the wine and refilled glasses as he spoke. “Okay, so, they’ve been married for about six years. They have two little girls, a cozy house in Larchmont, and a place up in Vermont. Frank is a stay-at-home dad, while Jim commutes into the city every day. Frank is the president of the PTA, Jim is a deacon in their church. It’s like a fifties marriage, really. Dinner is on the table every night, they argue about how much money Frank spends and whether the girls should be forced to learn Mandarin or take violin lessons—”
Victoria cut him off and said, “Except…”
“Except they’re both allowed to sleep with other people.”
“You mean they’re swingers?” asked Lucy.
“I don’t know the terminology,” said Thom. “They call it an open marriage.”
“Swinging implies, I think, participation,” said Victoria. “Like, watching each other do it or swapping or something. An open marriage is more, um, furtive?”
“Frank told me they don’t talk about it,” said Thom. “He said they each give each other a realm of privacy. He says it works out great.”
“We saw them a few weeks ago. They’re happy. The girls are happy. They’re the most stable couple we know.”
“How can that be stable?” asked Lucy.
“They’ve got rules,” said Thom. “They don’t let things get emotional. I think they’re only allowed to sleep with a given person a certain number of times. And some people are off-limits. Exes, mutual friends, coworkers, like that. ‘Out of town’ seems to be a bit of a free-for-all. The whole thing is pretty clearly hammered out.”
“Like Elton John and his husband,” said Victoria.
“That was a threesome in a paddling pool filled with olive oil,” Lucy pointed out.
Owen lifted his wineglass. “Allegedly.”
“You gotta hand it to gay men,” Thom said. “They’ve cracked the code.”
“Yeah,” said Lucy. “I bet their kids don’t destroy their furniture either. Or throw up in the middle of the night.”
“They get all this”—and here Thom gestured big, taking in the entire scene: the house, the yard, the wine, the friends, the coziness of domesticity, and the comfort of long, familiar love—“and sex too.”
“Hey,” Lucy said. “I’ve known Victoria for a long time. You get sex.”
“Not the kind of sex those guys get.”
“He’s right,” said Victoria. “He doesn’t.”
“We have sex,” said Thom.
“But it’s always with each other,” Victoria said, laughing. She and Thom clinked glasses and kissed.