There existed a general consensus among the married women of Beekman that husbands were useless. Not that any of the ladies wanted to be husbandless—not quite, not yet, probably never—but if you gathered two or more around a bottle of wine, the complaints would begin pouring out, first a trickle and then a flood.
Andrew showed up forty-five minutes late to his daughter’s third birthday party. Jake gave Sunny premium cable for her thirty-sixth birthday present and then canceled it eight months later. Rowan had been promising to set up the wireless printer/copier/scanner for six months, and the box was still unopened on the floor in the corner of the kitchen because Susan wanted to see how many times he could walk past it without either putting it away, returning it, or setting it up. So far, he’d done it at least ten times a day for a hundred and fifty days, which meant, conservatively, fifteen hundred times and counting. Edmund had so completely worn down Claire with his chronic forgetfulness and ineptitude that he had been given only one—one!—domestic responsibility, scooping out the cat box, and yet he failed to do it! Unless Claire nagged him! Which her therapist told her not to do under any circumstances! Just wait and watch, her therapist had said. You’re overfunctioning, her therapist pointed out. It makes him underfunction. Which meant the cat pissed all over the house, and Claire suspected her husband was trying to drive her slowly insane.
And in a life of niggling mommy minutiae—of finding the Batman sippy cup and the other pair of purple tights, of pulling out splinters and searching for ticks, of signing up for the book fair and then remembering that you’d already signed up for the book fair, of putting quarters in lunch boxes and scheduling trips to the dentist—the fact that their husbands had morphed into endless open loops, like three-fer federal employees you could never fire, like bathroom doors that had swelled while you weren’t paying attention, bathroom doors that you couldn’t shut but you couldn’t fix and you couldn’t replace, bathroom doors you were stuck with until you physically moved out of the house, well— “Hey, honey, can you make sure you take the recycling down tonight? The guy comes tomorrow and if it’s not there, he knocks on the door and complains.”
“Gotta go,” Owen said into the phone. “Gettin’ chored by the wife.”
Owen hung up. Lucy just looked at him.
“What?” Owen asked.
“Do you have any idea how much I hate that word?”
“What word?”
“Choring. Getting chored. You and Scott’s shorthand for when your wives ask you to do something.”
“It’s just a word. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“But it does. It does mean something,” said Lucy. “First of all, it is contemptuous of me. Me asking you nicely to do something you’ve promised to do, promised over and over and over to do and still haven’t done, is not me assigning you a chore. And somehow now, every last thing I ask you to do is me choring you. Like you’re a kid and I’m the mom. These are not chores, Owen. These are things adults do to keep a household running.”
“It’s just a word,” said Owen. “Don’t overreact.”
“Well, since I’m choring you anyway, can I ask when you plan to deal with the situation in the garage?”
“I’m gonna take care of it.”
“When?”
“When I have the time.”
“It’s going to start to snow in a few months, and we’re not going to be able to fit our cars into the garage unless you clear it out.”
“I’m aware that the garage needs to be cleared out before it snows. But it’s September.”
“Can I put a date on the calendar when it will be done, so I won’t have to think about it anymore?”
“You can put anything on the calendar you want.”
Lucy just looked at him.
“And I can’t control what you choose to think about,” said Owen. “I don’t have that particular magical power.”
“If I put a date on the calendar, will you promise to do it by that day so I can stop thinking about it and I won’t have to nag you about it anymore?”
“All I can promise is what I’ve already said,” said Owen. “I intend to do it when I have the time.”
“Are we really going to fight about this?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“I need to understand why you are doing this to me!”
“Because I don’t want to do it right now! I will do it, eventually, but it falls under the category of ‘things I’d really rather not do.’ And like many things you don’t want to do, you don’t just wake up on a beautiful Sunday like today and decide to ruin it by doing something you don’t want to do.”
“I don’t want to be a nag. That’s not who I want to be. This isn’t fun for me, Owen.”
“Then stop nagging me! I said I’ll do it.”
Lucy just looked at him. She took a deep breath.
“We could not park our cars in the garage last winter, Owen. Because you didn’t make the space for us to. You promised me you would, and yet you didn’t. You promised me again and again. I had to scrape snow and ice off the car over and over and over again, all winter long. So I’m not being crazy worrying that you will not complete this task.”
“Enough!” shouted Owen. “Enough!”
Why did my husband buy an air conditioner at Home Depot? Lucy thought for the thousandth time since Claire had oh so carefully let her know. Obviously, he bought it for some person he was seeing. There was no other logical conclusion. But still—an air conditioner? The Arrangement had only been going for six weeks and Owen was involved with someone to the degree that he was buying them an air conditioner and transporting it to their home? Who on earth was this person? And what the hell was going on between them?
Lucy slowly walked up the stairs and lay down on the bed, on top of the comforter. Her shoes were still on, and she looked down at her feet, at her sad Merrells, black potato shoes, the shoes of resignation and defeat. She reached over to her nightstand and picked up her phone.
“Sunny?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m in,” said Lucy.
“Are you serious?”
“I am,” said Lucy. “Set it up.”
Seven
Constance Waverly: Someone needs to admit that this is almost impossible.
Charlie Rose: And when you say “this,” I take it you mean, um, you mean— Waverly: Lifelong, sexually satisfying, non-deadening, non-soul-killing marriage— Rose: Right, yes, but this is not new, people have been talking about this since the seventies.
Waverly: The seventies might as well be ancient history, Charlie. We’re talking almost fifty years ago.
Rose: And the French, uh, the French have been making accommodations in their marriages, the Europeans— Waverly: I’d like to talk about here and now, Charlie. I think someone needs to start the conversation again.
Rose: And you think that that person is you.
Waverly: Well, I think it should be someone who’s not a pervy, out-there, free-love weirdo.
—Constance Waverly
Charlie Rose
It’s so romantic,” said Sunny Bang.