—Constance Waverly
You know the ‘young’ thing presses all my buttons.”
After about twelve hundred texts, Owen had finally agreed to meet Izzy at her house to talk. Just to talk. They were sitting at her kitchen table, somewhat formally. Owen was drinking tea, with his legs crossed, balancing the teacup on the inside of his left ankle. Izzy was deep into her wine and possibly still drunk from the night before.
“The ‘young’ thing?”
“You leaving me for a younger woman,” said Izzy.
“I didn’t leave you for a younger woman.”
“Semantics. You know what I’m talking about. And, by the way, that girl is not twenty-six.”
Owen had figured out that Izzy had tapped into his communication systems. Text for sure, e-mail probably, possibly even his phone. He knew it and he knew that she knew that he knew it. He didn’t see the point of bringing it up.
“How old do you think she is?”
“Nineteen,” said Izzy.
“There’s no way Madison is only nineteen,” said Owen.
“She’s nineteen, Owen. I found her on Facebook.”
Owen’s blood ran cold. Holy shit. Holy shit! Nineteen?
“Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re fucking with me.”
“I’m not. You big perv.”
“I did not know she was nineteen,” said Owen. “I would never have touched her if I knew she was only nineteen.”
“Of course you would have,” said Izzy. “Any man would have.”
“Not me. Never. Not ever.”
“Listen, Owen, I get it. It would be easier if I didn’t get it, if I could be one of those deluded women who think, Why would anyone want to be with someone that young? What would you talk about? What would you have in common? But I used to be that girl. Men went crazy for me.”
“Men still go crazy for you,” said Owen.
“Not in the same way.” She sighed a big sigh. “Something fundamental has changed. I was so young and so beautiful.”
“You’re still beautiful, Izzy.”
“But I used to be beautiful,” said Izzy. “And it is extremely hard to be a woman who used to be beautiful. You cannot begin to understand it.”
“You’re hardly past being beautiful, Izzy. You’re only thirty-four.”
“I’m thirty-eight.”
“So? Who cares?”
“I’m forty-two.”
“You’re forty-two?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I lie about my age.”
“You look amazing. Seriously, Jesus, Izzy, you look great.”
“For my age, you mean. I look great for my age. That’s the best I’ll get for the rest of my life.”
“You look great for any age,” said Owen. “And plenty of men will go crazy for you for a very long time to come.”
“But not you anymore,” said Izzy.
“That’s not true. But you have to get control of yourself,” said Owen. “What happened yesterday is not acceptable behavior.”
“I know. I got a little crazy. It won’t happen again.”
“Did you go see your doctor?”
“Not yet,” said Izzy. “I had an appointment but I had to cancel it.”
“I’m not even going to discuss having sex with you again until you see your gynecologist. I can’t keep waking up in the middle of the night worrying about having a child with you. I’m putting my foot down on this one, Izzy.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “I’ll go.”
Owen had no intention of sleeping with Izzy again. Never, ever, ever. Never, ever, ever! But he would cross that particular bridge when he came to it.
So now Owen was lying to Lucy and lying to Izzy. Well, he wasn’t exactly lying to Lucy, but he had this whole entire part of his life he couldn’t talk to her about, and that felt like lying. She’d asked about the dent in the hood of the car and he’d told her it was the work of a tree branch during the storm. Even though it was the agreement they’d made, it felt strange to have all of this life in his life he couldn’t talk about with her. He was used to telling Lucy everything—almost everything, anyway, 85 percent of everything—and it was only now, now that he had a completely separate life, that he realized how much he missed it.
He was ready for it all to end. As far as he was concerned, the Arrangement had run its course. He’d dropped almost twenty pounds, he felt happier with his life—his real life, his Lucy-and-Wyatt life—than he had in a long time. What he had was better than what was out there for him. He did not want to have sex in seedy motels with emotionally damaged nineteen-year-olds. He was not that guy. He didn’t want to be that guy. Growing up meant saying no to some things. Life was a series of losses, some big and some small, and trying to imagine it was something else was folly.
It had actually been interesting, this whole thing. Would he recommend it? If, say, a friend of his confessed to him, out on the deck late at night over a glass of bourbon, that his marriage had gone stale, that he was feeling the icy hand of mortality gripping his shoulder, that he had started to wonder if this was all there was, would Owen tell him what he and Lucy had done? He thought about that a lot lately. Would he suggest that other couples—couples who had hit “the hump,” as he liked to think of it—would he tell them to try this on for size? Try it the way he and Lucy had, with a list of rules and a cutoff date, with a steel foundation of “our family comes first and we’re never getting divorced”? With an understanding that this was just a quick, temporary time-out from the boring, middle-aged, soul-killing part of married life?
That was an interesting question.
He was able to see the potential land mines. What if he had gotten addicted to the Madisons of this world? Not the nineteen-year-olds but the vast pool of millennial women who seemed to have evolved past the rest of humanity in their approach to sex so that having sex with them was like being suspended in the middle of your dirtiest dream, a dream where you’re allowed to do anything you want, a dream where you never hear the word no.