“What kind of dog is this?”
I was as desirable as a hedge. That’s what happens when you lose your sex drive. I can put on Belgian dresses, wear my hair down, and flirt garishly, but when it came to real currency, sexual currency, I had none.
This morning when Joe said of Yo-Yo, “I know what he’s getting out of us, I just don’t know what we’re getting out of him,” he wasn’t only talking about the dog.
I offered the chef the leash.
“He’s a mutt,” I said. “Want him?”
“Wow,” he said. “No, but thanks. He sure is cute!”
With that, my Gentleman Caller disappeared into the ether.
It’s not like I don’t come with my own grab bag of flaws. Although Joe is far too superior to catalog his grievances toward me, they might include:
1. Once I ate a bagel on the toilet.
2. I use too much floss.
3. I floss in bed.
4. I take the dog into the shower with me to wash him.
5. I take my first bite of popcorn at the movies by touching my tongue to the top of the popcorn and eating what sticks. But Joe always says he doesn’t want popcorn because it’s too salty, so it’s mine and can’t I eat it the way I want?
6. I toss Milk Duds into the popcorn.
7. Actually, I bite the Milk Duds into four pieces and spit them back into the popcorn so they’re smaller, giving me a better popcorn-to-Milk-Dud ratio. Yes, they’re covered in saliva, but it’s my saliva. Though I can see how, to someone reaching into the popcorn he said he wasn’t going to eat, it could be an issue.
Joe wouldn’t say this because he’s a gentleman, but I will: I’m looking worse by the day. I’m all jowly. My back is dry. I have a bush the size of a dinner plate. My core strength is nonexistent. Menopause means your metabolism skids to a stop and you lose 30 percent of your muscle mass. In other words, the self-discipline to watch my weight, which I never had to begin with, I now need more of. Really, I’m hanging by a thread. Sure, Joe had spent breakfast with his face down on the table but at least he was still in the same room with me.
Yo-Yo, bored with the hot sun, let out a snorty yawn.
Come on, Gratitude List, work your magic! I haven’t nursed you all these years for nothing! The whole idea was when Joe finally hit the eject button, I’d feel free too. Kind of like that first shower after getting my hair chopped off, or those first steps in a new pair of cushiony running shoes, or seeing the world through new, stronger prescription lenses…
Could this be happening? Could the elixir I’d been squirreling away for decades have lost its fizz?
Was it me? Was it Joe? Was it the passage of time? Was I too tired to care? Earlier this year, I’d told a mother at school I’d been married fifteen years. She asked, “What’s the secret to a long marriage?” I thought for a second, then answered, “Staying married.”
Was it happiness I’d found in my long marriage? Or capitulation? Or is that all happiness is, capitulation?
The story of our marriage was in frames all over our apartment: Joe and I riding to the Emmys in the back of a limo. Me surprising Joe during a medical conference in Chicago and having someone take our picture in front of Cy Twombly’s peonies. (Moments later, Joe asked me to marry him in front of the Bean with a ring he’d grabbed at the museum gift shop.) Our wedding in Violet Parry’s backyard in Martha’s Vineyard. Giving birth to Timby at home on Thanksgiving Day, the TV on in the background, the cast of Sunday in the Park with George performing during the Macy’s parade. Sunday, by the blue, purple, yellow, red water. Joe opening the Wallace Surgery Center. Timby’s first day of kindergarten.
But standing there in the weak October sun, a different story of our marriage presented itself. It was as if all those years, Joe and I had been followed by a photographer snapping pictures of us unawares…
Joe and me reading quietly in bed, Timby playing Legos at our feet.
Me looking out the window, seeing Joe and Timby below, walking home from the Science Center.
Me standing on the Galer Street lawn in the drizzle, early for pickup.
Yo-Yo snoring in the living room, so loud none of us could sleep.
The three of us sitting on the curb outside Portage Bay waiting for them to call our name for brunch.
That was happiness. Not the framed greatest hits, but the moments between. At the time, I hadn’t pegged them as being particularly happy. But now, looking back at those phantom snapshots, I’m struck by my calm, my ease, the evident comfort with my life.
I’m happy in retrospect.
Oh, Joe, take me back and I promise I’ll make love to you twice a week and never eat a bagel on the toilet again. I’ll appreciate the quiet moments and—
Hey! Could it be? Alonzo! Walking on a pedestrian overpass spanning Elliott Avenue.
I watched him go down the stairs and head into the Costco parking lot.
This was perfect. I needed to apologize for calling him “my poet.”