AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
JULY 5, 2010
– Diary entry –
I won’t blame Nick. I don’t blame Nick. I refuse – refuse! – to turn into some pert-mouthed, strident angry-girl. I made two promises to myself when I married Nick. One: no dancing-monkey demands. Two: I would never, ever say, Sure, that’s fine by me (if you want to stay out later, if you want to do a boys’ weekend, if you want to do something you want to do) and then punish him for doing what I said was fine by me. I worry I am coming perilously close to violating both of those promises.
But still. It is our third wedding anniversary and I am alone in our apartment, my face all mask-tight from tears because, well, because: Just this afternoon, I get a voice mail from Nick, and I already know it’s going to be bad, I know the second the voice mail begins because I can tell he’s calling from his cell and I can hear men’s voices in the background and a big, roomy gap, like he’s trying to decide what to say, and then I hear his taxi-blurred voice, a voice that is already wet and lazy with booze, and I know I am going to be angry – that quick inhale, the lips going tight, the shoulders up, the I so don’t want to be mad but I’m going to be feeling. Do men not know that feeling? You don’t want to be mad, but you’re obligated to be, almost. Because a rule, a good rule, a nice rule is being broken. Or maybe rule is the wrong word. Protocol? Nicety? But the rule/protocol/nicety – our anniversary – is being broken for a good reason, I understand, I do. The rumors were true: Sixteen writers have been laid off at Nick’s magazine. A third of the staff. Nick has been spared, for now, but of course he feels obliged to take the others out to get drunk. They are men, piled in a cab, heading down Second Avenue, pretending to be brave. A few have gone home to their wives, but a surprising number have stayed out. Nick will spend the night of our anniversary buying these men drinks, going to strip clubs and cheesy bars, flirting with twenty-two-year-olds (My friend here just got laid off, he could use a hug). These jobless men will proclaim Nick a great guy as he buys their drinks on a credit card linked to my bank account. Nick will have a grand old time on our anniversary, which he didn’t even mention in the message. Instead, he said, I know we had plans but …
I am being a girl. I just thought it’d be a tradition: All across town, I have strewn little love messages, reminders of our past year together, my treasure hunt. I can picture the third clue, fluttering from a piece of scotch tape in the crook of the V of the Robert Indiana love sculpture up near Central Park. Tomorrow, some bored twelve-year-old tourist stumbling along behind his parents is going to pick it off, read it, shrug, and let it float away like a gum wrapper.
My treasure-hunt finale was perfect, but isn’t now. It’s an absolutely gorgeous vintage briefcase. Leather. Third anniversary is leather. A work-related gift may be a bad idea, given that work isn’t exactly happy right now. In our kitchen, I have two live lobsters, like always. Or like what was supposed to be like always. I need to phone my mom and see if they can keep for a day, scrambling dazedly around their crate, or if I need to stumble in, and with my wine-lame eyes, battle them and boil them in my pot for no good reason. I’m killing two lobsters I won’t even eat.
Dad phoned to wish us happy anniversary, and I picked up the phone and I was going to play it cool, but then I started crying when I started talking – I was doing the awful chick talk-cry: mwaha-waah-gwwahh-and-waaa-wa – so I had to tell him what happened, and he told me I should open a bottle of wine and wallow in it for a bit. Dad is always a proponent of a good indulgent sulk. Still, Nick will be angry that I told Rand, and of course Rand will do his fatherly thing, pat Nick on the shoulder and say, ‘Heard you had some emergency drinking to do on your anniversary, Nicky.’ And chuckle. So Nick will know, and he will be angry with me because he wants my parents to believe he’s perfect – he beams when I tell them stories about what a flawless son-in-law he is.
Except for tonight. I know, I know, I’m being a girl.
It’s five a.m. The sun is coming up, almost as bright as the streetlights outside that have just blinked off. I always like that switch, when I’m awake for it. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I’ll pull myself out of bed and walk through the streets at dawn, and when the lights click off, all together, I always feel like I’ve seen something special. Oh, there go the streetlights! I want to announce. In New York it’s not three or four a.m. that’s the quiet time – there are too many bar stragglers, calling out to each other as they collapse into taxis, yelping into their cell phones as they frantically smoke that one last cigarette before bed. Five a.m., that’s the best time, when the clicking of your heels on the sidewalk sounds illicit. All the people have been put away in their boxes, and you have the whole place to yourself.
Here’s what happened: Nick got home just after four, a bulb of beer and cigarettes and fried-egg odor attached to him, a placenta of stink. I was still awake, waiting for him, my brain ca-thunking after a marathon of Law and Order. He sat down on our ottoman and glanced at the present on the table and said nothing. I stared at him back. He clearly wasn’t going to even graze against an apology – hey, sorry things got screwy today. That’s all I wanted, just a quick acknowledgment.
‘Happy day after anniversary,’ I start.
He sighs, a deep aggrieved moan. ‘Amy, I’ve had the crappiest day ever. Please don’t lay a guilt trip on me on top of it.’
Nick grew up with a father who never, ever apologised, so when Nick feels he has screwed up, he goes on offense. I know this, and I can usually wait it out, usually.
‘I was just saying happy anniversary.’
‘Happy anniversary, my asshole husband who neglected me on my big day.’
We sit silent for a minute, my stomach knotting. I don’t want to be the bad guy here. I don’t deserve that. Nick stands up.
‘Well, how was it?’ I ask dully.
‘How was it? It was fucking awful. Sixteen of my friends now have no jobs. It was miserable. I’ll probably be gone too, another few months.’
Friends. He doesn’t even like half the guys he was out with, but I say nothing.
‘I know it feels dire right now, Nick. But—’
‘It’s not dire for you, Amy. Not for you, it never will be dire. But for the rest of us? It’s very different.’
The same old. Nick resents that I’ve never had to worry about money and I never will. He thinks that makes me softer than everyone else, and I wouldn’t disagree with him. But I do work. I clock in and clock back out. Some of my girlfriends have literally never had a job; they discuss people with jobs in the pitying tones you talk about a fat girl with ‘such a nice face.’ They will lean forward and say, ‘But of course, Ellen has to work,’ like something out of a No?l Coward play. They don’t count me, because I can always quit my job if I want to. I could build my days around charity committees and home decoration and gardening and volunteering, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with building a life around those things. Most beautiful, good things are done by women people scorn. But I work.
‘Nick, I’m on your side here. We’ll be okay no matter what. My money is your money.’
‘Not according to the prenup.’
He is drunk. He only mentions the prenup when he’s drunk. Then all the resentment comes back. I’ve told him hundreds, literally hundreds of times, I’ve said the words: The prenup is pure business. It’s not for me, it’s not even for my parents, it’s for my parents’ lawyers. It says nothing about us, not you and me.
He walks over toward the kitchen, tosses his wallet and wilted dollars on the coffee table, crumples a piece of notepaper and tosses it in the trash with a series of credit-card receipts.
‘That’s a shitty thing to say, Nick.’
‘It’s a shitty way to feel, Amy.’
He walks to our bar – in the careful, swamp-wading gait of a drunk – and actually pours himself another drink.
‘You’re going to make yourself sick,’ I say.
He raises his glass in an up-yours cheers to me. ‘You just don’t get it, Amy. You just can’t. I’ve worked since I was fourteen years old. I didn’t get to go to fucking tennis camp and creative-writing camp and SAT prep and all that shit that apparently everyone else in New York City did, because I was wiping down tables at the mall and I was mowing lawns and I was driving to Hannibal and fucking dressing like Huck Finn for the tourists and I was cleaning the funnel-cake skillets at midnight.’
I feel an urge to laugh, actually to guffaw. A big belly laugh that would sweep up Nick, and soon we’d both be laughing and this would be over. This litany of crummy jobs. Being married to Nick always reminds me: People have to do awful things for money. Ever since I’ve been married to Nick, I always wave to people dressed as food.
‘I’ve had to work so much harder than anyone else at the magazine to even get to the magazine. Twenty years, basically, I’ve been working to get where I am, and now it’s all going to be gone, and there’s not a fucking thing I know how to do instead, unless I want to go back home, be a river rat again.’
‘You’re probably too old to play Huck Finn,’ I say.
‘Fuck you, Amy.’
And then he goes to the bedroom. He’s never said that to me before, but it came out of his mouth so smoothly that I assume – and this never crossed my mind – I assume he’s thought it. Many times. I never thought I’d be the kind of woman who’d be told to fuck herself by her husband. And we’ve sworn never to go to bed angry. Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry – the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds. But lately it seems I am the only one who compromises; our communications don’t solve anything; and Nick is very good at going to bed angry. He can turn off his emotions like a spout. He is already snoring.
And then I can’t help myself, even though it’s none of my business, even though Nick would be furious if he knew: I cross over to the trash can and pull out the receipts, so I can picture where he’s been all night. Two bars, two strip clubs. And I can see him in each one, talking about me with his friends, because he must have already talked about me for all that petty, smeared meanness to come out so easily. I picture them at one of the pricier strip clubs, the posh ones that make men believe they are still designed to rule, that women are meant to serve them, the deliberately bad acoustics and thwumping music so no one has to talk, a stretch-titted woman straddling my husband (who swears it’s all in fun), her hair trailing down her back, her lips wet with gloss, but I’m not supposed to be threatened, no it’s just boyish hijinks, I am supposed to laugh about it, I am supposed to be a good sport.
Then I unroll the crumpled piece of notebook paper and see a girl’s handwriting – Hannah – and a phone number. I wish it were like the movies, the name something silly, CanDee or Bambie, something you could roll your eyes at. Misti with two hearts over the I’s. But it’s Hannah, which is a real woman, presumably like me. Nick has never cheated on me, he has sworn it, but I also know he has ample opportunity. I could ask him about Hannah, and he’d say, I have no idea why she gave me her number, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I took it. Which may be true. Or not. He could cheat on me and he would never tell me, and he would think less and less of me for not figuring it out. He would see me across the breakfast table, innocently slurping cereal, and know that I am a fool, and how can anyone respect a fool?
Now I am crying again, with Hannah in my hand.
It’s a very female thing, isn’t it, to take one boys’ night and snowball it into a marital infidelity that will destroy our marriage?
I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I’m feeling like a shrill fishwife, or a foolish doormat – I don’t know which. I don’t want to be angry, I can’t even figure out if I should be angry. I consider checking in to a hotel, let him wonder about me for a change.
I stay where I am for a few minutes, and then I take a breath and wade into our booze-humid bedroom, and when I get in bed, he turns to me and wraps his arms around me and buries his face in my neck, and at the same time we both say, ‘I’m sorry.’