Every Other Wednesday Page 19

  “How does he feel about the super-commute?” asked Alice, lifting a forkful of spring greens lightly dressed in balsamic vinaigrette from her plate to her mouth.

  Joan finished chewing the bite of flank steak and caramelized onion sandwich in her mouth. She would have to remember to make the sandwich at home, when the girls were around. All four of them loved steak, and Stephen was very capable at grilling. He had little interest in the preparation of food in the kitchen. But give him some beef tenderloins, a marinated pork loin, a butterflied chicken, homemade burgers, anything destined for the grill, and he was eager to help. “He’s okay with it,” said Joan. “If the bank is willing to put him up in a hotel three nights a week, it’s hard to say no.”

  “Are you okay with his working from home on Fridays?” asked Ellie.

  Joan smiled. “I am already rearranging my schedule, so that I will be gone most of the day on Fridays.” She wiped a bit of horseradish mayonnaise from the corner of her mouth. “We will need to update his home office with whatever he needs for this new role, but that should be relatively easy. He will be traveling some, too, in this job.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  Joan raised her eyebrows at Ellie. “Are you kidding? I can’t wait. Stephen and I have had a whole lot of quantity time lately; we could both use a break.”

  Ellie took a sip of water. “Chris and I have never spent a night apart from each other since we were married.”

  “What?” asked Alice.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “No weekends away, out of town funerals, business travel?” asked Joan.

  “Nope,” said Ellie, studying the sweet potato chip she held between her thumb and index finger.

  “Not a single day,” said Alice, who, after checking her phone for messages, set it back down on the table.

  “Not a single day.”

  “I can’t believe you haven’t jumped off a cliff by now,” said Joan, a smile on her face.

  Ellie’s somber face brightened. “Oh, believe me, I’ve thought about it.”

  “I can’t believe there’s no gym teacher convention in, say, Boulder, Colorado, where they could all climb a mountain while discussing childhood obesity,” said Alice.

  “He went to Hartford for a couple days last year, for the first Connecticut Physical Education Teachers’ Annual Meeting—but he came home at night, preferring to commute instead of spending the night in a hotel.”

  “Well, that’s kind of sweet,” said Alice.

  “Not really,” said Ellie. “He likes routine. He likes knowing his schedule. He likes eating what he wants to eat. He likes the coffee at home. Chris is not big on change.”

  Alice scooped the last bit of tuna salad on her plate onto her fork. “I’m not sure any man likes change,” she said. “Dave is so settled into his pattern—if he poops a half hour after his normal bathroom time, he’s in a mood.”

  Joan laughed. “Stephen likes to pour his coffee into his travel mug at exactly seven thirty. God forbid the coffee is still brewing when he needs it in his mug.”

  “Why seven thirty?” asked Ellie.

  “Because he walks out the door at seven thirty-two.”

  “So how is your man, who doesn’t like change any better than our men do, going to swing this job in New York?” asked Alice.

  Joan finished chewing her last bite and was instantly sad that her sandwich was gone. “He’s making lists, charts, diagrams—the man has never talked about Microsoft Office until two days ago. And now that’s all he talks about.”

  “Sounds fascinating,” said Alice, a grin on her face.

  “Yeah, shoot me now,” said Joan, who quickly regretted the words that had just slipped out of her mouth. She made eye contact with Ellie instead of Alice.

  Alice picked up on Joan’s evasive move. “You can look at me, Joan,” she said. “I’m not going to bend your ear about Well Protected Women.”

  Joan sat back in her chair. “Why not?”

  And Alice told her friends about the march on the state capitol, about her near arrest, about her wavering conviction. She was still interested in guns and planned on owning one as soon as her permit was approved. But she was less enthralled with the group, particularly with the leadership. They were zealots, she said, and she was not. “Does this make me a softie?” she asked. “An uncommitted amateur? An equivocal housewife?”

  “No,” said Joan, almost too quickly. She was so relieved to hear that Alice was having second thoughts about the Well Protected Women, especially after hearing about their attempt to storm the state police metal detectors. What was it about people with one track minds? “Backing away from stupidity sounds pretty smart to me.”

  “I think I know what you’re asking, Alice,” said Ellie. “Are you wondering how we define ourselves if we have no strong convictions, if we have allegiances to nothing?”

  Alice looked at Ellie and then squinted her eyes. “I think I am, Ellie. I think that’s exactly what I’m wondering.”

  “Me too,” said Ellie. “I’ve been wondering that for some time now.”

  Joan exaggerated a blink. “Educate me.”

  “It’s just another way of asking what we are doing with our lives,” said Ellie. “Now that our children have left the house, and we are no longer day to day mothers, what are we?”

  “So,” said Joan, closing one eye, “being a member of a group that breaks the law to further their personal agenda is a good thing?”

  “No,” said Ellie, “but it’s something. I’m talking about having convictions—or at least having interests. For so many years, we put whatever interests we had aside so that we could raise our children. And now we have an opportunity to rediscover these interests or to find new ones. Alice had—still has—an interest in her own protection with firearms. And she was charged up by being part of a movement. But now that she is questioning that movement, she is questioning herself. Here it is, May. Our children have been gone for almost nine months and what do we have to show for it?”

  “You’re serious,” said Joan.

  “I’m quite serious,” said Ellie. “If a man has a midlife crisis, he buys a sports car and has an affair. We should be able to go a little nuts too. But because we are so sensible and practical from mothering our kids, we do nothing. Or, if we’re kind of adventurous, we use ground turkey in our meatloaves instead of beef.”

  Alice smiled. “I’ve used ground turkey all along.”

  Ellie put down the bite of sandwich she was holding in her hand. “You can joke if you want to,” she said. “But I’m close to fifty years old, and, in some ways, I feel like my life hasn’t even started yet.”

  Joan rested her head on her intertwined fingers, elbows on the table. “How would you start it, Ellie? What do you want to do?”

  Ellie sat back in her chair, not knowing how to even start the conversation, not knowing how to say aloud that she wanted to leave her husband to pursue a lesbian relationship—even though such an announcement, not to mention a follow-through, would anger, confuse, frustrate, and disappoint everyone in her immediate and extended family. She had since childhood put everyone else’s needs before hers. “What if I want to move my needs and wants from the back of the line to the front?”

  Alice, who had just responded to a text from Linda at UConn about a care package of cookies for final exam week, put her phone back on the table. “Is that even possible for a mother?”

  Ellie pointed at Alice with the index finger of her right hand, a gesture both she and Alice had learned from Joan. “This is my point! We are mothers, yes, but not in the same way we were when our children were still home. They don’t need us like they used to. They are moving forward with their lives, which means we have an opportunity to move forward with our lives. Are you moving forward, Joan? Alice?”

  Joan looked at the check that the server had placed facedown on the table. “No,” said Joan, looking at Ellie. “I’m n
ot.”

  “I thought I was,” said Alice. “I was getting my house in order, getting organized. And then I got attacked—and that changed everything.”

  Joan, who knew she should be more sympathetic to Alice, but had wearied of her friend’s near-rape story and handgun firing chatter, quickly said, “So, the question is still on the table, Ellie. What do you want to do?”

  Ellie breathed in and out slowly, finding and then losing her courage. “Too much,” she said. “I want to do so much, but I don’t know how.”

  CHAPTER 33

  With Stephen gone during the day—for four days at a time now—Joan was able to resume her regular schedule at the casino. But after she had spent several nights in a very quiet house reading in their company-ready living room under dust free lamps or watching unsatisfactory television, Joan decided to try the casino in the evening instead of in the morning or afternoon. She promised herself she would drink only two drinks, like she always did, followed by water and coffee so driving home would not be an issue. Plus, she would not drink on an empty stomach, something she had been better about lately. On this particular evening, she made herself a roast beef and cheddar sandwich, which she worked at eating slowly while reading the newspaper until the six chimes of the clock in the hallway told her it was time to go. If she left home at six, she had discovered, she could play, drink, and talk with strangers for a couple hours, and be home by nine.

  When Joan had first started to gamble regularly, she didn’t talk much with the other players at her favorite roulette table. But as she had become more familiar with the game, she didn’t need to think as much. And some of the people who sat down next to or across the table from her sought conversation. She would give a one sentence response to the first few queries posed by fellow gamblers, but if they persisted after that, it seemed rude not to engage, at least on a superficial level. It was easy for Joan to do this, not because she was a superficial person, but because she understood the social world. The Howard women had prepared her well for casual chatter with almost anyone. The trick was to get the person to talk about herself or himself, and that was not much of a trick at all. Given the chance, and the encouragement, most people could and would talk about themselves for long periods of time, often without asking polite reciprocal questions, often without even realizing this omission.

  Occasionally someone versed in the art of conversation did his or her best to draw Joan out, either as a means to avoid revealing intimate details of his or her own life or for amusement. Those in the latter group were rarely disappointed, since Joan was well-read, witty, opinionated, and a convincing liar. Her lies were not malevolent, and she, more and more, did not even consider her stories to be anything but just that, stories. She swapped the details of her life for those of the lives of friends and acquaintances. Sometimes, she made things up—nothing farfetched or grandiose, and absolutely nothing she could get caught in. It would be bad but not impossible luck, she decided, to portray herself as, say, a skydiver to someone who had actually jumped out of a plane. She kept it simple, believable, light.

  When she sat at her usual table that evening, she barely had time to purchase chips and order a drink before a suited man in his fifties with the bloodshot eyes of someone who likes hard alcohol joined her. He sat across from her, nodded a greeting, and then ordered a single malt beverage from the waitress who had been hovering next to his right elbow. As soon as she had written his order on her rolled-top pad, she was off, fringed suede sweeping her upper thighs as she walked. The man looked at Joan. “They like to keep the booze flowing,” he said in a voice indicating that the drink he had just ordered was not his first. “Gets us to loosen up, gamble more.” He bought a thousand dollars in chips from the croupier and set six of them on the layout, all even numbers. Joan had already placed her bet, also even numbers. “What are you drinking? Vodka?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look like a vodka drinker. It’s the ladies’ choice, you know,” he said. “A subtle buzz when consumed in moderation. No odor on the breath.” The ball landed in seventeen black, and the croupier, whom Joan didn’t recognize, leaned out over the table and swept with his hands their chips into the felted hole in front of his station. “So,” said the man, setting another half dozen chips on even numbers, “what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  Joan had heard this tired question before, more than once, yet she was consistently surprised by the way it came out of a man’s mouth, him thinking, perhaps, that its utterance would produce a smile, an opening. Joan shrugged her shoulders and then launched into a story. “My husband is a comedian,” she said. “He’s in the Fox Den Theater, starting at eight.” She looked at her watch.

  “No kidding,” said the man. “You going to see the show, or is he one of those guys who doesn’t like family in the theater?”

  “I’ll watch him,” Joan said. “For a while.”

  “How’s his language,” the man asked. “Does he have a foul mouth?”

  “Pretty much comes with the territory,” said Joan. “He doesn’t talk that way at home. But on stage, he gives the people in the audience what they want. Seems the f word never loses its comedic appeal. My husband tells me that’s because it’s so versatile.”

  “Is that right? I can take or leave it myself.”

  “Then you probably wouldn’t like his show.” Suddenly bored with her own tale, Joan stood and cashed in her chips.

  “You leaving already?” asked the man, finding Joan’s eyes.

  “Yes,” said Joan, turning her back and leaving the table. She had no idea who was actually performing in the Fox Den that evening, but she was betting that watching whoever it was would be more interesting than passing the next hour with an over-served businessman. The theater, when she reached it, was closed. The show featuring a comedian Joan had never heard of didn’t start until nine, and the doors didn’t open until eight thirty. By then Joan would be on her way home. What to do for an hour, she thought. As she continued down the main corridor of the casino, she passed by a sports bar illuminated with large-screen televisions suspended from the ceiling. Seeing Red Sox players on the screens, she turned around and walked in. She’d had just one vodka soda at the roulette table; she would have her second here. Within a minute of Joan’s settling onto a barstool and rooting through her purse for her wallet, a middle aged man with thick, graying hair combed back on his head sat on the vacant stool next to her. He was dressed in tight-fitting jeans, a black turtleneck, and black leather shoes, looking part European and part like a man who had read in a men’s magazine what clothing women in their forties and fifties find attractive. Five minutes later, he had bought her a vodka soda made with Grey Goose and told her he was a Porsche, pronouncing it “porsha,” representative scoping out the area for a dealership.

  He, Phillip, no surname offered, was tall and lean. He moved slowly, with the subtle gestures of someone who has charmed other women: leaning in to listen to Joan; casually touching her elbow, her knee; buying her this delicious drink. Stephen, too, was tall, but his trimness came and went. He was not like this man, this Phillip who sold expensive cars. Stephen had the—what was the word? Doughy was too harsh. Soft?—look of someone who shunned regular exercise. He’d go on what Joan called fit kicks: run three miles every day for thirteen days and then quit; lift weights with his brothers on Saturday mornings (when it was convenient); use the TRX strap hanging in the basement that their daughter, Cassie, had given him for Christmas. It was always temporary, his interest in exercise, started with gusto and abandoned with excuses. As a result, he looked much better in clothes than naked. Joan didn’t fault him for this; after all she hardly exercised, and when she did, she was much like him, into something for a few weeks, and then out of it completely. This man, this Phillip, was not like Joan or her husband. Whatever he did to work out, she could tell that he did it five or six days a week; exercise was as much a part of his day as showering or eating. She could see his dev
eloped biceps spreading the ribbing of his shirt sleeves. His thighs filled the fabric of his dark wash jeans. Joan could tell that without clothes he would look like a marble statue of a Roman god. And she wondered what it would be like to have sex with this man.

  She had rarely thought about sex with a man other than her husband in the thirty years she had been married. She had an interest in a well built male body, but more in an aesthetic than lustful way. The fit runners that sprinted on the streets of Southwood didn’t turn her head, for instance, but the image of their taut, muscular arms and legs in motion stayed with her for a few moments after she drove past them. There had been just one man, at a bank convention ten or twelve years ago, who had tempted her. He was attractive, kempt, and fit, but what most attracted Joan to him was the attention he paid her. This came at a time when Stephen was on the fast track at the bank, which meant he not only worked long hours, but he also had a magnified sense of self-importance. At the convention, he was more interested in smoking cigars with the boys after dinner than in dancing with or talking with Joan. Terry Sullivan was interested in both dancing and talking. He was a divorced, single man at an almost exclusively married event and was grateful, he said at the time, to be seated next to such an intelligent and lovely woman the very first evening. By the second evening, Stephen had spent no more than an hour or so in the company of his wife, and Terry looked at her like she was the only woman in the room. He never solicited her, but Joan knew that if she had initiated an invitation to an intimate encounter that Terry would have eagerly consented. Now, in this sports bar, many years after her glorious three days of undivided attention from Terry, Joan again felt singled out, felt special in a world in which that very word had long ago lost its meaning.

  Abruptly aware of her appearance, Joan excused herself and went to the restroom. Looking into one of the mirrors over the row of sinks, she reapplied her lipstick and brushed her hair. She checked her teeth and removed with floss from her purse the tiniest bit of roast beef that had lodged itself between her right incisor and canine. When she walked back to her place at the bar, Phillip smiled at her. Did he know she had been preening for him? Was that what she had been doing, making herself presentable, as her mother-in-law would say, for a stranger? Joan settled onto her stool and took a long drink of her vodka. It was important to the Howard women, and thus to Joan, to be presentable. She had been making herself so every morning before she left the house since she had been engaged to Stephen. She smiled at Phillip and listened to him tell stories about the famous people he had sold cars to—the latest being the young British actor who had just won an Oscar. This led to a discussion about movies, what both of them had recently seen and what they thought about the various actors in the films. It wasn’t until Phillip changed topics, asking Joan what she did to occupy her time, other than go to the movies and watch the Red Sox in casino sports bars, that Joan lost her focus, feeling as if she had been plunged fully clothed into a swimming pool. She pulled her gaze from Phillip’s face to her drink, which now looked like two drinks. She tried to stand, but she had to lean against the bar for support. In a slow-motion flash, Phillip was at her elbow. He wrapped one arm around her waist and grabbed her coat and purse with his free hand. She looked at him as he steered her toward the exit, but she was not able to find the words to ask him where they were going. She was floating now, on the surface, feeling warm, calm, so relaxed. She was trying to remember how much alcohol she’d consumed, but she could not put a number on it. She faltered in front of an elevator.