“Well, I have a tutu!” I squeaked next, shoving the second dress in front of the first one.
“But I am the favorite!” I said, in the persona of dress number three, a yellow-and-orange tie-dyed number that I’d picked up at a craft fair in Vermont, where Dave and I had gone for Columbus Day weekend two Octobers ago. We’d run a race together—well, Dave had run the 10K, and I’d started off the 5K at an ambitious trot, which had slowed to a stroll, the better to enjoy the foliage and the smell of smoke in the air. When no one was looking. I’d tucked ten dollars into my running bra, and when I was sure I was the last person in the race I’d stopped at a stand and bought a cider doughnut. We’d spent the night in a gorgeous old inn, and slept in a four-poster bed set so far off the floor that there was a miniature set of stairs on each side. Dinner had been in a restaurant built in a former gristmill, at a table overlooking a stream—roast duck in a dark cherry sauce, a bottle of red wine so rich and smooth that even I, who enjoyed things like piña coladas, knew it was something special. There’d been cream puffs with chocolate sauce and glasses of port for dessert. The innkeepers had lit a fire in the fireplace in our bedroom, and left out a box of chocolates and a bottle of Champagne. I remember climbing into that high bed, and Dave saying, “Let’s do it like we’re Pilgrims.”
“What’s that mean?”
He gathered me into his arms, kissed my forehead, then each cheek, then my lips, slowly and lingeringly. “You lie there and don’t make any noise, like you’re just trying to endure it.”
“So, the usual.”
“Oh, you,” he said, flashing his white teeth in a grin, sliding his hand up the white lace-trimmed nightgown that I’d bought for the occasion. We made love, and then slept for fourteen hours, our longest stretch since Ellie had joined us, and then we ordered room-service waffles and sausage for breakfast, and made love again. We spent the rest of the day walking around the quaint little town, holding hands, buying maple candies and painted wooden birdhouse.
This had been before the Examiner’s first layoffs, before everyone who’d been eligible for the buyout had been persuaded—or, in some cases, strongly encouraged—to take the money and go. Now, instead of three reporters covering City Hall, there was just one, just Dave. Instead of leaving the house at nine, he left at eight, then seven-thirty, and I rarely saw him home before eight o’clock at night. On weekends he’d be either hunched over his computer or pounding out miles around Kelly Drive. When we were first married, we’d had sex three or four times a week. Post-baby, that dwindled to three or four times a month . . . and that was a good month. Sometimes it felt as if I’d gone to the hospital, given birth, then lifted my head five years later to find that my husband and I were barely speaking, and that sex with him was at the very end of a very long to-do list, instead of something that I actively wanted and missed.
Part of me thought this was normal. Certainly I’d read and overheard plenty about post-baby bed death. I knew that the passion of the early years didn’t last over the length of the union, but lately I’d started to wonder: If we weren’t talking, what was he not telling me? And who might he be talking to? The truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers, or his secrets, any more than I wanted him to know mine.
“Mommy? Oh, Mommmm-eeee.” Ellie was wiggling her fingers in front of my face, then trying hard and, so far, without success, to snap them.
“Sorry,” I said.
She pointed at the dresses. “Make them fight!”
“Pick me!” I squeaked, shaking one of the dresses so it looked like it was having a seizure. “No, me!” Using both of my hands and skills that would have impressed a puppeteer, I maneuvered the dresses, making them wrestle and punch. Finally, Ellie pointed at the tie-dyed dress. “I will wear she to school this morning, and she”—an imperious nod toward the purple one—“when I get home for my snack.”
“In your face! IN YOUR FACE!” I chanted, making the winning dress taunt the other two as the losers hung their hanger heads. I found red tights and located one of Ellie’s favored lace-up leopard-print high-top sneakers under her bed, and the other one in the bathroom. “Wait here,” I said, and trotted into the bedroom for my shoes. It was 7:18. I pulled my wet hair away from my face and secured it with a plastic clip, grabbed my phone, and clicked on the link that read—ugh—LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT, IN CYBERSPACE: A NEW GENERATION OF WOMEN WRITERS SHARE (AND SHARE) ON THE INTERNET.
Typical, I thought, and shook my head. It was an old reporter’s trick—call your subject and say, “I’m so interested in what you do!” Of course, “interested in” could mean anything from “impressed with” to “disgusted by.” Judging from that headline, I strongly suspected the latter.