I Liked My Life(22)

“For real?” Eve questions, skeptical.

Bobby holds up a hand. “Take everything I say, divide it by three, and it’s exactly what happened.”

They laugh until they see me standing there. “Wow,” I say. “I really know how to bring down a room.”

I expect Eve to disappear to her bedroom straightaway, but somehow the three of us end up parked in the living room listening to Bobby’s tales. They all end with an observation like, “Look at any couple where both people have a visor on and one person will also have a fanny pack.” Or, “Women tell their estheticians everything. Eve, you should know there’s no client confidentiality just because some lady did your Brazilian.” I don’t appreciate his uncouth delivery, but Eve seems to be enjoying herself.

Bobby and I are a six-pack in when he gets going on a guy who totaled a classic Corvette by self-installing a six-hundred-pound chandelier in his garage. “The wiring was old, and apparently the installation was shoddy too, because when he flipped the switch it pulverized the car.”

“Why would someone put a chandelier in a garage?” Eve asks.

Bobby’s lighthearted air evaporates. He shifts his weight on the couch and takes a sip of beer. “His wife liked them.”

“I bet his wife died.” I meant to think it, but I can tell by their faces I said it out loud.

Bobby takes another sip, bigger this time. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry, man, I forgot that part.”

“I bet they fought over it,” I continue, not wanting to put myself out there, but unable to shut up. “Now the guy understands what a waste that was, and he wants to make it up to her, but he can’t.”

I’m greeted with silence. I can read Eve’s mind; she’s wondering about my failures with Maddy, about the regret behind the tears in my eyes.

I am too. Until this moment, I’ve allowed anger to grant me absolution. Who jumps off a building? Now the chandeliers of our marriage present themselves. Who refuses to go on vacation? Who routinely comes home an hour late without calling, knowing two people are waiting to eat dinner? The epiphany would be meaningful if Maddy were here and I could do something about it, but she’s not, so I get up and head to bed. There’s no off switch once my mood sours. I need to sleep it off.

Not wanting to be left sole hostess, Eve also stands and exits without a word. I hear Bobby finish his beer in the living room before calling it a night. I’m sure he spends the time lamenting his decision to visit.

I apologize the next morning on the way to golf, but the awkwardness can’t be undone. Bobby waits until we’ve finished a Bloody Mary to attempt a serious discussion about loss, but some people aren’t wired for topics like that. Neither of us knows how to pull it off. I’m trying now with Eve, but it’s not smooth. I say things like, “I missed Mom a lot today,” or, “You sounded like your mother when you said that.” She just nods. Now, with Bobby, I take Eve’s approach and stay silent, hoping he’ll shut the hell up. But, like me, he doesn’t. On the sixth hole he says, “It must suck.”

I don’t stop walking until I get to my ball. “It does.”

“If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”

“Nah,” I reply, swinging hard. The ball goes far, but not straight. Story of my life.

“Remember the time I brought that girl from Rhode Island to your house?” Bobby asks as we head to the seventh. I nod. “When she was in the bathroom, I asked Maddy what she thought. ‘Well,’ Maddy said, all sweet-like, ‘she wears a shirt that covers her entire abdomen, so she’s better than the last girlfriend I met.’ She was a pistol, your Maddy. Funny and brutally honest. I always wish I found someone like that, you know? That I had a chance to have what you guys had.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about her, Bobby.”

He scratches his cheek. “Yeah, you did. Sorry.”

It’s a relief when Sunday comes and he leaves. I guess Eve’s comment that I had no friends was more a prophecy than a joke.





CHAPTER FIVE

Madeline

Eve was an accident. It’s hard to admit that my greatest accomplishment was thrust upon me, but it’s the truth. I was convinced women lacking strong maternal mentors had no business procreating. Friends accused me of being careless; I was not. I took that small blue pill every day at noon sharp, but Eve wanted in.

We’d been married almost three years. Our advertised stance on not having children was very sophisticated. (Or maybe self-righteous is more accurate.) We circled around topics like population growth, questioning the responsibility of adding life when we were educated enough to understand the long-term consequence on humankind. We poetically feared raising a child in a world where the most violent show on TV was the evening news. We regurgitated statistics about the pathetic state of public education, giving ourselves a pat on the back for having the foresight to not have a child who’d fall victim to it. But this hyperbole was a cover. I didn’t know the first thing about being a good mom and I was at a selfish point in life, loving the attention corporate America doled out to hardworking women in the nineties. That the pay wasn’t commensurate to the work didn’t bother me as much as it should have. It was the era of DINKs—Dual Income, No Kids. Brady and I took last-minute weekend trips, went out for nice dinners on a whim, and procured whole outfits worn by shop mannequins. We’d recently returned from Jamaica when that powerful little stick made a plus sign.