Nine Women, One Dress(27)
A woman leaving the inner sanctum interrupted my thought. I was up next. A few minutes later Anna appeared. I was slightly taken aback to see that she looked close to my age. She reached out a strong hand to greet me. I suddenly felt a bit uncomfortable, as undercover work isn’t really my thing. Plus this undercover work meant being naked in front of a stranger. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was doing this for Caroline, for all the wives out there whose husbands are screwing the masseuse. I followed Anna into a darkened room that smelled like lilacs. She told me to undress and get up on the table facedown, then left the room again. I kept my thong on, so as not to feel completely vulnerable, and slid under the white sheet. I was glad to be facedown—much easier for me to interrogate her from that direction.
She came back in and turned on a white-noise machine set to ocean waves. I thought about how badly I needed to relax and considered forgetting the investigation, taking this massage just for me and making another appointment for next week. But I thought of poor Caroline. She had told me that today was their anniversary and the thought of smiling and making nice all night was killing her. She said that she was close to just giving up and leaving him without the proof she needed to break the prenup. Twelve years of marriage, and she would leave with half of what he earned as a professor at Columbia. The injustice made me rally.
I came at Anna from every angle, from “So, are you married?” to “Do you feel weird massaging a man?” all the way to “Has a client ever made a pass at you?” She answered no to every question. That’s it—no opinions, no elaborations. Just no. She wasn’t the chatty type, and it didn’t seem like any confession would be forthcoming. As she worked on the knot in my right shoulder I tried to think of questions requiring more than one-word answers. But it was infinitely easier to relax than to concentrate. Done with my shoulders, she put more oil on her hands and came around to the side of the table. She rubbed her hands briskly together and worked on my left hip from above and below. As she did, she pressed her hand into the scar from the emergency C-section I’d had when I gave birth to my twins nearly eight years ago. Within seconds I found myself crying.
She noticed my tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head. She hadn’t at all. And it wasn’t the memory of the C-section that made me cry, though remembering the moment when my birthing plans had gone out the window as I was rushed away for surgery had certainly brought tears to my eyes before.
No, I was crying because I suddenly realized that hers were the only hands aside from my own ever to have touched that scar. I had my girls for both of us, Derek and me. I was brave as it was happening, and equally brave during the months of healing that followed. But Derek always looked at my scar with slight distaste, as if the sacrifice had been mine alone. I wished then and I wished now that I’d married the kind of man who would have loved my scar. Who would have traced it with the tips of his fingers before kissing me and telling me that I was beautiful. I don’t remember Derek telling me that once after the twins were born. Some scars never heal.
I was silent for the rest of the session, but my mind wasn’t. I wondered if I would ever be part of a couple again. I had yet to meet a man that I trusted enough to even show my scar to. I’d had a few flings right after my divorce, but getting close to another man wasn’t on my divorce to-do list. That’s what I call it. After my divorce I made a list of all the things I’d ever thought of wanting to do when I was married that I never could do. You know, those illicit thoughts that run through the mind of every married woman about things they never got around to before they jumped the broom. I married young, basically going from my parents’ home to my marital one. I didn’t get much out of my system pre–wedded bliss, and unlike my ex, I wouldn’t have dreamed of breaking my vows. My only dream was to have a happy, loving marriage. When that failed, I needed to find an upside, and doing all the things a married woman can’t do was the only upside I could think of. And it really did help. For those of my clients whose cases result in divorce, I always recommend the divorce to-do list.
The first step, as I advise all future divorcées, is to sell the engagement ring and take a trip with the proceeds. My ring, a two-and-a-half-carat empire cut, didn’t yield as much as I expected—it turned out the ring was as flawed as the man who gave it to me—but when I threw in the diamond wedding band, the spoils of my spoiled marriage got me through the first item on my list: a solo trip to Sicily. There I spent the week with a beautiful Italian, the second item on my list. He didn’t speak English, but we managed to communicate just fine. Back home I followed up that decadent week with a couple of one-night stands and a three-month fling with a much younger jazz musician whom I met on his cigarette break (yes, I briefly took up smoking again) outside of Minton’s jazz club in Harlem. He played the bass nearly as well as he played me, and I learned that even with all that extramarital practice, Derek wasn’t a very good lover. These flings were just for fun, though. I never introduced anyone to my girls, and mostly only saw the men when the girls were with Derek. I didn’t need a boyfriend to make me happy, just them—to me the best nights involved the three of us seeing a Broadway musical or even just singing along to one at home in our pajamas. I was happiest when I was with them, and soon I tossed my list in the trash, satisfied that I had sowed my oats.