“So you didn’t save yourself for me?” On behalf of the imaginary Surya, I was feeling legitimately angry. “Where did you take your groupie?”
“We did it . . .” He stifled a yawn. “In the back of my uncle’s minivan.”
“You couldn’t even spring for a hotel room?” Unbelievable. Why did Dave have to be cheap, even in fantasies?
He flopped on his back. “You know what? Let’s forget it.”
And that had been the end of that. The truth was, in the past year, I could count the times we’d had sex on two hands . . . and I’d probably have fingers left over.
Tonight, I promised. It was, after all, his birthday. I would force all thoughts of L. McIntyre and the jerks from the comments out of my head. I would pull on my flimsiest, most tight-fitting T-shirt, and the drawstring bottoms Dave liked best. I’d light candles by the side of the bed; I’d sing “Happy Birthday to You” Marilyn Monroe style; I would do all the things he liked, just the way he liked them, and we would come back to each other and be a team, a partnership, again.
FOUR
I spent almost an hour in a pilled-up haze, styling my hair, applying my makeup, squeezing myself into a dress with a built-in belt that made it seem like I still had a shape. Even the five minutes it took me to wrestle myself into my Spanx weren’t so terrible.
“Oh, you look beautiful!” our sitter, Katrina, said as I came down the stairs, while Eloise narrowed her eyes. I was carrying my pair of Jimmy Choos, one of the few surviving relics from my single-lady days, in one hand.
“When will you be BACK?”
“Not too late. It’s a school night.”
“Why aren’t you taking me?” Her lower lip quivered. “I want to go out to dinner!”
“No, you don’t. This place only has fish,” I lied. Ellie’s face crumpled. “I’ll bring you a dessert,” I promised . . . and then, before her pique could swell into a full-blown tantrum, I brushed a kiss on her forehead and trotted out to the car, feeling a pang of guilt at my broken promise about not driving. Dave would drive us home, I told myself . . . and, at this point, sad to say, I had enough of a tolerance that even the new medication didn’t seem to be hitting me too hard. It was just making me feel unguardedly wonderful, like life was a delicious lark, full of possibilities, all of them good. So what if a few online meanies had jerky things to say about me? Tonight was my husband’s birthday. We would celebrate with our friends, share a delicious meal, fall asleep in each other’s arms, and wake up in the morning once more, one hundred percent, a couple.
Cochon was a tiny BYOB in our old neighborhood, one of our longtime favorites. With its black-and-white-checked floors, café tables, and framed Art Deco posters on pumpkin-colored walls, it looked Parisian . . . or as Parisian as you could get in Philadelphia. As I pulled my Prius to the curb, I saw David waiting inside by the hostess stand with his phone pressed to his ear. My heart started hammering. I wondered if he was chatting with L. McIntyre, and made myself promise that I wouldn’t bring anything up until we were alone and, preferably, after I’d spoken to Janet. No dropping the bomb, and no drinking, I told myself sternly as I struggled to parallel park, a skill I’d lost almost entirely since our move to the burbs.
As I backed into the curb for the second time, I watched Dave through the window. He turned his back to end his call and put the phone back in his pocket. While he walked outside, I extricated myself from the driver’s seat. It took a little while, given that my undergarments made it hard for me to breathe and my gorgeous shoes were half a size smaller than what I usually wore now. Damn clogs, I thought.
“Happy birthday,” I said once I reached him, and handed off the bag containing six bottles of wine to the hostess.
Dave’s hands were in his pockets, his stylish canvas messenger bag—the one I’d had made for his last birthday—was slung over his shoulder, and his jaw was already bluish, even though he’d shaved that morning. In his best blue suit, he was so handsome, I thought, feeling a wave of nostalgia, and sadness. I knew all of his quirks and failings, his hairy hands and short, stubby fingers, his toes oddly shaped, the nails so thick he needed special clippers to cut them. I knew the sound he made when he ground his teeth, deep in sleep; how he’d sometimes skim the first paragraphs of a story or chapters of a book and then claim he’d read it; the name of the boy at his high school who’d stolen his backpack and thrown it into the girls’ locker room; and how he cried every time he read The World According to Garp. I knew him so well, and I loved him so much. Why had I pushed him away that last time in bed, and the time before that, and the time before that? What woman wouldn’t want him? What was wrong with me?