We haven't had sex in eleven months. Just shy of a year.
More time than it takes to grow a human being. I know it was
eleven months ago for two reasons: one, it was on our
wedding anniversary and on wedding anniversaries sex is a
given and two, the next night was the incident with the
family room light. I was reading a book about a missionary
family in Africa I ordered after Oprah plugged it. I keep
track of what I read on my calendar and plus I remember
wishing it weren't our wedding anniversary because I was at
the good part but instead I had to pretend I didn't know Bob
was simply going through the motions required of husbands
celebrating their wedding anniversaries.
So there we were the following night, in the second floor
room that is, after the kitchen, the nerve center of our
house. Bob was at the computer in the corner searching eBay
for tennis rackets even though it'd end up costing more for
one on eBay when you factor in the shipping and handling.
"Why don't you just go to Sportmart?" I'd asked earlier in
the evening.
"I'm looking for the old wooden ones," he said without
looking up. "The old Wilsons."
I shrugged and went back to my book. I became so engrossed I
remember looking up and feeling shock that no, I wasn't in a
civil war in the Congo, I was actually in my tidy
three-story house on Chicago's North Side. I remember
smiling and thinking I love it when that happens. When a
book's so good you forget who and where you are.
I'd heard Bob sighing and pushing back from the family desk
littered with half-finished homework, field-trip permission
slips and school reminders on brightly colored paper. He
crossed the room and flicked off the light as he left and it
took me calling "hey" for him to come back, switch it back
on with an "oh, sorry, I forgot you were there." The worst
part was he wasn't doing it to prove some point. He truly
forgot I was in the room with him. Which is exactly the
point. We haven't had sex since.
I know it seems like a silly thing, the light incident. But
everyone has that final straw, that moment of clarity when
you can't put your finger on it, you just know there's been
a shift, a ripple in the atmosphere. The little things have
added up and finally you can't take it anymore. We've been
quietly drifting into our own worlds for a while, Bob and I.
I've just been ignoring it. Up until now. And I can't take
it anymore.
Just last week I got buttermilk for the pancakes I decided
to make for no real reason. A special treat. I felt like
making an effort for once. I got the buttermilk because I
know Bob likes it when the pancakes are richer. Swanky
pancakes he used to say in a tone that thanked me for
going the extra mile back when something like buttermilk was
considered going the extra mile. Last week not only did he
not notice we were having something other than cold
cereal, but when I carefully slid a stack from the spatula
onto a plate waved me off and he said, "None for me. There's
that construction on Irving Park so we've gotta get going.
C'mon, guys."
Our eight-year-old sons, Jamie and Andrew, were still
chewing when they grabbed their shin guards and soccer
cleats. Sometimes I wonder if they really are twins, they're
so different in looks and personality. Jamie moves slowly
and deliberately like he's thought out every step he takes.
Before breakfast he lined up his guards and shoes neatly by
the backdoor. He put out two bottles of water, just to the
side. He remembers the second one because Andrew never does.
Jamie has freckles across his nose. His skin is so milky
white you can see blue veins through it. His delicate
features I think will translate into a refined face later
on. He is small for eight and many people assume he is
younger than his brother. Andrew is solid and stocky with
thick brownish-red hair and a Dennis the Menace
cowlick. He is exactly what you think of when you think
of an eight-year-old boy: messy, unkempt, fearless. If he
falls down and cuts his lip he spits the blood out and keeps
going. He's got a short attention span but he was tested for
ADHD and came up clean. I've had to tell Jamie not to pick
up after his brother, which he does on the sly because he
can't bear to see his twin in trouble. In trouble Jamie
looks wounded. Andrew just tips his head back to roll his
eyes at the ceiling and sighs at the futility of parental
warnings. Nothing gets through to Andrew; everything gets
through to Jamie.
"You know which field it is, right?" I ask Bob.
"I know which field," he says, annoyed but pausing for a
sneeze of a second while he considers double checking.
"I'm just saying. It's changed this season and you haven't
been yet. Boys, you know which way to go, right? Take a
right from the parking lot and go over the hill, remember?
Show Dad the way, will you?"
"Bye, Mom!" Andrew calls out.
"Tie your shoes, Andrew. Bob, get him to tie them up before
he gets out of the car. He'll trip."
"Yeah yeah yeah, tie your shoes," Bob says. "Let's go guys."
The soccer ball is wedged between his arm and ribs. He drops
the keys and bends like a pregnant woman to pick them up,
careful not to tip the plastic grocery-store platter of
doughnuts I got for halftime.
"Don't forget the dry cleaning on the way back," I tell him.
"Hey—you want steak for dinner? I'm going to the market."
"Yeah, fine, whatever. Jamie, get a move on, kiddo," he says
from the door to the garage.
Our backdoor opens to a stone path Bob and I laid when we
first moved in almost twenty years ago. We were house poor
but thrilled to own in what was then an up-and-coming
neighborhood. We'd brought a boom box out back and played
the only radio station that came in. Jazz music. I lost
steam halfway through the job that was supposed to take only
a day but stretched out over two whole weekends because the
pavers we'd chosen were mismatched. There were countless
trips to and from the outdoor landscaping center. The second
Saturday I lay back on the grass in the sun listening to
Miles Davis and Bob whistling then cursing. I remember
staring up at the clouds like a kid, smiling at life. We had
a great house, there was a light breeze and I was lying on
land we owned, my bare feet on our grass. I
remember shading my eyes to watch Bob with a mathematician's
concentration size up stone after stone over the shallow
hole he had dug. His college T-shirt was new then. It was a
Squeeze concert tee from when they played on campus. Our
second or third date. Sophomore year. Boston College. 1981.
After the concert we got drunk at a keg party at his
friends' off-campus house.
I was all over him back then. I thought it was sweet that he
wanted to take it slow. He said I was different. He said he
didn't just want sex, he wanted to "go the distance." He
said he didn't want to do anything to "mess us up." So we
took it slow. We fooled around but nothing major. We slept
squeezed into my single bed under my Marimekko comforter to
the smell of ramen noodles and beer. I remember wishing he
weren't so sloppy a kisser, but I figured it'd get better
over time. It never did get better, but I figured there were
more important things in life than having to wipe my mouth
with the back of my hand after kissing him.
Our friends loved being with us because we weren't the kind
to couple off and make the single ones feel worse for being
single. We were the fun ones. We went to parties and split
up to talk with this friend and that—we didn't need to be
together every second. In fact, it was not uncommon for us
to go a few days without seeing one another. Like during
midterms. Still, we'd always know where the other one was.
We had our schedules memorized. Sometimes I'd wait for him
after his sports-medicine class and get coffee at the
student center cafeteria filled with flyers with roommates,
band members, used books, tutoring. We had so much in common
there was very little learning curve. We were both from
Chicago, we'd both gone to parochial high schools, we were
both only children. My best friend—my freshman roommate,
Lynn—became his best friend. We double-dated with Lynn and
her various boyfriends. When she found herself in between
boys Bob fixed her up with his friend Patel from Delhi,
India, but she can be embarrassingly difficult if she
doesn't like someone and she didn't like Patel and Bob swore
he'd never fix her up again but he did because I begged him
to and finally she clicked with Michael who she ended up
marrying and Bob was best man and I was maid-of-honor and it
was all perfect. Storybook. We got married when Lynn and
Mike got back from their honeymoon. We laughed and said we
were like Fred and Ethel and Lucy and Ricky. Then we'd argue
about who got to be Lucy and Ricky and who had to be Fred
and Ethel. I'd imagined we'd live in houses next door to one
another. Lynn and I would quit our jobs to raise our kids
together. We'd have coffee after carpool-ing. Bob would play
weekly pickup games with Mike and they'd talk about how cool
their wives were. I imagined Bob and me spooning every night
like we'd done in my dorm room. I wanted the white-picket
fence. I was sure we'd have children, but at the time, being
so young, I felt indifferent about it.
But somewhere in there I had doubts. I began to worry on the
honeymoon actually. We were happy in the Caribbean, Jet
Skiing, parasailing, snorkeling, sunset booze cruises with
other honeymooners, but I started to notice we were running
out of things to talk about. Like we'd had a set amount of
sentences in the bank and by the time the honeymoon rolled
around that savings account was empty.
On the beach one afternoon, gloomy clouds turned day into
night and dumped rain like they were punishing us. It
happened so quickly we didn't have time to rush to the car,
so we waited it out under our rented Heineken umbrella that
was as useless at shielding us from the tropical shower as
it was from the brutal white sun.
"Are you upset about something?" I asked him. "You've been
so quiet."
He shrugged and stared out at the kidney clouds.
"What is it?" I asked him. "I'm freezing—will you pass me
the extra towel in the bag?"
He was mechanical. His arm bent at the elbow, dipping into
the bag on his right, clutching the towel, passing it across
to me on his left like claw-a-stuffed-animal machines at
supermarket entrances.
"It's just…" he said, fixing his eyes at the clouds rolling
away to refill themselves. "This is it."
"Wait, what? What're you talking about? Are you freaking
out? Do you wish we hadn't gotten married or something?
Here, get under the towel." I pressed closer into him.
"Aren't you cold?"
"I'm fine. Forget it. It's stopping. Want to go back to the
hotel?"
"What does ‘this is it' mean?"
He said, "Just forget it, okay? Forget it," with a
rattlesnake's venom, so I backed off. I was young and
figured it'd all work itself out. I thought it was a gloomy
rainy day kind of mood.
I did wonder why we weren't in the bedroom more. Our room
had a king-size bed with big fluffy pillows and equally soft
robes in the closet. Turn-down service included rose petals
sprinkled on the bed. The hotel catered to honeymooners.
Lots of finger foods. Chocolate-covered strawberries. I
chalked his mood up to being exhausted from the swirl of
wedding planning. Bob's always been an active guy so I knew
going in it wouldn't be a languid lie-on-the-hammock kind of
trip. On the last night of the trip we went to a tiki-hut
bar on the beach. We got a bucket of beer and listened to
the steel-drum band, nodding to the beat, looking out at the
ocean. Bob moved from beer to scotch. I'd only seen him
drink scotch once when he was with his fraternity brothers
at a homecoming party senior year. We watched the sunset. He
jingled the ice cubes and drained the rest of his drink,
holding up the glass to signal the waiter for another. I
went to the bathroom, washed my hands, looked into the
mirror and thought, I think I just made a huge mistake.
There was no one to talk to about this but I worried. I
worried and worried and worried myself into a thick inertia
that kept me canceling plans with Lynn and Mike for nearly
two weeks after we'd gotten home. I hadn't wanted Lynn
reading my mind.
The stone path isn't a straight line. We thought it would be
prettier winding to the garage like a miniature Yellow Brick
Road. Now we all use the direct route across the grass. Lynn
and Mike bought a house two streets over in our tree-lined
neighborhood that feels like the suburbs but is just a few
minutes from downtown Chicago. The two- and three-story
houses on our street are similarly designed with small
squares of grass, front porches, patios, decks and grass out
back. Two-car garages that open to a long narrow alley that
requires a tap on the horn and a wave to someone waiting
politely to back out. Barbecues with large spatulas and
tongs. Brick chimneys. Wreaths and roping in winter.
American flags in summer. Indian corn in the fall. On any
given week there can be three, four visits from Boy Scouts
selling wrapping paper or magazine subscriptions, clipboards
held by crunchy-granola college kids wanting to save the
planet, a local guy down on his luck offering to clean up
leaves with a flimsy rake he carries with him from house to
house. In the winter he comes to shovel snow off our short
walkways up from the sidewalk. He says we can pay him
whatever we think it's worth.