She can feel it getting harder. Softer than usual, but hard enough. Kids, she hollers, Jell-O’s ready!
Davy scrambles downstairs, his round face sweaty, his brush-cut bristling. Wendy hustles from behind, her eyes anxious, as always, that whatever she wants will be consumed by her older brother before she gets there.
Did you make the raspberry? says Wendy.
She said she would, says Davy, who, like his lawyer father, always remembers what has been negotiated.
With the little marshmallows? says Wendy.
Yes, says her mother.
And the itty-bitty oranges?
Yes, Wendy.
Wendy’s cheeks puff out with satisfaction as the raspberry Jell-O with the little marshmallows and the itty-bitty oranges is placed before her. Cynthia brushes her daughter’s hair back over her shoulders, away from the Jell-O, and kisses her sweet-smelling head. She understands completely: The girl just wants some control.
Cynthia’s old work-friends still ask How can you stand to be home with kids all day? I never had time to pee by myself. I had to get back to the office. Cynthia wouldn’t go back to Smith, Thornton & Boyle on a bet; Mr. Thornton standing over her desk, Cindy, have you finished summarizing the depositions from Bradley Industries yet? Judge Kleinman moved the trial up to Wednesday. Talk about no time to pee.
In her home she is the Mommy-goddess: dinner is at six, No you may not have an Oreo, baths are at seven, Goodnight Moon at seven-thirty. Once Wendy was out of diapers the evenings were clockwork. Having Dave out of town all week, that was tough at first, they’d fought about it: Does the client really have to have counsel on-site five days a week? Yes, the client does. Remind old man Thornton you have a family. He remembers.
It was still difficult; she couldn’t deny it but wouldn’t complain. But even this schedule had its compensations: evenings she could finish the laundry, plan the next day’s activities, read in the bathtub. Weekends Dave was tired but still game for family trips to the park or the zoo. Weekend nights were a bit of a honeymoon; she would cook something special, they’d have wine, Dave was more passionate and solicitous than when he’d been home all the time.
But lately, Cynthia has to admit, their weekends are growing decidedly less honeymoon-like. At first she attributes it to fatigue; all that driving, all those hours sifting through client files—she can hardly expect Ralph Fiennes to come home every Friday night. Then she tries keeping Dave from that third glass of wine. Finally she takes a merciless look at herself: No, she tells herself, naked in the full-length mirror, she jogs, she swims—that’s not a bad rear-end for a 36-year-old mother of two. It’s Dave. Not that he’s any less interested, no, that’s not it. He’s just less . . . able.
He is not the most romantic of men, she knows. Dave brings to love what he brings to law—thoroughness, determination—he prides himself on a job well done. He always grins as she drifts off, her freckled cheeks flushed, knowing her groggy satisfaction is a result of his efforts, that no more can be asked of him, the issue settled.
But now he cannot face her in the dark, waiting.
One Saturday night, as he turns away from her again, Cynthia says to Dave’s broad, slightly hairy back that they can talk about this. Maybe he should see his doctor; it’s 1999, there are pills now for his problem. He says nothing. The next weekend she brings it up and receives only the smallest of grunts. Weeks and then months go by and she is untouched, unloved.
Cynthia has never been a woman of extreme appetites. Her roommates in college complained of sleepless nights when their boyfriends were away; one kept a device on her nightstand that sounded like an electric toothbrush and looked like a carrot with a skin condition. Cynthia was no prude; there had been several men before Dave. She was an enthusiastic participant. But her own desire snuck up on her, a welcome but unexpected guest. Men were so needy, so desperate; they never left time for her more subtle feelings to overtake her.
Perversely, the very unavailability of it arouses her. She finds naughty thoughts intruding throughout the day: as she spreads peanut butter in slow, deliberate swirls, as she smoothes the cool, peach-colored sheets over their king-size bed, in the sandbox, letting the late-afternoon sand spill through her fingers, onto her bare legs. It gets out of hand; anything vaguely cylindrical brings on a flush. A trip to the supermarket becomes an erotic adventure—cans, cartons, certain kinds of pasta—the produce section (Davy, put the zucchini down) leaves her positively sticky.
She is short with the children. The delight she took in running a well-managed household is swallowed up in tension. Weekends are impossible. Something must be done.
Relief, when it comes, is from an unexpected source. Cynthia gets nowhere with Dave until he sees a full-page ad for the pills she mentioned, featuring a man who had run for president, a Republican, like Dave, endorsing the product. Why the endorsement of an also-ran, a man who couldn’t quite accomplish what he set out to do, makes all the difference is beyond her. But it sends Dave to the doctor, and that’s something.
The evening after his appointment Dave comes to bed wearing the familiar but long-lost grin. When he slides in next to her she is prodded in the hip by its source; she can’t remember him ever so distended. And with a firmness that recalls those over-eager college boys. Only Dave is no college boy—he knows what to do with it, what she likes. He nudges her onto her side, her back to him, and scissors her legs apart. Perhaps it is his new-found tumescence, perhaps the long conjugal drought, but Cynthia, always wordless in bed, cannot keep Oh baby from slipping out as he slips in.
The little blue pills change everything. They go at it on weekends like newlyweds—standing, sitting, kneeling. Dave brings home the Illustrated Kama Sutra and they try out the “rampant snow leopard,” the “fragrant spring lotus,” and several other improbable ways for his lingam to “make congress” with her yoni, pausing only when Cynthia pulls a groin muscle attempting to become the “majestic arc of heaven.”
It has been a long-standing joke between them, how their children could sleep through a nuclear attack. They now test that hypothesis, doing it on the couch in the living room, on the butcher block in the kitchen, on the washer/dryer during the spin cycle.
Dave, Cynthia gasps, looking up from their beige shag carpet, from her position as the lower half of the “divine see-saw,” what if Davy wakes up? He fell out of bed that time, remember? But her husband doesn’t hear her, only their nether regions making contact, their heads poles apart, facing opposite directions. She twists her neck around, catching a slice of Dave’s cheek and forehead, gone scarily red, the color of Wendy’s beloved raspberries. Dave, she says, but his focus is unshakeable. If Davy walks in, she thinks. There isn’t enough therapy in the world for that. But then her pelvis is lifted up, her body tilts upward on the divine fulcrum, and the planet, for a moment, tilts with her, and she is unable to think at all.
Cynthia has Wendy in the bathtub making bubble-beards when Dave comes home, unexpectedly, that first Wednesday night. Baths are a flashpoint with Wendy, who cannot tolerate having her head manipulated while her mother washes her hair. With sufficient suds, Cynthia has learned, the girl forgets to fuss.
Who am I? asks Wendy.
Santa Claus, says Cynthia.
Wendy pauses, frowns in thought. Right, she says, beaming.
Dave sticks his head in the bathroom. How’d Abe Lincoln get in the bathtub?
Wendy giggles. Honey, says Cynthia, what a surprise.
Took the puddle-jumper, he says, looking weary but wide-eyed, caffeinated. Wanted to see my girls. Where’s the boy?
Pokémon video, says Cynthia with an apologetic smile.
Speaking of videos. He wiggles his eyebrows. I got something for later.
Dave’s video doesn’t feature furry little creatures performing super-human feats, but superannuated schoolgirls in short plaid skirts who like their pizza delivered hot. Directed by a woman Dave assures her, when Cynthia looks at him, doubtfully, mid-way through the first delivery, when it becomes clear that no pizza will be consumed in the course of this film. It is not the sort of thing she goes for, random coupling. She prefers something more old-fashioned and indirect, like that scene where Paul Henreid slips the cigarette from his mouth and hands it to Bette Davis, who captures it between glossy lips, taking a long, slow drag, smoke curling out her nostrils. And it isn’t like Dave, either, not the Dave she knows, who’s upset when they’re late for church, who still blushes when she catches him looking at another woman’s legs.
Cynthia indulges him, though, and is rewarded for it later. But she can’t lose herself in it this time, not with images from Pizza Girls flashing through her head. Who is this demon lover? she wonders, watching Dave labor over her, his skin ruddy, scorching—side-effects of those pills—his eyes working furiously behind his lids.
Wednesday nights are stolen time for Dave—twelve brief hours off-task mid-week—and it seems to Cynthia that he slinks into the house those early evenings, furtively, catching the rest of the family off-guard, interrupting their routines. His attempts to re-insert himself into the rhythm of their lives are awkward—inviting Davy to kick the soccer ball around when his son, who tends towards hyperactivity, needs to be settling down for the night. Cynthia wants to appreciate Dave’s effort but can’t help showing irritation at his missteps, can’t really explain why they are missteps, the same way she can’t explain turning him down when he offers to take the family to Pizza Hut.
There is something wolfish, too, in the expectant smiles he gives her—grimaces, almost—when they finally hear the children snoring upstairs. The pills take an hour or so to kick in and, when his timing’s off, he prowls downstairs, coming up behind her as she loads the dishwasher, pressing into her like one of Wendy’s half-inflated beach toys: Mommy, wanna go to the pool now.
It’s been flattering being the object of so much desire—at thirty-six, nine years married, having nursed two babies—she’s felt again like the perky paralegal who was the cause of so much envious speculation at the Smith, Thornton water-cooler. But now this strange man is skulking about the house late at night, pill-engorged, referring to his erect self in third person, as Little Dave (Little Dave is hungry, Little Dave wants a snack), forgetting, apparently, that he has a son who sometimes answers to that name.
One Wednesday night he comes to bed with nothing on but a neatly-folded dish towel draped over Little Dave, making Big Dave look like a naked waiter with a small third arm.
Dinner, madam, he says, is served.
Dave?
Honey, he says to her. Honey?
It’s supposed to be a good thing, she knows, good news. That’s terrific, darling, would be the proper response, that’s wonderful. But there’s a tightness in her stomach and in her throat and a pooling of saliva that only allows shgreat to come out. Cynthia hangs up the phone unsteadily, missing the hook the first time, nearly braining Wendy, tugging at her skirt, demanding a raspberry Popsicle. What kind of wife, what kind of mother, doesn’t want her husband, the father of her children, back home full-time?
She pushes Wendy in closer to the table and hands her a Popsicle and a bowl to eat it over. Walking into the bathroom, snatching dirty towels from the rods, she slips over Dave’s socks and boxers and swipes them off the floor. Since he’s been home half-weeks the thought has recurred, how much housework he generates, how much, hefty paycheck aside, he’s like a third child. She holds the boxers up. Go BIG Red! they say across the front, scarlet lettering on gold, the colors of his alma mater. Looking at the BIG running down the placket, Cynthia can still see Little Dave poking through the opening last night, drawing nearer and nearer, a heat-seeking missile, as she sat on the edge of the bed combing her hair. What a baby Dave was when she said she was tired. Waste of a pill, he muttered, lumbering into the bathroom, sulking like a schoolboy who has done the assignment but still isn’t getting credit.
Cynthia opens the lid to the toilet, sees that the water is getting lighter blue, makes a note to pick up more Ti-D-Bowl. She kneels, sniffs, snaps on rubber gloves, shakes some cleanser around the base, begins scrubbing. One thing when Dave gets home, he’ll have to teach his son to aim. She scrubs, sniffs, scrubs, sniffs. Jesus—can’t males smell their own urine? Are they marking their territory? She scrubs harder, faster. Damn Dave, she scratches her nose with her forearm, damn him and his little blue pills. It pisses—ha!—her off, one pill and—Voila!—instant hard-on! It has nothing to do with her, with them. And once he pops one, no, they can’t be wasted, mustn’t waste a perfectly good erection.
Wendy bawls from the kitchen that she needs a second Popsicle and Cynthia goes to her, seeing that she’s wearing most of the first. Yes, she can have one more, but she’ll have to change that T-shirt after and wear a bib next time. No, she is not a baby, but this is not a laundromat.
New white T-shirt—what was she thinking? Knowing it will have to soak, Cynthia finishes gathering the colors, drops them in the washer, plopping the boxers on top. At least he’ll have to ration them now, she thinks, the doctor would prescribe only so many a month. She swirls in detergent, punches the start button. Or was it what insurance would cover? Dave wasn’t one for spending more than necessary, not even on the rare occasions when he bought groceries.
She takes a load out of the dryer, begins folding it on top of the machine. Things have to get back to normal, now that he’s home. He’s been under so much stress. And he doesn’t have many outlets. She pictures Dave at a table in the basement of that warehouse, bent down under fluorescent lights, his face pale as mashed potatoes, sleeves rolled up his beefy forearms, reviewing stacks of documents from Bielsky, et al v. Formatics Molding, a class action suit involving defective aluminum siding sealants. Cynthia looks out the window at their backyard, the garden, the sandbox. She rubs that cord on the right side of her neck, the one that tightens when she forgets sunscreen and the kids come in pink, or when she doesn’t leave time to shop and they eat McNuggets two nights in a row.
Back to normal. She takes the neat stacks of clothes, puts them in the basket, heads for their bedroom. What, when, was normal? Before this out-of-town case, when, two or three times a month, kids asleep and dishes done, she’d flounce into the den in the pink teddy he’d gotten her for Valentine’s Day and he’d count himself lucky to miss the second half of the game? Or earlier still, before kids, before marriage, when they were Smith, Thornton’s hottest secret, on that beach in Martinique, when Dave declared he’d die a happy man if he could go like this, smoothing baby oil on her back?
Cynthia opens Dave’s sock drawer and begins sorting in the essential order, lightest to darkest: grey, blue, black. Maybe he won’t need the pills at all, now things have settled down. She puts the last pair of socks in place and just that thought makes her lighter, her chest expanding, her neck looser. One of Dave’s argyle golf socks—he doesn’t play anymore, but won’t get rid of them—slops over into the blues and she nudges it back, hearing a rattle.
She lifts a pair of argyles and sees a pill bottle. Then another. She scatters the golf socks across the drawer, and it sounds like maracas shaking. Two, four, six—there must be a dozen bottles. The bastard’s been stockpiling them.
Cynthia grabs them in fistfuls and drops them into the laundry basket. She marches into the bathroom, sets the basket down.
Mommy, Wendy yells, come see what I made with the Popsicle juice.
In a minute, sweetie. Mommy’s busy.
The first lid she wrestles with, finally resorting to teeth, the childproof ridges cutting into her gum. Maybe that’s why he felt so proud, just getting to the damn things. She lets them trickle out of the container and they make satisfying little splashes as they hit, bob up, then sink to the bottom of the bowl. She gets the wrist action going and they rain down two, three containers worth at a time. Pwish, pwish, pwish, pwish, pwish. Bombs away. Sayonara, Little Dave.
When she flushes, the blue pills disappear in the swirling blue water, blue like the waves crashing in at Martinique. Cynthia closes her eyes, takes in a deep breath, lets it go. Oh baby, he’d said, massaging in the oil, your skin is so soft, I could do this all day. A little higher, she’d said. Yes. Right there.
