Read Goodbye To All That Online
Authors: Judith Arnold
Goodbye To All That (34 page)
She climbed onto her side of the bed and slid under the blanket. He reached over, arched his arm around her and drew her against him, cushioning her head against his bare shoulder. “Come here often?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
“Pretty much every night. I’m a regular,” she joked.
Gordon knew her well enough to sense that, despite her playful words, she was in a glum mood. He could have tugged down her nightgown, watched her nipples harden at their sudden exposure to air and claimed that as proof she was aroused. But he spared her, just running his hand up and down her arm. “Any chance I’m gonna get lucky tonight?”
No.
“Depends on your definition of lucky,” she said tactfully, hating that she couldn’t muster even a smidgen of romantic interest for him at the moment. “It’s been a long day.”
“This weekend it’ll get longer,” he noted. She thought he was referring to her mother’s impending night on the town, which would surely keep Jill fussing and fretting. But then he said, “Daylight Savings ends.”
She groaned. All the clocks—in the microwave, in the oven, in the DVR—had to be reset. One more chore she didn’t need.
“Do we really have to take the twins for a week?” he asked.
“You don’t want them here?”
“For an afternoon, sure. For a whole week? They’re five years old.”
“Six,” she said.
“I still can’t tell them apart.”
“I’ll put a braid in Mackenzie’s hair.”
“You’re going to have to drive them back and forth to school,” he went on. “Their bus isn’t going to cross town lines to come and pick them up.”
“So I’ll drive them. I’m driving Abbie and Noah all over the state, anyway. What’s two more passengers?”
“Your brother is probably spending a fortune on this trip to Nevis. I don’t see why he can’t spend a little more and hire a baby-sitter.”
“They’re my nieces,” Jill said, trying to ignore the logic in Gordon’s words. “Why should they stay with a stranger? I don’t mind, really.”
I do mind,
she thought. But how could she have said no to Doug? Whether or not he knew it, his marriage might be in jeopardy. What did it mean when your wife traveled two hundred miles to get her hair cut by your sister’s boyfriend? Melissa was right. It was weird.
Mackenzie and Madison had enough instability in their lives with their grandparents contemplating divorce. If taking them for a week enabled Doug to fly off to the Caribbean with Brooke and get their marriage back on track, Jill would do what she could to make that happen.
“Here’s what I think,” Gordon said. “Doug and Brooke should stay home with their kids and give us their tickets to Nevis.”
Gordon had never expressed a desire to vacation in Nevis before. As for Jill
. . .
If she were taking an exotic vacation, it would be in France. Not that she’d ever mentioned that wish to him. Her dream of France was a private thing, personal, fragile. If she expressed it aloud, Gordon would remind her that given his salary as a public high school teacher, given that they had to save for the kids’ college, given that the damned Old Rockford Inn was ripping them off to the tune of three extra dollars a person for Abbie’s bat mitzvah, and who knew how much catering would cost by the time Noah’s bar mitzvah came along, and given that France was full of frogs, a trip there wasn’t really feasible.
Or else he’d say, “Fine, book two tickets and a hotel room with a view of the Eiffel Tower,” and she’d have to explain that she wanted to go by herself. Even if she hadn’t spoken French since her sophomore year of college. Even if she wasn’t sure where her passport was, let alone whether it had expired. When was the last time she’d used it? Their honeymoon in Bermuda?
If Gordon wanted to go somewhere with her, they could go back to Bermuda. But France was for her alone—if she ever found the guts to make that dream come true.
“Nevis is too glamorous for me,” she said, although she had no idea how glamorous it was. “The girls will have fun here. Abbie will love having more females in the house.”
“Noah and I will be grossly outnumbered. We might have to move out when the twins move in. And take in a lot of Celtics home games to restore our manhood.”
“Fine.” If they wanted to flee a house full of Bendel women, let them go. Jill wasn’t going to waste energy worrying about an eventuality that was months away. She had more immediate concerns. “Melissa called me today from a bathroom,” she said.
“Do I want to hear this?”
“She’s in love with an apartment she can’t afford. She needs a loan.”
Gordon groaned. “Don’t tell me you said yes to her, too.”
“She didn’t ask. She said she wanted to ask Dad, except that he and Mom are embroiled in their marital crisis
.
And she wanted to ask Doug, except that he and Brooke
. . .
” Jill drifted off, unsure she ought to share the whole bizarre situation with Gordon. He already thought Doug was a pain in the ass. Doug was a pain in the ass. Her whole family were pains in the ass.
“He and Brooke what?”
“Well, it’s just that Melissa told me Brooke went to Manhattan to get her hair done.”
He didn’t seem concerned. “Brooke has too much time on her hands.”
“Not just Manhattan.” Jill propped herself up so she could look at Gordon. “She had her hair done by Luc. Melissa’s Luc.”
Even this didn’t perturb him. “Keeping it in the family. Is there a problem with that?”
“Melissa made it sound tawdry.” She settled back against him and shrugged, her shoulder nestling in his armpit. “Luc isn’t family. And the way Melissa was talking, he never will be.”
“He was a nice guy,” Gordon said, then added, “A little too suave, maybe.”
Jill tried to smile. “That day, when you and Brooke and Luc and the kids were watching videos while my parents were making their big announcement, did you notice any undercurrents between Luc and Brooke?”
“You’re asking
me
if I noticed undercurrents?” Gordon laughed. “Come on. If Brooke had heaped a bunch of twigs at his feet and set fire to them, I wouldn’t have noticed.”
True enough. Gordon was Mr. Oblivious, at least when it came to undercurrents. “It’s probably nothing,” Jill said. “Brooke and Doug are still planning to take this trip to Nevis in February, so I guess things are okay between them.”
“What difference does it make who did her hair?” Gordon sounded genuinely perplexed. “I mean, what’s the big deal?”
“No big deal.” But it
was
a big deal. If her parents could be contemplating a divorce, why couldn’t Brooke and Doug? Just because they looked so good together, and they were both devoted to their daughters, and they complemented each other financially—Doug made tons of money and Brooke spent tons of money—didn’t mean their marriage was destined to last. Once Jill’s mother had informed the family that she was ending her marriage, Jill had lost all faith in ’til-death-do-us-part.
Her own marriage was
. . .
good, she assured herself. Unlike Melissa and Doug, Jill hadn’t dated much when she’d been single. She’d met Gordon that day in the student union, gotten to know him and decided he’d make a good husband. When he’d asked her to marry him, of course she’d said yes. And she had no regrets.
Except that she wanted to go to France alone.
And her libido had lapsed into a coma.
And she’d lost faith in the institution of marriage.
“I think Melissa is looking for an excuse to break up with Luc,” she said, remembering her sister’s call from the public lavatory. “And on top of that, she wants a child. If she breaks up with him, she’s got to find someone else to father it.”
“She could adopt. Or go to a sperm bank.” Gordon was adept at coming up with simple solutions to problems. Unfortunately, most problems weren’t simple. “Your family is nuts. All of them. Excluding you.” He rolled onto his side, facing her, then leaned in for a kiss.
Jill kissed him back, but she couldn’t fake a passion she didn’t feel. “I’m sorry, Gord. I’m just so stressed.”
“Sex might de-stress you,” he said, skimming his hand over her breast. Her nipple perked right up; she was sure he could feel it through the flannel. His eyes glowed.
She sighed. “You know what I’d like?”
“To be on top,” he guessed hopefully.
She sat up. Her phone conversation with Melissa was still reverberating inside her mind, all that clamor about apartments and Luc and Brooke and fake pocketbooks. “I’d like you to massage my scalp.”
“Your scalp.” He sounded dubious.
Luc massaged women’s scalps. Melissa was upset because he’d massaged Brooke’s scalp. The thought of Gordon’s hands in her hair, his strong fingers stroking, turned her on more than his naked chest or his kisses. “Just for a minute,” she implored. “Just to de-stress me.”
“I think sex would work better.”
I don’t.
“Please, Gord.”
He sighed dramatically, then rose onto his knees behind her and placed his hands on her head, molding them to its curves. “Like this?” he asked, moving his palms in tentative circles.
“Use your fingers,” she said.
He probed with his fingers. He swirled them through her hair as if he was shampooing it. He must have heard her respiration deepening, because he increased the pressure, tangling into her hair, probing her skull with his fingertips.
Oh, God. This was good. Better than sex. Much better.
If he would do this every night instead of sex, she’d never leave him. Not even if he left dried toothpaste in the sink. Not even if she never got to go to France by herself. This—this glorious sensation, this strange intimacy—would satisfy her forever.
She would never leave him. But if she made him do this every night instead of sex, he’d probably leave her.
What am I doing here?
An hour ago, Ruth had been in her apartment, dabbing on make-up while Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in C Minor spilled out of the speakers of Doug’s old stereo. Such sweet, rich music, the familiarity of Corelli’s counterpoints, the tinkly rhythm of the harpsichord almost, but not quite, overwhelmed by the strings, and of course the suspended seconds. She loved how those two notes would bump against each other, creating all kinds of tension, and then resolve themselves into a safe, solid chord.
But that was then. This was now, in a place called some number, Thirty-Two or Fifty-Six or something. The room was dimly lit and loud, and so crowded you had to walk with your arms pinned to your sides to avoid accidentally hitting someone.
Somehow Wade had managed to secure a table for them. It wasn’t much bigger than a seder plate in circumference, but it was tall. They had to perch themselves on stools around it, and she had to sit between Wade and Hilda, who were barely talking. Hostility swept back and forth between them like the waves rolling in on Cape Cod at high tide.
Wade played with the straw in his club soda. He was the designated driver and promised to stick with soft drinks. But Hilda was making quick progress with her cocktail—some fashionable variation on a martini—and the white wine Ruth had ordered was so cold she couldn’t taste it.
Across the room was a dance floor crammed with people. From this distance they looked like a single writhing organism, their movements in no way related to the thumping music a DJ was playing. She didn’t recognize the song. She’d followed the music her kids had listened to in their youth, but this next generation, she just wasn’t exposed to their music as much. Unlike Doug and the girls with their stereos, Abbie and Noah absorbed their music through iPods plugged into their ears. Ruth could never lurk in their bedroom doorways, eavesdropping on what they were playing and deciding whether she liked it.