The Actor and the Housewife (35 page)

“That’s beside the—wait. You’re telling me you’ve never slept with anyone but Mike? No little romp in college, some postparty spontaneous slap and tickle with a bloke you never saw again?”

“Ick. Seriously—ick. I don’t know how people can do that. I don’t
enjoy
using public toilets—why on earth would I . . . would I
romp
with someone I don’t know? The germs, the disease, the awkwardness, not to mention the immorality, the social depravity, the—”

“The reckless abandon, the freedom, the sexiness of giving over to the purely sensual, the rush of—”

“Felix, I’m going to stick with ‘ick’ on this one.”

“Yes, I rather thought you might. Well, if you’ve really sworn to be chaste, then . . . I’ll chase you.”

“Oh gag. That was a bad line.”

“Really? I’d been saving it up for a special occasion.” She could hear some tapping, as if he were scolding a countertop with a pen. “But I don’t understand. How could you know if you and Mike were compatible enough to marry if you’d never—”

“Ha!” she said.

“I don’t think I’m going to let you get away with just ‘ha.’ ”

Rats. She’d hoped he would, because the question had nicked her guilt gland. She had often thought the same thing about her sister, Diana—how could she have known Steve was the guy without even kissing him? It was crazy! A kiss was the answer to a question, a kiss was a portal into the soul. She’d always thought Diana was loony not to test her future husband first with at least one kiss.

Oh ye hypocrite, she thought. So she tried to answer as honestly as she could.

“I knew . . . I just knew. We were compatible in every other way. And I suspected that in that aspect . . . you know . . . we would be too, because of his . . . well, his smell.”

“He must have smelt pretty good.”

“His pheromones practically danced down my gullet and straight to my ovaries. I was so attracted to his scent that I knew we’d have beautiful babies. Our eyes met, and our genes sang arias to each other. That’s what makes me suspicious about Internet dating—what happens when people fall in love without smelling each other first?”

“I never knew you were so feral.”

“I’ll tell you what—a lot of people procreating with incompatible genes, mutant children flooding the earth.”

“So,” there was a Definite eyebrow-wag tone to his voice, “do you find my scent compatible?”

That stumped her. “I . . . don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s not as if we’re going to be having children together.”

“That’s right, darling. Just some old-fashioned, highly compatible lovemak—”

“Aah! Don’t say that! I cannot think about you that way and retain any shame. Besides, I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage.”

“I’m talking marriage here, sweetheart.”

The wind was knocked out of her as hard as if she’d fallen two stories onto her back. “Marriage? Are you serious?”

“Becky, are you going to make me beg? Is your reluctance based on real trepidation, or are you just trying to torture me?”

“Mike and I,” she paused to take a breath. “We were married in a temple. It wasn’t just till death do us part. We believe our marriage was sealed for time and all eternity, that we’ll be husband and wife forever.”

“So that means you can’t marry anyone else?”

“No, I can marry again, just for the ‘time’ part and leave off ‘all eternity,’ but—”

“Then it’s settled. I don’t believe in the ‘all eternity’ anyhow. I only want to be your fellow for the rest of this life, till death do us part.”

“No, Felix, it won’t work. It just won’t. I’m sorry.”

He was quiet. Her heart squeezed.

“Felix? Sweetie, are you okay?”

“In that case . . .” His voice twanged with wickedness. “In that case, I’m going to have to romance you off your feet.”

She gasped. “No you don’t . . .”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Becky Jack, may I woo you?”

“No.”

“Ha! That ‘no’ was so weakly spoken I’m going to ignore it entirely.” He chuckled. “This is going to be fun.”

“No it’s not! No you’re not! Don’t you dare, Felix Callahan.”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. You’ll have to wait and see.”

“You’re so aggravating! I don’t know why I let you hang around.”

“Because of my swoon-worthy looks?”

“You’re tolerable, but you’re no Cary Grant.”

“He was milquetoast compared to what you’re going to get. I’m going to woo you until your knees go soft.”

“Argh!” She hung up the phone.

In which Becky Jack gets romanced

She came home from the grocery store and discovered a CD player on her front stoop, Kenny Rogers singing “Lady” on repeat play. She wondered who in Utah was doing Felix’s bidding—some hired assistant, a concierge service? It was a little bit creepy.

Two days later, she woke to a second CD player outside her bedroom window playing “Islands in the Stream.” She let it play, listening with her eyes closed, her big toe wiggling to the beat. She was really changing her mind about that song being lame.

The next day, it was “Short People.” She put her face in her pillow to stifle the laugh. She was trying to pretend none of this was happening, but she was running out of places to put the CD players. All the fl at surfaces still held flowers.

That sort of thing went on for a few weeks—songs, flowers, chocolates in the mail, a housecleaning service showing up and explaining that they were paid through the end of the year. All that time he didn’t return her calls, which was so irritating, because he was the one person alive in the world she would have liked to tell about a ridiculous wooing. Instead, she was showered with distant attention but kept from speaking to her best friend. And she missed him.

Then she started running into the man himself.

First at the grocery store. She was pushing a cart down the cereal aisle, searching for Hyrum’s favorite brand of raisin flakes, when she collided with another cart.

“Excuse me,” she started to say, until she saw who it was. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Oh, hey there, Becky,” he said, speaking with a suburban mother accent. “Do you shop here too?”

“You’re not serious.”

“Well, this is my first time in this store. I only just moved into the neighborhood.”

“Moved into the . . .”

“Mm hm.” He picked up a box of cereal, pretending to be very interested in the list of ingredients. “I’m renting a fl at over on Fort Lane. One bedroom, but I
love
the location.”

“You’re lying. Are you lying?”

“Nope.” He emphasized the “p” noise, popping the word in his mouth, and smiled wickedly before his faux-normal demeanor returned. “Well, I should go. I have quite a shopping list to fill. You know how it is. See you round!”

He winked as he left.

It was weird how hard her heart was pounding.

On Friday, the kids came home from school with Felix stories.

He’d been a guest speaker in Polly’s twelfth-grade English class, explaining the process of making a movie based on a book.

“When he left, Mrs. Elkins called after him, ‘Come anytime!’ and then batted her eyelashes. Then all the girls were swarming around me saying, ‘He’s so hot!’ And I was like, ‘Ick. He’s like my uncle.’ ” It was a big, bold paragraph for Polly to speak, and it made Becky extremely proud.

Then he showed up in Hyrum’s social studies class, prearranged with the teacher, to give a British perspective on current world events.

At lunch period, he met up with Hyrum and Polly. He brought a large take-out lunch for them to share, and they sat on the school lawn and ate and talked.

“What did you talk about?” Becky wanted to know.

Polly shrugged. “Just stuff. He asked us about stuff , school, friends, you know.”

“Did you talk about me?” Becky asked.

“No, Mom. We were just hanging.”

“Everyone was staring at us,” Hyrum said. “It was pretty cool. I mean, I knew Felix was famous, but I didn’t know he was
cool
famous. I thought he was, you know, snooty famous, like old-people famous.”

That afternoon, Felix made an appearance at Sam’s fifth-grade class. “He was our phys ed teacher for the day. He knows all these cool soccer moves. He calls it
football
. And he told us stories about how in England people kill each other over football. Killing people over soccer! That is
so
cool.”

The next encounter was at Sam’s soccer game on Saturday. Felix was wearing a purple shirt, the Tigers’ color, and had a purple megaphone. At least he hadn’t painted his face.

“All right, Sam!” he’d holler from the front row of the bleachers. “Great block! Come on now. Don’t let him get away. Go Tigers!”

Becky sat on the other side of the bleachers and tried not to let her Felix-glaring interfere with her Sam-cheering.

The Tigers were down several goals, and Sam was looking glum. When they had a break, Becky expected her boy to come over for some cheering up. Instead, he went to Felix.

Felix gave some sort of soccer advice that involved using shins and knees, and Sam nodded, his mouth open as if he were literally eating Felix’s every word. When Sam left to run back to the game, Felix rubbed the boy’s head in a fatherly fashion. Sam was grinning.

The Tigers lost in the end, badly in fact, but it didn’t matter, because in the second half, Sam scored a goal. Becky had never imagined that Felix could yell so loud, jumping about, shouting Sam’s name and pounding the air with his fi st. You would have thought his team had won the World Cup.

She invited him to join them for some celebratory ice cream, and he spent the entire time absorbed in Sam and recounting details of his inspired playing.

“Did you see how you used your shins to keep the ball away? It was a bloody brilliant move. Tell me what you were thinking when that redheaded kid tried to steal the ball from you.”

“I was thinking, no way! This is my ball. You’ll have to wait your turn.”“

“ I knew it. I knew you had the warrior spirit. A champion in the making.”

Sam positively glowed. “The British
know
football, Mom. It’s in their blood. Felix has met Pelé
and
Beckham, and he says I have the same wild look of a champion.”

“Of course you do, sweetie.”

Felix barely paid any attention to Becky until they’d gone back home. Sam ran into the house to tell Hyrum about his game, while Becky and Felix stayed out under the April afternoon sky, leaning back against the car and staring up into blue.

“He’s a good kid,” Felix said. “I like him much better now that he can talk.”

“Are you doing all this to show that you could play the part of his daddy?”

“No. He already has a daddy. I’d just like to be his mate and his mum’s husband.”

“Felix—” she started to say, but he took her hand, kissed it, and walked away.

“I have a date with another woman. Don’t be jealous—she’s eighty-two.”

He pulled his bicycle out of the back of her minivan.

“I wouldn’t put it past you,” she called after him as he rode off . “And you really should learn to drive a car!”

The next day was Sunday. Becky was in sacrament meeting when she felt someone sit on the bench beside her and turned to see a very stoic Felix Callahan in a black suit and white shirt. He looked outlandishly debonair in that Layton, Utah, congregation, even though he’d clearly put on a conservative striped tie in hopes of blending in. He stared straight ahead at the speaker.

“Don’t you dare pretend to convert just for me,” she whispered.

“Of course not. I’m here because I want to be here. With you.”

She stewed for a time.

“If this is—”

“Shh,” he whispered. “Don’t you know it’s rude to talk in church?”

After Hyrum and other boys his age passed around the bread and water of the sacrament, after Becky’s friend Jessie gave the first talk, the bishop returned to the podium.

“Now we’ll have a special musical number given by a friend of the Jack family, Felix Callahan.”

Becky gripped his arm. “What are you doing?” she hissed.

He just smiled at her before going down the aisle to stand by the piano. The pianist, eighty-two-year-old Ginny Castleton, played an introduction, and Felix began to sing.

It was the children’s hymn Hyrum had sung at the ward potluck over nine years before—a simple melody, no sharps or flats, no trills or grace notes, just a steady, innocent tune. But somehow Felix’s voice lent it depth, gave the words wisdom.

He didn’t look at Becky as he sang about being a child of God, about having a family on earth, about pleading for guidance so he could go home again one day. He took in the whole room, kept the entire congregation rapt with his voice. They’d heard that song sung a thousand times, but never like that. Polly was smiling sweetly, as if at a very dear friend. Hyrum was resting his head on the pew in front of them, but Becky could tell that he wasn’t asleep. Sam was mouthing the words.

When Felix returned to the bench, Becky wiped her wet cheeks.

“I’ll never understand why you cry at that song.”

“I’m crying because you’re so aggravating.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“No, you don’t believe it,” she whispered. “That’s part of the problem. You don’t believe that you
are
a child of God.”

“But I believe that you believe it,” he said.

“Felix—”

“Shh, I’m listening. Don’t you know it’s rude to talk in church?”

He came over for Sunday dinner. She’d made a Crock-Pot roast with potatoes and carrots, and the smell and the animated talking and laughing felt so Sunday-ish, so natural and wonderful, that she kept expecting to see Mike at the head of the table. She saw Felix instead. It hurt her heart, but not as much as she’d supposed. Felix could never replace Mike, but he was there, and he was there because he wanted to be.

He was pretending to be a stodgy old Englishman, calling for the butler and declaring the outing “rather jolly, pip-pip and all that,” and the boys were laughing too hard to eat. How could she feel sad when her boys were so happy?