The Actor and the Housewife (9 page)

“Thank you.” She planted a kiss square on his mouth. “Okay, I really need to go pump now.”

In which we listen in on phone calls,
track
down Slurpees, and are privy to a flashback

“He is.” Mike nodded fervently, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove the minivan home. “He took a pinky pledge.”

“He thought he was in love with me. Now that he knows he’s not, the reality of a Utah housewife as a friend will sink in.”

“You sound pretty confident there. Willing to put your money where your mouth is?”

“The usual?”

“You’re on.”

Becky lost the bet quickly. Felix called the next morning from Park City before hitting the slopes.

“I told you I would phone.”

“And thus you prove you are a man of your word. Now quit wasting your time and go skiing.”

“Excellent suggestion. Good-bye.”

“Bye.”

Mike was reading to Hyrum while keeping one eye on a golf match when Becky leaned into the TV room to announce, “He called.”

Mike peeked over the couch. “He did? Felix? What did he say?”

“ ‘I told you I would call.’ ‘Yeah, you did. Shouldn’t you be skiing?’ ‘Right, cheerio.’ ‘K-bye.’ ”

“Huh.”

“It was obligatory. He won’t call again.”

“Double or nothing?”

“Of course.”

Even though their friendship was surely doomed, she’d really liked Felix. That fact bothered her, and that night she listened to Mike snore and pondered her giddiness at each Felix encounter. By one in the morning, she’d determined her fond feelings weren’t caused by the novelty of his celebrity or a warped infatuation. What a relief! The idea that she could be so easily affected by a movie star had nettled her, and she had covered her ears and shouted “LALALA!” (meta phorically) at the barest hint that she might be harboring some secret and untoward attraction.

No, she just liked him. Felix, the guy who talked with her as Augie had, the guy who’d been fascinated by Edgar Poe versus Nubbin, even the guy who told a complete stranger, “I don’t keep a surplus of damns on hand.” Who talked like that? Felix. And though she could not approve of such behavior, she was still a teeny bit amused.

He didn’t call on Monday.

“Pay up,” she said.

“He’ll call,” Mike said. “He took a pinky pledge.”

Mike made a good point, but how long could even a sacred vow sealed by the tiniest and most loyal of digits forestall the inevitable?

They decided to give it a month. Tuesday morning the phone rang.

“Hello,” said an increasingly familiar British voice.

“Oh, hello,” Becky said, and thought both “darn” and “hooray!” at the same time. She hated to lose a bet.

“Yes, hello,” said Felix.

Becky cleared her throat. “Did you go skiing?”

“Yes, you know, we did.”

“Have a good time?”

“Mm hmm.”

“Good. Sounds . . . fun.”

“So, what do we do now, swap stories about our exes? Watch a reality show on the telly and narrate to each other in scandalized voices? ‘Can you believe she said that? I can’t believe she just said that.’ ”

“You don’t have many friends, do you?”

“I have thousands of fans, dozens of itinerant co-workers, a handful of acolytes, three stalkers, and a wife.”

“You have no idea how this friend business works, do you?” she asked.

“Ha!” Felix said.

“Ooh, that was a nice ‘ha.’ Full of derisive laughter and effectively evading any answer.”

“Thank you. I’ve been practicing.”

“Yeah. So, um, you have no idea how this works, do you?”

“I know there’s talking involved, don’t I? And phone calling. I’m not such an amateur as all that.”

“Felix, are you really sure you want to be friends?”

“What do you mean, am I sure? I took a pinky pledge.”

“Yeah, okay, you’re right.” It was true. He had, in fact, taken a pinky pledge. “It’s just that . . . I bet Mike this would deflate and go nowhere, so—”

“How much did you wager?”

“No money. We bet Slurpees.”

“What?”

“Slurpees? You know, those slushy icy concoctions, the perfect mix of cold and sweet that descends directly from heaven above? The winning Slurpee has to be grape flavored, which often requires driving to multiple 7-Elevens on the hunt, and we went double or nothing, so I’d have to get him two, which is really awkward to carry, because I’ll have one for myself as well, and I’ll be balancing three frozen beverages and a baby. So I was hoping, if you’re going to renege on the pinky pledge sometime in the future, could we jump ahead now so I can win the bet?”

“Sorry, love.”

That afternoon Becky had to go to eight 7-Elevens. Her afternoon was shot. But that grape slush was oh-so-scrumptious.

What with the Slurpee search, she hadn’t had time to make dinner, so she fed the kids cold cereal and she and Mike dined on their shockingly purple slush, sitting in the basement while watching
The
Little Mermaid
on VHS.

“What do you make of all this?” Becky whispered through three children—Fiona and Polly crammed between her and Mike, Hyrum on Mike’s lap.

“I think that octopus is up to no good,” Mike said, his eyes on the television. The corner of his mouth twitched. She knew he couldn’t help it—he was always so pleased with himself when he made a joke. Then he shrugged. “I don’t know, really. I don’t know.”

Becky nodded. “He doesn’t have any other friends besides Celeste, not really. I think this will be good for him. I think he needs us.”

“Yeah,” was all Mike said. The crab was singing now. It was his favorite part.

Wednesday morning she called the Park City number.

“Hi, it’s Becky.”

“Hi,” Felix said, with a hint of an exclamation point.

The degree of his enthusiasm made her feel all warm and squashy.

“You know, this friends thing means we get to hang out together if we’re in the same state.”

“Right. Right! I didn’t think about that. You mean, as in, a date?”

“Noooo. As in hanging out, as in friendly lunches or dinner. Why don’t you and Celeste come over to night?”

“We’re flying home this afternoon.”

Becky had not realized how light and happy her heart had been until she felt it plummet into her midsection. He was leaving. Of course he was leaving. He didn’t live there. Wow, this really was intense, this new friendship or what evership. That sticky, achy missing feeling was already burrowing into her chest.

“Oh,” she said, and she must have sounded pathetic, because Felix said, “You’re not going to cry now, are you?”

“Just hide the puppets. When do you go?”

“We leave for the airport in two hours.”

“What, are you taking a limo?”

“A hired car of some sort.”

“No, no, no. You don’t take a limo in Utah, and you
never
pay someone to drive you to the airport, not whenever there are friends or family around. I’ll take you, of course.”

And that’s how Becky found herself packing up four-year-old Hy-rum and baby Sam into their car seats and driving an hour to Park City. Long car rides with two small children should only be undertaken with trembling caution; yet off she went when Felix and Celeste could have afforded a fleet of stretch Hummers. Becky merged onto I-80 West, threading the snowy canyon, reaching back to reinsert Sam’s pacifier for the thirty-second time, and answering Hyrum’s whining with, “Just a few more minutes. Let’s sing ‘Wheels on the Bus’ again!”

She pulled up to the four-star lodge where Felix, Celeste, and their mountain of luggage were waiting, and her heart bounced back up.

She hopped out and ran to Celeste, trying out the cheek-kissing thing and succeeding moderately well. At least Celeste said, “Well done,
ma belle
.” Becky turned to Felix and wasn’t sure what to do. She usually hugged friends, but he was a
guy
. This was going to take time to figure out. So she just sort of waved and said, “Hi.”

Felix looked over her ten-year-old lemon yellow parka and unlaced snow boots. “What are you wearing?”

Becky rolled her eyes, and Celeste said something French and scoldy.

Becky helped toss the luggage in the back and offered the front seat to Celeste.

“No, no. I want to see the baby.”

Becky relocated Hyrum’s car seat to the back bench so Celeste could sit next to Sam and coo and stroke his palms.

“All I need is to smell a baby from time to time, and I am satisfied.”

Becky was pretty sure she heard maternal longing in Celeste’s voice, but Felix didn’t so much as glance at Sam.

Felix rode shotgun, and while Celeste cooed and stroked, Becky and Felix laughed.

Later when Becky was trying to recount the conversation for Mike, she couldn’t remember what had been so funny.

“I think he said something about traffic lights, and he just sounded so British, then I said something about the British but I got it wrong. And we just kept laughing the whole way. You remember Augie Beuter, right? That’s how it was with Augie too. I ended up parking at the airport and taking the boys in the stroller, going through security and everything with them, so Felix and I could keep talking. We sat by the gate, and I nursed Sam—under a blanket, but it still freaked Felix out, which was also funny, and . . . this is a really lame story, isn’t it?”

Mike scratched his chin. “You’ve told better.”

“Well, anyway, I’ve paid up in Slurpees and I agree that he was serious about the pinky pledge.”

They were in the kitchen, the kids asleep upstairs. Mike sat at the counter going over some papers while Becky rolled dough. It was a weekly tradition for Becky to make three pies—one for the family and the others for giving away to persons yet unknown. By the next night two names would invariably pop into her head, neighbors or family members or even relative strangers who, for what ever reason, might especially need the sweet comfort that came with a home-baked pie.

“It was good to see Felix again, after the ball and all,” she said. “He really is Felix to me now, not Felix Callahan, not the actor or any of his characters. I’m relieved. At the ball, I was still disoriented and caught myself daydreaming about a romantic moment with him and . . . not me, but someone sort of like me.”

She peeked up from the dough. Mike was looking at her as if she’d just confessed to murdering her parents and storing their bodies in the Deepfreeze.

“I know, that sounds really bad,” Becky said, laying dough in the tin and pressing ridges with her thumb. “I don’t know why I do that—I don’t mean it. But I couldn’t daydream about him like that now, even if I wanted to. It’s one thing to have cheesy thoughts about a far-off movie star, but now . . . well, I just don’t think about him like that. Still, for the sake of full disclosure, getting his calls does make me a little giddy, like I’m twelve and I have a crush on him.”

Becky had always gotten a little crushy with new friends of any gender. She’d meet a like mind and her heart would skip about and she’d want to brag to the whole world about this marvelous person. It was a common-enough occurrence to be unremarkable, though from his expression, it seemed Mike could not empathize. Everything about Mike’s face opened wide—eyes, lips, jaw. His nostrils may have even fl ared.

“Honey, I don’t mean . . . you need to take that the right way.”

“What right way is there to take that?”

“Not lovey crush, like, friendship crush, like . . . ugh, there’s no word for it! Maybe it’s a woman thing. I don’t think it’s unusual for women to feel affectionate about lots of people—not in a romantic way, just in an I-love-this-person way, I’m-excited-to-have-this-wonderful-person-in-my-life way.”

Mike’s horrified expression was frozen on his face.

“No, no, it’s not like that. I just wanted to tell you, since Felix is a guy and it might seem like a different thing and I wanted to be honest about everything. Never mind, never mind, pretend I never used the word ‘crush’ and go about your business.”

“Becky . . .” His tone was concerned.

“Honey.” She reached across the counter and took his hand. “Is this too hard for you? For me to have a friend who is a man?”

“When you start saying you have a crush—”

“Wrong word. There’s probably a word for it in French or Sanskrit or something. I am so violently in love with you. He’s just another Melissa. That’s all.”

“But he’s . . . an actor, one of those, whatdoyoucall’em, heartthrobs.”

“Not to me.”

“But . . .” Mike scowled. “I’ve always thought it was weird, the way you and your friends sometimes talk about seeing a movie with this actor or that, as if you’re in high school and the actors are guys who might ask you to prom.”

Becky’s smile was aghast. “Really? Are we that bad?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You know we’re not fantasizing about them in a vulgar way.”

“Yeah, I figured. But I still think it’s weird.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it is. I don’t know—it seems so normal. But Felix’s friendship isn’t about that. He’s not a character from his movies. He’s just some guy, a friend. An Augie.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Absolutely.”

“Okay,” he said. She was pouring the filling, and he watched like a dog under the dinner table. “Can I lick the bowl?”

“Can “And the spoon, baby.”

Becky watched him scoop up sweet appley goop. He wasn’t settled, but he wasn’t upset. She would have to take care. But maybe this was a good thing. They had gotten into such a routine the past few years; there had been no bumps in their marriage, no doubts, no serious conflicts. She didn’t want to get lazy. A little imaginary threat would give her a chance to fight for her man, prove her devotion.

And she would fight. She had chosen Mike thirteen years ago and never regretted a day.

She and Mike had both been part of a large group of friends at Weber State University in the 1980s. They held monthlong foosball tournaments, played music in backyards and held impromptu dances, went on day hikes and picnicked on mountaintops.

In the group, there were funny guys whose casual anecdotes were like stand-up routines. There were smart guys who could explain string theory and built backyard rockets. There were ambitious guys who would one day start their own successful businesses, taking their wives on vacations to islands strung with hammocks and glistening with virgin piña coladas.