This Is Between Us (15 page)

We both looked at the photo in the newspaper. You pointed at the date and address for the funeral service. “Let’s go to this,” you said.

…

There was a strip of photos that we had hidden somewhere. Four pictures of us from a photo booth when we still had other people’s rings on our fingers. You could see them in one of the poses. We never thought to take them off.

We thought that people would just think that we were married to each other when we were out somewhere—that I had given you your ring and you had given me my ring.

We were good at pretending to be one strong couple, not a combination of two weak ones. But I do remember that time at the dessert shop when you pointed at something excitedly and accidentally called me by your husband’s name. You didn’t notice your mistake, and I just rolled with it, like nothing happened.

There is no sign of rings in any other photo of us.

…

I’d always thought that going to a stranger’s funeral would be interesting. One of the first movies we saw together was
Harold and Maude
and we both loved how Harold’s hobby was going to funerals. But going to Cynthia’s funeral was different, of course. There could have been people there who knew you. It had been about twenty years since you last saw her. The closer we get to forty, the less time twenty years seems.

We sat in one of the last pews of the church and tried to figure out who her ex-husbands were. We were nervous about people talking to us, but we made up a story in case anyone did. We knew that she had a lot of money somehow and had donated to charities, so we would say that we worked for a homeless shelter. But no one spoke to us.

There was a slide show of photographs that faded in and out on a screen next to her casket: Cynthia holding a small dog and laughing as it licked her face . . . Cynthia eating a giant slice of pizza . . . Cynthia posing with political figures, mayors and first ladies . . . Cynthia holding a giant pair of scissors, ready to cut the ribbon on a new building . . . Cynthia and her daughter wearing matching designer dresses . . . Cynthia and her friends holding glasses of wine and smiling at a birthday party.

Some swelling, sentimental music that sounded like Muzak floated in the air. You nudged me and pointed to the organ player in the balcony. I watched him swaying dramatically to the sounds coming out of the giant instrument. I looked down at my polished black shoes and tried not to laugh. I noticed that you were shrinking beside me and I wondered if something was bothering you. You squeezed my arm hard and pointed back up to the balcony. When I looked again, I saw that the organ player was your dad.

…

Cynthia’s memorial service lasted more than two hours. After we saw your dad playing the organ, we moved to the back of the church where he wouldn’t be able to see us, though we still heard the swelling hum of the instrument fade in and out between each eulogist. One after the other, they talked about her generosity as a philanthropist, the amount of time she’d spent supporting local school programs, her strong political beliefs, and even the occasional editorial that she had written for the newspaper.

You kept looking behind us, as if your dad was going to walk by and approach the altar himself. I guess it wasn’t out of the question. You did say their affair lasted for five years.

Cynthia’s daughter was the last speaker of the memorial and she looked like a younger version of her mother. She was a model and painter, probably around twenty years old. She could barely speak, she was crying so hard. If the whole church wasn’t crying before, they were now. Even we cried, and we couldn’t understand anything she was saying.

…

You were a freshman in high school when your mom found out about your father’s affair. You came home to them throwing things at each other in the living room. At first, you thought they were playing because they were throwing pillows and couch cushions, but then books and plants and framed photos were flying and crashing everywhere. “Five years!” your mom kept shouting, and you didn’t know what they were fighting about. You yelled at them to stop. Your mom told your dad to get out, and then she shook her head and said, “No no no. You’re staying here and I’ll leave. Because I know where you’ll go if you leave.” You told me about how the room froze for a moment then and you noticed they both had blood running down their faces, as if they had each smashed something over the other’s head.

…

You and your mom moved out for several months after she found out about the affair, reluctantly giving your dad time to figure things out. You spent weekends with him during that time. You told me about a day when your dad took you out to the beach and tried to have a real one-on-one conversation with you about the situation. You told me that he could hardly talk because he kept sobbing, and sometimes someone would walk by, even though you were on the far end of the beach. “There are two good women who are in love with me, and I’m in love with both of them,” he told you. It was like he was trying to ask for your advice. You told me he couldn’t look you in the eyes.

You and your mom moved back in with him before Christmas that year. You described the mood around the house as stilted, as if your mom and dad were two actors trying to reenact what it was like when they were happy together. That’s when you started taking pills, you told me. Mostly painkillers and Ritalin from a rich kid in your honors English class.

You were never sure if your dad stopped seeing Cynthia. You once heard your brother say that they got back in touch after your mother died a few years later.

…

Sometimes I called you when you were still with your husband. I could tell if he was around by the tone in your voice. If you were alone, I could hear a warmth, a kind of purr in your words. If he was with you, you’d sound more guarded. All business. But I was still happy just to hear your voice. I’d say “I love you” at the end of the call and you’d say, “Okay. Bye.”

…

Your brother told me a story about an affair he once had with a married man. Daniel would buy the man gifts and write him notes, and the man had to hide them from his wife. Some of the gifts were things the man could not take home, so Daniel had to keep them at his place. But the man hardly came over, so after a while it seemed like Daniel was buying himself gifts. There was a shelf full of things meant for this man: a framed photo of them together, a poem written by Daniel, a coffee-table book of erotic art inscribed to the man, a bracelet, a two-hundred-dollar bottle of wine, a G.I. Joe action figure that they’d joked about at a vintage store, and several mix
CD
s of songs about love and sex.

“Instead of being with this man, I would be with his things,” Daniel told me. “You’re lucky you don’t have to hide anything like that.”

I thought about my night in the car with him, and wondered if I really was lucky and if I had nothing to hide.

“Did it make the gifts seem less sweet?” I asked him.

“It did,” he said. “They started to feel like unreal objects. Like pretend things in a ghost world. Like a museum that no one is allowed to see.”

I thought Daniel was right, but I felt bad for the man. I empathized with his position—perhaps more than Daniel’s for some reason. I dwelled on the thing Daniel said about the gifts seeming like a museum. But I changed it a little, maybe to make their situation less sad. I thought:
Every person is a museum. Everyone is a museum
.

…

We tried to structure some new activities that would become learning tools for the kids. We would write a famous quote and some historical facts about upcoming dates on a dry-erase board in the kitchen and we would talk about them while eating dinner. If the kids had their own quotes or facts, they could write them on the board as well.

We did that for five weeks before the kids seemed bored with it. They stopped looking at the board and never wrote on it. (Right next to the refrigerator may not have been the best place.)

I think we lost interest in this exercise too. We stopped writing on the board. I wondered if the kids noticed this and realized that we gave up on it. Moms and dads get bored too. Moms and dads get busy. Moms and dads run out of ideas. Moms and dads get tired.

…

Around the same time, I could tell that the kids were getting bored of us. They didn’t seem to enjoy our company anymore. They wouldn’t even pretend to be interested in what we talked about.

“You guys aren’t even eighteen yet,” I said one day. “You’re not old enough to move out and survive on your own.” I tried to put enough anger in my voice to get their attention.

It seemed like Vince and Maxine regarded us as uncool now, and in some ways that hurt more than their simple boredom with us. We would show them videos of bands we liked and they would just walk away before the second verse.

…

When I was about nine years old, my family—Mom, Dad, and my older brother—went on a vacation to Japan. It was such a different experience to me that I didn’t understand anything we were doing, and I struggled to enjoy even the simplest activities—things I felt would have been more fun in an English-speaking place.

My mom and dad ate it up though, and used their new Super 8 camera to shoot hours of footage.

The day after we returned home, my dad excitedly transferred some of the highlights onto videotape and invited a bunch of friends and relatives over for a vacation video party. After everyone ate Japanese food and drank sake, we all gathered around the big television and hit play on the
VCR
. The Vacation footage began midsentence and my dad said, “Oops, gotta rewind it a little.” The machine whirred and made a clunking sound and he hit play again. The screen fluttered with static for a moment and then about three seconds of a strange image: a woman stroking a man’s enormous penis while he lay on a bed.

The room got immediately silent. Then an image of our family standing in front of a giant Buddha statue appeared, and my dad’s voice started narrating on the tape. “Hello and welcome to
Good Times in Japan
, our very own family vacation diary.”

Fifteen minutes into it, my mom got up and left the room crying.

The next day, I found the tape and played the part again. I watched it over and over again, the woman’s hand going up and down. I couldn’t figure out what was happening or what could possibly happen next.

…

We were in the bar of the hotel after I got off work one night. Our heads felt lopsided with sloshed alcohol. The
DJ
played songs from the eighties and our friends said they wanted to dance. I flailed my arms like a joke and grinned like an idiot. I did not mean to act so silly and I quickly became silent. A gloom settled over me as I realized that I did not know how to dance anymore. It had been ten years since I last danced. Ten static and dance-free years. I looked at my hands and my feet reluctantly. They were dead people.

…

Vince didn’t even want to be seen with us sometimes.

We’d go to a café and he’d sit at another table.

We’d go to Target and he would hang out in the electronics section the whole time. Sometimes I wondered if the employees thought he was a shoplifter.

If I tried to show affection, a sort of parental gesture like putting my hand on his shoulder, when there were other kids around, he would shrug me off. He’d flash me a mean look. A face that I thought only a hurt lover could make.

…

The host of the radio advice show always tells people that threesomes will destroy their relationship. But I think the one we had with Janelle made us stronger.

It began when I met Janelle at a party and started holding hands with her under the table.

Then Janelle and I started talking to each other a lot over the phone.

Then all three of us went out for drinks.

Then we went back to her small apartment.

When I went to the bathroom, you began making out with Janelle in her bedroom. I waited several minutes before coming in and sitting next to the two of you. I asked if we could all kiss. Hands, shoulders, and hair. We rubbed through clothes and buttons and zippers. Two hours later, when you stood up and straightened yourself out, Janelle whispered harshly to me, “I did that for you.”

We stayed friends with Janelle for a year or so, but we never really grew to love her. She eventually moved away without telling us.

…

One of the guys you worked with was named Jon, and I knew he had a thing for you. You went out to lunch with him all the time. When we were separated, you went out on a date with him, even though you insisted it wasn’t a date. You went to dinner and then to a play. He also gave you a silver watch with an engraving on the back. It said,
Make time for us. J
.

You didn’t tell me about it, but I saw it one night when I was snooping around. I rifled through your dresser while you were in the shower. You wore the watch a few days later and said it was from a girlfriend who didn’t want it anymore. I looked at it like I was seeing it for the first time. You watched me nervously as I squinted at the inscription. But it had been scratched off now. “Why is it all scratched up?” I asked.

You shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe it was personal.”

…

You started to think I was falling out of love with you. You said I didn’t share things with you anymore. I asked you what you meant and you said I hadn’t read out loud to you in months. And you said I didn’t take your picture anymore. I didn’t come in to put more hot water in when you took a bath. I didn’t put lemon in your tap water anymore. I didn’t pick up your shoes when it was time for bed like I used to. You said I said
no
more often. I didn’t even push the cart at the grocery store when we went together. You said my hands felt cold. You said my lips didn’t open so easily. You said I was not all here. And I asked you, “Where?”