Second Chance. Elizabeth Wrenn

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СКАЧАТЬ manatee-shaped woman wrestling her way into a garden hose, it was indeed Neil who needed some hormone therapy.

      ‘Give me a break,’ I said, irritably. I stood upright, yanked on the hose, and promptly poked a fingernail through the fabric. As I watched the run cascade down the side of my leg, the tears slid down my cheeks. ‘Goddamnit! Goddamn them! Goddamn them to hell!’ I started to sob.

      ‘What’s wrong? Calm down, Deena. Who are you mad at?’

      ‘Everyone! Men. The men who made the first panty hose!’ I glared at him. ‘You know it was a man, don’t you?!’ I actually didn’t know it was a man, but I’d have bet good money on it.

      Defensively, Neil held up both palms toward me.

      ‘Well, it was a man! Goddamned men. They invented high heels, too. And girdles. And makeup.’ Again, I had no idea if this was all true, but at the moment, it felt it could be no other way. ‘All the things that tell women we’re not good enough the way we are. We need to be tanner, smoother, taller, prettier.’ Neil looked at me as if my face was familiar but he couldn’t recall my name. ‘And especially younger and thinner!’ I screamed. Whew. When the lid blows off a pressure cooker, it blows hard.

      Suddenly Neil was sitting on the bed next to me, patting my knee and talking as if I was a four-year-old. ‘Now, now, Deedle.’

      ‘Don’t patronize me.’

      ‘Who said I’m patronizing you?’

      I just stared at him. I half expected him to pull out a roll of stickers from his breast pocket and hand me one, the way he placated his youngest patients. But suddenly his expression changed, softened. Quietly, he said, ‘Do you just want to stay home?’

      Tears of relief slipped down my cheeks. ‘Oh, Neil, can we? Yes. Thank you.’ Instead of forced chitchat in tight shoes, I saw us walking around our neighborhood lake, in comfortable sneakers, and hand in hand. Like old times. Maybe I could even broach the idea of the dog thing I’d seen on TV.

      He looked sheepish, then impatient. ‘Not we, you. I have to go. I want to go. I’ve put my life into this clinic. It’s important.’

      I just looked at him. Part of me wanted to say, And your family isn’t? Yes, the past couple of years you’ve put your life into the clinic. Not your kids. Not your marriage. No wonder he seemed so unaffected by Sam’s departure, and Lainey’s and Matt’s growing independence and absences. He was able to throw himself into his work with impunity.

      Neil stood, walked to the door, put a hand on the knob, then turned toward me. He looked as handsome in his dark gray suit as I’d seen him in years. ‘What’s it going to be, Deena?’

      I stared at the blue dress, the blue tights with the shot elastic waist now my only option. We wouldn’t even look like we belonged together.

      ‘I’ll stay home with the kids.’

      ‘For God’s sake, they’re teen— They don’t need a—Oh, never mind.’ He closed his eyes, shook his head, and left.

      I sat on the bed, peeling the panty hose from my legs. I looked up to see myriad fat Deenas looking at me. The closet door mirror was angled just right to catch my reflection in the dresser mirror, making multiple mes, each disappearing into the next. I wadded my panty hose up in a ball and threw them at the mirror. But they had no substance or weight and merely arced limply for a few feet, and dropped silently to the carpet.

      When the house was still again after Neil had driven away, I came downstairs in my pruney bathrobe, walked into the kitchen, and was greeted by three unpacked lunch bags on the counter and Hairy sitting on the desk meowing for food again.

      ‘No,’ I told him. ‘You have your dry food. You only get wet food in the morning.’ His meowing ratcheted up a notch. I couldn’t stand the noise, so I gave him several Pounce treats in his bowl. As he devoured them, I began unpacking the lunch bags, pulling out dirty Tupperware containers, chip bags and largely unused napkins. As I was throwing the trash away, Matt came into the kitchen.

      ‘Hey, Mom,’ he said laconically, not looking at me, walking straight for the pantry. ‘How come you didn’t go with Dad tonight?’ He’d pulled open both pantry doors and was hanging on the handles, which I’d asked him approximately three hundred times not to do. He stared with a bored expression at the choices in front of him.

      ‘I— I’m not feeling well.’ I was struggling to open a small Tupperware container in which I’d packed Matt’s favorite homemade chocolate pudding. Lainey preferred the store-bought variety, feeling that anything else would make some sort of horrific social statement to her friends. But Matt said he preferred mine, which made me happy, although I’d evidently packed too much because he hadn’t finished it. I pulled again at the stubborn top, unable to leverage it. Just once I’d like to see a commercial not about how well a lid holds, but how the hell to get these small ones off their containers.

      Matt grabbed an opened bag of popcorn from the pantry. ‘What’s for dinner?’ he said, shoving a handful in his mouth.

      ‘Yeah, I’m hungry.’ Lainey had suddenly appeared behind me. I was sure the only reason they were home on a Friday night was because they’d expected their parents, both of them, to be out.

      ‘I thought you guys were going to order pizza. Didn’t Dad leave money on the desk?’

      ‘No, he said since you were home, you’d cook.’ Lainey was fingering the tie of my robe. ‘You know, Mom, I don’t like this color as well out of the store. You should have gotten the pink. Don’t take this the wrong way, but this purple kind of makes you look a little fat.’ She stood a step back from me, a sympathetic expression on her face.

      And just what was the right way to take that comment? I wanted to ask her. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to start crying again. What was it about adolescent girls that they thought some sort of verbal disclaimer made plunging a knife into your gut okay? It didn’t really help that I knew she wasn’t trying to be deliberately hurtful.

      I looked at Matt, who was crunching another mouthful of popcorn, his hand already back in the bag, gathering the next handful. ‘So, like, are we going to eat soon?’ he said, rather messily.

      My hands tightened into a chokehold on the Tupperware. Then, to punctuate the tenor of my evening, I felt the perspiration begin to ooze out the pores of my forehead and upper lip, the familiar temperature surge building in me like an overheating engine.

      I pulled off my bathrobe, grabbing the top of my worn pj’s, pulling it in and out rapidly, trying to cool myself. I looked at my kids. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t planned anything. I knew I could always make a tuna casserole. But I hadn’t planned on cooking tonight. I didn’t want to cook tonight. The anger I’d felt upstairs surged again. I wondered if other women going through the change had anger flashes, in addition to hot flashes. I put the Tupperware bowl on my hip and ripped the lid off, losing my grip and inadvertently flinging the lid across the kitchen. It Frisbeed its way right into Hairy, who, his white fur spattered with chocolate pudding, stood, yowling and hissing at me.

      ‘Dammit!’ I yelled.

      ‘Maw-ahm!’ yelled Lainey, rushing toward Hairy, but stopping just short. ‘Poor kitty!’ She glanced back at me, eyebrows up. ‘And you owe me another dollar.’

      Matt СКАЧАТЬ