Wife 22. Melanie Gideon

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      9

      “Alice!” William yells from the kitchen. “Alice!” I hear his footsteps coming down the hall.

      I quickly close the Netherfield Center questionnaire window and log on to a celebrity gossip website.

      “Here you are,” he says.

      He’s dressed for work: khakis and a pale purple dress shirt. I bought him that shirt, knowing how good he’d look in that color with his dark hair and eyes. When I brought it home he’d protested, of course.

      “Men don’t wear lavender,” he told me.

      “Yes, but men wear thistle,” I said.

      Sometimes all you need to do to get men to agree with you is call things by another name.

      “Nice shirt,” I say.

      His eyes dart over to my laptop. “Gwen Stefani and the Sisterhood of the Terrible Pants?”

      “What do you need?” I ask.

      “Oh, those are terrible. She looks like Oliver Twist. Yes, I need something but I forgot what.”

      This is a typical response—one I’m used to. Both of us frequently wander into a room bewildered and ask the other if he or she has any idea what we’re doing there.

      “What’s up with you?” he asks.

      My eyes fall on the bill for the motorcycle insurance. “Well. I wish you’d make a decision about the motorcycle. It’s been sitting in the driveway forever. You never take it out.”

      The motorcycle takes up precious space in our small driveway. More than once I’ve accidentally tapped it while pulling in.

      “One of these days I’ll start driving it again.”

      “You’ve been saying that for years. And every year we keep on paying the excise tax and the insurance.”

      “Yes, but I mean it now. Soon,” he says.

      “Soon what?”

      “Soon I’ll be driving it,” he repeats. “More than I have been.”

      “Mm-hmm,” I say, distracted, going back to my computer.

      “Wait. That’s all you want to talk about? The motorcycle?”

      “William, you came looking for me, remember?”

      And no, the motorcycle is not all I want to talk about. I want to have a conversation with my husband that goes deeper than insurance policies and taxes and what time will you be home and did you call the guy about the gutters, but we seem to be stuck here floating around on the surface of our lives like kids in a pool propped up on those Styrofoam noodles.

      “And there’s plenty of things we can talk about,” I say.

      “Like what?”

      Now is my chance to tell him about the marriage study—oh, you wouldn’t believe the ridiculous thing I signed up for and they ask the craziest questions but it’s for the good of science because you know there is a science to marriage, you may not believe it but it’s true—but I don’t. Instead I say, “Like how I’m trying, completely unsuccessfully mind you, to convince the third-grade parents that the geese are the most important roles in the school play, even though the geese don’t have any lines. Or we could talk about our son, Peter, I mean, Pedro, being gay. Or I could ask you about KKM. Still working on semiconductors?”

      “Band-Aids.”

      “Poor baby. Are you stuck on Band-Aids?” I sing that line. I can’t help myself.

      “We don’t know if Peter is gay,” says William, sighing. We’ve had this conversation many times before.

      “He may be.”

      “He’s twelve.”

      “Twelve is not too early to know. I just have a feeling. A sense. A mother knows these sorts of things. I read this article about all these tweens coming out in middle school. It’s happening earlier and earlier. I bookmarked it. I’ll email it to you.”

      “No, thank you.”

      “William, we should educate ourselves. Prepare.”

      “For what?”

      “For the fact that our son might be gay.”

      “I don’t get it, Alice. Why are you so invested in Peter’s sexuality? Are you saying you want him to be gay?”

      “I want him to know we support him no matter what his sexual orientation. No matter who he is.”

      “Right. Okay. Well, I have a theory. You think if Peter’s gay you’ll never lose him. There’ll be no competition. You’ll always be the most important woman in his life.”

      “That’s absurd.”

      William shakes his head. “It would be a harder life for him.”

      “You sound like a homophobe.”

      “I’m not a homophobe, I’m a realist.”

      “Look at Nedra and Kate. They’re one of the happiest couples we know. No one discriminates against them and you love Nedra and Kate.”

      “Love СКАЧАТЬ