Chances Aren't (2 page)

"You're crazy."

"You never looked at me the same way again."

"That's not true."

"You know it is. In your heart you know it is." After a few moments of complete silence I ask, "So if you're not leaving me for someone else, what's this about?"

"I just can't do it anymore and I, I…"

"What?"

"I still want a baby. I'm forty five and I don't have much time."

"Now you want a baby?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Um, we could have gone through with the adoption. We just needed—"

"Don't start." She shakes her head and groans. "You're the one who found something wrong with every baby the lawyer presented us with."

"Forgive me for being a little careful after we lost thirty grand on the one and then the other fell through the day it was born. Remember, you cried for a week."

"That Bennett girl was going to give us her baby." She wipes her tears again. "I know she was."

"I didn't trust her."

"I did."

"The one who wanted us to pay for her breast implants and two weeks in Hawaii?" I look at her, dismayed. "That one?"

"She only wanted a tummy tuck."

"Oh, okay, yeah," I fire back sarcastically while giving her a tired look.

We look at each other, but neither of us says another word. I pull my eyes away from her first and focus instead to my only friend in the room, my big plate of ziti. "So, what, my favorite meal is supposed to cushion the blow of all this?"

"I just thought… I don’t know."

"And what?" I sigh and now I'm the one curling my lip and fighting back tears. "You want me to move out?"

"No, I'm going to move in with my parents until I figure out what I'm doing next."

"You have a lawyer?"

"No, I don't."

"When did you decide all this?" I ask.

"I've been thinking about it for a long time. Can you honestly say you haven't been too?"

I nod in half-hearted agreement. "So, I guess there's nothing else to talk about. That's it."

"No, not right now."

Rising to her feet, she moves away from the table and grabs her purse. "I think I'm just going to go."

I watch in disbelief as she heads toward the garage door. "Don’t you need to pack anything?"

"Already did. Everything's in the car."

"Shit, really?"

She nods her head slowly and gives me a sad look. "I'll call you in a couple days and we'll figure out all the rest."

"Okay."

She turns and walks out the door.

Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and run my hands over my face. I suppose it's fitting that our breakup or whatever the hell you want to call that thing that just transpired between us was as innocuous and numb as the last ten years of our marriage. When I open my eyes, I notice our wedding picture hanging on the wall in the great room. God, she looked so beautiful that day. Shit… I actually had hair. My heart feels like it's thumping out of my chest and I grip the table with both hands and slump back in my chair looking out the sliding glass door at the trees.

The house is eerily quiet and I really don't know how I feel or how I'm supposed to feel right now. I run my tongue around my mouth and the only thing I'm sure of is that I'm incredibly thirsty. In my excitement over getting to this meal, I forgot a drink so I head to the refrigerator and grab a beer. If ever I needed one, it's now. After twisting off the top, I chug half of it then grab a second and return to the table. I pull the plate in front of me, pausing a moment just looking at it as a tiny smile spreads over my face. Selecting four noodles this time, I scoop up a giant glob of meat sauce and shovel it in and for some reason all I can think is I wish I had watched over her shoulder a few more times while she made the sauce so I'd have a better idea how to do it myself.

The nightmare is always the same— I'm standing up masturbating, specimen cup in one hand and myself in the other. Straining, I'm struggling to finish and make my deposit in the middle of this small decrepit room with its weathered dirty magazines, crappy old VCR and tiny television. To my right is a huge plate glass window where a doctor and team of nurses stand, arms folded, staring at me wearing their disappointed faces. Behind them only my wife's naked feet and calves are visible, propped up and spread apart, held in shiny metal stirrups. My audience grows angrier with each unsuccessful stroke. Giving them a confident nod, I redouble my efforts standing on my tip toes, squeezing harder, moving faster with the veins in my forehead bulging out from the fight.

Finally my climax is upon me and my face contorts as I let out a horrible grunt not unlike that of a dying animal. I think I'm done, but something's not quite right. Glancing down to the cup, I find it empty. I search the floor for the result of my Herculean efforts and it's nowhere to be found. I glance up to the crowd, whose expressions have morphed into something more of concerned disbelief. I'm still abusing myself and finally I feel something happening. A single tiny drop of the fluid my wife desperately craves, plops into the otherwise barren cup. Raising my contribution up in triumph, I deliver a shrug along with a hesitant smile and the crowd bursts into laughter.

I awake in a cold sweat, panting with my heart beating out of my chest, and for a moment I'm unsure where I am. Scanning the room with my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I realize I'm at home in bed alone and I play back the events of the previous night just to be sure I'm in touch with my new reality. I came home, began a delicious meal, but was interrupted for a few minutes as my marriage came crumbling down around me. Then after taking a few minutes to gather myself, I pounded some beers, finished my meal and finally drank until I could no longer remember my name. I'm not sure how I got upstairs to bed, but given that I'm alone I doubt anyone carried me.

I'm gazing up at the ceiling fan and running my tongue around my super dry mouth, now thinking about the dream. While I'm certainly a big fan of sex dreams since they supplement my mostly unfulfilling marriage; correction, they used to supplement my now all but ended marriage, I generally prefer the ones where I have an actual partner and the laughter is kept to a minimum. It's scary that when I think of sex now, I think of doctors, hospitals and tests. This dream isn't very far from the truth of my experience struggling for five years to impregnate Emily, of which more than two years was spent in various offices and clinics being studied, prodded, tested and criticized. The act that used to put a spring in my step and a huge smile on my face is now void of passion and heat at least as far as my wife and I are concerned—which, to be clear, is as far as I'm concerned since I'm a faithful guy.

Lying in bed, I'm trying to decide how to spend my first morning as a bachelor elect. Should I jerk off in this quiet house? I could really do it up right, watch a little Internet porn, break out the good lube and I could even do it in any room I choose without worrying about being discovered. With my head pounding from my night of drinking, I come to the conclusion that I'm much too exhausted and decide to take a rain check.

It's 7:12 a.m. and if I was a normal person I'd still be asleep, but I get up early no matter what. It's a curse and I'd give anything to be able to sleep late. Suddenly I remember that it's Wednesday, not a national holiday and sadly I'm not independently wealthy so I need to get my ass to work. I forgot to set the alarm, so I'm already late. After popping up out of bed a little too quickly, I grasp my head, pausing a moment before I slowly make my way to the bathroom.

Stripping out of my boxer shorts, I turn on the shower and step in front of the mirror to study my naked body. If it was even possible, now I feel worse. My thinning hair looks like crap, I don't care what anyone says, nothing ages you faster than going bald. Other than Bruce Willis, there isn't another guy on the planet who can pull off this shiny head thing and not look like an old man. I haven't shaved in a few days, but in the interest of time and laziness, I'll have to push that off at least one more. I turn to the side and cringe at the sight of my semi-pouch of a belly. I once, a long time ago, sported a respectable four pack, but now I'm all out and desperately in need of a consistent workout regimen. I'm only about twenty pounds over where I should be, but it all settles in the worst possible places— my stomach and my ass. After last night's pasta and beer party, I don’t want to know how far over my target weight of one hundred fifty pounds I actually am. To save myself from more bad news, I'll skip climbing on the scale today. I mention that as if I check my weight with some regularity, which is laughable.

I wasn't blessed with broad shoulders, but instead cursed with wide hips, so the extra poundage around the middle is emphasized by my already pathetically challenged and unforgiving frame making matters much, much worse. Thank God I at least have some decent biceps, probably from all that chronic masturbating, but if I'm to get back out on the market, I've got to address all those other issues before I do. After one last look, I shake my head in disgust before heading under the water. Once I'm dressed, I pack my gym back with every intention of slipping away during lunch to break a sweat.

During my hour-long commute, I'm struggling to stay focused as I drive on these mostly empty back country roads. I'm a mid-level manager in one of the information technology groups at a mid-sized Lawn and Garden Wholesale Distributor. Not the sexiest of professions, but it pays the bills. I oversee data flowing in and out to our customers as they order things like bags of mulch, shovels, garden hoses and Japanese beetle traps. It's not like I expected a career featuring red carpets and A-list parties, but come on, it could be slightly more pulse quickening.

At work, I settle down in front of my computer and open my email hopeful that no disasters await me. I'm pleasantly surprised to find nothing of concern. Heading to the hot water dispenser, I pray it can produce enough for a cup of tea. It's attached to this ancient coffee maker piece of crap that definitely has some issues, but for some reason we never can get a repair guy to fix. The same model runs fine downstairs and produces scalding hot water, barely needing any time to recover. Ours will produce one eight ounce cup before needing a full fifteen minutes to get back up to a temperature just north of tepid.

My cup of water isn’t up to the challenge, so I curse under my breath as I head to the water fountain and pour it away before returning to my desk. I'd trek all the way downstairs, but my head is still pounding. I dive into a minor task for this mindless and mostly unnecessary project we've been working on for just over seven years. That's right, seven years. Ninety five percent of the time it's been on hold for one reason or another, but somehow at the most inopportune time it always rises to the surface and becomes a priority again. And that's just until something else comes along and we're ordered to push it aside. I'm pretty sure when I finally retire, they'll all still be working on it, but for now, it is back on my plate. I push the files to our test system, do a quick review of the data and fire off an email to the project team. The ball's in someone else's court now. Mocking the whole process, I keep my sanity by wiping my finger across my brow and making a noise as if what I just did was somehow taxing.

Returning to the hot water dispenser, I get lucky and my cup steams barely enough to brew my tea to drinkability. I take a sip then start to tackle my email inbox. My boss Greg Mathews walks past my door, briefcase in hand and says good morning. He's in his early sixties and has been married for more than forty years. He joined the company before he was married and was promoted to director about fifteen years ago. He has told me he's retiring in two years at least seven times over the last ten and frankly I'm getting sick of hearing it. In fact, the last time he told me, about six months ago, I put a reminder in my Outlook calendar for the exact date two years out in the future. In some ways it's the bright spot that keeps me going. I can't wait for the day it pops up on my desktop and I share this nugget with him. I wish I had thought to store the date three or four announcements ago.

He's also been telling me he's grooming me to take over his position when he leaves. Don't get me wrong, I don't really want him to go because if I do get his job, I really might have to kill myself. All he does is go to meetings and nod his head at the appropriate intervals as he pretends to be paying attention. All his remaining time in the building is spent bullshitting with the ten people who report to him, listening to talk radio and surfing the Internet in his office.

He's incredibly upbeat and maybe just a tad flaky but I love the guy. He once was reprimanded by his boss for announcing his ground breaking liberal vacation policy. His policy stated that if you're taking a vacation day and happen to receive a support call from work, that even if it only takes ten minutes to complete, you should record the day as a full work day instead of vacation. Our group universally applauded this, since we all have had occasion to be interrupted while taking much deserved time away, but I'll admit it goes a bit far. Maybe there is some happy medium to be worked out there, but none has yet to be formally approved.

He pops his head into my office and cheerily says, "Do you know what today is?"

I give him a confused look. "No."

"My birthday."