Something New (2 page)

But my forty-third birthday approaches—a day that will
signal that I am no longer a hair’s breadth away from my thirties, but firmly entrenched in my forties. And I find that I am feeling wistful about my life. And bored. I am looking at things differently. I am looking at myself differently.

I have begun to gaze in the mirror for longer periods of time now. In the mornings, before my children wake up, and at night, after they have surrendered to sleep. There I stand, down the hall from my little progenies, staring at my reflection and wondering just who the hell it is staring back at me. I trace the wrinkles around my eyes with my index finger, lines that can be called
laugh lines
in your twenties and thirties, but in your forties must be labeled
crow’s feet
. I run my hands through my reddish-brown hair, noting that ten years of Miss Clairol have stripped it of its luster and bounce. I pull my shirt up and spy the harsh effect gravity has had on my breasts, the havoc that childbirth has wreaked on my abdomen. And I think,
Wow, Ellen. Look what you’ve become.

I was considered a babe once, sometime around the Clinton administration. But that time has long since passed. I have become a suburban cliché. The kind of woman lambasted ferociously by a certain chauvinistic shock jock on talk radio. The kind of woman who was once hot but has let herself go. I wasn’t aware of the slide; I had simply changed my focus. I mean, who has time to pluck her eyebrows or shave her legs when she has three children to feed, clothe, and ferry to school?

And worse still, my husband, Jonah, is the kind of man who doesn’t even see bushy eyebrows or hairy legs. He no longer loves me for how I look (which he did when we were first together, telling me that I made him hard every time I flashed my baby blues at him). He loves me for
who I am
. This may come across as a compliment, like he is the very
best kind of unconditionally loving person, and he is. But when no one demands that you keep yourself in shape and properly groomed, well, you just don’t keep yourself in shape and properly groomed. Whenever I complain about my flabby stomach, Jonah lovingly slips his arms around my middle and tells me that I grew three perfect babies
in there
and I should be proud of that fact. This little nugget used to reassure me. Now, it makes me want to punch him in the face.

I know I sound ungrateful, and I know there are millions of women out there who would kill for a man who loves them despite the mushroom cap spilling over the waistband of their favorite pair of jeans. My friend Mia, for one. Her husband has taken to making not-so-subtle comments about the size of her thighs and has even gone so far as to place Jenny Craig coupons on the refrigerator door. (I told her that if Jonah ever did that to me, I would beer-batter and fry up the coupons and force-feed them to him with Tabasco sauce.) My cousin Jill complains that her husband, Greg, never compliments her like he did when they were dating and that he rarely initiates sex. Jonah compliments me all the time, but lately I have come to mistrust these ministrations from him. “You look wonderful,” he says in his most sincere voice, but I question whether he really
sees
me anymore. And when we make love, which we do at least once a month or more, as scheduling and children allow, I can’t help but wonder whether he is replacing me in his mind with one of his attractive work colleagues, or an acquaintance at the club, or this particular checker at the grocery store who looks exactly like a porn star. Not that I blame him, really. I mean, if I weren’t so busy trying to figure out who he’s mentally fucking, I’d probably be fantasizing about someone else too.

I have started to suspect that the term
perfect marriage
is an oxymoron. I have started to wonder whether all marriages, even good ones like mine, harbor lies of omission and petty resentments and secret longings. Whether all husbands and wives sink into a quagmire of ambivalence, which they ignore in order to preserve the sanctity of their union. I have even begun to question whether human beings are truly meant to commit to one single person for the entirety of their lifetimes. The divorce rate being what it is, apparently I am not the only person to raise such questions.

I realize that it’s possible that I am having a midlife crisis, although I am loath to use that expression since it means that I only expect to live to be eighty-four. (Although, honestly, who wants to live that long anyway, unless you’re fabulous like Jessica Tandy or Ruby Dee?) But the plain truth is that I am going through
something
, whether it’s a midlife crisis or early menopause or simply crushing boredom. At some point between being a good wife and a good mother and always doing the right thing, I have lost
me
. So, instead of taking Zoloft, as half of the women in the PTA do, or succumbing to twice-weekly couch sessions with the local shrink, I am going to take matters into my own hands. I am going to renew myself. I am going to recapture my former babe status. I am going to do something for
me
. Something that has nothing to do with my children or my husband. Something that is solely about Ellen Ivers.

I’ve decided to start with an area of my life over which I have a modicum of control: my outside. I am going to start working out again and eating right, like I used to do. I am going to invest in some beauty products that target the skin of “women of a certain age” (
my
age). Because I know that when you feel good about yourself, when you are confident
in how you look, you open yourself up to a world of possibilities. And possibilities can lead to adventures, both large and small.

I feel better for having made this resolution, even though I have no idea what kind of adventure might be headed my way. I only know that reinvention is the mother of satisfaction. And I could use a little of that. Couldn’t we all?

O
f
course, resolutions are easily made, but without inspiration and motivation, they are nearly impossible to keep. I realize this on the fourth day of my supposed renaissance when I bypass the treadmill and head straight for my son Connor’s Pop-Tarts, which are calling to me from the kitchen counter where he left them. I’d been diligent for three days, jogging a total of six miles, sweating my saggy boobs off, my heart thumping alarmingly in my chest, cursing with every seemingly endless minute on the torturous machine. But by Thursday, my resolve has been whittled down to nothing, as I wonder just what the hell I am doing this for. Or, more to the point,
for whom
? When you have a husband who loves you no matter how you look, why put yourself through this hideous, organ-jarring exercise? For the endorphins? Please. I can get just as high on sugar and caffeine with a fraction of the effort.

I have also given up on the gaggle of wrinkle creams and
rejuvenating tonics and facial scrubs and moisturizers that I purchased at Target Monday morning. It’s not that I am suddenly accepting of the trails that time has blazed on my forehead. It’s more a matter of perseverance. By the time I’ve finished the dishes, checked homework, herded my children to bed, folded laundry, and answered my e-mails, I barely have enough energy reserved for washing my face and scrubbing my teeth before I fall, exhausted, onto my pillow. And I have discovered that beauty regimens are pretty grueling. You need a degree in anti-aging just to master the process. Seriously, universities ought to offer a course. Lines-Be-Gone 101. First comes the scrub, then comes the toner, then the undereye cream, which must be applied before the targeted wrinkle erase, which is followed by the all-over age-defying serum, and finally comes the moisturizer. I was in labor for less time than it takes to apply this shit.

And besides, who is going to care if my wrinkles suddenly seem to fade? Who is going to notice that my stomach is flatter than it’s been since the birth of my last child? Perhaps hearing that Hugh Jackman is coming to Garden Hills for a little fun in the sun would produce the inspiration I need. But Hugh is too busy promoting his films. Besides, he has better places to recreate, like San Tropez or Fiji or Monte Carlo. So here I am at ten a.m. eating the last strawberry-frosted Pop-Tart in the box, knowing that Connor will be really irked when he finds I’ve pilfered his goods (even though I buy them). As I finish it off, I wonder how I am going to fill the hour I’ve just acquired by not doing the treadmill, and I get annoyed with myself for losing my steam so easily.

After I swallow down the last of the crumbs, I give my cousin Jill a call to see what she’s up to. She promptly tells me that I must be telepathic because she was just about to call
me. And I should come over
immediately
. She says this as though there is something of vital importance that I must see or hear, but I know Jill too well. Most likely, she can’t wait to show me the color she chose for her toenails at her mani-pedi this morning. But since I have nothing better to do, I agree, telling her I’ll be there in five minutes.

Jill lives about a mile away, and since I have no reason to apply makeup or earrings, or even brush my hair, I make it to her place in four. As I pull to the curb in front of her ranch-style home, I notice a moving van in the driveway of the house next door and several young guys hauling furniture into the house. I can tell by their bronzed (and bulging) biceps that they are surfers and/or sun worshippers—and probably students as well, earning extra cash to support their extracurricular activities. They are the kind of strapping youths who cause even the most happily married women to simultaneously clamp their thighs together and drop their jaws. I watch as two of them effortlessly pull a floral sofa from the van’s rear end and, instantly, I think about my own rear end, which is currently encased in a tattered pair of gray sweats that may or may not have a hole revealing my left butt cheek.

Let me take a moment to dispel any notion that I am some kind of hag or that I look like a vagrant who just stepped out from under a cardboard box. I’m not, and I don’t. I am a moderately attractive, almost-forty-three-year-old woman who manages to look more than presentable at PTA functions and cocktail parties. I do all the requisite primping when I need to, so as not to embarrass my children or my husband. I fit into a size ten, although nowadays I prefer that my waistbands have elastic. I own two pairs of Ferragamo pumps (which Jill talked me into because they were on sale) and a great Versace dress that I wore to Jonah’s firm’s Christmas
party last year. But I prefer sweats or jeans and T-shirts for my everyday ensemble and cannot be bothered to apply makeup regularly. But as I stare, gape-mouthed, at the four studly twenty-somethings hefting chairs and tables and lamps and boxes across the lawn, I wish I had taken thirty seconds to drag a brush through my hair. And put on a pair of pants that I was certain didn’t have a goddamn hole in the butt.

I reach for the sweatshirt I keep in the back of my Flex for emergencies. As I squirm and gyrate in order to tie it around my waist, hoping that it will cover the alleged hole, Jill appears at the front door.

“Come on, come on!” she calls, drawing the attention of the boys next door. She glances over at them and gives them a coy wave reminiscent of a beauty queen.

Jill is not classically beautiful, but she has that fresh-faced, youthful quality that brings to mind those Ivory Girl commercials from the eighties. Originally from the South, she is the epitome of a Georgia peach, with a rosy complexion and a bubbly personality to match. She is two years older than me and looks thirty-five. (Bitch!) And she is always perfectly coiffed and well groomed. (Yes, she manages to find time to shave and pluck despite the fact that she has three children.) At the hands of her menacing African American trainer, Buick, she keeps herself fit and trim. (Buick, like the car, though he more closely resembles a Hummer.) And she has the loveliest green eyes I’ve ever seen. Why her husband, Greg, won’t touch her anymore is one of the great mysteries of life, equal to the current resting place of Jimmy Hoffa.

Jill flashes the movers a smile, and I notice that the two carrying a computer desk up the porch look like they might drop it on their feet. I alight from the car and head up the
flagstone path, where Jill meets me halfway. She drapes her arm around me and giggles.

“A little eye candy to keep you going all day.”

I laugh, but I can feel all of the boys’ eyes on the two of us and can almost hear their thoughts as they consider us: The Beauty (Jill) and the Beast (who else?). Well, at least the sweatshirt is covering the hole on my ass.

She guides me up to her front door, takes one last look at the testosterone fest, then ushers me inside.

Like Jill herself, her house is neat and orderly, bright and cheerful. No piles of stuff lying on surfaces, which I find mystifying since she has three boys. (Four, if you count Greg.) She tells me that she allows her sons freedom in their own rooms; she doesn’t care if their personal dwellings look like they’ve been hit by a monsoon as long as they keep the rest of the house neat. (I tried this edict at home, but to no avail. My children, God love them, are themselves little monsoons who regularly leave a trail of destruction in their wakes. I hustle after them like FEMA, and with about as much success.)

As I enter the kitchen, I detect the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Jill has set two mugs on the granite counter and goes about filling them from the Braun all-in-one she got for Mother’s Day.

“What’s the matter?” she asks with an uncharacteristic frown. Frowning and Jill’s face do not go together, which is why she has never needed—and probably will never need—Botox. I, on the other hand, am a frowner of the first order and would require at least three vials of dead botulism cells for the furrow between my brows alone.

“What do you mean?” I counter, stirring two teaspoons of sugar into my mug.

“You look…MI don’t know. Bummed out.”

Jill knows me better than anyone, even my own sister. And she has a way of getting me to talk about things I’d prefer not to talk about. She has an intuitive side that always emerges when I’m around. I consider just how much I should reveal to her, what she’ll make of all my inner musings. I wonder if I should tell her about my failed attempt at reinvention and, consequentially, my inevitable obsoletion.