The Breakup (4 page)

As we spoke, amidst his high-tech clutter, with the sunlight streaming through the blinds, I watched his
smooth hands circle the coffee cup. He seemed like a man with secrets, a man who nursed some deep and tragic wound, and while
this should have repelled me, I found it intensely attractive. I wondered what his secret might be.

Eddie called to insist that there’s no reason to wait for Libby’s report. He wants to come over and help me search the house.
Pete has a Tiger Cub pow-wow this weekend at Wesley Woods, and Roger is supposedly attending a writers’ retreat. I told Eddie
he could stop by Saturday, around noon. I suspect he has more on his mind than gold.

’Til next time,

V

Eddie and I spent all afternoon and most of the evening searching for Roger’s hidden stash of gold bullions. We removed the
ceiling tiles in the basement: nothing. Using a metal detector and stud finder, we scanned the drywall and floorboards: nothing.
We looked behind the circuit breaker box in the garage: nothing. We pawed through every drawer in every dresser and cabinet
in the house, through every box in the basement and garage, through every shelf and shoebox in every closet. No gold. I’m
beginning to suspect Diana fabricated everything.

I did, however, find the missing Austrian crystal necklace my father gave me on my sixteenth birthday, my Miles Davis CD,
the power drill chuck key, a Norton Utilities disk, Pete’s preschool class picture, and my favorite leather gloves. We also
found Roger’s stack of
Hustler
magazines. Six years’ worth. If these had been my husband’s only deep, dark secret, I would have been stunned. But compared
to everything else I now know about the man, I just shook my head and laughed.

As I write this, Eddie is sleeping on the couch. Despite my recent exhortations on the joys of unencumbered sex, I wasn’t
in the mood tonight. I should be able to screw with impunity now. I’ve got nothing to lose. But I couldn’t locate even the
tendrils of arousal. Maybe it’s the Prozac, or maybe it’s the fact that Eddie started to look a bit too
comfortable
in my house, walking around in his underwear and drinking orange juice straight from the carton. He seemed settled. I wanted
him to go away. When he started tugging at my clothes, I suggested he go back to his wife.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m supposed to be in Chicago. At a convention.”

“Plant guys have conventions?”

Then the phone rang. “Put my husband on,” said the voice on the other end. I froze. “Look, I know he’s there. Just put him
on.”

What was I supposed to tell her? That her husband
couldn’t come to the phone because he was busy convincing me to go to bed with him? “I’m sorry. Who’s this?” I said, stalling.
I could hear kids shrieking in the background.

“Don’t bullshit me, Mrs. Ryan,” she snarled. “I saw his truck in your driveway, okay? Now put my husband on the phone.” She
was talking loud enough for Eddie to hear. He pantomimed wildly:
No. I’m not here. Tell her I’m not here.

I hung up on her. Then I pulled the phone off the cradle and listened as the dial tone changed to a nagging beep and then
to a grating alert signal, and then, mercifully, to silence.

Eddie walked his fingers up my arm, and along my chest. “Come on, Val.” He winked at me. “We could always make believe we’re
in Chicago at a convention. I’ll be the horny conventioneer and you can be room service.” Eddie looked warm and delectably
rumpled in his flannel boxers; a quick romp on the couch could have been a welcome distraction. He pulled me toward him and
kissed me on the mouth, lightly at first, then harder. His hand tightly clenched the back of my neck. I tried to pull away
but he held on more tightly. I was having trouble breathing. “Let up a little,” I whispered. “No,” he grunted. Now he had
me against the wall. It scared me. I had a sudden recollection of the time I’d impulsively adopted a sleek, stray German Shepherd
from the pound. Alone with the dog in my empty apartment, I saw a
surliness in his eyes, a look I hadn’t noticed when I’d picked him out. I slept with my bedroom door locked that night and
returned him to the pound the following day.

“I guess you’re not in the mood,” Eddie said finally, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. And there, in Eddie’s eyes,
I saw that same surliness.

“It’s been a hell of a day, Eddie,” I told him. “I’m sure you understand.” I heard my voice quaver.

He shrugged his shoulders and grabbed the TV remote. “Whatever.”

’Til next time,

V

Eddie was gone by the time I woke up, and I knew it was over between us. I’m relieved. Happy, actually. Is that me or the
Prozac? Is there even a distinction between the two anymore?

When I went to retrieve Pete at Wesley Woods, I found him sitting on his duffel bag outside the cabin. His right hand was
wrapped in bandages. It looked like a big white lollipop. Apparently he’d scalded himself on a hot metal pot. After that,
he couldn’t do much of anything for the rest of the weekend.

I went into the cabin in search of someone in authority. I found Lynette Kohl-Chase, who just happens
to be the new assistant cubmaster. She was in full Cub Scout regalia, the dull khaki shirt and plaid neckerchief knotted tightly
at her throat, the navy blue cap and matching navy pants, the kind bus drivers wear.

“Why didn’t you try to reach me?” I demanded.

“We did,” Lynette answered, scanning her clipboard. “At 7:00, at 7:03, at 7:05, at 7:07, at 7:10. The line was busy.” She
looked at me. “Troop regulations require us to keep a log of all emergency phone calls, and believe me, this was an emergency.
Pete was in agony. We continued to try you all night.”

I almost collapsed when I remembered that I’d taken the phone off the hook after Eddie’s wife called. I can’t begin to describe
the guilt and heartbreak I felt then, and still feel. “Poor sweetheart,” she continued. “We made s’mores. He could barely
pick them up with his bandaged hand.” I looked into Lynette’s clean, earnest face. I wanted to strangle her with that stupid
plaid neckerchief.

I buckled Pete into the Jeep and popped in the
Annie
sound track, hoping to lighten the mood. He glared at me in the rearview mirror. “Why didn’t you answer the phone?” he asked.

I wanted to cry. “Oh, honey, I didn’t know you were trying to call me. I accidentally knocked the phone off the hook. It was
off the hook all night. I’m so sorry.”

He just stared out the window. I wanted to stamp
it across my forehead: World’s Worst Mother. Pete’s face was stern, like an old man’s. At that moment I sent up a promise
to God, a promise to live a cleaner, purer life. I made a mental note to call Reverend Lee.

’Til next time,

V

Roger called to say he has extended his stay at the writers’ retreat. He won’t get back until Saturday. Yippee!

Interesting side effect of the Prozac; I can’t stop yawning! Big, jaw-cracking yawns. I can’t stop myself. The other side
effect is gas. Lovely. I stopped by my parents’ house, and my father, who slept through most of my visit, woke up long enough
to accuse my mother of farting.

I didn’t feel obligated to confess, and my mother refused to accept responsibility. Dad started cracking up and said, “She
who denied it supplied it.” It was so gratifying to see him laugh like that, but he quickly tired himself out and was soon
fast asleep again.

In the kitchen, I admitted that I was the culprit, and told her about the Prozac. She was clearly disappointed. “You don’t
need pills,” she said. “You just need a divorce.”

“But I’m miserable,” I told her.

“Of course you’re miserable,” she responded. “Who wouldn’t be, married to that creep?” Then she started speechifying: Life
is supposed to be hard, there are no quick fixes, drugs are bad. I’d heard it all before and wasn’t in the mood to hear it
again.

“I gotta go, Mom,” I told her. I gave her a hug. “Kiss Dad for me when he wakes up, okay?”

She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I will.” Then she whispered, “No more pills, you hear?” I just shook my head and left.

’Til next time,

V

Last night I dreamed that Libby Taylor’s report came in the mail. It looked like my Visa statement, page after page of charges.
On the last page it said, Debit: $649,000. Roger was destitute. Instead of the million-dollar settlement I’d expected, I actually
owed the IRS $649,000! I woke up crying. I switched on the light and ran to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror.
I forced myself to say aloud, “It was a dream.” But I never went back to sleep.

’Til next time,

V

It’s amazing, really. The things I used to ruminate about—how Pete’s going to handle the divorce, how I’ll survive being single—now
just pass through my head. It’s like transcendental meditation. I notice the thoughts, but I don’t fixate on them. I have
decided to ignore my mother’s anti-Prozac admonitions: Westerners are the only people who seek to avoid suffering. Other cultures
accept pain as a normal part of life, but Americans have this crazy idea that we ought to be happy all the time.

So what’s wrong with wanting to be happy? What makes this American notion less valid than any other notion about happiness?
I say, why not take a cultural relativist approach to the question of happiness: Some cultures seek to accept it, others seek
to avoid it, nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong. It’s all cultural, and it’s all relative.

Now I may finally have a 20-milligram tool to help me feel some measure of happiness, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going
to try it.

’Til next time,

V

Our parakeet died. I found him facedown in the cage. Pete cried until he threw up, a reaction that surprised
me given the fact he didn’t seem to like the bird. Pete demanded a formal burial. It’s been unseasonably warm, and some of
the yard was almost swampy after all the rain, so I told him to find the spade in the garage and we’d dig a little grave by
the blue spruce. The ground turned out to be harder than I’d expected, and I was ready to abandon the project, but Pete started
bawling, so I forged ahead.

Lynette, who apparently starts with a fresh font of goodwill every day while I continue nursing my grudges against her, spied
me from her deck. “Aw, did the birdie die?”

Pete nodded mournfully, wiped away a tear with his bandaged lollipop hand.

“Can I help? We’ve got a fence post digger. Works like a charm. Even on frozen ground.” The next thing I knew, Lynette was
at my side with her contraption, drilling away.

We all heard it:
Clang!

“Darn it!” Lynette said. “We must have hit a rock.”

We peered into the hole. I tried to stop Lynette from reaching in, but it was too late.

“What the heck is this?” Lynette was bending over the hole. “Oh dear. I hope it’s not another little coffin. This isn’t some
kind of pet cemetery, is it?”

“No. Definitely not,” I answered. The bird had been our first real pet. Roger had never allowed animals in the house. He claimed
to be allergic, but I eventually realized that he was fearful. When Pete
brought home the class gerbil from preschool for the weekend, Roger insisted we keep it in the garage, where it died of hypothermia.

We did have a goldfish once, won it at the county fair. It died the same day, as soon as we transferred it from the Baggie
to a real fishbowl. Pete insisted on burying it. Roger sent Pete to bed, promising that he’d put the fish in an Altoids tin
and bury it under the blue spruce. I found the fish the next morning, floating in the basement toilet. Apparently Roger had
forgotten how unreliable that basement toilet could be. Now I knew that Roger had indeed buried something under the blue spruce,
but it wasn’t a dead goldfish in an Altoids tin.

Lynette dropped to her knees and stuck a gloved hand into the hole. “Jeez, this thing is heavy,” she said, grunting as she
pulled something out of the clay soil. It was a strongbox.

“Oh, why don’t you just leave it there?” I suggested uneasily.

She looked at me, bewildered. “Are you kidding?” She wiped the hair out of her eyes. “Aren’t you curious?”

Pete started hopping up and down. “Maybe it’s buried treasure!”

I tried to be cool. “Oh, wait a minute. Now I remember.” Pete and Lynette looked at me expectantly while my brain scrambled
to fabricate something believable. “I think that must be Roger’s time capsule.
You know, for all that millennium business. I’m sure that’s what it is.”

Lynette scrunched up her face. She was one of the few women who hadn’t been charmed by my husband. “Too heavy to be a time
capsule.” She pulled off her gloves and jammed a manicured finger against the latch. It was locked.

“Dang,” she said, scowling. Pete said something like, “You could use my key.” I figured he was talking about the key to this
little plastic locker my parents gave him for Christmas.

“I don’t think that would work, sweetie, but thank you so much for offering,” I told him. “You’re such a good helper!”

I pulled the box from Lynette’s grip. It
was
heavy. Dense, dead weight. It occurred to me that Lynette might think Roger had buried something really scandalous, like
drugs or body parts. But I wasn’t about to defend his reputation. “Well, Lynette, I might as well take this in. I’m sure Roger
wouldn’t want us messing with it.”

My heart thrummed as I lugged the box up the deck stairs and into the house. I put it on the floor in the family room and
tried to pick the lock with everything I could get my hands on. An old luggage key. A bobby pin. A safety pin. The thing you
use to pick walnut meat out of the shell. A shishkabob skewer. A screwdriver. I got hotter, sweatier, and more desperate with
every attempt. Suddenly, Pete appeared,
dangling a key from his good hand. “Try this key, Mommy,” he urged.