Wife Living Dangerously (24 page)

A half hour later Michael is home again clutching a bouquet of pearly pink roses, and unlike the cold, stiff roses you get
in supermarkets, these actually have a lush, authentically rosy fragrance because they came from Louisa’s, an old-fashioned
flower shop downtown. Michael brought me a bouquet of these same pink roses when each of our children was born. He sets the
flowers on my nightstand and drops to his knees.

“I adore you, Julia Flanagan,” he says, reaching under the covers to hold my hands. He presses his face into my neck and I
can feel his tears. “You can’t leave me. I love you so much, Julie. God, how I love you. I’d be lost without you.”

Michael has insisted we go to Primo for a belated birthday dinner. He is trying his best to engage me but all I can think
about is the way Evan’s jeans fit across his hips, how his forearms bulge when he flexes them, the crease of his eyelids,
the subtle protrusion of his upper teeth, the way his lips curl at the corners, even when he isn’t smiling.

My husband fills my wineglass and I feel like someone is stepping on my windpipe. My husband tries to make a joke—something
about a misspelling on our menus—and I want to cry. I remember how it felt to look up from a book and see Evan staring at
me, to be typing at my computer and feel his gaze warming the back of my neck, turning to find that he is, indeed, watching
me.

My husband reaches across the table to spoon a bit of raspberry sorbet in my mouth and I feel like I’m swallowing rocks. I
shouldn’t be here, not with Michael. I have nothing to celebrate tonight and neither does he. I feel only pity for the sweet,
skinny, balding man across the table. He may be losing his wife. He just doesn’t realize it yet.

Y
ou have the weight of the world on your shoulders, don’t you, Michael Flanagan?” Three weeks after the fish incident we’re
sitting with Dr. Tanya Walcowicz, bony and prematurely dowager-humped, sober in a gray tweed suit that is both out of season
and out-of-date. Leslie Keen said Dr. Walcowicz was the best in the business. Then again, Leslie Keen is twice divorced. But
I had to try something.

When I called to arrange the appointment, Dr. Walcowicz asked me what I hoped to gain from counseling. I told her that my
husband and I weren’t as close as we used to be, tried to describe as best as I could that the bond us between us now felt
wispy, tenuous. I said that Michael spends too much time at work, and now he’s involved with this band, and that he’d even
forgotten my birthday. She said nothing but murmured softly. I assumed she was taking notes. I didn’t, however, tell Dr. Walcowicz
what I felt deep in my heart and knew to be true, that I was inflating my husband’s flaws to build myself an impenetrable
pretext for leaving the marriage to be with Evan.

“You’re the warrior who goes out into the world and slays the fire-breathing dragon to protect your family.” It is our third
session with Dr. Walcowicz. We are focusing on Michael’s devotion to his work. She taps her sharp chin with the eraser end
of her mechanical pencil. “Am I right? Are you a dragon slayer, Michael?”

“Yes.” Michael is nodding vigorously, relieved and delighted that for once we’ve found someone who understands him.

I’m already a million miles away. I look down at my hands because I don’t want to look at Dr. Walcowicz’s gray panty hose,
which gathers in loose wrinkles about her ankles. Resting lightly in my lap, my hands suddenly look small and ineffectual,
dry as onion skin. I make a mental note to carry hand lotion at all times. In fact, I will buy a small tube for every purse
so I never find myself without it.

“Michael, may I ask, when was the last time you felt babied?” Dr. Walcowicz doesn’t wait for an answer. “Babies. Helpless,
dependent. Tiny creatures, sweet and needy. Am I right? Michael Flanagan doesn’t like feeling helpless, does he?”

Michael shakes his head and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. He wants to hear more. He thinks she’s on to something.
I’m wondering where she’s going with this.

“Babies are helpless, Michael. They depend on us for food and clothes and all the rest, yes? And babies don’t have to slay
the dragons, do they? They don’t have to work for a living. Babies don’t have to be at the office every morning, or worry
about getting the taxes in by April fifteenth, am I right, Michael? Little babies, little babies.” She sings this last line
and gestures as if she’s cradling an infant in her arms. “So sweet, so helpless. Not a care in the world.”

I hear a hissing sound and think something in the room must be deflating, like a pool float, then realize it’s my husband,
crying into his freckled hands. I hadn’t seen this coming and all at once Michael is foreign to me, not just the crying, but
every part of him, from the flushed bald spot to the ankle bones jutting through thin, olive socks. I realize that I never
knew his ankles were so bony, had never seen those socks before, or noticed that there’s a broken capillary on his bald spot.
What else haven’t I noticed about Michael Flanagan?

“I want you to take your husband in your arms, Julia.”

“Me?” I am yanked from my musings. I hadn’t expected to play a part in this.

Dr. Walcowicz smiles patiently. “Yes,
you.
I want you to take your husband in your arms.”

My husband has stopped crying. I open my arms and Michael positions himself stiffly, with his face in my hair. I notice that
he smells like a stromboli and I wonder whether that’s another meal he shared with Edith.

“Good. Very good. Now turn the other way. Like a baby. There. Good. Julia, I want you to cradle Michael like a baby. You remember
what it is to hold a baby, yes? Can you cradle Michael like a baby? Michael, can you just let go? Can you be a baby, Michael?”

My husband twists toward me and closes his eyes.

“Why don’t you suck your thumb, okay? Did you suck your thumb as a baby, Michael?”

He already has his thumb in his mouth. “Umnh-mhh.” My arms are beginning to ache.

“I thought so.” Dr. Walcowicz checks her watch. “We have a few minutes left. Yesssss. Just sit there and feel this. Michael,
remember how it feels to just
be.
To have all your needs met. Not a care in the world. You have your mommy, your thumb, your blankie…”

I can’t hold it in a second longer. I am laughing now, big snorty hiccupping laughter that makes my whole body shake. And
in the same moment I can feel something shift and now I am crying, but I am not crying with Michael or for him, or even for
us. I’m crying because I am desperately unhappy. I am not yet willing to admit to my husband or therapist that what I really
want is Evan Delaney, who makes me feel young and pretty and more important than his job. I want to be far away from this
humpbacked woman and my thumb-sucking husband.

Three days later Annie and I are back at the Freedom Café, sharing a small slice of tofu cheesecake. She tells me that Frankie
and Jeremy are in therapy and he claims to be done with his affair. As for Annie herself, everything’s “copacetic” as usual;
the only news is that she’s taking water aerobics at the Y.

“That used to be my life,” I told her. “When signing up for a water aerobics class at the Y qualified as a major life change.
Before Evan Delaney.”

“Okay. Here. How about this. Nonprofit work. Channel your energy into something productive and charitable and life-affirming.”

“What do you have in mind?” Now that I’ve passed through the grotesque cookie jar collecting phase, I am open to almost anything.
Doing life-affirming charity work seemed like just the thing to counterbalance the wicked thoughts and fantasies running through
my head on a continuous loop.

“You know Serena Carmichael? The one whose husband divorced her two months after they adopted those twins from Guatemala?
She’s involved with the Cambridge County Wildlife Rescue. Wonderful group. They take in baby birds with broken wings, fix
’em up, release them into the wild. Or something like that. Very gratifying work, she says.”

I’m thinking this may be Annie’s best idea yet. I picture cupping a baby bluebird in my hands, releasing it into the clear
sky over Cherry Hill farm, hugging my fellow rescuers as we watch the healed bird take flight. When I was a Girl Scout, our
troop saved four baby possums whose mother had been hit by a moving van. Not only did we earn our animal care badges, but
the district leader (the aptly named Eleanor Chesty) awarded us a special citation that I have to this day.

“And you won’t have to worry about some hunky wildlife type coming on to you,” Annie continues. “Because it’s all women. Not
a man in sight.”

“Oh.” I guess that would be a good thing. “This isn’t some kind of Outward Bound thing for bored suburban women, is it? Because
I don’t think I have the upper body strength to chop firewood.”

“Nobody’s going to ask you to chop firewood. You can hold a baby bottle, right?” Actually, I breast-fed all three kids, as
my southbound bustline proves, but yes, I assure her, I am confident that I can hold a baby bottle.

“Well, if you can hold a baby bottle, you can feed a baby coyote, or whatever. All they ask is that you commit to one day
a month. That’s doable, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”

Annie rips out a page from her DayTimer and scribbles something on it. “Here’s Serena’s number. Tell her I told you to call.
Come on, Julie. Just take it. It’ll be good for you.”

I have driven the six miles to Cherry Hill farm and Annie is right. It’s like another world out here, or at least another
part of the state, where there are still big patches of trees and meadows and gravel roads.

“You must be Julia Flanagan. I’m Serena Carmichael. Annie told me you’d be stopping by.” Serena’s smile is fleeting, her eyes
aren’t unkind, just sober. Her long gray hair is woven into a thick braid and she’s wearing faded denim overalls.

“You have any critters at home?”

“We’ve got a rat named Homer.” I feel small and inadequate. I wish I could tell her we’ve adopted a three-legged goat or a
blind fox or at the very least a cat. “The kids wanted a dog but my husband didn’t so we got a rat and I told him it’s a guinea
pig.” I was blathering now and knew it. “A dwarf Norwegian flat-coated guinea pig.”

“I don’t understand.” Serena looks confused and I feel frivolous for mentioning it.

“Oh, it’s a long story. My husband doesn’t like animals. But when he was a kid there was this guinea pig…” I stopped
myself. “Never mind.”

“Husbands,” Serena muttered under her breath. “Don’t get me started on that topic.”

We make our way to the main building, a low brick, windowless structure with multiple gates leading to outdoor kennels. We
pass a slender deer resting on straw, its legs tucked beneath her. “That’s Hester,” Serena says, pausing to check the doe’s
water bowl.

“Hester?”

“You know, Hester Prynne.
The Scarlet Letter
?”

“Of course.” The doe is small as a greyhound and surprisingly calm. “Hi Hester.” I put my finger through the gate, expecting
her to approach me but she doesn’t, just stares at me with enormous, black, unblinking eyes.

That night I’m eager to tell the family about my experience at Cherry Hill. “You wouldn’t believe this place. It’s so
cool!
Serena, she’s the woman who runs it, Serena Carmichael, she’s so strong and tough, like Bonnie Raitt, or Jane Goodall, you
know? And she’s got these animals, these incredible animals, Michael, like this hawk named Hemingway with a broken humerus
and—”

“What’s a humerus?” Lucy asks.

“It’s the leg bone,” I say.

“The leg bone’s connected to the hip bone,” Michael begins to sing to the kids. “The hip bone’s connected to the neck bone.”

“The
neck
bone?” Lucy screams, and they all erupt in giggles. Michael wipes the barbecue sauce from his mouth and takes a swig of beer.

“I ate a neck bone once,” says Caitlin. “On Thanksgiving.”

“Ewww.” Jake screams. “Don’t say that.”

“
Any
way,” I continue, trying not to sound as annoyed as I feel, “I got to hold a baby fox cub. His name is Finn and he’s just
as tiny as can be and so incredibly soft, Michael.”

“He sounds sweet.” He takes another gulp from the bottle. “Oh, hon, did you remember to pick up my dry cleaning?”

“What?”

“My dry cleaning. Did you remember to pick it up? Remember, I wanted to wear my blue suit in court tomorrow.”

“Oh, no. I’m sorry. Darn. I totally forgot.” I look at the clock by the stove. “What time do they close? I could go now.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I’ve got plenty of blue suits.”

“No, I’ll get it. I promise. I’ll get it on my way to Cherry Hill.”

“To where?”

“Cherry Hill. The wildlife refuge. You know, where I went today? Actually, it’s
technically
called the Cambridge County Wildlife Rescue Society, but everyone just calls it Cherry Hill since that’s the name of the
farm that used to be there.” Jesus Christ, has my husband heard a single word I’ve said? I’m expected to listen to every detail
of every gig in every seedy dive—excuse me,
venue
—he plays in, and he can’t remember the name of a place I mentioned five minutes ago? I want to scream.

“Sounds like a cool place.” Michael pushes his plate away. “Sweetie, would you mind cleaning up tonight? I need to go back
to the office and pull some things together for court.”

“What? Oh. Sure. Okay. Go ahead. I’ll clean up.”

Michael kisses each of the kids on the forehead, then kisses me softly on the mouth.

“I think it’s great, by the way. All this wildlife stuff. It’ll be good for you to get some fresh air, meet new people. And
if I may say so myself, they couldn’t have found a better volunteer.” He kisses me again. “I’m happy for you.”

I squint at Michael and smirk. He is happy for me? I doubt it. This new volunteer job made me forget to pick up his dry cleaning.
It isn’t a source of pride but amusement, inspiration for a song about neck bones.

As if he can read my mind—which is impossible because as we all know, only wives possess that particular talent—Michael tells
me later, as we’re getting ready for bed, that he’s proud of my new project. “Everything you touch turns to gold, Julia,”
he says, holding my shoulders gently and gazing into my eyes. “Think of what you’ve done at the Bentley. That place was just
a mausoleum before you got there.” He sighs deeply and steps back to look at me. “Are you okay?”