Fairy Tale Blues (14 page)

I tugged my boots off and stretched out on the bed.

She'd been gone half a month now, yet I still heard Annie's voice in my head as if she were in the twin bed next to mine up here, whispering in the dark, “Yes, but, Jess, that is just your desire to be in control. Two equal partners cannot play power games.”

It was no goddamn game. I wanted the power, no playing around about it. It'd been that way for centuries—men held the power. Yet I was willing to go with the change (Annie would say, when I felt like it). I cared for the babies, cooked, cleaned house. Maybe inconsistently, as she claimed, but those were her jobs; I was just helping out. Didn't I get any credit for that?

Maybe she had just meant to rock the boat when she left, but she'd tipped the whole goddamn thing over.

Annie

 

 

I
climbed the stairs to my apartment, leaving my suitcase in the car, because I had Bijou's dishes and food in one arm, a birdcage in the other. I couldn't resist the bird when I spotted her at the pet store while getting chew toys for Bijou. After staying at Daisy's I feared there wasn't enough company at my place with only a puppy and refrigerator mold.

Kia was a beautiful, tiny Fischer lovebird. Only four and half inches high with feathers of exotic greens, reds and yellows. White eye rings pounced out of her face above a brilliant beak that looked as if she were wearing shiny red lipstick—my mom's old favorite Cherries in the Snow by Revlon. The tiniest parrot in the world and I took to her immediately. Already she ate out of my hand.

“Don't you, pretty bird?” Kia scrambled over to the side of the cage nearest my voice. I set her cage on the kitchen counter, reached into my pocket for a sunflower seed and held it out to her with my fingers between the bars of the cage. She tipped her head sideways and took it, showing her tiny tongue. I had confessed to Jess about acquiring my second new pet while he was still feeling regretful over his “no dating” phone call to me. Then I turned my phone off; I needed a break.

Talking to Daisy over the weekend gave me confidence in my decision to take a marriage sabbatical. I'd seen too many divorces among friends in which the good parts of the marriage were discarded with the bad. I intended to save the good parts. Yet marriage as a completely shared life—from bed to business—needed loosening. MARRIAGE RULE #1, Establish Independent Money, pried open new avenues of thought. I couldn't tell yet where that would lead.

From the car I gathered an armload of shopping bags, my tote and suitcase. Lucille opened the back door as I closed the gate.

“Welcome home.”

“Good to be back.”

Mitzi barreled out to give Bijou a frenzied greeting. The puppies collided and locked into a black-and-white furry knot that tumbled in the grass.

Upstairs I opened Kia's cage door and she immediately flew to my shoulder. She accompanied me as I moved from room to room, opening all the windows in my stifling apartment. I checked on the puppies, then gathered ingredients to put together a salad for lunch. Kia nibbled on a lettuce leaf I held up to her, perched on my shoulder. Then she flew down into the sink to play in the drizzle of faucet water. I laughed as I watched her flutter her feathers and begin a little dance accompanied by quiet murmurs and clucks. She lifted one wing, tucked her head, lifted the other wing, tucked her head, turned in a circle.

Two hours until Perry's party. Plenty of time to unpack, settle back into my new home and get showered and dressed. I should have asked Perry how formally to dress for a dinner party on the beach. When a dressy event was held outdoors in Jackson Hole, invitations read “Mountain Cocktail Attire.” As far I could tell no one had figured out what that meant—clothing ranged from Levi's to lace. I hoped the same loose criteria reigned for a lawn party in Florida. My new orange cotton dress with the flared skirt and crazy assortment of white buttons down the front, dressy sandals and sunglasses might do.

 

My friends greeted me in the wide circular drive as soon as I handed my car keys to an attendant. Then Perry took us all to meet our hosts, her parents-in-law, Ralph and Anna. Next, with chilled glasses of white wine in hand, we sauntered across the bouncy Florida grass to the tennis courts where Perry's husband, Alex, was playing. Lobbed balls stunned the silence. I took in Alex's startling good looks, blond, slightly curling hair and tanned, muscled body. He grinned at his two opponents with bright, playful eyes as he crouched in anticipation of a ball served from the far corner of the court. We watched Alex beat the heck out of his two guests, teenagers who worked hard to keep up with this forty-year-old. Alex leaped over the net and shook hands with the losers.

Marcy said it for all of us: “So . . . rich
and
married to a movie god.”

“And on top of that, she's blond and beautiful,” Sara added.

Perry said, “The blond may be symbolic of it all—my real hair tends toward a dull rusty brown and the rest . . . You'll see. And I'll explain everything at lunch on Tuesday.”

What could possibly need explaining? She looked content and happy.

“Alex.” Perry waved. “Come meet my friends when you can.”

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful place. The house was huge, painted pink and yellow, its gabled roof tiled. It stood against a blue sky and was surrounded by lush, deeply green grass on three sides. The mirror of ocean stretched behind it, where sunlight sparked on the waves over the dune, like mysterious signals from beyond the sea oats. I checked my friends' faces, and they were all enthralled by the physical beauty of Perry's home . . . and her husband.

Alex jogged over, looking invigorated, while his partners slumped on a bench, looking exhausted. Up close a long, raised scar beside Alex's hair line was visible, but didn't deter one bit from his handsome, perfect features. His teeth flashed bright as the sunlit waves when he smiled at Perry, then at us. Perry made the introductions.

When Alex learned I had just come for the winter, he asked, “Have you gone to Disney World yet?

“No, I haven't. Probably won't,” I added.

“Oh, you have to go; doesn't she, Perry?”

“Alex loves Disney World.”

“I love it,” he said simply.

“I have a business at home where I deal with lots of tourists, so I don't usually go places with crowds.” I expected him to ask about my business now; I was looking forward to telling him. Something dramatic-sounding to Florida people, I had learned, about a ski shop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. All those snowstorms, cold temperatures and steep mountains. I was happy being in Florida, but I missed Jackson Hole enough to want to talk about it every chance I got. Giving the weather report back home was a sure way to stir reaction. I had come prepared: snow three feet deep on the valley floor, thirty feet in the mountains. Temperature: eleven below zero.

“Disney World, though . . . ” Alex looked to Perry for the words. Perry glanced to each of us, as if gauging something, and I wondered if perhaps not everyone liked to talk about Disney World in Florida. I checked Sara and Marcy for their reactions. There were none. They were just smiling at Alex and Perry, eyes expressionless. Much as I was doing. Maybe the family's obvious wealth—I glanced toward the enormous Key West-style house rising above the beach, with pool and gardens—was making us all stupid.

When Perry didn't step in to supply the words, Alex said, “Disney World has Space Mountain.”

“Space Mountain?” Marcy spoke as if taking her first verbal step out of a trance. You could feel her gathering herself together and trying to pretend that she had been part of the conversation all along, not off somewhere trying to put two and two together and coming out with five.

“And you can get married at Cinderella's Castle,” Alex said.

“My girls used to dream of doing that when they were little,” Sara said. “Hope they've gotten over
that
by now.” Sara tucked both lips between her teeth, realizing that she should have omitted that last sentence. She added, “Because it's so expensive.” And she dashed a look around the circle to see if she had reclaimed her good manners.

“That's what we did; we got married at Cinderella's Castle. Perry was Cinderella, with just the right color hair. And I was Prince Charming. I carried the ring in a glass slipper.”

“You mean . . . ?” I didn't even know where to go with this.

“They really do that down here,” Perry said. “I was surprised, too, when I first heard about it.”

“It's the dream of a lot of Florida girls,” Sara said. Her lips disappeared between her teeth again. Then she added, “And boys.”

Marcy, still looking a bit dazed, right when we needed her brashness for asking all the questions we were afraid to ask, said, “Well, it's all just perfect, then.”

Alex said, “It was perfect. The fireworks went off at just the right time in the background.”

Perry said, teasing him, “And you were so busy watching them, you almost missed saying your vows.”

“Perry poked me.” Alex grinned at us. “Then we went on a Mickey Mouse honeymoon.”

“Better go shower and change your clothes now.” Perry raised up on her toes and kissed Alex on the cheek. “They're all laid out on the bed.”

“I'm okay.”

“We're going to eat soon. See? Mr. Raul is grilling.”

“I don't need to change.”

“I'll come with you.” Perry turned to us and said, “Please help yourself to canapés and more wine. I'll be right back.”

Not one of us said a word or even exchanged a single glance. We were Perry's friends; she'd tell us what she wanted us to know during lunch this week at the Green Bottle Café. We moved together toward the tables set with food beneath colorful umbrellas and then, as if it were too great a burden not to look at one another without question marks in our eyes, we each reached for a canapé, turned and sauntered off in three different directions.

I struck up a conversation with a woman in her twenties I had seen knitting beneath a bottlebrush tree on campus one morning last week.

“You made me remember I really liked knitting,” I told her. “But I've only done square things. Well, dishcloths. It looked as if you were knitting a sweater.”

“A summer shell. It soothes me to knit and helps order my thoughts,” the woman said. “Mostly, though, I'm just hooked on it.”

We talked for a while, exchanged names; hers was Caridad. She said she was also a student at the college, her family was from Cuba and she had recently moved up the coast from Miami. She gave me the location of her favorite yarn store and the phone number from her cell, which I copied into mine. The desire to hold knitting needles in my hand rose suddenly and urgently, a physical thing. I wanted to knit right now. Caridad invited me to sit under the bottlebrush tree and knit with her between classes; then we parted when people were called to dine. I headed toward the patio, with fingers that itched to hold beautiful yarn and a pair of those bamboo needles that I'd seen Caridad use. Like her, I needed soothing. I needed to order my thoughts.

Urges seemed to come on hard and fast for me lately, as though my inner landscape were cleared of brush and tilled for seeds. I thought of my new bird, and before that Bijou, my college classes, those sudden longings for the beach, in which I dropped whatever I was doing and left. When was the last time I felt this much in touch with myself? For the past two decades I had held down a full-time job, along with mothering two sons and trying to keep a marriage together. Breakfasts and lunches were eaten at my desk. I smiled to myself; it was a nice surprise to discover I still had urges.

Marcy, Sara and I carried our plates, heaped with lobster thermidor, shrimp, crab cakes and colorful fruit, to the upper deck of the pool house, overlooking the ocean. Perry popped by our table in between hostess duties and perched on a chair to join our talk. The water stretched before us, calm and silky, a navy blue against the softer blue of the sky. Once our empty plates were collected by a waiter, Perry led us to the dessert table, and I hung back a bit, stepped behind an oleander and called the yarn shop to see how late they were open on Sundays.

The four of us sipped coffee, talked lazily and tested bites of one another's dessert choices until the colors of the sunset faded from the garish shades resembling the sherbets dolloped beside our small cakes to the soft pastels of our dinner mints. Discreetly I checked my watch, discovered it was a quarter after five; the yarn shop closed at six. I hugged my friends goodbye. I found Perry's in-laws and offered my appreciation for the wonderful afternoon, then hurriedly jumped in my car and headed for town. Who but me would be so eager to knit another dishcloth?

 

Monday morning I phoned the store. A young woman answered in a little-girl voice with a deep come-on to it.

“Could I speak to Jess?”

“Like . . . who's calling?”

“His wife.”

“His
wife
?

“Yes,” I said, and mimicked the young woman, “his
wi-ife
.” Then I changed my mind. “Let me speak to Hadley.”

I heard the young woman call Hadley and say before handing the phone over, “Jess is mar-ried?”

“Annie?”

“Does she look like she sounds?”

There was a pause, the clunk of a door shutting; then Hadley answered, “Bustier.”

“Oh, dear.”

Hadley said, “Come home.”

“Oh, dear.”

Jess had said our phone talks were our mating calls. Like birds, he'd said, calling from tree to tree: