The Marriage Intervention (10 page)

She had to give him a firm “no” to the drinks invitation. She had to tell him their personal relationship was completely over, that she couldn’t and wouldn’t talk to him about anything unrelated to Juniper Elementary School.
 

It was Thursday morning, and she put on a crisp, light blue button-up shirt and a black pencil skirt with high black heels and a string of pearls. She knew she looked as serious and determined as she felt, and she strode into Scott Smith’s office ten minutes before school with her heart pounding in her throat.
 

He looked up, surprised, and she couldn’t help but smile. When he smiled back at her, she felt like she was the only woman in the world.
 

Well, you
are
the only woman in Scott’s office, Josie. So it’s nothing special. Don’t let that one smile blow up your skirt.
 

“I need to talk to you,” she said.
 

“Coffee?”
 

Josie glanced quickly around her. The front office ladies, Cheryl and Tammy, made a big show of not listening, but she knew their ears were pricked by the way their hands were poised over their keyboards and their backs were razor-straight.
 

“Um, no. But can I shut the door?” Josie said.
 

He inclined his head toward the door, and she shut it behind her. For some reason, being this close to him still made her nervous. Scott motioned to one of the chairs in front of his desk, but Josie shook her head. He looked at her as if she were a tiger who might attack at any moment.
 

Not in a sexy, I’m-wearing-silk-boxers way, but in an I’m-slightly-scared-you-might-kill-me way.

Josie blew out the breath she was holding and said, “I just came to tell you that I can’t talk to you anymore. About personal things. I can’t have drinks with you. I can’t have coffee with you in the morning when the moon is still up. My marriage is very important to me, and I don’t want to do anything to threaten it.”
 

When he didn’t answer, and instead continued to stare at her with his eyebrows raised, she said, “Okay?”
 

He nodded. “I understand.”
 

A few seconds ticked by. For a split second, Scott looked shocked and maybe even hurt. Then his expression became unreadable. Blank.
 

Again, she felt vaguely uncomfortable.
 

“Okay then,” she said. “I guess that’s it.”
 

She turned around to open the door. Through the pane window, she could see Cheryl and Tammy in the front office, still holding suspiciously still.
 

“Josie,” he said.
 

She turned toward him, her hand still on the doorknob.
 

“I want you to know that my invitation to drinks was purely professional. I wouldn’t do anything to break up your marriage.”
 

Josie nodded—an automatic response. But inside, she actually felt stupid. Of course his invitation was purely professional. They had been over for a long time. For the past seven years, their relationship remained purely professional. The steam started rising only recently, because Scott was leaving Juniper Elementary. Belatedly, she realized maybe there
was
no steam. She probably just imagined he was looking at her in that sexual way.
 

On-the-spot, her ego stinging, she spit out a bitchy response.
 

“You know, Scott, I want to believe you. And I would believe you if you weren’t so … so … slick. Everything is part of your master plan. You wouldn’t have asked me for drinks if you didn’t plan on getting something out of it.” Then, just for emphasis, she added, “So there.”
 

As she strode out of Scott’s office, she pretended not to notice Cheryl and Tammy, their identical expressions of surprise, mouths hanging open and eyes following her quick exit.
 

How could I have been so stupid? Of course he meant the invitation in a professional way. He doesn’t even think of me that way anymore.
 

Even while her less-than-sane inner voice chastised her for her foolish behavior, Josie’s practical voice piped up with its own message:
He’s lying. He just had to cover his tracks. He thought you’d come running into his arms now that he’s leaving Juniper Elementary, and he’s probably just as embarrassed as you are.
 

Which one was the truth?
 

Josie couldn’t be sure. But she did know she was proud of herself for standing her ground and choosing her marriage. She felt a whole lot lighter.
 

On the second-floor landing she saw Blair Upton standing in her classroom doorway, glaring at Josie. She almost certainly would mistake Josie’s carefree attitude for post-coital bliss, or something like it. But Josie didn’t care.

She pushed the niggling sadness out of her mind, and wrote the morning bell work on the board:
Explain the term, “mixed feelings.” What does it mean? Have you ever experienced it?
 

***

Josie loved her weekly Rowdy’s Happy Hour with Summer and Delaney, but tonight she was dreading it. Really dreading it.
 

The girls would expect a report on her first marriage counseling appointment, and she didn’t want to reveal that Paul had a list of complaints as long as hers, if not longer.
 

But they were her best friends, they meant well and more importantly, she and Summer had absolutely dissolved any semblance of privacy when they stalked Delaney during The Dating Intervention.
 

She looked at her watch. Five minutes after four. Late, as usual.
 

Josie pushed open both of Rowdy’s swinging doors and paused in the doorway. She took a deep breath and gathered her confidence, then walked toward their table as if she wasn’t about to be forced to reveal every weakness she brought to her marriage.
 

“Whoa, you just looked like the cover of a romance novel, silhouetted in the doorway like that, the sun shining in behind your sexy body,” Summer said as Josie slid onto her barstool. “I’m starting to look like a puff pastry over here and there you are, as curvy and hot as ever.”
 

“Oh, Summer. You’re the most beautiful pregnant lady we know,” Delaney said.
 

Glad for the distraction, Josie beamed at both of them.
 

“How are you feeling, anyway? You
are
starting to show a little. It’s so cute.”
 

“I still feel horrible,” Summer said. “These olives help. Thinking about it doesn’t, though, so let’s talk about something else.”
 

Shit. Let’s not talk about me.

“Delaney, has Jake proposed yet?” Josie asked.
 

“Josie, we’ve only been dating for, like, a few months. Of course he hasn’t proposed yet. I haven’t even seen his feet yet.”
 

“What are you talking about?” Josie said. “And of course you’ve seen his feet by now. Right?”
 

“Remember your rubric during The Dating Intervention? ‘Have you seen his feet?’ was one of your questions. ‘It’s an intimacy thing,’ you guys said. Remember?”
 

“Oh, yeah,” Josie said. “But you’ve seen his feet, right?”
 

“Of course,” Delaney said. “I was kidding. But that doesn’t mean a proposal is imminent.”
 

“Yeah, it is,” Summer said. “Has he started talking about how many kids he wants? What kind of architecture he likes?”

“Ooh,” Josie said. “Or his favorite sexual positions? You know, like, kinky stuff?”
 

“You guys,” Delaney said. She dipped her head.

“She’s blushing!” Josie said, possibly a little overzealous with relief that they were talking about Delaney and not her own marriage. “He’s kinky!”
 

Summer laughed, but only for a second. Only for long enough for Delaney to switch gears.
 

“So, Josie. How was your appointment with Dr. Strasser?” she said.
 

Shit. Two can play at this game, I guess. I shouldn’t have gotten so excited about Jake and his sexual positions.

Josie sighed. “We don’t have to talk about it, do we?”
 

Summer, reading her reluctance correctly, as always, reached out and took her hand. “What happened?”
 

Josie felt her eyes fill. She blinked to clear them and a tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away, impatient.
 

“What happened?” Delaney repeated.
 

“I guess I should have expected it,” Josie said. “I thought I was the only one who was unhappy. But it turns out, Paul has his own complaints, too. Plenty of them.”
 

She ticked Paul’s grievances off on her fingers: she was cold, she constantly criticized him, she hated his job, she no longer supported his career. She was a hypocrite who valued her career as much as he did his, if not more.
 

“I mean,” Josie said, “Is it all true? I’ve always kind of blamed him for the distance between us, but to hear him tell it, I’m just as bad. Worse.”
 

Delaney and Summer looked at each other and Summer stirred her olives with her pointer finger.
 

“What? What, you guys?”
 

Summer licked her finger and looked at the top of the table as if she were studying it for a calculus exam. Delaney elbowed her.
 

“Josie,” Summer said, scratching at the table with her thumbnail. “You have been a bit, well, a bit …”
 

“A bit grumpy lately,” Delaney said. “You always seem unhappy.”
 

“And no offense,” Summer said. “But I’m sure it’s not that fun for Paul to be around you. He might have a point.”
 

Josie’s mom had always said, “Happy wife, happy life,” as if that one statement could solve all marriage problems and prevent any new ones from developing.
 

What resulted from an unhappy wife, though? And was she really unhappy? She hadn’t thought so, but maybe Paul did. And if so, then he was probably equally unhappy.
 

***

Is it true?
 

At home, eating dinner at the kitchen counter, Josie asked herself over and over whether Summer and Delaney—and Paul—were right as she ate dinner and prepared for bed that night. This wasn’t the first time in recent history the girls had pointed out her bad moods.

While mixing her meatloaf with her mashed potatoes, Josie thought about the last couple of interactions she and Paul shared.
 

Be subjective
, she told herself.
Pretend you’re a fly on the wall. Or a spider. A black freakin’ widow
.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Paul texted her at five one evening to say he was coming home early. Because Josie was still at school, working on lesson plans for the following week, she didn’t even think to check her phone. Needless to say, she didn’t get his text until she left school at nine p.m. By the time she got home, Paul was in bed. What if he had planned a nice dinner for the two of them, just as she had with the steaks? It never even crossed her mind.
 

A week or so before that, Paul came into the bathroom while she was in the shower. He worked late the night before, and he must have gotten up early just to spend time with her. He slid the shower curtain back, peeked his head in, and ran a hand from her shoulder to her ass, where he stopped for a little squeeze.
 

“Can I join you?”
 

And what did she do? Instead of welcoming a connection, she pushed him away. “I’m in a hurry. I’ve got to get to work.”
 

Without another word, he pulled his arm back, closed the shower curtain, and went back to bed.

Being subjective, she thought, she
was
cold.
 

“Ugh,” she said to herself as she put her dishes in the dishwasher. “You’ve got a lot of work to do, woman.”

***

Friday morning, Josie awoke with a renewed sense of purpose. She’d seen the light and she knew she had to change.
 

She could do it.
 

All along, she told herself she was just reacting to Paul’s bad behavior, but now she realized she played as much of a role as he did in the recent decline of their marriage.
 

Today’s outfit: skinny black pants with a bright pink sweater set. Cute, for sure, but still sexy, showing off the curves Summer so loved. She was thinking so hard about Paul and how she could fix things that she didn’t even see Scott standing in the doorway of his office, waiting for her to enter the building.
 

“Good morning,” he said.
 

She jumped.
 

“Good morning.”
 

Despite her intentions to continue walking straight up the stairs to her classroom, Scott walked toward her, stopping on the bottom step.
 

Impatient, Josie scowled at him. “I have things I need to do before school starts.”
 

“I just wanted to tell you something,” he said. His tone was so overtly gentle that she expected him to ask her to sit down.
 

“Well, tell me.” She placed a foot on the step next to him, making it clear she didn’t mean to spend much time here.
 

“I’m moving. To Phoenix.”

Good riddance.
 

“I thought you were taking that curriculum position at the district here, in Juniper.”
 

He sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand.
 

“I was. But the truth is, it’s just too hard for me to be here. In Juniper, with you. I’d still see you at all the districtwide administrative meetings. And even now, I see you everywhere I go. I drive past the square and remember that first time we met. I walk past the pub and remember how you convinced me to try their fried crickets that night. I see a kid on a red bike and think about young Josie, pedaling up the hill on her first bike, losing momentum and tipping over just before the crest.”