The Queen Gene (33 page)
Authors: Jennifer Coburn
“Lucy, do you feel something tingling?”
“Honey, remember it takes me a little longer to get warmed up than -- ”
“I’m not talking about being turned on, Lucy,” he snapped. “I meant does your skin feel funny?”
“Funny like --”
More frantic, he shouted, “It’s getting worse. The stinging! Doesn’t your skin feel like it’s burning?!”
As soon as he mentioned it, a thousand tiny pin pricks attacked my body. Then they spread to create an all-out burning on every part of my body that was submerged in water.
“Oh shit!” I said standing up naked in the tub. “It must be the lemon oil.”
“The what?” Jack demanded, now also standing scratching his arms frenetically.
“The lemon oil, the lemon oil,” I repeated, as if that would explain everything. “I put lemon oil aromatherapy in the tub to help relax us.”
“Well done,” he snapped and moved onto scratching his legs.
“I don’t think you should scratch it, Jack. You’ll just irritate your skin.”
“Irritate my skin?! Whatever the hell New Age snake oil you pt in this tub is irritating my skin!” And with that, things got worse. Jack fell into the tub and a tidal wave of unholy water splashed into his eyes and all over his face.
Like Audrey during her honeymoon kidnapping, I would be grace under pressure. Jack and I would one day tell the story of our lemon bath together and how Cool Hand Lucy saved the say. I grabbed his arm and took charge. “Jack, you’re going to be fine. Let’s get you out of this tub and get fresh water to rinse your eyes.” As I lead my blinded husband out of the tub, his foot knocked over one of the candles and set the bathroom rug on fire. It was a small fire, but big enough to burn part of Jack’s left foot. I didn’t know if the lemon oil would be flammable, so I filled a small bathroom glass and dumped water on the burning rug. Twice. Then a third time before it was fully extinguished and the smell of firewood and rain was overpowered by burnt wool and lemon.
After a few minutes, Paul’s vision returned, and I ran clear water through the shower for us to rinse our stinging bodies. “God, Lucy, that was awful,” he said, sounding much softer. “For a few minutes there, I thought I could be blind for the rest of my life. And all I kept think was I might never see my parents again. I might never see my family. I might never see another Knicks game. Fucking blind, Lucy! Do you know how bad that would suck?”
Jack picked up the bottle of lemon oil aromatherapy and read the back of the label. “May irritate skin,” he said. Subtext: You might not have nearly blinded me if you’d simply read the label, you idiot. Sub-sub-text: Can’t you do anything right?
That night, I stupidly asked Jack if he wanted to light a fire and snuggle under the cloud of a comforter. “Lucy, my dick has no top layer of skin. I’m not exactly in the mood right now,” he said rolling over.
Believe it or not, the next night we had amazingly passionate sex. It wasn’t making love. It was sex compliments of an excellent bottle of red wine our waiter insisted we try. Our night was release stress, really, but I wasn’t about to complain. I was so grateful for the contact that I just played the hand I was given and hoped it would grow into something better eventually.
I think that’s the night I got pregnant. In fact, I’m sure it is because it was the only time we’d been together in months.
Nearly five months later, I prepared Jack’s favorite meal -- prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes and Caesar salad, and planned to tell him about the baby over a glass of red wine. Here’s how the fantasy goes: I look ravishing, stunning, really. As I put Jack’s dinner on the table, he says something lovely about my cooking, the effort I made and how much he loves me. I pour a glass of wine for him, and tell him that I know we’ve had a tough road of it over the last few years, but that I want to get our marriage back on track. My eyes well with tears of joy and I tell him I have some exciting news. He asks why I’m not drinking any wine then, in an instant, he knows. He jumps from his chair, this time knocking nothing over and starting no fires, lifts me in his embrace and tells me he’s overjoyed.
Here’s how the reality goes: I look pretty good. Not bad. I’m bloated but relieved that it’s because I’m four-and-a-half months pregnant, and not just a cow, as I’d originally suspected. I don’t have quite as much time to primp as I’d planned because I keep repeating the home pregnancy test and calling the people at Planned Parenthood, asking them to please check my test results again to be sure they hadn’t accidentally switched my results with someone younger and more fertile than me. The clinician assured me that since I’d peed directly onto the stick that we both watched turn pink, a lab mix-up was impossible. Anyway, just as I was about to tell Jack the news, he blurted out that our marriage has run its course and he wanted a divorce. “So what did you want to tell
me?
” he asked. It was a home pregnancy test commercial gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Table of Contents
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four
- Chapter Twenty-Five
- Chapter Twenty-Six
- Chapter Twenty-Seven
- Chapter Twenty-Eight
- Chapter Twenty-Nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-One
- Chapter Thirty-Two
- Chapter Thirty-Three
- Chapter Thirty-Four
- Chapter Thirty-Five
- Chapter Thirty-Six
- Chapter Thirty-Seven
