A ticklish warmth overwhelms me,
radiates from my chest to my head and belly. The contentedness and confidence
that comes from being needed, being indispensable to someone. That's the
feeling I have when I look at my boys. Most of the time. Their unadulterated
feelings, fresh ideas, and their marvel at everyday things that adults take for
granted are beyond precious to witness. Gentle or wild, the sweetness of their
2- and 4-year-old beings melts me.
Then a switch flips: whining, hitting,
screaming, clinging, whining, whining. The warmth heats to a fire prickling
every nerve.
"But, Mama!"
"Mama, he hit me!"
"That's not what I wanted! Oh man!
Not again!"
"Mama, where are you? You need to
stay right by me! I'm scared."
The indispensability becomes a burden.
Sometimes I just want to be alone for a couple of minutes. No one touching me.
No one nagging me. No one watching me get dressed or go to the bathroom. Just a
few minutes to myself. I know I'll miss this when they get older and don't want
me around, but right now it's a disparity in desires. I want to play with my
kids, teach them, learn from them, read to them, just be with them, near them,
inundating them with love, kisses and soft touches. But. . . I want to be
alone. I want to be an adult woman. Alone. I want to do yoga or an hour on the
elliptical without worrying about having to stop abruptly to unclench
Anderson’s tiny fist from a tuft of his big brother’s hair. I want to go for a
swim without stopping Parker from splashing his little brother in the face or
screaming about whose turn it is to play with the blue bucket. Never mind
there’s a green one no one’s touching! I want to drink a glass of wine and
watch Law & Order reruns without being told, “But Mama, it’s not fair! I
want to watch Henry Hugglemonster! I hate the news.” Anything that’s not a
cartoon is called news in our house.
My husband? I love him. He's helpful,
smart, fun, handsome and a great partner. But after work, the kids, and the
house, I have very little left to give him. I try to make it a point to have
sex at least once every week, but that's not enough. He wants me to want it,
not just do it because I know he wants it. I want it about once a month -- if I
have enough energy. We're too caught up in our everyday lives to be the couple
we once were. Everything revolves around our family. Every decision, every
minute, every choice. And we're a happy family. We all love each other. We have
good jobs. We have enough money. We have a big house. We have nice cars. We
have a boat. We're that family you see in a Subaru ad: the healthy, attractive,
upper-middle class family, dressed in shirts with tiny alligator logos or Ralph
Lauren’s name on the label, and big, white-toothed smiles on our faces. We're
happy. Did I mention that?
It’s that time of the month. Not my
period, but the brief period my libido is present – if only a bit. A tinge of
arousal, that tenant who vacated just days before I became a mother, crept up
my thighs and around my swollen breasts.
“The boys are playing nicely,” I say to
Ben with that tilt of my head and the smile that lifts only the left side of my
mouth. That look he’s come to know over the last decade together – though he
sees it considerably less these days.
It’s Sunday afternoon after nap and
before dinner. Parker and Anderson are squatted before their perfectly-spaced,
toy fire trucks indulging in a rescue fantasy spun by Parker. No one’s
fighting. No one’s whining.
Ben looks from me to the boys, and back
to me with that look even 40-year-old men get when they anticipate boobs and –
gasp! – sex. “No way,” he says, but his down-turned grin and wide eyes are
praying that I’ll insist on it.
“Let’s just see,” I say as I take his
hand and lead him to our bedroom. One quick look behind me to make sure a civil
war isn’t imminent, and I take off my grey t-shirt as I walk toward the bed.
“If you’re sure,” Ben says, dropping
his cargo shorts.
As I climb up on the four-poster bed, I
unhook my bra and toss it aside. Ben takes off his shirt revealing his medium
frame slightly tanned from summer time at the beach, in the pool, and on the
boat. I notice that he’s just trimmed his chest and belly hair. He’s been
waiting for this. I lie on my back, lift my hips and wriggle out of my shorts.
Cotton panties come next. I shiver as my hand briefly caresses the soft, bare
bikini line that was treated to laser hair removal when personal grooming was a
priority, not a luxury.
Ben loses his underwear (bikinis since
his vasectomy – not my favorite) and climbs on top of me.
“You’re so beautiful, Raquel,” he tells
me. “I wish you could see yourself.”
I shake my head, and he kisses my neck
and chest as his hand creeps down my belly. For an instant, I’m distracted by
the thought of him feeling how soft my flesh is, never having regained its
tautness after the second pregnancy. Then I remember that we’re working with a
deadline of mere moments before we’re interrupted, and he’s seen the squishy
26-inch (okay, 27-inch) waist that replaced my pre-baby core a million times
already. I let go of the insecurity—his belly has grown in recent years,
too—and guide his Goldilocks-perfect (not too small; not too big; just right)
cock inside me. I can tell how slippery I am as he thrusts and I circle my hips
against him. My hand wanders down my own body, and I lightly squeeze my
clitoris between my index and middle fingers. It’s swollen and receptive. As I
rock my hips and grind against Ben, I close my eyes.
“Mama?” I hear Anderson say from the
great room. “Mama?”
I open my eyes. Ben’s doing his best to
ignore it, so I close my eyes again.
“Mama? Mommy, where are you?” Anderson
whimpers with his mushy toddler enunciation
“I’m in here, baby,” I shout out as Ben
rolls off me and covers us with the sheet. We both look toward the bedroom
doorway – no munchkins there yet, but they’re coming.
“What are you guys doing?” Parker asks
as he walks through the door with his little brother following close behind
him.
“Nothing,” Ben says. “Just resting.”
As Anderson climbs onto the bed, Parker
says, “Well, we need you.”
And. . . that’s over.
Work is my escape. When I’m working,
I’m in control of my own time—for the most part. I’m the authority there and
the best part: I get to be alone in my office. Such a blissful thing. If work
is an escape, shopping and wine are my crutches -- dangerous when combined, and
sadly cost me about three thousand dollars one month recently when I bought
miscellaneous toys, clothes, and gadgets that we didn’t need. But for that
moment when I add the items to my “cart,” that’s the only thought in my head –
no worries about laundry, vacuuming, what’s show-and-tell tomorrow, or work—and
the elation during that one second while the “checkout” processes on my phone.
On Saturday night, Ben’s asleep in the
guest room and the boys are asleep in my bed. My alone time. I sit cross-legged
on the trellis-pattern area rug in the master bedroom with my third glass of
shiraz next to me. I’m scrolling through the ads in my email while Project
Runway reruns play quietly on the TV mounted a few feet from my head. “Don’t
miss this secret sale! How much will you save?” they all seem to say. “Deepest
discounts today only! Click now to see what you’re missing.” I take a big sip
of my wine and shut the email app. Self-restraint. I can do this.
I tap the Facebook icon and
halfheartedly gaze at what my “friends” are up to. So and so posted
another bikini selfie on the beach in full makeup. That girl from high school
is in Turks and Caicos again against an ocean so cerulean it appears dyed. An
attorney friend sharing pictures of what she had for dinner – and dessert.
Scroll, scroll, scroll and . . . stop. My glass was halfway to my lips when I
saw a “people you may know” banner. First name there: Edward Jove. I gulp the
entire glass and tap on the link to his profile. The small picture doesn’t look
like the Edward I remember, but there can’t be another one, and Facebook says
we have seven mutual friends. Tapping on the his friends link, there’s one name
I’m looking for. I see it only a few names down. Lindsay Skelton, my high
school best friend. She’d made out with Edward on my seventeenth birthday. She
knew that I was madly, though secretly, in love with him. It had taken me ten
years to forgive her.
I carry my empty glass to the kitchen.
The house is dark except for the dim LED canister light on the ceiling left on
over the piano that my kids will someday learn to play, and the only sound
besides the faint chatter of the TV is the sound of my feet padding along the
tile. My steps are light though my mood has turned heavy. I refill my glass,
swallow half the glass, and refill it again. Back in my room, I see my boys
shifted positions on the bed and are now lying perpendicular to each other. One
is snoring softly. Probably Anderson. I cover them both lightly with the grey
Egyptian cotton sheet, and Parker instinctively pulls a corner up to his chin.
Anderson kicks the sheet off and makes an angry whine, but doesn’t wake up.
Cross-legged on the floor again, I email my college roommate out in California.
“Hey, Siobhan. Remember Edward?” I
write. “The Edward I used to wail over anytime we drank or got high in our
dorm? Facebook just put his profile in front of me, and he’s friends with
Lindsay. Can you believe it? If I saw him, he must have seen me, too. Right?
Why didn’t he friend me? Why did he friend her and not me? I mean, I’m married
and happy and everything, but I just don’t understand! I’m going to send him a
friend request. Or not. This is so stupid. I’m thirty-four years old, for fucks
sake! Anyway, I hope you’re out in WeHo having fun. Night night.”
The alcohol has taken over. I’m beyond
rationality now and I know it. I plug my phone into the charger on the
nightstand, turn up Project Runway, and stand in front of the full-length
mirror. In the dim light of the TV, I see my reflection in a cotton camisole
dress. My dark hair wrapped up in a tight chignon at the top of my head. My
face looks tired behind my black, plastic-framed glasses. I see creases framing
my full lips, and the youthful fullness that once inhabited of the apples of my
cheeks has deflated and seem especially concave in the dim overhead light, in
the shadow of my high cheekbones – courtesy of the Native American genes on my
maternal grandmother’s side. I take my hair down and shake it out into long,
loose waves. Eh. I take my dress off and look at myself in my black sports bra
and black cotton panties. Not bad. Not great, but not bad—in this light. At
five-foot-six, I wear a size four—a two if I’m lucky or the brand runs big. But
my thighs are thicker than they were five years ago. I check out my stomach. My
belly button used to be a perfect little oval, now it’s wrinkled and lopsided,
and I can wedge a finger between the vertical separation of my abdominal wall –
the price of motherhood. At least my tummy is free of stretch marks, and only
has a slight pooch. A squishy pooch. My waist is also thicker than it used to
be. I stretch my belly skin tight to see what I’d look like after a tummy tuck.
Nice. I lift my heavy breasts and imagine going through the torture of having
them sliced open down the center and along the bottom and around my nipples,
then sewing them closed lifted higher on my chest with new, perfect,
quarter-sized areolas. I turn away from the mirror and throw my dress back on.
An insecurity I haven’t felt in so long
just sneaked in. Suddenly I have the mental fortitude of a teenage girl. I sit
back down on the rug, turn up the TV a bit, and do a set of fifty crunches. I
finish my wine, and climb into bed between the two boys. For a moment, I lie
there with my eyes closed. My brain won’t stop. I roll over and reach for my
phone over Anderson’s sleeping body, do a quick Facebook search, and send a
friend request. This is so stupid.
Life goes on: work, chores, kids’
birthday parties, dentist, discipline, play, chores, and more chores. It feels
like there are two loads of laundry a day that need to be washed, folded, and
put away. Work – my auditing job with the Federal Reserve—could be
interminable. It’s everything I can do to work a mere ten- to eleven-hour day.
Ben’s job as a professor at the local community college is also demanding – a
different curriculum for each course: anatomy and physiology I, II, and III, and
one section of engineering technology. The natural way of parents who are
employed outside the home full-time, at least for us, is to let work and
children, with a side of housework, take over your life. It takes effort to
maintain a marriage – to keep from becoming simply roommates and co-parents.
When most things your spouse does annoys the hell out of you, it takes even
more effort. If you hate the way he eats ice cream— or that he eats ice cream
at all—it’s hard to then want to take him to the bedroom and screw him the way
you did five years earlier. If his whining about how he hasn’t been able to
take a nap in weeks, or how his life is miserable because he can’t do whatever
he wants annoys you, the last thing you want to do is get down on your knees and
suck his cock for that three minutes it takes to get him off. Half the time I
want to yell, “Stop eating that crap! You’re getting fat!.” Or “Suck it up, you
fucking pussy. Welcome to adulthood. You can’t just do whatever you want. You
have responsibilities!”
Yet, I do love him. I couldn't imagine
a life without Ben, and I don't want to. I know that love ebbs and flows, and
we're in an ebbing stage.
On a Thursday afternoon, I’m on the
preschool bus with Parker on our way back from a field trip to the grocery
store – the things we do with our little ones! Parker’s on my right and his
friend Katie’s on my left. Parker holds my hand and talks excitedly to Katie
about the lobster they’d just seen in the store. I glance at my phone and see
that I have a Facebook message. I open it and see that it’s from Edward. My
heart starts racing and I instinctively look around me like I’m about to do
something wrong. It’s a brief message. Two words.
“Hey, you,” he wrote.
I close the messenger app and try to
hone my focus back on Parker and our fun day, but I can feel a smile slide
across my face– not the innocent smile from sharing time with my first-born
angel, but the devious smile that comes from thinking about doing something you
shouldn’t do but really want to do. In this case, something I've wanted to do
for almost two decades.
When we pull back up to the
pre-school, I walk with the class back to their classroom – praying that Anderson
doesn’t see me and have a tantrum. I make it through without being detected by
my toddler. Luckily, it’s 2-year-old nap time. I can see the darkened room
through the window in the door as we walk by, me hand-in-hand with Parker. I
kiss him all over his face, hands on each cheek, as I leave him to go to work
for the second half of the day.
I wait a full thirty hours before
responding to that message. Partly because I’m carefully calculating my
response, and partly because I wonder if I should just leave it alone. Who am I
kidding? I know I should leave it alone.
Waiting for this is like waiting
in line at an amusement park to ride a rollercoaster. The zigzag snake of
people inching forward, chatting, sweating, waiting. Excitement an ingredient
in my desire, but anticipation and impatience are greater. Waiting. . .
waiting. . .waiting. Finally, I’m at the front of that line and have to choose
which row to be in on the vessel I’ve been hungry to board. Do I choose the
front with a full view of the thrill before me, the middle with a safe spot
sandwiched between folks braver than I feel at the moment, or the rear where
the force is greater though the view of the experience is obscured? I choose
the front. This time. I strap myself in, and pull that safety bar tight against
my chest. No turning back. As the coaster climbs slowly, clink-clink-clinking
its way up that first steep, metal scaffolded hill, I ask myself why I’m doing
this. This is reckless. . . ridiculous. . . careless. As the car reaches the
summit, I brace myself. It can’t kill me. It’s scary—terrifying—but nothing
truly bad could happen. While hanging over the precipice of intense
exhilaration, I remind myself that I wanted this. I waited in line—for what
seemed like ages—for this. I can do it . . . and there’s no going back now.
Suddenly, I’m thrust downward with the immense force of a 65mph thrust. My face
is smiling against the gravitational force, my body unable to contain audible
cries of pleasure. I’m so happy I did this. I love the feeling—that
overwhelming tingle and heat that trickles from my core across my whole being.
I ride that ride for the few but intense minutes it takes to finish, and after
a moment of recovery, I’m ready to ride again.
Edward was my fantasy. Do I really want him?Or is it the idea of an interlude that drives me?
