Elizabeth Wrenn - Second Chance

FOUR

‘You got that at Victoria’s Secret?’ Neil had an almost sick look on his face. ‘ That? ’

I’d just pulled off my new bathrobe, having worn it for the first time and gotten exactly the reaction I’d feared. We were dressing for the O’Keefes’ party, and, as much as I didn’t want to go, a sense of duty drove me. And, I believed in the clinic – there were too many people for whom health insurance was an impossibility. Besides, I wasn’t ‘You-zing’ my life; the least I could do was support my husband in using his.

I hung the robe on the closet hook. It now looked more prune-colored than purple to me. I sighed. ‘Yes. It was on clearance.’

‘But, Dee, you , in Victoria’s Secret?’ He chortled. ‘The one time you go and that’s what you get. Of all things.’

Neil, in worn but clean undershirt and briefs, looked at the robe, and he too sighed. ‘You could have gotten something for me , if you know what I mean.’ I knew exactly what he meant, and I didn’t even come close to having enough energy to explain to him that I was tired of always doing and buying and being for someone other than me. I said nothing, and Neil went into the bathroom to shave.

I sat on the bed and slipped my thumbs down into one leg of a pair of suntan panty hose, gathering it up as I went. I placed my toes inside. Sitting there on my bed I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d worn panty hose. It could well be that the pair in my hand were more than fifteen years old. Ten minutes earlier I’d excavated them from the back of my underwear drawer and taken them out of the sealed package. When I’d gotten out of the shower that evening, Neil, predictably, had begged me to wear a dress to the O’Keefes’, rather than one of my ubiquitous pantsuits. ‘You used to look so good in a dress and you never wear them anymore,’ he’d said. ‘This may be our only opportunity to really dress up till one of the kids gets married.’

‘I had it on the other night, you know,’ I muttered, too low for him to hear in the bathroom, as I spread the dress out on the bed. It was somehow even less stylish than it had been six nights ago.

I sighed. I didn’t want to go to this soiree at all; it wouldn’t matter if I was unhappily there in a pants outfit or unhappily there in a dress. ‘I tried to call Sam again today,’ I said, staring at my foot. I was sitting with my ankle on my knee, still with only my toe in the hose, waiting for the motivation to pull them up.

‘Diddah you yust caw heh a cuppa day ago?’ he said, sounding like an old man who’d removed his false teeth as he contorted his face to shave under his nose.

‘Yes, but I didn’t talk to him. I never talk to him, I just leave messages.’

A little laugh from the bathroom, accompanied by his razor swishing in a sink full of water.

‘Aw, Dee. He’s just busy, having fun. You remember college, don’t you? It’s a whole new life for him. We’re not his life anymore. We’ve got to accept that.’ Meaning I had to accept that. Neil seemed to be fine with the fact that we’d gone from three kids to two, and that the two would also soon disappear from our lives.

Slowly, morosely, I pulled the leg of the hose up over my ankle, then calf. I stopped, just above the knee, wondering if there was an expiration date on panty hose. The nylon felt more granular and restrictive than I remembered. I gazed down at the box on the bed. No ‘use by’ date. It should at least give a use by weight . Which, come to think of it, it did on the chart on the back. I flipped the box over to the height and weight chart; I was precariously close to the outer limit. Darn near expired.

I pulled the hose up over my knee. I wondered if the fabric got unstretchable with age. There just simply did not seem to be enough material here, considering how far I had yet to go. I gathered up the other leg, slipped my foot into the suntan donut, then slowly pulled that side thigh-high. I put my stockinged feet on the carpet and stood. I tugged on the right, then the left, then the right, all while swinging my butt hither and yon trying to stretch a couple feet of fabric up on to an acre of hips. I took a breather and caught my hunched-over reflection in my dresser mirror, my pale flesh bulging out in more than the usual spots. There was the familiar boobies-in-the-back bra bulge, the see-I-have-two-waists! panty bulge, and now I had added the glorious bisected-saddlebag thigh bulge. Worse, it was not only me staring at my bulginess. There in the mirror, staring at my reflection, was Neil’s reflection. He was leaning on the doorframe of the walk-in closet, mostly dressed now, a twinkle in his eye.

‘What d’ya say we show up fashionably late to this thing, Dee?’ he said suggestively.

Oh. My. God. If he could get turned on by this, a bent-over, middle-aged manatee-shaped woman wrestling her way into a garden hose, it was indeed Neil who needed some hormone therapy.

‘Give me a break,’ I said, irritably. I stood upright, yanked on the hose, and promptly poked a fingernail through the fabric. As I watched the run cascade down the side of my leg, the tears slid down my cheeks. ‘Goddamnit! Goddamn them! Goddamn them to hell! ’ I started to sob.

‘What’s wrong? Calm down , Deena. Who are you mad at?’

‘Everyone! Men. The men who made the first panty hose!’ I glared at him. ‘You know it was a man, don’t you?!’ I actually didn’t know it was a man, but I’d have bet good money on it.

Defensively, Neil held up both palms toward me.

‘Well, it was a man! Goddamned men. They invented high heels, too. And girdles. And makeup.’ Again, I had no idea if this was all true, but at the moment, it felt it could be no other way. ‘All the things that tell women we’re not good enough the way we are. We need to be tanner, smoother, taller, prettier.’ Neil looked at me as if my face was familiar but he couldn’t recall my name. ‘And especially younger and thinner! ’ I screamed. Whew. When the lid blows off a pressure cooker, it blows hard.

Suddenly Neil was sitting on the bed next to me, patting my knee and talking as if I was a four-year-old. ‘Now, now, Deedle.’

‘Don’t patronize me.’

‘Who said I’m patronizing you?’

I just stared at him. I half expected him to pull out a roll of stickers from his breast pocket and hand me one, the way he placated his youngest patients. But suddenly his expression changed, softened. Quietly, he said, ‘Do you just want to stay home?’

Tears of relief slipped down my cheeks. ‘Oh, Neil, can we? Yes. Thank you.’ Instead of forced chitchat in tight shoes, I saw us walking around our neighborhood lake, in comfortable sneakers, and hand in hand. Like old times. Maybe I could even broach the idea of the dog thing I’d seen on TV.

He looked sheepish, then impatient. ‘Not we , you. I have to go. I want to go. I’ve put my life into this clinic. It’s important.’

I just looked at him. Part of me wanted to say, And your family isn’t? Yes, the past couple of years you’ve put your life into the clinic. Not your kids. Not your marriage. No wonder he seemed so unaffected by Sam’s departure, and Lainey’s and Matt’s growing independence and absences. He was able to throw himself into his work with impunity.

Neil stood, walked to the door, put a hand on the knob, then turned toward me. He looked as handsome in his dark gray suit as I’d seen him in years. ‘What’s it going to be, Deena?’

I stared at the blue dress, the blue tights with the shot elastic waist now my only option. We wouldn’t even look like we belonged together.