Elizabeth Flock - Sleepwalking in Daylight

“I don’t know what you’re worried about.” Ginny looks at me and rolls her eyes. “You’re always so together, you know? Like you’ve got it all figured out. Plus, you and Bob are like the golden couple. I bet you have sex, like, every other day.”

I open my mouth to say, “Are you crazy? You can’t be serious!” but Lynn interrupts.

“As far as Michael knows, I have my period every day of the month,” she says. The laughter bounces off the cuddly critters or whatever they are, mixing with advice for what to say to get off the sex hook and then a juicy story about a sex-addict husband of someone we all know very well, according to Kerry Kendricks, who, when Lynn asked her if she still has sex, says:

“Who has the time?” Kerry Kendricks is on every committee at school and not once have I heard her called by just her first name.

Ginny: “Let me ask you something.” She looks at me. “Do you all think it’s the women or the men? Do women want sex and the men don’t or is it the other way around?”

Everyone’s talking at once so it doesn’t matter that I don’t answer. I don’t tell them that neither of us wants sex. Only Lynn knows I haven’t stopped trying with Bob because I think it could still save us from being total strangers to one another. I haven’t stopped trying for sex even though I don’t want it any more than Bob does.

The next morning after the kids are off to school Lynn pulls up a kitchen chair and shakes a packet of Sweet’n Low into the tea I put in front of her.

“Before I forget, will you sponsor me for the breast cancer run?” I slide the form to her. “I know, I know. I swear this is the last time I’ll hit you up this year.”

“Breast cancer, Go Green, Save the Whales …” She sighs, fitting her name into the allotted space. “Sheesh, is there anything you don’t raise money for? Here you go.”

“Thanks, and for the record it was a Greenpeace fund-raiser not Save the Whales and it was about ten years ago.” I laugh. “Thanks for this. I really do appreciate it.”

“You should’ve taken it to book club last night,” she says. “I would’ve loved to have seen how much Paula gave, since she loves breasts more than anyone, I bet.”

“I don’t think she’s a lesbian,” I say. “You heard her.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Lynn says.

“So how about what Ginny said?” I settle across the table from her and just to make it seem like I’m bringing it up casually, I brush nonexistent crumbs off the table.

“What, you mean how they still have tons of sex?”

“Yeah, that,” then I pretend to remember something else Ginny said, “Oh, and then there was that comment about me … what was it?”

Lynn narrows her eyes at me. “You actually think I’m buying your little show? You really want to talk about Ginny’s sex life?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I barely finish the sentence without laughing. “Okay, okay. You’re right, you’re right.”

This is the best part about Lynn. She’s pretty much always right. The worst part about Lynn is that she knows it.

“You know why everyone thinks you’re so together? Because you act like you’re so together,” Lynn says. She’s blowing on her tea, waiting for it to cool.

“Everyone really thinks I’m so together?”

“Yup.”

“I’m not so together.”

“I know that and you know that but I’m telling you, people think you’re so together.”

“Wow.”

“Yup—” she takes a sip “—little do they know. Shoot! There’s the recycling truck and I forgot to put the bins out. Got to go.”

“Don’t forget dinner tomorrow!” I call out to her. At a school fund-raiser/silent auction last spring, I bid on dinner for two at a new sushi place downtown thinking it’d be a good date-night thing to do with Bob. SushiMax is the hardest reservation to get according to Chicago Magazine. I forgot all about it until they called to reconfirm, and of course Bob found some excuse to get out of it until I came out and asked if it was just that he didn’t want to go and he shrugged and said, “You know how I feel about sushi,” so I asked Lynn and told Bob he had kid duty.

I have been acting. Of course. I haven’t thought of it as acting but that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. But doesn’t everyone put on a good face? Is anybody my age really happy? I’ve stretched my mouth into a smile for so long it’s become natural. And sometimes it is natural … with the kids, especially when they were smaller. With Lynn. I know there are other times, too, I just can’t think of them off the top of my head. Oh. After yoga, when I make it to Imogen’s class. That’s another genuine smile. On the rare nights just Bob and I have dinner, it’s so silent I restrain myself from upending the kitchen table just to jolt us out of this stupor.

Bob once said, “The only constant in our marriage is the edge of the cliff we’re hanging on to, killing time until we tire ourselves out and give in to our inevitable collapse.”

It was fairly early in our marriage. We were reading in bed. We’d been married probably three years by then. I think it was during the fertility nightmare, but that’s a whole other story. I remember it was summer and all the windows were open because the air conditioner didn’t work. When we’d moved in, Bob had said, priority number one was central air, but the months ticked by and two, three years later there we were with a broken window unit and air so humid I was sweating just lying there.

“Listen to this,” he said. I put my book down to wipe my palms on the white sheet while he read a sentence aloud.

“‘The only constant in our marriage …’” He recited more while I was staring up at the ceiling thinking a ceiling fan might not be such a bad idea after all.

“Are you listening?” he asked. Then he read it again and that time I heard it.

I turned on to my side and flattened the pillow so I could see him, his expression. I remember wondering if he was simply impressed with the writing—sometimes he read passages aloud to anyone within earshot just to marvel at the sentence structure. Or was it something else? He’d put the book down and was staring into the room so I only had his profile. Then, almost to himself, he said:

“So I guess things could be worse.”

I waited for a laugh but there had been no sarcasm in his tone. It was as if he was comforted knowing at least we were doing better than the couple hanging on to the cliff, if only a little bit better. That’s the way he said it. Like he hadn’t realized anything could be worse than what we were living through.

I couldn’t think of what to say. I remember struggling to find words but none came. After a few minutes of dead silence, both of us lying there, our books splayed facedown across our chests, he said, “We should get a ceiling fan.” He paused to consider the idea. “I don’t think they’re that expensive. It wouldn’t be so hard to install. Probably only take me a day. Victor could come over and help me with the electric. What do you think?”

I’d shut my eyes and when he glanced over for my opinion I pretended I’d fallen asleep. I faked a few random muscle twitches. I heard him sigh then felt him shift to reach the lamp. His book fell on the floor, more shifting, and I thought maybe he’d gently lift my book off my chest, but soon there was snoring. I realized I’d been tensing every muscle to stay still until I had the night to myself to think about what Bob had just said. It was a bombshell, no doubt about it.

Around the time my eyes adjusted to the dark—I remember this part because I was staring at the ticky-tacky drapes I’d never gotten around to replacing, when it hit me. It wasn’t a bombshell. Things could be worse but not by much. I just hadn’t wanted to see it.