A. Homes - Things You Should Know

“Haven’t I mentioned him?”

“No.”

“Really? You would think I would have — he’s staying with us.”

There is a long pause.

“Mother — could you just check with your doctor, could you just say, my daughter is concerned. She thinks I don’t remember. She thinks I forget. Could you do me the favor and ask the doctor if everything is all right?”

“The truth is when I’m in there, I don’t think of it.”

“You forget.”

“I’m in that paper gown. Who can think of anything when you feel like at any second it might come undone?”

“How long has this Ray been around?

“A couple of weeks. He’s a lovely guy. You’d like him. He’s very tidy.”

“Is he paying rent?”

“No,” her mother says, horrified. “He’s a friend of your father’s.” She changes the subject. “Where’s Steve?”

“At the game.” As she says it, she hears Steve at the door. She hurries to get off the phone. “I’ll call you tomorrow, we’ll figure out the weekend.” She snaps the bedroom light off.

She hears Steve in the living room, opening the mail. She hears him in the kitchen, opening the fridge. She sees his shadow pass down the hall. He is in the bathroom, peeing, then brushing his teeth. He comes into the bedroom, half undressed. “It’s only me,” Steve says. “Don’t get excited.”

She doesn’t respond.

“Are you in here?” He turns on the light.

“I just spoke to my mother.”

“Yeah? It’s Wednesday — don’t you normally talk to them on Sunday?”

“There is a strange man living at the house. He’s been there for two weeks — she forgot to tell me. A friend of my father’s.”

“Your father doesn’t have any friends.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe if you’d waited and called on Sunday, he wouldn’t have been there.” Steve pulls his T-shirt off and drops it onto the floor.

“Not funny.” She gestures toward the hamper. “I was thinking I should go and see my parents this weekend — that’s why I was calling. I haven’t been in a long time. But I can’t exactly go home if this guy is there.”

“Stay in a hotel.”

She sits up to set the alarm. “I’m not staying in a hotel. Am I going to have to do some sort of intervention, kidnap my parents and reprogram them?”

“It’s deprogram.”

“How’s Bill?”

“Good.”

“Did you ask him what you should do?”

“About what?” Steve punches at his pillow.

“Us.”

Steve doesn’t answer. She thinks of her parents, her parents’ marriage. She thinks of her parents, of Steve, of having children, of when they stopped talking about it. She wishes they had children. He thinks it’s good they didn’t. She still wants to have one. “It’s not going to fix it,” he says. She doesn’t want the child to fix it. She wants the child because she wants a child and she knows that without Steve she will not have children. She rolls away from him. There is an absence of feeling, a deadness, an opaque zone where there used to be more.

“Breathe,” Steve says to her.

“What?”

“You weren’t breathing. You were doing that holding-your-breath thing.”

She takes a deep breath. Sighs.

“Do you want me to come with you to your parents?”

“No.”

In the night, in the subtlety of sleep, they are drawn together, but when they wake it is as though they remember — they pull apart, they wake up en garde.

“I know it’s been hard,” he says in the morning as they’re getting ready to go.

“What should we do?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says.

They don’t say anything more. She is afraid to talk, afraid of what is happening, afraid of what she is feeling, afraid of what will happen next, afraid of just about everything.

The morning meeting is adult undergarments — Peer Pampers. There are boxes of the product on the conference room table. The client opens a box and starts passing them around — a cross between maxi-pads and diapers, there’s something about them that’s obscene.

“What we’re selling here is a new gel insert — it’s incredibly absorbent,” the client says. He is the only one truly comfortable handling the product — he rips one of the diapers open, pulls apart the crotch area to expose the insert. “This is it,” he says. “It sucks up water, up to ten ounces. Our research shows the average void is four to eight. The older you get, the more frequently you urinate and with slightly less volume, so we’re estimating approximately six to seven ounces per use.”

A junior creative executive picks up one of the garments and, as though giving a demonstration, pours his coffee in. “Afraid to have your morning cup because it runs right through you? Try these.”

For a tenth of a second it’s funny and then, as a liquidy brown stain spreads through the material, it becomes a problem. Blushing, he puts the dirty diaper in the trash.

“Not a good idea,” someone says. “A very poopy diaper.”

“That’s all right,” the client says. “Accidents happen.”

“It’s a control issue,” she says, trying to pull the meeting back to order. “How to feel in control when you are out of control. Picture a man in his car stuck in traffic, a woman strapped into her seat on an airplane, she coughs. But she doesn’t look stressed; in fact she’s smiling. When everything around you feels out of control, help yourself feel in control. One less worry.”

“Don’t make it seem like we’re encouraging people to piss their pants,” the client says.

“The idea is to encourage people to lead healthy, normal lives, not to let bladder control issues stop them from activities that are part of everyday life. We’ll spend some time with these,” she says, gathering up the diapers. “Give us a call next week.”

The client stands. There’s a wet spot on his suit.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, “but it’s not that. In the car on the way here — my muffin flipped. I got jam all over me. Imagine me,” he says, “going through the day with a wet spot on my suit selling adult diapers.”

“There’s a one-hour cleaner down the block, maybe they can do something for you,” she says.

“Now that’s a good idea.”

Steve calls. “I was wondering if we could have dinner?”

She thinks two thoughts — he wants them to work it out and he’s leaving. Either way, whatever it is, she doesn’t want to hear it. She isn’t ready.

“I have plans,” she says.

“Yeah, what?”

“I’m meeting Mindy for a drink. She’s coming in for a matinee and then I’m meeting her.”

“Well, I’ll see you later then. What should I do about dinner?”

“Don’t wait for me,” she says.

She has no plans. She hasn’t talked to Mindy in six months.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks.

“Fine,” she says. “You?”

“Fine,” he says. “Fucking fantastic.”

After work she goes to Bloomingdale’s. She wanders for two hours. She is tempted to take herself to a movie, to take herself to a bar and have a drink, to get home really late, really drunk, but she doesn’t have the energy.

“Are you finding everything you need?” an overzealous sales associate wants to know.

What does she want? What does she need? She is thinking about Steve, trying to imagine a life apart. She’s afraid that if they separate she will evaporate, she will cease to exist. He’ll be fine, he’ll hardly notice that she is gone. She hates him for that. Will she start dating? She can’t picture it, can’t imagine starting again with someone else.

When she gets home, Steve is on the bed, channel surfing. “I ate the Chinese — I hope you weren’t saving it.”