Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

But it turned out that Barney the Market was some Freakosaurus Rex, capable of sprinting downhill so fast that not even the most personable, prettiest, and most charming of realtors could chase him. There was no way to unload those properties. And Barney the Market wasn’t so fucking friendly either. He was loose in their neighborhood, and every house he stopped at and swiped at with his monster claws lost value: I love you! You love me! There’s no longer equity! Those condos were underwater so deep, so far, and so fast that divers with masks couldn’t have found them. Nobody was buying houses now. Kay, after a few months — like the ten zillion other real estate agents in Florida who thought they were geniuses — didn’t even try. Soon she was back doing what she had been doing before, fixing up houses for Todd Malgarini, work that had felt fun and creative once upon a time and now felt like a humiliation. There weren’t a ton of houses to show, and the Whites fell back on what they had, which was Terry’s salary. This is about when Kay stopped sleeping nights, trying to figure out how to stuff those two condos, a house, the health insurance, the car payments, and the subscription to the Wine of the Month Club into one deputy sheriff’s salary.

Nothing in Kay’s experience had prepared her for being broke. She was terrified. She wished that Terry couldn’t sleep either. Why wasn’t he awake, too? The two of them could talk about the shadows on the ceiling. That one looked like a dancing walrus. That one looked like a sad weasel. She looked at Terry lying there, and she thought, What is wrong with him? So she lay in bed doing the numbers; then, first thing in the morning making coffee, she did them all over again. Kay made plans that didn’t pan out and contingency plans that she knew were unrealistic. Kay and Terry had been paying for private school for Terry’s nephews. Now they couldn’t send that check to Green Valley anymore. They canceled vacations — that wasn’t nearly enough. Kay’s father loaned Kay twenty-five thousand dollars—“against your inheritance,” he said. “Daddy, don’t talk like that,” Kay said. Kay took the money and felt awful in every way. That ran out too.

Then came the moment when the two of them, not exactly holding hands, stepped off the financial cliff, when Terry lost his job after the business with Marianne Miller. He was just outplayed, pure and simple, by that woman. It wasn’t fair, but that’s what it was. That was the summer Terry took up competitive glowering. He was pretty good at it, too. If you got him talking, he’d head straight to the one subject he was fit to talk on, which was how much he hated Marianne Miller.

Give it a rest, Terry —that’s what Kay thought but was (almost) smart enough not to say (too often).

* * *

It wasn’t as if Terry was exactly a hero to her in that stage of life. Things hadn’t exactly been super great between Kay and Terry since forever.

The first thing was about the kids — and don’t tell Terry I told you this, okay? But we tried for years, and finally I got him into the clinic, and — and that was a big thing for Kay&Terry, a very big thing, maybe bigger even for Terry than for her. They almost adopted, the process falling through twice at the last minute, the second time when the birth mother backed out, with Ella Marie White’s room all decorated and waiting for her. After that, Terry, looking as thoroughly beaten by the world as a man can look, said, “Kay, if you want someone who can give you a family, I’d understand.” And Kay rolled over and said, “Like swans, Terry. We’re for life.”

It was just about that time that Terry and Kay became obsessed with politics, the two of them taking all their energy and despair and boredom and channeling it straight into ambition. When she’d met Terry and married him — why, the guy just glowed with promise. Everyone thought so. It wasn’t just Kay. Her sisters, her mom, her friends — people saw him in politics or business, or as a lawyer: anywhere someone smart, articulate, clean-cut, and connected could make it big. They didn’t see a cop; they saw Representative White, with a solid background in law enforcement. Maybe even Senator White.

So when Terry threw his hat in the ring, Kay figured that this was when Rocketship Terry, headed straight for Planet Success, finally took off. Only Terry took two shots at it and lost both times. The two of them worked their backsides off trying to get Terry up the ladder, and both times he took a licking. Kay never understood why. You know that business with the pheromones, how you fall in love with people because they have some smell you didn’t even know you were smelling? Maybe that’s the way it was with Terry. Funny thing was, she loved the way he smelled. Sometimes he’d come home at the end of the day and she’d bury her nose in the fleshy place under his jawbone, just inhaling him — like a half packet of Marlboro Reds and two cups of black coffee, like honest sweat, like a man …

… there was something she wanted to tell me. Do you mind if I tell you these things? It’s just that we don’t know each other, so I can talk to you …

Kay hadn’t been the only one who thought Terry smelled great. There was another lady voter who found him mighty attractive. Like the swans, my ass. With her nephew Brett’s third-grade teacher. Seriously? Terry was coaching Brett’s Little League, and Miss Whitman came to a game, introduced herself. It didn’t help that Brett was head over heels for Miss Whitman too: all Kay heard that year was Miss Whitman this, Miss Whitman that; the woman made kids laugh and grown men act like pigs.

Oh my fucking Lord, did that hurt. She’s staring at the ceiling at night, worrying how they’re going to eat and pay the mortgage, and Terry’s dreaming about her .

That was a couple of years back now, and something about the affair just rankled down to her bones, rankled to this day, rankled in a way that not even her own infidelity expunged. Basically, she knew that Terry, no matter how much he wept and cried and begged her to take him back, would have left her for Miss Whitman — but Miss Whitman wouldn’t take him. Terry wasn’t good enough for Miss Whitman. He was too good for Kay and not good enough for Miss Whitman, so that pretty much left Kay somewhere down at the bottom of the pile, which was not exactly how Kay thought things should be.

Deepest, longest, hardest pain of her life, and nothing really made it better. Not the counseling thing, not Terry’s tears and protestations and affirmations of undying love. Not even the thing with her dentist, and don’t laugh, say what you will about Dr. Stern, he was basically single; he was gentle; he had a good sense of humor; he took every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon off all summer long; he had a condo with a pool; and he asked Kay a lot of questions about what it was like to be the woman in Kay’s head and body, then listened to her answers with the same air of concentrated attention he offered her in his office when she talked about her incisor, the one that was getting supersensitive to cold. Also — and this wasn’t a joke — he really had the best-tasting mouth of any man she had ever kissed. She asked him about that once, and he said that it really made a difference, regular flossing. Kay wasn’t exactly sad when Dr. Stern broke it off in the fall — it was just something that she missed. She didn’t even change dentists.

Why did she stick with Terry? It’s a good question — the question she asked herself approximately twice a minute for the last three years. And is it totally crazy if I just say I still love him? Just not the way that she thought love should be. She hated herself for loving him when her sisters told her that she should be hating him: it made her think she was weak and sick. But the thing is, deep down, Terry was a good person. Like the way — when guys were in county lockup at Christmas, he’d make sure their kids got presents. He’d take orders from the guys in lockup and then spend his own money to make sure some fuckup’s three-year-old got a shiny toy truck. Or like the way when his sister was dying (ovarian cancer and only thirty-four), he spent every minute at her house, carrying her to the bathroom, just sitting by her side when, drugged out and dopey, she slept. Kay knew that’s the way Terry would be for her.