The Encyclopedia of Exes Read online

  My wife’s body fits my own so nicely, our ungainly, saggy bodies, as we lie in bed holding each other and talking. It’s a bit of solace against this stinking world. The other night we were discussing Susie’s impending purchase of a new car. Jane said, “Can’t you take her aside for just fifteen minutes and tell her what kind of crazy circus she’s going to encounter in car sales?” We were lying on our backs, angled slightly to face one another. Her head was resting on my arm, and our bodies were in gentle contact all the way down to our ankles. The lights were off, but I could see Jane’s face as it was illuminated by the street lamps our town government had put up and by the small lantern we have in our front yard, both of which are on timers that turn them on an hour after sunset and off an hour before sunrise. Jane’s face is not beautiful, but there is nobody’s face I would rather look at. Show me the most gorgeous twenty-eight-year-old model for eyeliner or moisturizing cream—my heart might race for a couple of seconds, but don’t make me face her for an hour. Familiarity is better than beauty. The extra grooves in Jane’s skin, the puffiness around the eyes, the small amount of flesh that has accumulated below her jawline during the twenty years of my having looked at her steadily: these things are a life’s work. Jane and I own each other’s skin.

  “Yes, that’s good,” I said. “Circus. That’s just it. It is a circus. But how am I gonna tell her? You know how she is.”

  “Please. Don’t tell me how she is. I’m her mother. It’s worse for the mother. With the father I don’t think there’s the same humiliation.” I could see the echo of the word humiliation in the muscles of her face the instant before she smiled in that pained way. “Humiliation” has a particular meaning to us. Rather, it has a particular meaning for me that Jane is aware of. She doesn’t know the details of the single event in my life that makes the word resound at the very core of my being—namely, the ending of my infatuation with the young woman—but she understands. This seems to be the gift of women: to know the feeling of an event without knowing the event. Thus, Jane can say, “Oh, I saw the most wonderful movie on public television the other night,” and I’ll say, “What was it called?” and she’ll say, “I can’t remember,” and I’ll say “Who was it by?” and she’ll say, “I don’t know, I think it was Australian,” and I’ll say, “What was it about?” et cetera. (In this regard, by the way, our daughter, Susie, is more like a man.)

  “Okay,” I said, “now tell me what you mean by circus.”

  “You know, they’re a bunch of clowns, car dealers. They’ll deceive her with illusion and falsehood. They’re famous for it. The whole enterprise is just going to be another defeat for our family. Could you go with her maybe?”

  “You mean accompany her while she shops for the car? First of all, she probably won’t let me. Second of all, it’s a deadly dreadful prospect, spending a goal-oriented day with that supercilious American girl.”

  Jane laughed. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, we’ve got to help her.”

  A car went by on our street in front of our house, and we both watched the crucifix-shaped shadow of our window frame move from one side of our bedroom ceiling to the other.

  “My arm is asleep,” I said, and tried unsuccessfully to wiggle it out from under her heavy head.

  “It’s funny that you say, ‘My arm is asleep.’ What you really mean is that your arm, as the result of a trauma, has fallen unconscious. Your arm has fainted. It’s been overtaxed. Your arm’s getting older, dear.”

  We laughed. Jane didn’t move her head, and I didn’t move my arm. We fell asleep.

  I made a point of getting up early, showering and deodorizing, shaving, and putting on a fresh, crisp shirt and pants before going down to breakfast. As I approached the door to the kitchen I saw Susie’s two tall, clean, golden legs sticking up side by side from behind the table in the breakfast nook, toes pointed. “Morning, sweetheart. I’m all clean and not smelly.”

  “Look, this is the candle position, Dad. Can you touch your toes?” Her entire weight was balanced on her shoulders and neck and the back of her blond head. I don’t know where she got her coloring from, since Jane and I are brunettes. She exhaled and rolled forward one vertebra at a time. When her legs were flat out in front of her she continued to move forward until her fingers were holding the bottoms of her feet and her face was between her knees.

  “Susie, are you going to start your car hunt today? I thought that we should talk over your strategy on buying this car.”

  She didn’t answer. Her breathing was steady and slow. It was clear that these idle greetings and questions of her father’s were an annoying distraction.

  After she had held the same position for a couple of minutes, she unfolded herself and stood up. She went to the cupboard and got a glass, which she held under our refrigerator’s automatic ice dispenser, and then she took a carton of orange juice out of the fridge and poured some into the glass. “We should stop buying this stuff,” she said. “Consumer Reports rated a couple of new electric juicers really high. I think we ought to invest in one. Most of the nutrients are lost in the concentrating and rehydrating process, not to mention the flavor.”

  “What, do you just casually flip through Consumer Reports in your spare time? Most girls your age are languishing in their rooms listening to Janis Ian over and over, reading Seventeen magazine.”

  “Most girls my age don’t read. They also don’t save their money or spend it wisely.” My daughter talks this way, like Benjamin Franklin or something.

  “So about the car,” I said.

  “The Japanese cars seem good,” she said. “There’s that new American car company that seems to have a lot of integrity. I’m looking at the area between compact and midsize. Gotta have passenger-side airbag. Gotta have antilock brakes. I’m thinking four-wheel drive for winter safety, but I’m not sure the terrain in this area demands it.”

  “You don’t know where you’re going to college,” I said.

  “Good point, Dad. Excellent point,” she said thoughtfully.

  It’s pretty rare that she finds something I say worthy of consideration. I could feel myself blush. I had momentum, so I said, “I just want you to be careful because even though you may know a lot about the cars, the car dealers are tricky and deceitful. A car dealership is like, you know, a circus. You go in there, they throw a lot of jargon at you. They say, ‘reclining bucket seats’ and ‘V-6 engine’ and ‘ergonomic design’ and ‘hard-body steel construction’ with big smiles on their faces.”

  “Dad, give me a little credit for knowing something. Also you’re exaggerating the evil in human nature as usual.”

  “No. You know what? You give me a little credit. I’m not paranoid. I have actual experience with car dealers. I’ve bought cars. I even once knew a car dealer. If you do this all on your own, you’re gonna get hurt.”

  She was silent for a moment. “It sounds like you relish the idea of me getting hurt,” she said. “Excuse me, I’m going for a bike ride.”

  As she walked out the back door I called after her, “I do not relish the idea of you getting hurt.”

  I often have this sensation after talking to Susie or Jane that I’ve left out the most important thing. I can never put my finger on what it is, but I feel that if I were to say it, even once in the conversation, it would make us a winning family instead of the other.

  “She resented my input,” I said to Jane that night.

  “Don’t say ‘input,’ ” she said. “ ‘Input’ is like ‘reclining bucket seats.’ ”

  “You’re right,” I said. “ ‘Input’ is a dirty word.” We were lying in bed again. Inertia is the epitome of our marriage. I don’t mean that we don’t change or that we’re frightened of progress. I mean that our last moments of conciousness each night, when we talk and lie together, amount to a dark nest of quiet truth amid all the racket. Our conversations are the opposite of a car.

  Jane smiled and snuggled against my soft, hairy shoulder. “What did you say to her?” sh
e asked.

  “I said the thing about car dealers being clowns.”

  “But what was the point? What were you hoping to persuade her to do?”

  “Let me come along and protect her.” As soon as I said this I pictured Susie’s body, which is like a coat of armor, and I realized how absurd a thing it was for me to protect her, and so did Jane, and we had a good laugh.

  “So I guess she turned you down.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Are we just going to let her go through with this by herself?”

  I sighed. We were silent for a moment, and I could hear the alarm clock ticking on the night table on Jane’s side of the bed.

  “I mean what are we going to do with her?” Jane said.

  “Pack her off to boarding school?”

  “I think she really needs the opposite of boarding school.”

  “What’s the opposite of boarding school?”

  “Maybe she could climb in bed and sleep with us the way she used to?”

  “Maybe we could accidentally push her down the stairs.”

  Jane gasped and rushed to put her forefinger to her mouth and say, “Shhh,” as if suddenly Susie could hear our whispers from down the hall. But I saw that smile breaking out behind her finger.

  The following day was a Saturday. At 8:30 A.M. on my way to the bathroom I saw that the thermometer outside our bedroom window indicated sixty-five degrees. In anticipation of Susie’s subtly perfumed limbs at breakfast that morning I lost all hope and went back to bed for an hour and a half. Jane and I were feeling so embattled that when I finally did get up, we agreed that I would scout out the breakfast nook. If she were still there, I was to grab a box of cereal, some milk, a couple of spoons and bowls, mumble something about “your mother’s menopause,” and retreat to the bedroom.

  “Dad,” she said, before I had caught sight of her, “let’s go, get a move on, shake a leg, I want to have a car all picked out by five o’clock this afternoon.” She had evidently finished with her yoga. She was wearing a new pair of fancy jeans, an off-white short-sleeve silk blouse, a delicate gold necklace, and elegant brown pumps: a car-hunting outfit.

  “What?” I said. “You want me to go with you?”

  “Of course I do, Dad. How would I be able to do this without you?” There it was: Susie’s evil twin.

  I showered. I put on a polo shirt, khaki pants—the Dad outfit.

  As we were walking out the door Susie threw on a blue blazer, put a Walkman in her pocket, stuck the tiny speakers in her ears, and proceeded to listen to music that only she could hear.

  “You gonna wear that thing when we talk to the salesmen?”

  “What do you think I am?” she said, louder than she needed to.

  The first place we went was to the showroom of the American Car with Integrity. We walked in. No one approached us. All the walls were made of glass. The lighting was subdued. The air smelled processed. The cars were shiny and resting gently on the gray carpet. I felt as if we were in a fancy restaurant that had cars instead of food. I became nauseated. What did she need a car for? She was sixteen, she could ride her bike. I prepared myself to forbid her to buy a car.

  Susie marched us over to one of the sales offices. When I caught a glimpse of the salesman sitting behind his desk, I put my hands over my face. In a few moments my face remained covered by my hands, I gave up on Susie; I gave up on her altogether. Then I turned so that my back was to the salesman, dreading that he had seen my face, and I asked Susie to step away from his office for a moment.

  Very quickly and monotonously I said, “I’ve decided to let you handle this by yourself. I think this car company is different and they won’t take advantage of you. This will be a good experience, too, for you to buy a car on your own. If you can do this, you’ll be ready for adulthood.”

  “What? Excuse me, Dad, but this is very weird.”

  “I’ve thought this over, this is what I want you to do. Here are the keys to my car. I’ll take the bus home.”

  “Thought it over? It seems like you, like, are freaking out on the spur of the moment. You said you were gonna buy a car with me.”

  “You really didn’t want me to.”

  “Yes.” Her face was red. She looked confused. It was all I could do to walk and not run for the door of the showroom.

  The salesman, you see, was the husband of that young woman who had caused me to be ironic with my family for an entire year seven years ago. I had known way back that the guy was a car salesman, but it must have slipped my mind. Not only had his wife worked in my office, she had been my secretary. I cannot put into words how beautiful she was. I had thought that any life with her in it would be better than what I had, no matter how high the price.

  I had wanted to fire her, but there were no grounds. For a year I practiced self-restraint. Then, one warm Friday in spring, when everyone else in the company had gone home, she wore a sleeveless blouse into my office to water the plants, and I got down on my knees. She was standing above me, and I took her hand and told her that I loved her, and I asked her if she would go away with me the following weekend. She ran out of the office and never came back.

  For several months after that, I came home from work, ate dinner, and went to bed; on weekends I slept as much as possible and rarely left the house. I did not tell Jane what had happened, but my irony was gone and I’m sure she understood, in that way she understands without knowing. What she did was remarkable. She spent the time in bed with me. If I lay in bed until noon on a Saturday, she lay in bed until noon. If I went to sleep at eight o’clock on a work night, she climbed in next to me and held me in her warm arms. It must have been tough on nine-year-old Susie, her two parents hiding in the bedroom, cohabitating in their defeat.

  Jane was not at home when I arrived. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I sat at the kitchen table. I saw ahead of me an afternoon of sitting and waiting, and I was afraid.

  At this point I had the following thought: “What would Susie do?” The answer was that she would run ten to fifteen miles, and then go for a thirty-mile swim. So I actually went up to our bedroom and found a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and put them on. On the way down the stairs I felt hopeful. Then, in the driveway, I felt stupid. I was in my pajamas, practically. Then Jane came up the driveway in the station wagon.

  She got out of the car and laughed. “Say it isn’t so!” She was referring to my jogging attire.

  As a kind of preemptive strike, I scrutinized her outfit. She never dresses well. She had on an old pink T-shirt with a worn, frilly hem. It was too small for her. Her jeans were baggy, and her tennis shoes, which she had worn to play tennis about twice, were dirty and frayed. Her graying hair was stuck up on top of her head with a random assortment of bobby pins and barrettes.

  “What happened? Did you get kicked off the car-hunting team?”

  I nodded.

  “Ooh, you look so cute in your getup.” She came over smiling and grabbed my shoulders and kissed me all over my face, making each kiss an enchanted, artificial kissing noise—“mwa”—as if we were a brand-new couple in our twenties.

  “Frankly, you don’t look so great at the moment yourself,” I said, before it dawned on me that she was not being ironic.

  Her face looked pained, and then calm. “So it really smarts that Susie wouldn’t let you shop for a car with her, eh?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “I guess it really does smart.”

  Now she squinted, which meant she knew there was a discrepancy between what had happened and what was being said. “Why don’t you come inside,” she said, “and we’ll split a beer while we wait for her to come home.”

  There was such assurance in the way she said that, and in the way she hooked my arm with hers and steered us toward the front door, that I was afraid of her. Surely when Susie got home my lie about getting kicked off the car team would be found out. And if I sat across the kitchen table from Jane just waiting for Susie to come home
, it was conceivable that all my lies would soon be found out. “I feel disgusting. I’m going to take a shower,” I said.

  “Do whatever you want.”

  As I was dressing I looked out our bedroom window and saw Susie coming up the driveway in a brand-new economy-size hatchback from the American car company. I ran downstairs and out into the driveway. Susie got out of the car. Her face was flushed. I gave her a big hug. “I’m sorry, honey,” I whispered before Jane caught up with me.

  “Dad, it’s fine. It worked out for the best. You’ll never believe what happened. Mom,” she said to Jane, who was strolling toward us, “you’ll never believe what happened.”

  “What happened?”

  Sweat was pouring form my armpits onto my freshly laundered polo shirt.

  “So, we’re in the car taking a test drive, just me and the salesman, right?”

  Jane and I nod eagerly. Here was this beautiful new car in our driveway that Susie had purchased all by herself. Jane was infected by the car and by Susie’s radiance. The two of them made their mouths into these big alarming smiles.

  “So we’re on the highway, right? And I’m driving? Well, this guy puts his hand on my knee. The car salesman does. For real.” Jane stopped smiling. “And then he starts asking me things and saying things to me. I can’t even tell you what they were because I’d be too embarrassed. But he said like five separate gross things to me. I had no idea what to say to him, so I didn’t say anything. I just concentrated on getting back to the lot as fast as I could, but I also didn’t want to get a ticket or anything.