Better Half

Rather than sooth me, as she had intended, all my suspicions were confirmed in one text message from Lou Ann.

“Aw, Rorie Babes, you’re being paranoid! He’d never do a thing like that. The only gal Ricky’s ever had eyes for is you, and you know it. Just the other night, I saw you two swooning over candlelight and cocktails, in that bistro parklet on the corner, on my way from the salon. Thursday, I think it was. You two are the picture of true love.”

I hadn’t been out with Ricky for cocktails in eons. The only outing we’d been on together in a week was to the health food store, and there was no swooning. On Thursday night I was nursing a cool stream of nicotine and a bottle of wine alone, getting up only to graze the kitchen cabinets, wondering what time my husband would come home.

To say that I’m unhappy in my marriage would be missing the point. I am unhappy. And, now, I am married.

Ricky, though… For Ricky to be happy in his marriage - in this marriage - he would have to be a saint.

Or a psychopath.

Until recently, I took for granted the notion that greener fields await on the other side of these exalted milestones. That I would metamorphose naturally into the happy wife. I have no reason not to be. Fairytales instill this illusion that happily ever after is a real place - a promised land that’s right around the corner. But there is no cinematic fading out or panning into the rest of your life. There is just the tedious enterprise of living it.

So far, that greener grass eludes me, and there is no natural spring of dopamine flowing in this desert.

All this is probably due in part to an unrelated plot twist. Shortly after our wedding, I left a toxic job of seven years with the promise of a new opportunity, and a rare, unprecedented stretch of time off in between. Consequently, an unorthodox degree of isolation was imposed on my foray into married life.

Ricky encouraged the change of direction. For a long time, I blamed the poisonous workplace for the funk I was in. We both did. As it turns out, this must have been the only thing keeping my head above the bottom of the well, and now I’ve gone and taken the plunge, right into the mouth of it.

In the spirit of new beginnings, I had high hopes for my sabbatical at first. Time to turn my life around. Write a business plan. Publish a book. Creative and social aspirations, thirty pounds to lose, more than one destructive habit to finally kick. All the time in the world to do it. My whole life in front of me.

So far I’ve spent it stalling – sucking the nectar out of anything with a surgeon general’s warning, as if to stave off that next inevitable step of bearing a new life into the world, and assuming the role of the loving mother. I know better now than to expect that to possess me of its own accord.

While Ricky goes to work, I spend my days stabbing away at my laptop, trying to coax out the best-selling novel I swear is in there somewhere. Anything to justify all the hours I squander, the housework I avoid, the sex life I’m neglecting, the social life that I’ve abandoned, and the extra inches buttressing my empty womb.

Rather than turn my life around as planned, I haunt the house. I never stray from it. A ghost, drifting between the liquor cabinet and Netflix – both of which I have exhausted, left alone to my devices.

In the throes of all of this, I have become a stranger to myself. To Ricky, too, I reckon.

There is no joy to be wrung out of a new recipe, or the simple triumph and catharsis of cleaning even a corner of this cluttered house. Sex has become a mechanical thing. No acts of love are left in me. The simplest gesture takes enormous force and offers no reward.

Suffice it to say, I have nothing to show for myself except the dead plants, empty bottles, a billion abandoned manuscripts, and ten extra pounds, I expect, on top of what I started with.

And now this – the adultering husband.

I guess it was naive to assume our marriage was immune to that played out cliché – an age-old plague on other, lesser couples. Not us! Ricky was my ticket out of that odyssey of cheating boyfriends and nonnegotiably open relationships. Ricky is a dying breed. Commitment incarnate - the patron saint of faithful spouses. So I had believed.

I didn’t admit to Lou Ann that the woman she’d seen Ricky with wasn’t me. She would feel guilty for unwittingly incriminating him. Neither of us was expecting her to present this irrefutable evidence to contradict her claim.

Until she sent that text, I’d made some peace with my suspicions. I’d surrendered to the theoretical inevitability of this other woman, who must be stepping up in all the ways that I was falling short. An intangible, mythical thing. A figment of my insufficiency.

But the second Lou Ann substantiated her, my peace was shattered.

The notion of Ricky basking in the fever of a kindling affair was stirring something new in me. A zealous envy for this woman, and the novelty of their attraction. Remorse, for pushing him away. And something else. A wild, carnal pining for my husband, the likes of which I hadn’t felt since early days.

I could picture Ricky encountering her, casually out in the world. At the gas station maybe, or a grocery store, accidentally reaching for the same thing. All this time, I’ve been wallowing in my own little world, I let myself forget the actual vastness of it – a veritable minefield of imminent meet-cutes, and better women, lining up in broad daylight to pounce.

So I did what anyone would do. I followed them to her apartment. Not to confront him or accuse him. Just to see with my own eyes.

Ricky unlocked the door, as if to his own home. He held it open for her, followed her inside. His wedding band glistened in the porch light.

I watched them from behind, through the window as they crossed the living room into the kitchen, where they stood around the island. I could only see slivers of them through the narrow entryway. Ricky twisted the cork out of a bottle of wine and poured a glass for them to share.

The apartment looked uncannily like ours, but cleaner. Tidier, and neater. Plants were manicured and perky. Laundry and dishes, empty shot glasses, were nowhere to be seen.

Ricky led them back to center stage with the wine in hand. As he took a seat on the sofa, the woman moved into view, unobstructed, beaming in the yellow light. All the sensation went from my legs in the moment of recognition. I’ve seen that face before.

My face.

Not similar. Identical. Down to the freckle on her neck.

Her hair was teased up in a sloppy bun, the same auburn-blond I wash and brush and peel out of the shower drain when I mustered the gumption to finally wash it. Except that hers was thick and lush, and clean. A halo in the light. She coasted across the room as if she might be light as air.

She wore a smart blouse, buttoned up and tucked into her skirt, which hugged her hips and didn’t put up any fight with her waist, like mine do. She was slim and toned. This must be what my body would look like if I could summon the willpower to swap the binging and boozing for some cardio or dreaded calisthenics.

She struck me as the sort of woman who could stop after one drink. Someone productive and functional. Inspired. Someone who could finish any project that she started. She was everything I wasn’t. Everything I want to be. Everything I’d want for Ricky.

In the stupor of discovering my double through the window, I forgot to be jealous of her. Until she bent down and went in for a kiss. She hiked her skirt up and slung her leg over his lap. He rolled her panties down her thighs.

She reached for the blinds and let them fall. Regardless, through the slats, I could see it all. It was a thrill to witness. The urgency of their desire. It was intoxicating. I was woozy, watching them. Watching myself in the third person - albeit the better version - with my husband inside her. And me outside, looking in - just a fly on the wall.

My body was buzzing, and flooding with warmth. Vicarious ecstasy rushed into my bloodstream.

When they finished, she lingered on his lap. She lifted her hand to brush her hair out of his eyes, my wedding ring gleaming on her finger. The very one I was wearing, on mine.

Finally, she released him from the clutch of her thighs. Ricky stood and zipped his pants, which never made it off in the haste of their lust. One more kiss, before he peeled himself away and retreated down the hallway. The shower faucet shuddered on in the distance.

She leaned across the couch, reaching for the drawstring to lift the blinds. They went up, leaving nothing but a naked pane of glass between us.

“I wasn’t expecting you.”

Funny, I thought. I could have said the same.

She took the wine glass in her hands and sipped without breaking her gaze. She was not startled in the least to discover me there.

“Looks like my time is up.” She glanced down at her wine, and swirled it. “He’s all yours, if you want to come in.”

I did not.

Without a fight or another word, I fled the scene. I walked myself directly home, but Ricky beat me. His car was already parked in the driveway by the time that I arrived. I nudged the door open to find him slumped back into the couch, skimming the vast menu of streaming services.

“There you are. Where’d you go?”

“I was just out for a walk.”

He scooted to the corner and patted the space next to him. “I warmed it up for you.”

I accepted.

While I was busy intently averting his eyes, he turned to face me. Handed me a glass of wine. “I’m proud of you,” he said.

“What for?”

“Finishing your novel. Obviously.” This was news to me. He planted a clammy kiss on my forehead. “It’s a big deal,” he assured me, elbowing me playfully.

“Right…”

He tucked my hair behind my ears. “I worry about you, you know. The way you get lost in your head, sometimes.” His eyes were digging deep in mine, for an answer that I didn’t have. “I just want you to know I love you. All of you.”