Best Place to Be

The Old Economy Husband It was that summer, the summer we were fifty and the little Cuban boy went home to no mother, not the first West Nile virus summer but the second, the Hillary and Survivor summer, you know that summer, the summer the women were manhandled in the park and the kids lined up for Harry Potter, the summer we were fifty, all of us, fifty and holding, the ones a little older and the ones a little younger, fifty and holding, like thirty and holding only fifty, and it was summer and the ones who were rich were and the ones who weren't weren't but we were all fifty, every one of us, and holding. We were in the city that summer because we couldn't afford a vacation and we couldn't afford a beach house, because our oven died and it was vintage 1929 or something and connected to the dishwasher in some complicated way having to do with converted residential hotels -- in other words irreplaceable -- and one thing led to another and now we had twenty thousand dollars' worth of European-made appliances on order. It was the summer we renovated the kitchen. "Will you call the Miele place in the morning?" I asked Richard. "Will you remember to because I can't face it. Will you?" Our contractor was useless. Also he was in Brazil. "I'll do it," Richard said. "I said I would." "Because you have to, sweetie, okay?" What was I, deaf ? He said he would. One minute I was disgusted with myself for owning a fancy dishwasher I couldn't even pronounce -- Meal? Mee-lay? May-lay? -- the next I was in a rage over the incompetence of the people responsible for getting it to me. Those were the two ways I was. Everything that used to be in the kitchen was spread out all over the living room -- one thing about a renovation was you saw all the stuff you never used with sickening clarity, the useless stupid juice glasses and the dust-encrusted early-eighties cappuccino maker and the rusted flour sifter and the grimy oven mitts from the Caribbean vacations, cartons of junk you dragged guiltily down the hall to the recycling room for the building staff to pick over. The bathroom was now the acting kitchen and a lot of stuff that used to be in the living room, specifically the dining room, was in my office. We ate dinner there, in front of the TV. It was summer so there was nothing on. We were watching a biography of the actress Jane Seymour, Dr. Quinn, with the hair. How her first husband left her and her life was terrible, then she had a baby, then her life was terrible again, then she had another baby. Like that. Terrible, baby, terrible, baby, commercial, baby, baby, with some husbands thrown in and a castle and the hair. Richard carried our dirty dinner dishes to the bathroom -- it was his week to cook and like a champ he'd brought in takeout burritos -- and reappeared with dessert, from somewhere, on plates: pie. He kissed the top of my head. "Do you know that you're my fave?" he said. He said it a lot lately, probably picking up those voodoo vibes of double-dose Zoloft, of Tylenol PM addiction, of night-sweaty breakdown. Those crazy fifty-year-old women! He said "You're my fave" instead of "I love you" instead of "Take whatever hormone you want just don't get cancer" instead of "I'm sorry I already had children in my first marriage and didn't want any in my second and you didn't get to be a mother." Fine. He wasn't exactly sorry, but it was fine anyway. He was my fave, too. That was me, married to the one man who made me feel like my fiercest, most clear-hearted twelve-year-old self and not any of the men who made me feel that other way, that euphorically grandiose, desperately insecure, wildly libidinous twenty-five-year-old way. We ate the pie. Dr. Quinn was looking back, saying it was all worth it. I picked up the pie plates, headed for the bathroom, and considered walking straight out the door and shoving everything down the compactor. Throwing out was definitely doing iDormen, Lesley is the author of 'Best Place to Be', published 2008 under ISBN 9781416532620 and ISBN 1416532625.