The Arrangement Read online

  “We’re trying to avoid getting a divorce.”

  “Well, you’re going about it the wrong way.”

  “What would be the right way?”

  “You really want to know?” Izzy said.

  “Sure.”

  Izzy climbed back on top of him and started grinding herself against him, trying to see if he was good for another go.

  “Only. Have sex. With each other,” she said, and then she started to laugh like a mental patient.

  Izzy was like that. She was a different world. Not a better world, not a kinder or gentler one, but a different one. Owen had read somewhere that the brain needs novelty. Novelty is what keeps the neurons from dying. Novelty makes new connections; it rewires things, it repairs, it renews. Drive a different route to work, the article suggested. Order something new from your favorite restaurant. Have sex with someone who’s the polar opposite of your wife.

  The best word to describe how Izzy fucked was angrily. She was explosive and hungry and passionate and crazy and would allow more or less anything to penetrate her anywhere. Owen had gone out and gotten himself some strange—but it turned out to be pretty strange strange. Izzy asked to be tied up, she liked to bite, she begged to be spanked, and she had a sex-toy collection that was truly astonishing. One time, Owen opened up her dishwasher, and there were two gigantic rubber penises in the silverware compartment. What the hell is going on around here? he wondered, but then he chose to put it out of his mind.

  Another thing: Izzy was highly orgasmic. She came, a lot. Many, many, many times. Izzy came so much and so often that it was, paradoxically, difficult to satisfy her, to completely satisfy her—it was like trying to fill a bucket that had a hole on the bottom. No matter what Owen gave her, it was never enough.

  Owen had gotten so used to his hands being guided away by Lucy, with her “Not tonight” and “Please no, not there,” her distinctly unsexy desire to keep her T-shirt on during sex (he’d put his foot down on that one, thankfully), that for a while the sheer pleasure of being able to do anything he wanted to do was enough. Like a kid in a candy store, really, that’s how he felt. I can do this! And I can do this! I can put this in here! I can touch that! I can look at this with the lights on!

  And the pictures. Good God, the pictures. After his second time with Izzy, a seemingly unending stream of pornographic selfies popped up on his screen, to the point where Owen’s once rather cozy relationship with his cell phone was forever changed. He’d type in his password and see he had four new texts and then be like, Whah? She really didn’t have a good eye, Izzy. She didn’t seem to know the difference between a sexy picture and an alarming one. It didn’t help that she held her iPhone at strange angles, and always a little too close, so that he often had to spend a good fifteen seconds figuring out which way was up and, occasionally, what exactly he was looking at. Once, while he was giving Wyatt a bath, he glanced at his phone and saw what he thought was an extreme close-up of Izzy’s vagina. It turned out to be a picture she’d found online of one of those wrinkly hairless cats.

  Owen tried to get her to stop with the pictures.

  “You mean because of your wife who knows we’re sleeping together and is fine with it? You’re worried she’s going to see something on your phone?”

  “Yeah. It doesn’t mean she needs to see any of that. Plus, my kid plays with my phone.”

  “So password-block your texts.”

  “I don’t know how to do that. And even if I did, I don’t want to have to type in a password every time I get a text. It’s not efficient. Just, do you mind stopping?”

  “I thought you liked my pictures.”

  “I do like them. It’s just—you send a lot of them. And maybe it would be better if we just toned that part of things down for a while.”

  “Whatever.”

  Four

  The only virtue of a marriage based purely on love is the expediency of a divorce based on hate.

  —Constance Waverly

  The Waverly Report

  The tot park was one of the things real estate agents made a point of showing to prospective home buyers on sunny days, when it was filled with nice-seeming moms chatting on park benches while their toddlers poured sand out of plastic dump trucks and took turns swinging on the swings. A lot of moms in Beekman spent a lot of hours at the tot park. Each spring it was replenished with a batch of new mommies, exhausted and half brain-dead, wondering what their lives had become.

  Lucy and Sunny Bang were sitting next to each other on a park bench in the sun.

  “I feel so bad for Arlen,” said Sunny Bang.

  “Who’s Arlen?” Lucy asked.

  “Eric Lowell’s wife,” said Sunny. “I wonder how she’s handling all this. She’s had a really hard life.”

  “Hard how?”

  “One of her parents murdered her sister.”

  “What?”

  “It was a long time ago. Her sister disappeared and the whole town looked for her for days and then they found her body in this pond behind their house. Apparently everybody knew it was one of the parents but nobody could prove anything.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “I know, right? And Arlen and Eric still live in the house she grew up in. Can you imagine? She looks out on that pond every day. And now her husband is turning into a woman. I’d be like, Are you fucking kidding me, God?”

  “Why didn’t they search the pond right away?” asked Lucy. “I mean, isn’t that the first place you’d look?”

  Lucy had to run across the tot park to wrangle Wyatt away from a scooter that had caught his eye while another kid was riding on it. After about ten minutes of redirection, she got him settled on an empty swing. She walked back to the bench. Sunny eyed her intensely as she approached.

  “Why are you so skinny?” Sunny Bang asked.

  “I’m not skinny,” said Lucy, sitting back down next to her.

  Sunny Bang squinted. “You’ve lost like, what, eight pounds?”

  “Eleven,” said Lucy, “but who’s counting.”

  “How? I need to know.”

  “I have no idea,” said Lucy. “I haven’t been hungry so I haven’t been eating.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Sunny Bang said. “If it’s pills, I demand some.”

  “I haven’t been hungry lately. I can’t explain it.”

  “Maybe you have a tapeworm,” said Sunny Bang. “I know this guy who went to Africa, and he got these parasites in his skin, and they put slabs of bacon all over him and the worms came out and ate the bacon and then they ripped the bacon off like a Band-Aid. And the worms got pulled out of him like strands of spaghetti.”

  “You know this person?”

  “Friend of a friend,” said Sunny Bang. “You ruin all my stories. TOBIAS, GIVE LOUISA A TURN ON THE SPRINGY ZEBRA. YOU’VE BEEN ON LONG ENOUGH. Maybe you have cancer.”

  “Thanks, Sunny. Thanks for that.”

  “Sudden unexplained weight loss. It’s a symptom. TOBIAS, GET OFF THE ZEBRA RIGHT THIS SECOND! OFF! NOW!”

  “I cut out carbs,” Lucy said. “Carbs and sugar. All the whites.”

  “You are lying to your friend,” Sunny Bang pronounced. “You are a lying woman talking!”

  “I’m not,” said Lucy.

  Sunny Bang narrowed her already narrow Korean eyes.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe it,” said Sunny Bang.

  “What?”

  “I know what’s going on with you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do not tell me what I’m thinking right now is true.”

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Sunny.”

  “You know exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “Do I look like I’m having sex with strange men?”

  “Yes, actually, you do. You got super-skinny quickly and you’re wearing lip gloss.”

  “This is Carmex.”

  Lucy had to tell someone. Otherwise she was going to explode. It had
been just over a month since the Conversation and Lucy hadn’t said a word to anybody. (Lucy found herself thinking about all of this in formal, capitalized phrases: the Dinner Party, the Conversation, the Arrangement, the Rules.) And Sunny Bang was a lot of things—unapologetic discipliner of other people’s children, wearer of kneesocks when kneesocks were not called for—but she was trustworthy. And she was fiercely loyal. She was Lucy’s best friend in Beekman. And she could keep her mouth shut.

  “Can you keep a secret?” Lucy asked.

  “You know I can.”

  “You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. Anyone.”

  “I swear I won’t. Not even Jake.”

  “Normally I would let you tell Jake, but you can’t on this one, you have to promise.”

  “I promise. I swear.”

  “We are,” Lucy said. She lowered her voice as low as it could go. “Doing it. The thing.”

  Sunny Bang stared at Lucy for a second and then bent down and put her head between her knees like a passenger waiting for the airplane to crash. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  “Sunny,” Lucy said through a forced smile, “the ladies are watching you.”

  “This is nuts! You guys are crazy!”

  “Sit up, Sunny,” said Lucy, still smiling. “People are staring.”

  “It’s easy to lose weight because you get to have sex with strangers. It’s the best diet ever.”

  “I’m not having sex with strangers. I haven’t done anything.”

  “But you can,” said Sunny Bang. “That’s enough motivation. I haven’t even shaved my legs since my sister-in-law’s wedding, and that was in April.”

  “That can’t be true,” said Lucy. “You’ve been to the pool.”

  “I don’t shave for that pool. TOBIAS, STOP THROWING SAND OR WE ARE GOING HOME RIGHT THIS SECOND.

  “Is Owen sleeping with anyone?” Sunny asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Yes, you do,” said Sunny. “You do have an idea.”

  “We agreed not to talk about it.”

  “Even if you aren’t talking about it, you must have an inkling.”

  Lucy did, in fact, have an inkling.

  Lucy had been cooking dinner, a real dinner, which happened less often than she’d have liked. Wyatt ate his five foods and his five foods only, and as he got older Lucy found it depressing to cook entire meals she knew he wouldn’t even try, and she didn’t attempt recipes that might smell up the house in a strange way and set him off on a sensory panic attack. But this was Marcella Hazan’s lemon-up-the-butt chicken, the easiest and tastiest roast chicken in the world, and she’d made it before and Wyatt didn’t mind the smell.

  Owen came home early, and Lucy’s hand was, in fact, up the chicken’s butt trying to wedge the second of the two “rather small” lemons Marcella insisted you could fit up there, the one that always rolled out whenever Lucy tried, when Owen gave her a kiss. Her hands were chickeny so she just stood there, motionless, arms stiff and a little out to the sides, and felt the kiss. It was a real kiss.

  “I can’t touch you,” said Lucy. “I’m all chickeny.”

  “I don’t care. Rub me with salmonella.”

  “Tempting,” said Lucy, “but I can’t take any more people in this house throwing up.”

  “I love you,” said Owen.

  “I love you too.”

  Owen went into the playroom and started playing with Wyatt. Lucy could hear them laughing. She tied the chicken’s legs together with cooking twine and then used her elbow to turn on the faucet. She washed her hands. She slid the chicken into the oven and set the timer. She was getting a big bunch of elephant kale out of the refrigerator when it hit her.

  He did it.

  She knew it. She could feel it.

  When?

  That week? That day? That afternoon?

  Where? Who?

  Lucy felt faint. She leaned against the butcher-block island and took a few deep breaths. It’s not that she hadn’t thought he would do it—she was always pretty sure he was going to do something—but here, faced with the reality…she took another deep breath.

  My husband is having sex with another woman. And I’m letting him! I told him he could! I said, “Go right ahead”! What is wrong with me? Have I lost my mind?

  Then she washed the kale. She dried it with a paper towel. She placed it on the cutting board. She reached for a knife.

  She felt an odd sense of calm descend on her while she went to work on the kale. The good thing about kale is it needs a lot of chopping. It was ideal for a situation like this. Chopping kale had become a certain kind of American housewife’s version of chopping wood, carrying water. Something you did, and then you did again, and then you did again. Chopping kale, for women like Lucy, never stopped.

  How did she feel? Surprised, really. Surprised that this was her life. Surprised that something so fundamental had changed and yet it felt like nothing had changed. A little scared. Less curious than she’d thought she’d be. But still a little curious.

  Can I handle this?

  She heard Wyatt in the playroom telling Owen his knock-knock joke about the interrupting monkey.

  Is this a bad idea?

  Maybe. Who knows? This is crazy. What’s done is done.

  Lucy kept chopping the kale.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s done it.”

  “Really?” said Sunny Bang. “What makes you say that?”

  “Oh, he just seems happier. A little peppier. And he wants to spend all this time with Wyatt. He’ll play the beaver game for two hours on a Saturday morning without complaining. It’s like this thick fog he had over his head has finally lifted.”

  “The beaver game?”

  “Wyatt’s the beaver, Owen’s the zookeeper, and a bunch of imaginary kids come visit the zoo, including a character named Stinky who takes off his pants in the middle of the field trip and has to go sit alone on the bus as a punishment. Wyatt would play it all day if he could.”

  “That’s very inventive,” said Sunny. “Tobias just plays Minecraft.”

  “It’s the exact same script, every single time. If you try to change one word, Wyatt goes completely batshit.”

  “A friend of mine once flew on a private jet with Bill Gates, and she said he had a blanket over his head and was rocking back and forth the whole time. Wyatt’s gonna be just fine.”

  They both looked over at Wyatt. He was dangling on one of the swings, with his belly in the sling part, trailing his fingers meditatively in the sand.

  “So, what do you think Owen is doing?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe seeing an old girlfriend. Maybe he found someone online. It’s possible he tried it once, and it made him appreciate what he has. Or maybe it’s still going on. Either way, it’s like he’s seeing his life a little more. Even me.”

  “Are you going to ask him about it?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “I’d be so curious,” said Sunny Bang. “I’d be tracking his every movement.”

  “I thought I’d be jealous, or at least curious, but I feel this strange sort of calm. And, honestly, it’s nice to see him happy. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true.”

  “What about you?”

  “If something happens, it happens. I feel better just thinking that I could if I wanted to.”

  “You should go on Facebook and message all of your old boyfriends. When they ask you how married life is, just type in ‘Eh, dot-dot-dot, you know, dot-dot-dot.’ That’s the code.”

  “I don’t want to have sex with any of my old boyfriends.”

  “There’s a website, you know. For married people who want to have affairs. You could try that. I’ll send you the link.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “Everybody knows about it,” said Sunny. “It’s like Match.com for married people.”

  “I don’t want to mess with someone else’s marriage. That
just seems wrong.”

  “Well, you have to do something.”

  “Actually, I don’t think I do,” said Lucy. “Thinking I could feels like enough. Thinking I have the option feels like it’s enough. I feel like a completely different person already and nothing’s even happened.”

  Sunny just looked at Lucy for a moment. She had an expression on her face like she was about to say something meaningful, something profound, something that might permanently alter the course of events. Then she started screaming. “THAT’S IT, TOBIAS! WE’RE GOING HOME RIGHT THIS SECOND! I TOLD YOU NOT TO THROW SAND! SAY YOU’RE SORRY TO HUDSON AND GET IN THE CAR!”

  It was funny that Lucy realized Owen had actually gone through with it because of the kiss. The Marcella Hazan Chicken Kiss, is how she would forever think of it. It was a good kiss, a real one, one she felt all the way through her body. It had been a long time since she’d been kissed like that. A very long time. Marriage changes the kissing, Lucy found herself thinking later. Why is that? The kissing had almost stopped. And when it did happen, it felt different than it used to. It felt—well, weird wasn’t quite the right word, but it was the closest one Lucy could come up with. Kissing without all the fireworks that used to be there; it was a strange activity.

  Marriage doesn’t hurt the cuddling or even change the sex all that much, but it does do something very bad to kissing, Lucy thought. It does. And it’s a shame.

  Five

  Too often, a harmonious relationship is like a beautiful yacht tied up alongside a dock. Everything looks dreamy, but eventually you have to sail out into the open ocean.

  —Constance Waverly

  The Beekman elementary school’s auditorium was filled to overflowing. Lucy was sitting up front, next to Claire, who always got to these things an hour early and saved seats for people she liked. Signs on the doors read PARENTS ONLY! and all but the nuttiest of the attachment-theory adherents had obeyed. Other than a four-year-old who was lolling long-limbed on his mother’s lap, breastfeeding out of sheer boredom, there wasn’t a kid in sight who was old enough to understand what was going on.