Cutting Teeth(6)
She musses her hair, the way the models do in Victoria’s Secret ads. Better.
Swear on the Holy Bible, she never would have thought to buy lingerie if it weren’t for Pastor Ben.
Pastor Ben is new. Pastor Ben has tattoos. And wears hats indoors. She wasn’t even intending to pay attention to the sermon. Many Sundays, she tunes out, enjoying the forty-five or so minutes of her week during which no one is asking for chocolate milk at the exact same moment she sits down, or wondering whether she’s seen the remote, or talking to her while she’s on the toilet, asking her what smells.
Pastor Ben came onstage to the tune of “SexyBack” and Mary Beth was alerted to the movement of his firm biceps, his swaying hips, and his lack of forehead wrinkles. The point of the talk was to encourage married couples to have sex and, at the end of it, he announced the 30-Day Challenge with a zingy exclamation mark.
A spark plug shot off inside Mary Beth. When was the last time that she and Doug had had sex? Three months ago? Four?
But now, as she stands in front of a mirror in desperate need of a good Windex, wearing some unmentionables, a swell of pride rushes into her rib cage. She can do this. A starting point. A fighting chance. Carve out a place for herself, away from her crippling headaches and her nibbling volunteer work and her adorable children. She can take back her life.
* * *
“You didn’t need to do all that for me.” Doug’s put the kids to bed and, finally, the house is quiet. He peels off his socks and drops them into the hamper.
And suddenly, Mary Beth feels silly, and silly is not what one wants to feel in a cocktail lace playsuit. “I know.” She sounds dull, not vixen-y at all.
But need had nothing to do with it. Of course she didn’t need to wear new lingerie. What she’s after is desire. Now she doesn’t know what, exactly, she was expecting.
Or maybe, worse, she does.
She hoped her husband’s eyes would widen, caught by surprise, like a camera flash had gone off two inches from his nose. She imagined him crossing the room without a word, wrapping his fingers in the hair at the base of her skull and tipping her head back so that he could lower his mouth onto hers. That had never happened to her before and it sounded nice, like something she should experience at least once.
Instead, Doug stares at her, flat-footed, in his rumpled khakis and flannel shirt. He’s a regular guy, her husband. A dad sort, and that is not a knock. He enjoys putting up Christmas lights and coming up with family itineraries for the weekend and talking hypothetically about the dog he plans to get when “things slow down.”
“Pastor Ben told us we should have fun with it.” She evokes the pastor’s name like a shield: Don’t blame me, this wasn’t my idea.
Mary Beth could have sworn she was warned—many, many times, in fact—that she would spend much of her married life concocting sorry excuses to stave off the unwanted advances of a pawing husband. She thought that once there were no longer sleepless nights with babies in the house, the space in their minds and bodies would open up naturally, but perhaps they needed a jump start. Enter Pastor Ben.
“It was on sale,” she says. It wasn’t.
“I mean, I like it.” Doug can’t seem to sort out what to do with his hands. He scratches behind his ear, pets the back of his neck, checks the buttons on his shirt.
“You do?”
“I haven’t seen you wear lingerie since our wedding night.” He grins now, his turn to look silly.
“But that was just yesterday,” she says, which they both know is the most ridiculous thing of all. Their wedding feels like eons ago. Recently, in a morning breath fog, as she fumbled for coffee, she had the thought: Wait, does the Earth go around the sun once a year, or is it a day?
It takes something like five or six or fifteen seconds for Doug to cross the room to her, and though his fingers do not twine through the roots of her hair, what they do instead is quite nice.
An absurd number of throw pillows rains down onto the floor and the playsuit soon becomes irrelevant as Mary Beth forgets all the things she’s been forgetting lately and time swirls in a way that doesn’t feel draining and she is very thankful for her soft, cushioned mom body, which is rarely if ever ogled when—ouch! ouch!—there’s an alarming pinch on her heel.
“Did you do that?” Her head picks up from the mattress.
“Do what?” He hovers over her, a sheen of sweat slicked across his wiry chest.
She rolls him off the top of her, and then emits a bleat of distress when she sees the blond top of her four-year-old’s head sticking up over the edge of the bed.
“Honey!” she shrieks, unsure to which member of her family she’s speaking. “Noelle! Noelle, sweetie! What are you doing up?” Mary Beth huddles her knees into her chest while Doug’s busy pulling pillows over his most sensitive areas.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Noelle has a sweet, high-pitched voice that reminds Mary Beth of angel bells.
“Okay. Well…” She trails off.
The door. They should have locked the door.
“Watch it.” Doug points. “You’re dripping.”
She is momentarily horrified by his implication before she sees what he means.
Blood slowly bubbles up in the spot on her ankle where she’d felt the pinch. A bright bead falls onto her white duvet spread. “Shit.” She scoops her hand underneath her heel.