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Chapter 25
The first thing I noticed when we got back to our house was that Alexa had borrowed one of my Coach purses. I was livid. You would think that as a chr
onic house-switcher I would be immune to that kind of emotion, but I’m not. No matter how much someone has, they still don’t want people messing with what is theirs. And after I had refrained from raiding her closet! I could handle the house switching, because Adrian likes it and I like Madison, and Alexa’s house is all sparse and clean while ours is cracks and crevices that are never quite perfect. But, to me, there is an unwritten, commonsense rule that you just don’t use someone else’s Coach bag and leave Powerbar wrappers inside.
“It’s good to be home,” said my husband, making a beeline for the stack of mail. I knew that it was a normal thing to do after having been away for almost two weeks, but it rubbed me the wrong way.
He caught me giving him a dirty look. He set down the magazines and catalogs, but remained holding the stack of letters. “What’s up?”
“Let’s have sex,” I blurted out.
“Sure, we can do that in a little while. Do you mind if I look at the mail first?”
“You can do that later. Come on.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the bedroom, but he was still looking through the pile of mail, ignoring me. I let go.
“Adrian…”
“Give me five minutes,” he said. “We just got home. Why don’t you go play on the computer for a few minutes? Or go look at the flowers. Maybe something new is growing back there.”
I drew in a deep breath. I had to talk to him about that letter. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Adrian… sit down.”
He looked up from the letters, “What?”
“I have to talk to you about something.”
“Is it about what we were talking about on the plane?”
“What were we talking about on the plane?”
“About what your mom said?”
“No. It’s about you. And it’s about the mail. I want to look at it with you. Hand it to me.”
He set the stack of mail off to the side of the table by the door and then pounced on me. He kissed me hard, like we were in junior high school, or prison. He started yanking off my shirt and his pants at the same time. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.
“You’re totally grossing me out,” I told him.
“Tell me how you really feel,” he said, backing off.
“Seriously. You’re, like, attacking me, so I will change the subject.”
“You said you wanted to make love!”
“And you told me to go look at the flowers! Anyhow, I didn’t say I wanted to ‘make love.’ I said we should have sex.”
“So you want to fuck.”
I shook my head. “You’re ridiculous.”
“What’s your problem? If you need to look at the mail, then look at it. I’m not stopping you!” he yelled, throwing the whole stack to the floor by my feet.
I looked down at the catalogs and envelopes spewed across the foyer, hating him. He knew me too well. I would never bend down and pick it up. Then I looked up at his red, angry face and we locked wild eyes, waiting to see what would happen next. I considered that were it not for his accomplishments, his talents, his out-of-my-leagueness, perhaps I might find him rather ugly.
“I don’t care. Whatever is in there means nothing to me. Forget it. Just… Whatever it is that you need to be so secretive about, just get rid of it. Get rid of it. I don’t want to talk about it again.” I pulled my shirt back down and grabbed the key from its hook by the door. I didn’t look back as I went out into the warm Savannah night.
Chapter 26
Thanksgiving is the worst holiday. No presents. Bad weather. The patriarchs of the family reeking of peppermint schnapps, clad in their bright orange bloody hunting coveralls, telling tales of hauling twenty point bucks three miles over barbed wire fences. Football games blaring. Food that only old people would like. But in 1986 I was literally counting the days for it, more salivatingly desperate with each dismal, dreary hour. The Whitney Houston calendar in my room had pink X’s marking off each passing day until my sister and brother were due to return. I had casually set out the Uno deck on the coffee table, hoping a family game would spontaneously erupt from it. I had made Chex mix like we learned to in Home Economics, imagining all of us munching away, laughing and shoveling handfuls of it into our mouths.
