Trading Husbands

"I have to talk to you,” George told Anne. Mildly annoyed, because she'd been watching "Jane Eyre," with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, Anne followed her husband into the parlor and sat down in the other wing chair. She was trying to hide her ill temper by looking pleasantly expectant, but why bother? George was frowning at the unlit birch logs, maybe envisioning a fire, though this was July. He waited until she'd finished fishing a Kleenex out of her pocket. Then, he said, in a voice that bordered on the sepulchral: “I’ve lost all interest in sex.” He seemed to think this was something of a bombshell, but his libido had disappeared a year and ten days ago, not long after he started taking Paxil. In his youth, which had lasted well into his fifties, he had been his wife's ideal lover—ready for action at the slightest caress and so horny that that was a turn-on in itself. Premature ejaculation had never mattered much, because he could usually make love again, often twice. "It's like when you make pancakes," Anne used to say. "The first one's to test the pan—it hardly ever turns out right.” “The sacrificial fuck,” she and George called it. For months, she'd been after him to consult another doctor, one who wouldn't say, "Well, you're what now—seventy?" Certainly there were other drugs he could try. She had compiled a list. George refused to examine it. He would rather—it was true—be impotent than anxious. Also, he thought he had no choice in the matter. Never mind that, years ago, he had promised Anne: "We'll still be doing it in our nineties, toots." Here he was, trying to tell her it was over, the love life that was supposed to have lasted forever. "If I wanted sex, sweetheart, I'd want it with you. It's just that nothing turns me on." "You mean I don't." "A fortiori." She was married to a man who’d rather be unkind than illogical. But then he added, "Please don't take it personally." "How can I not?" She took off her glasses. Bitterness was welling up from the ache in her chest. It turned into a surge of rage. "How would you feel if I took a lover?" If only he'd had the sense not to answer so readily: “I guess I could handle it. I want you to be happy,” or had managed to keep himself from chuckling, “But realistically, where would you find anybody?" It made her see that his shoulders were narrower than they used to be. Pinched into the wing chair, he seemed to have lost stature. He was a seventy-year-old man with a paunch and a wattle, and he was dumber than she would have thought possible. But she said, neutrally enough, “Maybe the Internet?” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t want anybody like that.” Her smile was pure ice. “Don't count on it, buddy.” She marched upstairs and made two phone calls. “My daughter is sublimating,” Jane's mother tells her friend Mort. “She’s living with a man our age, but all she thinks about is sex.” “Yes,” Mort says, “you told me that.” In his opinion, it’s not Jane but her mother who thinks so much about sex. As for Jane, she thinks of many other things. With Pablo in the spare room, she’s re-realizing what she always knew: she likes to live alone, she’s not cut out for sharing her space. Pablo is a fretful, neurotic man, a man whose illness doesn’t bring out the best in him. He criticizes the dinners she cooks for him; he’d be better served to find something to praise about them. He goes on and on about her voice, until Jane, whose threshold for taking shit is high, finally loses her temper and yells, “Enough!” Even then, Pablo doesn’t know when to quit. “Now, there,” he says, “see? That was using the diaphragm. We could’ve heard you up in the second balcony.” “Shut the fuck up!” “Even better!” “Go fuck yourself.” “Darling, you’re getting repetitious.” But Jane is hauling his suitcase out from under the bed. “You’re going home. Now. Tonight.” “Why? What did I do?” “You’re the most obnoxious man that ever lived. You’ve never appreciated one single thing that’s ever been done for you.” She’s flinging his underwear into the suitcase, which she’s thrown open next to him on the bed. He’s flinging the underwear back, straight into the bureau drawer it came from—a pitcher’s aim, from years in minor league baseball. “Stop that!” He laughs. She can’t keep up. He begins to miss, deliberately; she has to bend over to pick up the clothes. There’s nothing in the suitcase. Empty. It strikes her that this is the story of her life—that she’s constantly trying to fill a void that is emptying. On the other hand, her life is full of what she doesn’t want; she will never get rid of him. She grabs his trousers off the chair where, every night, he drapes them, and slings them at him from across the room. They travel farther than she expects, because of the weight of the belt, landing with a clonk against the night table. Miraculously they don’t tip over the lamp. “Put those on!” “Jane,” he intones, like Orson Welles playing Mr. Rochester. He likes to do this. So did Ralph. “Don’t you ‘Jane’ me. I’m calling you a cab. I don’t give a shit whether you take your clothes with you or not.” He must perceive that she means this, because he leans over from the bed and retrieves his pants from the floor. Something falls out of one of the pockets; Jane hears it click on the floor. He picks it up and holds it on his palm. “You’ve broken my teeth.” He sounds awed. On his palm, upside down, lie his bottom teeth, the ones made by Tufts Dental School. At first Jane thinks the teeth are intact, but no, there’s a jagged break where some of the gum has cracked off. Rummaging in the pockets, he brings out two pieces of pink plastic—a small triangular section and the trapezoidal remainder. “Oh, shit!” Jane moans, stricken. Who was to know his teeth were in his pants-pocket? “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry.” This, too, is the story of her life. She’s always ending up doing something worse than whatever was done to her, then having to feel terrible remorse, while the real sinner goes blithely guilt-free and even gets to be magnanimous. “I forgive you,” he says, proving her point. “You don’t forgive me. I forbid it.” He’s smiling, triumphant. Gloating. “I’ll pay for the fucking teeth.” “Nonsense. I was going to get a new set anyway.” She wants to believe this. “You don’t have to be nice.” “These never did fit quite right.” “It’s kind of you to say so.” “It’s true.” Perhaps it’s true. Why else would his teeth be in his pocket, not his mouth? And the next night (for there is a next night; there will be another two weeks of next nights), he says, “This soup is delicious.” It’s fennel soup with shrimp, a new recipe from her new cookbook, Saved By Soup. “Damn right it is,” Jane says. She’d like it better if he didn’t learn. Then, without guilt, she could throw him out instead of treating him as if he were the only real person who lives there. “Oh, Jane,” her mother sighs. “My poor daughter’s such a wimp,” she tells Mort.