Part 5

Happiness Sold Separately
by Lolly Winston

(Page 5 of 5)

The doorbell rings. Elinor drops a tin of white pepper clanging to the floor. She wipes her hands and heads into the hallway. Before opening the door, she pulls her apron over her head. Too suburban and matronly.

Gina stands on the porch wearing a long tie-dyed skirt, a tiny white T-shirt, and leather thong sandals. A strip of her flat tan belly peeks out above the skirt's low-cut waistline. Elinor would like to slam the door.

"Come in," she tells Gina. Ted turns off the TV and saunters into the hall, being the polite husband. His head jerks back when he sees Gina. Gina's eyes pop open, but then she narrows them, redirecting her alarm into a smile, her expression making a U-turn.

"Gina, this is my husband, Ted," Elinor tells her. Ted limply shakes Gina's hand. "Nice to meet you." He opens the coat closet door. "May I take your coat?"

Suddenly Elinor's embarrassed by the coat closet. It's jammed full of junk, much of it a testament to her athletic failures. The tangled jump rope, the dusty hiking boots, the too-small ski suit. "She doesn't have a coat," Elinor tells Ted. Still, Ted lingers with his head in the closet, as though he'd like to dive in. "Can I get you a drink?" Elinor asks Gina.

"Do you have tomato juice?" Gina asks. Bracelets tinkle on her wrists.

Ted closes the closet door. He and Gina are busy not making eye contact. So far, Elinor would give them an A-minus on this notknowing- each-other thing.

"No tomato juice," she tells Gina. "Diet Coke?" "Oh, artificial sweeteners," she says. "That's one of the things we're going to have to purge." Clearly she's trying to be firm, but nervousness bubbles under her sentences.

You're one of the things we're going to have to purge, Elinor thinks as she motions Gina into the kitchen.

"Hey, I recognize you," Ted finally says to Gina. "From the club." Perspiration darkens his armpits.

"Yeah." Gina cocks her head and squints her eyes. "You work out a lot."

Gina places a little food scale and a spiral notebook on the kitchen counter. Elinor hands her a glass of orange juice. If orange juice has any evils, she doesn't want to hear about them.

"You get to have artificial sweeteners on Weight Watchers," she tells Gina while looking at Ted accusingly. "What's the deal with that?" Her jaw hurts. Now that she's found anger again, she wishes she could reel it in. Her hatred for the fickle diet gurus. Her loathing of the world.

"Well, ladies," Ted says. "I have some work-" "I was hoping the three of us could eat dinner together," Elinor tells him. "Talk about things."

Ted freezes in the doorway. "Oh, I can't stay for dinner." Gina places her untouched juice on the counter.

"Really? But you two like to eat together," Elinor says. Suddenly she's dizzy from the intensity of this encounter. She wants to sit on the floor. Call this crazy intervention off.

Ted rests a hand on the doorjamb, turns halfway toward Elinor and Gina.

Gina giggles nervously. "What?" "Sleep together? Eat together? All that good stuff." Elinor pulls the Zone cookbook from its hiding place in the bread drawer (Ted would never look there!) and waves it at them.

"Elinor," Ted says. He faces Elinor with his back to Gina, his eyes pleading. Suddenly he looks old-slim from his newfound athleticism, but in a gray, gaunt way, not in a rosy, happy way.

"Ted," Elinor says. Please, his eyes say. I'm sorry, and please. "I better go." Gina picks up her food scale and notebook.

Elinor looks at Gina's impossibly small waist, remembers how easily Ted crossed the room in Gina's condo, how quickly his hands slipped up under her flimsy robe to touch her breasts. He made the first move. Suddenly she can't stand being in the kitchen with these two. She can't stand being in her own house. For the past few days Elinor fantasized about going away with Ted to Hawaii-skinnydipping and stargazing and oversleeping. She even surfed the Web and chose a resort on the Big Island, sighing at the thought of the last time they visited the Kona Coast and left blissfully worn out from too much sun, sex, and rum. Yet now she wants to go away by herself. Leave these two with the carbohydrate charts and bland chicken breasts. Maybe before you can fix something, you have to let it break completely.

"I have to go," she tells Gina. She opens the cupboard, yanks out the bags of flaxseed and flax meal, and shoves them into Gina's arms. Gina flinches as though Elinor's going to deck her, then looks curiously at the bags.

"Flax at it!" Elinor races up the stairs to pack. Just like in the movies. There is something liberating about being the first one to leave in a situation like this-sort of like being the first one up in the morning or the first one to dive into a cold swimming pool. What does she need? A few work outfits, hose, shoes, comfy pajamas, slippers, toilet articles, bubble bath, magazines, The Iliad. She folds the things into her little black suitcase. She's a pro at packing quickly for emergency business trips. She'll drive to the Fairmont downtown. Order room service. Pancakes with real maple syrup. Elinor nearly crashes into Ted on her way down the stairs. She lunges past him for the front door, her legs and knees suddenly rubbery at the sight of him.

Ted reaches for her bag, trying to stop her. "Don't leave," he says. Gina appears to be gone.

Elinor turns to look at her husband. He's as tired as she is. She can see that. Many nights when she thought he was sleeping and he thought she was sleeping, neither one of them was. They'd discover this in the morning as they tripped over each other in the kitchen. Instead of watching the indifferent blue numbers on her clock radio click toward dawn, Elinor wanted to roll over and hold Ted, talk to him. But despite her inability to sleep, or maybe because of it, she was too exhausted to move.

"She's gone," Ted says now. "Listen, I know we can work this out." Elinor squeezes the handle on her suitcase and tugs it past Ted. "I love you," Ted says, his voice rising with desperation. I love you, too, Elinor thinks. I did. I do. But that's beside the point! Isn't it?

"What are you going to do?" Ted asks as Elinor opens the door. "What am I going to do, Ted?" She pictures him unbuckling his pants and sinking to Gina's kitchen floor. "What am I going to do? I'm going to call the Dalai Lama. Do you think he's listed under D or L? I'm going to lie on my yoga mat and rub soy milk in my third eye, and weave baskets out of turkey bacon. I'm going to spend a week in the Zone."

Ted steps toward Elinor. Elinor backs away from him out onto the front porch. Maybe she'll finally get a good night's sleep at the Fairmont. She looks away from her husband toward her car in the driveway. She closes her eyes for a moment and imagines sliding between crisp white hotel sheets. What do they use to make them so clean? That crisp white cleanness of starting over. Starch? Whatever it is, it seems less pedestrian than starch. More otherworldly.

She opens her eyes. Ted hovers in the hall, not wanting to step over the threshold. He doesn't like to leave the house in his bare feet. Not even to retrieve the newspaper from the driveway.

"Excuse me." Elinor reaches around Ted for the door handle. She wants the satisfaction of closing the door behind her. As she pulls it shut with a thump and a click, the image of Ted's drawn face disappears. Good-bye, then. She steps off the porch. But then she stops halfway down the driveway to her car. Life is never like it is in the movies. Not her life anyway, because she has left her car keys inside, on the kitchen counter. She takes a deep breath of cool, moist air and tries to gather the gumption to walk back in. Then she remembers her hide-a-key. A few years ago, when she slid the thin, magnetic box under the driver's side of her new car, she wondered if she'd ever lock herself out. She tried to picture such a scenario: rushing in the parking lot at work, or spacing out while loading groceries. She never would have imagined this night.

She continues down the dark driveway, halting again when a shooting star streaks across the horizon, just above the trees. It's big and bright, followed by a greenish tail. The Perseids. The meteor shower is marked on Elinor's calendar so that she and Ted can make their annual trek to the backyard, with lawn chairs and blankets. "I saw one!" they usually shout to each other, almost competitively. Last summer she wished on every meteor for a baby. Although she's not a superstitious person, Elinor has always taken wishes seriously. As a kid she would hover over her birthday cake candles until islands of wax pooled in the frosting. While trying to get pregnant, she wished on everything from found pennies to stray eyelashes. Now Elinor tips her head to look up at the sky. According to the newspaper, tonight there will be up to 150 meteors per minute. The next neon green streak makes Elinor gasp. She squeezes her eyes shut. For the first time, she's not sure what to wish for.

Copyright © 2006 by Lolly Winston

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