Why continue submitting to a proven recipe for disaster? Take two cups pressure to conform, equal amounts fear and isolation, add a dash of childhood trauma and you’ve got marriage. Put that in the microwave with sexual urges and animal behavior, cook on high until the whole thing either caves in with apathy or explodes with infidelity. There is no such thing as a genuinely happy marriage, there are just varying degrees of skill in the performance of one.
Cynical? Maybe. I’ve earned my cynicism, though. I wear it like a Purple Heart.
My parents split up when I was eleven. My father, the shop teacher—skinny and slouching, sporting horn-rimmed glasses and pants that showed his blinding white socks—started giving it to a twenty-six-year-old dental hygienist with major cleavage. Simon does Sally. It was a mess. Calistoga (think sleepy, claustrophobic, its only claim to fame a line of mediocre beverages) had a great time laughing about it behind cupped fingers.
After the divorce, my mother moved to Marin County, studied numerology, unblocked her chakras and became an embarrassingly successful hypnotherapist. Her main clients were miserable bleach-blond divorcées driving Beemers and wearing dream catcher earrings. She started marrying with a vengeance, always with an unerring eye for the clod who would make her (and, by association, me) most miserable. I called her a serial wifer. She didn’t need them for their money; she was driven by something much deeper, more compulsive and masochistic. She once said to me, “Claudia, I don’t marry because I want to. I marry because I find it impossible not to.”
As for my father, he married the dental hygienist, who turned out to be a hypochondriac. She got out of her dental career, claiming the drills exacerbated her migraines, and sponged off my father, consuming his modest but carefully stashed savings, until a guy rolled into town who built swimming pools, and she went off with him. It was a weird time in my life, watching the drama of my parents’ love and (worse yet) sex lives unfold with the creepy predictability of a B horror flick. At first I dug my nails into my arm and tried not to scream, but by the time I was into my teens I observed it all with cool detachment, bored by the snowballing disaster of it all.
Cynical? Isn’t observant a little more accurate?
Anyway, now that my Jonathan-induced amnesia is safely behind me, I have every reason to be thrilled that he fell for a jailbait temptress and ran off with her. I should send them a dozen roses with a note: Better you than me. Let them indulge in each other’s flesh until they’re surfeit with sex and kisses and don’t-ever-leave-me-I-love-yous and the slow, torturous monotony of the future stretches out before them like the open ocean before seasick stowaways. I’m done with it all. From now on, I’ll be a warrior for non-monogamy. I’ll fight the good fight, protesting the evil of the bridal industry and romantic comedies wherever they rear their treacherous, sycophantic heads.
CHAPTER 3
Clay Parker takes me to a filthy dive on Mission Street called the Owl Club. It’s a Tuesday afternoon and there are only three customers, two old guys with faces like worn baseball gloves and a woman in tight cords playing pool by herself. She also appears to be having a solo conversation, and since no one’s bothered to feed the jukebox we can hear most of it—something about the FBI and Walter Cronkite, but it’s so complicated I tune her out after a few minutes. I’m feeling really guilty about poor Medea, who’s puffed up like one of those troll dolls after too many twirls, so I bring her in with us and hold her shaking body in my lap, trying to stroke her into submission.
“I guess we should call the cops, or something,” Clay says as he returns from the bar with our drinks.
“Cops?” My head swings toward him too quickly.
“It’s a bad time for a fire like that—could get out of hand,” he offers, but I can see by the way he’s studying me that my panic is apparent.
“I can’t.” I spent most of the ride here trying to concoct a good story, but I’m a rotten liar. I’ve been acting since I was six years old and still I can’t fib my way out of a goddamn dental appointment, let alone grand theft auto and arson, so I’ve resigned myself to telling this hapless stranger the truth. “Look, I hate to get you involved in all this,” I begin, stirring my vodka tonic quickly before downing half of it. “The thing is, I sort of—well—borrowed that bus.”
“Borrowed it?” In the dim light of the Owl Club, I can’t be sure what color his eyes are—somewhere between blue and green—but there’s something remarkably comfortable and familiar about his face. He has a stare that makes you lose your train of thought, and for a long moment I can’t remember what I’m doing here, or what I’m supposed to confess.
“If I seem incoherent, I’m sorry,” I say, looking away. “I’m a little tripped out. God, this is absolutely the most delicious and the most needed vodka tonic I’ve ever tasted.”
“You didn’t steal it, did you?”
“Well…” I try a smile, but it’s all wrong. The woman playing pool breaks and the smack of the balls makes Medea sink her claws into my thigh with alarm. “Ouch!” I cry, quite loudly, and everyone turns in my direction. I sink a little lower into the booth. Psychotic Car Thief and Mad Pussycat Apprehended at the Owl Club. “It was my boyfriend’s,” I whisper. “I just borrowed it, but he doesn’t know.”
“Aha. And where’s your boyfriend now?”
“Ex-boyfriend. Sorry. I can’t seem to get that right. He’s in New York, having sex with a teenager.”
“Charming.” He leans back, looks at the ceiling, and I can tell he’s wondering what he’s gotten himself into.
“You don’t think it’ll start a fire, do you? I mean, of course it was on fire—the explosion and all—but do you think it’ll catch?” What an idiot. Why can’t I speak?
One of the old guys at the bar laughs violently at something, and this time Medea makes a break for the door. I scramble after her, but Clay’s quicker by half; he scoops her up into his arms and has her purring in his lap before I’ve even managed to lay a hand on her. Jonathan never did get along with Medea. He claimed he was allergic, that she gave him a headache and an itchy tongue, but I always suspected it was more of a jealous grudge than a physical reaction.
Now that I’m standing, I feel a warmth spreading into my underwear again, and I realize that in my haste to get a little vodka down my throat I completely forgot about changing my tampon. I excuse myself to the ladies’ room, which turns out to be a disgustingly neglected converted broom closet. There’s a sink stained brown with rust, the floor is covered with miscellaneous paper products, and the single-stall door has been delightfully decorated with a vast array of rants, insults and warnings, the most prominent of which reads, Die Puta Bitches.
I study myself for a moment in the small, cracked mirror. My hair, even on a good day, is immune to threats with a comb. Each curl finds its way into its own contorted expression of chaos; trying to interfere leads only to excessive frizz. Today the curls have twisted to ambitious dimensions, resulting in a Medusa-on-crack look. I’m wearing this little orange sundress—the most comfortable thing I own for long drives (now, I remind myself, the only thing I own). It’s not exactly the height of chic, especially since it’s all wrinkled, the armpits are wet and the bodice is smeared here and there with the sooty remains of Jonathan’s bus. I think of Mr. Indecently Attractive out there, nursing his beer and petting my cat; perhaps it’s just as