Lipstick Jungle

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Jenny said airily.

“Are you going to bed?” Wendy asked.

He wrenched free. “Noooooo,” he said tauntingly, running around to the back of the couch.

“I’m sorry,” Wendy said to Jenny, standing up. Now that she’d told Tyler to go to bed, she had to get him into bed.

Where the hell was Shane?

“Don’t mind me,” Jenny said, pouring the last drops of wine into her glass. She held up the empty bottle. “I’ll just open another bottle of wine.”

Wendy nodded, chasing after Tyler. She groaned inwardly. Normally, she wouldn’t have minded if Jenny stayed. But normally Shane didn’t just disappear. Oh God. What if he was secretly on drugs . . . ?

She grabbed Tyler from behind, and picked him up, kicking and screaming. She carried him to his room.

All the children’s rooms were sort of makeshift chambers with plasterboard walls. She would have liked to live in a real apartment with real walls, but Shane had insisted on living in a loft because it was “cool.” Every now and again they talked about fixing the place up or moving, but she had no time, and Shane’s eyes glazed over at the suggestion of managing contractors or real estate agents. And so they had simply continued on, and every day the loft got a little bit more decrepit.

She deposited Tyler on the bed. He started jumping up and down. Where was Shane? He usually got Tyler into bed, and then she would come in and kiss him good night. When she was there, of course. Sometimes she wasn’t there, she was on location, and even though she would never admit it to anyone except to maybe Nico or Victory or some of her other girlfriends, there were times when she really didn’t miss her family, when she was actually very happy to be a single, self-actualized person on her own without familial attachments stuck to her like extra appendages . . . Tyler put his hands over his ears and screamed.

“That’s exactly how I feel, guy,” Wendy said, grabbing his shirtfront. And then he lashed out and hit her. Right in the face. With his fist.

Wendy gasped and stepped back in shock. Her first thought was that there was no way he could have meant to do it. But now he was coming at her again, swinging his skinny little six-year-old arms. She couldn’t believe it. She’d heard about little boys who hit their mothers (and even adolescent boys as well). But she never imagined that her own son would turn against her, that her own little six-year-old boy would abuse her like she was some kind of . . . charwoman.

She wanted to cry. She was hurt. Wounded. It was right there, not even under the surface: millions of years of men disrespecting women. And thinking it was their right . . .

She was suddenly filled with a tearing rage. She hated the little bastard. Her breath came out in panting gasps. She grabbed his wrists and held them. “Don’t you ever hit Mommy again!” she said, right into his face. “Do you understand? You don’t ever hit Mommy!”

He actually looked . . . confused. As if he didn’t really understand what he had done wrong. And he probably didn’t, Wendy thought, releasing his wrists.

“Go to bed, Tyler. Now,” she said sharply.

“But . . .” he protested.

“Now!” she shouted.

He meekly got into bed with his clothes on. She didn’t care. Shane could get him into his pajamas later. Or he could sleep in his clothes all night. It wouldn’t kill him.

She went out of the room and shut the door behind her. She was still shaking with rage. She stopped and put her hand over her mouth. Tears welled up in her eyes. She loved her son. She really did. Of course she loved all her children. But maybe she was a terrible mother. Tyler obviously hated her.

She couldn’t take all these emotions. That’s what having kids was about. Endless, endless emotions. And many of them not terribly pleasant.

She felt a crushing guilt.

She walked toward the living room. From the perspective of the narrow hallway, she could see Jenny Cadine framed in the living room like a beautiful girl in a fashion photograph. Her wavy hair was pinned up carelessly on the back of her head; her long legs stretched luxuriously in front of her. For a moment, Wendy hated her. Hated her for her life of freedom, for what she didn’t have to deal with. Did she know how good she had it?

Wendy veered off to the kitchen, opened the freezer, and took out a bottle of vodka.

Why had she had kids? she wondered, pouring herself a small shot. She drank it quickly. If she hadn’t had kids, she and Shane probably wouldn’t still be together. But that wasn’t the reason. She slammed the freezer door shut. The refrigerator was decorated with the kids’ drawings—the same way the refrigerator in her house growing up had been covered with her handiwork and that of her four younger brothers and sisters. She’d had children simply because it was the most natural thing to do—she’d never even questioned the possibility. Even when she was a kid herself, as young as Magda was now, she remembered thinking that she couldn’t wait until she was “grown up” (twenty-one), so she could start having children (her mother must have told her that that was the age when women could have kids), and she hadn’t been able to wait to have sex either. She’d started kissing boys at thirteen and lost her virginity at sixteen. She’d loved it. She’d had an orgasm the minute the boy had stuck his dick in her.

“Everything all right?” Jenny called out.

“Yes, it’s fine,” Wendy said, gathering herself together and going into the living room. She must have sex with Shane tonight. And proper sex. In the past few months, Shane had gotten very lazy about sex, or maybe he was just spoiled. He allowed her to give him blow jobs, but then afterward he rolled over and went to sleep. It really bothered her, but she didn’t like to hassle him too much. When you’d been married for twelve years, you understood that couples went through phases . . .

She heard the key turn in the lock, and the world suddenly righted itself.

Shane came into the living room, exuding his usual boyish good spirits. He still had a slight tan from their Christmas vacation in Mexico, and his cheeks were pink from the cold. There was always something deliciously male about Shane that caused the energy to shift when he walked into the house. The air seemed to expand, the house felt fuller . . .

“Hiya,” he said, throwing his coat over a chair.