I'm Fine and Neither Are You

“Yes, I guess that’s true,” he said. “We have an hour to kill before you head to dinner with the girls. Do you want to go walk around?”

I wondered if he was hoping I would say, No, let’s go make love. In the past that was exactly what we would have done after arriving at our destination—at least, it was before we had children. The conversation we’d just had left me feeling warmer toward him. Connected, even—though I hated to admit it for fear of jinxing us. Still, I couldn’t shake Christina from my mind. Had he been attracted to her before Jenny’s death, back when we were still at least sporadically sleeping together? If so, was he longing for her as he reached for me? Oh, how I wished I hadn’t always turned the lights off all the time. How easy it must have been to imagine—if not her curves, then her face, when mine was shrouded in darkness.

At any rate, you didn’t just turn off attraction like a switch. Try as he might, there was no way she wouldn’t be in his thoughts if we made love. Maybe he would even say her name when he came. I would rather not sleep with him than risk having that happen.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“Oh my God, look at you!” The minute Harue saw me, she got up from her seat at the bar and began jumping up and down, glass still in hand. She was wearing bright-red glasses and a denim romper that would have made people think I was a farmhand. She looked fantastic.

I laughed as I leaned away from her. “I’m happy to see you, too, but not so happy I want to take a wine bath.”

Alex had risen from her barstool, but not before glancing at the couple hovering behind her, daring either of them to try taking her spot. She wore black on black, and her mouth was a gash of magenta. “Darling, so good to see you,” she said, hugging us both. “You’ll love this place. You must try the pork belly.”

“You’re back on meat?” I said with surprise.

“Vegetarianism was impractical.” She leaned in and said in a pretend whisper, “And I’m thinner when I up my protein.”

Harue sniffed. “Traitor.”

I laughed. “You guys are the exact same.”

“Nothing stays the same,” said Alex. “It just doesn’t change all at one time, thank God. So, how is your loved-up trip away from your perfect children?” She looked at Harue and rolled her eyes.

“Goals, Alex,” said Harue. “I can’t manage to stay married for more than two years, but Penny and Sanjay—” She looked me. “How long has it been now? Three decades?”

I swatted at her. “Very funny. Eleven years.”

“What’s your better half up to tonight?” asked Alex.

“He’s grabbing takeout and putting the finishing touches on his proposal. Thank you again for your help with that,” I added.

“My total pleasure.”

The hostess appeared and told us our table was ready. Once we were seated, Alex said, “I’m thrilled about Sanjay’s project, but to be blunt, Pen, I thought you’d be the one I’d be talking about book deals with. Remember that story you wrote? About the little girl who loved dumplings?” she said, referring to a draft I’d written right before Stevie was born.

“It needed work,” I said lamely, because it, like so many other things in my post-childfree life, had been abandoned for more pressing matters.

“Still, it was great.”

“Thank you,” I said shyly.

“Remember those funny poems you used to write about us at Hudson ? ‘Harue, Harue! The animals adore you—shunning bacon and burgers, too. Because you know what they do: Meat is murder!’” She laughed as she recited my ditty in a sing-song voice.

I couldn’t help but laugh with her. “I can’t believe you remember that. That was literally fifteen years ago.”

“It was catchy! What are you working on lately?” she said.

“My marriage,” I said.

“Ha-ha.”

“No, seriously. Sanjay and I have had some tough times lately. We’ve been working through it, but it hasn’t been fun. We’re trying to be more honest about what we need and what we want each other to change.” Maybe because honesty had become my new norm, this confession came easy.

“I’m glad, because if you two don’t make it, then love is dead,” said Harue.

Funny—I could imagine myself saying something just like that to Jenny before I knew what I did now. “Marriage is hard,” I said. “At least, mine is.”

“You’re telling me! If it weren’t, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten divorced twice,” said Harue. “But what about work? Alex is right—I’m glad you’re doing so well at the university, but we all thought that was a short-term gig.”

A waitress appeared to get our drink order. I was relieved—I didn’t want to talk about my job. But the minute she disappeared, Harue pressed on. “What’s your plan? Are you going to stay there?”

I thought about my conversation with Russ. “It pays well, and I’m up for another raise in September. So yeah, I’ll probably be at the university for a while.”

“Are you happy, though?” said Alex. “Or at the very least, do you have some sort of creative outlet outside of work?”

They were both looking at me, probably with disappointment. I shrugged. “Not really.”

“Then it isn’t really a surprise you and Sanjay are having a hard time,” said Harue.

“What do you mean?”

“Darling,” said Alex, “even I know the saying ‘If a mother isn’t happy, no one’s happy.’”

Harue snorted. “I’m pretty sure it’s, ‘If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.’”

“Exactly,” said Alex.

I must have looked as shell-shocked as I felt, because Harue quickly apologized. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m just . . . surprised. If you would have asked me ten years ago, even five, I never would have predicted you’d still be living in the Midwest and working a job you don’t feel passionately about.”

I accepted the glass of wine the waiter had just handed me. “Me neither, but life with kids isn’t exactly what the brochure promised, you know? And Sanjay had a really hard time getting back on his feet after dropping out of school. Instead of pushing him to do more, I more or less enabled his coasting. Things are getting better, with his book proposal and the new job, but I still feel kind of stuck.” I hadn’t thought about how much of a brave front I’d been putting up in email and on the phone until I was face-to-face with my friends. It was a relief to be frank.

“You need a change,” said Harue.

“You’re not the first person to point that out,” I said, thinking of Jenny’s text. “But I don’t know that I have a choice.” Hell, I had not had a choice since . . . if not when two tiny cells cozied up in my uterus and decided to multiply at lightning speed, then at least since Sanjay had dropped out of medical school.

“It’s not like making yourself a priority is going to suddenly unravel your family,” said Alex. She smiled kindly. “You know that, don’t you, darling?”

She’s not wrong, said a voice in my head—and this time, I was pretty sure it was my own.

At once I understood that I had been looking at things with the right intention but from the wrong angle. My marriage was imperfect and my job lacked meaning, but I had been searching for complicated solutions instead of addressing the common denominator in both equations—me.

Moreover, I’d been approaching my life as a zero-sum game. As Alex had just pointed out, meeting my own needs for a change didn’t mean my family would collapse or sink into bankruptcy-level debt. There were certain parts of my marriage that might never be fixed—wasn’t that what “for better or for worse” was all about?—but that wouldn’t necessarily put Sanjay and me on a one-way dinghy to divorce island. And even if we did split, that wouldn’t be the end of everything. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn’t erase the good times we’d had. My children would still have two parents who loved them and who would not opt out of their lives just because things were hard.

I sat back in my chair, nearly breathless from these realizations.

“Are you all right, Penny?” said Alex.

“I’d say I’m fine, but I’m not,” I admitted. “But I just realized why, and that’s almost the next best thing.”

When I got home, Sanjay was sprawled on the sofa. His computer was resting on the coffee table in front of him, but his eyes were at half-mast.

“Hey,” I said. “Did I wake you?”

He gave me a sleepy smile. “Yes, but I’m glad you did. How was it?”

“Really good,” I said. Later I would tell him about my conversation with Alex and Harue. But right now, I had other things on my mind. I walked over to the sofa, straddled him, and buried my face in his neck.

“I probably taste like curry,” he said in a muffled voice, but his lips were already on mine.

“I don’t care,” I said as he continued to kiss me. My sudden longing wasn’t lust driven. What I really wanted was to feel his skin against my own—to share the thing that had brought us together, and maybe could again.

“Do you want me to get the lights?” he said, already reaching for the lamp next to the sofa.

“No,” I said in a low voice. “Leave them on.”

And then we were a tangle of limbs, our lips and fingers in places familiar and yet seemingly foreign. Admittedly it was strange—almost like sleeping with a friend for the first time. But I didn’t have long to think about it, because before I knew it Sanjay was apologizing for finishing nearly as soon as he had begun.

I laughed and kissed him again, overcome with a sudden lightness. “I don’t mind,” I said, and it was true. I had finally met his request—but I hadn’t once thought about how I was doing that, or even Christina, until we were lying there panting.