Page 32 of The Husband Diet
Turbo-Mama
If it weren’t for my job, I’d never see anywhere outside Boston City Center. It had widened my horizons but slimmed (I do hate that word) my chances of being a good mother and wife – according to Ira.
‘Erica, you just can’t keep going off on business trips all the time,’ Ira had curtly said to me during one of my calls home.
‘And you,’ I snapped back, ‘can’t keep talking to me like I’m your dumb wife. You lost that right when I opened my eyes and saw you for who you really are.’
He groaned. ‘You have to be here every day. Your mother is driving me crazy again!’
I huffed. God, I hated him. One more month to go before the New Year, when he’d move out. But he was right. Marcy wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination anyone’s ideal babysitter.
‘There’s no one who can do this job here but me,’ I explained for the umpteenth time in twelve years. That someone was doing a better job than me in the sack was the strong unsaid message.
I heard him snort. What Ira refused to understand was that fieldwork had given me the bonuses that we needed to stay afloat. We were living way beyond our means and at the end of every month, I calculated we’d just made it and breathed a sigh of relief. Until the next month. But next month I’d be free of his car payments and, yes – even the rental of his office space. He was on his own from now on and my purse strings breathed a sigh of relief. Let him finally fend for himself.
Considering he was a ‘business expert’, Ira had no idea of our financial situation. I was sure he’d screwed up his company because of his lack of organizational skills. He concentrated too much energy on maintaining his IT equipment rather than his clients and services. What Ira needed was to accept advice. If not from me then at least from someone else who would make him wake up and smell the coffee.
‘I’ve got someone else on the other line – I have to go,’ he said hastily and hung up, but I knew it wasn’t true.
I shut my cellphone, feeling like shit – there was no better word for it.Hang in there, Erica, I thought to myself.These dark days will soon end. They have to.
I looked in the mirror and saw a young old girl, with bags under her once pretty eyes, a messy head of hair, and a face bathed in anxiety and exhaustion.
I was already going away on business twice a month and had greatly improved the quality of our hotels, much to my boss’ joy, so I knew that even more trips would have to be made. But I was missing out on entire days of my children’s lives. They were growing up – and I was growing old – away from them.
That night, like every other night I was away, I lay in a luxurious Farthington hotel room, this time in Seattle, Washington, hours before my real bedtime. Sleep eluding me as usual, I stared at the ceiling and listened to the typical hotel sounds: the heating system quietly humming recycled air though the vents, the wheels of the baggage cart softly squeaking through the plush, thick carpeting of the corridors, toilets flushing (no amount of luxury can eliminate that) and the occasional grinding of keys in bathroom door locks. I missed my children terribly.
As I lay there, waiting to fall asleep, Julian, or my projection of him, quietly stepped into the room.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, sitting up suddenly, but he puts his finger against my lips and shushes me gently.
‘I’m your erotic dream,’ he whispers.
‘Oh,’ I answer. That made so much more sense.
He sits on the edge of my bed and as I open my mouth to speak, he catches my lips in a toe-curling kiss, his mouth hot, soft but firm on mine, coaxing (as if he needed to) a response from me. Now unless I can get him drunk and abduct him just so I can have that one kiss, that’s the kind of kiss that would shake me from my foundations to my roof beams.
‘You’re so beautiful, Erica,’ he whispers, sliding under the covers, which at this point become redundant, seeing how hot it is in here all of a sudden. ‘Can I make love to you, Erica?’
‘You need to ask, foxy headmaster?’
‘I’m going to have to keep you here all night on detention.’
Okay, it was a lame dream, I knew it, but after all these years without any romance whatsoever, I was easy to please.
A loud screech brought me to my senses, pushing him right off me.What? Where had he gone?
I slapped at the alarm clock uselessly and moaned in grievance, leaning over the side of the bed, scanning the carpet, wishing he’d been real, willing him back to me, and willing myself to continue with the dream. But, as a dearly departed one, he was lost to me forever. Or at least until my next erotic dream.
*
The next day when I got back home, as the first point of my multipoint plan toward happiness and well-being, I decided to face my boss.
‘Can’t Jackie go to Denver?’ I asked him. ‘She’s never seen Colorado and I really need to stay home with my kids more, Mr. Farthington. Like we agreed.’
He seemed to consider it. ‘Jackie’s great, but she lacks your flair. I need you out in the field, Erica.’
‘You promised it would only be a couple of times per semester. I practically live in my suitcase and my kids miss me. I should be at home with them more.’
