The Trouble with Lexie Page 10

  “Well, if you live there, how do Don and others stay there when they go to the city?” Lexie stopped pacing. As if to better hear what he had to say.

  Daniel laughed. “Oh, god, they’re offering up the apartment for staff retreats again?”

  “Um . . .” Lexie didn’t know the details of the arrangement. All she knew was what Amy had told her in the text.

  “Before we separated, so before last spring, we offered the apartment to Don and others to use during the weekends when we were at the lake house. If you want to ask around, you’ll find that not a single Ruxton person has stayed in the apartment since last spring. Not one. Because it’s my home, not my pied-à-terre.”

  There was silence while Lexie took it all in. She sat on her Windsor chair and leaned against one arm. There was an easing in her body. “Okay, I believe you.” So, she wasn’t a complete dumb-ass fool. She was only a cheat and a liar. “But I can’t see you anymore.”

  “Oh, baby, don’t do this to me.”

  “I don’t want to be the kind of person who has an affair.” Lexie lowered her voice, even though no one was around. She slid halfway down the chair, as if she were hiding.

  “You’re not. This is not a normal affair. This is so beyond anything else in life that I actually walked out of a meeting with the former prime minister of Canada so I could talk to you.”

  “Seriously?” She was impressed. Peter didn’t even go to meetings that could be walked out of.

  “Yeah. He’s been here since seven this morning. The guy likes to start early.”

  “Wow.” Lexie couldn’t wait to tell Amy this tidbit. To let her know she’d completely cut things off with a guy who (a) wasn’t a liar, (b) wasn’t married, and (c) walked out on a former Canadian prime minister to take her breakup call. “Which prime minister is it?” Not that Lexie could name any other than the two Trudeaus.

  “Chrétien,” Daniel said. “He’s old as fuck, speaks out of one side of his mouth, and is pretty damn hilarious.”

  “The hilarious former prime minister. Could be a sitcom or something.”

  “The only problem is I’ve had about eight cups of coffee and when we took a break he went to the only public john in this wing of the building and I didn’t want to go in there, because, you know, it seems wrong to stand at a pissoir next to a former prime minister. So I’m starting to feel a little bladder pain.”

  Lexie laughed. “But men pee en masse. Surely he pees with other people all the time.”

  “But what if he has a teeny, tiny cock? I don’t want to know that.”

  “What if it’s huge?” What harm was there in having a little fun banter before never speaking to Daniel again?

  “If it’s huge I’ll feel completely insignificant. Not only have I never been the prime minister of anything, but I don’t even have a prime minister–worthy dick.”

  “Hey, I’ve seen what you’ve got. That could easily be a prime minister’s dick.”

  “Aren’t you sweet. I thought you were banishing me from your life?” Daniel had a teasing lilt in his voice as if he were confident that Lexie couldn’t bring herself to break things off.

  “Oh, yeah, but . . .” But if there were only one hour left to live, Lexie thought, she would revert to her worst self and spend that hour in bed with him.

  “Give me another chance. Please? I haven’t lied to you about anything.”

  “I love Peter and I’m going to get married.” Lexie said it quickly. Like swallowing food she didn’t want to eat.

  “But I’m completely mad about you. I’m out of my mind over you.”

  “I need to be a good person.” Her voice had slowed. Why did it feel like she was reciting lines she hadn’t properly memorized?

  “Sweetheart. Please.” Daniel sounded slightly choked.

  “I have to get married,” she managed.

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “I am committed to my fiancé and I want to follow through on my promise.” Lexie pushed her forehead into her palm and cringed. Life was unfair. She wanted this guy and goddammotherfuckingsonofabitchfuckface she wasn’t going to have him.

  “You’re breaking my heart.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lexie wanted to sob. Or throw up. Or scream. Or expel something from her body.

  “Damn.” Daniel’s voice was croaky. “You were like an incredible dream that abruptly ended.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She was cringing, recoiling.

  “I’ll give you some space, but—” Daniel lowered his voice to an airy whisper, “shit, I have to go. The secretary is calling me back in. Listen, I refuse to give up on you. But I’ll give you a little break to let you sort things out.”

  “There’s nothing to work out,” Lexie recited dutifully.

  “I’ve gotta hang up. Don’t forget, I’m coming back for you.” The phone went silent.

  Lexie threw the phone across the room and onto the couch. She pulled her feet up onto the chair, folded over her knees, and let herself cry for the first time since she met Daniel Waite. Hidden deep inside herself—in a place she wanted no one to discover—was the hope that Daniel would indeed swoop in and save her from her decision.

  Lexie remained curled up on the chair for fifteen minutes, until the bell tower gonged the hour. She got up, brushed her hair, put on lipstick, and then quickly patted her cheeks and under her eyes to bring some blood to her face and release the puffiness from crying.

  Through each of her student sessions that morning, Lexie listened while simultaneously running over the last conversation with Daniel and the conversation with Dot. Certainly she was relieved—the tension, the anxiety, the guilt of cheating had turned to vapor and drifted off. But nothing was the same. Lexie’s world had changed into something misshapen and soiled. Life as a soiled dishrag.

  At lunchtime, Lexie brought two plates of pasta with red sauce to Amy’s office. Amy filled the electric kettle and Lexie was reminded of the kettle of anxiety she’d drugged out of her system first thing this morning.

  They sat across from each other on the old-fashioned beds. Amy was wearing a yellow-and-white-striped dress that reminded Lexie of a parasol. She wore a headband that was also striped.

  “You look like a Southern belle today,” Lexie said. She could tell Amy was waiting for her to bring up the subject of Daniel, but Lexie wasn’t ready.

  “Sun’s going to stop shining soon, so I gotta get my pretty dress wearing in while I can.” Amy ate as if it were her first meal in days.

  “Yeah . . .” Lexie took a deep breath. She put the plate down. Eating felt impossible.

  “Oh no.” Amy looked up from her plate. “Did you run over to that hotel and fuck him this morning before class?” Amy took another bite of pasta.

  “No. I broke up with him.” Lexie pushed the plate away.

  “Honestly?” Amy shoved more pasta into her mouth.

  Lexie repeated to Amy everything Daniel had told her. She hopped off the bed, went to the cupboard where Amy kept cups and tea bags, and made them each some tea. Amy had yet to respond.

  “You don’t believe him?” Lexie looked over at Amy. “Honey, right?” She squeezed the small, plastic bear and let a few oozing bits elongate and then drop into each of their teacups.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter what I believe since you broke up with him anyway.”

  “Well, don’t think poorly of Daniel,” Lexie said. “Even if you don’t believe him, you can see there are great things about him. And you have to admit he’s accomplished.” Lexie put each of the teacups on a saucer. She placed one saucer on each of the sickbeds.

  “Assholes can be accomplished. And you don’t know for sure that he’s great. You only know he’s great in bed.” Amy started eating again.

  “But why did it feel so perfect?” Lexie delicately hoisted herself up onto the sickbed without knocking the tea.

  “That’s your hormones talking.” Amy’s words were muffled by the chewing. “I can’t have an orgasm
with a man without thinking that I want to marry him.”

  “You want to marry every person who gives you an orgasm?” Lexie sipped at her tea. Her stomach was so empty she could feel the liquid entering her body like a sliding, hot rope.

  “Yup. It’s come to the point where I deliberately stop myself from orgasming so I won’t bond with him.”

  “So billions of women across the planet are chasing the ever-elusive partnered orgasm and you’re trying to stop it?” Not that Lexie had difficulties finding her own orgasms. She had taught herself with her hand sometime in the beginning of sixth grade and hadn’t had a problem since.

  “I’m like a guy or something,” Amy said. “He sticks his thang in me, and before the tick can bite the dog, I’m having myself an orgasm as big as a bull on steroids.” Amy pushed away her empty plate and pointed at Lexie’s untouched plate. Lexie had always thought it was great the way Amy ate: like a man, completely unconscious of quantity or calories. She put food in her mouth when she was hungry, and didn’t when she wasn’t.

  Lexie picked up her plate and handed it to Amy across the gap between the beds. “So how do you stop yourself from having an orgasm?”

  “Right when I’m about to come, I think of garbage.” Amy indicated toward the plate with her fork. “You’re sure you’re not going to eat this?”

  “I’m not hungry. You think of garbage?” Lexie looked toward the wire trash can near Amy’s desk. It was half-full of balled up paper and the plastic clip-ons for the ear thermometer.

  “Not that kind of garbage. I think of the gunk you pull out of the sink after you’ve done the dishes.” Amy dug into her second plate of pasta.

  “The stuff from the strainer?”

  “Uh-huh.” She swallowed. “All that slimy, smelly, food gunk. And then I don’t even have those preorgasm-shudders.”

  “You know, I’m going to detox from Daniel by imagining the putrid slime from a sink strainer every time he enters my mind.”

  “Great idea.” Amy raised her teacup. “Here’s to fish skins and oily old chicken bones.” Lexie raised her teacup and they motioned toward each other as if making a toast.

  “Do you think I ruined everything with Peter?” Lexie hoped her feelings for Daniel were like her past love for the film Rent. Lexie had almost cried at the opening scene the first time she saw it at the theater. She went back five times before it came out on DVD. Years later, Lexie dug out and watched the DVD (which had moved with her from apartment to apartment to apartment) and she couldn’t even understand or remember what she had liked about the film in the first place.

  “No, you haven’t ruined anything. After Billy and I kissed I was out of my mind crazy. You coulda told me my mama was dying of cancer in the hospital, waiting to say good-bye, and I still woulda stopped off at Billy’s house and fucked him before seeing her. There was no way out but down.” Amy hopped off the bed with her teacup. She went to the cupboard, took out the honey, and squeezed several more teardrop-shaped globs into her cup.

  “I’m not like that, am I?” This thing with Daniel had presented Lexie with a whole new version of herself.

  “Hell, no. No one knows but me, right?” Amy licked the pour-tip and the sticky head of the plastic bear and then shut the lid. Lexie made a mental note to never use Amy’s honey again.

  “Yeah. You’re the only one who knows.”

  “Then you and I will die with this secret. And once that ring is on your finger you can honestly say you never cheated on your husband.” Amy sat at her desk chair and sipped her tea.

  “But I did.”

  “You cheated on your fiancé. Change the word and you’ve changed the circumstances.”

  Lexie’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. Her heart knocked once, a fist on a door. Lexie hopped off the bed and picked up her purse from the floor. She pulled out her phone. Peter. Lexie was relieved that she didn’t have to read a text from Daniel and be forced to face whatever feelings might float up from it.

  Peter’s text read: Bought a black Jetta. 5 yrs old. Looks brand-new. Won’t deplete the honeymoon account.

  “Peter got me a used Jetta. Nice, right?” Lexie looked up at Amy.

  “Well, yeah! How many girls have a guy out there finding a car for them? Do you know what a pain in the ass it is to car shop? Plus, who has the money for a car these days?”

  “The parents of every single kid at this school,” Lexie said. No point in mentioning Daniel in particular. And no reason to confess that the money was Lexie’s savings—Peter had simply gone through the effort of procuring the car.

  Amy rolled her eyes. “Stay the course, honey. Stay the course.”

  “LET’S DO IT IN THE CAR.” LEXIE WAS STARING OUT THE KITCHEN window, looking at the Jetta in the driveway. She had done the dinner dishes and swept the wood shavings.

  “Won’t the bed be more comfortable?” Peter was at the kitchen table, cruising music sites on his iPad.

  “Let’s go wild. Go crazy! Right?”

  “Okay.” Peter was craned toward his iPad. Lexie put away the broom, went in the bedroom to insert her birth control, and then went out to the long, sloping driveway. She opened the back door of her new car, lay on the seat and stared at the ceiling, which was the color of eggshells and looked like it was made of felt. There was an ashy gray-brown smudge directly above her head. It reminded Lexie of the brown contrail created by her father’s cigarette butt she had found floating in the toilet each day when she got home from school.

  Eventually, Peter loped out to the car.

  “I didn’t know where you were.” Peter pulled off his T-shirt.

  “Waiting for you, babe.” Lexie kicked off her shoes and then slipped off her pants and let them dangle from one ankle. She pushed aside the crotch of her yellow underwear. Peter dropped his pants in the driveway. As was his habit, he wasn’t wearing underwear, something Lexie had never quite grown used to. She couldn’t help but imagine the inside point-of-view of Peter’s jeans against his slightly gluey balls and dick.

  Peter climbed on top of Lexie, his forearms on her hair, pinning her to the seat.

  “Wait.” Lexie worked her hair out from under Peter. “Okay, go ahead.” Peter did and Lexie drifted off into her mind and successfully avoided thinking of Daniel. Mostly she focused on the ceiling smudge, wondering how it got there and why the person who was selling the car didn’t clean it off.

  Peter dismounted. “Let’s switch positions.”

  “Okay.” Lexie clumsily worked her way out from beneath Peter. She was a spaz, like her mother had always claimed. As they resettled, Peter’s fist knocked into Lexie’s breast giving her a painful jolt that ran straight to her gut and made her momentarily breathless. Lexie didn’t complain. She deserved all this and more.

  They carried on with Lexie on top. She stared down at Peter’s closed eyes and carefully watched his clenching and counterpushes so she would know when they were coming to an end. Peter wasn’t a noisemaker or a panter; it wasn’t always obvious.

  At last, Peter was done. “That will bring us good luck in the car,” Lexie said. She slid off Peter, readjusted her panties, and put on her pants.

  Peter leaned out the open car door and grabbed his jeans from the driveway. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I made it up.” Lexie wondered what the distance was between making things up and lying. She’d done a lot of both lately.

  “So is this car sexier than the van?” Peter pulled on his jeans.

  “Way sexier than the van. Sexier than the Saab even.” That he asked, that he cared, filled Lexie with a sudden and untouchable tenderness toward Peter. It was as if he were a glass egg that she had knocked off the counter, but caught seconds before it shattered on the tiled floor.

  Back in the house, they settled into their regular seats on the couch: Lexie on the right, Peter on the left. Peter picked up the remote control, turned on the TV, and then, without taking note of what was on, left the room. Lexie picked up the novel she�
��d been reading and stared at the page she was on. She read the first sentence of the new chapter over again three times before giving up and lowering the book to her lap. Her mind was so knotted up she couldn’t unravel it enough to take in much more than her own thoughts.

  Peter returned with two cereal bowls filled with butter pecan ice cream. He placed Lexie’s bowl on the coffee table and picked up the remote again, which he immediately started clicking, landing finally on a late ’70s Woody Allen movie.

  Three minutes had barely passed when Peter clinked his empty ice cream bowl down on the coffee table.

  “You gonna eat that?” Peter pointed to the bowl he’d brought for Lexie. She hadn’t touched it.

  “I’m not in the mood for sweets.” Since her fling with Daniel, lying to Peter had become second nature. The truth was Lexie was in the mood only for sweets and was trying to keep from binging on them. After skipping the pasta with Amy, Lexie had picked up a plate of cookies from the teachers’ lounge with the intention of having them in her office for her student patients (as she had loudly stated to the group who was in the lounge at the time). But before her next student patient had shown up, Lexie had eaten every single cookie. She had wanted to hit the gym to burn off at least a fifth of the cookie calories, but never made it there due to an emergency session with Lizzy Aleman who had wanted to see Lexie “right away.” With the encouragement of her roommate, Lizzie had confessed to being bulimic. As they talked, Lexie felt like she was right there with Lizzie (even fantasizing about leaning over her delicate office wastebasket and hurling up the cookies). Lexie had never purged, but she fully understood the urge to undo what had been done and to control a body—a life—that felt out of control. If she had continued to carry on with Daniel she might have, eventually, been fingering her own throat.

  WEDNESDAY, WHEN ETHAN STROLLED INTO HER OFFICE, LEXIE’S flesh reacted as if Daniel himself had appeared. Biology, Lexie thought. She was smelling something on Ethan that she had smelled on Daniel and damn if that didn’t get the blood rushing to central points on her body.