Still Life with Husband by Lauren Fox Page B

sound the same, she said, and romance seemed to be more or less incompatible with the brass instruments. Then eighth-grade social studies teacher Peter Johannsen entered the scene, a brawny Scandinavian from Minnesota with a surprisingly biting sense of humor. They met in the teacher’s lounge and started hanging out, going out for beers after school on Fridays, meeting for walks on Sunday mornings. Meg insisted that they were friends. Until they slept together. Craig’s heart was broken, Peter Johannsen turned out to be a commitment-phobic, anal-retentive control freak, and Meg was alone. For about ten minutes. But still. It was an ugly time. She learned her lesson.
    “Ja,” I say.
    “I don’t know, Em. I suppose it’s possible.” She turns to face me. “But I love Kevin. I love you guys. If I thought you were about to squander your happiness with him for something so…superficial, for a thrill, I’d tell you never to let another e-mail from this guy darken your in-box again. If you think you can handle it, then, yeah, I suppose you can have a friendship with what’s-his-name. And, you know, word to the wise. I’ll regret what I did with Yo- han -sen for the rest of my life! ” She says the last part with such unexpected emphasis that a little spray of spit escapes from her mouth.
    “But, first of all, we were twenty-five when that happened. And second of all, that was you, not me,” I remind her, discreetly wiping my cheek where the splash landed.
    “I’m just saying.”
    “I know, but, do you think men and women can’t be friends?”
    “Sally, you know that’s not what I mean,” she says. “I’m just saying, watch yourself. Don’t get carried away by excitement. And don’t think that an affair is going to be the answer to some kind of creeping marital malaise.”
    “Well, Harry, don’t you think married people develop crushes on other people all the time?”
    “I’m sure they do,” she says. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?” She’s picked up her pace again during the course of this discussion. I’m practically jogging to keep up with her. I don’t answer her question. I wonder if Meg’s hormones are out of whack, postmiscarriage. Why else would she be so adamant? I can handle this. I’m resolved.
             
    Being married is like reading the same novel over and over again. You might discover new subtleties of language on the twenty-millionth read-through, a metaphor or two you’d missed before, but the plot is always the same. Kevin is in a bad mood, and there’s nothing I can do about it: chapter six.
    We’re driving home from Madison, where we spent the day visiting old friends of ours, Michelle and Tina. Michelle is a law professor and Tina stays home with their six-year-old son, Zack. Tina gave birth to Zack, but his actual conception is a mystery to us, and Michelle and Tina refuse to tell. One of Michelle’s male relatives? Sperm bank? Friend? We’ll never know, although we’ve tried for years to trick them into divulging. “Which family member does Zack most resemble?” I’ll ask, or Kevin will casually mention an article about sperm-donor babies who grow up and locate their biological fathers. They just roll their eyes at each other, then at us. Zack calls Tina “Mommy,” and Michelle “Momichelle.”
    We walked around town, the five of us, made our way slowly up and down State Street, poked in and out of various stores full of various colorful trinkets, stopped for lunch at an Indian restaurant, ate orange chocolate chip ice cream at the Memorial Union…all in all, a lovely day. Except that, while we were all eating our dosas, while I was regaling Zack with fascinating details from my latest freelance editing assignment, a children’s book called Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Hamsters, Tina said something to Kevin. Kevin was telling her about his job, about the latest set of instructional pamphlets he was working on, and