The Average American Marriage Read online

  I look over at Alyna and Andy. He’s sitting in her lap and she’s stroking his hair. He’s absolutely soothed. There’s no place in the world he’d rather be than right there in his mom’s lap in this moment. She’s a good fucking mom, and I realize that maybe the cost of having a good mom for your kids is losing the person you loved, losing the person you fucked, losing the person who still wants to fuck you. I wonder if it’s just a phase for her. I wonder if, when the kids get older, she won’t revert to her old self again. I think of the girl I used to think about when I jerked off, and I wonder if I’ll ever get her back.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. I take it out and see that I have a new message from Holly. I’m reluctant to open it while every member of my family is sitting within ten feet of me, but the little shot of adrenaline I get every time I see she’s sent me a text message is too much to deny and I open it. It’s a picture of her ass and pussy, basically a POV shot as though the camera is my face and she’s sitting on it. The accompanying text reads, “I hope you like the picture as much as the real thing.”

  I quickly look over at Alyna to make sure she’s not watching me. She’s not. Jane still seems too young to know what the fuck is going on with anything, and she didn’t see it anyway.

  I bring the phone up close to my face so I can really study the photo. It’s even more perfect than I remember, and all I can think about is when I can have it in my face again. I imagine that this feeling I have, this all-consuming, burning desire to fuck her again, to bury my face in her pussy again, to just feel her again, is similar to what a heroin addict must feel.

  I text her back a message that reads, “I could never like anything more than the real thing, but keep sending me pictures. This is so hot.”

  Over the course of the final fifteen minutes of American Idol, Holly sends me a picture of her fingering herself, a picture of her fingering her asshole, a picture of her tits, a picture of her sliding the back end of a toothbrush up her asshole while she fingers her pussy, a picture of her watching porn on her computer and fingering herself, and eventually a picture of her fingers glistening with pussy juice and a text that reads, “I came thinking about you fucking me in the ass. More when I get horny again.”

  I turn my phone’s screen off and set it on the ground next to my chair. Then, in a moment of paranoia I think it’s actually a better idea to slide the phone under my chair as I wonder if it’s completely deplorable that I just thought about fucking a twenty-one-year-old girl in every hole while my two-year-old daughter was sitting in my lap. I rationalize that it’s probably happened a million times and it’s not that big a deal unless Jane were ever to find out, which she won’t, so fuck it. Doesn’t matter.

  chapter twenty-three

  Mistakes Were Made

  I’m in my office staring at Holly when she gets up from her desk and walks into my office with a pouty look on her face. She says, “I’ve been texting you all day and you haven’t texted me back. I even went to the bathroom and sent you some, you know, naughty stuff.”

  I say, “Fuck. I left my phone at home.” I had searched for it this morning before giving up, but only now do I realize that it’s still under the chair in my living room where I left it last night. I say, “I’ll look at them when I get home, though. I’m looking forward to that.”

  Holly says, “When’s the next time we can hang out?”

  I say, “I don’t know. Probably next week I can get away for a night.”

  She walks over close to me and leans in and whispers in my ear, “I want your fucking cock in my ass again,” then licks my ear and walks out. I look over through my window to see Dan Persons staring at me from his desk. The surprised look on his face betrays the fact that he must have seen the entire exchange between me and Holly. I’m sure I’m caught. This is bad on several levels. I imagine a scenario in which Dan tells Lonnie that I’m fucking the intern, Lonnie fires me, and then I have to go home and tell Alyna I got fired, and when she asks me why, I’ll have to come up with some story about the economy and cutbacks and hope the real story never gets back to her. Then Dan smiles at me and gives me a thumbs-up. Everything’s fine.

  I get through the rest of the day and head home. When I get there, Alyna answers the door crying.

  I say, “What’s wrong?”

  She holds up my phone with a picture of Holly’s ass on it along with a text that reads, “Your cock needs to be in this.”

  Alyna says, “What in the fuck is this?”

  My brain is fucked. It’s like pouring water on a computer. Nothing works right. I can’t get to the second step of any thought. First words of potential sentences I could say next keep replacing themselves in my head. Roland flashes through my cycle of stuttering thoughts for a brief second. Roland could get out of this situation. He’d have some fucking incredible thing to say that would calm Alyna down and make her realize that this is a necessary part of building an individual identity. But I’m not Roland. I say, “Is that my phone?”

  Alyna says, “Uh . . . yes it’s your fucking phone, asshole. It was buzzing under your chair every five minutes.”

  I say, “How’d you get my password?”

  Alyna says, “Your password for everything is your birthday, you dipshit.”

  That’s a mistake I’ll never make again. If this is going to happen, I don’t want the kids to be around. I say, “Where are the kids?”

  Alyna says, “Fuck you. They’re with Isabelle. You think I want them in the same house with you, you disgusting fucking pig?”

  I say, “Just calm down. What are you talking about? That thing is just a joke from one of the guys at work.” It’s a terrible lie, but the best one I can come up with as I can feel the blood draining from my face and my heart beating in my asshole.

  Alyna says, “Really?”

  I say, “Yeah, they text around pictures of naked chicks from the Internet. It’s like a little interoffice guy thing.”

  Alyna says, “That’s some joke, because whatever guy from work this is has really been sending you a lot of these texts, and not just today but for the past few weeks. And look at this one.” She scrolls through Holly’s texts until she comes to one of my responses. “You even replied to a few of them. ‘I want you to suck my cock and then ride it until you cum on it.’ That’s a pretty funny joke. He must have laughed his ass off when he got this one.”

  I take the phone out of her hand so she can’t wield it like a murder weapon at a trial and say, “Alyna, it’s just text messages. It’s nothing.”

  Alyna says, “Shut up. Just shut up and stop lying. I’ve read every text message you’ve sent to this person. I know that when you said you were at Todd’s, you were with her. You were . . . fucking her. How could you do this?”

  This is immediately recognizable as the worst moment in my life even as it’s happening. I don’t regret fucking Holly, but I never wanted Alyna to have to go through any of what’s happening right now. Even if there were ever a time when I would have wanted her to know about Holly, I wouldn’t have wanted her to find out like this. She’s sobbing and angry, and more than that, she’s hurt. She’s devastated. I’ve ripped out the heart of the woman who is the mother of my children and I’m watching her bleed in front of me.

  It tears me apart to see Alyna like this. She might not want to fuck me, but in that moment I know that I love her as much as I ever have and I hate the fact that I’ve caused her this much pain. Her face and her tears are enough for me to say, “Alyna, I’m so sorry. I didn’t . . . it was just a stupid thing to do. I love you and I . . . It’s over between me and her. I mean, it was never really anything anyway, but it’s done.”

  I move in to hug her as she sobs. She steps back from me and says, “Get the fuck out of this house.”

  I say, “Alyna, come on. Let’s talk about this.”

  Alyna says, “No. There’s nothing to talk about here.
You’re a fucking piece of shit and you can’t sleep under the same roof as me and the kids. Not tonight. I’ll give you five minutes to pack some shit and get out.”

  I look at her. She won’t look back at me. She just leans against the wall sobbing. There’s no way I’m talking myself back into the house tonight.

  I go upstairs and throw some shit in a Lakers duffel bag that I use to carry my gym shit. I get a few work shirts, some pants, underwear, socks, whatever my numb brain can conjure up. This is the worst I have ever felt in my life. I have potentially destroyed my family. Holly is the best piece of ass I’ve ever had, but still, it doesn’t seem worth this.

  I think back to what Todd said about his dad and Maria Reynaldi. It’s easy to look back from your deathbed and regret the girls you didn’t fuck when you had the chance. But what if he had fucked her and it had ripped his family apart? Would he even remember what it was like to have fucked her? Or would he just remember the look on his wife’s face when she found out?

  I convince myself that there’s a chance to make things right here and to repair what I’ve done. I convince myself that Alyna just needs some time away from me, and then a heartfelt apology, and that doing everything she asks of me, including more therapy sessions, will get me back in the house. As uncertain as I am about everything in the immediate future, I am certain that Roland will no longer be on my side, but I’m prepared to eat as much shit as necessary in order to fix this.

  I toss my toothbrush in the bag and head back to the front door, where Alyna is still crying. I say, “Okay, I’m leaving. But I want to talk to you when you’re ready, okay?”

  Alyna says, “I don’t know.”

  I say, “I love you.”

  Alyna says, “Just go.”

  I say, “Tell the kids I love them,” and she breaks down, sobbing uncontrollably. I want to hug her, to make even the smallest piece of this whole thing be slightly less shitty for her, but I can’t. I just walk back out to my car and start it. I can’t feel anything except the air conditioner blowing on my face as I drive to the Warner Center Marriott in a daze.

  chapter twenty-four

  First Night

  My room is shitty and small. I have no idea how long I’ll be staying here, but I refuse to take my clothes out of my duffel bag and put them in drawers or in the closet or anything like that. I lay down on the bed and turn on the TV so there’s some noise, something to take my mind off what just happened, off what’s still happening. I watch TV for a few minutes. It doesn’t work. I’m stuck in some weird kind of emotional shell-shock that doesn’t seem to be going away or resolving into any real emotion.

  I take my phone out and look at all of the text messages Holly sent me over the course of the day. There are two pictures, one of her ass and one of her tits, and several sexually suggestive text messages. Alyna read them all. She read them all and I know she probably read every other text message that’s ever been in my phone. Holly’s are the only ones that matter, the only ones that aren’t meaningless conversations between me and Todd or me and Alyna. If I had just remembered my phone none of this shit would be happening. I’d be back at home watching the American Idol results show and wondering when I’d be able to fuck Holly next.

  It dawns on me that now I can fuck Holly anytime I want. This line of thought gives me something other than numbness. I go with it. I text her the following message: “Want to hang out tonight?” I spend the next few minutes looking back over all of the naked pictures she’s sent me until she replies with a text that reads, “Can’t tonight. Plans.” I wonder what her plans are. What plans could a twenty-one-year-old girl have? I’m sure they involve alcohol and drugs and not wondering if her husband is going to divorce her and not wondering how her children will react to her not sleeping under the same roof as them for the first time in their lives.

  Realizing I will be alone in this room without being bothered by anyone, I unzip my pants and start jerking off. It doesn’t work. I don’t even get hard because I can’t stop thinking about my kids and about Alyna crying and about what she must be telling them about me and about how this is all going to end.

  I go to the bar downstairs and drink by myself for a few hours. American Idol is on the TV. One of the closeted gay guys gets kicked off. I pay my tab and head back upstairs, where I take a long shower and get into bed.

  It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve slept in a bed alone. I miss the noises of my house. The ticking of the refrigerator, the low hum of the air conditioner, the slight crackle of the baby monitor that we still keep in the kids’ room. I close my eyes and I miss all of the shit that annoyed me about sleeping with Alyna. I miss the way she would put her cold feet on my legs to warm them, I miss the way she would exhale so hard through her nose as she slept that it would feel like she was poking me with an index finger, I miss the way she would twitch slightly when she would fall asleep, I miss the way her hair would get in my face when she’d force me to spoon her. I miss the way her aging, out-of-shape body felt against my aging, out-of-shape body. I miss my wife.

  some chapter

  Repairs

  My cell phone freezes. I take the battery out and restart it. It works for a second, but when I open the text application it freezes again. I do this five more times and get the same result each time. I stop at a Sprint store on my way to work and speak with Gus, a customer service representative who obviously hates his job and everyone on planet Earth.

  He says, “What’s the problem?” in a tone that makes me think he’ll probably kill himself by the end of the day.

  I say, “Every time I try to read or send a text, the phone freezes.”

  He says, “Did you try taking the battery out and restarting it?”

  I say, “Several times.”

  He takes the battery out and restarts it. He opens the text application and it freezes. He says, “Yeah, that didn’t work. So we’ll just reset it. That should fix the problem.”

  “Won’t that erase everything I have on the phone?”

  “Your contacts are saved to your Google account.”

  “Right, but all of my text messages, my pictures, all of that’s gone if you reset it, right?”

  “Did you save that stuff to the phone or to the memory card?”

  “Some is saved to the phone and some to the memory card. Can you just back up everything and put it all back on the phone after the reset to be sure I get everything?”

  “It takes a little more time, but I guess.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I wait while Gus goes into a back room and backs up everything on my phone. I’m positive this process will involve him getting to look at every photo Holly sent me of her ass and tits, as well as every filthy text message she sent me explaining what she was going to do to my cock. I’m also positive that Gus and all of the other assholes who work here see so much of this shit every day that it probably doesn’t faze them in the least. Unless they come across something extremely out of the ordinary, like a picture of a guy with a peanut butter jar up his ass or something, they probably don’t even take the time to show the other guys in the back room. I imagine a wall of pictures they’ve printed out that are kind of a hall of fame of the weirdest shit they’ve ever seen on customers’ phones. I convince myself that this photo hall of fame must exist in every cell-phone store in America.

  I watch a woman with a baby in a stroller looking at phones while she’s waiting for hers to be fixed. She’s not attractive. I think about fucking her and blowing my load on her ample tits. I imagine a scenario in which she’s actually here to get her husband’s phone fixed and Gus and the guys in the back see all of the naked pictures of all of the chicks that her husband is cheating on her with but they don’t tell her. I wonder how many times that happens. I wonder how many times the wife does find out about her husband cheating through some discovery of a text message or Facebook post.
I can’t decide if we’re better off or worse. It seems like all of this shit makes it much easier to fuck chicks, but it makes it much harder to keep any of it a secret.

  chapter twenty-five

  The Meet

  Alyna left a message on my newly repaired cell phone that said, “Meet me at the Baker for lunch tomorrow. 1 P.M. Don’t be late.” She didn’t actually call me. She just recorded and sent the message to meet her at her favorite café. I imagine three scenarios as I drive to the Baker.

  I imagine her showing up with divorce papers and demanding that I sign them or never see my kids again. I imagine her telling me that she forgives me and she’ll take me back as long as I never talk to Holly again, which I don’t know if I’m prepared to do just yet. And I imagine her not showing up at all but, instead, a hired killer who slits my throat and pisses on my corpse. I realize the first two scenarios are much more likely, but still, the third is possible.

  When I walk in she’s already there. She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t even get out of her chair. She just looks at me. She doesn’t seem angry or even upset. She just seems to be there. I sit down and I say, “Hey.”

  She says, “Hey.”

  I say, “So, what’s . . . I mean . . . I don’t know what to say here, really. Do you want to know where I’m staying?”

  Alyna says, “I don’t give a fuck where you’re staying.”

  I say, “Okay. How are the kids? What’d you tell them?”

  She says, “I told them there was something extremely important at work and you might have to be gone for a little while.”

  This gives me some hope that she sees a possible reconciliation. I reason that she would have outright told the kids I was a cheating pile of shit, or maybe told them that I died, or something far more final than that I might have to be gone for a little while, if she thought there was no chance of ever repairing things between us. I say, “Okay. So why did you want to meet?”