Bring Everybody: Stories

Chapter 8 - Gisela

BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Massachusetts Press / Page 84 / Printer Proof / Bring Everybody / Yates 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 [84], (84) Lines: 1184 to 1191 ——— 0.4pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [84], (84) Gisela So what’s to be done about a wayward wife, hitherto faithful and such a brick for twenty-one years, not to mention nurturer of two college-settled sons, one even in the Ivy League? What to do now that the midlife mess-up I was priding myself on avoiding afflicts her instead, as, my God, I should have expected in this day of gender equity but had acknowledged only in theory, in stats, but never in my own house, a lovely Greene and Greene—you’d think she’d at least be appreciative of it. Twenty-one years! Of course I was—am—a feminist, raised my sons to be, in some respects so confusing their innate courtesy that, sweatered cheerleaders on arm, they froze before doors and restaurant chairs, especially the younger one, Jeffrey, built like a teenage Hercules and of a temperament to simply lift young women into convertibles (“topless” cars, he calls them). With no warning, their mother, my Gisela, forty-eight, turns loony over a boy of twenty-nine she meets in low-impact aerobics, the intimacy developing over the weeks and months as they sweat to Mariah Carey moans, grow slimmer and firmer in spandex, became addicted to flat abs and defined gluts, eventually to one another. He, Brandon (what a matinee name it sounds; might as well be Lance or Karsh), he will advise you financially at the local Dean Witter office, seated there beneath moussetamed hair (smelling of coconut, Gisela reports). Acquiring portfolios by day, muscles after work, conquests after muscles, that’s Brandon. Not extensive conquests, I hope, but rather—oh the pain – 84 – BOOKCOMP, Inc. — University of Massachusetts Press / Page 85 / Printer Proof / Bring Everybody / Yates Gisela – 85 – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 [85], (85) Lines: 1191 to 1193 ——— 0.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [85], (85) of this—just repeated ones of my Gisela. Not in these contagious times, she assures me, would he be promiscuous, but believing it is only Gisela he wiggles with is hardly a comfort you must imagine if, nonetheless, a nibble of relief. And anyway, how can she know he’s faithful? Him at twenty-nine years, all hormones and energy and quantitative thinking, watching the numbers climb the Dow, counting his abdominal curls. “I like his methodical style,” she tells me. And what is that to mean exactly, if not that his head has nothing in it but a schedule? She claims to be listening to her body and acting on its dictates. “What about listening to your mind?” I ask, admittedly getting right into the murk of the old epistemological problem, but one she to her satisfaction has already resolved. A new body, she informs me, has new messages to send, and these messages in aggregate constitute the new mind, the old one not being a river that she can step back into. “Not even for a quick wade?” I ask. Where is she getting all this drivel, I have to wonder. Surely not from spandex boy, the Italian-suited financier, whose nose is either in the NASDAQ or the Consumer Reports’ assessment of juicer-blenders that Gisela mentioned when I asked, and really pretty desperately, what is it you want, my wife, name it. Brandon, she claims, is cultivating a New-Agey spiritual side oriented toward healing (how about my wounds, I want to ask). He even sets out a six-course vegetarian feast for each solstice. So help me, Deepak Chopra, I know the reasons for all this, and they are hardly spiritual: we married young, Gisela had so few adventures, boomers can’t help expecting more, wanting all, wanting, wanting, also deserving—they think. Cut me some slack, Bertie, she says, allow this, pretty please, also the juicer. She has become shameless. Something else Gisela mentioned: Brandon is so unencumbered ; how refreshing that is, Bertie, she says. No one, I tell her, at...