Franny explored the drain with her big toe. “I’m beyond mad. I truly didn’t know this space existed, where he could do something so terrible that the word mad wouldn’t begin to cover it. Do we really do it? Do we sell the house? Does Sylvia become totally unstable and crazy because the minute she goes to college, her parents get a divorce?” She shook the washcloth off into the water, and it made a little splash. “What would you do if Lawrence cheated on you? Would you get a divorce?” She turned around to look at him.
Friendships were tricky things, especially friendships as old as theirs was. Nudity was nothing more than a collection of hard-earned scars and marks. Love was a given, uncomplicated by sex or vows, but honesty was always waiting there, ready to capsize the steady boat. Charles closed the magazine.
“I cheated on him once. With one person, I mean. More than one time.”
Franny sat up and swiveled ungracefully in the tub so that she was facing Charles directly. Her breasts were half above the water, half below, her heavy flesh settled into tidy rolls underneath. Charles wanted to ask her if he could take a photo to paint from later—she would say yes, she always said yes—but realized it was not the time.
“Excuse me?”
Charles leaned back against the toilet tank. There was a small square window on the short wall of the bathroom, and Charles looked through it onto the mountains, which seemed to wave through the ancient glass. “It was in the beginning. Almost ten years ago. We were already living together, but it wasn’t that serious. It wasn’t that serious to me, I should say. Lawrence, bless his little heart, he always thought we were in it for the long haul. He’s the settling-down type, you know, with his real job and his supportive parents. He always wanted to get married, even before it was legal. Whatever documents we could get, he wanted them.
“This was when I was with Johnson Strunk Gallery, remember, on Twenty-fourth? And Selena Strunk always had the cutest boys working for her, the art handlers, kids who looked straight out of some gym-bunny porno, all beefed up and adorable, with little beards they’d just learned how to grow. I don’t know why they liked me—I was already, what, forty-five? But some of them wanted to be painters, I suppose. Anyway, one of them, Jason, he started hanging around the gallery when he knew I’d be there, and he was a nice kid, so I took him out for coffee. When we sat down, he grabbed my dick under the table. Lawrence is such a WASP, he would rather die than admit he even had a dick in public. So I was, you know, surprised. It only happened a few times, over the next few months, at my studio.”
Franny made a noise. “Involuntary,” she said, then covered her mouth with the washcloth and waved him on.
“Lawrence was so young, I didn’t think it could really be it. I didn’t even know if I believed in it. So I fucked around. I felt terrible about it, of course, and the whole thing was over quickly, but I never told him. So.”
“So? So? So you never plan on telling your husband that you had sex with someone else? What the fuck, Charlie?” Franny crossed her arms over her chest, which had a lesser effect than it might have, due to her nakedness, and that she slipped a bit into the tub, and had to pull herself back upright.
“No,” Charles said. “And I’m not telling you because I think that what Jim did wasn’t awful, because it was. I’m just telling you because you asked. I wouldn’t want to know. And if he did, and I found out, I would probably forgive him.”
Franny rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously you would, now.” The water in the tub had cooled, and she turned the hot water back on, refilling the room with a warm steam.
“Even if I hadn’t, Fran, that’s the truth. Marriage is hard. Relationships are hard. You know that I’m on your side, whatever your side is, but that’s the truth. We’ve all done things.”
“That is bullshit. Yes, we’ve all done things. I’ve done things like put on thirty pounds. He’s done things like put his penis inside a twenty-three-year-old. Don’t you think one of those is significantly worse?” Franny stood up, her body dripping, and grabbed a towel. She stayed put, the now dingy water sloshing against her calves.
“I am on your side, sweetie,” Charles repeated. He walked over to the side of the tub and put his hand out, which Franny accepted, stepping over the lip like Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra, her chin lifted from her shoulders, her dark hair wet against her neck.
“Well,” she said, once she was safely on dry land. “Secrets are no fun for anyone. Keep that in mind.” She kissed him on the cheek and padded into the bedroom, listening for the sounds of snoring coming from all the other rooms.
Day Seven
WAITING FOR A BABY WAS LIKE WAITING FOR A HEART attack—at a certain point, you had to just surrender and make other plans, not knowing if you’d have to cancel. Charles and Lawrence had taken a trip to Japan the previous year but had put off Paris when it seemed—for no real reason, Lawrence had just had a feeling—that they might be chosen. They had spent holidays at home alone, their anxiety too toxic to make small talk. The hoops prospective adoptive parents had to jump through were legion: writing letters, making websites, culling flattering family photographs without any wineglasses in them. The goal was to make your family sound stable and appealing, to have the birth mother imagine her child having a better life in your arms. Gay men were attractive options, Charles was surprised to learn, in part because there would never be any competition as to who the child’s real mother was. They’d never actually been chosen before, though, and this time the waiting had taken on a surreal quality, like being told that you were going to win the lottery, maybe, just hang on for a week and see if the numbers actually match.
It had been Lawrence’s plan from the beginning, and after they were married, there was no stopping him. Charles, on the other hand, had never truly visualized himself with a baby. He had Bobby and Sylvia, after all, and other friends had pipsqueaks for whom he could buy expensive, dry-clean-only clothes and other impractical gifts. Wasn’t that one of the perks of being homosexual, being able to adore children and then hand them back to their parents? Lawrence didn’t see it that way. Some of their friends had gone through lawyers, which were more expensive but also more private. Lawrence said they’d try that, too, if the agency didn’t work. They went to informational meetings at Hockney, at Price-Warner, everywhere gay couples were welcome. They sat in brightly colored waiting rooms as quiet as an oncology ward, trying not to make eye contact with the other hopeful couples in the room. Charles was surprised that the carpet wasn’t polka-dotted with holes burned by a thousand downcast stares. There were no balloons or cheery smiles in the waiting rooms, only in the glossy brochures.
Now the best they could do was keep themselves busy. Lawrence wished for a Rubik’s Cube, or knitting needles, not that he knew how to use either. Mallorca would have to suffice. It was a hot day, and Bobby and Carmen and Franny seemed happy enough to stay in the pool. Jim read a novel in the shade. Lawrence couldn’t take another whole day of nothing, and the Miró museum was nearby, a fifteen-minute drive down the mountain. They took Sylvia and went.
The museum itself wasn’t remarkable—a few large, cool rooms, and Miró’s playful paintings and drawings on the walls. One room had an exhibition of other Spanish artists, and they walked through quickly, pausing here and there. Lawrence liked one painting of Miró’s—oil and charcoal on canvas, large and beige, with one red spot in the middle—that looked like a giant swollen breast. Charles took his time in the last room, and Lawrence and Sylvia waited for him outside.