Chapter 2

I’m zipping back to Clay Elementary now. The pitch was a big hit—everyone loved the plans we’d put together, the booth design, the swag, the interactives and collateral and press releases. Tedious stuff that’s really just a waste of my talents, to be honest. But when I do a thing, I do it well. Also Bryan was gallant, highlighting my contributions and making sure I got more than my share of the credit.

It was tough to escape afterwards, though, so now I’m running late again. Like a dolt I signed up to coordinate the Reading Rulez!™ enrichment program at school. The volunteer-readers are scheduled to come in Monday morning, so I need to get everything set up today. Otherwise, our Ferdinand-the-Bulls will get muddled with our Fourth-Grade-Nothings and there will be hell to pay.

My mind drifts back toward Mike again as I rattle through suburbia, trying to channel the positive vibes I brought from the meeting into tender feelings for him. Although there are moments like this morning when my husband can be frustratingly tone-deaf, it’s not really fair to blame him for all the patriarchal dysfunctions of our society, nor for the impossible tradeoffs that capitalism seems to demand (from everyone, but especially mothers).

Fatherhood has been a lot for him to process too, and he’s been good at it, all things considered. Once work is over, he’s mostly there with us, and takes on his quota of the bathtimes and read-alouds and temper-tantrums without complaint. Plenty of dads around here can’t be bothered with that stuff.

One thing I know has been especially rough for Mike since we had kids is the feeling that I’m less there for him, physically. When it comes to relationships and intimacy, we were pretty much each-other’s ‘firsts’ for everything. Partly this was a function of having rather straight-laced upbringings, partly due to being natural introverts, but also just because we paired off so young. We met during our senior year in college, got engaged within a few months, and married right after graduation. It hadn’t been my plan, and I don’t think it was his either, but we just sort of fell into it.

At a nuts-and-bolts level, inexperience didn’t pose any major problems for us. We had a few false starts, but soon reached the point where intercourse was consistently good. Nevertheless, in retrospect, I’m not sure coupling so early was great for either of us, and Mike in particular. To leap straight from total inexperience to having me all to himself, it seemed to jumble up self-worth and intimacy and sex in his mind to an unhealthy degree. Like, to the point where he gauged my feelings for him solely through that lens—only experiencing validation and love when we were fucking.

That was certainly never ideal. However, we were both still in our early-20s, and my sex drive was vigorous enough to provide him with fresh jolts of such gratification on a frequent basis. The whole thing appeared basically manageable.

And then, we had kids.

Pregnancy was a bitch for me both times—nauseating, swollen-up, profoundly unerotic. After that came the fatigue and stress and neediness of two infants in close succession. Honestly, years went by when I just didn’t have sex in me, and I found myself turning down Mike’s overtures, again and again. He was nice about it, superficially, but gradually he gave up trying to initiate, and I could see how strained and bitter it made him on the inside, eating away at our closeness like a slow poison.

I wanted to respond, wanted to be there for him. But as long as I was still dealing with kids at home all day, it took a supreme effort of will to gear up for intimacy, and I rarely managed it. I’m not sure we quite reached the clinical definition of a ‘sexless marriage,’ but matters languished in that general vicinity for a long time. It didn’t mean I loved Mike any less, only that I had very little to give in that particular regard. But I could tell that he took it as a reflection on himself, both as a lover and as an all-around person.

Fortunately, over the last year, with Jemma finally off to kindergarten and boosted by the energy of restarting my career, my libido has been on the uptick. I’m experiencing the itch again—feeling like sex could be better than ever, in fact, now that I’m more mature and in touch with my femininity. Plus, I’m definitely guilty about our long dry spell. I want to be more giving with Mike, and to make up for lost time.

I’ve even been taking active steps to try and rekindle the sparks—scheduling sitters, making reservations for candlelight dinners, buying lingerie, that sort of thing. Yet, vexingly, perplexingly, those sparks have mostly fizzled. I expected Mike would be thrilled that I was feeling up to it again. Expected him to be off-the-charts eager with pent up lust, to be honest. But instead, his response has been oddly stand-offish and sullen. The few times we have had sex, the encounter has been more awkward than ecstatic, more frustrating than fulfilling. In truth, I’m been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what’s up with him.

That’s why I’m so determined for tonight to go well. I’ve pulled out all the stops—arranging for the kids to stay over with Gramma and Grampa, and booking a fancy suite downtown. I only hope it’s the medicine we need to finally get unstuck.

There’s a workroom (read: glorified closet) set aside for PTA volunteers across from the school library, and for a while I have it to myself. Moving efficiently, I decant the books from the cardboard boxes where they were chucked willy-nilly at the end of last school year, organizing them into separate stacks for each teacher according to the class lists I was given.

I’m nearly done when Peggy comes bustling in. Her arms are full of tambourines destined for the ‘rhythm and motion’ cupboard. Once these are safely stowed, she glides over and shoots me one of her patented shiny plastic smiles. “Jessie, I’m so glad I caught you. Did you hear, there’s an opening on the PTA council next year. Hai-Lin’s youngest is off to middle school so she’s aging out. We can count on you, right?”

Margaret “Peggy” Archer is the president of Clay PTA—a statement which should be understood as an eternal, timeless truth, much as we might say the Earth orbits the Sun. She’s also queen bee of the ‘good mom’ set. This is a rarified clique which deigns to admit lowly me to its outer fringes; so that although I don’t really have the time and energy demanded by performative motherhood, I strive valiantly to pretend I belong. Hence my dalliance with Reading Rulez!™.