Love May Fail Page 2

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” says Khaleesi, covering her perfect vanilla-ice-cream-cone breasts with one of my Calvin Klein decorative throw pillows.

  I can’t stop laughing.

  “What are you doing in the closet?” Ken asks. “I thought you were going to visit your—Listen.” He’s holding his palms in the air, and his fingers are spread wide. “I can explain. Really, I can. We can work our way through this, Portia. Trust me. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Hilarious!

  “Why are you laughing like that?” Ken says. “Are you okay?”

  Khaleesi says, “I better go.”

  “No, no, no, sweetie. Stay. Please. I insist. My husband hasn’t even made you come yet,” I say. “I’m leaving anyway. So make yourself at home. You can fuck Ken as many times as you like. If he can get it up again, that is. But spoiler alert! It doesn’t get any better than what you’ve already experienced.”

  I laugh so hard tears spill from my eyes as I stand and exit the closet.

  I start stuffing underwear and bras into my Michael Kors weekend bag.

  Naked Ken watches me with his mouth hanging open, like I have just invented fire.

  I shake my head.

  Fucking caveman.

  How did this happen to me?

  “Portia,” he says. “Portia, come on. Where are you going?”

  “E.T. phone home,” I say, using the E.T. voice, and then laugh until I cough and gag.

  “Portia,” Ken says. “You’re scaring me. Are you okay?”

  I stop packing and look him dead in the eyes. “I’ve never been better in my entire life, Ken. Thank you. Seriously. Thank you so much for being this awful. I might have stayed if you were even a tiny bit more human. But you’ve spared me from all that. My hero. Thank you. Thank you one million times.”

  I decide to pull a suitcase from the walk-in and pack enough for a few weeks.

  “Do you need any help?” Khaleesi asks, the sweetheart. And I realize that she is even dumber than she looks. I actually start to like her. Maybe I pity her, to be more precise. I imagine saving her from Ken and becoming her mentor. We could join some sort of group for women addicted to horrible men.

  ABMAA.

  Asshole Boy-Men Addicts Anonymous.

  Forgive her, universe, for the little bimbo knows not whom she screws.

  “No, just stay where you are,” I tell Khaleesi. “I’ll be gone soon. You can listen to Ken snore and then wake up for his postsex shit. No courtesy flush. He won’t even bother to shut the door. He’s a national treasure, let me tell you.”

  “Portia,” Ken says. “Can’t we just talk about this for a minute? That’s the whole problem. We never even talk anymore!”

  I laugh again, but this time it’s only a snicker.

  “It’s been fun, Ken,” I say, and then stick out my hand like we just finished a grueling ten-year tennis match.

  “Portia, admit it,” Ken says, completely naked, gesturing with his open palms extended. His little Khaleesi-coated wang has shrunk like a turtlehead into a graying shell of pubic hair. You’d think he’d man-scape before dating teenagers. He says, “Things haven’t been right for a long time now, and I have needs. You haven’t, well, I’m only—”

  “That’s true,” I say, cutting him off before he can say it’s my fault. That I should have fucked him more. That I’m inferior. Not what he bargained for all those years ago. That I dared to age and no longer have the body and sex drive of an eighteen-year-old girl, that I want something more substantial and meaningful than his playboy lifestyle, and should be ashamed even though I haven’t been eighteen for more than two decades and was long past my teen years when we met. I pull my hand back. “Correct.”

  “I’ll take care of you, moneywise. Don’t worry. You know I’m not a bad guy like that.”

  “I’m not a whore, Ken. Thank you very much.”

  “So you’re not mad at me? We’re still pals.”

  Pals.

  Unbelievable.

  After watching him fuck a teenager, I’m supposed to tend to his fragile emotions.

  I look at Khaleesi, who has the covers pulled up to her nose, hiding. She’s watching us with wide-eyed Kewpie-doll interest, like we’re some live soap opera.

  The Middle-Aged and the Pathetic.

  The Betrayal of our Guys.

  Portia Kane Is An Aging Fucking Idiot.

  “I’m actually happy, Ken. For the first time in years. I’m happy. Fuck you for cheating on me. Again. But thank you too.” I wave to Khaleesi and say, “Thanks and fuck you, as well.”

  She nods, but looks confused.

  “E.T. phone home,” I say once more, using the voice, pointing my index finger at Ken’s nose.

  He squints at me, cocks his head to the side. “You weren’t really going to shoot me, were you, baby? Not after all we’ve been through. We’ve had some good times together. You and me. We’ll always love each other deep down. Admit it. Right?”

  I actually believe he cares about the answer—that it’s important for him to think I still love him in some sort of dependent, subservient-daughter way, and always will.

  Forever.

  He wants to be my emotional pimp—the owner of my heart.

  I decide to kill his memory, no matter how long it takes.

  Obliterate Ken Humes.

  Delete him.

  Recover from a decade of dependency.

  I deserve better.

  And better shouldn’t be all that hard to get when you’ve started at the absolute bottom of all men.

  “Good-bye, Ken.” I slap his little dank pecker and testicles hard with the bone of my open palm. “Low-five.”

  He doubles over and calls me a fucking bitch before dropping to his knees.

  I think I hear Khaleesi squeal with fake delight, like she’s suddenly riding on the back of a jet ski, her naked arms around the sculpted abs of an NFL player—an image I’ve actually seen on a TV commercial for a best-selling brand of underarm deodorant.

  This is the world we live in.

  Khaleesi’s playing her role again.

  Girls like this really exist, I think. They really do. Men like Ken can’t get enough of the facade. And I’ve played this game for too long.

  “Fuck this life,” I say. “Fuck it. Fuck you, Ken Humes. Fuck everything!”

  And then I’m gone.

  CHAPTER 2

  “I shouldn’t have dropped out of college,” I say to my regular driver, Alfonzo. I’m in the backseat of the town car. I’m sipping directly from a little one-serving bottle of Riesling. He’s in his standard black suit and skinny tie, gripping the wheel with his smooth and steady almond-colored hands, acting statue-stoic as always. “Do you know how hard it is for a woman without a college degree to support herself?”

  “I don’t know anything about college. And I know even less about women, Ms. Kane,” Alfonzo says, keeping his eyes on the road. “I stick to driving.”

  I guzzle the rest of my tiny bottle. “I couldn’t keep my grade point average high enough to maintain my scholarship. I had a four-point-oh in my literature and writing classes, but the stupid other required classes outside my major—I mean, why did I need to take chemistry again in college? Memorize the periodic table? I’d rather carve out my right eyeball with a box cutter. I wanted to be a writer, not a scientist. And they were going to kick me out. Me! I was hovering around a three-point-three average while working twenty hours a week at the food court too—mopping floors, frying food, creepy twice-my-age janitor Old Man Victor constantly hitting on me, saying perverted things like ‘I have a leather couch that feels good on the skin.’ I was overcoming so many obstacles, and yet I was the one on academic probation! Why are some people drivers and some people passengers in the town car of life, Alfonzo? Have you solved
that riddle?”

  “No,” Alfonzo says. “I have not.”

  “My freshman roommate was a passenger. She had something like a two-point-five GPA, but it didn’t matter because her daddy was a lawyer who could pay for her ride. Oh, how I hated Casey Raymond! Designer clothes. Expensive makeup. You’ve driven her type a million times. It took her ninety minutes to get ready in the morning. Our dorm room became a beauty salon every time the sun rose. She even had a car. At eighteen! A brand-new Volvo! Can you imagine, Alfonzo?”

  Alfonzo doesn’t respond, but the alcohol coursing through my veins keeps me talking.

  “College was just one big sorority party for her. She exploded with fun, fun, fun every time a guy hit on her. All while I was forgoing sleep to study and then nervous puking before every midterm and final. Smoking Camels like a fiend. Mainlining coffee. Anxiety like a giant fist shoved down my throat while I bit hard on its elbow to fight the pain. I had no support system. None. And I know you know what I’m talking about. The inequity. I see it in your eyes, Alfonzo. You and me are cut from the same cloth.”

  Alfonzo and I lock gazes in the rearview mirror for a second.

  I can’t tell if he’s wearing too much aftershave or if I’m sweating alcohol.

  “So I left before they could kick me out. Because fuck them, right? Just walked off campus with my suitcase and took a bus home. Didn’t even tell them I was leaving. I don’t know, maybe I had a breakdown. Maybe I’m having a breakdown now too. But it was a mistake. I see that now. I needed college, whereas Casey Raymond was going to be okay no matter what she did or didn’t do, because her daddy was her Ken Humes. She was a born passenger. Or ‘a client,’ as you like to say into your little phone. The client is aboard.”

  “I don’t think I should be hearing all this, Ms. Kane,” Alfonzo says. “I’m just your driver.”

  I backhand the air between us. “Everyone knows that Ken has a sex addiction problem. He’d screw the hole out of a doughnut. He just can’t help himself. And I was such a good little pretender. For an entire decade. I just wanted a nice life for myself. I wanted nice things. Who doesn’t want nice things? And nice things made life okay for a time. Especially after years of waitressing long shifts at the Olive Garden until my spinal cord and all the bones in my feet exploded. Endless salad bowls. Oh, endless salad bowls! If I ever see another garlic breadstick, I’ll stab myself in the heart with a screwdriver.”

  “Ms. Kane, are you okay?”

  We’re passing a line of palm trees now, and their symmetry is frightening, juxtaposed to my mental state. Finally I say, “You can wash away a lot of life’s pain with money. You can hide from the past with money too. You can quit the Olive Garden. And it cures backaches. You should see the Jacuzzi in our en-suite. It makes your voice echo when it’s empty. That tub alone was worth it at first.”

  “Maybe I should turn the car around and take you home.”

  “Even our marriage counselor liked Ken better than me. She always took Ken’s side. Even about the possibility of an open marriage. AN OPEN FUCKING MARRIAGE! Do you know why?”

  “Ms. Kane, you’re yelling, and—”

  “HE PAID FOR THE THERAPY! Everyone likes the man who’s paying. That’s just the way it goes.”

  “Ms. Kane, this isn’t—”

  “Ms. Kane. That’s right. I didn’t take Ken’s last name. Because I’m the sexist pornographer’s feminist wife! Isn’t that just hilarious?” I laugh until I begin coughing. “I mean, there is porn made for women and sometimes by women—feminist porn where we aren’t objectified and are actually in control—but my husband doesn’t make that kind because he believes there’s no money in it, or at least not enough. Don’t you think I tried to get him to make feminist pornography? I even talked to his actresses once, telling them they should unionize maybe, which pissed Ken off mightily and accomplished absolutely nothing. They laughed at me. It’s like some women actually want to be oppressed, right?” I’m starting to sense that Alfonzo is uncomfortable. He’s rolling the back of his head against the headrest, so I say, “All right. The speech and the pity party are over. I’ll just shut up back here.”

  Alfonzo doesn’t say anything else.

  Here’s the truth, dear reader: it wasn’t really Ken’s affair with his latest teenage lover that destroyed me, but a simple offhand comment he made a little more than a year ago.

  I don’t remember why I started, but I’d been writing some fiction again, like I used to in high school. At first it was just a hobby. Something to pass the time while Ken was off doing whatever. But then I started to really feel something. I produced a few raw personal pieces about my mother that seemed to have promise. So I began wondering if I might have a shot at publishing someday. Of course, I didn’t share any of this with Ken at first, but over dinner one night at our favorite restaurant, while I was feeling champagne hopeful, I casually mentioned that I had been writing and that maybe publishing a novel was a life goal of mine—something I had secretly wanted since I was in my favorite high school English teacher’s class. As I spoke, I could hear the excitement reverberating in my words and I felt myself becoming vulnerable—as if I was letting Ken see the real naked me for the first time.

  When I finished, Ken smirked, stared down at his meal, and said, “Go for it, baby.”

  “Why did you just smirk?” I said.

  “I didn’t smirk,” he said.

  “You did so. Why?”

  “You should do it. Write your little book.”

  “Little? What the fuck is that, Ken?”

  “I don’t know, Portia.” He smirked again, looking at me now. “Sometimes you just have to know who you are.”

  “And who am I exactly?”

  “You’re my wife,” he said, pinning me down with each syllable.

  “So your wife can’t publish a novel someday?”

  “You didn’t exactly grow up among novel-writing people, did you? And you’re not exactly among those types now.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You didn’t even graduate from college, Portia,” Ken said as he knifed his way through his chicken cordon bleu. “You and me aren’t exactly the book-writing types, am I wrong? I don’t want to see you get your hopes up for something that’s never going to happen. That’s all. I know how emotional you get. Anyway, you’re much too pretty to be a novelist.”

  I hate you, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

  It was our wedding anniversary, after all.

  I even let him fuck me later that night the way he likes and I hate—from behind.

  Hooray for feminism!

  He’d belittled me so many times before, but for some reason on this night, as he got off inside me, something shifted.

  The best part of me knew I had to escape Ken right then and there—that it wouldn’t get better, that he was slowly killing everything good inside of me—but it took a while to find the courage to give up financial security and make a break for it. Especially since Ken had me sign an airtight prenuptial agreement before we were married, so leaving him meant an immediate and most likely permanent decline in social status.

  Why did I make a break tonight?

  Why does a rotten tree branch come crashing down to earth one day?

  Everything has its breaking point—even women.

  And I’m courageously drunk too.

  “I don’t think Maya Angelou ever earned a college degree,” I say as Alfonzo pulls up to the US Airways terminal. “But I read somewhere that she has more than fifty honorary doctorate degrees. Fifty.”

  Alfonzo shifts into park and turns around to face me. “Are you okay, Ms. Kane?”

  “What?” I say, blinking repetitively for some reason.

  “I couldn’t help noticing that you’ve been crying pretty hard the whole ride. You’re still crying right now. I kno
w it’s not my business, but this just doesn’t seem right to me, Ms. Kane.”

  I look out the window at the cars and taxis pulling away from the curb. “Well, nothing worth doing is painless.”

  He reaches back to hand me a few tissues, and when I take them, he says, “Are you sure you want me to leave you like this?”

  I dab my eyes and say, “Do you know what happens when you do nothing? Nothing. My high school English teacher said that to me a long time ago. And he was right.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Next thing I know, I’m on a plane.

  I stumble my way to the last row.

  A tiny wrinkly woman is already seated in the window seat. She’s dressed in a nun’s habit. She even has her head covered, which makes her look absolutely adorable.

  Present-day Sally Field reprising her Flying Nun role—only this time she’s old and wrinkly (and cute!) as a shar-pei.

  Her spine is curved so that the middle of her back is touching the cushion, but there is a good five inches between the headrest and her shoulders.

  She resembles the letter C.

  When I sit down, the old woman says, “Hello, I’m Maeve. How are you doing tonight?”

  It’s almost like she’s the hostess of our row.

  I sit.

  I buckle myself in, which proves a bit hard after the two blue martinis—which looked like Windex but tasted like Kool-Aid—I had at the airport bar.

  I turn, look into her old eyes, and say, “Sister, I’m glad you asked, because I’m not doing all that well, honestly. And I could talk. Yes, I can. Talk all the way to Philadelphia. Because I’m in trouble. Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P and that stands for Portia. My name. My curse-id stupid name.”

  I offer my hand, and she shakes it with her eyebrows lifted.

  Her hand feels like a branch ripped from a small tree, left to dry for many years, and then stuck inside a surgical glove.

  If I squeeze hard, everything will snap.

  Even though I’m drunk, I handle with care.

  And then I start to cry again, because I have enough alcohol in me to fuel a small dump truck.