“I do love you, you know,” she said, looking up at him.
“I love you too,” he said, and this was easier, because it was true.
“ ’Night.” She pecked him on the lips, rolled over, and reached out to switch off her bedside light.
Daniel felt relief wash over him.
“ ’Night,” he said, and went back to his book.
No one sleeps together anymore, Bee told herself, when she was forced to think about it. On the days when she and her friends got together for coffee, or lunch, or had play dates with the kids, if ever the subject of sex came up, all of them would laugh and say, “Sex? Who has time for sex? Who even wants to have sex anymore?”
They would joke that they were running out of excuses to give their husbands, that the headache excuse was far too old and boring, and that they were constantly having to come up with new ones.
“My husband thinks my period lasts two weeks of every month,” Jenny had said recently with a grin and they had all roared with laughter.
“After I had my second baby I told my husband my gynecologist had advised me not to have sex for a year,” said someone else. “And he believed me!”
Maybe she wouldn’t want sex, Bee thought, if Daniel wanted it all the time. Maybe the only reason she misses it so much, misses the intimacy, the warmth, the closeness, is because he refuses. Isn’t it human nature to always want what we cannot have?
No one is having sex, she tells herself when nagging doubts, horrible thoughts that she refuses to permit, try to make their way into her head. We have young children, we are exhausted, all we want to do when we climb into bed is sleep.
And she tries very hard not to think about the fact that it is Daniel’s refusal, not hers. The one time she contributed to one of those joking conversations, she realized it wasn’t normal.
“I know!” she’d added. “Daniel does this thing where he’ll stay in the shower until he thinks I’m asleep so he doesn’t have to have sex with me!” And she’d looked around for laughter, and seen only sympathy and slight embarrassment.
She didn’t bring it up again.
“I think you have to spend some to make some,” Sarah tells Nan, standing over the large cardboard box and cutting it open to reveal packages of crisp white sheets. “And it really wasn’t expensive, ” she adds. “All things considered. And you didn’t have enough sheets for the bedrooms you want to rent, so we had to do it. Oh, they had a special on towels too, so I ordered four sets of white towels.”
“You think of everything,” Nan says with a smile, ripping open the packaging and cooing over the softness of the towels. “And while Andrew Moseley would probably have a heart attack, I couldn’t agree more. We can’t have our tenants sleeping on anything other than the best.”
“Speaking of tenants, I think we’re nearly ready to post our ad.”
“Oh I’m so pleased!” Nan claps her hands together. “I can cycle into town later and post the ad on the message board.”
Sarah pauses. “I think we should put it online too,” she says. “On Craigslist and some of the other online boards. Those are the best ways these days.”
“I think you’re absolutely right,” Nan says. “Come upstairs and see what I did to the blue room this morning.”
Both Nan and Sarah have spent every day transforming the house. Old faded rugs have been rolled up and put in the shed, and Sarah has sanded and waxed the wooden floors of the bedrooms, as her brother Max re-grouted tiles in the bathrooms, painted walls bright white and cornflower blue.
They have shopped together online, Nan going over to Sarah’s house to access her computer, marveling at what can be found, stunned that you just point and click, and two days later magnificent things arrive on your doorstep.
They have labeled each bedroom by color. The blue room has, naturally, blue walls, pretty blue and white toile curtain panels, with matching bedspread, valance and pillow, and a jug of fresh hydrangeas on the old washstand. A blue and white checked quilt that Sarah had lying around is thrown haphazardly over the little loveseat in the bay window.
The green room is white, with a green and white vine design on the fabric of the panels and bed. A bowl of viburnum stands on the chest