know where it is. Have they got an underground bunker somewhere? Did you notice that when I asked if it was parked under cover, she sort of avoided answering the question?”
“Mmm,” said Jessica noncommittally.
She couldn’t bear another fight about the car, or about anything. Her stomach was still recovering from the last screaming match. Whenever they fought she got instant indigestion, and that meant that these days she nearly always had indigestion. Their arguments were like submerged rocks they kept crashing up against. They couldn’t be avoided. Wham. Wham. Wham.
She lay back on the bed and looked at the light fixture. Was that a spiderweb near the globe? This house was so old and dark and depressing. She’d been aware it was going to be a “historic” house, but she thought they might have, you know, renovated. There were cracks all over the walls, and a kind of damp smell.
She turned on her side and looked at Ben. Now he was leaning dangerously over the balcony railing, trying to see the other side of the house. He cared about that car more than he cared about her. Once, she saw him running his hand along the hood and for just a moment she’d felt envious of the car, of the way Ben was touching it so gently and sensuously, the same way he used to touch her. She was going to tell their counselor that. She’d written it down so she wouldn’t forget. She felt like it was a really profound, powerful thing to mention, quite significant and telling. It made her eyes prickle with tears when she thought of it. If the counselor ever wrote a book about her experience as a marriage counselor she would probably mention it: I once had a patient who treated his car more tenderly than he treated his wife. (No need to mention the car was a Lamborghini, otherwise all the male readers would say, “Oh, well, then.”)
She wished the “intensive couples counseling” part of this retreat would hurry up and start, but “Delilah,” their “wellness consultant,” had been annoyingly vague about when it would begin. She wondered if the counselor would ask them about their sex life, and if she (Jessica assumed she would be a she) would be able to hide her surprise when she heard they were down to having sex, like, once a week, which meant their marriage was officially in dire trouble.
Jessica didn’t know if she could talk about sex in front of the counselor anyway. The counselor might automatically assume that she was sexually unskilled or that there was something wrong with her, in a very personal, gynecological kind of way. Jessica was beginning to wonder that herself.
She was obviously prepared to get more surgery (even down there) or do a course. Read a book. Improve her skills. She’d always been prepared to improve, to listen to the advice of experts. She read a lot of self-help books. She Googled. Ben had never read a self-help book in his life.
Ben came back inside from the balcony, lifting up his T-shirt to scratch his stomach. He didn’t bother with crunches or planks and his stomach still looked that good.
“That author we met is in the room next to us,” he said. He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl and tossed it from hand to hand like a baseball. “Frances. Why do you reckon she’s here?”
“I expect she wants to lose weight,” said Jessica. Like, duh. She thought it was kind of obvious. Frances had that padded look middle-aged women got. Jessica herself would never allow that to happen. She’d rather be dead.
“You reckon?” said Ben. “What does it matter at her age?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What are her books like?”
“I used to love them,” said Jessica. “I read them all. There was one called Nathaniel’s Kiss. I read it in high school and it was just really … romantic, I guess.”
“Romantic” was too ineffectual a word to describe the feelings Nathaniel’s Kiss had provoked in her. She remembered how she’d cried big heaving shuddering sobs, and then she’d kept rereading that last chapter for the pleasure of more crying. In some ways, it felt like Nathaniel was the first man she ever loved.
She couldn’t tell Ben that. He never read fiction. He wouldn’t understand.
But was that one of the problems in their marriage? That she didn’t even bother to try to communicate how she felt about things that were important to her? Or