Outtakes from a Marriage Read Free

when to use each child’s name, so I used 7829 for everything. I typed it in as my code when Joe’s assistant, Catherine, gave me my new cell phone, and apparently that’s what Joe typed into his phone, too.
    I borrowed Karen’s phone again before we left the restaurant. I went to the ladies’ room and I dialed Joe’s number. I held on to the sink, punched in 7829, and there she was.
    “Hi, babe, thanks for the message. I can’t believe you had to ask if I’m happy, baby, you know I am….”
    Half an hour later, I stood in our kitchen, in the dark. Joe was taking a shower and I tapped out the code one more time.
    7829.
    My thumb knew exactly where the numbers were. I didn’t have to look.
    “I’m horny as a motherfucker…. I just thought you should know that, baby.”
    That lilting, sultry voice. Southern, that’s for sure. And the mouth on her.
    Then, the crisp, automated female voice. My familiar Nextel friend:
“To repeat this message, press eleven.”
    11.
    “Hi, babe, thanks for the message. I can’t believe you had to ask if I’m happy, baby, you know I am….”
    “Julia,” Joe called from the bedroom, “are you coming to bed or what?”
    “Shhh! Joe! You’ll wake the kids! I’ll be there in a minute.”
    “To repeat this message, press eleven.”
11.
    “Hi, babe, thanks for the message. I can’t believe you had to ask if I’m happy, baby, you know I am….”
    It was 1:33. The digits on the microwave clock emitted a miniature aura—a pale emerald haze that seemed to hang in the air in the dark. The refrigerator hummed lazily and every few seconds the freezer tumbled ice. From the street below came the sound of two raised voices, one singing in a hollow, drunken tone, the other inexplicably yelling, “Hey!…Hey!”
    “I’m horny as a motherfucker….”
said the voice in my ear.
    “Hey!” cried the voice from the street. “HEY!”
             
    The Golden Globe nominations had been announced live, on national television, two weeks before our dinner with the Metzgers. The announcement was scheduled for eight-thirty, during the morning news shows, which was the same time that our son, Sammy, was supposed to be at preschool. It was the last day of school before the holidays, and at first I had considered sending Sammy to school with Catalina. Then I decided to take him myself—I wanted to be distracted from the excruciating suspense of it all. This wasn’t the first time there was a lot of hype surrounding Joe and his show. The year before, I woke up early and waited three hours for the announcements. All the critics had insisted that Joe deserved it, that he was guaranteed a nomination. Although Joe went off to the gym, so as not to “jinx” himself, I had watched the morning news with a sense of impending glory, the phone on my lap, ready to dial Joe the second his name was called out. I watched the new 007 guy and America’s Sweetheart read off the list of nominees, and when they skipped Joe altogether, I honestly thought they had made a mistake. I sat there and watched for several minutes before the network switched back to the regular broadcast and then I made the unhappy call to Joe, but he already knew. He had been running in front of the TV. I imagined his shoulders sagging with disappointment and his feet slowing down on the rushing treadmill when they announced the other nominees, and I wondered if he was carried backward, just for a moment, before he was able to regain his stride. A week later, on Christmas morning, Ruby presented Joe with a Golden Globe award she had made out of papiermâché, carefully replicating the trophy from a photo she found on Wikipedia. She had painted a bronze-colored plaque on the Styrofoam base and etched in the words “Best Performer in the Role of Father.” Joe had displayed it proudly on a bookshelf, where it remained for several months, but at some point it ended up in a toy box (four-year-old Sammy sometimes used it as a