Free Outtakes from a Marriage by Ann Leary Page A

eyes.
    “No. We ended up wrapping early.”
    “What about that difficult stunt?” I asked, but Joe had already turned away from me and was chasing Sammy into the kitchen, with Sammy squealing excitedly and Joe roaring, “I’m gonna get you!”
    I’m gonna get you,
I thought.

[ six ]
    R hesus monkeys,
thirsty
rhesus monkeys, would rather watch a videotape of their tribe’s dominant monkey than drink their favorite sweetened juice beverage.
    Ruby presented me with this interesting kernel of information that night when she wandered into the kitchen and discovered me watching a story about Matt Damon on
Entertainment Tonight.
    It was a distraction.
    On weekday evenings, after I put Sammy to bed, it had become my habit to watch TV in the kitchen while Ruby did her homework in her room and Joe studied his next day’s lines in ours. When Ruby was little, I never watched TV in the evening because I was trying to write a children’s book.
Annie Acorn,
it was called. It was about a little acorn that wanted to be a flower but grew up to be a tree. It rhymed. There were pictures. I never really finished it. Also never finished the screenplay about the three college friends that I started and abandoned a few years back. Or the article about the politics of breast-feeding that Beth had encouraged me to write. Most recently, I had never finished an application I had requested and received from an adult literacy program. I had decided I would volunteer to teach people to read now that I had such a large part of the day with no kids around. I had started to fill out the application but had gotten hung up in the section that asked how many hours I would be able to dedicate to the program. I had meant to talk to Joe and Catalina about it—how much did they each need me? But I just hadn’t had the chance.
    Anyway, we had a large flat-screen television for our living room, but I always watched television in our kitchen, where we had a tiny set that sat on the counter under the microwave. “Why don’t you watch that on the big TV?” Joe would sometimes ask when he came into the kitchen for a snack, and I’d usually say, “Oh, I’m not really watching it. I just turned it on so that I’d have something in the background while I get some things done in here.” Then Joe would look around the kitchen, immaculate from Catalina’s after-dinner cleanup, and he’d look at me sitting there with a glass of wine in my hand and he’d say, “Oh.” This always prompted me to sputter something like, “I’m just having a quick wine break,” and it had become a little bit of a running joke. “Don’t bother Mom,” Joe would sometimes call to Ruby when she approached the kitchen, “she’s working!” and I would leap to my feet and start sorting through drawers and we’d all have a good chuckle. But that night, I’d had no warning and I was caught watching
Entertainment Tonight,
which made me a little ashamed.
    “Monkeys watch videos?” I asked Ruby, fumbling with the remote.
    “Yep. Given the choice, and two clearly defined levers, the parched monkeys will always choose to watch the activities of their star monkey.” Ruby paused behind my chair and watched as the show segued to a piece about Jessica Simpson.
    “And the male monkeys, even if they’re starving, would rather watch a video of a female monkey’s ass than eat food,” she said.
    “I was only watching because there’s supposed to be a segment about Daddy’s show,” I said, finally finding the power button and switching the TV off. “It looks like they ran out of time. Maybe it’ll be on tomorrow.”
    “On the other hand,” said Ruby, who had moved to the fridge to pour herself a glass of iced Kombucha tea, “the monkeys have to be bribed,
with extra juice,
to watch the ordinary monkeys on TV.”
    I sat for a moment after Ruby left the kitchen and then, feeling a sudden, indignant rage, called after her, “Your father is no ordinary monkey!” to which she