Free Outtakes from a Marriage by Ann Leary Page B

replied, “Mom! What are you talking about?” Then she muttered, “Psycho!” and stomped off to her room.
    I tried to shrug off Ruby’s diagnosis, but the image of those monkeys stayed with me for the rest of the evening. I decided I would do something constructive in the kitchen and began searching the refrigerator for food that had passed its sell-by date, but all the while I thought of the monkeys’ hollowed eyes, glazed and vacant from hours of television viewing, their parched, swollen tongues pressing against their yellowing teeth, their fur falling out in clumps as they pulled the lever over and over again. Just to watch that celebrity monkey. And watch him doing what? Preening? Racing about on toes and knuckles? Self-grooming?
    And then I wondered about the famous monkey’s mate. Did she choose him when he was just an ordinary chimp, before he became famous, when nobody wanted to watch him, much less mate with him? Did she desire him just because she loved his smell or his gait or the way he gazed at her, or did she throw herself at him later, after he was already better than juice—just to bask in his reflected glow?

[ seven ]
    H
i, Julia! It’s Alison! I feel like we haven’t spoken in ages. Jules, where the hell have you been? Why do I get the feeling you’re there and just not picking up? Hmm…Okay, well, just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing. Not much going on here. Call me when you get this—don’t worry about the time difference, I wake up early. Julia? Oh, I thought I heard somebody pick up. Okay. Just checking in. Let’s catch up. Call me! Bye!”
    Beth had told Alison.
    I feel like we haven’t spoken in ages
. Right. I talk to Alison on the phone every other day. She was feeling left out.
    Beth had told, that lying bitch. I knew she was going to tell. I knew it because I probably would have done the same thing—in fact, I have, many times. The friendship that had existed among the three of us since we shared an apartment in college was basically a twisted triangle of deceit. When Beth told me about Walt’s gender ID issues, for example, I promised—swore—not to tell Alison. Less than an hour later, I was talking to Alison about something completely unrelated when she said, “Something’s wrong with Beth. I sense it.”
    Blown away by Alison’s almost mystical intuitive powers, I allowed as to how Beth might be going through a difficult time.
    “Is it Walt?” she pressed.
    “I don’t think so,” I replied.
    “Walt’s a child,” Alison said, and I concurred, and before I knew it, I had spilled the beans about the panties and the shoes and everything. If it had been something else—a health issue or something—I’m sure I could have kept it to myself, but Alison and I always secretly felt that Beth’s decision to marry Walt was a serious betrayal. She knew we weren’t fond of him—couldn’t stand him, honestly—and it seemed selfish of Beth to go ahead and marry him anyway. I knew that Alison and Beth both felt the same way about my marrying Joe, and for that matter, Beth and I had always wondered why Alison had tied herself down with creepy Richard—we didn’t care how much he made in his mysterious real-estate ventures. Our standards for one another seemed to be higher than our standards for ourselves, and we each thought that the others had settled for illegitimate, undeserving mates, which is why we felt entitled to speak disparagingly about them with one another.
    I had no intention of calling Alison back that morning. I had just sent Ruby and Sammy off to school and Joe was in the shower. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table with the telephone. I dialed Joe’s phone number, tapped in his code, and waited.
    The first two messages were show related: an urgent plea from the wardrobe manager to return a belt and the second AD calling to announce a delayed call time.
Too bad Joe didn’t listen to his messages before he took his