Second Chance. Elizabeth Wrenn

married.’

      ‘I had it on the other night, you know,’ I muttered, too low for him to hear in the bathroom, as I spread the dress out on the bed. It was somehow even less stylish than it had been six nights ago.

      I sighed. I didn’t want to go to this soiree at all; it wouldn’t matter if I was unhappily there in a pants outfit or unhappily there in a dress. ‘I tried to call Sam again today,’ I said, staring at my foot. I was sitting with my ankle on my knee, still with only my toe in the hose, waiting for the motivation to pull them up.

      ‘Diddah you yust caw heh a cuppa day ago?’ he said, sounding like an old man who’d removed his false teeth as he contorted his face to shave under his nose.

      ‘Yes, but I didn’t talk to him. I never talk to him, I just leave messages.’

      A little laugh from the bathroom, accompanied by his razor swishing in a sink full of water.

      ‘Aw, Dee. He’s just busy, having fun. You remember college, don’t you? It’s a whole new life for him. We’re not his life anymore. We’ve got to accept that.’ Meaning I had to accept that. Neil seemed to be fine with the fact that we’d gone from three kids to two, and that the two would also soon disappear from our lives.

      Slowly, morosely, I pulled the leg of the hose up over my ankle, then calf. I stopped, just above the knee, wondering if there was an expiration date on panty hose. The nylon felt more granular and restrictive than I remembered. I gazed down at the box on the bed. No ‘use by’ date. It should at least give a use by weight. Which, come to think of it, it did on the chart on the back. I flipped the box over to the height and weight chart; I was precariously close to the outer limit. Darn near expired.

      I pulled the hose up over my knee. I wondered if the fabric got unstretchable with age. There just simply did not seem to be enough material here, considering how far I had yet to go. I gathered up the other leg, slipped my foot into the suntan donut, then slowly pulled that side thigh-high. I put my stockinged feet on the carpet and stood. I tugged on the right, then the left, then the right, all while swinging my butt hither and yon trying to stretch a couple feet of fabric up on to an acre of hips. I took a breather and caught my hunched-over reflection in my dresser mirror, my pale flesh bulging out in more than the usual spots. There was the familiar boobies-in-the-back bra bulge, the see-I-have-two-waists! panty bulge, and now I had added the glorious bisected-saddlebag thigh bulge. Worse, it was not only me staring at my bulginess. There in the mirror, staring at my reflection, was Neil’s reflection. He was leaning on the doorframe of the walk-in closet, mostly dressed now, a twinkle in his eye.

      ‘What d’ya say we show up fashionably late to this thing, Dee?’ he said suggestively.

      Oh. My. God. If he could get turned on by this, a bent-over, middle-aged manatee-shaped woman wrestling her way into a garden hose, it was indeed Neil who needed some hormone therapy.

      ‘Give me a break,’ I said, irritably. I stood upright, yanked on the hose, and promptly poked a fingernail through the fabric. As I watched the run cascade down the side of my leg, the tears slid down my cheeks. ‘Goddamnit! Goddamn them! Goddamn them to hell!’ I started to sob.

      ‘What’s wrong? Calm down, Deena. Who are you mad at?’

      ‘Everyone! Men. The men who made the first panty hose!’ I glared at him. ‘You know it was a man, don’t you?!’ I actually didn’t know it was a man, but I’d have bet good money on it.

      Defensively, Neil held up both palms toward me.

      ‘Well, it was a man! Goddamned men. They invented high heels, too. And girdles. And makeup.’ Again, I had no idea if this was all true, but at the moment, it felt it could be no other way. ‘All the things that tell women we’re not good enough the way we are. We need to be tanner, smoother, taller, prettier.’ Neil looked at me as if my face was familiar but he couldn’t recall my name. ‘And especially younger and thinner!’ I screamed. Whew. When the lid blows off a pressure cooker, it blows hard.

      Suddenly Neil was sitting on the bed next to me, patting my knee and talking as if I was a four-year-old. ‘Now, now, Deedle.’

      ‘Don’t patronize me.’

      ‘Who said I’m patronizing you?’

      I just stared at him. I half expected him to pull out a roll of stickers from his breast pocket and hand me one, the way he placated his youngest patients. But suddenly his expression changed, softened. Quietly, he said, ‘Do you just want to stay home?’

      Tears of relief slipped down my cheeks. ‘Oh, Neil, can we? Yes. Thank you.’ Instead of forced chitchat in tight shoes, I saw us walking around our neighborhood lake, in comfortable sneakers, and hand in hand. Like old times. Maybe I could even broach the idea of the dog thing I’d seen on TV.

      He looked sheepish, then impatient. ‘Not we, you. I have to go. I want to go. I’ve put my life into this clinic. It’s important.’

      I just looked at him. Part of me wanted to say, And your family isn’t? Yes, the past couple of years you’ve put your life into the clinic. Not your kids. Not your marriage. No wonder he seemed so unaffected by Sam’s departure, and Lainey’s and Matt’s growing independence and absences. He was able to throw himself into his work with impunity.

      Neil stood, walked to the door, put a hand on the knob, then turned toward me. He looked as handsome in his dark gray suit as I’d seen him in years. ‘What’s it going to be, Deena?’

      I stared at the blue dress, the blue tights with the shot elastic waist now my only option. We wouldn’t even look like we belonged together.

      ‘I’ll stay home with the kids.’

      ‘For God’s sake, they’re teen— They don’t need a—Oh, never mind.’ He closed his eyes, shook his head, and left.

      I sat on the bed, peeling the panty hose from my legs. I looked up to see myriad fat Deenas looking at me. The closet door mirror was angled just right to catch my reflection in the dresser mirror, making multiple mes, each disappearing into the next. I wadded my panty hose up in a ball and threw them at the mirror. But they had no substance or weight and merely arced limply for a few feet, and dropped silently to the carpet.

      When the house was still again after Neil had driven away, I came downstairs in my pruney bathrobe, walked into the kitchen, and was greeted by three unpacked lunch bags on the counter and Hairy sitting on the desk meowing for food again.

      ‘No,’ I told him. ‘You have your dry food. You only get wet food in the morning.’ His meowing ratcheted up a notch. I couldn’t stand the noise, so I gave him several Pounce treats in his bowl. As he devoured them, I began unpacking the lunch bags, pulling out dirty Tupperware containers, chip bags and largely unused napkins. As I was throwing the trash away, Matt came into the kitchen.

      ‘Hey, Mom,’ he said laconically, not looking at me, walking straight for the pantry. ‘How come you didn’t go with Dad tonight?’ He’d pulled open both pantry doors and was hanging on the handles, which I’d asked him approximately three hundred times not to do. He stared with a bored expression at the choices in front of him.

      ‘I— I’m not feeling well.’ I was struggling to open a small Tupperware container in which I’d packed Matt’s favorite homemade chocolate pudding. Lainey preferred the store-bought variety, feeling that anything else would make some sort of horrific social statement to her friends. But Matt said he preferred mine, which made me happy, although I’d evidently packed too much because he hadn’t finished it. I pulled again at the stubborn top, unable to leverage it. Just once I’d like to see a commercial not about how well a lid holds, but how the hell to get these small ones off their containers.

      Matt grabbed an opened bag of popcorn from the pantry. ‘What’s for dinner?’ he said, shoving a handful in his mouth.

      ‘Yeah, I’m hungry.’ Lainey had suddenly appeared behind me. I was sure the only reason