Second Chance. Elizabeth Wrenn

was building a school for orphans in Vietnam. Then there was a man who helped inner-city kids learn new skills and teamwork by building low-income housing. Then a husband and wife who’d adopted eleven siblings so they wouldn’t have to go to different homes. Eleven! Lord.

      I could collect backpacks and suitcases maybe.

      During the next commercial break I scurried to the kitchen and refilled my Corn Pops. This was just what I needed. Fill up the void. I was pouring on the soymilk as the Oprah theme music started in the den. The soymilk was supposed to help with the menopause symptoms, although I hadn’t seen any evidence of that yet. But it was tasty on Corn Pops. I hurried back down into the den as Oprah began speaking.

      ‘My next guest, Annie Forhooth, falls in love repeatedly, for approximately a year each time, only to bid a fond farewell to her loves, again and again. Why does she do this? To help provide loving eyes for the blind. Take a look.’

      The piece opened with an eight-week-old black Lab puppy gamboling over Annie’s lawn. I set my cereal bowl on the coffee table as Annie’s taped voice-over talked about how exciting it is to get a new puppy, to know you’re going to raise it with love and care for a special purpose, a special gift. I sat up, gripping my knees in my hands as I watched.

      The last shot of the piece was of Annie, with a blind woman, during some sort of graduation ceremony. Her voice-over said, ‘You do fall in love with the dogs, but you know from the beginning that you’re raising them so they can help someone; these dogs love to work. They love to be a part of the world. I just help them get started.’

      In the video, Annie, crying but smiling broadly, handed over the leash of a full-grown, sleek, and boxy black Lab to a blind woman, her unseeing eyes also teary, her face uplifted. Annie put the leash into her hands, their four hands clenching around it in a tight ball. The two women then hugged, laughing, crying. The dog was sandwiched between their legs, tail wagging, eyes bright.

      Sitting there wiping my own wet cheeks and eyes, I had only one thought: That’s what love looks like.

       TWO

      I was having another Art Instructor dream. I’d been having them off and on for several months now. They weren’t really erotic dreams, not in the usual sense of the word anyway. Although my definition of erotic was quickly becoming ‘any time spent alone.’ What was especially erotic, by my definition, was that Art Instructor never wanted anything from me; he only offered me things, beautiful things, to look at, to linger over. Then he’d politely disappear.

      This time, we were strolling through an orange grove. Art Instructor was tall and handsome, though far from dark – he was actually stone white. He was always naked, at least the part I saw, which was typically just his chiseled upper back. A David back, deeply muscled and perfectly symmetrical. In this dream, he reached up with his also deeply muscled arm and picked a fat, absurdly brilliant orange, the color pulsating from it. Without turning around, he handed it back to me. This is when I realized he had no hand. The orange was just kind of stuck on the end of his wrist, and its color contrasted deeply with his whiteness. Then he turned, and for the first time ever, I looked down. Between his legs. His yoohoo was broken off, too. Dream-me smiled.

      Suddenly all his detail began to fade and Art Instructor disappeared, as did as the grove. But the orange remained, and I could see each individual pockmark on it. I could even see the shadows in the tiny craters.

      That was when I felt Neil slip back into bed, his hair still wet, his body smelling of soap.

      I remembered with some dread that it was Saturday.

      It wasn’t a given, exactly, sex attempts on Saturday. But over the years it was the one day we could pretty much count on all three kids being either happily mesmerized by cartoons down in the den, at a sleep-over, or, as they grew into teens, dead asleep, sometimes till noon or better. And over the years, in the mood or not, mostly not, I’d obliged. But not for weeks now.

      I knew he was going to work on the clinic – a low-cost health clinic, his dream for years, but finally in its genesis – again this weekend; that’s why he’d showered. So he was clean. Teeth brushed. Shaved. But still, inside I cringed, a shriveled part of me shriveling further. I didn’t want to have sex. I wanted to paint an orange. Probably from watching Bob Ross the other day. I hadn’t painted in years. But lately, I’d rather have a root canal than have sex.

      Neil lay quietly for a moment, then gently began stroking the backs of his knuckles against my upper arm. Sex knocking. And, once again, nobody home.

      Was it my fault? Neil’s? Why was I turned on by a damn orange and not by my husband of over two decades? How and when had sex become one more duty? Part of my job description? Full-Time Homemaker: Be available at all hours to do all things for just about everyone. Must respond attentively to all demands for attention, physical and otherwise. Immediate supervisors include, but not limited to: husband, kids, cat. The pillow still over my head, I pulled the quilt up under my chin and rolled to the other side of the bed, trying to also pull back the cover of sleep.

      ‘Dee? Deena? Dee-deelicious ….’ A pause, then a whispered, resigned, ‘Shit.’ I waited, breathing silently. What was I supposed to say? I’d already said no in every way possible. I could write a book, like a cookbook, but with different recipes for how to deliver the news to your husband that it ain’t happening.

      But I knew I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I was supposed to roll over. Make Love. Or at least Be Compliant. But I just couldn’t. Not anymore. The hasty retreat of estrogen from my body was making my breasts tender, my joints and muscles ache, and I was getting headaches at the drop of a hat. Or the raise of a penis. And I was irritated a lot. Really irritated. In a way I’d never been before in my life. A don’t-touch me -or-I’ll-yank-it-off-you kind of irritated. Although I never let those feelings out. Never. Just kept the lid on. Tight. Part of my job.

      Neil exhaled sharply, muttering, ‘I wish you’d take some hormones. This isn’t good for us.’

      He climbed out of bed and noisily dressed, banging drawers and cabinets. Then it sounded like he was putting every clinking, jingly thing from the dresser in and out of his pockets several times. Finally he left the room, his heavy footfalls down the stairs further conveying his feelings. I didn’t blame him. But I did. Neil was one of the good guys. Or was when we’d married. I supposed he still was, but we’d drifted apart the past few years, sailing merrily along in our life sailboats, our courses charted by the gale force winds of responsibilities, rarely by the gentle breezes of love. And as for me personally, as a woman, I felt like I’d recently looked up and realized I was in the doldrums.

      I heard Neil downstairs, kitchen noises for several minutes, complete with slamming fridge door and cabinet, a few minutes’ pause, then going through his medical bag, opening the hall closet for his coat, then, Bang!

      The doors and cabinets in the house were paying a price for our lack of sex.

      Sex. It had once been so great. But now … If one person’s legitimate need is to have sex, and the other person’s legitimate need is to not have sex, whose need trumps? Why were women supposed to take hormones in order to be horny? Why weren’t men pressured to take hormones to make them able to have three thoughts and not have two of them be about sex? That way they might be able to think over the myriad facets of ‘good for us,’ like the fact that working seventy-hour weeks, even for a good cause, was a kind of infidelity.

      The garage door went up, his car started, then backed out. The garage door went down, and, even though it was a remote, I swear it too landed with more of a thud than usual. I exhaled, my eyes still closed.

      But I was solidly awake, and still wanting to paint an orange. And yes, when I pictured myself holding a paintbrush, there was that feeling again. Arousal. What is it about nearing fifty that one’s life becomes steeped in irony?

      I climbed out of bed and raised the blind. It was another