Bath Time

I knocked on the door that Friday and when his wife answered I introduced myself as her husband’s lover and that I’d decided it was time for him to choose. She invited me in and showed me to their kitchen table, calling up the stairs for her husband. It was the first time I’d been in his house although I’d ridden by on my bicycle dozens of times, hoping to see him mowing the lawn of his lakefront house. I envisioned living there while I rode back up the steep hill and then the many miles back to my upper flat.

As he promised, he called me at work on Monday morning to tell me his decision. He was staying with his wife of twenty-five years, the house, the children, her chronic illness, he had no choice but to stay and he insisted that we not have contact for six months. I worked the rest of the afternoon, adding up census numbers to describe how much poverty had increased in Milwaukee over the last ten years. I used a calculator with a roll of white paper and an arm that had to be pulled to get a total. The calculator made different noises that calmed me like my heart still beating after it had stopped for long minutes on the phone call.

At five o’clock, I straightened my desk and went home where I cooked macaroni and cheese out of a box for my five-year-old daughter. Then, I took a gallon size jug of wine and my only wine glass to the bathroom where I filled the tub with the hottest water I could stand and got in. When the water cooled, I turned the hot water on and poured another glass of wine. I stayed there until it was time to go to bed.

This routine went on for a long time. I went to work, came home, made dinner, and got in the bath tub. My daughter brought her toys into the bathroom and then her coloring books and crayons. We stayed there for hours, me not speaking, her talking or humming. She never asked why I was in the bath tub and, of course, I couldn’t tell her. Her life was already different enough, the only kid with a single mom in her kindergarten class. I knew that from when we all showed up for the holiday shows.

My bath routine lasted for a good while. I was religious about my baths and my wine. Sometimes, when I had a night meeting, I’d sit fidgeting in the metal folding chair the whole time. My skin would itch and I’d get to rocking, not so much that people would notice, just a calming rock, imperceptible, imaginary pats on the back by a mother pacing the floor late at night. I missed my mother an awful lot but I never told her about the married man or about my baths.

I did finally tell a friend of mine who used to be a priest and then became a therapist and then my boss. We were driving somewhere along the lake and I told him about the baths, how I was in the bath tub every night drinking and I asked him if he thought I was crazy. He nodded and said, “You need to see a shrink.” And then he added, “Today.” It sounded as if he thought I was suicidal but I didn’t argue with him. He gave me two names to call. I called the one who was a woman.

“Are you thinking of hurting yourself?” she asked. “No,” I answered. I am just stuck in the bath tub drinking every night and it’s not good for my daughter to be spending so much time in the bathroom with me and I have a hangover every day which makes me nervous on top of the calculator’s noises which are startling and no longer calming.

She had a notebook on her lap where she wrote down facts about me. Finally, she asked, “So, what brought you here today?” I told her about going to my married lover’s house and talking to him and his wife and his decision but while I was talking and the words were all over the place, on my lap and on the table and some in her notebook, I realized that wasn’t why I was there. “My friend told me to come,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”

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