Remind Me Again Why I Married You - Hardcover

Ciresi, Rita

 
9780385335843: Remind Me Again Why I Married You
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0385335849 ISBN 13: 9780385335843
Verlag: Delacorte Pr, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

After marrying the man of her dreams, Lisa is confronted with the realities of marital bliss, motherhood, and domestic life as she deals with her husband's long office hours, boring social functions, a messy and ailing child, unfulfilling sex, and her spouse's scorn about her dream of becoming a writer. By the author of Pink Slip.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rita Ciresi is the author of the novels <b>Pink Slip</b> and <b>Blue Italian</b> and two collections of short fiction, <b>Sometimes I Dream in Italian</b> and <b>Mother Rocket</b>, the latter of which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She lives with her husband and daughter in Florida.<br><br><br><i>From the eBook edition.</i>

Aus dem Klappentext

No one blends humor and heartbreak like Rita Ciresi, whose award-winning novels are lauded as much for their generous wit as for their unflinching honesty. Ciresi’s crowd-pleasing novel <b>Pink Slip</b> captivated readers and critics alike, introducing two utterly unforgettable characters and a love story both bittersweet and comic. Now Ciresi returns to the people and place of that irresistible bestseller in a riotous and rueful, sexy and poignant tale of married love…a novel that asks how two people who fell desperately, passionately, heartbreakingly in love can sustain a second act.<br><br>It’s Valentine’s Day, and Lisa Strauss, nee Diodetto, is spending it playing dutiful wife at a $100-a-head benefit instead of in bed with Eben, her hardworking husband of (is it only?) five years. Once upon a time, Lisa, too, was a member of the corporate workaday world--until she fell in love with her boss (Eben), gave birth to a cute but rambunctious son, and gradually morphed into a stay-at-home mom. Somewhere in the mix Lisa also is a writer with ambitions of fame and glory, but those dreams seem to be shrinking, along with her sex life. That is, until a hotshot literary agent shows interest in Lisa’s magnum opus.<br><br>Suddenly, she has a pen name, and an excerpt of her book appears in Playboy. In between revising chapters, Lisa is trying--and failing miserably--to get pregnant again. She’s going house-hunting with Cynthia Farquhar, the gorgeous blond Realtor/divorcee who has become her closest confidante (and the object of Eben’s secret fantasies). And she’s wondering if this is all marriage is and can ever be: bonded for life to a man who may never again be the red-hot lover of their pre-marriage union. In fact, he just may turn out to be the conflicted protagonist of her novel--a devoted family man whose moral fiber may not be strong enough to withstand the slings and arrows of lust and temptation. As their lives begin to bizarrely mirror aspects of Lisa’s book…as marital life as they know it teeters on the edge of utter chaos, Lisa and Eben search--apart and together--for the answer to the question that has plagued husbands and wives since time immemorial: Can love survive marriage?<br><br>In a wickedly funny, right-on-target look at love and relationships, Rita Ciresi peels back the layers of a marriage with equal doses of hilarity and humanity. Filled with all the zest, zingers, and unexpected surprises of life, <b>Remind Me Again Why I Married You</b> is this uncommonly gifted author at her lusty and liberating best.<br><br><br><i>From the eBook edition.</i>

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chapter one

Lisa

My married name is Lisa Strauss. From the outside, I resemble a respectable woman. A photographer seeking to capture the essence of the American female might stroll into my local supermarket and take a snapshot of me unloading a cart full of milk, maxipads, Cheerios, Boston butt, Idaho Spuds, onion bagels, and a king-size box of Junior Mints. Later the photographer would develop the picture and say: Voilà. Yet another ten-pound-overweight wife and mother who wears a stained jogging suit, drives a Toyota Camry, and pigs out on Smarties or Dum-Dums when she gets pissed at herself. Or her husband. Or her kid.

Okay. So maybe that’s an accurate portrait of me from the outside. But on the inside, I’m anything but an ordinary wife who purchases California prunes for her sometimes-constipated husband at the Price Chopper market (her eyes firmly turned away from those Cosmo and Redbook headlines that read ten ways to fire him up 2-nite! and turn your marital angst into marital bliss). And my true self is miles away from the regular mom who mock-threatens her son squirming in the front seat of the shopping cart, “Put a stop to that whining right now–or I’ll put you on the grocery belt and refuse to pay for you when the cashier says, ‘And your grand total is . . .’ ”

I loathe admitting this to anyone, but I’m an (aspiring) writer. Which means I’m a professional liar. Or maybe it just means I lead one lusty-slut of a fantasy life and that I neglect myself and my family–never mind my broom and my mop and my toilet brush–to nurture the odd assortment of characters who keep moving their cumbersome furniture around in my head.

My husband, Eben, on the other hand, is so grounded in reality–so normal, so disgustingly logical–that people often remark on what an “unusual couple” we make (translation: Whoa! Are you two ever mismatched!). If I were seeking a shorthand method of characterizing Ebb, it might run like this: For the past ten years, he has worked for the same pharmaceutical corporation, whose hottest-selling drug is an over-the-counter medicine meant to promote regularity. Plus he wears a lot of gray. Plus–I mean–the guy has never ridden a bike in his life!

But I love him anyway. And even though Ebb always tells me ’love you instead of I love you (as if to disavow any responsibility for harboring such a foolish and uncontrollable emotion), I know he loves me just as much back. He, after all, was the one who proposed we honor Valentine’s Day by cocooning at home. I didn’t put up an argument. Although I know that a truly sexy woman (i.e., a single woman) would expect to be wined and dined at some romantic candlelit restaurant, the moment I got married I morphed into the world’s cheapest date. Nothing makes me–or Ebb–happier than sitting cross-legged in front of the coffee table eating take-out Chinese, watching our son, Danny, crack open the fortune cookies and phonetically sound out our fates. (“Daddy, your cookie says: Hap-pee is he who is CON-tent with his lot. Mommy, your cookie says: Life is a tray-juh-dee for those who feel, and a co-muh-dee for those who think.”)

But this year fate wouldn’t let Ebb and me stay at home–and thus stay out of trouble–on Valentine’s Day. At the eleventh hour, Ebb’s CEO and his wife found out we had “no plans to speak of” for the evening, so they asked us to substitute for them at a benefit cocktail hour and dinner for the American Heart Association. Ebb–ever the good company man–said yes, which meant I had to do everything short of calling a dog kennel to find a last-minute place to park Danny (who kept repeating, “But I don’t want a baby-sitter. I want chop suey”).

Ebb was the designated driver that evening–not because I planned on boozing it up, but because his car (a silver Audi with a meticulously vacuumed gray leather interior) was much more presentable than my car (a baby-blue Toyota with Froot Loops pulverized into the floor mats and sticky grape Juicy Juice splattered on the red plastic booster seat).

Ebb had picked me up straight from the office, so he had to heave his heavy briefcase into the back before I could climb into the passenger side. I was too aware of the date–a holiday meant to celebrate amour–and so the kiss I first gave Ebb felt obligatory. My lips hit his cheek, and my nose bumped his glasses. But then Ebb drew me closer–or at least as close as we could get with the stick shift between us–and said, “Again?”

“Yes,” I said. “Definitely. Again.”

The second time we kissed was a lot more wowsa. Ebb sneaked his hand underneath my unbuttoned winter coat and I slipped my hand beneath his gray wool jacket. My mistake–because when I pulled away, Ebb’s jacket fell open, revealing that he carried one of the worst masculine genetic deficiencies nature ever invented. The specifics pain me, but they must be admitted: My husband is severely color-blind. And he wore a turd-brown necktie that made me want to shudder!

I might have strongly suggested that Ebb change his tie (with these loving words: Lose the tie!) if he hadn’t told me, “You look nice tonight.”

I glanced down at my white silk blouse and black velvet skirt. “I look like I should be standing on a riser, belting out the ‘Hallelujah Chorus with five hundred other amateur singers.”

Ebb peeled back my coat placket and gave my blouse a closer look. “I think I can see your bra–”

“That’s because you are looking to see my bra.”

“Do you want to change?”

“If I change,” I said, “will you change?” I pointed to his tie.

Ebb immediately put the car in reverse. “We’re running late,” he said. “Do me a favor and look out your side window.”

“What for?”

“This morning–when I backed down the driveway–I almost crushed a cat.”

Once we made it out on the main road (without flattening a single feline), I looked down at my wrinkled skirt and sighed. I couldn’t believe I had married a man who thought that brown went together with gray. And I just knew I should have put on a better outfit. But I’d been in a rush to feed Danny a consolation meal of La Choy chow mein before I dropped him off at the home of one of his Montessori schoolteachers. I hadn’t had time to fix myself up. And I guess by not paying much attention to what I wore, I was making a silent statement (which, of course, Ebb completely failed to get). I was telling Ebb that even though he was a loving, faithful husband who just that afternoon had sent me the standard overpriced dozen red roses, I still didn’t like the way he forced me to call around for baby-sitters at the last moment. I didn’t like the way he always put the office before home. And I especially didn’t like attending these work-related parties where, whenever I got separated from him, I was forced to introduce myself as “Eben Strauss’s wife.”

Just for the record, “I Gotta Be Me” was not playing on oldies radio as we sat in traffic on Route 9. But the lyrics to that obnoxious song were running through my head as Ebb idly drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then glanced over at me when I reached beneath my skirt to fix my twisted slip.

“I know you don’t like to go to these . . . doo-rahs, as you call them,” he said.

“Whatever gave you that impression?” I asked.

“You keep...

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Verlag
Delacorte Pr
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385335849
ISBN 13 
9780385335843
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
291
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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Verlag: Delta, 2003
Softcover