THE BUNKO BUNNY
I have no luck. Glynn remembered this snippet of movie dialogue, but not the actress who said it or the name of the movie. She did recall a histrionic mass of corkscrew curls, a chewy New York accent, a tragedy: The husband she loved had been hit by a bus before they could have a baby. No baby. No husband. No luck.
Glynn figured it was better to have no luck than bad luck; even inertia was preferable to chaos. Glynn herself knew a lot about chaos because she had plenty of luck: a little good, some bad, all of it adding up to insanity. She had thermodynamic luck; the odds for explosion were high. Who cared that you shouldn’t apply the laws of thermodynamics to human relations? She had atoms, she had energy. There must be, she decided, a scientific explanation, an underlying, imperceptible flame beneath her feet.
An example: Glynn wanted to play super couples bunko, but George would have none of it. Here she was, ten minutes before everyone was supposed to show up, cross, sweaty, trying to convince him. Not that she could gather up all those husbands at the last minute, but still, there was the principle of the thing. One had to have principles. And anyway, he’d gone and devoured the box of spinach tarts that she thought she’d hidden underneath the frozen pizzas, and she’d been forced to run—literally—to get more.
“I’m not playing anything called ‘super’ or ‘bunko,’” he said, his face washed out in the glare of the TV.
“But they’re your friends,” she said.
“They’re your friends. They’re my friends’ wives.”
That was the point, but Glynn didn’t say it. Glynn was the new wife. The young one. But she wasn’t so young. And George was her second husband. She was between jobs and, she hoped, between children. Anyway, she had to make a good showing, and she hadn’t gotten remarried to go it alone.
And speaking of showing. “Will you please turn that horrible stuff off? You know how I hate it.”
George tugged on his bottom lip. “Did you know that it only takes five pounds of pressure to rip a person’s cheek away from the gums?”
“Ugh, George. I don’t know why you feel the need to share these things with me.”
George tore his eyes away from his new favorite program: Autopsy! “I love you.”
She wiped the back of her hand across her brow. “We shouldn’t have moved,” she said, though the move was due to her own faulty logic, her luck. Their future seemed so ripe with possibility, why not move to a nice neighborhood in the suburbs, send Joey to a decent school for once, settle in, settle down? But that was before the budget cutbacks that cost Glynn her job, the strain to make the mortgage. Before she discovered that her new neighbor was a mortician and that her husband had never lost his little-boy obsession with all things torn and bloody. “We shouldn’t have bought a house near those people.”
“Who?”
Though she was irrationally fond of him—from his Muppet-oboe voice to his feline fits of ecstasy—she sometimes wondered if George was breathing through both nostrils. “You know who. The Addams Family.”
“He said that if he gets a call for a body tonight, I can go.”
“You’re not serious.”
“It’s a necessary profession.” George turned back to the screen. “You can’t just leave a lot of dead people lying around. It’s unsanitary.”
The first time she’d brought George home to her mother’s for dinner, his nerves had gotten the better of him and he’d ended up berating her mom and stepdad about their injudicious use of water. “You’re watering the lawn and using the dishwasher. And the pool! Do you know how many gallons it takes to fill a pool?”
Her mother’s verdict: “He’ll need some encouragement, that one.”
The bunko box waited on the dining room table. This was the box that jumped from hostess to hostess, a box that her ex-sister-in-law, Moira, had solemnly handed off to Glynn the week before. “This is it,” she’d said in a tone that meant, to Glynn, Don’t fuck this up.
Inside the box: dice, three for each table; scorecards; tiny little pencils; a large brass bell; and the bunko bunny, floppy eared and absurd in its polka-dotted boxer shorts. Joey would have gone nuts over the bunny, would have grabbed it and tortured it and then refused to give it up on pain of . . . well, on pain of pain. She supposed it was lucky—in the good and not thermodynamic way—that he was at his shithead father’s for the night.
At his father’s, she corrected herself. Do not even think shithead. Thinking led to speaking, and speaking led to parroting, and then there would be another infuriating letter from the shithead’s attorney, from his father’s attorney, about therapy and respect and the positive impact fathers have on the lives of their children. She’d said one little thing—one thing!—after the shithead had started dating that bitch. Woman. After Joey had come home from a visit and informed Glynn that his father, the positive influence, and the woman, the positive influence’s influence, thought it was okeydokey to sleep in the same bed on a kid weekend and leave boxes of rubbers inadequately concealed for children to find. And bring home. And show to their still-prone-to-outbursts mothers. “Mommy? What’s ‘pleasure’?”
Glynn placed three dice on each table along with a scorecard and some pencils. She ripped open bags of M&M’s and Reese’s Pieces and poured them into the matching candy bowls they’d gotten as wedding presents, one per table, and then into some larger bowls at the bar. Indulging her librarian’s lust, her secret craving for order, she arranged the liquor bottles alphabetically, lining them up in neat rows. Martinis. Check. Mimosas. Check. Manhattans. Check. Beer, wine, even a nasty bottle of candy-cane-flavored grain that some alcoholic neighbor had given her for Christmas. She could make any drink the wives could think to think of and a whole bunch they couldn’t.
Bring them on, she thought. She was a wife, a wifey-wife, the wifey-est. Look at these M&M’s, will you?
Of course, none of this was what she wanted to be doing on a shithead weekend. No, these weekends were their “young marrieds” weekends, where she and George could eat four-course breakfasts, see R-rated movies, or grope in the living room—things she hadn’t been able to do freely for more than seven years. It was a pleasant—and unsettling—side effect of the shithead’s visitation schedule. It hadn’t started out that way. Those first sonless days after the separation, she had lurked and moped, a thin haunt in her own house, unmoored and outraged. After a while, though it seemed impossible, she got used to the days without her son, got used to herself without him. Now, when he was home, she began to crave the days he wasn’t, that lazy sweep of hours in which she was relieved of monitoring the appetite, bladder, and emotional development of another human. And then he was gone again, and just folding his little underpants could make her weep. Split custody split her down the middle, until one day she was both mother and not-mother, two-faced like some goddess, but a crazy one, always turned the wrong way. And it made her despise her ex-husband that much more.
The doorbell rang. Glynn ran a finger across her teeth to ensure no lipstick had strayed there and watched George trundle upstairs, where he had promised to stay all evening. Then she opened the door.
“Is your doorbell broken or something?” said Moira, her hair blown straight enough to shear her blouse. “I’ve been standing here for ten minutes.”
“Really?” said Glynn. “I’ll have George look at it tomorrow.”
“Sure, sure,” Moira said, and threw her coat over the banister. “I need a drink. You wouldn’t believe the week I’ve had.” She marched into the living room, where Glynn had set up her bar, and sifted through the bottles. “Ryan is driving me crazy. I don’t think he’s spoken a civil word to me since he got back from that stupid fishing trip that Ben took him on. Now, he fishes. Since when does that rotten bastard fish? Do you have any Campari? I’m feeling Mediterranean today.”
Campari. “I have everything else,” Glynn said, surreptitiously pushing some bottles back in line.
Moira heaved one of her theatrical si
ghs. “What the hell. I’ll have a Scotch and soda. The effect’s the same.” The doorbell rang, and Moira looked up, frowning. “Your bell works fine.”
“I’ll get that,” Glynn said.
One by one, eleven women arrived, threw coats over the banister, and ran for the bar. As they plunged into the bowls of candy and poured themselves an assortment of drinks, Glynn collected the $10 ante from everyone. She knew them all by name, except for one, a woman so dull that her name refused to stick in the mind. This woman did not mix a drink or dive into the candies, she skulked around tugging on her crispy hair, doing something weird with her lips, sucking them in and out like gills. Glynn found it difficult not to stare. Joey would never have let her get away with a habit like that. As a mimic, he was merciless.
Moira sidled up to Glynn as she struggled to hang the coats on the lone coat tree in the foyer. “What’s Lu doing here?”
“She’s taking Rosemary’s place tonight,” Glynn said.
“Lu is.”
“Yes.” A coat, gray and shiny like sealskin, slithered to the floor. “What’s the matter?”
“Lu’s married to Ward.”
Apparently, Glynn was supposed to understand the significance of this. “So?”
“So? Roxie’s here. Roxie’s ex is married to Ward’s ex, Beatrix.”
“Oh,” Glynn said. She felt the prickle of sweat underneath her arms—the creep of chaos—as she tried to work out the relational tangle. “Is that a problem?”
Moira blinked at her. “What do you think?”
“Lu isn’t married to Roxie’s ex. She’s married to the ex of an ex. What do they care? They probably don’t even know each other, right?” she said, hoping that this once Moira might humor her. After Moira had divorced Tate, Glynn’s brother, Moira had declared them the only extended family to have ever survived a divorce intact.
“Of course they know each other,” Moira said. “The knee bone’s connected to the hip bone by the thigh bone, you know?”
Campari and now anatomy. Glynn reminded herself that Ben, Moira’s second husband, had walked out on her recently, and one had to be compassionate at times like these. “Sorry,” Glynn said. “What?”
Moira pinched the bridge of her nose, like a teacher with a particularly dense student. “When Little Miss Hot Pants finally moves in with your ex, Joey will find out all about her and tell you. You’ll hear about her parents, her hobbies, the fact that she calls your ex ‘Motor Hips’ when she thinks Joey’s not listening. And she’ll know all about you, too, down to your bra size. That’s what sucks about divorce. You can’t keep a damn thing secret from anyone anymore. You know what I mean.”
No more coats would fit on the rack. Glynn was left holding the slippery gray one, which she hugged as if it were a diary. “Well, I don’t know what I can do about it.”
“Nothing,” Moira said, shrugging. “Now,” she added. She threw back the dregs of her Scotch. Then she flexed a bicep and tested it with a finger.
Glynn wondered what kind of drink she should have, besides big.
Glynn had arranged three card tables in her family room, labeled “High,” “Middle,” and “Low.” Glynn drew the head table and found herself sitting across from Roxie, while Moira took the “Middle” table with some of the other girls. Lu, Glynn noticed with relief, sat with the losers at the “Low” table.
Roxie declared herself the scorekeeper and rang the bell for the first round to begin. Even though Glynn had played before, even though the game was supposed to be mind-numbingly simple, she had to work to remember the few rules. In each round, players take the three dice and try to roll the same number as the round, called the target number. So in round one, you try to roll ones. Round two, twos. You get one point for each target number you roll. Three of a kind of any number except the target gets five points. Bunko is called when you roll three of the target number. Rolling bunko gets twenty-one points, but you have to yell it out to get credit. The round ends when the “High” table reaches twenty-one points.
“Rats,” Roxie said after rolling, “not even one one.” She slid the three dice over to Glynn.
Apart from the cartoon characters Joey liked to watch, Glynn didn’t know anyone who could say “rats” and make it sound organic. Glynn rolled two ones, one one, and then bust. She watched Roxie scribble a “3” next to her name and tried to think of a topic that didn’t have anything to do with Lu or the fact that Lu was married to the ex of an ex and might be privy to Roxie’s personal information. Kids were safe. Except when they were on drugs. But Moira hadn’t said anything about Roxie’s daughter, Liv, being on drugs, just that she was a bitch. And that was all teenage girls, wasn’t it?
“How’s your daughter?” Glynn asked.
Roxie sighed, scratching her head with the end of her pencil. “Very skinny.”
“In a good way?”
“In every way. Her body. Her outlook. Her worldview. I like to imagine she’ll spend less time disappointed because of it.”
Glynn handed the dice to a large, pie-faced woman named Sharon, who yelled, “Come on, baby!” before rolling three ones. “Bunko! Hey! I said bunko! Where’s my bunny?”
Moira, who had been holding the bunko bunny, tossed it to Sharon, hitting her in her big head. “You’re not supposed to get a bunko so fast!” Moira said. “I haven’t even gotten a chance to roll yet.”
“Me neither,” said Rita, who was Sharon’s partner but wouldn’t get any credit for the bunko. Bunkos were an individual thing.
Sharon hugged the bunko bunny. “That’s tough luck, ladies, this bunny’s mine. And so’s the pot tonight. I can feel it. It’s my lucky night!”
“You always say that,” said Rita, whose luck with bunko, a game that required absolutely no skill whatsoever, was as poor as her luck with men. Rita’s bizarro husband, Mike, the Pyramid Scheme King, still fancied himself a jock, though his bandy legs had gone thick and his pectorals were as soft as breasts. At the last Super Bowl party, he’d tried to leap over one of the couches but caught his foot, fell, and knocked out his front teeth.
Glynn sipped her vodka-tonic, the lime juice stinging her lips. George might be a bit obsessed with death and dismemberment, but at least he had dignity; he had never injured himself trying to hurdle the furniture.
They played until the “High” table had twenty-one points. Roxie rang the bell to signal the beginning of round two and tucked the pencil behind her ear. “So, Glynn. How old’s your son now? Five?”
“He’s seven,” said Glynn. “But sometimes he’s two. And twenty.”
Sharon threw the dice again. “My girl was born thirty, so I guess that she’s now about forty-two. She’s currently having her midlife crisis. She’s not actually playing with her Barbies anymore, she just makes them have sex.”
“I did that,” Rita said.
“You had sex?” said Sharon. “That is news. What was it like?”
“Oh. I meant about the Barbies,” Rita said.
“What about the sex?”
Rita pulled at the neck of her sweater. “We’re trying to have another baby.”
Sharon grunted. “Oh, that kind of sex.”
Roxie turned back to Glynn. “Is your son with your ex-husband tonight?”
“Yes,” Glynn said. “It’s working out well.” Do not say shithead do not think shithead. “Joey loves his father.” A little sliver of lime had worked its way between her front teeth, and she worried it with her tongue. “Sometimes it’s a little weird for me,” she ventured. “To be without him. Joey, I mean.” She wanted to say that it was also hard with him, harder than it had ever been before, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“You girls better stop yapping and roll,” said Sharon. “Put down two for me, Roxie. I rolled a two and two.”
Roxie wrote a “2” next to Sharon’s name and grabbed the dice. One two. She passed the dice to Glynn, who got one two in each of eight rolls—eight points—before coming up empty.
&
nbsp; “Isn’t he living with someone now?” Roxie wanted to know.
“Who?” said Glynn.
“Your ex-husband.”
Bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch. “He has a girlfriend, but they’re not living together.”
“Yet,” said Moira, who had tipped her chair back and was listening in.
“Um . . . bunko?” called a voice from the back, from the losers’ table.
“Jesus!” Moira said. “Can’t a girl get a chance to roll before someone else gets a bunko?”
Sharon tossed the bunko bunny over the “Middle” table to Lu, who promptly dropped it.
Roxie touched Glynn’s hand. “Sorry,” she said. “But you know, she could turn out to be a nice person.”
Glynn felt suddenly sarcastic, and she didn’t like it. “Oh, sure,” she said. “Is your ex’s wife nice?”
Roxie tapped the pencil against the table. “Well, we’re not exactly typical. You wouldn’t want to use us as an example.”
Glynn wondered about the word us. Roxie and her ex? Roxie and her ex and his wife? The wife’s ex? How big did “us” get?
There was a thud from upstairs, and everybody looked at the ceiling. Glynn closed her eyes, imagined her new husband leapfrogging over the furniture.
“What the hell was that?” Moira said.
“The cat,” said Glynn. “Just the cat.”
“You don’t have a cat,” Moira said.
Glynn swallowed the rest of her drink. “The dog, then.”
They were on round six of the third game when someone rapped on the front door with the knocker. Moira, brandishing her third or fourth Scotch, said, “It’s the cat!”
“Why don’t you guys go to the kitchen and have some food? I’ve got spinach tarts keeping warm in the oven.”