SMUDGE

By Pamela Acuña-Capiz
(published in Celebrity World magazine in the 90s)

MUNCHING on a bagel at the kitchen table, Karen Stratton could hear her husband whistling a merry tune.

“Is that new?” she asked as he bent to buss her cheek.

Andy looked surprised.  “What, this old button-down?  You bought this yourself a month ago.”

“I meant your cologne, silly.  I’ve never smelled it on you before,” she pointed out, noting, too, his immaculately combed brown hair and perfectly knotted Claybrooke tie.  Typical  of Andy.

“Oh.  Yeah.  Can you believe it, it’s on sale yesterday.  Got it for only 19 bucks.  Last time I looked, it’s at $44,” he went on.

Last time he looked?  Andy, who hated shopping?

Karen still failed to recognize the scent.  And to think she was always the one who lingered at the store’s perfume section.

Giving up, she finally asked, “What’s it called?” as he was about to open the back door.

He stopped.  “You didn’t know?” he asked back, frowning, as if she should.  “It’s Tsar.”  Then, singing aloud, to her amazement, “To all the girls I loved before. . ,” he waltzed away with a flying kiss.

Andy, singing a la Julio?  Didn’t he once say he hated the man?

Shaking her head, she poured herself a second cup of coffee and walked toward their enclosed porch, her special room.

This is the time of the day she loved most.  When she could collapse on the plump sofa, relax, and savor the privacy and coziness of the room and the feel of the sun on her face.  She could even write a poem or two during her solitude.

When she and Andy, a junior partner at a law firm, got married six years ago, she decided to quit from her job as a copywriter at an advertising agency.  She told him she would just resume writing short fiction for magazines and maybe, work on her first novel.  They also agreed a baby could come later.

“IT’LL be foggy in Berlin today,” Karen announced the next morning, “but fair in Hong Kong,” as she checked the paper’s weather chart.

“Who cares?” Andy said.  “I don’t understand why you always have to know the weather in China or Paris everyday when it has nothing to do with you.  Who’s going to Berlin Schmerlin anyway?”

“I am,” she replied, smiling.  “I might go shopping there today.”  Then, laying down The Post on the table, she blurted, “My, my.  Aren’t we looking handsome today?”

Andy quickly looked down at his red and white striped dress shirt but not too quick to hide his burning cheeks.  Andrew Stratton, blushing?  Karen was puzzled.

“I told you you look better in prints than in the solids you prefer.”

“Gee, thanks,” was all the Boston U champion debater could say.

KAREN always thought she knew her husband well.  After all, they sailed through college hand in hand.  And she was his first and only girlfriend.

Calm and steady, Andy was the kind of guy you could always count on.  She could almost always guess what’s on his mind, what he’s going to say, what he’s about to order in the restaurant.  She could even tell the moment he’s going to make a whistling sound at night in bed.  She knew everything about him from the most trivial to the most complicated thing.  At least, that’s what she believed.

His predictability has always given her comfort and security.  And pride.

Or maybe she was becoming too smug.  Her friends’ marriages were failing one by one and only theirs has remained, well, successful and strong.  They have stayed together through big and small humiliating moments, bad ears, running noses, cancer scares, reversals at work, a broken furnace even.

One of her ex-officemates asked her once, “Have you had an affair?  I mean, weren’t you tempted?  You have been with Andy for ages!”

“I am human, Dolly,” she told her.  And, shaking her wavy blonde mane, she declared, “But no.”

“What about him?”

“Andy?”

“Yes, Andy.  Even if there’s only been him for you, hasn’t he ever had the hots for someone else?”  Dolly insisted.

“The hots?”  Karen laughed heartily, her kelly green eyes twinkling in amusement.  “Who, my husband?  No, not Andy.  Certainly, not Andy.”

“HONEY, what’s best for removing stains?”  Andy was asking her that night.

Looking up from the paperback she was reading, she replied promptly, “Cold water.  Why?”

When no answer came, she tiptoed toward the bathroom and peeked inside.  She saw him over the sink, dabbing water with a paper towel onto the left collar of his printed button-down.  Indeed, a not-so-large but noticeable stain was present.

Peering closely, Karen tried to stifle a gasp.  It was a lipstick smudge.  And she thought she recognized the shade.

Flaming Azalea.  It was the same shade the Avon Lady was showing her the week before.  But she politely declined.  It was too bright for her, she said.

Then the phone rang.  Karen rushed to the bedside table to pick it up.

“Is Mark there?  This is Laura,” a husky female voice came from the other line.

“I’m sorry.  You got the wrong number,” she replied.  And she put the phone back on the cradle.

What was taking her husband long?  Shrugging her shoulders, she patted her pillow into position.  But just before she finally succumbed to Dreamland, she realized Mark was Andy’s middle name.

SHE knew she was dreaming.  But no matter how hard she tried to wake up, she couldn’t.

Andy was in a restaurant.  But not with her.  He was sharing a table with another woman.  A woman she hasn’t met or seen before.  Wearing a red dressy jumpsuit, she was smiling, touching Andy’s hand and mussing his hair.

No! she screamed at her.  Andy doesn’t like his hair being touched.  Not even by me.  But her husband and the woman with the long red hair and long painted nails didn’t hear her.  They weren’t seeing her, either.

The woman tossed her hair and looked at her direction.  Karen was shocked.

She was wearing Flaming Azalea on her lips.

SIPPING her third cup of coffee for that morning, Karen simply couldn’t dismiss her evil thoughts.  Was Andy having an affair?  Was he seeing another woman?  Who was Laura?  Was she the one who called up last night?  She vaguely remembered Andy mentioning a newly hired lawyer with the same name the night before.  Was she the woman in her dream?  And were they the same person?

And what about the lipstick smudge?

“You’re up early,” Andy greeted her, breaking into her thoughts.

Squinting through the lattice wall, he remarked casually, “I predict a lovely weather.  Though the chart said it’ll be cloudy in Tokyo and rainy in London today.”

Andy, who didn’t care about the weather?  When did he start poring over the charts?

Placing her mug on the twig coffee table, Karen studied her husband carefully.  His usually neat hair was slightly tousled this morning but he appeared not to care a bit.  He who only owned solid-colored slacks and button-downs was donning a printed dress shirt again.  And his new scent was all over the room.

He started to hum but stopped when he saw her staring.

“Do you know somebody named Laura?” she demanded.

“Laura?”  Andy’s brows knotted together for a moment.  Then chuckling, he replied.  “Oh, Laura.  Remember the one I was talking about the other night?  The one who bungled her first case?  Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten because it was oh-so funny.”

“Does she call you Mark?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“And why does she call you Mark?” she asked again.

“Honey,” he began to explain, “how many times do I have to remind you there are three other Andys at the firm.  So we have to use our middle names.  You’ve met the other Andys before, haven’t you?”

When she didn’t say anything, he stared at her, “Karen, you couldn’t possibly have thought..,” his voice dwindled.

She hung  her head.

Andy chuckled again, then became serious. “But of course,” he said in his professional voice, “it could be a ground for a lawsuit… Nah, I was just joking.”

Karen had always considered Andy a simple man, a smart but uncomplicated guy, easy to know inside and out. He was as easy to read as the weather report. After six years of marriage, plus another three and a half in college and four more at law school, she believed they’ve lived in absolute intimacy. In soul, mind and body.

Andy hovered over her. With his left arm carrying his briefcase, he offered the other to help her up. “The office awaits, my dear,” he said.

By the front door, boxes of pink geraniums hang under both windows. Andy bent to pick a bud and placed it on his lapel.

Kissing her on the lips, he told her, “Have a lovely day, hon,” and just before he boarded his car, he waved at her, grinning happily like a little boy.

AS he drove away, Karen thought of the lipstick smudge again. She would never know if it was Laura’s or somebody else’s. Why it got there. And what it meant.

And perhaps she’d never know Andy and understand the changes in him lately. His moods, his new manner of dressing, his new interests and preferences. True, there was only so much you can ever know about a person. You can never ever know somebody so well.

Not Andy. No, not even her husband. #