“Maybe he became nicer after she died.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Clearly not,” Phoebe says, and Juice laughs.
“I want to be nice,” Juice says. “It’s just that we have nothing in common.”
“You both enjoy air. And food.”
“Okay, yeah fine, we both like breathing. But we don’t have anything important in common.”
“You’re right. Air is so not important.”
“Who needs air? I, personally, hate air.”
Phoebe puts the keys in the ignition.
“I mean, I guess we both love all things Disney,” Juice says.
“That’s something,” Phoebe says, and starts the car. “That’s something.”
For the rest of the ride, Juice asks to be quizzed on the things she knows, like the country’s capitals. She has a test next week. But she also just thinks it’s fun. She likes maps. She likes knowing where things are. She likes using Waze and pointing out things on the street, like the most impressive mansions. They drive out of the historic district, and Phoebe looks for a parking space that’s not right in front of the sex shop. She parks two stores down in front of an animal shelter.
“Oh my God, it’s fate,” Juice says. “Can I get a dog?”
“That’s a question for your father,” Phoebe says.
“But he always says no. Lila hates dogs.”
“Nobody hates dogs.”
“I just want to go look.”
“Trust me, there’s no just looking when you’re at a shelter,” Phoebe says.
“But I’m ready for more than a piece of plastic.”
“Okay, fine. You have ten minutes to go adore nonplastic animals.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
Phoebe is not ready for it, can’t bear to see all those little animals with their noses pressed against the cages.
“I need to run this last errand. I’ll meet you back at the car.”
Juice claps her hands and goes alone into the shelter, while Phoebe looks down at her phone. She finally listens to the voicemail from her husband.
I don’t know what you know about Harry, or where you are, but I thought I should tell you that I buried him in the backyard. Please call me back, Phoebe.
His voice—it sounds just like him, though she doesn’t know why this should be surprising. It makes her cry, thinking of her husband getting the shovel, probably her father’s old one that she keeps in the garage. She wonders where he buried him. By the stone near the pine?
But she doesn’t call him back. She has no responsibility to make her husband feel better about anything at this point. He is her ex-husband, she repeats. Ex-husband. And she is a maid of honor. She wipes her tears, drops her phone into the purse, and walks into the sex shop.
PHOEBE HAS PASSED sex shops hundreds of times on the St. Louis highways but has never actually stopped in one. It never even occurred to her to enter, the way it never occurred to her to stop at a church. She was a married woman who never watched porn, never orgasmed theatrically, never saw a need for props. She didn’t like anything too weird, she told Matt.
So she is surprised by how not weird it is inside, set up like any other store, except where the blouses should be, there are silicone vaginas. Chains on the wall. Panties everywhere.
“Can I help you?” the saleswoman asks.
“I’m looking for dick-themed flatware,” Phoebe says, slightly embarrassed at first. It helps that the saleswoman is not. She looks as bored as she might working at Kohl’s.
“We have straws shaped liked dicks,” the woman says. “And those silicone vaginas that I guess you could like, use as a bowl or something?”
“Are the dick straws compostable?” Phoebe asks.
“No. But I think they’re recyclable.”
“I need compostable.”
“The only thing we have that is close to being compostable is the edible underwear in the back. I mean, assuming you eat it all. Zero waste.”
The whole exchange is so businesslike, Phoebe wishes she could go back and speak the same way when in bed with her husband. She wishes she could have had the courage to ask for what she wanted, even if it sounded weird. Because she is starting to suspect that she actually likes weird things. That everybody likes weird things, which is why sex shops are open in the middle of a Thursday afternoon.
She picks up the plastic penis straws and wonders if with Mia, for whatever reason, Matt can be weird. If that is why he needs her. If that is what made him feel alive again. And for the first time, the thought doesn’t fill her with horror but with hope. Maybe one day she will find someone and together they will be weird.
She pays for the penis straws, as well as a few strappy red thongs simply because she imagines it’s impossible not to feel sexy while wearing them.
OUTSIDE, JUICE IS not in the car. Phoebe pauses in front of the shelter, looks through the window to see Juice on a chair holding a small yellow dog. Juice looks so happy, and Phoebe decides to go in. She wants to be a part of it. It’s okay, the therapist said, to want to be a part of it.
