“I thought I might join a yoga class,” I said.
“What’s that got to do with it?” he exclaimed.
“I need a bit of time to myself, that’s all,” I said. “I’ve already checked out a few options. I might try a class next Monday.”
“And then come show me some steaming hot poses,” he said languidly.
“My pleasure,” I said, kissing his hand. “You dirty old man.”
I lay on the yoga mat and let the spring sun warm my bones, Lily playing beside me. A parrot squawked from the top of the Persian lilac tree. From time to time, I saw it maneuvering through the thick foliage, triggering showers of delicate, pale purple flowers. Halimi was inside, but now I saw him walking toward us with the weekend newspapers, which he placed beside me on the mat.
“Do you want me to make room for you?” I asked him, stretching out even more on the mat.
“Wait,” he said and went over to Lily. She explained what she was doing with a set of doll furniture in meticulous detail and assigned him the task of bringing some Smurf figurines from her bedroom so she could breathe some life into the display. “And bring me water, please,” she yelled in his direction as he walked off.
After a few minutes, Halimi reappeared with a tray, upon which stood Smurfette, Brainy Smurf, Jokey Smurf, and Papa Smurf, alongside two glasses of lemonade and a plate of sesame cookies.
“Mmm, how nice …” I murmured as Halimi set the tray down.
“I wanna lemonade too!” Lily shouted and drank half of mine.
In Lily’s second year, I went out a lot. She started to go to a nearby daycare, with three other toddlers her age. I regained what Libby called my “humanity.” I began translating again, spending hours in neighborhood cafés, meeting friends. I enjoyed buying treats from the local deli and cooking elaborate dishes. Halimi and I no longer collapsed onto the couch at night, and we caught up on several TV series. Once a week or so, I went to a bar or club with Libby. We usually hung out with two gay guys from Libby’s office, perfect dancing partners, and occasionally met other girlfriends too.
I added bedtime stories to the lullabies I sang to Lily at night. From age one and a half, I was already reading her stories supposedly writtenfor older kids. She was curious, even when it was clear she didn’t really understand. I had a collection of Hans Christian Andersen stories that my parents gave me when I was a kid. I was fascinated by the illustrations long before I was able to appreciate the complexities of the texts themselves. Now, I saw the same erratic details that had attracted me as a child through my daughter’s eyes, like Thumbelina’s walnut shell and rose-petal bedding, or the silver teapot in which the emperor saw his own reflection, dressed in finery, though he was naked as the day he was born.
It also became scarier to take Lily out, to constantly make sure she wouldn’t wander off. Once I lost her in the supermarket, and another time in a clothing store, and both times I almost had a heart attack.
Halimi worked hard. Budget cuts at the magazine continued, and he was forced to spend more time at his desk. The management demanded an increased online presence, which bugged Halimi, who belonged to the old school of print. One brilliant writer, poached from a rival magazine, got Halimi fueled up on the subject of the Mizrahi Jews—he suddenly connected with his Algerian identity and got involved in cultural activist events. As for us, we exchanged daily selfies, either funny or sexy, and that pretty much summed up the romantic side of our relationship.
Throughout Lily’s first year, sex between us was rare and mechanical. I was always tired, often on edge, frequently lacking patience. When motherhood stopped being a full-time job, I felt the world opening up to me again. My libido resurfaced—at first shy and hesitant, then bold: In the morning, I would try tempting Halimi back into bed for a few minutes after he dropped Lily off at preschool, sending a text message inviting him back home for a quickie, but he hardly ever took me up on it. I got into the habit of pleasuring myself after they left for preschool.
At night, when I was less horny, Halimi would grope me or pull me toward him in bed; sometimes, we just turned out all the lights in theliving room and did it there. For some reason, sex remained mechanical. Halimi was good at knowing where to touch me and how to arouse me, but it somehow rattled me. I felt humiliated, as if I were a microwave oven that just required a basic knowledge of its buttons to be turned on. I used to stare at him, trying to understand what had changed. I still found him attractive, with his relaxed manner and the way he stretched his long limbs, never in a hurry—until suddenly he would disappear all at once and go about his business.
Shortly after Lily’s second birthday party, which included her daycare friends, Libby and Zozo, my parents, and Halimi’s sister and her family, it suddenly hit me.
“He’s stopped looking at me with that adoration in his eyes,” I told Dina on Zoom.
“I told you about the terrible twos,” Dina said, “and I wasn’t just talking about Lily. It’s a decisive moment. If you can get through this, it’ll all work out.”
So, I was horny, and we fucked a lot, but something was missing. It wasn’t the orgasms, but something more fundamental that was hard for me to express in words. It took time before Halimi also noticed that something wasn’t quite right. It happened one night when I began crying after Halimi came. He freaked out, even got annoyed, and I stuttered something about my microwave analogy. I couldn’t bring myself to say it: Halimi no longer adored me.
His male pride was hurt—he was always very pleased with himself when I came hard, even after years of being together. “I don’t get it,” he complained. “Is it not okay that I know exactly how to make you come? What do you want me to do?”
We tried everything. We watched porn together, but it was tough finding something that turned us both on. He filmed me pleasuring myself, which made him really horny, which turned me on, but after two or three times, it lost its charm. I read him erotic stories out loud,which was effective for a while. He bought me a bunch of sex toys, but mostly we abandoned those for the real thing, which I always preferred.
Occasionally, I would come back from a night out feeling aroused—when someone made a pass at me in a fun way, or when I was still a little drunk, or after I’d fooled around with a guy I barely knew. Halimi loved hearing my silly stories. Usually it turned him on and almost always led to the best sex we had during that time.
One Friday morning, I came back from an awesome party. This really gorgeous guy hit on me, but soon enough it became clear he was dumb as a doornail—which turned me off instantly. He was crushed when I refused to have sex with him, so I agreed to stand with him in the stall while he jerked off. During the act, I felt like someone administering first aid, practical and accommodating and unemotional. He was very nice when he thanked me, with a degree of humility. Surprisingly enough, the whole situation actually turned me on.
The entire way home in the taxi, I thought about waking up Halimi with a blowjob. As I turned the key in the door, I imagined the two of us laughing at that dude. As I entered the house, I heard Halimi snoring. I walked into the bedroom and looked at him for a few seconds; his mouth hung open, and he looked kind of old. I peeked into Lily’s bedroom—a tiny room that Halimi had used as a storeroom in his bachelor days—and I heard her deep breathing, punctuated by adorable little wheezes. I went to smoke a bedtime cigarette by the window ledge and looked out as dawn spread slowly over the city.
Often when I sat there like that, on the window ledge, still buzzing from the night’s festivities—after drugs and the physical pleasure of hours of dancing, with a horniness that sometimes peaked but often didn’t even begin—I would inhale the silent chill of early morning and fill with vitality. Once I texted Libby, as dawn rose over the city: “It’s asense of power that you’ve vanquished the night, that you don’t have to lose consciousness to witness the changing of time.” She responded with a smiley emoji with hearts in its eyes.
This only worked at the break of dawn. Later, the energetic, practical light of day would erase those nighttime impressions, blurring what had been, but in those few minutes by the windowsill, I often felt unbelievably happy and lucky that I had at my fingertips both wild pleasure and my beloved, blissful routine.
Perhaps on this specific occasion, I didn’t exactly feel that. Maybe I just looked out at the construction sites closing in on the apartment from all sides, the foundations of a new building where there had been jackhammering all week.
Halimi had left his cell phone on the table in the living room. He must have fallen asleep on the couch and dragged himself to bed in the middle of the night. I extinguished the cigarette on the outer wall of the building, and as I went to throw the cigarette butt into the trash, the cell phone flashed. A WhatsApp message. It was kind of a weird hour to be texting. My attention was also drawn to the heart emojis in multiple colors. With the cigarette butt still in the palm of my hand, I picked up the cell phone.
