“It’s okay, Gracie.” Blood soaked through the napkin, dissolving the paper as she exerted pressure. “Emma, get me a damp towel.”
This was preventable, Ben would say. This is why we have plastic glasses.
“Make it stop, Mommy!” Tears cut through the dirt on Caleb’s cheeks.
She pressed harder. Gracie mopped the spilled milk with a dirty T-shirt from her backpack.
“Here.” Emma held out a dripping kitchen towel.
“You need to wring it out, Emma. Never mind, just get a clean one.”
Emma stomped out with Gracie in her wake. Wet cloth slapped in the sink.
“Give this to Mom.” Emma’s voice from the kitchen was extra loud.
Using the hem of her black cotton skirt, Maddy covered the napkin. Gracie returned with a new towel. Emma watched from the doorway, twirling the bottom of her long brown braid.
Maddy peeled away her skirt and replaced it with the towel, Caleb whimpering. “Do I have to go to the doctor?” He squinted as she peeked under the towel. “It doesn’t look too deep, but it has to be cleaned,” she said. “I don’t think we need a doctor.” Maddy’s pulse calmed. She stopped rushing ahead in her mind: wrapping Caleb’s foot safely enough to hold in the bleeding until they got to the emergency room, packing the kids in the car, calling Ben. She peeked again—making sure her decision was based on wisdom and not wishful thinking. It wasn’t gaping. The bleeding had slowed.
He tried to pull his foot away. “No! No cleaning. It’ll hurt.”
Emma squatted next to them. “You let Mom wash out the cut and I’ll play Monopoly.” Caleb’s smile came through like a sun shower.
“That’s sweet, honey.” Maddy had to appreciate Emma’s goodness and stop losing patience with her sulks and eye rolling. “Thank you.”
“Can I play?” Gracie asked.
“No,” said Caleb. “Just me and Emma.”
Gracie’s lip quivered at her brother’s words, leaving Maddy torn between soothing and yelling Stop it, especially when she saw Gracie make the tiny signature sign of the cross she’d picked up from Grandma Frances, Ben’s mother, a woman given to reflexive ritual blessings. Gracie’s gesture unsettled Maddy. Next thing she knew, her daughter would be genuflecting at Our Lady of the Virgins. Buying her a Jewish star or a Unitarian flaming chalice, before Grandma Frances hung a crucifix over Gracie’s bed, went on her to-do list. Mixed marriage only went so far.
“Monopoly is better with more people, Caleb.” Pregnant women should be required to take classes in referee and negotiation skills along with breathing and panting lessons.
“No. I only want to play with Emma.”
Gracie pulled at her camp-grimy toes. “How about you and I make chocolate sauce while they play?” Maddy suggested. “We could have hot fudge sundaes for supper.”
“Ice cream for supper?” Gracie raised her chin off her knees.
“Why not?” She pushed back her daughter’s sweaty black curls, the only visible part of Maddy that Gracie had inherited. The kids divided their parents’ parts and shared few: Skinny Caleb had Ben’s thick brown hair, Maddy’s long lashes and narrow shoulders. Poor Gracie, like Ben, would have to fight a tendency toward getting thick in them middle. Emma, wiry like Maddy, had her father’s sharp cheekbones.
Emma rolled her eyes. “Healthy, Mom.”
“Shut up, Emma,” Caleb said.
“You shut up. Or I won’t play with you.”
“I’ll play,” Gracie said.
“No. Emma picked me. Wash my cut, Mommy.”
A child leaned on either shoulder. With feet propped on the coffee table, Maddy drifted in and out of sleep. Dirty bowls decorated with blobs of hardened fudge littered the room. After cresting to a quick high of giggles over supper, they’d slumped into queasy sugar comas.
They stirred at the sound effects of Ben’s nightly return: The car rolling on gravel. Scrape of heat-swollen door opening. Keys dropping on the hall table. Briefcase thudding to the floor. Sighs of relief or disgust indicated his mood level. Despite their early-morning fight, Ben sounded audibly benign. Thank God. Maybe it would be a Swiss night, with the living room their first neutral zone.
Ben entered the living room and surveyed their collapsed bodies and the scattered Monopoly pieces. Gracie pulled away and ran to him, throwing her hands around his waist. He stroked her black ringlets into a little bundle at the back of her head as she leaned into his slightly softening middle. He had the body of a forty-three-year-old man who fought gravity by playing handball twice a week, but who had given up his chin-ups. Not bad, but unlike Maddy, who ran and used free weights and a rowing machine in their basement, his battle against time brought fewer visible rewards.
“What happened?” he asked. “It looks like a war zone.”
“We had some excitement. Our boy cut himself.” Caleb held out his bandage-swathed foot while still staring at the television.
“You okay?” Ben asked. He gave Gracie one last pat and went to the couch. “Hurt much?”
Caleb shrugged. “I guess. A little.” He studied Maddy as though seeking the right answer.
Ben laid a hand on Caleb’s calf. “Can you walk on it?”
“Sorta. I hop on my heel on that side.”
“It’s on the ball of his foot. The inside,” Maddy said.
“How’d it happen?” Ben tugged on his chin—his poker tell that steam could build at any moment.
Maddy leaned over Caleb and kissed her husband, hitting the side of his mouth he offered. “Forgetting anything?” she asked. “Hello, Maddy? How are you?”
He exhaled. “Don’t start. I’ve had a rough day.”
Kissing was starting? It is when you’re being sarcastic, she answered herself, using Ben’s lecture voice. “He fell asleep and then got up without remembering there was a milk glass next to him. It was an accident.” She knew the lie was barely plausible, but she also knew it was just enough for him to avoid being prosecutorial.
“Where was he sleeping? The recycle bin?”
“Very funny. A glass broke. End of story.” There. The truth snuck in.
“Why can’t the kids eat and drink at the table like they’re supposed to? Why weren’t they using plastic glasses?” He ran his hands through his hair. “Look at this place. It’s a mess. No wonder everyone’s always having accidents.”
Caleb rubbed his thumb back and forth across his knee. Gracie crossed herself.
“Not now, okay? Please.” She sent him a significant look.
Ben flexed his shoulders, leaned back on the couch, and stared at the ceiling. He took a deep breath, seeming to remember the anger management sheet Maddy had forced on him six months ago, after he’d thrown a shoe. At the wall, he insisted each time she mentioned the incident. Not at you. But her message had landed. For once, she’d broken through his endless rejections of her careful observations about his temper.
Good thing. She’d gritted her teeth through his rages, but she’d be damned if their house became a physical battleground. He’d scared himself when he’d thrown the shoe—just as he had years before when he’d thrown a bottle of detergent against the wall. The difference was this time he’d listened to her. He’d read the sheet despite hating it when she supposedly social-worked him. Save it for your clients, he’d yell when she deconstructed him. The children. Their marriage. You’re not my shrink, you’re my wife.
If he didn’t want her to social-work him, then she sure wished he’d learn to manage his own moods. Maddy’s sister insisted that one day it would be too late for anger prevention sheets and other tricks. Vanessa had no patience for Ben’s rages, but Maddy blamed herself for the antagonism her family felt toward Ben. Maddy overshared. Everything negative, anyway. When had she last called her sister to say things were going great? To brag about Ben taking an entire day to make sure Gracie could ride her bike safely? How often did she mention that Ben took the kids to the movies while she went for a massage?
At least he
r mother pretended to love Ben. For which Maddy was grateful.
“We had ice cream for supper,” Caleb announced.
Emma’s shoulders squared. Gracie pressed into Maddy.
Ben turned to Caleb. “Ice cream?”
“With hot fudge,” Caleb added.
“Nice to be rewarded for breaking a glass, huh?” Ben kicked off his shoes. “Since I haven’t fallen or broken anything, what do I get for supper?”
Emma jumped up. “Should I make you eggs, Dad?”
“Thank you, honey. That would be terrific.” He leaned back and closed his eyes, pushing off his shoes with his toes.
Gracie tapped his forehead. He blinked and gave her a tired smile. “What is it, cupcake?”
“Want me to cut up carrots for you?”
Maddy grabbed the laundry basket from where she’d dropped it in the corner of the living room and hurried out before she had to witness the girls wait on Ben. It drove her crazy watching them being trained in the fine art of placating an angry man, but try explaining that one. What, a child couldn’t feed a hungry father?
After throwing in a white wash and rummaging through the crowded shelves for fabric softener, she dragged over a small dusty step stool and climbed up, stretching to reach behind the jumble of cleaning supplies. She pulled out a dusty baggie that held a few tablets, took out a yellow one, bit off half, and swallowed it dry. Sometimes she wondered if she could remember all of her caches. Keeping them scattered around the house gave her a convoluted sense of peace and safety. She might reach for one pill in a week; she might reach in every day. Either way, knowing that they were never more than a few steps away comforted her.
Back in the kitchen, remnants of Ben’s eggs and carrots littered the countertop. She cleared the debris to one side to make sandwiches for the kids’ lunch boxes. Trying to spread cold peanut butter made her hate Ben’s mother. Frances had spent the past forty-six years appeasing Ben’s father’s neuroses by keeping a spotless house and refrigerating peanut butter, on constant guard against food poisoning, bacteria, and dust.
Because of Frances, they ate hard peanut butter.
The bread tore. She folded it around the wad of Skippy and shoved it in her mouth. Then she got a fresh slice and began making the sandwiches again: grape jelly for Caleb, blueberry for Gracie, and for Emma, Maddy’s mother’s homemade orange preserves.
Anger exhausted her. She waited for the kiss of Xanax to kick in, Prince Charming bearing a sheath for her nerves.
Ben hadn’t cared if they ate hot mayonnaise and slept on typhus-encrusted sheets when they’d met, not while they burned off the searing heat of their early years. He’d been exciting, her Ben, a public defense lawyer demanding the world give his wrecked clients a break—a little justice, a fair shot. She could barely breathe around him, some part of her always needing to touch some part of him. Her hand on his shoulder. An ankle casually leaning against his calf.
Ben dwarfed everyone, racing through life with exclamation points coming out all sides. Poverty to the right? Boom! Racism? Pow. Dirty landlords? Gotcha!
Who knew all that passion and rage could be directed at a late car payment? A missing button.
Her.
Accidents of Marriage is published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster
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22
The Comfort Of Lies
Happiness at someone else’s expense came at a price. Tia had imagined judgment from the first kiss that she and Nathan shared. All year, she’d waited to be punished for being in love, and in truth, she believed that whatever consequences came her way would be deserved.
She felt vaguely queasy from the late Sunday lunch she and Nathan had just shared. They’d ordered too many courses; buttery appetizers, overdressed salad, and marbled meat roiled in her stomach. Black Forest cake had left her mouth pasty with sugar and chocolate. Each time Nathan patted his thickening middle with chagrin, she worried that she’d become Nathan’s accomplice in more than one sin.
Since childhood, she’d hated heavy food. Instead of sharing this lunch, she wished they could have waited until tomorrow to see each other, when they could sit on a blanket watching fireworks explode on the esplanade and listening to the Boston Pops. The Fourth of July was a holiday without the burden of expectations; a perfect celebration for them.
Nathan squeezed her hand as they walked toward her apartment. His obvious pride delighted her. She was twenty-four, he was thirty-seven, and this was the first time she’d been loved by a man of substance. Each time they met, she discovered new love-struck traits─details she’d never admit to anyone, like the way his hands seemed more like a cowboy’s than a professor’s. Qualities that might seem ordinary to someone who’d grown up with a father, Tia added to her list of Nathan lore.
Last week, he’d seemed like Superman when he came over carrying a toolbox, planning to install a showerhead that sprayed more than a weak stream. A red ribbon tied to the handle had a card attached, where he’d written, “This is for you to keep here.”
The words made Tia feel as though he’d use it again.
No present could have pleased her more.
Mostly, she found Nathan perfect. Muscled arms. A wide back. His sardonic New York edge, delivered with a crooked smile─worlds away from the street humor of the South Boston boys of her youth─cracked her up, while his innate competence wrapped her in a thick blanket of security. Nathan’s too-rare presence oxygenated her blood. When she ran her thumb up and down each of his fingers, the universe existed in that physical connection. Her life had shrunk to being with him.
She’d spent many hours crying during this year of Nathan. A man with a family couldn’t spare a whole lot of attention.
When they reached the two-family house where she lived, Nathan circled her from behind. She leaned back and caught his kiss on the side of her neck. He ran his hands down the length of her body. “I never tire of touching you,” he said.
“I hope that never changes.”
“People always change.” A look of discomfort crossed his face as he disengaged from her. “You deserve so much.”
Did he think she deserved having him with her always? Tia put the key in the door. She comforted herself with the thought that he believed her worthy.
The moment they entered her apartment, Tia raced to the bathroom; lately she always needed the bathroom. Afterward, she spent a long time drying her hands and straightening an out-of-place antique perfume bottle he’d bought her. She was constantly rearranging things, trying to make the pink crystal fit in with her Ikea-ware and her mother’s castoffs. Tia’s apartment became a stage set when Nathan visited. She spent hours before he arrived seeing every book, decoration, and poster through his eyes.
Nathan offered her a glass of wine when she joined him in the living room. “Listen to this one,” he said. “I used an old Groucho line today—‘I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member’—to illustrate a point, and a student asked me who Groucho Marx was.”
Tia put out a refusing palm for the wine. “No thanks, I’m not in the mood.”
“It made me feel about a hundred years old. Now, tell me the absolute truth: you know who Groucho Marx was, right?” He pushed the glass toward her. “At least taste it. It’s probably the smoothest Merlots you’ll ever have.”
When she didn’t have wine at lunch, he hadn’t commented. “I’m in the mood for a Pepsi tonight,” she’d said. Maybe he thought she was acting like a teenager, and he found it cute. Sometimes it bothered her, the things he found cute.
“You Bet Your Life,” she said. “Duck Soup. A Night at the Opera.”
“Thank you. My faith in young people is restored.”
“There aren’t that many years between us.” She hated when he dwelled on their age difference. “God knows I’m older than your students.”
“And sharper,” he said.
“That’s right—don’t forget.”
The moment she sha
red her news, their romance would change forever, not that it had ever had been sustainable as it was. From the first time they slept together and he’d blurted out “I’m crazy about you,” she’d wanted more. First she’d wanted him in her bed all the time, and then she wanted the ring on his finger to be from her. When her need for him hit full throttle, she wanted the crease in his pants to be put there by a dry cleaner she’d chosen, his shirt to smell of detergent she’d chosen.
Tia looked straight at him. “I’m pregnant.”
He stood with his hand still extended, the wine sloshing against the edge of the glass like a riptide.
Tia reached for the glass. “You’re going to drop it.” She put it next to his on the coffee table.
“So that’s why you didn’t drink with dinner,” he said.
He delivered the words slowly; so slowly it terrified Tia. Despite knowing how unlikely it was, she wanted to see a shy smile—a TV smile followed by a movie-style kiss. She put a hand over her still-flat belly, nausea welling again. She pushed away thoughts of Nathan’s wife. Much as she tried, Tia couldn’t stop thinking of Juliette—where she was, where she believed her husband had gone—but early on, he’d made it clear that topic was off-limits.
“How long have you known?” he asked.
“A few days. I wanted to tell you in person.”
He nodded, finished his wine, and then sat. He laced his fingers and leaned over until his arms rested on his legs. He glanced up at her, looking stern, like the professor he was. “You’re going to take care of it, right?”
Tia sank into the armchair across from the couch. “Take care of it?”
“Of course, take care of it.” He closed his eyes for one moment. When he opened them, he sat up straighter. “What else can we do? What else makes sense?”
19 Myths About Cheating: A Novella Page 15
