What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels)

by Wendy Markham

  At least, not in this particular red-upholstered nook.

  “Sorry I’m late.” She sits beside me on the couch, in chic, sleeveless black, and is obviously distracted.

  Has the personal chef quit? Did Mini-Kate cause bodily harm to the new nanny?

  “It’s okay. I was late, too. I just got here.”

  “Bad day at work?”

  “As usual.” Good thing I don’t feel like talking about it, because it’s obvious that Kate isn’t in the mood to be an ear or a shoulder. I have a feeling she needs both from me.

  “Can I get something for you ladies?” The cocktail waitress arrives, also in chic, sleeveless black and just as distracted as Kate.

  Without consulting me, Kate promptly orders two Prohibition Punches.

  “I was actually going to have pinot grigio,” I say.

  “Go ahead, Tracey.”

  “What—oh.”

  The Prohibition Punches are both for her, further proof that we’re not here to celebrate Saint Joseph’s Day or discuss my new house.

  Though Kate does say, as she tucks her cell phone back into a gi-normous designer handbag, “Listen, congratulations on getting the house. You must be so excited.”

  “We are. Definitely. We close around Memorial Day.”

  She smiles briefly. “That’s so great.”

  But I can tell she doesn’t want to hear about my plans for painting the ugly kitchen cabinets or planting a garden like my mother’s.

  “I don’t know what I’ll do without you,” she says, and I wonder fleetingly if that’s why she looks so upset.

  Nah. My moving to the suburbs doesn’t seem like a two-drink dilemma…unless you talk to Raphael, who practically hung up on me when I told him the house news earlier.

  He blamed it on Georgie, his soon-to-be-son: “Congratulations, Tracey, Georgie needs the phone, gotta go.”

  Who knows? Maybe Georgie really did need the phone, though he’s all of seven years old.

  Or maybe Raphael is sulking.

  I’m pretty sure he’s just sulking.

  I’m also sure he’ll get over it.

  Mental Note: e-mail Raphael tomorrow to see if we can get together Saturday night. He can’t hang up on e-mail.

  “I’ll still be in the city every day for work,” I remind Kate.

  “Not on weekends.”

  “Knowing my job, weekends, too.”

  “It won’t be the same, though.”

  “Nothing ever stays the same, Kate.”

  “Tracey, I know that. Believe me. I know.” There’s a tremulous note in her voice, and she looks away.

  “What’s going on with you?” I ask, and brace myself for the answer.

  “It’s Billy,” she says, and my heart sinks.

  I knew it.

  He’s having an affair. Damn him.

  Then again, do you think maybe it’s not what I thought? Wouldn’t that be just too cliché?

  But what else would bring this tragic pallor to Kate’s flawless skin? Maybe Billy is dying of some horrible disease or just got a job transfer to Minot, North Dakota, or something.

  “Billy’s having an affair.”

  Mental Note: clichés are clichés because they’re true.

  “Oh, Kate.” I grab both her hands. They’re cold and bony and shaking like crazy. “What did he say?”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “You caught him with another woman?”

  “No!”

  Oh, right. That was me.

  “It’s just…I feel like he’s different. Like he doesn’t love me anymore. He’s so wrapped up in his e-mail or text messages or whatever it is that he’s always checking for on his BlackBerry, and he’s been working out a lot more, and spending less time with me and Katie, and getting home really late at night,” she says in a rush. Her Southern twang is always much more pronounced when she gets worked up like this. “He always says he was at work or out with clients but…I don’t know if I believe him. Actually, I don’t. I don’t believe him. But it’s not like I have anything to go on.”

  No…but I do.

  The moment of truth has arrived.

  Here is where I can either tell Kate she’s jumping to conclusions and that none of those things—even added together—necessarily mean Billy’s having an affair.

  Or I can tell her what I saw on Horatio Street.

  Even though I didn’t really see anything explicit.

  To tell, or not to tell. If it were me, would I want to know?

  Hell, yes.

  Anyway, she already knows. Just like I do.

  I take a deep breath. “Kate, I saw Billy out really late one night a few weeks ago in the Meatpacking District with a woman.”

  She wrenches her hands out of mine to press them against her throat, sucks in a lot of air, and her eyes get huge. “Who was she?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I don’t know…I guess I just didn’t think much of it at the time.” Big fat lie.

  I hate myself for not telling her before.

  I hate that Ass-wipe Billy even more, though, for putting me in this position.

  “Oh, God. What was she wearing, Tracey?”

  “A business suit,” I say, wishing that sounded reassuring. “Maybe she was a colleague of his.”

  “Was she tall and skinny with shoulder-length dark curly hair?” she asks, and I nod reluctantly. “Did she have super-white teeth and a mole on her shoulder and a slight British accent even though she’s not from freaking Britain at all and probably has never even been there?”

  Hmm. Methinks these aren’t just random questions.

  “I—I mean, I didn’t see her shoulder. Or her teeth. Or hear her voice. They were far away.”

  “What were they doing?” Kate’s voice is barely controlled hysteria, and she rakes a hand through her blond hair.

  “Nothing, just walking down the street. They got into a cab.”

  “Together?”

  I nod.

  “Shit. Did it head downtown or up?”

  No way around this. “Down.”

  “I knew it.” Kate shakes her head, tears in her eyes.

  “Kate—”

  “I know who she is. Marlise, from his old job. She lives in Battery Park City. I met her at the office Christmas party and she was dressed like a dirty little ho in some strapless thing.”

  I—who incidentally met my husband while dressed like a dirty little ho at the office Christmas party—am not sure quite what to say to that, except, “Maybe it wasn’t her.”

  “It definitely was. But if it wasn’t,” she adds with the logic of a spurned wife, “it was someone. Some woman. Not me.”

  “It could have been business.”

  Wait, why are you doing this? Inner Tracey demands. You know what Billy’s up to. You’ve known it since the second you saw him that night.

  “It wasn’t business,” Kate snaps, and I don’t blame her.

  “Where’s the waitress with our drinks?” I ask, thinking that’ll somehow help.

  Which is the same reason I’m instinctively trying—at least verbally—to give Billy the benefit of the doubt.

  I’m not trying to protect him, I’m trying to protect Kate. I want to make her feel better, even if it’s just momentary. Even if her future is clear as Grey Goose: she’s going to be one of those brittle, beautiful, wealthy single mothers who populate the cavernous, lonely apartments in the city’s most exclusive neighborhoods after their husbands move on and move in with other women, other families.

  I wonder if Marlise has a husband and children.

  I wonder if Kate will be better off without Billy.

  I wish I could say yes, because I can’t stand the SOB, but Kate loves him and on some level, they do suit each other. They come from similar backgrounds, appreciate the same things—things that might not matter to other people. Like labels and good bourbon and fine art and ridiculo
usly extravagant tchotchkes in the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog.

  Besides, on her own, Kate would be—well, maybe not helpless, exactly, but she did go from being daddy’s girl to sorority girl to coddled wife. Of course, Billy did his coddling not with cuddling but with cash, hiring others to do things like cook for her and massage her, things Jack does for me.

  The truth is, without Billy, Kate would be miserable. Even more miserable than she is right now.

  “What am I going to do, Tracey?” she asks, her beautiful aquamarine eyes so flooded with tears that I hope her colored contacts don’t raft down her cheeks.

  “Confront him?”

  She nods. “I’ll tell him you saw him with—”

  “No, wait, Kate—don’t drag me into this.”

  “But you’re the one who saw him, not me.”

  “Yes, but he didn’t see me. And I didn’t really see anything.”

  “You saw my husband get into a cab with another woman in the middle of the night and head in the opposite direction of home.”

  “Well, if you’re going to bring it up to him, tell him someone saw him. Don’t mention that it was me.”

  “Why do you even care?”

  Because something tells me she and Billy are going to patch things up no matter what he was up to, and I’m the one he’ll resent for the rest of his life.

  Not that he’s my favorite person, or that I’m his.

  “I probably shouldn’t care,” I admit to Kate, “but it would make things pretty uncomfortable when I see him.”

  “You think you’ll be uncomfortable? What about me? I’m the one he’s cheating on. You know what? I really wish I’d slept with Gabriel when I had my chance.”

  “Who’s Gabriel?”

  “My old personal trainer, remember?”

  Vaguely. But I tend to tune her out when she starts talking about the gym. Which, by the way, is a private one, on the third floor of her house. Billy had it put in just for her; he prefers to go to some athletic club—also private, but presumably filled with buff and beautiful people. Women.

  “You had a chance to sleep with Gabriel?” I ask Kate.

  She nods and delicately blows her nose in a lace handkerchief. “We were together every single day for hours, all flushed and sweaty, when I was trying to lose my baby weight.”

  Her baby weight was all of ten pounds, and it took her maybe two weeks to lose it, which is why I might hate Kate if I didn’t love her. And I just can’t see her flushed and sweaty, even in a gym setting.

  “Did he make a move on you?” I ask.

  “No, but he wanted to. I could tell.”

  I don’t doubt her. “But I think you were right not to do anything about it, Kate. That would only bring you down to Billy’s level. You’re better than that.”

  Our drinks arrive at long last. She chugs hers, then has another. I switch to seltzer, thinking one of us had better keep her wits about her if we’re both getting home safely tonight.

  I walk Kate the few blocks down Park Avenue, back to her brick town house on Thirty-eighth. She cries the entire time. She’s more sad than angry now. I wish she were angry, because I feel like that would give her more strength.

  I’m hoping Billy the Bastard won’t be there when we arrive, because I don’t know what will happen if he is. In Kate’s condition, she might confront him, and I don’t want to be in the middle of it.

  He isn’t there, though. Just Katie, who’s asleep in the nursery, and the nanny, who, Kate tells me, is upstairs in her quarters.

  There was a time when I fantasized about living in a place like this, one that has a nursery and “quarters” for the live-in help. Kate’s house is spotless, sterile, plush, hushed, same as always (unless the Screaming Jesus is awake, in which case there is no hush). There’s nothing lived-in about it. I used to think the baby was going to change that, but this just isn’t the kind of house where you step over Tinkertoys or find crumbs on the coffee table.

  Our house—mine and Jack’s—will never be like this. Thank God.

  It’s hard to believe I used to covet Kate’s beautiful home, filled with rare antiques and heirloom rugs and expensive art.

  Now, as I leave her alone there, tearfully running a bath in her marble bathroom with custom-built cabinetry, I find myself thinking I’ll take ugly old cupboards any day, even if I never do get around to painting them.

  Our new house has a lived-in, loved-in feeling that all the money in the world can’t buy.

  Our old apartment, when I get there, also has something all the money in the world can’t buy—or, for that matter, make go away: Mitch.

  He’s sprawled on our barely three-month-old couch wearing sweats, a bowl of popcorn balanced on his stomach. Jack is in his favorite chair, leaning elbows on knees toward the TV, where a basketball game is obviously in a pivotal moment.

  It takes both of them a few seconds to even realize I’m there.

  “Hi, Tracey!” Mitch sits up and has the grace to look vaguely guilty for having parked his sock feet on the cushion where I normally sit. “Here, want to sit down?”

  Uh, not there.

  In fact, not anywhere. It’s late, and all I want to do right now is go to bed. With my husband, but I have a feeling that’s not going to happen anytime before midnight.

  “No, thanks,” I say. “I’m just going to go to bed in a minute. It’s been a long day.”

  “Hey, while we have you here,” Mitch says as I kiss the top of Jack’s head, “have you seen Jack’s jockstrap?”

  “Um…no?”

  “What the heck did you do with it, bro?” Mitch asks Jack, who shrugs.

  To me, Mitch says helpfully, “He couldn’t find it.”

  “No kidding.”

  “We were going to play racquetball, but Jack didn’t want his junk flopping around,” Mitch informs me without so much as a cringe.

  “That’s understandable.” I am so cringing inwardly—and noticing that Jack is paying no attention whatsoever to this conversation.

  “So much for racquetball, so here we are,” Mitch concludes.

  “Yeah,” I say, “here you are. Bummer.”

  He nods in agreement, obviously thinking I’m referring the missing jockstrap.

  I ruffle Jack’s hair to get his attention.

  “So what was up with Kate?” he asks, eyes fastened to the screen.

  If Mitch wasn’t here, I’d tell him what was up with Kate. In fact, I wish Mitch weren’t here so I could tell him, because I’m feeling pretty bummed and burdened.

  “She just wanted to celebrate our new house with me.”

  “Really? I thought you said it seemed like something was going on with her. I figured you were going to come home and tell me Billy’s cheating or something.”

  “Why would you figure that?” I ask, and my voice sounds unnaturally high.

  Jack shrugs, still maddeningly focused on the television. “No reason.”

  “There must be some reason.”

  With a sigh, he grabs the TiVo remote and freeze-frames the screen mid-jump shot.

  “Hey!” Mitch bellows, and I want to tell him to go home and watch his own TV, but I don’t.

  I ignore him and say to Jack, “Did you know Billy was having an affair?”

  Oops.

  “Billy’s having an affair?”

  I glance at Mitch. Yeah, he’s listening in, munching popcorn as if he’s in the front row at the multiplex. “I didn’t say Billy was having an affair,” I tell Jack. “That was you.”

  “No, it was you, too.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Good thing there’s no conversational TiVo remote that would allow Jack to rewind and replay the whole exchange.

  “You did say it, Tracey,” Mitch puts in, and I want to put a big couch pillow over his stupid head and sit on it.

  I shake my head and walk toward the bedroom, saying over my shoulder, “Billy is not having an affair.”

  “Billy’s having an affair,” I tell
Jack the next morning as we walk to the subway on the way to work. It rained in the night and it’s trash-pickup day, so everything smells like wet garbage. Nice.

  “What!” Jack gapes at me. “I thought you said he wasn’t.”

  “I did say he wasn’t.”

  “So…what happened? I didn’t hear the phone ring in the night, and you didn’t check your e-mail. Was this news bulletin somehow telepathically beamed into your brain while you were sleeping?”

  “No, I knew about it last night, but I didn’t tell you because Mitch was there.” I pause, wondering whether now is the right time to bring up the fact that freaking Mitch is freaking always there.

  I decide against it, for two reasons.

  The first: we’re moving away from Mitch in about sixty-four days (okay, exactly sixty-four days; I counted).

  The other: Jack has been ultrasensitive lately about Mitch. He seems to have gotten it into his head that I think Mitch is a pain in the keister.

  Okay, maybe I put that into his head.

  And I only said it when I found out that Mitch had found and polished off the Garden of Eatin’ Salsa Reds I had been hoarding in a remote cupboard.

  I’m really hoping absence will make my heart grow fonder, but until we move, Mitch being a fixture in our lives is a sore subject that I’d rather not get into again with my husband.

  “Remember when you asked me last night if Billy was cheating on Kate?” I ask Jack as we step over an oil-slicked river of gutter water on the corner of Lexington Avenue. “What made you say that?”

  “No specific reason. Just a vibe I got from him when we were out the other night.”

  So I’m not the only one with a vibe.

  Though, of course, I’ve got something more significant than a vibe. I’ve got cold hard evidence.

  I tell Jack about how I saw Billy in the Meatpacking District with some woman the night I went to Raphael’s.

  “I hope you didn’t tell Kate about that,” is his response.

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t need to get into the middle of their marital problems. Trust me, you can’t win.”

  Stopping at a crosswalk, we both jump back as a Yellow Cab whips around the corner dangerously close to the curb, splashing gutter water over our ankles. All in a day’s walk here in Manhattan.