by Amy Hatvany
I wished I could talk with Charlotte about Andrew, but she seemed to only want to talk about Bryan. “He just gets me,” she said during one of our daily text conversations. “He totally understands my feelings, and he makes me laugh like crazy.”
Be careful, I wanted to say, though who was I to warn her about the perils of talking with another man when I’d had sex with three men in as many years. It seemed hypocritical—how could conversation with a man be more intimate than getting naked with him, letting him inside your body? But I hadn’t allowed myself to become emotionally attached to anyone the way she seemed to be doing with Bryan. If I’d learned anything over the last few years, it was that having sex with someone was a multifaceted experience, involving your mind, body, and soul. When I was with Jake, we connected on all three of those levels. His words crawled into my mind, stimulated my body, and amplified the love I had for him even more. My experiences with Will, Tim, and Vincent were purely physical—my mind and my heart belonged only to my husband—which is what kept my relationship sacred and safe.
But simply speaking with Andrew had pushed my body into a spiral of want. It was tempting to see if adding the mental aspect would heighten my experience—and subsequently, Jake’s, when I told him about it—even more. Isn’t that what he had suggested we needed to do—up the ante? Push our boundaries? Jake was intensifying his side of this arrangement by not being involved in choosing who I slept with, forcing himself to only imagine the things I did with another man. As long as I reserved my heart for my husband, didn’t it make sense that I escalate what I did in the experience, as well?
“So, I’m thinking I might talk to Andrew again,” I told Jake, casually, in the late evening, on the kids’ last day of school. Ella was at work, and Tuck was over at Peter and Kari’s house, getting ready to head to eastern Washington for a baseball tournament. Jake and I were sitting on our back deck, enjoying a majestic, glowing-embers sunset, each of us sipping at a glass of wine. Since our failed date night, he’d made absolutely sure that he was home by seven on Fridays, so we could enjoy at least a few hours together, whether or not we went out.
“Changed your mind, did you?” Jake asked, raising a single eyebrow.
“I never really decided against him.” This is true, I thought even though my heart was pounding inside my chest. I wasn’t lying to Jake; I just wasn’t sharing how profoundly my first meeting with Andrew had affected me. A lie of omission, committed only to protect my husband’s feelings. And he didn’t really need to know that I’d known Andrew briefly, in the past. It was so long ago, and besides, it automatically added an extra layer of security to what otherwise could be a risky situation. “I wanted to give it a little more time,” I told Jake, “since he was one of the first replies I got. It always took us longer to find someone.”
“You don’t feel like you’re settling, do you?” He ran his fingertip around the rim of his glass, making it sing.
“Not at all,” I said.
“When are you going to see him?” He stopped moving his hand, though his fingers lingered on the edge of the glass.
“Not this weekend, obviously,” I said. My parents were due to arrive the next day, and we had the barbeque Charlotte had ended up inviting half of Queens Ridge to on Sunday.
“But soon, though.”
I nodded.
“Good,” he said, and the air between us suddenly felt like it had in his car, after we had met Will at the club—full of possibility, longing, and excitement. Everything a good marriage is supposed to have.
Sixteen
I sent a text to Andrew the next morning, asking if he was still interested in getting together, even though I knew that he was. I told him that my parents were visiting for the weekend, so we wouldn’t be able to get together until the following one, which he said he understood. “Real life comes first,” he wrote. “Literally.”
Jake laughed when I told him Andrew’s last remark. “I see why you like him,” he commented, and I instantly felt guilty for not telling him the entire truth. But I wasn’t technically breaking any of the rules we’d set in place to protect us. He knew our last name and where I worked, but he’d also given me all of his personal information, which I’d confirmed by doing as he had suggested—I Googled him. He was, indeed, the founder and CEO of Lightning Design, a sizable internet design and tech services company. He was also single, according to the King county public records I reviewed online, and his house really was on the street in Kirkland that he’d named. If he’d been lying about any of it, I would have cut things off immediately. But since he’d been honest, I decided to trust him.
“What time are Grandma and Grandpa coming?” Ella asked me when she finally woke up, around noon. Her shift at Olive Garden had ended after ten the night before, but she always spent a few hours scrolling through Instagram while Snap Chatting with her friends when she got home from work, so gone were the days when she used to leap out of bed before the sun came up. Two years ago, as a freshman, she’d abandoned soccer to join the highly competitive Queens Ridge Raiders dance team, so instead of spending my Saturday mornings at short games, once or twice a month during competition season, I endured eight to ten hours sitting on uncomfortable bleachers. Dance demanded a lot of time, energy, and long hours of practice, but it was something Ella truly loved. I’d watched her self-confidence soar since joining the team—so much that she nabbed the position of junior class president without putting much effort into a campaign. Luckily, Bentley had also joined the team, so unless she had an event the same day, Charlotte joined me on those rock-hard bleachers, and we cheered our daughters on, together.
“They should be here around four,” I told Ella, now. Despite being dressed to meet clients, in a knee-length black shift dress covered in a tiny, white-flowered print, I was in the middle of doing an extra wipe-down of the kitchen in preparation for my mother’s critical eye. “How does your room look?”
“Meh.” Ella shrugged as she gathered her long curls into a messy bun on top of her head, securing it with a black elastic tie she almost always wore around her wrist. I marveled as the beautiful young woman she had morphed into over the last few years: she’d grown three inches, and long hours of dancing had carved her body into a lithe, well-sculpted piece of biological art. Her skin was smooth and clear, her green eyes sparkled, and her stomach was flatter than mine had ever been. Unlike Bentley, she had yet to have a boyfriend, but being single didn’t seem to faze her. There were boys at school she thought were cute, but too immature, or they spent too much time partying. “I’m so not going to date a pothead,” she had declared to me at the beginning of her junior year. “I hate the smell of pot, and I definitely hate the smell of stupid.” For her to be so self-assured at such a young age thrilled me. Tucker, on the other hand, still tended toward impulsive, silly decisions, like spending all his fifteenth birthday money on an expensive skateboard that he’d insisted he “needed” and we’d refused to buy him as a gift, and then proceeded to ride it exactly two times before letting it gather dust in the garage. I kept telling myself that boys mature slower than girls, and that Tuck would eventually start to grow up.
“What does ‘meh’ mean?” I asked Ella. “Is your room clean or not?”
“It’s fine, Mom. God.” She opened the fridge and grabbed a Greek yogurt, along with a package of fresh raspberries.
“Fine isn’t any clearer than ‘meh,’” I said, lightly. I normally didn’t bother to force the kids to clean up their rooms; as long as they did their own laundry and didn’t leave food on their desks to rot, I figured it was their mess to tolerate—I could always close their doors so I didn’t have to look at it. But it was a different story when my mother came to visit; she wouldn’t ride the kids about the state of their room, she’d ride me. “Can you at least see the floor?”
“Yes!” Ella said. She walked into the family room, set her breakfast on the coffee table, and flopped onto the couch. “You totally freak out whenever Grandma’s h
ere. You need to chill. Tell her it’s your house and you’ll keep it as filthy as you want, then not give a shit if it bothers her.”
“Easier said than done,” I told her, choosing to ignore her language. I swore enough that it was a little hypocritical to expect her not to. “Please make sure the bathrooms are clean, too, okay? Especially the guest bath.” I paused. “And double check that I put the right soap in there. You know Grandpa needs his Irish Spring.”
Ella laughed. “That’s so weird. Like some other soap isn’t going to clean his skin just as well.”
“Grandpa is a creature of habit.” Just as he stuck to the same meals almost every day, he insisted on using the same soap. When it went on sale, my mom would fill an entire shelf in the bathroom cabinet with the shiny green boxes it came in so he wouldn’t unexpectedly run out. He said his regimented ways helped keep him focused on his work: “Any energy I waste thinking about what kind of soap to use or what I should eat takes away from my ability to think about how to save one of my patients,” he told me once, and I’d never forgotten it. I’d admired this level of self-discipline, but never embraced it as my own. I was a fan of variety, in my beauty products, the food I ate, and, as I had discovered, my sex life.
“Oh my god, Mom,” Ella said, snapping me out of that thought. “I forgot to tell you about Lizzy!”
“What happened this time?” I asked. Lizzy was generally too snappish and bitchy for she and Ella to be friends, but she was on the dance team with her, so my daughter, at my prompting, tried not to participate in spreading the rumors about what Lizzy did with boys under the bleachers or in the back seats of their cars. She did, however, like to talk to me about it.
Ella swallowed the bite of yogurt and popped a few raspberries in her mouth before answering me. “Ryder Hanson had a party last weekend because his parents were out of town and Lizzy went into a bedroom with him and some random dude she didn’t even know. They were in there for like, an hour, and when she came out, her hair was all messed up and everyone else could see that the guys were still getting dressed.”
I frowned. “I wonder if they were drinking.” I knew Ryder and his parents, Chuck and Christine; I had sold them their house. When they first moved here about eight years ago, Ryder had been a sweet ten-year-old, obsessed with Legos and still holding his mother’s hand. Now, he was a senior, and quarterback on the football team, with a reputation for having a new girl on his arm every few weeks.
Ella snorted. “Um, they totally were. Ryder’s always bragging about how his parents don’t even notice how much booze he steals from their bar. They just replace it. He’s such a douche.”
I couldn’t help but feel a touch of pride that Ella had disdain for boys like Ryder. “I feel bad for Lizzy,” I said.
“She has a ho account on Instagram, too.”
“A what?” I asked, stopping mid-swipe as I cleaned the counter. I gave my daughter a baffled look.
“A ho account. ‘Ho’ is short for ‘whore.’ It’s where a girl posts sexy pictures of herself, separate from her regular account. She calls it Lizzy_the_Ho. If I had one it would be Ella_the_Ho. They do it so people will tell them they’re hot.” She rolled her eyes.
“Tell me you’re joking.” I felt sick thinking of this sixteen-year-old girl plastering intimate pictures of herself on the Internet. It reeked of desperation and lack of self-esteem. Not to mention that the images, if they were as sexy as Ella indicated, could be considered pornographic. Lizzy was under eighteen; what she was doing was illegal, though I doubted she realized that.
Ella shook her head and popped a few more raspberries. “Nope. A couple of other girls on the team have them, too. They don’t post their faces, but everyone knows who they are.”
“You don’t have one, right?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“God, Mom! No! I’m not that dumb.”
“I know. Sorry. I just needed to be sure.” I paused. “Does Lacy know?” Lacy Sullivan was a former Seahawk cheerleader who had been the dance team’s coach at Queens Ridge High School for the last twelve years. She held the girls to a high standard when it came to their behavior, both on and off the dance floor. I couldn’t imagine she’d be okay with something like this.
Ella shook her head. “You can’t tell her.”
“Oh yes, I can.” I might not have felt comfortable talking directly to Tiffany about her daughter’s behavior with boys, but there was no way I could let something like this go. Sexual exploration was normal, but this crossed a line.
“No, Mom! Then everyone will know I told you! They’ll hate me!”
“No, they won’t,” I said. “And even if they do, you can tell them you told me because you’re concerned about their safety. Who knows how many perverted men are following their accounts, looking at their pictures? What if they or someone else gives away what high school they go to? They could be kidnapped...or worse.” I gave her a sharp look, and she nodded, reluctantly.
“I didn’t think about that,” she relented.
I quickly made a note in my calendar to call Lacy, and then, a few hours later, I returned from meeting with clients to find that my parents had arrived early. A rented blue sedan—my dad always insisted on having his own vehicle in case there was an emergency with one of his patients and he needed to get to the airport quickly—was in the driveway, blocking me from going into the garage, so I parked on the street. Walking up the winding pathway that led to our door, I noted that Jake had placed a few pots of cheerful red geraniums—my mother’s favorite—on our front porch.
I entered the house to the sound of voices coming from the family room. “Hello?” I called out as I walked down the hall that led past the living room into the kitchen. Jake, Ella, and my mom and dad were all seated on the sectional sofa.
“Hello, Jessica,” my dad said. He looked so much older than when I’d last seen him, at Christmas, when we’d gone to stay with them a few days. His previously brown and silver curls had gone entirely white and the dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced than ever. He looked like an emaciated Albert Einstein.
“You’re here early,” I said.
“We took an earlier flight,” she said. “Thought we’d surprise you. But then you weren’t here.”
“I had to work,” I told her. My voice was tight, even though I forced myself to smile. It was still hard for me to deal with my mother’s admonishments about my working too much when she’d spent most of her life doing the same. It took everything in me to not point that out. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here until four.” I glanced at the clock over the mantle. “It’s only three-thirty.”
“Oh, I know,” my mom said. “I just figured you’d manage to be here the day your parents are scheduled to arrive.”
“I have to get ready for work,” Ella said, rising from the couch before I could respond, which was probably a good thing. She’d showered since I’d seen her earlier; her damp curls hung halfway down her back, and she wore fitted black dance shorts with a red t-shirt.
“You, too?” my mom said, making a sour face.
“I have to work Friday and Saturday nights, Grandma,” Ella said. “That’s when I get the best tips from the servers.” Not waiting for my mother’s reply, she headed upstairs, and I envied her ability to not get drawn into—or even be aware of—my mom’s passive-aggressive games.
“She’s coming with us to Charlotte’s for the barbeque tomorrow,” I said after she was gone. I thought about pouring myself a glass of wine to take the edge off the irritation I felt, but didn’t want to deal with my mother’s inevitable raised eyebrows and commentary: “You’re drinking? Before five o’clock?” Instead, I went to sit next to Jake.
“Hi babe,” he said, giving me a quick kiss. He took my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. I’m here, the gesture said. Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.
“The yard looks great,” I told him. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he said.
“How’s busine
ss?” my dad asked, directing the question at Jake as he returned to the couch.
“Couldn’t be better,” Jake said. “There’s a hiring boom around here, so I’m busier than ever trying to find the right candidates to fill all the positions. I can barely keep up.”
“Good, good,” my dad said, bobbing his head.
“I’m busy, too,” I said, though he hadn’t bothered to ask. Like my mother, he wished I had chosen a more intellectually illustrious career. But I wondered if even that would be enough to bring us closer, since his relationship with my brother Scott, who worked as a biological engineer, was just as distant as the one I had with my dad. Still, I wanted both of my parents to understand how hard I worked. “All of those new hires need somewhere to live,” I went on. “House prices are sky-rocketing. It’s a total seller’s market. If a property goes up for sale, it almost always ends up in a bidding war.” I looked at my mom, who didn’t seem to be listening. “That’s why I had to meet clients, today. They’ve been renting forever, waiting for the right house to buy, and finally the perfect one went on the market. We couldn’t hesitate.”
“Did they get it?” Jake asked. He knew how long I’d been trying to find a house for the Clarks, a sweet young couple with eighteen-month-old twin girls.
“Yep,” I said, giving him a smile. “It took an all cash offer, twenty thousand over the asking price, but it’s theirs.”
“That’s awesome, babe,” my husband said. “Isn’t that awesome, Mom?” He smiled at my mother, who had insisted from the minute we married that he should call her “Mom,” too.
“Wonderful,” she replied, but I could tell she was distracted and didn’t really care that I’d managed to find my clients a home. “Is Tuck at Peter’s?” she asked, looking around the room, as though he might magically appear.
“No,” I said. “They’re over in eastern Washington this weekend for a baseball tournament. I thought I told you that.” I didn’t “think” I’d told her; I knew I did. We’d had a conversation about it the day before, while she was packing for the trip.
