by E. G. Scott
* * *
SO MANY YEARS LATER, he still used the nickname, but it was out of habit, not affection. We’d experienced the natural ebbs and flows of a long-term relationship leading up to Paul’s unemployment, but that occurrence had marked a major shift that didn’t seem like something we could come back from. We didn’t speak about the distance between us. We just lived with it, silently hoping it would leave as quietly as it had arrived. And it did, sort of.
After Paul went to work with Wes, and his fog of unhappiness began to recede, so did my resentment. The more he returned to a work schedule, the less hard on him I became. We both relaxed into the possibility of things returning to how we’d been before the economy tanked. With money starting to flow again from his side, his confidence and attention reemerged. One memorable night, he glided into the house after making his first six-figure commission as if he was on a parade float. “There’s my dove.” He smiled at me like I was something very delicious and forbidden he wanted to devour. I was still getting adjusted to this version of Paul, after having the depressed, unkempt edition around for so long, but I was open to him for the first time in the two years since his business had shuttered.
He sat on the couch and watched me as I moved around the kitchen, conscious of his staring. I wasn’t minding it, just nervous from his focus. It was good to feel something other than distraction coming from his direction.
“Madoo.” It was more command than statement. I shot him a look. “Come here.” He patted the couch next to him.
I hesitated. I’d been turning away long enough that it had become reflexive. I went to him. I sat next to him for a moment before he pulled me closer.
“I miss you.” He kissed me deeply. Funny how unfamiliar a kiss from your husband can feel after so many familiar ones.
“Where did you go?”
“I don’t know. Not far, though.” He paused. “You left too.”
“I know.”
“No more. Me and you.”
“Always.”
We fell into step together, and in love again. We started making love again at the pace of hormonal teenagers. I vowed to myself to stop taking so many pills, and eventually stop them altogether. I didn’t want to be numb anymore. I wanted to be present and with him. I was able to act the part, but the chemicals interrupted my body’s previous responses to his touch. My libido was undeniably affected by the opioids, but I didn’t let on that anything was wrong. Our bed became a sanctuary. It felt so good to fall into each other that I willfully suppressed the irking feeling that something was still off beyond my own physical muteness. Looking back, we were seeking comfort in the other and masking a larger rift, but the immediate gratification of Paul wanting me again was all-consuming.
He became protective. His newfound attention to my well-being opened up a softer side. In the mornings he’d walk me to my car, open the door, and watch me drive away. He texted me throughout the day to see how I was doing. He sent romantic emails reminding me of how much he loved me. And if he beat me home in the evenings, he’d greet me at the door, looking happy and relieved, as if part of him expected that I might not return home that day. He began holding my hand when we were out. I liked it. He pulled me into him for long hugs out of the blue, and held my face in his hands when he kissed me. I’d catch him looking at me pensively and then he’d deny he’d been doing it. There was a sea of unsaid things, but it added to the excitement. I liked being his mystery. He became mine too.
Now I realize that he was really just protecting himself.
* * *
YOU WANT TO BELIEVE you had the intuition to see the unseen, that you saw the tide quietly recede before the wave swelled and crashed so powerfully, obliterating everything in its path.
With the return of our connection came a quiet psychic disconnect that I couldn’t put my finger on. Even in bed, where our return felt the strongest, I sensed it. Burrowed down deep, a jagged glass pea poked at me.
There was a day, a few weeks after the return of the old Paul, before everything ripped apart so violently, when I woke up uneasy. Paul’s snoring body was next to mine after a particularly athletic romp. I’d said to myself and then out loud, “The bed feels different.” He’d murmured, “Love you too,” and rolled over.
I suppose I knew. I just made the choice to ignore until the choice was made for me.
After
Without Duff or Paul, the walls around me feel like someone else’s. To the extent that I’m not feeling like myself today, they might as well be. The anger about Paul’s betrayals has started to wane, and a thick fog of depression has rolled in. I fight the call of our bed, the imagined relief of crawling under the blankets and giving up. It’s not lost on me that this is how Paul must have felt when his business failed.
I sit at the kitchen table breathlessly staring at the open door, sweat rolling down the back of my tank top. The sound of the TV is playing low in the next room, but I can’t recall turning it on. I’ve been running around the house for what feels like hours, although time has barely passed. Knowing that stopping too long will result in complete motivational atrophy, I stand up and start to pace. I blindly reach for my rings out of habit.
I try to replace worry about Duff with my will to punish Paul. Taking our dog from him was on my short list of ways to take his life apart when I was at my most irrational, piece by valuable piece, but having no recollection of what exactly I’ve done weighs heavily. I would never actually hurt Duff. But I’m stricken by uncertainty.
Now my imagination cycles through any number of terrible fates, and I suppress a cry from deep within. Worry is not an emotion I’ve given a lot of power to in my life, but I am overcome with anxiety about so many things now. I should be looking for our dog. I should be looking for my ring. I should be calling Paul. I can only focus on finding pills. For just a moment I consider how out of control my habit has gotten if this is how I really feel. I file the thought away to be dealt with later, after I’m chemically well stocked again and have the luxury of self-reflection.
It takes about eight hours for opiate withdrawal to kick in, and the countdown since my last dose is around six hours before things start to feel dicey. Paranoia, hallucinations, and disorientation already feel like they are rolling in. Things won’t get debilitating until tomorrow, but the only other time I’ve undergone the painful process was like getting food poisoning in the midst of having the flu. And that was just the physical withdrawal.
After I’ve searched every one of my hiding places inside, I decide turning over the contents of my car is the most promising option and find not one errant pill on the floor or in the seats. This is getting desperate. I can’t reach out to Mark. Not while Sasha is MIA.
I know what I need to do, as much as I don’t want to face the outside world. I check to make sure my gym clothes and spin shoes are still in the back seat where I threw them two days ago. A lifetime ago.
I barely have the key in the ignition when I hear barking. In the rearview, I see Duff bounding toward our house. A flash of a figure disappears around the corner and out of sight before I can get a good look. I move closer to the street and fall to my knees on the grass as he leaps into my arms and knocks me over. I am panting as hard as Duff is, and I laugh and cry with relief into his fur, both of our hearts racing.
twelve
PAUL
Before
AT SOME POINT, our pasts come looking for us.
I should have handled things differently. I can see that now. Then again, it’s always hard to tell how a different handling of any one thing might affect the overall outcome. Nothing more than educated guesswork, really. Still, I could probably have done more to quell the fire. Or at least not actively fan the flames. I probably should have blocked Sheila’s new number. But, if I’m being honest, it fed my ego and turned me on a little. I was intrigued by just how far she was willing to go. At least I was
at first.
While the texts that I received just after the run-in were unnerving in the moment, I came to regard them differently as time passed. It was obvious that she was in a tough spot. She’d lost me, and who knew what the fuck had come of that marriage of hers. She lashed out immediately after what must have been a huge blow for her, seeing my wife and me hand in hand and contented. And I could understand how she felt. What she and I had was so visceral and raw that of course she would react strongly after she blew it up. So, by a week or so after that first round of texts, the whole thing had moved into the back of my mind.
Then she upped the ante.
I’ll never forget the feeling of opening that photo on my phone. In the picture, Rebecca and I are sitting together at an outdoor table at the café where we would often laze over lunch on the weekends, drinking coffee and reading the paper together. We’re holding hands across the table and laughing. That waitress with the phenomenal rack is waiting on the couple sitting next to us. Rebecca and I look as if we’re having a genuinely nice moment in each other’s company. But the context of the image gives it a sinister sheen. I realize immediately that the picture must have been taken months before the run-in, on account of the warm weather, which means that my shunned mistress, far from having accidently happened upon us in the street, had been surveilling us for who knows how long. My head was still wrapping itself around the implications of this when a text followed:
Want more?
The surge of adrenaline coupled with the feeling of violation at having this clearly unstable woman stalking my wife and me was enough to enrage me. I should have taken a breath and composed myself instead of firing off the text that I sent:
I will fucking end you.
I didn’t hear anything back from Sheila after that. At first, I was keyed up with anticipation, waiting on her next move in whatever fucked-up chess game she thought we were playing. But the text never came. For days and days, nothing. I finally deluded myself into thinking that my message had terrified her into silence.
I should have come clean. I should have fessed up to my wife before things went where they went. But I was scared. The balance in our marriage was at an ideal point, and I didn’t think I could risk upsetting that dynamic. I was concerned about her safety, of course, but that just pushed me to keep a more vigilant eye on her whenever I could be at home and present. The more of that I did, the closer we seemed to come together. And I started to fall hard for this new component of our relationship, which made the thought of ever coming clean to her nearly impossible.
And so it goes. Small things have a way of snowballing beyond reasonable measure, until the scale is so daunting as to render them no longer addressable. I could have put my wife’s safety above my own pathological need to be the good guy. I could have admitted everything, told her how sorry I was, what a mistake the affair had been and how much it clarified for me the depth of my feelings for her. I could have tried to explain to her that my transgression had served to remind me of what was really important, and how I hoped she would realize how it had ultimately brought us closer together. I could have done any number of things differently. But things happen the way they happen. And in the end, it wasn’t left up to me.
thirteen
REBECCA
Before
MY BIKE WAS always number six. Sasha’s was number five. Always the front row.
When Paul got depressed, I started leaving the house earlier and earlier in the mornings, aimlessly driving around until my office opened. He didn’t ask me where I was going, only brought up how much the charges on the gas card had increased. I didn’t bother to lie about where I was spending my mornings because he didn’t care, and I didn’t have an imagined destination. Until I overheard Sasha telling one of the new pharma reps in the bathroom at our Rep of the Year dinner that she got all of her good pills at spin class. Suddenly I had a purpose on my restless mornings. And I was hell-bent on getting to know more about Paul’s old girlfriend.
It was a place to click into the pedals and be restrained physically while becoming completely unrestrained emotionally. I started going every day, sometimes twice a day if I needed it. I spent thousands of hours and dollars whittling away the soft physical and emotional parts of me that I had always hated about myself.
It got to the point where I couldn’t get through my day without wanting to murder someone if I didn’t have that time to unleash. There was the bike high, which I came to need as much as the chemical high.
When I started spinning, I was only taking the pain pills that were prescribed to me—granted, sometimes from multiple doctors. And only Percocets. I had rules. Like me, Sasha liked to prescribe in her head which meds people could take to improve their flawed personalities. She knew me as Paul’s wife but hadn’t ever really paid me any mind. It took two months of going to the same classes as her religiously before she acknowledged that we knew each other. We were in the locker room and a particularly neurotic regular was having a meltdown waiting for the shower.
“I just don’t understand how they could accept that child into a supposedly top-level private school when it is common knowledge what a little sociopath he is. And his mother, what a train wreck she is. The whole incident is making me rethink if I even want my Christina to be there. God, it is just so stressful, I cannot even.”
Sasha turned to me and whispered conspiratorially, “Someone could use some Xanax. Too bad I’m so attached to mine.”
I’d been surprised that she’d spoken to me directly, and gone temporarily blank but recovered quickly. “Me too, although I think she’d need something far stronger than what you and I have.”
She’d laughed and nodded. “You’re Paul’s wife, aren’t you?” We’d sat at the same fucking table and she acted like it was the first time she was laying eyes on me.
“Yes. And I work with your husband.” I was all smiles.
“How lucky for you.” I couldn’t tell if she was referring to my being Paul’s wife or working for her husband. I was just glad she’d finally acknowledged me.
“You went to high school with Paul, didn’t you?” I absolutely knew she had; Paul liked to drop it into conversation when the subject of Mark came up.
“That was so long ago. He had such puppy love for me.” I’d heard Paul talk about Sasha as though they’d been on the verge of marrying out of high school if it hadn’t been for some college guy swooping in and stealing her.
Each class after, she would return my greetings of “hello” and “how are you” until we got to the point of actual conversations. Usually they revolved around her while she was primping in the mirror for ladies’ happy hour, which I never managed to get an invite to.
It was like high school all over again. I was used to being on the outside, something that had become hardwired in me from never really being a part of any of the families I lived with growing up, or never staying in schools long enough to grow any social roots. But that part of myself that was accustomed to being excluded, even subtly, never stopped me from wanting to be included. Even if it meant enduring Sasha’s mean streak. She must have picked up on my sensitivity surrounding her and Paul’s history, because it became a regular topic of mention in the locker room and endlessly amused her.
“Did you guys know that Rebecca’s husband and I went to junior prom together? We were so nervous about losing our virginity. He cried. It was adorable.”
“I’m so glad you and Paul found each other. I was worried he was never going to get over me, he was so destroyed when I broke up with him. The things he used to do to try and win me back.”
“Does Paul still sing in the shower? He always thought he had such a good voice. He was always singing our song, ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ though he was no Van Morrison, that is for sure.”
I always laughed and played along, but Sasha knew it bothered me. I hated that she brought out a jealous side of me.
/>
It was Sasha who introduced me to amphetamines. She fancied herself a kind of self-taught pharmaceutical savant but complained that Mark didn’t give her whatever she wanted even though he had access. I had something she wanted. I had names of doctors I’d gotten to know through repping over the years who were liberal when it came to writing scrips for controlled substances. These were the old-timers, who’d come up on prescribing Valium like it was a cure for being a woman. I gave her referrals and she handed off some of her bounty when she felt like it. But we were hardly the only ones trading in mood enhancers.
The pill trades happened in the locker room. No one was obvious, but no one suspected well-heeled upper-class white women anyway. You had to know how to spot the like-minded women and strike up the right conversation.
“Oh my God, I am so distracted at work. Is it me or can you not get anything done?”
“I have to go to my mother-in-law’s house this weekend and I could pull my face off. I’m fresh out of Xanax, can you believe it?!”
“I think I’m totally immune to coffee now; I’m still dragging. I swear I’m going to have to take up Ritalin!”
“My husband is cheating on me with the babysitter. The only thing that is keeping me from murdering them both is Ativan and chardonnay.”
It was surprisingly easy to find empathetic traders. There was Adderall for Ativan. Oxy for Xanax. Percocet for fentanyl. Everyone had Ambien. Someone even still had fen-phen in the mix, for the hardcore who were more fearful of weight gain than heart failure.
I started to see what Paul found so fascinating about Sasha. She had an undeniable star quality that made everyone want to look at her. She’d walk into the studio and get as much attention as the instructors. She was easy to watch, not aware of the people around her and noticing little else outside herself in the mirrored walls opposite her bike. She was a spotlit blond bird of paradise, perched atop the bike, tapping back, tits and heart forward. Always in perfect time to the music, her arms and shoulders ropy and sharp. I hated her and yet I couldn’t stop obsessing about her.
