Evelyn, After: A Novel

by Victoria Helen Stone

  Evelyn reached out, not sure what her hand was doing. She might have hit Juliette then. Slapped her. Grabbed her silky blond hair and thrown her to the ground. But her fingers only wrapped around Juliette’s arm. “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  Evelyn gave her a hard shake, and Juliette just let herself be shaken. “Do you swear? Do you swear?”

  “It’s the truth. I swear. I’m sorry. It’s the truth. Go to the police. Maybe it will be better for all of us. Maybe I’ll be able to live with it. Finally.”

  Yes. It was true. Even Evelyn knew. It all made so much more sense than what Gary had told her. He was the bad guy here. The predator. The heartless monster. This woman looked as if she might dissolve into nothing very soon.

  And Evelyn, who’d been so self-righteously invested in doing the right thing, wasn’t the least bit interested in justice for Kaylee. Because she wasn’t going to do anything at all.

  She turned and left Juliette standing there. Broken, blameless Juliette. Gary had used her in the sickest, most immoral way. He’d traumatized her. And Evelyn had further degraded the woman by sleeping with her husband. And still, Evelyn just left her there, crying.

  She walked to her car, drove home, stumbled into her house. She crawled up the stairs on hands and knees, but when she got to the second floor, she managed to stand and walk into her room. After locking the door, she slipped into her bathroom and dropped to sit on the cool tile.

  She had a dozen nearly empty prescription bottles in the bottom drawer on her side of the bathroom. When she emptied them all out, she laid the pills on the floor and counted them. Twenty-two. Twenty-two plus a few more in the bottle in her nightstand if she needed them. But twenty-two sleeping pills would do it, surely. The nightstand was very far away. She didn’t think she’d make it there and back.

  Staring at the pills, she thought idly that she couldn’t put anything in her mouth that had been on the bathroom floor. But that was silly, wasn’t it? Was she worried about germs? Worried about putting germs in her mouth right before she killed herself?

  Laughing, she wiped snot and tears from her face. All these weeks of seeing herself as the victim, but she wasn’t the victim at all. She was the villain in this story. The one who should have known better. Gary’s infidelity had freed a demon inside her, as if she’d been waiting her whole life to lie and cheat and steal and ruin lives. She’d become a stalker, a cheater, a liar, and an accessory to more than one crime.

  And if Evelyn needed further proof that she was a worthless excuse for a human being, the only thing she truly cared about was that she could never have Noah. He was lost to her. He would never love her now. Never.

  How was she supposed to live without him? What had she even thought about before him? He was in her bones now. In her womb and her mouth and her mind. Even when she’d imagined she only had to wait a little while longer, it had felt impossible to not be near him. And now? Now he was gone forever, and she couldn’t go on.

  She loved him. She needed him. Or was it just more sickness in her? More obsession, and evil, and dirtiness?

  “Oh, God,” she groaned as the pain welled up and spilled out of her mouth in a wail. “Oh, God!”

  Curling onto the floor, she screamed out her pain. She screamed and screamed until her voice cracked and faded and she could only weep, her arms wrapped tight around her body as if the touch of her own awful hands could help anything. But she had to hold on. She had to hold tight or she’d explode. This would all be over. Done.

  But wasn’t that what she wanted? To be done?

  “Yes,” she whispered, pressing her face into the tile. Her lips spread over the hard, slick surface. “Yes,” she grunted out. She wanted to be dead. There’d be no living with this pain. It was impossible to imagine.

  She sat up and tried to gather the pills her body had swept around the floor. When she could only find nineteen, she panicked a little, but soon enough she found that three had scooted under the rug near her feet.

  She lined them up again and stared at them. Would she vomit if she took them all at once? Maybe she could take them with an antacid to soothe her stomach, but might that keep her body from absorbing the pills? Much worse than dying would be almost dying and then having to face it all again with everyone watching.

  She didn’t want attention. She just wanted blankness. Forever. She picked up the first pill. Put it on her tongue. Swallowed it past her aching throat. She was good at taking pills. She did it every night. That was something people could say about her when they sat around gossiping at her funeral. “You know, she always was good at taking pills.”

  She swallowed a second pill and a third. Her throat closed a little on the fourth one, like a body would strain for air even when you didn’t want to rise from the bottom of a pool. She forced the capsule down.

  The fifth pill was still stuck in her throat when a bang from outside startled her. Coughing, she looked toward the window, worried that Cameron was home. But the sound of a diesel engine shook through the windowpane, and she realized it was only the garbage truck working its way through the neighborhood.

  Not Cameron. Not her husband. Not the police. Just a garbage truck, as if everything were normal and fine. As if life could just go on.

  She looked back to the pills, but it had taken only that one moment to break her concentration, and now she was shaking. Her entire body trembled with horror.

  What had she done? Cameron would come home. He’d come home and find a dead mother waiting for him. He’d live his whole life with it. Wondering why. Why she’d done it, why she’d left him. She couldn’t do that to her baby.

  Shaking her head, she spit the fifth pill in her hand and cried again, her swollen eyes burning from the salt now. “No, no, no. I can’t. I can’t.”

  She wanted to be dead. She deserved it. But Cameron didn’t. He was a good boy. He’d be a fine man. He deserved a happy life and a mother who at least pretended to be decent.

  The remaining pills glowed in pretty colors against the dark tile.

  New Evelyn had had so many dreams. She’d been strong, independent, and proud. She’d been sure of herself. Sure of what was right in the world. Sure of her body and her heart. New Evelyn had meant to embrace life and be something better.

  But had she been real? Or had she only been the horrid imaginings of Evelyn’s twisted mind?

  Maybe she’d been old Evelyn the whole time. Old, stupid, worthless Evelyn, who’d built a life around a husband and son and didn’t want more than that because other lives were so complicated, weren’t they? People had affairs and got divorced and made stupid, selfish decisions that ruined families and sent their kids to therapy. Not Evelyn. Never Evelyn.

  People had dreams and took risks, and those risks destroyed lives. Evelyn didn’t destroy lives for the sake of her dreams. That was reckless. Rude. Selfish.

  Maybe she could just go back to that. Have her old life. Calm down and carry on, pretend Gary was a man she could love, keep Cameron safe and happy.

  Her stomach rolled. Evelyn pushed to her knees and crawled quickly toward the toilet. The edges of the tiles dug into her kneecaps, but she kept moving.

  Crouched over the toilet, she stuck all her fingers into her mouth, pushing until she gagged. It wasn’t difficult. Her body knew it had been betrayed. As she vomited, her vision went blurry with tears, but everything was suddenly clear to her.

  She couldn’t let Gary win. She couldn’t. She wasn’t nothing. She wasn’t old and worthless and stupid. And if she’d lost her mind, she could get it back. It was somewhere waiting. She’d find it. She’d make this right. For herself. For Juliette. For Kaylee.

  She coughed and spit out the last of the vomit. When she opened her eyes, she carefully counted each pill shimmering beneath the water and the liquid remnants of the day’s stomach acid. Four pills. Plus the one clutched in her fist.

  Laying her forehead against the toilet seat, she sobbed out a mixture of re
lief and fear. The pills had been the simpler solution. But now . . . God. Now.

  It had been so much easier to imagine being brave when she’d thought Noah might love her. The idea of being brave alone seemed nearly impossible. It was all up to her. Just her. It always had been.

  She swiped toilet paper over her mouth and rose to her feet. Then she picked up each pill from the floor and carried them to the toilet to flush away. They swirled and bobbed and disappeared. Two of them clung stubbornly to the bottom of the bowl, so she flushed again. She didn’t toss the ones in her nightstand, though. She’d need them to sleep. She’d need them for a very long time.

  Watching herself in the mirror, she stripped out of her creased and rumpled clothing. She stared at her breasts and belly and pubic hair. This body had loved him. Noah. This body had loved Gary too. It had betrayed her and misled her, but someday she’d forgive it. Maybe someday she could even forgive herself.

  It was five thirty when she emerged from the shower, her skin raw and red from scrubbing. Evelyn put her wet hair in a bun and pulled on yoga pants and a sweatshirt. She piled the empty pill bottles back in the drawer, tidied up the bathroom, and walked slowly downstairs.

  When she saw the mess left in the kitchen from this morning’s breakfast, she pushed up the oversize sleeves of her shirt and washed the dishes. When her sister texted her, Evelyn texted right back with a funny smiley face, its tongue sticking out sideways.

  She took out the recycling, set the table, and finally, called to order Chinese food. They hadn’t had it in months. Cameron would be over the moon. He loved chicken lo mein so much.

  Grabbing a glass and a bottle of white wine from the fridge, Evelyn nodded at the pretty scene she’d set. The kitchen looked better than it had in weeks. Homey and warm.

  Cameron and Gary came home at almost the same time, Cameron’s hair still wet from practice. The Chinese food arrived minutes later. Evelyn poured another glass of wine, and she and Cameron discussed the team’s chances in the state meet this weekend. They didn’t expect to place, but Cameron still seemed cheerful about it. He was competitive, but he’d never been a sore loser. More evidence that maybe Evelyn had done something right in her life.

  As for Gary, he made a meal out of fried rice and a few steamed vegetables, but he didn’t complain as he usually did when she ordered Chinese. Maybe he could sense the tension in the air. Maybe he could feel the force of something coming.

  The pain was waiting for her. Evelyn knew that. It was upstairs in her room, in her bed, lying in the faint outline of Evelyn’s body in the mattress. It would live there with her for years. Maybe for decades. But she somehow managed to laugh with Cameron over the awful pun war he and his friends had waged with each other in English class. She even met Gary’s smile once, accidentally. A last, lovely family dinner.

  When Cameron finally excused himself to do homework, Gary packed up the leftovers and took the dirty dishes to the sink.

  She almost felt sorry for him in that moment. He looked so unsuspecting. She could feel the weakness in his ignorance. It came off him in waves. He believed the worst had passed. He thought he’d gotten away with it.

  He was wrong.

  CHAPTER 30

  BEFORE

  Mr. Noah Whitman. An elusive man, but she’d finally found him.

  She’d checked for a Noah Whitman or any Noah who followed Juliette, of course, but he hadn’t existed. Either he didn’t follow his wife on Facebook (interesting) or he wasn’t signed up.

  But this morning she got off Facebook and tried a new search. It yielded the typical hundreds of hits to online phone directories all across the country. But when she added the name of Juliette’s suburb to the search, she found something likely. A Noah Whitman in the area. Triumph crawled up her spine and tightened her scalp. This was him.

  And then she stumbled across an honest-to-goodness surprise. Noah Whitman was the owner and manager of an art gallery. The Whitman Gallery. And not only did the Whitman Gallery have a Facebook page that Juliette followed, but there was a whole website there for Evelyn to explore. Noah Whitman’s picture was on the front page, and he was the same man from Juliette’s family photos. Bingo.

  So . . . Juliette was married to a man who loved art. How horrifically ironic. Evelyn had been a painter once, long ago. Their lives were a disgusting spiderweb of connections.

  The Saturday night with her sister had managed to tame some of Evelyn’s sick interest in Juliette’s life, but it came roaring back as she paged through the Whitman Gallery’s collection. If he hadn’t fallen prey to Juliette Whitman’s perfect-damsel routine, Evelyn might have respected this man. He had good taste in art, if nothing else. How had he loved a woman like Juliette enough to marry her?

  Evelyn could find out. His gallery was just a short drive away. It was closer than Juliette’s school. And Evelyn didn’t have to worry that he’d recognize her. Surely he knew little about his wife’s psychiatrist and even less about her affair. Evelyn could go browse through his gallery and get a feel for him.

  Then again, Sharon was right. Evelyn needed to pull herself up by her bootstraps and move on with her life. If she wanted to stay with Gary, she needed to work at it. Make herself happy again. She couldn’t keep indulging this obsession.

  And she wouldn’t. After today. She’d promised her sister she’d give all this up on Monday, but she hadn’t said what time on Monday.

  Still, she wouldn’t put off all of Sharon’s advice.

  She showered, shaved, put on makeup and perfume. She even took the time to blow out her long brown hair, pleased that even though she hadn’t gotten it colored since February, there wasn’t too much gray. She was lucky in that, at least.

  Instead of putting on the sweats she’d been living in, Evelyn dressed in real clothes, and she felt better, just as promised. She really did.

  It didn’t hurt that the only nice clothes that fit right now were a black pencil skirt and a red blouse. The skirt had been one of those ill-advised, surely-I’ll-fit-into-this-soon purchases she’d made years ago. Her hope was realized at long last. It fit perfectly.

  Unwilling to pair her new power outfit with flats or sandals, she dug her nicest pair of black pumps out of her shoe pile and slipped them on.

  Her stomach rumbled, and Evelyn was shocked to realize she was hungry. Starving, actually. The twisting of her stomach felt foreign after so long with no appetite. The cream cheese and bagels she’d bought for Cameron a few days ago suddenly sounded like manna. After adding a swingy little set of earrings to her outfit, she rushed downstairs to eat.

  She felt excited. Excited about this one last little bout of spying, yes, but more excited about moving forward. She didn’t have to be a victim forever. She could choose to be happy. Choose to let go of some of this awful fury.

  Taking her toasted bagel to the desk, she wrote an email to Gary.

  Please take another look at these therapists so we can choose one. I don’t think we should put it off. In fact, I’ll move your stuff back into the bedroom today. I love you.

  She would never forget what he’d done. She’d never feel good about this secret. In fact, just typing I love you made her gut burn. But maybe, with time, she could learn to forgive.

  She’d worked on the puzzle of his affair for far too long, trying to solve it, sure that she could. But the truth was, even if she never truly solved it, she had a clearer picture now. A hint of an understanding. Just one more piece, and surely she’d be satisfied.

  The mysterious Noah Whitman awaited.

  NOW

  Strange that it was possible to regret something so completely and yet miss it every day. But she did miss it. Desperately. She missed the anticipation of seeing him. The possibility of pleasure. The yearning. The sweet ache.

  She missed Noah’s scent and taste. Missed his words. The need in his eyes. Even the smell of paint was enough to send her spiraling sometimes, and she’d stumble for the shower to weep and weep beneath the hot spra
y of water.

  It hurt to not be with him. Her organs and skin and bones protested. They wanted to reshape themselves into the woman she’d been with Noah, and now they had nowhere to go. Evelyn was just starting to settle them down.

  Out of everything she’d been able to set right in the past eleven months, her affair with Noah was the one transgression she could never correct. All she could do was leave him. Every day. Walk away and leave him behind.

  Each morning she’d woken and told herself she would not check Facebook. She would not text. She would not call or drive past or even fantasize about what could have been.

  She had no idea if he and Juliette had confessed to each other or if they’d managed to find happiness again in their marital deception. After everything, she owed them privacy now. So she left Noah behind just as she’d left Gary.

  At long last it was finally getting easier, if only because she’d put them both a thousand miles behind her.

  Letting go of the steering wheel, she tipped her head back against the headrest and took a deep breath. This was a new day. A new start.

  After locking up the Range Rover, she threaded her way through the other vehicles to a stairway. Once she reached the second level, she leaned against the metal railing that overlooked the sea.

  Waves glinted in the afternoon glare, flashing light and dark and light again. She raised her face to the spring air, still cool despite the bright sun. Closing her eyes, she let it soak into her. She’d worn no sunscreen, hat, or glasses. She didn’t want anything between her and the light. The wind tossed her hair with wild, whipping hands, and it was all she could feel for a long while.

  When a seabird screamed overhead, two others screamed back, and she opened her eyes to watch them hover on the air above her. They looked nothing like blackbirds, and she felt thankful for that. Maybe out here she’d never see a blackbird again.

  A ship’s horn blew. The metal deck dipped and rose. Evelyn needed to call her lawyer before they got too far from shore.