Eliza Starts a Rumor

by Jane L. Rosen

  “I am the woman from the bulletin board. I am the woman,” Olivia sobbed. Alison knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “Oh my God. You’re anonymous?”

  “No. It’s worse than that.” She could barely say it. “I’m the wife.”

  Now Alison was tearing up. A pit filled her stomach and she couldn’t get enough air. Motherhood has made me soft, she thought.

  “How awful,” she said, hugging her. Olivia melted into her arms sobbing, the two strangers now intimate friends.

  As Olivia wept, Alison regained her composure. This situation called for the Iron Lady, not the wussy confection of hormones and baby love that she’d become. Toeing the line between lawyering and mothering, Alison began her line of questioning while brewing a pot of chamomile tea.

  “How are you certain it’s your husband? Did he admit it?”

  “No, he denied it. But I’m sure.” Olivia pulled up the first post on her phone and showed it to Alison. She now knew it by heart and read along in her head.

  Anonymous: I just moved here from the city with hopes of starting over after an affair that my husband knows nothing about. The man I was having the affair with followed me here and keeps showing up at my door . . .

  “OK, is this all you’ve got? Because there is some major circumstantial stuff going on here. I understand that you moved here recently, but so have many other people. I bet there are other couples having the same fight right now!”

  Olivia wasn’t buying it. She scrolled forward to the next post while explaining Spencer’s crazy reactions to reading them, and how he was gone in the morning at the same time the cheating woman claimed to be running with her boyfriend. Olivia read the next post. Alison was skeptical.

  “Everyone runs in the morning. Did you confront him?”

  “Yes.” She began crying again. “He turned it all around, accused me of cheating. It was so frustrating, and . . .” She took a deep breath to try and calm herself. “And so embarrassing. I mean, look at me. To accuse me of cheating . . .” Olivia’s milk had come in right on schedule, leaving her with circular stains on her gray T-shirt over each nipple and a good amount of guilt for having left a now-sure-to-be-hungry Lily at home. She buried her face in her hands. The teapot whistled. Alison fixed Olivia a cup of tea and placed it and the muffin in front of her.

  “Here, eat something. I’ll go up and get you a sports bra and a clean T-shirt. I’ll be right back.”

  Once upstairs, Alison called her best friend from college, a detective named Andie Rand, who specialized in domestic disputes after suffering a particularly horrendous one of her own. Recently engaged, she was finally not rendering anyone with a penis automatically guilty. Alison came back down, armed with a change of clothes and some very logical advice. Olivia went to the bathroom to wash her face and change. She took her time and came out somewhat renewed.

  “I hope it’s OK, but I called my friend who owns a detective agency in the city. I didn’t give her your name.”

  Olivia didn’t mind. She was desperate for direction. “I’m so thankful I bumped into you,” she said.

  “Me too. So first off, she understands that you want to hear the truth from your husband, but if he is a cheater, then he’s also a liar. She says he will feed you lies, and you’ll want to believe them.”

  So far she was right. Olivia only wanted to hear his explanation, to hear the words “I would never cheat on you” and to believe them and turn the page on this whole episode.

  “It’s pointless to confront him until we gather as much evidence as possible.”

  Olivia’s eyes filled with tears. Alison assumed it was because she was probably being cheated on, and as the timeline suggested, it was likely going on during her pregnancy. Alison reflected on her own experience of childbirth and shuddered at the thought of it being laced with duplicity. Poor Olivia. How soon before she started questioning months of interactions in her mind? Olivia’s awful situation affirmed Alison’s decision to go it alone, not that she’d really had much choice.

  As it turned out, this trickling of tears was out of gratitude, because Alison had used the word “we.”

  “Thank you so much for helping me like this. You don’t even know me.”

  That was the best part of it for Olivia. While she was in the bathroom, she had resisted the urge to call her parents, her sister, or her best friend. She knew once she did, she could never take the words back. True or not, the damage would be done, especially if she told her father. She vowed only to confide in this stranger until the whole ordeal was resolved, regardless of the resolution.

  “I don’t mind at all. I’m happy to be here for you, really.”

  Olivia shook her head with a mixture of relief and appreciation.

  “Did you tell your friend that he accused me back?” she asked hopefully. The more Olivia thought about it, the more she realized that Spencer could have come up with the same conclusions about a cheating spouse from the post that she had. The story did work both ways, and he had made little effort to conceal his behavior.

  “I did tell her.” Alison paused, as the answer would not be fun to hear. “She said it may be true, but more often than not the guilty party hopes to defuse anger with confusion.”

  Olivia’s face sank.

  Alison knew one was innocent until proven guilty, but her career had swayed her to often believe the opposite. She was very familiar with the emotions involved when someone wanted so badly to believe that the person they know is blameless. She felt terrible for this woman.

  “She said we can come see her at her office on Monday, if you want.”

  Again, we. Olivia jumped at the chance. “The sooner the better. I have my sitter on Mondays. She can watch the kids if you want.”

  “Both of them?”

  “Absolutely. She’s a retired kindergarten teacher who raised a family of her own. She could probably watch ten babies more easily than we can watch one. I promise.” Alison agreed to it.

  “The thought of having any control over this . . .” Olivia couldn’t finish her thought. Her eyes welled up again.

  Alison went into defendant mode. “Don’t start. You have to go home and backpedal. Tell him you are not having an affair, and you’re sorry you accused him of having one. Then just try and act normal.”

  Olivia had no idea how she was going to pull that off. Alison read it on her face.

  “Remember, Olivia, questioning a cheater only makes things worse. If you signal what you know, he’ll cover his tracks, and it will be very hard for us to get at the truth. Plus we have no idea if this is for real. What’s that saying about worrying?”

  “No use in worrying until you have something to worry about?”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  Olivia knew what she had to do. As she trudged home, she directed her thoughts to uncovering the truth. She swore to control herself and go about everything purposefully and emotionlessly for her and Lily’s sake. The only thing worse than being cheated on was being made a fool of, and if that was what was going on, she would take him down. She thought of something that happened last week, something that had touched her. She’d been giggling at a silly cat video when he walked in, caught her, and smiled a huge grin.

  “What?” she had asked, and he said, “Nothing, I just love to hear you laugh.”

  She would think of that nice moment when her mind drifted to hating him and promised to stop before the worst thought took over. The worst thought being that everything, including that moment, was a lie.

  CHAPTER 14

  Amanda

  Amanda had insisted that she and the girls take a car from the airport, but of course her father had completely ignored her. While she appreciated him and had been garnering strength from just the promise of their forthcoming hug, she recognized she would have to draw clear boundaries. Dan Williams could b
e quite obstinate, especially when it came to his only child, Mandy.

  The ride home was particularly uncomfortable. Dan would ask a question, and Amanda would quickly shut it down with her eyes. Finally, she said, “Let’s talk when we get home, Dad,” as she turned up the radio.

  Dan brought their luggage inside. The girls would share Amanda’s old room, and Amanda would take the guest room on the first floor so as to give her some privacy, he said. She secretly longed to stay in her childhood bedroom, snuggled up under the primary-colored tulips of her beloved Marimekko comforter. When trying to fall asleep next to Carson, Amanda would sometimes imagine herself in her childhood bed. She would envision the array of stickers that she’d collaged to the underside of the top bunk in middle school—an abundance of Wacky Packs, the bright leopard prints of Lisa Frank, and a mega-sized MTV logo were interspersed with nearly anything with an adhesive back. She doubted anyone else even knew they were there. Sometimes she would lie in her Beverly Hills bed trying to recall every last sticker until she drifted off to sleep.

  As Sadie began losing the battle for the top bunk to her older sister, Amanda winked at her and motioned for her to try out the bottom. She did, and upon seeing the ’80s time capsule, quickly acquiesced as if she were doing Pippa a favor.

  “Fine, I’ll take the bottom,” she said, with a knowing smile.

  The girls thought this visit was about escaping the initial fallout from their father’s indiscretions. “Just until it blows over,” Amanda had told them on the plane. But Amanda knew better than to think it would be blowing over anytime soon. She assumed that those first accusations against Carson were only the tip of the iceberg. Her gut told her that her husband would be going down like the Titanic, and like on the Titanic, all women and children belonged in lifeboats. She helped the girls unpack and excused herself to settle into the guest room.

  From her window, Amanda could see that across the street Eliza had company. Her dad had mentioned an invitation in the car, before she’d silenced him. On other visits, Amanda might have run to Eliza’s to say hello before even entering her own house, but not today. Until receiving her text, Amanda hadn’t heard from her for a few months, and then it had only been to wish her a happy birthday. In the old days, they would have called each other on their birthdays and stayed on the phone for hours catching up. Eliza knew Amanda better than anyone, and would have heard, just from her hello, how unhappy she was. It’s much easier to feign happiness over text. She remembered selecting a smiley face in response to Eliza’s asking how she was doing. She’d gone with the slightly smiling face as opposed to the big grin to avoid feeling like a complete hypocrite. If she were being honest, she would have sent the exploding head back then as she had yesterday. Texting is both a blessing and a curse.

  Eliza’s house looked so happy and full. It made Mandy wonder about the life she was so quick to give up. As soon as she was able, she had flown the coop to head to the West Coast in search of something bigger. On the yearly trips back east to see her dad, she could remember her perspective changing. Eventually she would see things through Carson’s eyes. The spacious houses in their affluent neighborhood, built in the ’70s on a large expanse of undeveloped Hudson Valley farmland, slowly began to shrink as she became accustomed to the mansions of Beverly Hills. The conversations about country clubs, canasta, and composting seemed droll compared to industry talk in LA. Even the bodies were less exciting to look at; everyone seemed to have an extra ten pounds on them yet didn’t think twice about ordering a slice of pie for dessert. That part was actually better. In LA, “à la mode” meant with a side of remorse and a promise of three more miles on the treadmill.

  She stood there now wondering how she could have become so jaded. How could she have been so foolish as to think this wouldn’t be enough for her? But of course, hindsight is everything, and who wouldn’t make different choices if they were given a crystal ball? Eliza probably wouldn’t, she thought. Good for her. She hoped it were true.

  Though Eliza lived in the house she had grown up in, Mandy knew it was now a very different home. Eliza and her mother had been like oil and water for most of their lives, until later, when they were like gasoline and a match. But still, when her mom moved to Florida and offered Eliza and Luke the house, they grabbed it. It was a beautiful Colonial near some of the best schools in the state, plus there was a natural warmth to the place that even Eliza’s frosty mother hadn’t been able to extinguish. Birdie Reinhart was ice-cold to almost everyone except, oddly, Amanda. Actually, it wasn’t that odd. Even a stranger could figure out why Birdie seemed to care more for Amanda than for her own child. In fact, upon meeting Eliza and Amanda in the presence of Birdie, the tactless ones often pointed it right out:

  “Oh, how funny that your own daughter (with her frizzy black curls, broken-out skin, and extra pounds) looks nothing like you, and her (fit, tan, blond) best friend (with the wide-set blue eyes and fine features) could be your clone?”

  The only thing wrong with that sentence was “how funny.”

  Eliza was always generous about it to Mandy, making faces and snide comments to defuse the situation.

  “Do you want her?” she would ask, referring to her mother. A baited question, since Amanda’s own mother had walked out on them when she was seven. Amanda’s answer would be no. She didn’t want Birdie Reinhart to be her mother, but she did let her spoil her. She was happy to take her hand-me-downs or a gift of coral lipstick when Birdie would buy two because, “It goes perfectly with our coloring.”

  Eliza always felt like the ugly duckling when the three of them were together, but feigned indifference. She would make self-deprecating jokes and laugh everything off until that one day in high school, when out of nowhere she refused to leave the house. It was as if her entire personality changed overnight and no one, not even Amanda, knew why.

  Amanda pulled herself away from the window and opened up her suitcase. She would visit Eliza tomorrow when her company was gone. It would be too much to walk into her house today. She pictured the Hollywood-style announcement:

  Amanda Cole, Hudson Valley’s D-list actress, is back for a return engagement with her tail between her legs.

  It was not the big comeback she had hoped for.

  CHAPTER 15

  Jackie & Alison

  Jackie made a special trip to the Video Room on Saturday to pick out a movie for him and Jana to watch. He was old-fashioned that way. Perusing the aisles of the last standing DVD store in Hudson Valley gave him a satisfaction he didn’t get from streaming at home. The alternative was spending an eternity doing it the Netflix way, and not a happy eternity. Every suggestion by one of them led to the other saying, “Maybe. Let’s see what else there is.” The delayed start significantly upped the chance of Jackie dozing off halfway through. It had been years since he’d carried Jana upstairs to sleep; lately it was more likely to be the other way around.

  He walked in around five o’clock with a bag of groceries, including the newest flavor from Ben & Jerry’s, and the DVD of Drop Dead Fred. A classic, he told Jana as she came down the stairs to gingerly burst his bubble.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. Lauren Adwar is having people over, and I really want to go.”

  He made a sad face, but Jana didn’t waver. She reminded him that the last time she acquiesced to guilt she missed the party of the year, which fueled a few hundred inside jokes that she was not inside for.

  It never seemed to enter her mind that Jackie might also have other things to do. Not that he could even remember having such desires. Jackie’s friends used to invite him to join them on Saturday nights, but he would usually turn them down, choosing to spend more time with Jana. Even his mother would push him to put himself out there. He always made excuses. Jackie had no interest in ever being as broken as he was when his wife died. He had his daughter and loving her was enough for him.

  “Will her parents be home?”
he asked.

  “Yup. Call them if you want,” she challenged.

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  “Oh, believe me, Daddy, I don’t think you won’t!”

  They both laughed. They knew each other too well.

  Within an hour of her leaving, loneliness set in. Jackie looked at his DVD choice and bemoaned the fact that he’d had Die Hard and Die Hard 2 in his hands and had put them back. Even the lovely Phoebe Cates couldn’t entice him to go this one alone. Jana would be going to college in a few years, and he hadn’t bothered to build a personal life for himself. He poured a bowl of cereal, not exactly the dinner of champions, and opened up his computer to throw himself into his work. This was a common defense of his when discontent set in—don’t think, just work. He remembered his new mom bulletin board friend and reached out to her instead of delving into a trade index summary report.

  Hi! Did you make it to the Karma Sutra? Were there any meditation classes posted?

  She answered pretty quickly, leading Jackie to assume that she was just as bored as he was. In truth, she was happy for the distraction.

  Alison had been lying around all night, obsessing over the posts about the affair. She was poring through the comments, looking for clues. She’d hoped it was just in Olivia’s head, but the more she thought about the situation, the more she felt like something wasn’t right. The whole thing was making her crazy.

  Alison was a good friend to have, both virtually and in the flesh: the kind of straightforward person who tells it like it is, even when you may not want to hear it. She had just met Olivia, but still she couldn’t help but feel protective toward her. She had tried some of the most difficult cases in the state and seen how easy it was for people to lie. If Olivia’s husband was lying, she wanted to catch this guy and take him down.

  Hi! There was a notice for a class called Intersectional Embodiment. I was too scared to even take the flyer!