Safe in My Arms

by Sara Shepard

  But Lauren’s braininess had served her well: after college at UC Santa Cruz, she got into tech, finding coding languages easier to master than German or French. She put her love of gaming to use and developed a game app called Huzzah!, a Candy Crush–like color-matching puzzle that featured elves and sprites. The game garnered a following, and then she helped make Huzzah! 2, and then both games were set to be purchased by a big developer in Silicon Valley for wide distribution. Thanks to a business-minded friend, she’d lawyered up and secured rights to both properties. The sale of the games would earn her a decent nest egg, enough so that she didn’t have to figure out her next steps for a while. Right around that time, she’d met Graham.

  Also around that time, she’d started to entertain the idea of having a baby—maybe even being a single parent by choice, though she didn’t share that notion with her family. When she broached the subject with Graham after just one month of dating, she was sure she’d just ruined the relationship, but Graham was into it, which she found incredibly romantic. They started trying only a few months later. Lauren figured that it would take a long time for them to conceive, but then she got a positive pregnancy test the first month. Things happened quickly after that: wedding plans, and then a move down the coast to a town that was more “family friendly” than LA—Raisin Beach’s public schools were some of the best in the state. Suddenly, they were going to be married and parents. Lauren was even secretly happy that one of Graham’s scripts hadn’t hit it big yet. They could be stay-at-home parents together.

  But then, last winter, not long before Lauren’s due date, Gracie Lord chose Graham’s spec script from a pool of thousands of hungry screenwriters to join her writing room for the show’s fourth season. Graham was over the moon—Lauren, too, although, if she were being honest, the few times she’d watched the show, she thought it was kind of sophomoric and didn’t have believable plotlines. Regardless, not long after, the economy started to tank. Graham’s job was safe, but the sale of Lauren’s game, which had been a sure thing, was postponed. And postponed again. The money she’d hoped to flood in didn’t come. At this point, she wasn’t sure if it would ever come. It was probably good Graham got a job, and suddenly, their roles had flip-flopped. All at once, Graham was the achiever, and she was the one who wasn’t sure of her worth or her identity.

  Graham had worked nonstop since he started at Ketchup, commuting two hours daily back up to Culver City. After the first week of working in the office, Graham floated the idea of renting an apartment in LA. But Lauren had had some . . . trouble, postpartum. And that idea was dropped.

  “Can you text Clarissa?” Graham asked. “See if she can come in?”

  Lauren squeezed her kneecaps. “I think I could handle Matthew alone for a few hours without the nanny.” But Graham cut her a sideways glance that was a mix between concern, sadness, and—maybe—warning. “Okay, okay,” she said, backtracking. “I’ll get her.”

  She started texting. When she looked up, Graham had taken the road that would eventually parallel the ocean. It was the nicest route home.

  “So did you say there’s going to be a documentary?” Graham murmured.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t get into details. But it could be cool?”

  “I don’t know if we should have Matthew involved. Privacy issues and all that.”

  “I doubt they’d want to feature Matthew anyway. He’s just a baby.” Her cell phone pinged. Happy to! Clarissa wrote. “You know, this weird thing happened. I asked the director this totally innocent question, and she looked at me like I was from another planet.”

  “What did you say? Did you . . . you didn’t get angry, did you?”

  Lauren stiffened. “Excuse me?”

  “No, I mean . . . you know.” Graham tried to sound jokey, nudge-nudge. “I’m just making sure! This school’s costing us enough money—we want to get off on the right foot!”

  Just like that, Lauren could feel it coming on. The low simmer with rising bubbles. Silver Swans had been a point of contention with them. Back when Lauren thought she’d be flush from Huzzah!, they put down a deposit to send Matthew—Silver Swans was running an incentive that if they enrolled a child in the six-month-old class, they’d be charged a slightly lower rate going forward. When the game sale didn’t go through, Graham argued that they should retract the down payment, but Lauren didn’t want to. She wanted Matthew at this school, and who knew if there would be spots for him in the future? (Ironically, there probably would be spots for him, considering how many people had pulled their kids out, but Lauren hadn’t known that then. And then the deadline to cancel Matthew’s spot in the school passed, and she couldn’t get their money back, so now they were just . . . going for it.)

  “I didn’t get angry,” she said. “I mistook some man for Piper’s teenage son, a simple mistake, and she got really strange about it.” Graham opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a finger. “But the conclusion you automatically jump to is that I’m a hot mess? That I’m going to be inappropriate in public? Do you realize how that makes me feel?”

  “Honey.” Graham licked his lips. He was nervous, she could tell. He knew her signs by then. “It’s also . . .” But then he stopped, changing his mind. “Forget it. Let’s talk about this later. When we’re not in traffic.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  They were on the ocean road at that point; only a few feet away was a running path full of joggers and bikers. Graham had to slow down to obey the speed limit. He pushed his wedding ring around his finger. “It’s just that . . . am I really so out of line for being concerned? Excuse me if I get sort of jumpy about you potentially making a scene.”

  And there it was: the rolling boil. Lauren had no idea where the fury came from—she’d tried to break it down to Dr. Landry, but it was futile. The fury coursed and snapped inside her, a black, bulbous shape that rose from some other dimension and yanked her by the collar, threw her out of her body, and took the helm. Even now, her waist tensed against the seat belt. A scream burst from within her, making Graham jump and Matthew start crying.

  “Do you not respect me at all anymore?” It wasn’t even Lauren’s voice. It was something keening, primal, and bloody. “Do you even see me as a person these days—or just some unhinged woman who makes scenes?”

  “Lauren . . .” Graham quickly rolled up the window, glancing out at the people on the running path. Regardless, a few passersby looked their way.

  But Lauren didn’t care. Or, rather, the beast inside her didn’t care. “I was just trying to tell you a story about something I perceived as strange. I wanted to have a normal discussion where you took my side and we dissected it together—even laughed about it. But you always write me off!”

  “Do you blame me?” Graham pointed at her. “Do you blame me, when this is how you respond?”

  “You brought this on! And also, if you were so fucking worried, why didn’t you come in with me? Why did you stay on your stupid call?”

  “Because I have a job,” Graham said, defeated now.

  Lauren squeezed her eyes shut. “Pull over, please.”

  “What?”

  “Pull over. I don’t want to sit next to you.”

  Graham did as she asked. When the car was in park, Lauren flung the door open and stepped into the murky air. It was scorching outside—how could people run in this? There wasn’t even a sea breeze, despite the ocean being so close by. Her long skirt stuck to her legs, and she felt fat and pale next to all the lithe, healthy bodies that were jogging past. Still more people glanced at her. People passing didn’t see a diagnosis, probably, a very real postpartum thing Lauren had discussed with a therapist who cost them $400 an hour. They just saw a bitch.

  Shoulders hunched, she yanked open the door to the back seat and slid in next to Matthew. Once she was belted, Graham pulled away from the shoulder. He kept his eyes on the road and
his hands on the wheel, but he was too still, too watchful. He was afraid of her. Afraid of what she was going to do next. He had good reason to. Look at what happened in the kitchen. Look at how awful she was.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, suddenly feeling drained. “I’m such an asshole.”

  “No, you’re not,” Graham said, sounding defeated. “It’s okay.”

  But Lauren didn’t feel okay. She was sick of this happening. She was sick of being the hurricane that ravaged her family. She just wanted to be normal again. A good wife. A good mother.

  She looked around for something to use to wipe her sweaty face, then noticed Matthew’s raccoon backpack on the floor beneath the car seat. Inside was a package of wipes; she pulled out a handful and pressed them to her forehead, savoring their coolness. Again, Graham eyed her in the rearview, but Lauren didn’t meet his gaze.

  She almost missed the note when she returned the wipes to the backpack. It was just a small square of paper, folded in half. She pulled it out and read the unfamiliar handwriting. And then she felt confused.

  And then embarrassed.

  And then ashamed.

  And then paranoid.

  And then angry.

  You, the note read, are not wanted here.

  Three

  That same afternoon, Ronnie Stuckey squatted on the wood floor and swiped a pink, fluffy feather duster across a media console. Her nose tickled. Her legs ached from the pose, though she knew this particular stance made her butt look amazing. There was a draft going up her bare ass from her short skirt. And her breasts swung loose and free—literally free. That was how Charlie Lowes—and every other client who called upon Ronnie to “clean” for them—liked it.

  Charlie watched Ronnie from the other side of the room, his eyes at half-mast. He was twenty-five, three years younger than Ronnie, and had dark, tangled hair that came to his shoulders. From what Ronnie gathered, Charlie was a printmaker—though what he printed on was a mystery. He must have inherited money, because he lived alone in a huge house on the ocean, about forty-five minutes away from where she lived in Raisin Beach. His place had a negative-edge pool that overlooked the beach and an updated kitchen. It was also cluttered with shedding plants, hairball-riddled cats, art supplies, old magazines, and empty yogurt containers. What the house needed was a real clean—not the sort of ersatz version Ronnie did. Oh, she dusted a little, and sometimes she pushed a vacuum in a sexy way. But mostly she just scooted around the rooms, twirling, twerking, jiggling her butt, and making her naked breasts bounce. That was what Topless Maids, with whom she was employed—her true employer, not the job she told everyone she did—was all about.

  “How’s that little girl of yours?” Charlie asked suddenly.

  Ronnie looked up. Sometimes she shared a personal detail with her clients, but questions about Esme were always jarring.

  Perhaps Charlie understood this, because he then added, “You told me about her last time you were here. I saw a pic of her on your lock screen?”

  Ronnie flicked dust into the trash can. “She’s . . . great.” She did a little twirl as she kicked the trash can closed. And then, even though Charlie probably wasn’t the best person to unload upon, she couldn’t help herself. “Her first day at a new preschool was today, actually.”

  “Oh yeah? Which school’s she going to?”

  For a moment Ronnie considered not telling—it felt like a privacy infringement, and what if Charlie was some sort of pervert and ended up loitering outside Silver Swans? But she felt she knew Charlie well enough—he had been one of her first clients when she moved there. She was pretty sure he wasn’t that sort of guy. And anyway, after she named Silver Swans, he shrugged and said, “I’m not going to even pretend I know anything about preschools. Everything go okay?”

  “I think so. She said she had a lot of fun. They had a get-together for the parents while the kids were in there, too. It’s funny to be out in the world after being shut in for so long, but it was nice to see people.”

  She glanced at Charlie, then looked away fast. His erection poked through his jogger pants. Ronnie locked eyes with Bethany, the dancer she’d come with. Bethany was tracking the erection, too. The guys were allowed to masturbate in front of them, but they weren’t allowed to get undressed.

  Ronnie busied herself by dusting a credenza so she wouldn’t have to look at Charlie for a little bit. At Kittens, the adult establishment in Pennsylvania where she’d gotten her start in this industry and worked until two years ago, dim lighting obscured men’s faces. She’d liked that better. Ronnie would rather men look at her and talk among themselves than try to include her in the conversation. She also liked the camaraderie with the other dancers. With Topless Maids, they always had to go in pairs, but Ronnie was always grouped with different girls, often not the same person twice. She hadn’t gotten to know anybody.

  When Ronnie had to leave Pennsylvania, she’d reached out to Dahlia, one of her friends at Kittens, asking if Dahlia knew of any leads for work far, far away that paid decent money. Topless Maids was what Dahlia came up with. It paid way better than the job Ronnie told everyone she was doing—working at the nonprofit group home, caring for patients with mental disabilities. And though she probably could have found work at a strip club elsewhere—she’d even considered Vegas—there was something aspirational about this part of California. Its clean streets. Its quaint, Disneyland-like main thoroughfare. The fantasy-themed playground in the center square where the slides were cheerful, pink-fire-breathing dragons. It was a far cry from dreary Cobalt, which was what she wanted for Esme.

  All told, Ronnie didn’t mind Topless Maids that much; she was used to men looking. Since she was thirteen, men had gone to pieces around her—especially men of an older generation. How many times, growing up, when she was wearing something even remotely revealing, had someone whispered, “Look at those titties” or “Playboy model ” or even just “slut” as she passed? Ronnie’s dad, Jimmy, was always down on his luck, perpetually getting laid off from jobs, and that instilled in him a certain ineffectualness. He tried to protect Ronnie from the male population, though instead of lashing out at the people who ogled, he told Ronnie to stay inside and not invite the comments at all.

  Ronnie’s mother, Brenda, agreed. She sent Ronnie upstairs half the mornings before school, saying she looked “too sexy.” Ronnie’s older sister, Vanessa, wore clothes that were far more revealing . . . but no one looked at Vanessa. Vanessa treated Ronnie’s looks as an inconvenience, annoyed that so many boys in her grade came up to ask her if Ronnie was old enough to date. “You’re not that pretty,” she always told Ronnie—right in front of their parents, who made no efforts to correct her. “Don’t be stupid enough to believe what those guys say.”

  When Ronnie was seventeen, her dad died of a heart attack. Ronnie’s mother fell apart shortly after that and passed away a year later. Going to college wasn’t in the cards for Vanessa, but Ronnie still thought it was a possibility for her. She’d major in business, she thought, or maybe accounting. She was good at managing things and crunching numbers. Though she had no idea how she’d even pay the application fees. Then, when a friend of a friend at a party jokingly told her she should work at Kittens, the county’s only strip club, Ronnie took it to heart. She’d heard through the grapevine how much money you could make, so she called to see if they were hiring. For someone like Ronnie, of course they were.

  Ronnie kept her new job a secret for a while, but then she blurted it out to Vanessa, who was scandalized but probably, deep down, quite jealous. “How can you do that for strangers?” she asked.

  “It’s okay,” Ronnie said. “And anyway, it’s just to raise money for college.”

  A girl at Kittens got sick; the boss asked Ronnie to come in for extra shifts. The money was so good, but it made her miss the school application deadlines. She had to put it off for another six months. But then Vaness
a was out of work, and Ronnie felt obligated to help her out—she took on more shifts and missed the deadline again. Then Jerrod came along, and then Esme, and the prospect of leaving for college was out of the question. It just all . . . happened, a snowball growing larger and larger as it rolled down the hill. And now, there she was, all the way in California, still taking off her clothes for money. But if these guys were dumb enough to shell out cash to stare at her naked, what did she care? And she kept it from her boyfriend, Lane, not because she was ashamed—it just wasn’t his business.

  At least that was what she was telling herself, anyway. But now things had become a little more complicated. Ronnie and Lane had been living together for over a year now. Esme was now going to the school where Lane taught, and because Ronnie and Lane were considered “domestic partners,” Ronnie got a huge discount on Silver Swans’ tuition. Every day, the hole of lies Ronnie had dug for herself was a little deeper, and her roots to Raisin Beach were a little more . . . rooted. Every day, she had more to lose.

  After a few more minutes of dancing, Ronnie put down the duster. “Hour’s up, babe.”

  Charlie sucked on a weed pen, then lazily cast his gaze around the room. “Looks great.” Laughable: the house was no cleaner. He stretched out his arms. “C’mere, ladies.”

  She and Bethany walked toward him. Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out several crisp twenties, doling them out to the girls in eeny meeny miney moe. “Gracias, mamas.” He slapped the bills into Ronnie’s palm, but before she could pull away, his fingers curled around hers. Ronnie’s feet had been so planted that she tripped forward, almost into his lap.