“Could we not, tonight? Please, Thomas.”
“Don’t tell me you have a headache.”
“No, not that. I’m just . . . Abigail was sick, and I visited three people in the hospital, and—”
“It’s your duty,” Thomas says. “The apostle Paul—”
“Can we leave Paul out of it just this once? I’m tired. I don’t want—”
“You made a vow, Elizabeth. I expect you to honor it.”
If I keep saying no, he’ll accept it eventually. He would never resort to physical force. But he’ll be quietly angry and I’ll pay in little ways for days to come. Best to get it over with.
I let him pull up my nightgown and lie still, holding my breath against the discomfort of his thrusting, my face turned to the side so he won’t see the slow tears of weary helplessness tracking down my cheeks. And then the door opens, and Abigail stands there in her nightgown, staring.
She’s so small, too young to see this, to understand any of it. Her eyes meet mine, and hold. I shake my head, warning her to say nothing, and she backs out of the room, closing the door behind her. After, when Thomas is snoring, sound asleep after his exertion, I slip out of bed to check on her. She’s asleep, or pretending to be.
I look at my daughter now, wondering if she remembers, if that moment scarred her. We never spoke of it. I didn’t know what to say, and she seemed fine. Normal. And gradually the moment faded into the distance and I let it go, the way I let so many things go back then.
What does Abigail see in me now? I feel like my face is a billboard flashing every emotion, every dirty, humiliating secret of my marriage, for her and the neighborhood to see. I wonder if Earlene is awake, if she will see us out here, two wild women, uncombed, half dressed, ridding the house of an offending mattress.
“We don’t air our dirty laundry in public,” my mother used to say. Well, I’ve now done that with a vengeance. Maybe it’s not too late and we could drag the mattress back in. A flicker of movement in Earlene’s window says otherwise.
I wave in her direction, an exaggerated parade wave, and follow it up with a stage curtsy.
“Now what?” Abigail asks, hands on hips, but it’s difficult to look in control when you’ve been wrestling a mattress in your pajamas. She looks younger, softer, her hair in two loose braids hanging down her back.
“You should wear your hair like that.”
“Mom!”
Val’s door opens, and she steps out onto the porch, a coffee mug in one hand, an already lit cigarette in the other. She, too, is in pajamas—but hers are slinkier, shorts and a midriff top, a knee-length robe unbelted. Her eyes survey the scene as she exhales a slow ribbon of smoke.
“I’m bringing you coffee,” she calls. “You want some, Abigail?”
“Thank you, no. I’m going to have a shower and get ready for work.” She stalks into the house, slamming the door with a little extra emphasis.
Val pops out of sight and then reappears with a steaming mug in each hand. My anger is fading, leaving me feeling bruised and exposed.
“What’s the plan?” Val stands beside me, the two of us watching the mattress as if we expect it’s going to develop the power of motion or magically transform into a large bird and fly away.
“Planning does not appear to be my forte.”
“Here. Hold my coffee.”
She vanishes back into her own house and comes out with an armful of blankets.
“Val . . .”
“Go get a couple of chairs.”
I do as instructed, lugging a dining room chair in each hand to find that Val has covered the mattress with a fuzzy pink blanket. She arranges the chairs on either side of the mattress and drapes a large quilt over the top.
“What are you doing?”
“Are you telling me you don’t recognize a blanket fort when you see one? Come in. It will be fun.”
I hesitate, but Val is already inside the crazy shelter, screened from the road and the neighbors, and I join her.
“See?” she says, grinning, and I do see.
When I was a little girl, I had hidey-holes everywhere. I figured out how to climb up into the shelf in my closet, above the hangers, and would sit there with my legs hanging down, daydreaming or reading. I built blanket forts that let me feel secret, safe, and touched by magic.
“I used to build these for Lenny,” Val says. “He had anxiety for years after we left his dad. I found him hiding under the bed one morning, thought he’d heard his father at the door. I made a fort, and we sat in it together almost all day.”
“Thomas never hit me,” I say. “Not ever. Not once.”
“There’s all kinds of ways of making fear.” She’s not looking at me, but I think maybe she knows and understands.
As for Abigail, maybe if I’d made forts for her when she was a little girl, she wouldn’t look quite so embarrassed when she comes out of the house, showered, braided, and back to her carefully constructed persona.
“I am not helping you put it back,” she says. “Please have this cleaned up by the time I get home from work.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Val giggles, an infectious sound that ripples through me. I press a hand over my lips, but a giggle escapes me, too, and the next moment we’re clinging to each other, laughing like kids.
“You two are incorrigible.” Abigail stalks off, and I hear her start her car and drive away.
My laughter fades, and I stare up at the roof of this flimsy shelter, trying to figure out what I’m going to do next.
Chapter Seventeen
“Wanna talk about it?” Val asks, rolling over onto her side and propping herself up on one elbow to look at me.
“Not really.”
“You slept with Lance, didn’t you?”
“Oh my God.” I sit up and stare at her, aghast. “What makes you say that?”
“Well, didn’t you?”
I close my eyes and will the question to go away. If Val guessed, just like that, everybody will guess. Maybe I’m walking around like one of those LED signboards, flashing a scarlet letter A for all the world to see.
Val sits up and grabs my hands. “It’s okay, Liz. You’re a grown woman.”
“It’s not okay! How is it so obvious? Will everybody know?”
She laughs. “Don’t be silly. I put things together. You came home late last night, and you usually come home right after rehearsal. This morning, you had a sudden hatred for your marriage bed. And, the sparks between you and Lance were so hot last night I thought the two of you were going to start the stage on fire.”
I flop back on the mattress again, wishing I had a pillow to put over my face.
Val settles down beside me. “Look, what I said about him before . . . I didn’t mean you shouldn’t be with him. I just wanted you to be careful. I want you to be happy.”
“It was just research. Lacey and Darcy. I’m not expecting him to put a ring on my finger.” I say it with conviction, but the truth is I’ve checked my phone a dozen times this morning hoping for a text or a call from Lance, telling myself every time that I’m relieved he hasn’t reached out. I don’t think I believe me.
“Why do I feel like it was something more than that?” Val rolls over to look at me, and I try to explain.
“In the bedroom, Thomas was . . . and then Lance . . .”
“Thomas was an asshole?” Val supplies.
“This morning, that feels like the truth. Comparatively speaking.”
“So it was good with Lance?”
“It was superlative.”
We’re both silent with our thoughts for a bit, and then I ask, “What am I going to do with this mattress?”
“I was thinking you could turn it into a yard sale.”
“I don’t—” I stop. Think about all of the things in the house that I never want to see again. “Can I do that?”
“Free country,” she says. “And it’s Friday. And yard sale season.”
“But we sho
uld have had signs up, gotten everything set out. And I don’t have that much, really.”
“Hang on. I have an idea.” She sits up and taps at her phone, lets it ring. “Bern? Yes, I know it’s early. If you didn’t drink every night . . . Well, fuck you, too,” she says cheerfully. “Hey, you know all of those old props we’ve been agitating to unload? Today is the lucky day. Impromptu yard sale at Liz’s place.”
Bernie says something that makes her laugh. “Perfect. See you then.”
She closes the phone and grins at me. “The forces are now at work.”
“Which forces, exactly?”
“The theater has a bunch of extra furniture, costumes, you name it, that they’ve been meaning to get rid of for years. Bernie’s bringing it all over. She’ll get Tara to make signs.”
“What about Abigail?” A burst of panic hits me, and I sit up to stare at Val with wide eyes. “I didn’t think. She wants the house to stay exactly the same, forever.”
“Are you going to keep it exactly the same forever?”
“I’ve been thinking about moving. She’s completely opposed.” My brain scrambles to catch up with events. Abigail will never agree to change. She’ll want to keep every item of furniture, every plate and cup and knife and spoon. I can try to whittle away at that, or I can act on this crazy idea and blast both of us loose from our moorings. Dangerous. But sometimes dynamite is necessary.
“What on earth is going on over here?” Earlene’s voice asks. Her face appears in the entrance to our cave. Her eyebrows rise almost to her hairline as she glances from me, to Val, to the mattress, and back again. Her eyes narrow.
“Have you been drinking again?” She eyes my coffee mug as if she suspects that it contains clandestine moonshine.
“We’re having a yard sale,” Val intervenes. “But once we got the mattress out here, we were overcome by the temptation to make a fort.”
“I understand a yard sale,” Earlene says after a considering silence. “But a little planning would have been in order.”
“It just seemed like the right day,” I say, then feel devious and deceitful. “Actually—”
Val’s elbow catches me in the ribs before I can fess up. “When inspiration strikes, go for it. It’s the perfect day. We’ve got friends bringing things over to contribute. Do you have anything you want to add in, Earlene? The bigger the sale, the better.”
“I do have a few things I’ve been saving up for a sale of my own. We’ll need a cashbox and some change. Do you have all that?”
“No,” I confess humbly. “I’ve really got nothing but the idea.”
“I’ll be back,” Earlene says. “And I’ll check with the others.”
Val looks at me. “If you want to stop this, you have about ten seconds.”
But it’s already too late. The decision is made, the fuse is lit. I just hope I don’t blow my relationship with my daughter to smithereens.
“Too late to stop Earlene,” I say, trying to decide whether what I feel is exhilaration or panic. “It’s on.”
Val stretches out her tanned legs, luxuriously spreading her bare toes. “How is she so put together so early in the morning? Fully dressed. Every hair in place.”
“Sometimes I don’t think she’s human. I don’t suppose we can just stay in this fort forever and always?”
“I wish. But if we don’t get moving, somebody is likely to buy this bed right out from underneath us.”
A snort-laugh escapes me. “If I survive this, I say we have a sleepover in the backyard.”
“Deal.”
Together we start hauling stuff I don’t want out onto the lawn. It turns out that what I don’t want is nearly everything in the house. We remove the dining room chairs and the table. Thomas’s recliner. The couch. The hated armchair long ago allotted to me. Most of the china and the silverware, both patterns that Thomas chose and I never liked.
I keep things for Abigail that I know she particularly loves. The teapot and teacups painted with garden flowers, with the luxurious gold leaf on the rim. Her father’s watch and Bible. But I thoroughly dismantle our bedroom. The dresser goes, all of my clothes stacked in the closet on Thomas’s side to deal with later. Thomas’s clothes are the one thing that has already left the house, based on the only good advice I’ve ever had from Earlene.
“The clothes are hard,” she’d said. “Maybe we could take them to Goodwill for you?”
With my permission, she and Annie and Kimber packed them up and hauled them all away. Thomas’s suits, shirts, and dress pants had overflowed his half of the closet and overtaken mine. What’s left is a cavernous space. My new clothes form a small, colorful oasis in the midst of a selection of demure and boring dresses and skirts, all in compatible mix-and-match colors. At the very back end of my row hangs my wedding gown.
“We totally need to go shopping again,” Val says, peering over my shoulder. “Want to get rid of any of those?”
“Definitely the gown. Only, I don’t think we can yard sale that.”
“Abigail might want it,” Val suggests.
“It goes.” My voice is low and full of venom. I will not willingly pass any memento of my marriage to my daughter.
“I’ll take care of it,” Val says quickly. She doesn’t ask any more questions, just bundles up the dress and gets it out of my sight.
I stand there staring at a small leather satchel in the very back corner of the closet, wondering how it is possible to forget something while it’s hiding in plain sight. I’ve vacuumed this floor once a week since the day I tucked that bag behind the folds of the gown, knowing Thomas would never investigate that corner. On some level, I’ve always known it was there while at the same time forgetting all about it.
Like a sleepwalker I move forward and drop to my knees beside the bag, brushing off a haze of dust before opening the zipper. It’s like a time capsule, and I remove the items and lay them out on the floor. Two pairs of underwear and a pair of socks. Jeans and a T-shirt and a little stash of money. Everything smells musty. The elastic on the underwear is brittle.
I’d packed it soon after my wedding day, when it was already clear to me that I didn’t want the life I’d married into. Asking for a divorce seemed impossibly overwhelming and humiliating—Thomas would quote scripture at me and flatten me under layers of guilt. So I daydreamed about sneaking away some evening while he was out, maybe writing him a letter from the other side of the country. And then . . . Abigail. Morning sickness and hormones and the realization that, other than Thomas, I was all alone in the world with no marketable skills. The decision to stay was so gradual and insidious, I never bothered to unpack the bag.
“Everything okay?” Val asks.
“Fine. This can go in the trash.” I stuff the items back in the bag, except for the cash, and Val carries it away.
Truthfully, I feel anything but fine, rocked to the core by this brush with my younger self. But if I’ve gained one skill in my life with Thomas, it’s learning to suppress and disguise my emotions. Taking a deep breath, I shake off the memories and finish with the closet, steeling myself for the most difficult room in the house, saved for last.
Thomas’s study.
I stand in the doorway, reluctant to enter. The bookcase is laden with weighty tomes on religion. The desk is solid, authoritarian. The pictures on the wall are of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from an angry-looking God and Abraham ready to slay Isaac at the altar only to discover that there is a lamb he can sacrifice instead. “I don’t think I can touch this,” I say as Val comes back down the hall carrying two packing boxes. “It always feels like holy ground, like I should take off my socks and shoes before I go in there.”
“You’ll feel better once it’s done,” she says. “Maybe that Steve guy would be happy to have all of the books?”
“Or Abigail. I don’t even know how this desk fit through the door in the first place. We’ll never get it out.” I turn to her. “Maybe we should just leave this room for late
r.”
“Time to tear off the Band-Aid,” Val objects, determined. “If you don’t clear this room, he’ll always still be here, running everything.”
I close my eyes for a minute, breathing, picturing Abigail’s outrage when she comes home to find this sanctum violated. But Val’s right. This was always command central, and I still soften my footsteps and shrink into myself every time I pass it. As for Abigail, she’s like Isaac, bound to the altar as a sacrifice. Maybe the only way to free her is to sell the altar out from underneath her.
That moves me into action. “Let’s start with the pictures.”
“I’m not sure these should really be in anybody’s house, but okay.” Val lifts the Ten Commandments painting down, holding it gingerly with the tips of her fingers. “I feel like God may smite me for this.”
“It’s only a picture.” But I feel the same uneasiness as I lift Abraham and Isaac down from the wall. Isaac’s eyes stare into mine. How could he do this to me? Isaac asks. I’m his son. And what sort of God would ever ask him to?
Val takes both pictures and heads for the door.
I sink into the leather chair behind the desk. How did it feel to sit here, all-powerful and in control of everything? I just feel small and tired.
“You can’t get rid of my desk,” Thomas whispers. “You’re a crazy woman. The contents of our lives will sit out on the lawn all day, and then you’ll have to enlist help to bring it all back in, put it back in its place.”
I focus in on my anger, letting memories fuel it into renewed energy, and begin emptying the desk. The center drawer, neatly organized, contains pens, paper clips, stamps, a stapler. I pull it out and turn it upside down over an empty box, letting the contents rattle out with a satisfying racket. I repeat the process with one drawer after another. Envelopes, stationery, a three-hole punch. Thomas’s planner goes into the trash. The file drawer is locked. I tug at it, jerk it harder. What could he have bothered to lock away? Neither I nor Abigail would ever have dared to search his office.
A Borrowed Life Page 14
