The Ever After

by Sarah Pekkanen

  Josie looked down at the name flashing on the screen: Dana.

  She scooped it up and pressed accept. “Hi,” Josie said, a brittle edge lacing her tone. “Were you looking for my husband? Trying to set up date number six?”

  Dana hung up without a word.

  Josie couldn’t help it. She laughed.

  Then something in her body snapped and the tension she’d been holding broke. She began to cry. Not the deep, wrenching sobs she’d felt herself suppressing all day. Tears slid down her cheeks as silently and steadily as drips from a faucet.

  Josie had heard somewhere that an emergency room surgeon confronted with daily horrors always allowed himself thirty seconds to steel himself for what lay ahead before he approached a patient on a gurney.

  She began to count: “Five, six, seven . . .”

  When she reached thirty, she went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face with her cupped hand, and then looked down at Frank’s cell phone, which she was still holding in her other hand.

  This was the only chance she would have to learn everything, she reminded herself. After tomorrow it would be too late.

  She dialed their home number. Frank and the girls probably hadn’t left for the carnival yet.

  He answered right after the first ring. “Josie?” He sounded hopeful.

  “I need to see you,” she said. “I’ll come by the house after the carnival tonight. I’ll call you right before I show up so you can come outside.”

  “Okay, sure,” he said. Maybe he thought any contact was a positive thing, moving them past this crisis and toward a resolution. He needed to be punished for that.

  “Oh, and Frank?” she said.

  “Yes?” he asked eagerly.

  “Your girlfriend has a weird voice,” Josie said. “It’s so deep and creepy.”

  She hung up before he could respond. She stared down at her hands—hands that had rubbed Frank’s back after he’d thrown it out while cleaning the gutters; hands that had wiped the bottoms of their children and picked low-sugar cereal off the grocery store shelves and written checks for their mortgage—as if she had never before seen them.

  • • •

  Josie passed the hours until it was time to meet Frank by taking a long, brisk walk outside. She was too restless to stay in her room. She managed to eat a croissant she bought at the café in the hotel’s lobby but couldn’t stomach anything else.

  “Would you like a latte with that?” the woman at the café counter had asked.

  Josie had shaken her head. “No thanks,” she’d said. She didn’t know whether she would ever be able to drink a latte again, or even hear the word, without remembering.

  She went back to her hotel room and walked over to the desk. Beneath it was the refrigerated minibar. Josie pulled its door open. Inside were little bottles of vodka and rum, along with orange juice and Coke for mixers. She shut the door, erasing the vision.

  She needed to remain clearheaded. And she had to press on, even though it felt counterintuitive to dig into the source of her pain. Wounds needed to be covered up; they demanded time and medicine to heal. But Josie couldn’t pause. She had a narrow window of time to reestablish a true foundation on which to balance herself.

  At any minute now, Frank could chance a call to Dana’s home. Even if he didn’t have the number, he could find a way to get it. It was probably listed. Frank was a smart guy who thought quickly on his feet. If Dana’s husband answered, Frank could simply pretend to be a telemarketer and hang up.

  Phone calls, Josie thought. She looked at Frank’s cell phone again. Had Dana left Frank any voice mail messages that could provide more information?

  Josie fought the sense of trepidation as she looked through Frank’s call history. But there wasn’t a single one to Dana listed. She then checked his voice mail messages. The few messages he’d saved all had Home as the source. Josie listened to them just in case. They were simply funny messages from the girls; Josie had several of those saved on her phone as well.

  Josie checked all of Frank’s texts, even the ones from male names, but they revealed nothing suspicious. Perhaps Frank and Dana had only communicated by email. Or maybe he had simply erased the records of their phone calls and texts.

  The thought of such subterfuge made everything worse. It seemed so calculated.

  Josie checked Frank’s email again, even though she knew he wouldn’t risk sending one to Dana now that Josie had access to his accounts.

  What else?

  She went over to the bed and lay down, folding her arms behind her head as she tried to think.

  She’d already made one mistake, Josie realized as she stared up at the ceiling. She should have let Dana’s call go to voice mail. Then she could have texted Dana, pretending to be Frank. She could have tried to obtain more information that way.

  But maybe she wouldn’t have changed anything, given how satisfying it had felt to answer Dana’s call. To have Dana be the one feeling upset and frantic.

  Had the two of them laughed at her? Josie wondered. Maybe Frank had discussed Josie and their marriage with Dana.

  An image thrust itself into her brain: Frank and Dana together in Atlantic City, in a hotel room much like this one, sharing breakfast in bed amid the rumpled sheets. Dana sitting up and handing Frank his mug of coffee, Frank’s hand resting on Dana’s bare back.

  Did you sleep with her? she wondered, feeling her hands clench. She leapt up off the bed, trying to expel the image from her brain.

  And then, as horror rose within her, Josie wondered: Were there others?

  * * *

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  Four years earlier

  JOSIE HAD NEVER BEEN angrier with Frank. Where was he?

  She was almost six months pregnant with Izzy—an ultrasound had already revealed the baby’s gender—and she needed to pee so desperately it was painful.

  Josie and Frank had gone to the mall to look at infant car seats, even though Zoe’s old one was still perfectly good. But Josie had learned from wretched experience that lifting a sleeping baby out of that soft, padded contraption and trying to carry her into the house and transfer her into a crib without waking her guaranteed a disastrous ending.

  BabyFace, the store that anchored one end of their local mall, sold car seats that could be detached from a base that remained in the vehicle, then popped into the frame of a stroller. Which meant Josie could simply carry Izzy, car seat and all, into the house or wheel her along on errands if the baby dozed off during a drive. That contraption would be worth any amount of money.

  Where was Frank? Josie wanted to lean on the horn in frustration. They were supposed to have lunch after their trip to the mall; Josie was craving Mexican food with such an intensity that she’d actually dreamt about eating a burrito last night. Zoe was at home, being watched by Josie’s mother. Given that the baby was due soon, this would likely be one of their last days together as a couple for quite a while. And now Frank was ruining everything.

  He’d asked her to go on ahead to the car and drive around to the curb in front of the store while he carried out the big, heavy boxes.

  “See you in five,” he’d said. She’d been waiting for more than fifteen minutes.

  She should have used the restroom before leaving. BabyFace had the roomiest and cleanest bathrooms in the mall; they catered to the needs of their clientele.

  If Frank didn’t show up in another sixty seconds, she was going to abandon the car here and go inside again, even though signs clearly warned patrons that this lane was simply for loading purchases. He was probably chatting with the cashier or the customer behind him in line. Conversation was his stock in trade as a salesman; Josie used to admire his ability to connect with people. Now she wanted to strangle him for it.

  She crossed her legs, but that made her even more uncomfortable. Stop blabbing, Frank, and get out here! She mentally willed him the message.

  Oh, here came her loquacious husband n
ow. He was strolling—strolling, like he had all the time in the world—out of the store, accompanied by a young guy wearing a blue polo with the BabyFace logo. The young employee was pushing a flat cart loaded up with Frank’s boxes.

  “Hey, Jos!” Frank broke into a grin. “Can you pop the trunk? This is Dave. He’s going to help me load up the car.”

  Josie smiled at Dave, shot Frank a death glare when Dave bent down to deal with the first box, then climbed out of the car and waddled furiously into the store. “Bathroom!” she called back over her shoulder at Frank. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard her; he was too busy laughing at something Dave had just said.

  Her irritation at Frank lingered after she exited the stall and washed her hands. She recalled how just last month they’d gone to a neighbor’s house for the unveiling of the neighbor’s new two-level renovation. “How long are we gonna have to stay?” Frank had asked. “I was going to try to hit the gym tonight.”

  “Just an hour,” Josie had responded. She wanted to soak in a bubble bath and watch The Voice after Zoe fell asleep.

  After they’d toured the home and admired the walk-in closets and sparkling kitchen, Josie found Frank and asked whether he was ready to go. He’d looked at her in surprise. He was flopped on the sectional sofa in the basement with a few other guys. “Oh, I’m staying here to watch the game,” he’d said, gesturing to the huge TV affixed to the wall.

  “Really?” she’d responded.

  “What?” Frank had asked. “Isn’t that okay?”

  He’d stayed for four hours, arriving home long after Josie and Zoe had both fallen asleep. She hadn’t bothered to bring up the incident the next day—it wasn’t worth an argument—but now her grievances formed a hard, rocky stockpile.

  It was selfish, when you thought about it. Frank was so busy trying to charm everybody, wanting to make friends, that he sacrificed the needs of his own family. She was going to have a serious talk with him about this, because once the baby came along, she would be far less patient about this sort of thing.

  She strode out of the store. Frank was in the driver’s seat now, his aviator sunglasses on, bobbing his head to John Coltrane. The man did have good taste in music; she’d give him that.

  She opened her door and looked down at her seat. A box wrapped in shiny silver paper and tied with a big gauzy bow rested there.

  “What’s this?” Josie asked.

  Frank smiled at her. “It’s for you. That’s what took me so long. Sorry to keep you waiting, baby. I had to run to the other end of the mall and pick it up.”

  Anger slid out of her, like air out of a balloon.

  She picked up the box and settled into her seat. “Can I open it?” she asked. Josie adored getting presents, which Frank knew. He also knew that as a child, Josie’s parents had adhered to the rule that children should only receive one gift apiece on their birthday and at Christmastime, stocking stuffers excluded.

  She’d told him about that family rule shortly after they’d begun to date. “Plenty of kids don’t get any presents, though,” she’d said, shrugging. “I was a little spoiled, I guess, because I was always jealous of my friends who got more.”

  On her next birthday, Frank had shown up with an armload of gifts for her, including not only a bottle of her favorite perfume and the cowboy boots she’d admired in a store window, but also the retro Easy-Bake Oven she’d told him she’d deeply coveted in the third grade.

  Now Frank put a hand on her knee. She felt his warmth through the fabric of her skirt. “You can’t open it until lunch,” Frank said teasingly. She turned the box over in her hands. It was about the size of a hardcover book, but it felt so light that she knew that wasn’t what it contained.

  “Aren’t we going to the Blue Taco?” she asked when he turned the wrong way out of the mall.

  Frank just smiled and turned up the music.

  He drove ten miles away, to the nicest Mexican restaurant in the area, one with stone walls and cozy leather booths and waiters who wheeled around carts containing avocados and limes to make fresh guacamole table side.

  “A virgin margarita?” Frank suggested, and when Josie nodded, he ordered two. “And a double order of guacamole, please,” Frank told the waiter.

  Then he grinned at Josie and slid out of the booth to sit next to her.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  She tore into the wrapping paper—her parents had always made Josie and her sister open their celebratory gifts slowly and carefully, which sucked some of the joy out of the moment—and opened the lid of the box. Inside was a single sheet of paper. When Josie unfolded it, she saw flight and hotel information filling the page.

  “We’re going to Cancún,” Frank said. “You and me and Zoe, but we’re staying at a resort that has child care so we’ll have some time alone. They do prenatal massages and there are cabanas lining the beach. You’re going to love it, baby. Both of my babies are going to love it.”

  He reached down and rested his palm on the curve of her belly.

  She flung her arms around his neck, thinking of massages to ease her swollen ankles and achy back, and a sandy beach filled with the sound of soothing waves, and child care so she could put on a sundress and have an evening out with Frank.

  It was the best gift she could imagine receiving.

  “I just love you,” she whispered in Frank’s ear. She blinked back tears. How could she ever have been angry with this man? “I love you so much.”

  She let go of Frank and the waiter delivered their margaritas. Frank raised his. Their glasses clinked together.

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  • • •

  Those four days in Cancún were close to perfect. They stayed on the ground floor of a beachfront hotel, in a room with creamy tile floors and bright teal accents. They slept in a king-sized bed that faced the blue-green waters of the Gulf. Every morning, the three of them took the elevator to the rooftop restaurant, where smiling waiters twisted cloth napkins into animal shapes for Zoe and offered flutes of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Josie devoured huevos rancheros—eggs smothered with salsa on corn tortillas—for breakfast, napped along with Zoe under the shade of a thatched bamboo umbrella, and made love with Frank on a comforter spread out over the sand just beyond their room’s sliding glass doors.

  “Happy, Jos?” he asked her afterward, smoothing her hair back from her face. They were huddled under a blanket for extra privacy, even though an awning overhead and thick hedges on either side shielded them from view. Over Frank’s shoulder, she could see a crescent moon.

  “So happy,” she responded.

  “It’s not as fun as our honeymoon, though,” he said, and she laughed. They’d gone to Aruba, and it had started raining an hour after they’d stepped off the plane. I wasn’t going to let you out of the room today anyway, Frank had said. The next day, he’d come down with a terrible stomach flu. Josie had gone to the beach alone one afternoon while he lay curled in bed, after making sure he had crackers and water at hand, and she’d stepped on the jagged edge of a broken shell, cutting the insole of her foot so deeply that the resort doctor had to give her two stitches.

  “Worst honeymoon ever,” Frank said.

  “We made up for it with this trip.” Josie shifted onto her side and Frank spooned her from behind.

  “What do you think the baby is going to be like?” she asked, then she said, “Oh!” and grabbed Frank’s hand, moving it lower on her abdomen.

  “With a kick like that?” Frank kissed her shoulder. “Probably a holy terror. Or an NFL punter.”

  “Do you think Zoe’s going to be good with her?” Josie asked. Zoe had shaken her head when they’d told her she was going to be a big sister. No, thanks, she’d told them, like she was rejecting the offer of an apple.

  “Sometimes,” Frank said.

  “Yeah, and sometimes she’ll be awful,” Josie said. “That’s the law of sisterhood.”

  They’d crawled back into bed around midnight
, and the next morning, they’d awoken to hear Zoe’s high little voice asking why there was so much sand on the floor.

  • • •

  Eleven weeks later, Izzy was born.

  Josie thought she was prepared for the birth—even though Zoe, who had taken eighteen hours to emerge, had taught her that no one could be truly ready.

  But her bag was packed, her mother was on standby to care for Zoe, and Josie was poised to demand an epidural the moment she entered the hospital.

  Her contractions began around three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, which was the absolute perfect time. She didn’t have to wake up her mother in the middle of the night, Zoe was already home from preschool, and Frank was able to leave the office ahead of rush hour. Josie was even able to place an online Peapod grocery delivery, so the house would be stocked with food when she came home from the hospital.

  Frank was flustered when he came through the door. “You okay?” he almost shouted at Josie. She was sitting next to Zoe on the couch, watching The Little Mermaid—or, more accurately, watching Zoe and stroking her hair and soaking in these last moments when her daughter was her only child. As excited as she was about Izzy’s arrival, it felt bittersweet.

  “I’m fine, sweetie,” she said.

  “Your bag!” Frank said. He bolted upstairs, then thundered back down a moment later, empty-handed.

  “I already took it to the car,” she said, feeling the corners of her mouth curve into a smile.

  “You’re not supposed to lift anything!” he protested.

  “Frank, I lift up Zoe every day,” Josie said. “And she’s a lot heavier than that bag.”

  Zoe nodded in agreement but didn’t move her eyes from the screen.

  “Okay, so . . . I guess I should go change and then we can go,” Frank said. “Oh, no, Jos, what’s happening?”

  Her eyes were closed and her teeth gritted. She’d been about to tell Frank to calm down, that they had plenty of time and that they couldn’t leave because her mother wasn’t even there yet.