by Lena North
“Wha –”
He cut me off as he leaned down behind the bar, “I’ll call you Angie.”
“Wh –”
“Angelica drinks shit like pinot grigio or vodka cranberry,” he interrupted again, replaced my almost empty bottle of Coors with a fresh one and nodded toward the bottle. “Angie.”
Before I could respond to this, he walked off and started filling a tray with an order from one of the waitresses. Maddie gave me a long look but didn’t comment on his unexpected use of a nickname I hadn’t heard in years, and soon we were giggling again, remembering things we’d done in college, and trips we’d made over the years.
When Louise and Beebs walked in, I waved them over. They had met Maddie, and I’d gotten the feeling neither of them had liked her, although if they’d heard about how she’d been when she met Daniel, they wouldn’t of course. They didn’t know her, though, and she’d behaved toward him with a calm indifference after that first time, so I figured they’d get over it.
There weren’t a lot of customers, and we stood by the bar, laughing and having a good time. Zack passed by and added to our conversation every now and then, and a few others who seemed like regulars chimed in with jokes of their own.
I was genuinely happy for the first time in weeks and wasn’t at all prepared for what happened next.
“We went to Rio for our honeymoon,” I heard Beatrice say. “Spent years paying off that trip but oh my God how it was worth it.”
“I know!” Maddie squealed, and I turned to her. “I was there to celebrate my divorce and –”
She stopped speaking, and her eyes went to me, fleetingly. And I knew.
“Well, that was years ago, and this year I will go to –”
I immediately interrupted her attempts to cover up what she’d accidentally shared.
“When were you in Rio, Maddie?” I asked.
She’d told me she’d gone Barbados to celebrate her divorce and had come home sharing all kinds of intimate details I hadn’t wanted to listen to, about the man she had spent the whole two weeks with.
“Um,” she mumbled.
I stared at her.
Stewart had been on a business trip to Brazil, working with the manager of the new sales office we’d opened. He’d only planned to be gone for one week, but there had been issues with the staff, so he’d ended up being there for three.
I remembered exactly when it was because Johnny had broken his arm and I’d been calling Stewart frantically, first from the hospital and later from home. It had taken me more than a day to reach him, and he said he’d been away in an area with no coverage for his American cell phone. And I’d believed him.
Maddie had been gone too, celebrating her divorce, and I had felt utterly and completely alone as I tried to do my best for my injured son and hysterical daughter.
I swallowed and then I swallowed again. The bar had not been bustling, but there had been sounds. It suddenly felt as if Maddie and I stood in a bubble, where no one and nothing else existed.
“Please tell me you didn’t,” I whispered.
“Angelica,” she started, but I raised my voice and repeated my plea.
“Please, Maddie, oh God, please tell me you didn’t.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You slept with him too?” I asked hoarsely and watched her wince.
There was a long silence, and I couldn’t get another sound out, but my mouth formed her name silently, begging her to tell me it was all a misunderstanding.
“Answer her,” a deep voice suddenly rumbled from behind the bar.
I turned toward Zack, but he was aiming an angry scowl at the woman who had been my friend for so many years.
“Okay, yes. I did,” she said quietly, but went on, almost defiantly, “But Angelica, you weren’t giving him what he needed, and he said you had an arrangement.”
I blinked. Did everyone around me think I’d meekly agree to my husband having relations with just about whomever he chose? Was that who they thought I was?
“You know me, Maddie,” I said, desperately trying to keep my voice from breaking. “You’ve known me for more than twenty-five years. You’re my oldest child’s godmother. You know I would never agree to –”
I clenched my teeth together and breathed through my nose, unable to accept what she’d just told me. She was pale, and her face was hard in a way I’d seen many times before, although never aimed at me.
“How long did it last?” I asked hoarsely.
She swallowed and whispered, “A year.”
My shoulders sagged, and I took a small step backward as if she’d slapped me, and that’s what it felt like.
My best friend had slept with my husband for a year.
“You are such a bitch,” Beatrice said suddenly. “Leave now before I put puncture wounds in those balloons you have where the rest of us has normal boobs.”
Maddie looked angry, but I just stood there with my mouth half open, feeling strangely numb. Suddenly, Shaneesha’s words echoed in my head.
“Women like us, we’re strong, you hear?”
I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to be strong when everything hurt so bad I mostly wanted to scream. My knees had started to shake, though, so I knew I had to do something before I crumbled into a pile of anguish right there in the bar.
“Leave, Maddie,” I said hoarsely.
It wasn’t an act of Herculean strength by any means, but asking Maddie to leave was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and when her eyes widened I knew she hadn’t expected it.
“I –”
“You heard her,” Zack interrupted. His voice had deepened, and there was a rasp to it which hadn’t been there before, making him sound frightening. When she just stared at him, he went on, “Watched you in here the last couple of nights, making plays for most of the men, married or not. Didn’t like it then, like it less now.” His eyes were so hard it looked like they were made of steel when he growled, “You should leave before I help you out of here.”
She closed her mouth and looked at me.
I wanted to say something scalding, something that would make her feel bad and me feel better, but no words that would accomplish either came to me. Finally, I swallowed, and without uttering a single word, I walked out of the bar and away from the woman I’d thought was my best friend.
Chapter Five
Invention
Louise and Beatrice walked home with me, and they tried to talk to me about what just happened, but I clenched my teeth and shook my head. I’d thought Stewart’s betrayal was painful, but I’d had no idea.
This hurt in a way that was physical, burning through my bones and pushing bitter acid from my belly and up my throat. I didn’t know how to handle what I felt, so I pushed it back, and kept walking, faster and faster. I wanted to go home. Wanted to close the door and hide from everything and everyone.
Both women tried to hug me when we reached my house, and I knew they said something that probably were kind words of comfort because I could see their mouths moving. They looked worried, but I was in no condition to be on the receiving end of their sympathies, so I shook my head again, raised a hand, and walked inside.
I’d barely closed the door behind me when my legs gave out under me, and after a few wobbly steps, I doubled over, going down on my knees. Then I threw up, right on the floor in my living room. Beer and snacks poured out of me, splashing out on the rough planks and I didn’t care.
In reality, it was probably only a few minutes until I’d calmed down, but it felt like forever.
“Shit,” I rasped out and got up on legs that felt like jelly.
I washed my mouth in the sink in my ugly downstairs bathroom, and then I stood there, staring at myself in the small mirror.
I’d put on more makeup than usual that night, and I knew I wasn’t so very young anymore but I wasn’t so very old either, and I had felt pretty. Tears had leaked out of my eyes as I threw up
, and the mascara and carefully applied eye shadow had run with them. The dark colors followed the creases around my eyes, making the thin lines look like an ugly spider web. The purple shadows under my eyes were clearly visible, and I was pale.
I didn’t look pretty anymore, and I didn’t feel like it either. I felt old and fat and stupid. How could I not have known? Surely it was some kind of horrible misunderstanding?
I leaned forward and used the soap bar to wash away the remainders of my makeup and wiped my face with the rough towel I normally wouldn’t use on my face. Screw remover, and toner, and rose-tinted anti-ageing creams, I thought and picked up the pale pink bottle of hand lotion standing on the sink. As I smeared a healthy a glob of the hibiscus scented cream on my face, I suddenly froze.
“Hibiscus?”
I whispered the question out loud, trying to make my brain answer why this was important. It didn’t take many seconds for me to filter through my memories until I knew why the scent bothered me. My hands were shaking when I wiped off the remaining cream and the towel ended up on the floor as I ran through the house and up the stairs. There was no air conditioning in the house, but the builders hadn’t started on the second floor, and I had all the windows open in the room I slept in, which was also where I had my computer.
With hands that were shaking a little, I logged on to the Google drive both Stewart and I used as a safety backup for all our photos, both from the digital cameras we rarely used and from our phones. I’d never actually looked through Stewart’s pictures, because either I had been there and had my own pictures, or else I hadn’t been there so there was no reason. He’d always showed me the best ones anyway – or so I’d thought. Surely he wasn’t so stupid he kept photos of his extramarital interests in a folder structure he shared with his wife?
I went into my own folders first, browsing through the structure, organized neatly by year and month. When I got to the time when Maddie and Andy had split up, I started hitting the arrow-button to find the photo I was looking for.
Maddie was sitting in a restaurant, next to a huge hibiscus plant, leaning her head back a little as if the wide smile on her face was about to break into loud, happy laughter. I’d loved that picture when she sent it to me and had told her she should have it as her Facebook profile picture for life. She looked pretty, and happy, enjoying her romantic getaway in what I had thought was Barbados.
The outline of a man was visible in the huge sunglasses she wore, and I enlarged the picture. I’d done this before because I’d been a bit curious about this mystery man she’d met, but he was just an outlined shape against the background. It wasn’t hard to ascertain that it was indeed my husband, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before, but that wasn’t the reason I zoomed in. There was a city sprawling up on the mountains behind him, and it was way too big to be a town on a tropical island.
Rio.
“Shit,” I said, exhaling air that I’d held in my lungs without even knowing it. “Fuck,” I added loudly.
Outside the window, the squirrel barked, right after my crude expletive.
I turned toward the window and wondered if I could chase the damn animal down and strangle it, but the night was silent again, so I turned back to the computer.
Stewart had one folder for each phone he’d had in the past ten years, and I clicked through them, staring at the mysterious file names the phone generated and trying to remember what damned phone he had back then.
Was adultery cause for divorce in Illinois?
I winced when that thought hit me, partially because I never imagined I’d have to wonder this, although mostly since it was the first time I’d really, seriously, allowed myself to use the d-word.
There weren’t any photos of Maddie and him that I could find.
Instead, I found photos of at least three other girls. Some were in various stages of undress, some were selfies of my husband with them. One was a combination, showing my husband kissing a girl, and they might have had clothes on the lower parts of their bodies, but there wasn’t a stitch showing in the image. Stewart had stretched his arm out to snap the picture so their heads were turned in a strange angle and I could see a bit of his tongue as it went into her mouth.
“You fucking piece of shit!” I shouted at the image.
Then the squirrel barked again.
“Shut up!” I roared toward the window.
Another snicker came from outside the window, and I wondered if the rodent-resembling little geezer actually laughed at me and my pathetic life.
He probably did, and there was no doubt in my mind that it was a he.
When I’d copied a handful of Stewart’s lecherous images to my own hard drive, I stomped downstairs, grabbed a bottle of wine, and went outside to sit on my back porch. I had no chairs, and I’d forgotten a glass but immediately decided I would eschew both and sat on the floor, leaning on the rough, scraped up side of my butt-ugly house.
My mind was completely blank, and it didn’t matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get it to form any coherent thoughts. Then I took a deep swig of wine straight from the bottle, which was something I’d never done before in my life, and never thought I would. Maddie had bought the bottle, though, and it seemed fitting to waste it on someone like me who did not like wine at all.
I wanted to feel sad, but all I could feel was anger. It bubbled up my throat and spilled over my lips in a long string of hoarse curses that wasn’t loud but not exactly quietly either, and the friggin’ squirrel kept laughing at me.
The buzzing sound from my phone startled me, and I turned my gaze downward slowly to look at it, expecting it to be Maddie. It wasn’t. It was Stewart.
I drank some wine as I watched the phone.
When I didn’t answer, he called again, and I had some more wine.
For the next hour he called over and over, and each time I raised the bottle. It felt almost as if we were playing a silly game, except I wasn’t laughing.
Finally, I picked up.
“Asshole,” I hissed, and a long echo of squirrel-laughter followed my greeting.
“Angelic –”
“Expect a call from my lawyer,” I snapped.
“Wh –”
“Rio,” I said hoarsely and listened to the resounding silence caused by my husband saying not a word.
I closed the call and threw the phone on the floor next to me, wondering if the insurance would cover damage made by me stomping on it. It took a few minutes, but then it pinged out that I had text message from Maddie. Apparently, she and Stewart had a separate conversation about how to deal with the situation.
“I never meant for you to find out. It didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry. Call me.”
I stared at it.
It didn’t mean anything?
She slept with my husband for a year, and it didn’t MEAN ANYTHING?
“Assholes,” I shouted at the phone.
And the squirrel barked again.
“I will kill you,” I murmured, and got to my feet.
The wine went from my foggy brain to my knees in a swoosh, and I had to put a hand on the wall to steady myself. Muttering a long string of foul words, I marched inside and over to the hall closet. My aunt had clearly been a fan of old school protection for her home, and I grabbed the biggest of the five rifles she apparently had deemed necessary to own.
When I walked out on the porch again, the night was silent. I raised the rifle to my shoulder anyway, imitating the stance made by cowboys in the old western movies my mom liked to watch.
“Shit,” I called out, and sure enough, the stupid animal barked.
I had never held any kind of firearm in my hands before in my life, so I had no clue what I was doing, but I moved the barrel toward the sound, pulled in air and held my breath.
“Fuck,” I ground out, partially because I wanted to hear where the squirrel was hiding but mostly because the rifle was heavy.
Then I s
crunched my eyes together tightly and squeezed the trigger.
There was a rasping sound that ended with a soft of click.
I opened my eyes, turned my gaze to the gun I still held awkwardly pressed to my shoulder and squeezed the trigger again.
Scratchy click.
The friggin’ gun wasn’t even loaded.
I was such a complete failure I couldn’t even retaliate on a rat with a long bushy tail.
The anger that had simmered inside me since I walked into the conference room to find my husband bare-assed and in the act simply drained out of me. I lowered the rifle, and then, finally, I started crying.
“Hey…” a soft voice murmured next to me, and I felt someone pull the rifle out of my hands.
I turned toward the tall man standing next to me. It was Zack, from Louise’s back porch, and the bar earlier that night.
“You okay?” he asked although he must have seen that I wasn’t.
“No,” I said.
“Okay,” he said gently. “You want me to get Louise, or –”
“It’s no use,” I whispered. “I can’t even kill a squirrel.”
“What?”
“My husband is sleeping with tons of women,” I confessed.
“I know,” he said, and added calmly, “He’s a dick.”
“My best friend is one of them,” I said even though I knew he was aware of this embarrassing fact.
“I know,” he repeated.
“I’ve had enough, and I just want to sleep,” I murmured.
His eyes went to the almost empty bottle of very expensive red wine, and the corners of his eyes crinkled a little.
“That sounds like a good idea,” he agreed. “You need help upstairs?”
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“I live up there,” he said an indicated a house that was barely visible through the trees. “Closed the bar, got home, heard your,” he paused and smiled a little, “expletives.”
“Is adultery a cause for divorce in Illinois?” I asked, which was stupid because how would a bar owner in a small town in the Rockies have any idea about legislation three states away?
“Not anymore,” he replied calmly. “If you agree, and have no kids under eighteen it’s pretty straightforward. Pets could complicate things.”
