by Jana Casale
The man pushed hard first, and even tried to pull despite the fact that the door was clearly meant to be pushed.
“That’s funny,” he said.
Leda tried a few times herself but couldn’t get it open. They shrugged and turned around, but as they went to open the door back to the school hallway it wouldn’t open.
“It’s locked,” Leda said.
“What the heck?” the man said.
They pushed and pulled and tried over and over to get it open, but it wasn’t opening.
Just then Leda could see the lights flickering in the hallway.
“The play is starting,” she said, utterly devastated all at once.
They banged on the door a few times, but no one was nearby.
“Do you have a phone?” Leda asked him. “Mine is back in my purse with my husband.”
“I do, but it’s not charged, I’m afraid.”
Leda’s disdain for the man, which formerly had been little more than the general disdain she felt for most people, suddenly spiked. Who carries an uncharged phone around? But she knew John was hardly any better with his own phone (although, caught up in the moment, she wasn’t likely to admit it to herself).
They banged on the glass for a while longer before just standing awkwardly together, not knowing what to do. Leda kept thinking of Annabelle in her insane outfit and how unbearable it would be if she’d miss her line.
“Well, my wife is going to be pretty angry with me over this one. I was meant to get here earlier, but I was running late.”
“Tell her that it wouldn’t have helped to get here early. I was one of the first people in the gym and here we are.”
“Yeah,” the man scoffed to himself. “My name is Charlie, by the way.” He stretched his hand out.
“Leda.” She shook it.
“You have a child in the play, I’m presuming?”
“Yes, a daughter, Annabelle.”
“I have a son, Liam. I hate to say it, but I really don’t know what he is in this play.”
“He isn’t anything. They’re abstract woodland creatures. No one is anything.”
“Oh, that’s a bit sad. Isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“What will they tell their kids one day about it?”
“They’ll probably have to explain that they went to one of the best public school systems in the country, so this is what happens.”
“I thought we’d avoid this if we didn’t put them in private school.”
“Ha, yeah. I guess we failed as parents again.”
Charlie nodded and leaned up against the door. Both of them likely would have preferred to sit on the floor, but neither of them pushed for it. There was a certain decorum about standing that needed upholding in this situation. It was needless, yes, but without it there’d be no separation between people and abstract woodland creatures.
They could hear the sounds of the children singing a song. It was even more devastating than the lights flashing.
“If I miss this I don’t know what I’ll do,” Leda said. “Maybe my husband will record it on his phone.”
Charlie nodded, but he didn’t seem to understand.
“It just means so much to me to see this. Annabelle will be so upset if I miss it.”
Charlie shrugged. “Kids are resilient. I’m sure down the line she’d never remember if you were there or not.”
Leda wasn’t sure if Charlie was trying to be comforting or dismissive, but the thought that this wouldn’t matter to her child disturbed her. The feeling of anticipation that she’d felt along with her daughter as she’d waited for the play to start made her feel a sense of purpose so lovely and rich, and for Charlie here to denigrate it all with his flippant remarks, it only further solidified the horror of the moment at hand.
She thought back to high school, where all one hoped for was the chance to be caught in some vestibule with the boy you’d had a crush on. She’d been in love with a boy named Sam, who was sweet and bookish and popular beyond hope. Over and over she’d imagined situations where they’d be forced to spend time together and that time ending up in making out.
“What? We’re stuck here in this locker with our bodies pressed up against each other? Well, might as well start kissing” was the general way the fantasy played out. And here she was with Charlie, living the high school dream, and it was hell on earth. How much bullshit everything you want is, she thought.
“Don’t you think Liam will be sad you missed him?”
“His mom is there, so I doubt it. Kids don’t really care what it is their dads do. It’s their mom’s being there that matters, I think.”
Leda was done talking to Charlie after that. It was an impractical stand to take, though, and seconds later they were talking again.
“What is it you do?” he asked her.
“I’m a writer,” Leda said.
She couldn’t believe she’d said it. She had no certainty where it came from. And it sure as anything wasn’t planned, but she could feel her heart beating away in her chest as she said it.
“Oh, what is it that you write?”
“Everything,” she snapped back.
Just then she saw John in the school hallway.
“There’s my husband!” She banged hard on the glass and John ran over and let them out.
“We got locked in,” Leda said. The two of them jogged back down toward the gym, leaving Charlie bumbling his way behind. They entered through the once-again open side door, and there was Annabelle in all her abstract glory standing in center stage. Leda was far back in the crowd, but she could see her daughter fully because she wasn’t seated.
“Here in the woods all of us fight through winter. But a successful winter is not one you merely survive, it is one in which you thrive.”
I heard her line! Leda thought, and she couldn’t help but feel every bit of wonderful. It was revelatory, it was eternal, it was everything she could have ever wanted.
CHAPTER 46
A Call from Elle
It wasn’t late at night when Leda got the call. Eleven thirty really isn’t late. But it felt late to see “Elle” blazed across her phone. It could have easily been three a.m., given the context of their friendship, which had rarely been a phone-call friendship, let alone one late like this. She figured that maybe it was a pocket dial or some other such mistake, but even so she answered. John was trying to fall asleep beside her and she was up with a book. The light on her nightstand was the only beacon in the room besides, now, her phone.
“Hello.”
“Scott is cheating on me.” Leda could hear Elle’s voice shaking.
“What?!” It was all so surreal, Elle’s voice, what she was saying. Leda looked around her bedroom quickly to orient herself. She touched the corner of her book, sharp, familiar, paper present in her hand.
“He’s having an affair.”
“Oh my god.”
“I’m freaking out, Leda. How could he do this to me?”
Leda really didn’t know Scott. In fact, until this moment she’d entirely forgotten his name was Scott. Elle didn’t have her relationship status up on Facebook, and apart from two family pictures she’d posted, there was little evidence Scott existed in her life at all, at least to Leda, who knew Elle these days exclusively through selfie smiles and the longing melancholy of food pics.
“I don’t know what to do. I just found out,” Elle said.
“Are you sure it’s true?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh my god, Elle. I’m so sorry.”
“I am in total shock. I didn’t think Scott could do this. I wouldn’t have believed it if you told me. I swear to god I wouldn’t.”
From the two pictures Leda had seen of Scott, he looked too handsome for real life, like every leading man in a Lifetime movie
or Bradley Cooper. He seemed like someone who wasn’t born out of a vagina but rather just sprang up fully grown from a snowdrift in Aspen, already wearing Patagonia as he smiled and said things like: “We’re headed to Cabo for the weekend” or “We’re going wine tasting in Napa.”
“How did you find out?”
“I went through his phone. I don’t usually snoop, I’m not that kind of wife, but he left it out, and I just had this weird feeling that I should look at it.”
Leda wondered what “kind of wife” Elle thought would do something like that. She imagined a woman who was pushy and nosy wearing some kind of apron and looking the very opposite of chic as she folded sheets and angrily fluffed pillows. Someone who would yell at a man to straighten up and fly right. Someone who just didn’t give a damn about the mirage of trust foisted upon love. Maybe it’s actually those kinds of women who are actually secure with themselves, Leda thought. Maybe they’re the ones we should all be.
“I found all these text messages of him being like, ‘I’ll meet you at seven,’ and ‘She’s home.’ Can you believe that I’m the she? That one really killed me.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, and then there were all these sexual ones, so there’s no way he can tell me it’s anything but an affair.” Elle paused. “Her name is Chelsea. What kind of a slut name is that?” Elle hung on the word slut for so long it was like she was spelling it. The s, the l, the t all rang out over the phone as if semen were just pumping through her veins.
“I am so sorry,” Leda said.
“She has fake tits too. He always told me he liked small breasts, but that was clearly a lie, ’cause she has Big. Fake. Tits.”
“How do you know this?”
“I found her on Instagram. She has like twenty-three thousand followers. Can you believe that? It’s probably the number of dicks she’s sucked. Here, I’m sending you a link to her account.”
Leda clicked the link and looked through the pictures. The woman was stunning in a slutty kind of way. Her tits were definitely fake, as Elle had said. They were round and alienating like all fake breasts were, existentially existing on a plane higher than anyone could reach, certainly higher than either Leda or Elle ever could. Among the pictures there were thousands of selfies. There was Chelsea in a bikini, Chelsea standing near a cactus, Chelsea wearing overalls with no shirt on, Chelsea eating some kind of sexually suggestive fruit. Scrolling through them, it was hard not to feel that her friend was in trouble. It seemed that this round-breasted woman buoyed far above the currency that was paper Elle. On the surface it would be assumed that Elle would be favorable in her husband’s esteem, given the time, and the love, and the children, but staring at this perky, perfect, slutilicious figure it was clear that Elle was falling, Elle was flailing, Elle was likely worth less.
“She’s ugly,” Leda lied.
“You think so?”
“Yeah, she’s gross and so trashy. Don’t even think about it for a second.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes, she’s a total whore.”
“I think her lips are fake too.”
“I’m sure they are. They’re, like, way too big.”
“I bet she doesn’t even look like this in real life.”
“There’s no way. I guarantee every single picture is Photoshopped.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
Leda knew that at this moment in her life all Elle felt was a repudiation of everything she ever was funneled through these filtered Instagram pictures. To confirm to her that she was prettier than this woman who was having sex with her husband, touching him, lying beside him, filling a space that only she was meant to fill, was all Leda had to offer as a friend right now. The monumental confirmation of everything despicable and desperate that had ruined so much of both their lives was Elle’s only beacon. How cruel, how sick were thoughts that Leda wouldn’t think but certainly should have.
“I don’t know what to do,” Elle said.
“What did he say when you confronted him?”
“I haven’t yet. It’s not that easy with Scott. We don’t have the kind of relationship where I can just start crying to him about this.”
“What do you mean?”
“He and I, we just don’t have the kind of relationship where we share everything. It’s complicated, but I just can’t imagine myself sitting there and telling him this. Saying her name and talking about her big fake tits and the whole thing. I cannot even imagine it.”
“But you have to tell him,” Leda said.
Elle was silent for a moment and then said something jumbled that Leda couldn’t quite make out. She had a vision of her friend squatting in some corner with a cell phone pushed to her face. Where is she right now? A closet in her big, fancy house while he sleeps and she sits desperately next to purses?
“I like my life, though, Leda. He’s made a fool of me, but I do like my life.” Elle paused. “Do you think he goes down on her? He’d never go down on me our whole relationship. I asked him once, and he said it wasn’t his thing, but he said the same thing about big breasts, so who knows.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t.”
“I would die if he does. I would absolutely die. I’ve felt bad about this forever. You know, I’ve been with him so long now that I don’t even remember what it feels like to be without him. And what am I going to have to say, I’m divorced? Divorced.” Elle’s voice clicked heavily on the word. “That just isn’t me. It’s not who I am.” Elle paused again. “Do you think he’s told her he loves her? Do you think he loves me?”
“Of course he loves you!”
“You know how many blow jobs I’ve given him with absolutely nothing in return?”
Why are men so complacent about getting head and not giving it? Leda thought. She’s felt bad forever and he doesn’t give a damn, because he’s a man and men think their pleasure is your pleasure and your pleasure is nothing. Leda wanted to say something about this but wasn’t quite sure how to word it. “You deserve better” was the best she could do.
“And to think that I’m the ‘she’ to him. I’m the ‘she.’ The ‘she,’ Leda. The ‘she.’ ”
“He’s an asshole.” Leda needed to tread lightly here. There was a thin line between husband/father and dirty rotten cheater that was essential to the success of this conversation.
“He is an asshole,” Elle said, and she started to cry.
Did I push it too far with the “asshole” thing? Leda wondered.
“You know what, Leda? One of my biggest fears is that I’ll die and I’ll have made no difference in the world. Sure, my children will be sad, but that’s it. It’ll be like I never existed.”
“That’s crazy.” Leda briefly thought back to Annabelle’s tiny desk and chair. They’d long since been moved to the garage. They were upside down now, stacked, dusty.
“I don’t know. Maybe it is crazy. I’m just…I do love him. I do. Why did this have to happen? He wasn’t even acting weird, that’s the part that pushes me over the edge. Everything was the same. I was just living my life, and all along he had this whole thing going on. He was living this totally separate life that has nothing to do with me or our family. I feel so humiliated. Like I was sold a lie all these years. I’m not who I think I am because he isn’t who I thought he was.”
Leda tried to think of something comforting to say to her dear friend. They’d grown close in these last twenty minutes. It was as if the time they’d grown apart hadn’t existed at all. Trauma could do that in friendships among women. It wasn’t the time to feel superior or to put your happiness out on the table, as was often the bread and butter of female friendships. No, it was the time to band together and find emotional clarity off of each other’s estrogen. Leda figured that maybe the reason Elle had chosen to call her, out of all people,
her friend from college whom she hadn’t talked to in years, was that she didn’t know Scott beyond those two pictures. He was no more to her than a fragment of Elle’s life. He didn’t define her in the way he surely defined her to herself. Maybe I’m her lifeline to the lady who sold the combs, she thought.
“Listen, Elle, you’re going to be fine. You were fine before this and you’re fine now. I know it doesn’t feel like that this second, but it is true. Don’t be scared. Be strong, be fearless. And most of all, you should be happy.”
Leda and Elle talked a few more minutes after that before Elle wanted to get off the phone. She thanked Leda over and over and made promises about getting together in the near future. Leda could hear Elle’s breathing stabilize and that she was no longer crying.
“I’m going to talk to him tomorrow” was the last definitive thing she said regarding the affair.
A few days later Elle changed her relationship status to “Married” and added a new picture of her and Scott on the beach together in a warm embrace. It got over a hundred likes and comments along the lines of: “You two are still the cutest couple I know” and “Perfect!” Leda wasn’t all that surprised. Partly she’d sensed Elle’s hesitation on the phone that night, and part of it was something she’d learned through many, many different women in her life: good women stay with bad men.
“I think it’s probably a ten-to-one ratio of decent women to decent men,” Anne had said not long after a bad breakup.
“Really? That seems a bit harsh,” Leda said.
“Oh, yeah? Name three guys you’d date right now.” Leda was already married to John at this point, but for the life of her she couldn’t. She ran through a mental Rolodex of men she knew, single, not single, and so many of them were selfish or gross or unemployed. On more occasions than she’d be willing to admit she’d met a girlfriend’s significant other and been wildly disappointed. Beautiful, strong, incredible women would date the most egregious of people.
At some point in her freshman year of college she’d gone dancing with a girl from her biology class named Erin in an effort to get over her ex.
