“Isn’t it? She said something about wasting money on a babysitter and asked if I wanted to grab a drink. Yeah, we had sex a few times. It was just fun, two single, fucking lonely people who had sex a few times. That’s it.”
“Well, she thinks it’s a lot more.”
“I don’t know how. We said almost nothing to one another. Literally a few words. It was just blowing off steam, just sex.” He rubs his hand over his face and sighs. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Yeah, you probably should.” I feel my face redden with shame. He’s right. I’m throwing a fit. Somehow I’m asking for monogamy from him, which is absurd.
“If you’d given me any signal that I had a shot here, I would never do anything to mess that up. But you made your decision. Didn’t you?”
The blaze of rage that fueled my trip over here is now extinguished by my longing to be touched by him, to feel adored by him again, and to say the right thing so this isn’t over. I’m not ready. I’ve let it go so far beyond just sex.
If I hadn’t come here tonight, he would have left in ten days and I would have remained resentful; his memory would be a fleeting pang of regret now and again, but I did come.
I don’t say anything. The silence hangs in the air. I can hear myself swallow. I stand and walk over to him. He’s leaning against the counter, staring through the window over the sink, waiting for one of us to speak. When he turns toward me, I kiss him, hard and forcefully. He looks shocked at first, then grabs my face and kisses me back, and we fumble our way to the bedroom.
I glance at the bedside clock, making note that I only have two hours with him, maybe the last two hours I’ll spend with him, and we fall into his bed together.
I shower this time, before I leave. As I stand in a towel in his bathroom, fixing my hair back to the way it was, he sits on the edge of the enormous spa bathtub and watches me. I smile at him. I’m holding the image in my mind, trying to collect these memories for when he’s gone. He hands me something.
“What’s this for?” I ask, looking down at a weird-looking phone—some ancient-looking flip phone.
“It’s a pay-as-you-go deal,” he says.
“A burner phone?” I ask, horrified. “I think these are exclusively for criminals.”
“I got it back when I thought you’d show up at my door again. It’s not traceable.”
“I know. That’s creepy.” I hand it back to him.
“It’s a way to stay in touch if you want to.” He sets it on top of my purse. I nod.
Before I slip back out the side door, he kisses me again.
“You know where I live.”
“Bye,” I say, turning quickly to go before I am unable to leave.
11
WITH THE KIDS NOW at school and Collin busy working on a relocation of the “goddamn vibrating hospital,” I find I have many hours a day to myself. There are many things I could be doing. I should actually finish writing the piece I’m working on like I said I would. Collin was gracious in helping me pursue it and now I can’t seem to concentrate for more than a few minutes on anything without my mind wandering to forbidden thoughts, Luke’s body on mine, the passion I haven’t felt in so long.
I should be teaching myself to cook something besides frozen chicken. I should get a head start on Ben’s Halloween costume. He wants to be a Ninja Turtle. I should catch up on laundry. I should do anything other than what I decide to do.
On Monday morning, I hire a day nurse and pay her cash to stop in midday and take care of Claire for me. When I think about the fact that Claire can’t tell on me and that’s the only reason I’m getting away with it, I feel sick. But I do it anyway. Then I show up at Luke’s. I can’t help myself. I don’t help myself.
I know he never thought he’d see me again after I left on Saturday night. It should have been that way. Everything I set into motion by not staying away is my fault. He swallows me in his arms, we spend the day naked in his bed, making love until we are too exhausted to do it again. Then I go back the next two days in a row.
I let him deluge me with care; I take in all of it as if it is deserved. We sun ourselves by the pool, and I read fashion magazines he bought for me. Sometimes, while I fall asleep on a deck chair with my glass of Chablis, he works on his book—leaning over a laptop, just the way I imagined him. We watch documentaries and romantic comedies; he tries to cook for me, but can only produce offerings of burnt pancakes or crunchy spaghetti.
We tell each other everything. I knew about his father, who wanted him to be a navy man like himself and refuses to be proud of his success. He talks about his depression he takes meds for and how it’s changed him—how some days he feels the despair encroaching, recognizing the enemy as it approaches, hopeless to battle it, even when he thinks he’s perfectly happy. I rest my forehead on his shoulder as I listen. I tell him about my first love, the way the boy kissed me tenderly at first, but never touched my body, only pushed into me, a flat hand on the wall above my head, groaning until he was finished—how it confused me until he came out as gay a few years later. He knows I have a husband I dearly love...just in a different way than whatever this is.
I lie across his bed. A rainstorm has brought in cooler air and it sweeps in through the open window; he leans up on one elbow and traces the contours of my back with the finger of his free hand as I lie facing away, watching the drizzle make trails down the windowpane. He speaks lovers’ words and I feel the wet under his eyes when he presses his face into my neck, already mourning the loss of when this will end.
At home in the evenings, the burner phone is on silent and hidden inside a tampon box under my side of the sink. Before bed, I close the bathroom door and run the water, so I have a couple of minutes to read the texted love letters from him. I’m getting very skilled at lying and acting completely normal. It scares me, how Collin and the kids are the same. No odd looks, no suspicion. All because I’ve become a good liar and cheater. The house is the same, the crack in the front stair that needs repair, the TV always on in the living room as Rachel and Ben fight over the remote and do homework, cross-legged at the coffee table, Ralph begging for food under the dinner table. How can this all be the same when I feel like my life has changed so completely?
One evening, after spending the last four days in his arms, he texts and says he wants to stay through the winter and postpone his trip until spring maybe. I don’t know what to say to this.
Rachel comes home in tears, telling me that we absolutely have to let her friend Katie stay over for a few days.
“Honey, what happened?” I hand her a tissue and sit beside her on the sofa.
“Her mom is taking her away.”
“What do you mean?”
“It didn’t even matter that she got the part, her mom is so—She ran away. I’m being honest here, okay, so you have to help her and let her come over. She needs somewhere to go. She’s, like, freaking out.”
My daughter is losing her best friend. I think about the reality of Katie running away. If she really ran, she’d probably be sex-trafficked or in a drug house within a week or two. She’d go to New Orleans, no doubt. This could be Rachel if anyone found out what I was doing and it tore up our family like that.
“Honey, her parents need to know where she is.”
“Mom, no!” she sobs.
“We can’t hide her from her parents. Do you understand that they would probably file a missing persons report and a police force would be spending time trying to find her? That’s a crime. We need to make sure she’s safe and her parents know where she is.”
“You don’t understand!” she screams.
“Rach, I know you want to help her and that this is hard, but that’s not the answer. Do you know where she is now?”
“I’m not telling anyone. You were supposed to be cool and help us. This is such bullshit!” She runs into her room and slams the
door, violently. Collin comes home and walks in through the garage door just in time to be startled by the slam of her door.
“What’s goin’ on?” He puts his things down and kisses me on the cheek as I explain about Rachel wanting to harbor a runaway.
“Should I talk to her?” he asks.
“I’d give her a little time.”
“I know Katie’s dad a little from the country club. Jerry. Sounds like a really ugly situation. His wife drained the joint bank account when she found out. Says he lived in his car for a week before she moved out.”
“Wow. Well, Rachel says she’s taking the kids away. Thinks she’ll never see Katie again,” I say, and Rachel comes out of her room to try and manipulate her father. She puts her arms around his waist and pouts. It sometimes works, but he gives me a look like he’s got this.
“Daddy,” she whines, “can I talk to you?”
And with that she whisks him off to her room to retell the story with extra tears. It hits me, hard, that he’s good cop. Not only would the kids probably choose him, he’s the breadwinner. I feel weak-kneed, suddenly, and sit. I have no job. All the assets are joint. I would never drain our account and be more selfish and horrible than I’ve already been. I would single-handedly destroy our family and lose everything if anyone found out. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have known this, but I’m crippled by how close I am to this blowing up the way it did with Katie’s parents.
My phone buzzes on the table. It’s Lacy. I pick it up.
“Lacy, hi.” I should have sent a text or something the next day, apologizing again for my abrupt departure from the bar, but I’ve been consumed. I haven’t even thought about her. She’s crying. “What’s wrong?”
“Men are fucking assholes. They’re all the same.”
I hear her exhale smoke and take another pull off a cigarette.
“Oh no. What happened?” I hate myself. I’m such a liar.
“He called me Sunday and said he couldn’t see me anymore. Just like that.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s—that’s terrible. Did he...say why?”
“No! Not even an explanation. He’s just not looking for anything right now. What guy is? None. None is the answer. They can all suck it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she whimpers, sniffling.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Tell me not to answer Joe. Fucker keeps calling me, a hundred times a day.”
“Lacy. Oh my God. You—” I stop myself, not wanting to upset her more by telling her, once again, to report him. “Do. Not. Answer. You said it was in the past and you were never gonna answer again.”
“Yeah, but I always say that. It’s not so easy when every other guy you meet just wants a couple a blow jobs then they’re gone.”
Luke isn’t that guy, but she’ll never know that.
“They’re all the same. I’m so done.”
“No, you’re not, come on,” I try to console her.
“Yes, I am.”
“Please, promise me you won’t see Joe. Think about it, remember what it’s like—what will happen after the apologies wear off.”
“I know,” she says in a singsong tone, like we’re talking about his bad habit of chewing tobacco or something rather than felony assault.
“Can you get a drink at Rodney’s this weekend?”
“Yeah, I mean I’ll check with Collin, but I’m sure I can sneak away for a bit.” As I say this I imagine myself using her by agreeing to plans, and then canceling to go and see Luke. I promise myself I won’t do that. I’ll be there for her. I go to the stove and poke at the stir-fry I’m heating up.
When Collin comes back out, of course he’s somehow persuaded Rachel to tell him where Katie is. He puts his arms around me from behind and steals a piece of broccoli off the top.
“It’s frozen!” I try to warn, but he’s popped it in his mouth before I can get the words out.
“No, it’s good,” he says, spitting it into his hand with a disgusted look, and I can’t help but laugh. “Turns out Katie’s in the food court at the mall, so I’m gonna go call Jerry.”
After dinner, we all watch Survivor, except for Rachel who’s sulking in her room. I must have fallen asleep, because when I wake up, Ben is in bed, and I hear Collin from the kitchen on a work call. He’s pulled a blanket over me. I sit in the blue light of the television a moment. I shake off the dream I was having about the wrath of God—a God who looks like he did in all of the picture books from Sunday school. A Gandalf the Grey beard, feathery white hair and a furrowed brow; his mouth open in midcondemnation, lightning extending from his fingers and striking down sinners who run in circles, like ants on the ground, begging for forgiveness, but too late.
I have to do it. I’m ruining everything good in my life. I have to go to Luke’s tomorrow and tell him to go to Italy, and that I can’t see him again. Ever. I have to.
I look at Collin hunched over his work at the counter, off his call now. I wish I could tell him how sorry I am.
“You’re up,” he says, seeing me staring at him.
“Sorry, I didn’t know I was that tired. You’re still working? It’s so late.”
I go and sit next to him, his computer screen glaring in the dark room. I see a multitude of spreadsheets and hope I didn’t open up conversation about his work right now because I’m so very tired and I don’t have the wherewithal to mask my sadness.
“I can be done.”
“How’s Rachel? Actually I should ask, on a scale of one to ten, how much does she hate us for calling Katie’s dad—or rather, probably just me?”
“She doesn’t hate you. Come on. Let’s go to bed.”
* * *
Later, under the fluffy down comforter, I roll over to Collin, who is fast asleep, and put my arms around his broad shoulders. I hold on so tight and bury my face in his back. I’m so, so sorry. I kiss the back of his head and pray that I can make this right.
The next morning I message Luke and tell him I’ll stop by that night. I won’t hire care for Claire again even though I want to do it right now, get it over with. I should have never done that. It was dangerous. I try to make it up to her. I bring her lunch and sit next to her while she eats a tough knot of Salisbury steak and some applesauce, and we watch reruns of Golden Girls, another of her favorites. I quietly vow to myself to become a better cook. I’m making a mental list of penance.
That night, I say that I need to meet Lacy for an hour, that she’s going through something. I cannot let myself think of anything but what I need to do. I can’t let myself cave, change my mind, weaken when his face crumples. I’ll bring the burner phone to give back to him. No more contact. I will end this for good. He’ll move on. I have to think about Collin and my children, I can’t care about his feelings. I say this out loud to myself as I drive. Tears blur my vision.
“Goddamn it!” I scream, punching the steering wheel with my fist as I make the familiar drive to my parking spot, blocks away from his hidden house.
When I reach his property, I wipe my tears, but they continue to flood my eyes and fall. I take a minute so I’m composed. I rehearsed what I’ll say. It will be short and to the point, so I can turn around and leave without him doing anything to change my mind. I walk up the driveway. I take a deep breath. I will say goodbye. This is goodbye.
12
THE DOOR IS OPEN when I arrive. I don’t think it’s strange. I think maybe he left it that way to let in the breezy night air. Perhaps he was enjoying a glass of wine on the porch and had run in for a refill. I didn’t know what it would mean that the door was ajar, and I shouldn’t have shut it. I shouldn’t have touched anything.
I call his name, setting my purse on the counter and cocking my head to listen for maybe a shower running or footsteps upstairs. No answer. No sounds. That’s when I
notice his phone on the floor of the kitchen. The glass screen is smashed, but it works. That gives me pause. Why would he leave it there like that if he dropped it? When I look through into the living room, I see the couch cushions tossed on the ground. It’s so quiet. What the hell is going on?
I call his name again; my heart starts to speed up as I yell for him and throw doors open to find him. Was there a robbery? I chart the stairs and start to panic a bit. He should be home. The television in the upstairs family room is on, but no one is watching it. When I turn it off, the silence rings in my ears. I see the French doors to the balcony off of the bedroom, which overlooks the pool, are open. When I walk out onto the balcony, I feel a tremor of unease even before I see it.
The backyard is canopied with Spanish moss dripping from the trees and hums with the sound of cicadas, invisible in the branches. The humidity is palpable in the thick night air. I think of calling him, but remember I just saw his phone downstairs. All of a sudden, I wish, desperately, that I could take back every decision I’ve made over the last couple months that landed me here, witnessing what I can never unsee.
He is there. I see him in the shadowy blue light the swimming pool casts across the patio. He is lying on the concrete slab next to the pool with ribbons of blood making a river from the back of his head down to the pool-deck drain.
I rush down the stairs and kneel next to him. His face has an unmistakable pallor. I can tell from the eerie, lifeless stare and gloss over his eyes that he’s dead. I touch the back of my hand to his neck. He’s cold.
I don’t scream. I immediately understand that no one can ever know that I was here. I want to wail over his body, but the utter shock is helping me through the next few minutes without breaking down and being heard. From the pool deck, I look up to his bedroom balcony. Did he fall? Jump? I can’t touch him again. I need to get out. I need to get out of here.
Such a Good Wife Page 10
