The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet

by Susan Ward

  He reaches in trying to get the keys out of the ignition. “You are not driving with the baby. Not like this, Chrissie. I can’t stop you, but you are not taking my daughter anywhere. Not like this.”

  I push at him, trying to get him back so I can slam my door. “My daughter, Neil—” The flash of pain in his eyes nearly stops my words. I’ve drifted into territory we never venture into, but hurt catapults me onward. “I’m not leaving her here with you. Not in that house. Not with Andy. Are you crazy? And you are not taking her from me. Not ever, Neil. Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do with my daughter.”

  Screams pierce the sound of our heated argument, and I realize the baby trapped in the car seat is in full-blown hysterical crying. Our yelling must have woken her up. I look over at Kaley, her penetrating dark eyes studying us, her sweet face startled and distressed.

  Oh shit. I didn’t want her to see this. I don’t want to fight with Neil in front of our daughter. Damn it, Chrissie, get hold of yourself now and end this. Whatever it is I’m feeling has to wait. Kaley is watching us.

  My fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “If you don’t step back, I will drive away with you there, Neil,” I inform him stiffly, but at least my voice is a normal tone and steady. “Get back from the car and let me get out of here.”

  I can tell by his expression that Neil is debating whether to do as I ask, that he’s afraid to let me drive, and his eyes betray concern for Kaley and for me…damn him.

  The way he is looking at me is just enough for my emotions to go into free fall again. For a split second, I’m trapped in this hideous morass with my Neil. Sweet and kind and caring Neil. Damn him.

  His body is quaking and he looks as if he doesn’t know what to do. He’s afraid and I’m afraid, everything changes the instant I drive away from the house, and I think we’re both dreading where we go from here.

  I turn my face to stare stonily forward through the windshield. I can’t look at Neil. Not any longer. If I do I’ll fall apart again.

  I hear my door click closed. I turn on the ignition. I have no awareness of anything, of putting the car in gear, of pulling from the driveway, but I know that I’m driving, that the car is moving down the long road to the highway. I just can’t feel it. Even Kaley’s shrieks can’t penetrate the leveling emotions crushing me. She shrieks and I can’t feel it.

  I don’t know what I’m doing. Not really. My body moves on its own, mechanical and without command. I am drowning in a void and yet somehow I am breathing and driving and endeavoring to mumble soothing words to my daughter and going somewhere.

  The mountain highway ends at State Street, and I sit at the intersection and stare. Where am I going?

  The next thing I know, I’m parked in my dad’s driveway without ever having made a decision to come here. I sit in the car while Kaley continues to whimper, staring at the house, forcing myself to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.

  Jack’s car is parked in front of the garage, but the house is dark. I look at the clock on the dash. 10:30—has it really been only an hour since my life blew up in my face? How is it possible so much has changed and it’s only been sixty minutes?

  My shaking intensifies and all I want to do is get from this car, give my daughter to Maria, and get to my bedroom so I can let loose everything churning inside me.

  Please. Oh please. Oh please. Let Jack be asleep or out or anything. Just let me get to the safety of my room so I finish falling apart without anyone watching me do it, asking questions, expecting answers or wanting anything from me.

  I climb from the car, rush around to the passenger door, and quickly unsnap Kaley’s belts. She fidgets in my arms, still whimpering but too exhausted to be too difficult for once. I’m a mess, she’s a mess, and of all the things I’ve done badly tonight, letting her see the scene in the driveway with Neil is what I regret most. It’s the part I’ve given to her of this horrible event that will be a part of her life forever, too.

  Patting her back and making soothing sounds, praying she doesn’t burst out in a full tantrum again, I round the house to the entrance at the far wing where my bedroom is.

  I slip into the dimly lit hallway and stop at Maria’s door. I knock softly.

  Oh please, Maria. Be awake. Be here.

  The door opens.

  Maria’s dark eyes search my face and then widen in alarm. “Chica, why are you here? What’s wrong?”

  I push Kaley into her arms. “Can you take the baby tonight for me, please? Do whatever you have to do. Just keep her quiet, keep her happy for one night.”

  I whirl away toward my bedroom. Damn it, I can hear Maria following me.

  “Chrissie, you are scaring me,” she exclaims worriedly from my doorway. “What has happened?”

  Somehow I manage to meet her probing dark stare directly. “Nothing is wrong, Maria. I need a little time alone, please. That’s all. Is my dad home?”

  “Señor Jack…” and then the words become a jumbled mess, a rapid torrent of Spanish and English, but my emotion-frazzled brain doesn’t have the energy to translate them. I can only catch fragments. Nothing more.

  “Please, Maria. Will you stop talking? I can’t deal with it. If my husband calls tell him I’m not here.”

  Her eyes fly even wider. “No. What has happened, Chrissie, that you do not want to talk to your husband? I will not lie for you.”

  Brown eyes shift back and forth rapidly examining my face. “Nothing,” I exclaim, more loudly and harshly than I want to.

  Disbelief flashes in her gaze. A hint of reproach. “Do not lie to me. I can see when something is very wrong with mi niña.”

  I take in a steadying breath. “I’m all right, Maria. Neil and I had a fight. It’s nothing. I just don’t want to talk to him for a while. You understand, don’t you? Married people sometimes fight. We take time-outs from each other. We—”

  Oh fuck. I’m only worrying her more and I clamp my mouth shut. I hate that when she questions me I feel like a little girl, snotty and bitchy and babbling. But I am not a little girl. I’m a grown woman. With grown woman problems—I feel my heart start to beat out of control again—and I don’t owe anyone my private hurts and pain. Not even Maria.

  “Can you not tell my dad I’m here?” I ask.

  Her lips tighten, but she nods.

  I give her a hug. “We’ll talk in the morning,” I assure her. “I promise. I’m all right. I just need to be by myself for a while. Take care of Kaley, OK?”

  I put a fast kiss on Kaley’s forehead and Maria’s cheek, and then I close the door between us. I turn the lock and drop my forehead against the frame, straining to hear sound from the hallway. Finally, I hear Maria’s bedroom door click closed.

  I move to the center of my bedroom and stare. Now that I’m alone, I don’t know what to do. And I feel it starting over, like panic attacks or PTSD. The sickness in my stomach. The world spinning. My body shaking, flashing images in my brain that I do not want to see, and new tears gathering in my throat.

  It is running in my head like a movie I can’t shut off, each scene, one by one, that brought me here. Over and over again.

  I go into my bathroom, switch on the shower and lock the door. Numb, I undress as the room fills up rapidly with steam. My legs are wobbly and don’t want to hold me. I lean back into the tile and slide weakly to the floor, the hot streams of water reddening my flesh.

  It is scalding, but I can’t feel it. I hug my legs with my arms, rocking on the shower floor in a huddled ball. The tears start again, unstoppable, and all I want is to feel the burn, but I can’t feel anything.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling as soft shots of dawn peek through the half-open slats of the shutters. An impenetrable numbness has settled over me through the sleepless hours of the night.

  Snippets of yesterday return to me, but I feel no reaction. Nothing. Good, it’s better this way. It is better not to feel, at least until I can process wha
t has happened and figure out a way to deal with this.

  My mobile phone rings and I switch it off without bothering to check the caller ID. I can’t talk to Neil. Not yet. Maybe never. I’m not certain of anything today and no words from either of us will ever change this.

  I feel half-insane and half-dead. How does a woman deal when life throws at her the inconceivable? Can it even be dealt with? Neil is in love with Andy.

  So many of the things, the clues I missed along the way, those things always nagging and troubling me, suddenly make sense. He loves Andy. Before me. During us. And today. That is the only thing I am certain of this morning.

  It was forced in my face too brutally. Even I can’t run from that truth. The look in Neil’s eyes when he saw me watching them in bed, before he could alter his expression; it was love shining in those lush green eyes. For Andy.

  The only question is where we go from here. Is there even any place for us to go?

  My gaze shifts to my walls with the hideous pink flowered wallpaper. Inside me a memory stirs. Jack shaking his head the day I picked it out. Do you really want to be surrounded by Pepto-Bismol pink until you’re thirty?

  Ha, ha, Jack. Thirty. You were funny when I was little, but I didn’t know it. You always seemed sad and serious and distant to me. But I missed that one, too, I guess. You were a humorous dad. A good parent. A loving man. As a child I didn’t see it and I was angry with you. Wrongly. I miss everything.

  I even missed the opportunity to back out of my crummy decision decorating my bedroom. I stared at him, afraid to say no so I said nothing. Jack made a silly face, kissed me on the nose, and for all his warning bought it anyway.

  A ragged laugh pushes out of me. I hated the wallpaper the second it went up. I just learned to live smothered by Pepto-Bismol pink. The sight of it this morning makes me want to vomit.

  I push back the covers and climb from the bed. I feel like I’m going to suffocate. I have to get out of this house. I can’t hide in my room like a child forever. And I don’t want to wait until Jack finds me here. Better to cut out early before he spots me, traps me, and forces me, in that paternal way he’s cultivating quite expertly of late, to relive the worst Chrissie moment ever, my marriage ending over Andy.

  From my drawers I pull out an old pair of sweats and quickly dress. I chide myself to stop thinking. It’s a long drive to Rene’s, and I need to keep myself focused at least until I get there.

  I can’t stay here and I can’t unravel again. I have too much to do. Very soon my child will be awake, wanting and needing me. I have the same list of commitments that I had yesterday, appearances I can’t cancel and have to make it through.

  The world is not going to stop for Chrissie. Whether I’m heart-broken or panicking or having life-altering decisions forced upon me willy-nilly out of nowhere. Whether my husband loves me or not. Whether my marriage is over. Or even if Andy has now replaced me in my life.

  My stomach turns. I go into the hallway. I need coffee for me. A sipper juice for Kaley. Maybe some Cheerios or something for her until I can cope with thinking about eating.

  As I step into the kitchen, bright light streams through the back wall of glass. Fuck, it’s after dawn. I search the patio area. Good, no Jack. I so don’t want to face my dad today.

  I go toward the fridge and my heart skips a beat as another shock rockets through me. The refrigerator door is open and a lean body clad only in a shirt—my dad’s shirt—is standing there leaning against the frame, a coffee cup in hand. Her back is to me, but oh no, I don’t need to see this woman’s face.

  Short dark hair, stylishly cropped.

  Pansy tattoo on wrist.

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  I stare at her in disbelief. I say the first words that form in my head. “How long have you been fucking my father?”

  The mug drops to the floor. Startled, Linda whirls to face me, her dark eyes flashing with surprise and her tense features awash with just a hint of a blush. Then, all emotion is stripped from her face and she calmly arches a brow.

  “Fucking your father?” she repeats with just enough criticism to make me inwardly flinch. “This morning about an hour. Or are you asking something more significant, Chrissie?”

  The air in my lungs is knocked out of me. Linda has nerve, I’ll give her that, but how dare she answer me glibly?

  I stare at her, wounded and confused. “I thought you were my friend. Or is that a lie, too?”

  She shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be a bitch, dear. It’s too fucking early in the morning. I am your friend. A damn good one. And let’s not talk about lying. You don’t want to go there. I’ve got a thing or two in that department that I could say to you.”

  She says that in her superior all-knowing way and my entire face covers with a burn. She closes the refrigerator and moves until she’s across from me at the center island. She gives me a sharp once-over.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, frowning. “Is everything all right?”

  My eyes go wide and my mouth drops. Really? That’s all she has to say to me?

  “I don’t think that is any of your business,” I hiss.

  Linda crinkles her nose. “Seeing as how you are kind of ruining my morning, I think it is.”

  The heat in my cheeks has spread into a full body burn. I don’t know what she sees in my expression, but her eyes soften and worry replaces exasperation on her face.

  She relents. “I’m sorry. This is an awkward moment for the both of us. I wasn’t expecting to run into you in the kitchen either.”

  Good point. But it does nothing to soothe the things running through me, and a part of me wants to slap her.

  I look away first. “How long have you been having an affair with my dad?”

  Linda takes in a steadying breath. “Almost twenty years.”

  Twenty years? How could they be involved for twenty years and keep it a secret from me?

  I shift my gaze back to hers. “Why didn’t my father tell me? Why didn’t you?”

  Her mouth turns into a stiff line. “It doesn’t matter, Chrissie, and I am not explaining my relationship with Jack to you. You are the last person on this earth who has a right to answers or to judge me. Let’s leave it at we did what we thought best for everyone we love.”

  Her matter-of-factness stirs up the disquiet in me. Neil, Andy, and the mess in my own life currently.

  “I don’t understand how you could do this to Len. Doesn’t anyone fucking believe in marriage?”

  I’m yelling at her, but not really. Not inside me, and the change of her expression makes me regret those words and feel badly for her.

  I am disoriented, frazzled and ready to melt down again. Damn.

  Her temper flares. “Don’t you dare toss my husband into my face. It’s not smart to be opinionated about things you don’t know anything about.”

  Her anger is a good thing. It stirs mine in return and blocks out all the other things I don’t want to feel, not now, not here in the kitchen with her.

  “Well, someone has to think of him, don’t you think? You sure as hell aren’t thinking of Len. Doesn’t marriage mean anything to you? How can you live with yourself, lying every day to your husband and son? Fucking my father. Being my friend. Lying to me. What kind of person can do that?”

  There’s a sharp sound and then a heating sting shoots down my cheek and I realize, in shock, Linda slapped me.

  “Don’t get righteous with me, Chrissie. You understand nothing. You never have. And you are too old for me to explain it to you. Take care of your own marriage, and I’ll take of mine.”

  My marriage. Direct hit. It all comes tumbling back in nightmarish images and leveling waves.

  Without another word I run from the kitchen back to my room. As I jam my feet into my shoes, I frantically search for my keys.

  I need to get out of here. Quickly. Being here, having Jack and Linda shoved in my face before coffee, it’s too much after the shocks
of yesterday.

  I feel hands on my arms. Linda’s eyes are anxiously searching my face. She is worried. Very, very worried. I can feel it through everything else I’m feeling.

  “Wait, Chrissie. Wait. I love you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have slapped you, but sometimes your mouth gets the better of me. You hit a nerve, baby girl. Because I’ve loved you every day of your life for the past twenty years without being allowed to show it or you even knowing it. But I shouldn’t have reacted that way.”

  Now I want to cry. And if I start again I won’t ever stop.

  “I’m getting out of here,” I manage to choke out. “That way I won’t hit any more nerves or ruin your morning with my father.”

  She makes an aggravated growl.

  “That was snotty and petty. Please, will you stop? I don’t want to fight with you. I don’t want to say things we’ll both regret, and I can tell when something is pretty fucked up with you. I’ve not been a casual observer in your life, Chrissie. Settle down and talk to me. There must be some reason you snuck into the house and spent the night here. Did something happen with Neil? Please, I don’t want to leave things between us this way.”

  With the mention of Neil’s name, any chance I could manage this without being completely pathetic flies out the window. Worse, suspicion is curling through my digestive tract since there is something in the way Linda asks about Neil.

  I frantically try to read her face and I can’t, but the fear won’t silence inside me. Does Linda know about Neil?

  I can’t look at her any longer. “I’m not leaving anything any way. I’m just leaving, Linda.”

  She turns me back toward her, her eyes wide and alarmed. “Chrissie, what the fuck is going on with you? Can you just talk to me straight for a change?”

  She’s doing it again—all-powerful woman and motherly. The Linda can fix anything demeanor. Only today it pisses me off. She can’t fix my world. Hell, right now I don’t even trust her.

  I feel totally betrayed by her. Stupid, but that’s how it feels. Betrayed.

  She does another sharp inspection of me, and then says imperatively, “You are not leaving this house until you talk to either me or your father. You are in no condition to go anywhere. And you sure as hell are not in any shape to take care of a three-year-old. Nope, not letting you do it. Kaley stays with us until you pull it together.”