“We never meant for this to happen,” Amy finally managed.
“Few do,” I said. Then Jay had stammered out some nonsense about how now he finally knew what people meant when they talked about soul mates, the coup de foudre, except his French accent was so terrible that I didn’t know what he was talking about and made him repeat it twice. Soul mates! Had I ever imagined my sensible, lawyerly husband, with his monogrammed briefcase and receding hairline, using a phrase like that?
“Could you excuse us for a moment?” I asked Amy politely. “I need to speak to my husband alone.”
She’d at least had the grace to look pained by the word husband as she’d slunk toward the door. I took the seat she’d left empty—metaphor!—and stared at my husband, whose brow was furrowed and eyes were soft, like some director had told him, “Do contrition,” and he was trying his very hardest to look sorry.
“Why?” I asked him. Waiters passed the table, bearing trays of delicious-smelling dinners. Somewhere in the restaurant, I could hear people singing “Happy Birthday.” Outside, it had started to rain.
Jay sighed. It was the same sigh I’d heard thousands of times during our marriage, a sigh as familiar to me as my own. Then I watched his face transform, lighting up like someone had lit a match inside a carved pumpkin. His eyes were shining as he described his beloved. “I’m not saying this to hurt you, but I want to be honest. What I feel with Amy, that’s what love is supposed to be. Real love.”
“So what do we have? Fake love? Ten years of nothing?” My voice was grating, probably too loud. I was furious at him, for cheating, and for doing it for such dopey, predictable reasons.
“I haven’t been happy for a long time.”
I rocked back in the chair like he’d shoved me. “You might have mentioned it. You know, just a little clue or two, during your years and years of misery.”
“When would I have mentioned it? You’re never home! And when you are home, you’re on the phone with one of your clients, and there’s always some kind of crisis. You don’t know me anymore.”
“I love you,” I whispered . . . even though at that moment I was not entirely sure that it was true.
He shook his head, a patient teacher instructing a slow learner. “No, Rachel, you don’t. You admire me. You need me. You like the things I do. But you don’t love me. You don’t know me. You don’t . . .”
“How about I don’t cheat?” I hissed. “How about when I promised to love you, in sickness and health, forsaking all others, I wasn’t kidding? How about I’d never fuck your boss?” Which was especially true, given that Jay’s boss was his father, a kind, avuncular man of seventy-six. “Oh, and also, how about if I did cheat, I wouldn’t be enough of a dumbass to use my wife’s OpenTable account to make my reservations!”
Jay sighed again. “I’m prepared to be fair,” he said.
“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe you’d better prepare to be broke, because I’m going to find the biggest shark in the tank and I’m going to take you to the cleaners.” Biggest shark in the tank. Take you to the cleaners. Where had I gotten these lines? Probably from one of the reality shows I loved, the ones Jay called my programs. Oh, no, we can’t go out on Monday, Rachel needs to be home for her programs. I’d believed he was just being playful. Only now I thought maybe his dislike hadn’t been feigned. There’d been things that had annoyed me about him, too, but I’d picked my battles strategically, refusing to fight about the petty irritations that went with living with another adult. I’d thought I’d been so smart, managing my marriage like it was another case at work, and what had it gotten me? My husband with another woman, looking forward to a long, happy life with my ex–best friend.
“Are you coming home?” I asked. My voice cracked on the last word, and finally, I could feel the tears, a scalding tide of them, waiting to wash through my numbness. “No, you know what? You’re not. You’re not welcome. You can stay somewhere else.” Then, with my back straight and my head held high and my gait a little strange because I was locking my knees to keep them from shaking, I’d walked out of the restaurant and then all the way downtown. The rain had tapered off to a light mist, and the smell rising up from the pavement was a blend of filth and urine and that wet, wormy scent that came from the ground after a storm. The urge to cry had receded; the rage had returned. My jaw was clenched, my feet came down hard with each step, stomping the wet pavement, and I glared at any pedestrian who blocked my path or tried to edge me out with their umbrella. I was furious at Jay for what he’d done, furious at myself for having missed all the signs, furious at Amy, who’d set me up with Jay in the first place and then decided she wanted him back.
But that wasn’t the worst part. For years, I’d told myself that Andy was my big mistake; that he, along with all the surgeries and everything that had gone with them, were the tests I had to pass so that I could meet the man I was meant to be with, and live the life I was supposed to live. But if my husband, that promised gold at the end of the rainbow, was leaving, then clearly I’d been wrong. What story could I tell myself now?
I’d found out about the affair on a Friday night, the start of one of the many long weekends that sending your children to private school guaranteed. The girls would be home Monday while their teachers attended some kind of enrichment. Jay texted me to say that he’d arranged for Adele and Delaney to spend the weekend with his father in Long Island. His brother, Ben, and his wife and their three-year-old daughter would be there, too, and there was nothing Adele and Delaney loved better than being the big girls when their little cousin was around. That weekend, before Brenda’s arrival, I only left the bed to pee and scoop the occasional swallow of water out of the sink. I couldn’t stop hearing the crap Jay had said, about soul mates and the thunderclap and how he finally knew how love was supposed to feel.
I could have told you, is what I should have said. I felt that way, once, but not about you. About Andy.
I’d planned on staying in bed indefinitely, but now Nana was here, ushering the girls into my bedroom, where they found me showered, in a clean nightgown, on clean sheets.
“Mommy!” cried Delaney, racing across the room to vault onto the mattress and into my arms. Her hair was done in a fancy French braid—courtesy of Aunt Katie, I assumed—and she was wearing strawberry-scented lip gloss and her favorite maxi-dress.
“Why are you in here?” asked Adele, whose book-crammed backpack was still hanging from her skinny shoulders.
“I have taken to my bed. It’s like an in-service day.”
“Yay!” Delaney whooped, and went dashing to her bedroom. Delaney was a pistol. Older people said she looked like Shirley Temple; people my age saw a brunette Annie. She was delightfully plump, with light-brown ringlets and a constant smile, the adorableness of which was only enhanced by the gap where her front teeth used to be.
“You want us to wear our nightgowns in the daytime?” asked Adele. She had the same light-brown hair as her younger sister, only hers was thick and straight, cut, at her insistence, in an old-fashioned ear-length bob. She’d been sober, reserved, thoughtful, and cautious ever since she was an infant, when she’d squirm away from hugs and cuddles in order to gaze at dust motes in a beam of sunshine, or a bug batting itself against a window, or her own baby fingers wiggling in the air. Some days I thought she’d be a scientist, because of the way she’d assess every situation, considering every potential outcome before committing, whether the action in question was jumping into a swimming pool or blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.
Some days I wondered what had made her such a pessimist, perpetually braced for disappointments: the wrong kind of sandwich in her lunchbox, the wrong color tights laid out on her bed, the scary sixty-year-old first-grade teacher instead of the pretty Miss Rose, who had a tiny, glittery stud in her nose and a tattoo of birds on her shoulder. Delaney loved sweets; Adele had been known to dismiss desserts as “too rich.”
Delaney left a litter of toys and shoes and clothing wherever she went. Adele kept her room hospital-neat, and had told me more than once that we didn’t need to spend money on a cleaning lady when we could just clean up after ourselves. On vacation, Delaney adored ordering room service, and would watch eagerly while the waiter wheeled the white-draped cart into our room, then opened up its wings, turning it into a table. Adele, meanwhile, would scrutinize the bill, purse her lips at the 18 percent delivery surcharge, and tell her sister that it would be much less expensive to just eat in the restaurant. “Or we could just bring food from home!”
Once, after a five-year-old classmate’s birthday party where Adele had refused to play in the ball pit—“because there are germs in there,” she’d earnestly explained, “and because also, what if somebody pees?”—I’d been so concerned that I’d taken her to a therapist, who reassured me that children were different, that to a large degree their personalities were hardwired, and that I should love Adele the way she was while doing my best to show her that the world was not a terrible place full of bad things just waiting to happen. I wondered how I could get her to believe that now.
“Why do we need our nightgowns?” she asked.
“We are taking to our beds,” I repeated. “Well, my bed, technically.”
“I have homework,” Adele protested.
“You are lying,” I said. “I know for a fact that your teachers didn’t give you anything over the weekend.”
Adele fidgeted, frowning. “I want to read ahead.”
“Can I watch Victorious?” Delaney wheedled, skipping back into the bedroom in her flannel Lanz nightgown with the iPad already in her hand. I shut my eyes. I couldn’t remember if that was a show we let her see or something we’d decided was too mature, but I knew that Jay and I had discussed it, probably in this very bed. Probably I hadn’t been paying attention. More likely than not, I’d had my phone on and my earpiece tucked into my ear and I’d been solving some other mother’s problems.
“You’re in charge of the entertainment,” I told Delaney, ignoring her big sister’s gasp. Then I pointed at Adele. “You’re in charge of dinner. You can pick what we’re having. There’s money in the cookie jar.” “Seriously?” Amy had once asked when I’d told her I kept my money in the cookie jar. “That is so 1950s.”
When Delaney was engrossed in her program and Adele was sorting through menus, her straight hair obscuring her cheeks and the tip of her tongue poking out, I found Nana in the living room. She was dressed in one of what I’d always thought of as her New York outfits—tailored tweed pants, low-heeled leather boots, a cream-colored pullover, clothes she’d bought at Saks Fifth Avenue when she came to the city (there were, of course, Saks stores in Florida, but Nana said they didn’t have the inventory of New York City). I looked at myself, in my stretched-out ten-year-old nightgown and my hair that I’d washed and combed but hadn’t dried or styled.
“I have a suggestion,” she said. “When is their school year over?”
“The first Thursday in June.” The date—ridiculously early, in my opinion—had been on my mind for weeks as I’d scrambled to find day camps that started before July.
“Why don’t you take some time off and come to Florida?” she asked. “I’m sure your boss will let you take a few weeks’ leave, all things considered.”
“All things considered,” I repeated, and struggled to push the words through my brain. It was like shoving clumps of Delaney’s Play-Doh through the plastic extruder, hoping they’d yield some meaning.
“I will help Delaney pack,” said Adele, who’d come into the room with a pad and a pen, ready to take dinner orders. A judgmental tone crept into her voice. “Last time all she put in her suitcase was stuffed animals and glitter glue and three princess costumes.”
“I remember.” Last time had been in November, when we’d made a pilgrimage to Disney World to celebrate Delaney’s fifth birthday. While Jay tried to coax Adele to ride at least one of the roller coasters, I’d taken Delaney for her big present, a session with a stylist at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Her “fairy godmother in training,” a heavyset teenager in a blue-and-white gown and apron combination, had asked, “Did you make your list for Santa yet, princess?” Delaney’s nose wrinkled as she considered the question. “I did NOT make a list for Santa,” Delaney finally said, in her sweetly piping voice, “because I am a Jewish princess.” I’d laughed so hard that I’d inhaled some of my soda and Delaney had stared at me in alarm and irritation, demanding to know what was so funny. Later, in our suite at the Polynesian Village, with fireworks blooming outside in the dark and the girls asleep on the bed, Delaney still dressed as Cinderella, with glitter in her hair, and Adele clutching her Mickey Mouse ears, Jay had put his arm around my waist and said, “This is so great.”
Had he been with Amy even then? And what would I do about work? There was only room for one of us at FAS, and I hoped it would be me. I loved my job. Maybe that had been the problem. Defying Jay’s wishes, I’d gone back to work after six weeks at home with each of my girls, leaving them with an extremely capable nanny for eight hours a day, and unlike my husband, I’d never learned the trick of leaving my work at the door. Jay would set his briefcase down in the entryway and not utter a word—or, as best I could tell, entertain a thought—about his clients or cases, or his annual performance evaluation, whereas I was always dragging messy stacks of folders into the living room, and leaving my cell phone on in case my clients needed to reach me. I thought that Jay’s nonchalance was the byproduct of working at his father’s firm. Even if he failed to meet the benchmark for billable hours, even if he screwed up spectacularly and got himself accused of malpractice, as one of the partners once had, he’d never lose his job. I didn’t think I’d ever lose mine, either, but I knew that my clients needed me available and at my best. Maybe a son had been arrested; maybe the gas had been shut off; maybe a woman who’d already put in a twelve-hour day needed help finishing her homework for the class she was taking at night. A woman of valor, I would think sometimes . . . and when Jay chided me for staying up late or texting one of my ladies when I could have been joining him in whatever he was currently watching, I would tell him that it was important for the girls to see me do my job, to know what I did, to know who I worked with and that not everyone was as privileged as they were.
“What about after?” I asked Nana, who patted my hand reassuringly.
“You’ll get through it,” she said, leaving out the part I already knew—because you’re a mother now. Because mothers don’t have a choice.
Andy
2014
New York
Mr. Landis?” Andy’s latest hire, a kid named Paul Martindale, was standing in front of him looking even more nervous than he normally did. Paul was nineteen, a part-time student at CCNY, tall, pimply, and terrified. If a woman asked him where to find the lightbulbs or the paint display or the gardening mulch, he’d look at her like she’d pulled a knife out of her diaper bag, and if a man asked him anything, he’d stammer, “Let me get the manager,” and run.
“Yes, Paul,” Andy said patiently, and wondered, again, whether moving him from the overnight shift to days had been a mistake.
“Phone call for you.”
“I’ll be right there,” said Andy, and walked toward his office at the back of the store.
Andy had come to Wallen Home Goods five years ago, not hoping for much but telling himself that he had to start somewhere. Years ago, the home-goods chain had announced a policy of hiring Olympic hopefuls, giving them flexible schedules so they could keep up with their training. Andy hadn’t known how they would feel about hiring a disgraced ex-Olympian, but he’d decided it wouldn’t be a bad place to try.
His interview had been scheduled for 8:00 in the morning. He’d been in the parking lot at 7:00 a.m., sweating behind the wheel of the sedan that he’d bought for its trunk space and the easy ac
cess it offered to the front seats. On weekends he went to Philadelphia and drove Mr. Sills wherever he wanted to go—to junk shops, to bookstores, to church, to visit family and friends. It was Mr. Sills who’d encouraged him to get a job—because, he said, Andy needed purpose, and structure to his days. Routine, respectability, the first step on the road back to not hating himself quite so much. Andy’s first thought had been coaching, but after he’d written to Roman Catholic and gotten a form-letter rejection, he’d decided that if his alma mater didn’t want him, no one would.
“You always were handy,” Mr. Sills had said. Andy had wondered if he could be a superintendent for an apartment complex or even work as a handyman, but then he’d thought of Wallen and imagined a big, anonymous store, different faces every day, not the same small handful of people in a neighborhood or apartment building, who’d have too many questions, and decided to try. They offered benefits, he vaguely remembered, and they had classes there, in plumbing and painting and basic repairs. Maybe someday he’d teach them.
He remembered how hot it had been that morning, the air almost liquid, a heavy soup you had to push through to get anywhere. As he sat behind the wheel, his muscles clenched in a familiar knot, as if he was waiting for a starter’s gun that would never go off. His right leg jiggled and jumped; his toes flexed and curled; his fingers were rattling on the dashboard. In spite of the air-conditioning and the liberal application of deodorant, he’d already sweated through his undershirt.
That was just one of the post-scandal adjustments—the new clothes he’d had to buy. Khakis and jeans, shoes that weren’t sneakers, shirts that had long sleeves and weren’t made of wickable, odor-fighting fabric. On Interview Day, he’d worn Dockers, a white button-down, and the only tie that he’d kept, a heavy red-and-gold silk one from Hermès that Maisie had bought him for a birthday. With the fifteen pounds he’d put on since he had made what would be his final magazine appearance—Newsweek, six weeks after the revelations, had put the runners on the cover, beneath the single word DISGRACE—he no longer had an athlete’s leanness. He looked like every other clock-bound couch rider, like a guy who put in maybe three halfhearted days a week at the gym, and who’d get winded after a single turn around a track.
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