Carpool Confidential

by Jessica Benson

  “It’s just I hoped I’d have things figured out”—she was almost hysterical now, choking on sobs—“the doctor didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” I suspected that even without the Ativan I wouldn’t have been following this too well.

  She got up and wrapped her arms around herself, pacing the room, sobbing. “This is just like so fucked up.” Tears were dripping off her chin. Her sleeves were pulled over her hands, and she used them to wipe her face.

  “M.A. just tell me what, OK?”

  “I want you to know I’m like really, really sorry, Cassie, about the lies—”

  “What lies?” I was starting to wonder whether being past its use-by date might not after all seriously reduce the potency of Ativan. I was developing the vague suspicion that three might have been two and a half too many.

  “You’re gonna kill me.”

  I gave her a look. “Believe me, if I’ve restrained myself so far, it’s unlikely to happen now.”

  She gulped in a huge sob and closed her eyes. “I’m not pregnant.”

  I stared at her while the world once again rearranged itself in front of my eyes.

  “But please don’t tell my mom.”

  “I don’t understand.” I was pretty sure my dimness was not Ativan-induced. “Did you have a miscarriage?”

  She shook her head. With her long, straight hair tucked behind her ears and her sleeves over her hands, she looked about eight. “I was never pregnant.” She was sobbing again. “I was so afraid someone would find out, but I thought if you knew the truth you’d send me back to school. The doctor, she was really nice, but she knew from my blood tests and she said I was going to have to tell you.”

  “But honey, why would you lie? Why not just say you wanted to leave boarding school?”

  “Would you have let me stay?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  She looked at me. “You’d have sent me back and I know it. But, Cassie, you’re like so calm. Aren’t you mad at me?”

  I shook my head. “No, not mad,” I said, after I’d finished shaking. Whew. I’d never realized quite how much work that was before. “Just confused.”

  “I knew my mom was going to be gone for a long time. She was never really trekking or in an ashram or anything—”

  “No, she was. Grandma told me, and she just said so on the phone.”

  “Oh, Cassie”—she shook her head, more tears followed— “you’re so naïve.”

  I couldn’t help it; I started laughing.

  She looked reproachful. “I was trying to protect you. It’s not a pretty story.”

  “I’m sorry. That was just funny. Go ahead, I’m guessing I can take it.”

  “So you know how my mom likes to say that she and my dad have a don’t ask don’t tell policy in their marriage?”

  I nodded. It made my heart hurt that she knew that.

  “That’s not really the truth. It’s more like my dad has a don’t tell and she has a don’t ask policy. ’Cause when she does, it gets awful”—she anticipated my question—“not that he like hits her or anything. There’s just all this begging and crying and then he takes off again and she stays in bed for like weeks. She doesn’t shower or eat or go out.”

  Everything in me was aching both at this and at the fact that Harmonye knew it. “How do you know this, honey?”

  She gave me a look. “Who do you think took care of her?”

  Oh, God. She was right—I was naïve. “Starting when you were how old?”

  “I don’t know. Ten, maybe. There was always, you know, she always has like plenty people to do cleaning and cooking and stuff, but there was no one to help her.”

  This was agonizing to hear. And I knew it was more than sorrow for my sister and her daughter. I could feel my own pain, through the Ativan haze. My father leaving, my mother, I now knew, leaving too, Katya bringing me tissues. Rick leaving. “I’d have thought going away to school would have been a relief.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her expression told me just how much I did not get. “I was scared about what could happen. With me there, she always got out of bed in the end, and then there would be a new project or cause or a trip.”

  “How could I not have known any of this?”

  She shrugged. “Dunno. It felt like it was her secret to tell, you know? Anyway, this time my father got some like twenty-year-old intern pregnant and wants Mom to give him a divorce so he can marry her. Get this, not only is she like my age, she’s Catholic, so he wants an annulment. Mom freaked. But instead of getting in bed and staying there, she got like some total body makeover, face-lift, boob job, everything. But something like went wrong and she got really sick and was in the hospital for a really long time and then went to L.A. to try to get it fixed.”

  “Does anyone know?”

  She shook her head. “Just me, but I’m not supposed to. Please, please don’t send me back, Cassie. I like it here with you and I’ll be close by my mom when she gets back but not right on top of her. I even think I kind of like the school. Please let me stay, Cassie, please. I promise I’ll be responsible and help out and not fight with you or swear at teachers or get high any more.”

  Yeah, right.

  Her nose was running and she wasn’t even bothering to wipe it. Tears were dripping off the end. “Please?” she said. “Please?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you can stay here as long as you want, but it’s not really up to me. You’re not of legal age, so your parents get to make the decision.”

  “They won’t mind once they get over the idea.” Her certainty was heartbreaking.

  “I love having you here,” I said. “Even when you steal all my clothes while complaining they’re out of style and spill stuff on them and leave them all balled up on the floor under the bed for weeks and use up all my shampoo and finish all the peanut butter, bread, and milk at midnight.”

  She started crying harder.

  “I was just kidding, M.A.”

  “It’s not that,” she snuffled, “it’s just, that stuff you were saying is like real mom stuff. Even when you yell at me and give me curfews and stupid rules. You just know how to be that way, and I’ve never had that before.”

  “Oh, honey.” I put my arms around her and let her cry on me. “It’s OK, let’s talk to your mom when she gets here, see what we can work out.” I was starting to feel woozy. “I feel like I live in some weird pod,” I said, sounding very far away to myself, “where men can’t be faithful. My father, your father, James Spence—”

  “Who?”

  “Long story,” I mumbled. “Not involving me. Rick’s father—”

  And then (I sort of hate to admit this because it’s not pretty), I fell into an Ativan-induced coma for about seven hours.

  I woke up to that seriously-weird-dreams-oops-not-

  dreams feeling, stumbled down the hall to the kitchen, and downed two glasses of water. I was standing at the counter, glugging, when the panic hit. It was getting dark—I’d slept right through picking the kids up from school. As horror engulfed me, I noticed a note on the refrigerator from M.A. She said she’d walked Cad and then gone to pick up the boys. I was so grateful I wanted to cry.

  The sense of not being able to hold my eyes open crept over me again. I scratched a reply on the bottom of M.A.’s note for them to wake me up when they got home and went back to bed. The next time I woke up it was midnight and I was still in my clothes. I knew for sure the drugs had worn off, because I’d barely opened my eyes before the panic about the kids, and life in general, crashed in on me. I resisted the urge to go top up from the medicine cabinet and tiptoed down the hall. The boys were both asleep in the bunks in Noah’s room.

  M.A. was curled up in a chair in the dark in the study. “Hi,” she said, “are you feeling better?”

  “Not really.” I switched a table lamp on and sat down. “Were the boys OK?” I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t been around to put them to bed.

/>   “They were great. I told them you had a headache. Noah has like two math problems to finish in the morning, but otherwise they did all their stuff.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate it. And are you OK?”

  She looked at her lap. “So are you like really mad at me for lying? I feel really ashamed of myself but kind of glad it’s out, you know?”

  “I’m not mad. Just sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell me the truth from the beginning.”

  “So can I really stay if my mom says so?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks, Cassie.” She tossed me a cashmere throw that was on her chair, and I wrapped it around myself. She looked out the window. “This city is like so awesomely beautiful sometimes.”

  “Particularly at night when you can’t see all the reality of the grime and crowds,” I was almost surprised to hear myself say.

  “Is that where the Trade Center used to be?”

  I followed her gaze. “A little further to the left, closer to the Woolworth Building. There will be new towers going up pretty soon, rebuilding,” I said, almost to myself. We were both quiet until I said, “Would you still want to stay with me if I moved out of New York?”

  “Like to Dallas?” She was laughing.

  “Connecticut,” I said. “It’s like Dallas except, um, not.”

  “Maybe.” She swung her foot back and forth. “I want to be close to my mom, you know? And I really like the school. I think I can actually be happy there and like make some friends and stuff. But I also like being part of a family with you and Noah and Jared.” It didn’t escape me that Rick was conspicuously missing. Not surprising, considering he wasn’t really part of the family at the moment. “You’re a nice person to be with.”

  I flushed with pleasure. “Really? Thanks.”

  “Actually you’re better now that you’re not so perfect, you know?”

  “You mean now that I’m falling apart?”

  “You’re not exactly falling apart, you’re just like not so together you’re like a robot or something.”

  I laughed and got up to hug her. “Believe me, I don’t think any of us have to worry about me being perfect. Don’t stay up too late”—I dropped a kiss on the top of her head—“and thank you, M.A.”

  When I got back to my bedroom, I really wanted to talk to Rick. I had no explanation for it, I just wanted to hear his voice. I sat up in bed, looking out at the lights and the empty space where the towers had been, listening to his cell ring with that hopeless sound of a phone that’s not going to be answered. I couldn’t find the number he’d given me and I didn’t feel like searching for my cell phone, so I called directory information and asked for the number of the Four Seasons Dallas at Las Colinas. They connected me right to the hotel. “I’m sorry,” the pleasant Southern voice said in my ear, “what did you say the guest name was?”

  “Rick Martin,” I repeated.

  “I’m afraid we don’t have a Rick Martin registered.”

  “He was there yesterday. In room 512.” I hated the plaintive wobble in my voice. I had to remind myself that I would never meet this woman, that she had no idea who I was.

  “I am sorry,” she sounded genuinely puzzled, “but we didn’t have a Rick Martin registered at all last night either.”

  “But that’s impossible. I got put through to his voice mail. In his room,” I added.

  “I’m not sure what to say except that there must have been an error.”

  “Could you try Richard Martin?” I was gulping in deep, panicky breaths. Was I losing my mind?

  “I’m sorry, no Richard Martin. If you could hold on one second I’ll see if I can figure this out.”

  “Could you check Rick and Richard?” I was praying that this woman could work a miracle. That she’d come back on and chirp that there had been a computer error and she was incredibly sorry or that Mr. Martin was in room 520 or whatever. I was not surprised, however, when she returned to tell me gently that they did not at the moment have either a Mr. Rick or a Mr. Richard Martin registered at all.

  Maybe the reservations weren’t under his name. If someone else had made them, that would be perfectly possible. I explained this and asked if she could just put me through to room 512. “I’m sorry, without the correct guest name, I can’t do that.” She was polite but firm. She knew exactly what I was—a wife searching desperately for a lying husband.

  I felt like I was going crazy. Had I called yesterday? Granted, the call had been pre-Ativan, but where had room 512 come from? It’s not the kind of detail you just think up, even under the influence of…whatever Ativan is. I had called yesterday. I went down the hall and grabbed my cell, terrified I was losing my fucking mind. I called information again and wrote the number down this time, then pulled up my dialed calls. I had two different 972 numbers. How weird.

  Maybe the hotel had two different receptions? Unlikely, but stranger things have happened. Maybe there had been a problem with the reservation or there was a mistake on the itinerary and they’d ended up at a different hotel. I hit redial. Within three rings it was answered by a pleasant, Southern-voiced woman. “Four Seasons.”

  So not a different hotel, after all. I couldn’t figure out what was going on here. “Is this the Four Seasons Dallas at Las Colinas?” I was trying to make sure I had every base covered.

  “Yes, it is,” she said. “How may I help?”

  “I’m looking for Rick Martin in room 512.”

  “Just a minute please.” I got canned music (not Barry). I looked at the phone, my heart thudding, waiting for her to come on and tell me she’d made a mistake, but a second later she came back and said, “I’ll put you right through,” and then I heard Rick’s voice on the other end. “Hello?”

  “Rick!”

  “Hi, Cass, what’s up?” He sounded very cheery.

  I didn’t know what was up. Why had I wanted to hear his voice so badly? Maybe to remind myself that it no longer sounded like it belonged to a man I loved.

  “I just wanted to remind you to give the boys a call tomorrow,” I said quietly. I thought about asking him where he really was, but I knew he’d just lie.

  “Sure,” he said, equally quietly, and I was wondering if he was thinking the same thing about my voice. “I’ll do that. Oh, and if you need me call me here. My cell battery’s dead and I think I left the charger at home.”

  37

  The Old Sorts

  First thing the next morning I left a message for Humphrey about the phone number issue but didn’t hear back from him.

  Randy, Jen, and the kids all came over for dinner that night— miserable take-out Chinese from Andy’s. It was the usual three children and a toddler mayhem until, in a shocking display of poor parenting, we packed them all off to watch a video and sat down with our drinks. I told them all about the phone numbers, too, and how I hadn’t heard back from Humphrey yet.

  “Can we call?” Jen’s face was alight.

  “Sure.” I googled the number.

  After a fair amount of dialing involving both numbers, we kept getting the same thing. One number, the one off the computer, yielded a definitive no Rick Martin staying here answer. The other, the one he had given me, which was exactly one digit off from the google one, kept saying that yes, Rick Martin was in room 512 and putting us through to voice mail. Both receptionists were equally firm that we were calling the Four Seasons Dallas at Las Colinas. Directory information gave the same number as google.

  The doorman buzzed that Josh was here. I followed Cad down the hall to let him in. At the sound of his voice, all the kids came rocketing down the hall and threw themselves into his arms. He did the daddy pick-them-up-hug-them-swing-them-around thing. It broke my heart to see Jared and Noah’s eagerness for their turns.

  I closed the apartment door and stood for a minute, feeling like an outsider in my own home. Watching Josh with his own children, it was hard not to feel like Randy’s family was held in a circle of warmth that mine wasn’t
. I didn’t begrudge them their happiness, but that didn’t mean this was easy. But I also understood that it took a hell of a lot more than a marriage license to nurture that circle, and Rick and I didn’t have what it took. We had once, for sure, but we’d gone too far past it.

  The kids ran back down the hall to savor the last of their time together. The ease with which Sarah and Owen let go of Josh made me feel even worse; they had no question he was coming back. If Rick had walked in right now and picked up Jared and Noah and swung them around, they’d have needed to be pried off his neck with surgical tools. Josh followed me to the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Randy said, so casually it was almost like she hadn’t noticed him.

  “Hey,” he said back, equally casually. Even though they looked like a Ralph Lauren ad together—all blond hair, blue eyes, and white teeth—they weren’t a huggy, PDA kind of couple (you’re surprised, right?). Nonetheless, I could feel the bond between them as strongly as if they’d been all over each other.

  Josh ended up sitting down at the table and eating the rest of the food straight out of the containers. “The hotel thing is weird,” he agreed. “How many times did you call?”

  “Less than ten,” Jen said. “I’m sure they’ve hardly noticed.”

  We all laughed at that. “Hey, Josh! Would you call?” I asked.

  He looked warily into the carton he was holding. “Should I be scared that I can’t tell the pork from the mushrooms in this moo shoo pork?”

  “That’s chicken with black bean sauce,” Randy said.

  “That explains it.” He dropped the container really quickly. “Why do I feel like a twelve-year-old being set up to make prank calls?”

  “Misspent past.” Randy handed him a glass of wine. “But this is forensic investigation.”

  He laughed. “Sure, I’ll give it a try.” He was looking into another container. “This is lo mein, right?”

  Randy nodded. “So they claimed.”

  Just as I picked up the sheet on the counter with the hotel numbers, the phone rang.