All Caroline could think about were things that didn’t help her function, like Savannah’s constant thirst for her and Peter’s need for the perfect family.
“Peace. I long for peace,” she said.
“Just that?”
“That’s plenty. Without it, everything else overwhelms me.”
“How is work for that?”
Caroline laced her long fingers. “Work is never a problem. Even when things get hectic, I can provide my own inner peace. I love my work. As long as I also get my quota of quiet.”
“And when you don’t?” Jonah asked.
She didn’t want to answer, so she didn’t. She simply gave a self-deprecating smile that he could take any way he wanted. That was the beauty of talking to a stranger. Low stakes.
“How about your husband? Have children?”
He’d noticed her ring.
“My husband is dead.”
What?
“Oh, I’m sorry. Recently?”
“Three years ago,” she said. “My husband and daughter. In a car accident.”
Horror passed over his face. Her stomach cramped. Had she gone insane? How could she take the words back without making him run away?
“I don’t like talking about it,” she rushed to say. “At all.”
“Of course, of course.” He covered her hand with his. She pushed away the awfulness of her words. His skin carried the chafing of a winter spent shoveling snow and chipping ice. It felt scratchy and yet good. Not like it came from a hothouse at all.
• • •
Caroline arrived home. She paid the cab driver. She opened the car door quietly, still greedy for solitude despite her four-day absence.
It was seven at night. Perhaps Peter had taken Savannah out for dinner. Just the two of them living the high life at McDonald’s, acting as though they were free, free, free, until Mommy came home and laid down the law. Peter liked to play these games, putting Caroline in the role of the stern but loving mommy, while he played fun dad, making Savannah his companion in their domestic rebellion game.
Except it was just that. A game.
Where had this Peter come from, this man who wanted to poke and mold Caroline into someone different? He fell in love with her as a quiet researcher-doctor, claiming to love her safe aura of calm, so why was he trying to make her into a fun-loving, mess-enduring cookie baker?
As for the role Peter picked out for Savannah, the girl was as rebellious as an accountant. Savannah watched every move Caroline made as though measuring her against a secret measuring stick to which only Savannah had access.
The garage door was, of course, neatly closed. Peter hated it open, while Caroline disliked the grinding of opening and closing it. She had a crazy fear of it crashing down on her.
She hated their garage. Just as their house was a foolish minimansion for the three of them, the garage was a ridiculously massive home for their cars. It embarrassed Caroline, this conspicuous consumption in which Peter reveled—especially now, with so many suffering from the bad turns of the economy. Peter loved reminding Caroline how smart he’d been taking their money out of risky stocks and parking it in bonds at just the right time.
Her parents had managed to provide comfort without the sound and fury Peter required. She feared Peter might bury her in things before he overcame his upbringing. His background seemed perfectly acceptable to Caroline; whenever she said this, he’d bark his seal laugh and say, “Only the rich appreciate the beauty of poverty.”
Peter hadn’t grown up in poverty, just the bustle of keeping up. His father had hauled groceries long-distance, but he owned his own truck, and, later, three trucks. “Almost a mogul, my father,” Peter would say with a pained smile. Peter’s mother took in sewing, but it wasn’t as though she hunched over an underlit project in a freezing room, wrapped in rags. She’d been the first choice of anyone who wanted a better fit, a copy of a designer dress, the perfect wedding ensemble.
Peter’s family enchanted her when she met them. They were a noisy, teasing bunch, so different from Caroline’s parents and sisters, who’d been muted except when playing team sports on their lawn—something that she never participated in anyway.
Caroline slipped her key in the door and inched it open. The smell of chocolate greeted her. In Peter’s family, food represented everything fun in life, and they shoveled in prodigious amounts. Caroline’s family portioned it out as though the supply was finite: here’s your half cup of peas and your chicken breast. Two quarters of roasted potato. Sauce was for restaurants, butter available only in pats, cake in the house meant a birthday or wedding.
She followed the sound of Savannah singing, finding her daughter and husband in the kitchen smearing frosting on a platter of brownies. Gilding the proverbial lily. Didn’t the brownies taste sweet and rich enough already?
Caroline didn’t want to be the bad cop in the house—the “No, no, no” parent, instituting the designated fun-free zone. Peter’s enthusiasm tamped her down, as though some mechanism forced couples to balance each other until they reached equilibrium.
“Mommy!” Savannah yelled when she saw Caroline. “Daddy, get me down.”
“Here you go, sweets.” Peter swung Savannah off the high stool on which she knelt at the kitchen island. Dark chocolate smeared the white counter tiles, the red apron tied around Savannah’s waist, and her cheeks.
“We’re putting gumdrops on top of the brownies,” Savannah said. She threw her arms around Caroline, who tried not to flinch at the vision of chocolate staining her beige trench coat.
“Wow. Sugary,” Caroline said.
Savannah stiffened and removed her arms from Caroline’s hips, where they’d been tightly circling her mother. Caroline saw her face fall.
“Sounds delicious.” She tried to imply that sugary had been meant as a compliment and not indicative of Caroline’s true reaction: that it sounded disgusting, crunching into tooth-achingly-sweet candies on top of an already overrich brownie.
“You mean it?” Savannah asked. She knit her brows together, making frowning lines in her once-again grave face. Not in the house a minute, and Caroline had managed to flatline her daughter’s smile.
“Of course Mommy means it,” Peter said. He kissed Caroline’s mouth lightly. “Didn’t you, Mommy.” He gave a surreptitious tweak to the top of Caroline’s arm, warning in Peter pinch language, Don’t be a party pooper.
• • •
Caroline tucked the blanket around Savannah just the way the child liked. Flatten the comforter across the top, tuck it around her feet—stopping to give each set of toes a squeeze—and then tuck, tuck, tuck up one side and down the next. Much like Caroline, Savannah required routine and repetition.
“I love you, Mommy,” Savannah said.
“I love you, honey.”
Savannah pressed her lips together. She stared at Caroline with those intense eyes that sometimes spooked Caroline, often made her squirm, and always made her want to keep her from getting hurt.
“Do you love me as much as you love Daddy?” Savannah asked.
“Of course I do.” Caroline prayed each day and night to love them better than she did.
“Do you love me more than you love Daddy?”
Caroline worried that she was giving subliminal messages to Savannah. Perhaps Savannah, in the way of children, had a seventh sense that measured true love.
Caroline supposed that adults, if they were willing to let in the truth, could also have that seventh sense.
But did anyone want that sort of knowledge?
Caroline started formulating “I love you differently” answers, but overtiredness made her take the easy route. “I love you and Daddy exactly the same.”
“Do you love me as much as you love Grandma?”
Grandma was Caroline’s mother. Peter’s mother was Nana. Caroline worked to keep her impatience in check. “Yes, I do.”
Savannah squinted, looking like the teenager she would be, the one who’
d measure Caroline for a suit of disgrace. “Okay,” she said finally.
Okay. A strange little word from her strange little visitor from some other planet. Caroline’s heart splintered in convoluted love. She leaned in close and planted three kisses on her daughter: one on the forehead, one on the right cheek, and then one on the left, just as Savannah liked.
Caroline vowed again to wrench herself off the hamster wheel of worrying about her thoughts and leave behind her wishes for impossible and awful things.
• • •
She entered the bedroom.
Peter lay in bed wearing his sex smile.
She calculated how long it had been, wondering if she could claim headache or jet lag or plane backache.
Two weeks.
She’d always been fast at math.
“I missed you, honey,” he said. “Really missed you.”
He emphasized his words, so she couldn’t miss his meaning. Caroline controlled her inner groan. When they’d been in the earliest stages, when their love glittered and twittered around their heads like Disney bluebirds, she’d adored their shorthand. Their secret Peter-Caroline language had been romantic. Code words for “Let’s make love” had given Caroline shivers of anticipation.
Now, most times, she felt a shudder of dread.
“Just let me shower,” she said. Maybe he’d be asleep when she came out.
“You don’t need to shower,” he said.
“Trust me, after all those hours traveling, I do.”
He made pleading eyes.
Her stomach turned.
“I’ll be right out.” She didn’t look back as she went into the bathroom, afraid the sight of his hot desire would make her even less excited.
She opened the medicine cabinet for aspirin—she really did have a headache—and saw the bottles and tubes promising beauty. All that pristine purple and black packaging, unopened.
Peter sometimes asked what happened with the trip to pretty-land. He’d found her irresistible the afternoon she’d come back from juliette&gwynne—even called Nanny Rose to come out, offering triple overtime, so he could take Caroline to a fancy dinner.
Where she’d had nothing to say, because nothing running through her brain could be spoken.
First Peter had filled the empty air by droning about work. Then he engaged Caroline in conversation about Savannah. What did Caroline think about the school where their daughter would attend kindergarten in September? Had Caroline thought about it? Should they enroll Savannah in private school? Had they made a mistake not putting her in preschool? They should probably send her to summer camp, right? What kind did Caroline think would be best?
Caroline pushed the top of the childproof cap on the aspirin bottle.
Sometimes when Caroline couldn’t fall asleep, unbidden fantasies—nightmares, she reminded herself—floated up from her subconscious.
Train wrecks.
Car accidents.
Plane crashes.
Peter and Savannah were passengers.
Of course, it was never painful, and there were never flames, just an instant snuffing out of the body and then a quick ascension to heaven.
And Caroline would be alone.
After those thoughts, she couldn’t stand herself.
Those horrible things she said to Jonah Weber hadn’t come from nowhere.
She swallowed two aspirin tablets, grateful for the bitter taste. She needed punishment.
On the top shelf, far out of Savannah’s reach, were her emergency bottles. Ambien. Xanax. She took them down and counted the number of pills left in each.
Five Ambien.
Three Xanax.
As she’d counted the days since she and Peter last had sex, she counted how long since she’d taken a pill.
A week. Okay, she could have one. Which one?
If she took the Ambien, she’d barely make it through lovemaking.
Her indifference—bordering on distaste—for lovemaking was worsening. In the beginning, when they’d first adopted Savannah, she’d attributed it to exhaustion. But now Savannah was five. Caroline no longer woke up in the middle of the night for her daughter, so she couldn’t blame her feelings on exhaustion, but her desire to push Peter off her when he touched her had become greater—at times so bad that she resorted to using a blanket of drugs to muffle her aversion during sex.
She nibbled off half a Xanax as carefully as possible. It was difficult with the tiny pills, but she had to make them last.
CHAPTER 15
Caroline
The Xanax kicked in as Peter worked his way from Caroline’s lips to her neck. Making love could now move ahead, with her body participating while her mind drifted.
Caroline made soft sounds of pleasure, trying to convey excitement that would hurry him over the edge.
“Now,” she murmured.
She wondered if whispering dirty words would hasten the act. Thinking about it, her throat closed up as though she’d been inhaling dust.
Caroline had never been the dirty words sort.
Peter tightened his grip on her.
She’d once found him electrifying.
His breath warmed her neck.
Back then, she’d barely been able to survive two days without making love.
He tensed.
She squeezed her eyes against tears.
• • •
The following Sunday, Caroline and Savannah studied three dresses laid out on Savannah’s bed, the top fashion choices for Easter dinner at Peter’s parents. Savannah deliberated over the dresses with the air of a discriminating style expert. She fingered the taffeta hem of one, placed her pink patent-leather shoes next to another, and then held the last one up to her shoulders and examined her image in the mirror.
“Do you like this one, Mommy?”
Caroline examined it with a serious expression. “Red looks good on you.” It did, heightening the drama of Savannah’s dark hair and eyes.
“Do I look fat?” Savannah asked.
Dear Lord, the child was five. Where in the world had that come from?
“Savannah, honey, of course not. How could you look fat? You’re perfect.” Caroline thought of the anorexic preteens and teens whose case histories she read, some as young as eight.
Savannah stroked the red satin sash of her favorite dress. “Janine said I was the kind who blows right up.” She sent a laser beam look at Caroline. “That means fat, right?”
Who in the world was Janine?
“Right, Mommy? Didn’t she mean I’m fat?”
Ah, it came to her: Nanny Rose’s niece. “Sweetie, you don’t need to worry about that.” Caroline jotted a mental note to ban Janine from the house.
“Am I?” Savannah demanded to know.
Pat answers never satisfied Savannah. When something confused her, she chipped away until Caroline provided a complete explanation.
Caroline took Savannah’s hand and led her to the bed. She gathered the sturdy child into her lap and hugged her tight. “You’re perfect. Strong.” Caroline squeezed Savannah’s upper arm. “Feel that muscle!”
“Nanny Rose says I’m meaty. Is that good?” Savannah scrunched her face. “It sounds like soup. Like I’m fat soup.”
Inconveniently smart fat soup. It was time for a long talk with Nanny.
“Strong is wonderful.”
“Is meaty wonderful?”
“Sure, it’s like a muscle, which is always good.” Trying to prove her point, Caroline made the biggest muscle she could, flexing her arm until her tendons popped. “See. This is something I’m proud of.”
Savannah seemed unconvinced by the demonstration. The child took Caroline’s hand and brought it to Caroline’s wrist. “Make a circle,” she said.
Caroline hesitated.
“Please, Mommy.”
Caroline made a bracelet with her fingers.
Savannah circled her own wrist with her own fingers. “Mine don’t meet. Nanny said they have to meet to be pretty
.”
“I doubt she said that, Savannah.” Caroline shouldn’t have let Nanny nag her into ordering all those fashion magazines. Nanny and Savannah spent hours poring over them. Caroline had thought it cute how they made paper dolls from the magazines, combining arts and crafts with make-believe. Even teaching Savannah a form of recycling. How very politically correct of Caroline and Nanny Rose.
Apparently, what they’d been doing was quietly destroying her daughter’s confidence.
“You are beautiful.” Perhaps what she should be saying was how little beauty mattered. Right. Except it was a lie in this world, and Savannah was too smart to buy it. Even at five, she’d immediately think that Caroline was declaring her not-beautiful.
Caroline knelt before Savannah. She put her hands on the girl’s sturdy shoulders. “You’re a great, smart, and beautiful kid, and I love you.”
• • •
Three blocks from Peter’s parents’ house, Caroline began wishing they were going anyplace else. A movie. The park. Even the zoo, and Caroline despised zoos.
Savannah slept in the backseat with her favorite stuffed dog, Pudding, clutched in her arms. Peter concentrated on the Red Sox game playing on the radio. He loved the Red Sox. Yet another zealous pastime pouring from Peter in torrential storms. Go Red Sox go! Must have Big Mac now! Let’s go to Europe next week!
What was this paradigm of love, where what first attracts later repels?
Perhaps Caroline was too young when they got together, still recovering from life as the hidden middle sister; the afterthought whose absence people noticed only when they saw her empty chair. She’d be curled up in bed reading, having missed the gentle tinkle of the bell her mother rang for meals.
Peter pulled their car next to the others parked on the edge of the front lawn, which sloped right down to the street. This part of Chelmsford had no sidewalks, despite the houses’ proximity to each other. Cars overfilled the Fitzgerald driveway. Peter sat still for a moment, hand paused on the radio dial, as he caught the last play of something. She leaned back and gulped her last shot of peace.
Treasures of the past filled the Fitzgerald home. Pictures of the Fitzgerald children in every possible costume—graduation robes, Little League jerseys, navy uniforms—lined the walls. Smaller pictures of grandchildren crowded next to oversized wedding photos.
The Comfort of Lies: A Novel Page 14
