“Yeah. Crap, shit, fuck. You might as well say it all because really, we’re probably dead and you are well on your way to hell now anyway, so you might as well enjoy the trip!” I am so indignant and furious I can actually feel my blood pressure rising as the blood angrily courses through my veins that are ready to pop. I am almost hoping for an aneurysm to put me out of my misery.
Beth puts on her, ‘I’ve eaten a sour lemon’ face. “Why would you even say that, Amy? Why would I go to hell? Why would you even…”
“Gee, Beth. I don’t know. Maybe the fact that number one, you cheated on your husband, and number two, you cared way too much about your pride and your precious name to call the police to save your child. And number three…you cheated on Derek!” If I had my fingers free, I would be using them to count and point in her face. “And with that…gross man thing!” My brain is so muddled that I can’t even come up with a witty enough insult to describe our captor Kevin.
Beth’s face crumples. “You don’t understand,” she says quietly, lowering her eyes.
“I understand perfectly, Beth! Your perfect little life wasn’t good enough and you got greedy.” I am practically spitting at her now.
“You really don’t understand-”
“I thought you were the mother who had all the answers, the daughter who never falters, and the wife to whom all other wives compared themselves. Instead, I find out that you’re a phony of a wife and a selfish mother. Shit, I thought hiding the kids’ Reese’s Peanut Butter cups that they get from trick or treating was selfish, but damn, you certainly take the cake. Too bad I’m going to have to die in this process of discovery. You couldn’t have made this clear over Christmas dinner or something? We couldn’t have had a spa day to reveal the depths of your selfishness to me? Nah, you drag me down with you into a pit of despair. It’s a fabulous ending to my not so fabulous life.”
Beth looks away, her expression full of pain and hopefully a little self-loathing. I know I should feel a tiny bit guilty about bashing my sister, but I don’t. I want her to feel the pain that I’ve felt from 36 years of living in her picture-perfect shadow without any hope of redemption.
“Haven’t you ever wished you were someone else, Amy? That you had made different choices in life?” she asks me quietly.
“Yeah,” I scoff. “Ironically I’ve spent the past 36 years wishing that I was you.”
“And I’ve spent it wishing I was you,” she remarks so quietly I almost can’t hear her. In fact, I’m certain that I’ve misunderstood.
“There’s no need to blow smoke up my ass, Beth. It’s not like I can save you and I’m your only chance of survival here,” I scoff with annoyance
“No, I’m serious. I always wished that I could be a little more like you,” Beth continues in a soft voice.
“Oh so you’ve spent your whole life wishing you could be a hot mess full of flaws?” I remark sarcastically. “I gotta tell you, it comes pretty damn naturally to me but I could write a self-help book for you if you’d like.”
Beth ignores my self-depreciating remark and says, “You never seem to care what people think about you.”
“Is this about the sweatpants? Please forgive me if I don’t feel like discussing that right now,” I pipe up bitterly. Beth has been on my ass for years about wearing sweatpants.
Beth sighs. “No, Amy. It’s not about the sweatpants. Although…” She is quiet for a moment, as if she is deep in thought.
“Just get on with it,” I snap.
“You do what you need to do. What’s best for you and your kids and your family, and you don’t care what other people would do or say or even expect from you. You didn’t care that we thought it was strange when you married Roger, because you loved him. You did it and said to hell with what anyone thinks. You don’t let other people dictate your life.”
I take one thing away from that monologue. “You thought it was weird that I married Roger?”
“Oh for goodness sakes, Amy! The guy practically had an AARP card when you met him! He was a member of the Hair Club for Men!”
“What difference does his age make?” I retort, trying to right the chair, but finding it futile with my appendages bound. I am starting to wish Kevin had duct taped Beth’s mouth shut. That would have a least made this a little less painful for me.
“It doesn’t make any difference. The point is that when you married him, I thought that you were making a bad decision and you didn’t care about that. And look, Amy…you proved me wrong.”
“I’ve proved you wrong?” I am amazed those words are coming out of my sister’s mouth in that particular order. Something is messed up here. Perhaps her brain is scrambled from hitting her head. Usually that set of words sound like this, “Amy, I’ve proved you wrong.’ I didn’t think Beth Phillips-Katz was capable of being wrong.
“Yes,” Beth says with a slight grumble. This must be difficult for her to admit; being wrong in addition to your dumb younger sister being right. AND not throwing in any digs at me? I bet this may be more painful than root canal for her. Although Beth has never had root canal. She’s never even had a cavity, a fact she doesn’t hesitate to share when she sees me pour soda.
Good. This duct tape around my wrists isn’t too comfortable either. And it’s her fault it’s there.
“Roger is a good man who provides for you and the kids. I respect that, despite the fact that he’s the laziest man on the planet. He isn’t mean and doesn’t beat you…even though you probably deserve a smack upside the head on occasion.”
And there it is. I knew the queen of Passive Aggressive-ville couldn’t hold back an insult that long. It would be like holding back a fart. Not that Beth would know what a fart was. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t actually have bodily functions. And if she did, she certainly wouldn’t admit to them out loud. As far as her assessment of Roger; well, it’s true, but only I’m allowed to insult my husband. The nerve of her.
“And he doesn’t cheat on you either…” her voice trails off sadly, her face crumpling.
Oh. This is suddenly becoming clearer to me.
“Derek cheated on you?” I ask timidly, afraid to upset her. I’m not sure if Beth just wants that insinuation about her husband to linger in the air between us or she actually wants to talk about it. I tread lightly, hoping that my sister’s wrath does not explode all over me like the time Lexie rode a roller coaster after a Western Omelet breakfast.
I don’t hear her respond; her head is tucked into her chest. Instead, I can hear the quiet murmur of muffled sobs coming from my sister’s direction.
Oh shit. I’ve made her cry! I cringe until I rethink that. Oh, shit! I’ve made her cry! It makes me feel a bit giddy and lightheaded.
Yes, I realize it is incredibly childish, but I cannot remember the last time I made my sister cry. Oh wait, I do remember. We were four and six years old and I took the last Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup from her Halloween bag (I’m a little obsessed with them). My mother was so mad she made me give Beth the rest of my candy. So that cry doesn’t count because it didn’t end in victory for me.
And then I realize, neither does this one. We are still stuck here, Jillian is still missing, and my sister still has a broken heart. Oh, and we’re probably going to die at the end of all this, so my victory is for naught.
“I’ve suspected it for about eleven years,” I hear Beth say meekly.
What has she suspected for eleven years? Surely not that Derek has been cheating? They’ve only been married for eleven years.
“A few months before our wedding, I went to his apartment to tidy it up.”
Of course you did, Beth. Before we got married, (that whole month), I couldn’t have cared less if Roger wallowed in his own filth. But if I know Beth, she probably had mini seizures if she walked into Derek’s apartment and there was a cup in the sink.
“I let myself in with my key. I could hear that he was in the shower, so I didn’t want to…” Her voice trails off. I can almost feel
the heat from her blushing.
“What?” I ask impatiently after a moment or two. Is she really going to insinuate that she never saw Derek naked before that point in time? Now I know my sister is a goodie two shoes, but she could NOT have possibly been a virgin when she got married…could she? Or does she not want to tell me about their dirty shower games…not that I want to hear about them, mind you.
And then…an appalling thought crosses my mind. I know what could have possibly happened to cause my sister such embarrassment. Could she have walked in on Derek and another woman in the shower? Wow, that’s certainly juicier than I would expect from stick in the mud Derek.
I am now hanging on Beth’s every word as she finally continues her tale. “So, um…I didn’t want to bother him in the shower…”
My face falls. Oh, what a prude! How boring, Beth.
“I went into the bedroom to make the bed instead.”
Of course. That’s the only logical thing to do when your hot fiancé is in the shower. Duh, Amy.
“I remember that I wasn’t sure if his pants were dirty because they were on his bed. I went through the pockets and discovered his wallet, so I figured he had worn them and they needed to go in the hamper. So that’s what I was doing when the phone rang. I raced into the kitchen to grab it, but the machine had already picked up.” Beth’s lip starts to quiver.
“I was just standing there in the kitchen, ready to go back to the bedroom and let the machine pick it up, when all of a sudden, a woman’s voice was filling the room. She was saying ‘Oh, baby I miss you’, and ‘I loved last weekend’ and ‘We need to do it again sometime soon’. I nearly threw up in the sink.”
I am completely silent. I can hear my sister’s heart breaking in her voice. For the first time in my life, I actually have the urge to reach out and comfort her. And ironically, I can’t. Damn duct tape.
Beth’s voice shrinks as she adds, “The previous weekend, Derek had gone to Vegas for a conference. I specifically remember that I had wanted to go with him. He had groaned and told me how he didn’t want me to be bored because he would be in workshops and meetings all day. Yeah, he was in meetings all day. Meeting this whore and her pussy,” Beth remarks bitterly.
“Beth!” I gasp. I have never heard such vulgar obscenities escape my sister’s lips. She was certainly fired up in a way I had never witnessed before.
“I quickly deleted the message. I don’t know why. I guess I didn’t want Derek to hear it. I felt completely and utterly…betrayed.” She stares up at the ceiling for a moment. It doesn’t seem like she’s going to continue her tale, so I nudge her a bit.
“So what happened when he got out of the shower?”
Beth snorts. “Derek swept into the bedroom after his shower and halted in his tracks when he saw me. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.” Beth tries to imitate Derek’s voice but she only succeeds in sounding like a transsexual mid transition.
“I said to him, ‘Oh, I was just tidying up.’ Trying to smile and all. And then he casually says, as he pulls open his dresser, ‘I thought I heard the phone ring?’.”
“And?” I would be on the edge of my seat if I wasn’t taped to it.
“I shrugged and said, ‘Oh, it was the wrong number.’ And then I just smiled at him and we went out to dinner.”
What?
“Why didn’t you confront him?” My sister, the queen of passive aggressive confrontations had just glossed over her fiancé cheating on her?
“I wanted to be certain, have time to look for evidence.”
Ok. That made sense.
“A few days later, I snuck over again and went through his pockets. I found tickets to a movie we never even saw and a scrap of paper with a phone number on it. Later on, I took that scrap of paper and called the number. Some other woman answered. Not even the same girl!” Beth shakes her head. “I don’t even know how many women he’s cheated with.”
“Oh Jesus.” I don’t even know what to say.
I can tell Beth is fighting back tears, but I am furious for her. “Did he deny it?” I ask curiously.
She shakes her head sadly, her hair falling into her eyes. “No.”
“Did he promise it would never happen again?” I am getting fired up. Damn, Derek. What an ass treating Beth like that! I know she isn’t the easiest person to live with, but geez, they weren’t even married yet and he was already straying? What a dog!
“No.” Beth is using her tiny voice again.
“So you just forgave him?” I ask incredulously.
“Well…” Beth is hesitant.
“Well, what Beth?” I ask with irritation in my voice. I shift my weight in attempt to scratch my wrists. I think I might have a duct tape allergy. My wrists are getting really itchy and I’m becoming increasingly cranky. That, and the fact that I am duct taped to begin with, of course. It’s putting a slight cramp in my style this evening.
“We never talked about it,” Beth tells me meekly.
My neck nearly snaps from whiplash. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! You had concrete proof that your fiancé was cheating on you and not only did you go ahead and marry the ass, you never even told him you knew? You never even confronted him?”
I am shaking my head. This cannot be my smarter, older sister speaking right now. She sounds as dumb as Allie gets when she likes a boy. “Please tell me that you’re joking.”
“I wish I was,” Beth retorts, a little snottily, I might add. “Don’t you think I’ve spent the last eleven years wishing I could go back in time to that one day and do it all differently? Make a different choice? Not care what anyone else thinks?” Beth inhales sharply. “Why the heck do you think I said I wish I could be more like you, Amy? Did you think it was because of your great fashion sense?”
“Hey!” I snap. “No need to sling insults.”
“Sorry. You’re right,” Beth replies while lowering her eyelids, properly admonished for once.
“And what does not caring what other people think have anything to do with this?” I ask.
Beth lets out a long slow exhale. “If I confronted Derek about the answering machine message and the phone numbers and the movie stubs, I would never be able to deny it. The words would be out there and I wouldn’t be able to ever take them back. And then I would have had to deal with the fallout.”
Trying to understand, I ask, “Is this about what Derek would think about you spying on him? You weren’t the one in the wrong. Derek was the one who should have been ashamed. Not you. Quite frankly, you should have been considering pulling a Lorena Bobbitt on him, not worrying about what he thought.”
Beth lets out an uncharacteristic snort. “No, it’s not that I cared what he thought. The reason I didn’t confront him was because if it came out in the open, I wouldn’t be able to marry him.”
“Well, duh, Beth. As well you shouldn’t have!” I am now trying to slide one of my fingers under the tape of the opposite hand behind my back. I have only succeeded in losing half a fingernail. Maybe if I try to saw it against the chair…
“Yes, and then we would have had to cancel the wedding and everyone would have known that Derek had cheated on me,” Beth replies in a condescending tone, as if this was the reasonable conclusion that I should have come up with on my own. Suddenly, I think that I understand.
“Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t confront your philandering fiancé because you didn’t want to cancel your wedding? Because people would want to know why, and then you would have to tell them he was cheating on you?” I cannot believe I am actually saying these words. “And during your whole marriage, you’ve been just carrying this knowledge around and not doing anything about it?”
“Uh, huh,” Beth replies docilely. “I didn’t want people to know he had wronged me or that he had hurt me.”
“For God’s sake, Beth! That doesn’t even make sense! That doesn’t sound like you at all!” I am remembering a time when I cut the hair off her Barbie. I can assure you that she didn
’t let me forget about that for decades. In fact, she mentioned it not too long ago when Lexie gave Jillian a Barbie doll she had outgrown.
“You’ve been letting him walk all over you for more than a decade? You’ve let him get away with it just because you care what people think?”
“I haven’t just lain down and let him walk all over me, Amy!” Beth retorts. And then, in a more sinister voice, “I’ve been waiting. Biding my time. Looking for the perfect opportunity to get even.”
I am stunned. “That’s what this whole affair with Kevin was? A chance to get even?” This is getting stupider by the second. I can’t believe my life is on the line because my sister needed a chance to get even with her husband. If we make it out of here alive, I’m considering killing her myself.
“No. Well…it might have started out that way. Kevin was out of work at the time. Claudia just started her new series and was filming a lot of episodes at once, so she wasn’t around to help out at school as much as she had been in the past. Kevin was filling in for her, helping with class parties and the Founder’s Day Carnival.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. I have been to Beth’s kids’ school for their Founder’s Day Carnival. Bear in mind, our school festivals usually consists of a lopsided bounce house that someone’s brother’s friend’s sister owns, and a broken cotton candy machine that we keep swearing we are going to fix. The only people who actually show up to our festivals are the ones who put the event together in the first place.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the Founder’s Day Carnival that Beth runs at her school. Besides being a catered affair with actual carnival rides, there are guest appearances by bona fide actresses and actors of popular TV shows that my kids actually watch. Unlike the one time our school had an appearance by a sad and pathetic washed up old actor, who used to play the butt end of a cow on a local TV station kid show. The kids leave this carnival with prizes like X-boxes and ski equipment, not goodie bags full of left over Charleston Chews and Mary Janes.
“Kevin helped me tremendously last year with organization. He even got our special guest, Abby Large. She’s a singer…”
Amy Maxwell & the 7 Deadly Sins (The Amy Maxwell Series Book 2) Page 14
