I STAYED FOR LUNCH WITH MAISIE AND THE BOYS—grilled cheese sandwiches with charred crusts and canned tomato soup. When Leo started to yawn and Gus burst into tears when Maisie told him he couldn’t have another cookie, Maisie announced it was time for their nap.
“I should get going anyway,” I said.
“You don’t have to leave,” Maisie protested, following me to the front hall, where I gathered up my bag.
“No, I should go. I have to…” Then I stopped, because there was nothing I had to do. By all rights, I should still be at work. I glanced at my watch. It was just after one. Sixth period. My ninth-grade class. We were near the end of the Romeo and Juliet unit, and last week I’d broken the class up into pairs and assigned each to memorize one of the scenes from the play. They’d been rehearsing ever since, and today the first few teams were going to present their scenes to the class. It was always a fun project, one the kids really got into. Some even wore costumes and brought props.
I was going to miss it. This realization caused a small stab of pain to puncture my heart. I wondered who was going to sub in for me. Then I remembered that no one would be subbing for me. It wasn’t my class anymore. Someone else would soon have my job. And the pain I felt at this wasn’t at all small; it was more along the lines of an anvil being dropped off a cliff and landing on my head.
“Lucy?” Maisie asked.
I started, suddenly realizing that I hadn’t finished my sentence. I was so traumatized and so frightened, I didn’t even have the ability to carry on a simple conversation.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t remember what I was saying. I think I’m going to go home and lie down.”
“Why don’t you stay here? You can nap in our room. The boys will sleep for hours, so they won’t bother you,” Maisie offered.
“No, thanks. I want to go home,” I said. I leaned forward and hugged her. “Thanks for putting up with me today. The company helped.”
“Anytime,” Maisie said. She leaned back and looked at me, a small frown pulling down at her lips. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
“I’m unemployed, not drunk,” I said.
“Call me later,” Maisie said.
“I will,” I promised.
But once I was in my car, headed toward home, I couldn’t remember why I’d been in such a hurry to leave the warm, raucous atmosphere of Maisie’s house. The loneliness of my predicament was suddenly unbearable.
But I was saved from having to contemplate it further. My Volvo coughed once and then, with an offensive lack of drama, died and rolled to a stop right in the middle of the street. The drivers of the cars behind me immediately began to register their displeasure. One honked, then another, and then several at once. And all the while I desperately turned the key, praying for something, anything to happen. A flicker of lights, a rumble of engine. Anything.
But nothing happened. I had no idea what was wrong. I had just filled up the tank that morning on my way in to work. Or, to be more accurate, on my way in to be fired. If it wasn’t gas, what could it be? What would cause a car to suddenly stop working? And what had I been thinking when I took home ec instead of auto shop back in high school? Surely the knowledge of what to do in these situations would have been a more valuable skill set to acquire than learning how to whip up canvas tote bags on a sewing machine.
Honk, went the drivers. Honk, honk. Honk.
It was then that I burst into tears. I just sat there, clutching the steering wheel in the ten-and-two position, and sobbed, body-racking sobs, the kind that start in your lungs but spasm outward until your entire body is shaking. I sobbed, I howled, I wailed. I completely and totally lost it.
There was a sharp rap on my window. I started, and looked up. A police officer passing by had stopped and approached my car without my noticing. He was now standing at my window, peering in at me. The officer was overweight, his stomach pushing out against the unrelenting polyester of his uniform, and he had short hair that stood on end like the bristles of a brush. He was wearing the sort of reflective sunglasses I’d always loathed. Seeing myself now reflected in them and being confronted with a distorted view of my red, puffy, tear-streaked face did nothing to change my opinion.
The police officer made a roll-down-your-window gesture. I complied.
“What’s the problem here?” he asked gruffly.
For a wild moment I wondered if he somehow knew I’d been accused of propositioning a minor, and terror seized me. What if he arrested me? Put me in jail? What if I had to spend the rest of my life trapped behind bars, wearing an orange jumpsuit and being tortured by my fellow prisoners, who would all somehow know—they always did in the movies—what I’d been convicted of?
But, no. Dr. Johnson had told me that Matt’s parents had decided to let the matter drop if the school agreed to terminate my employment. And the officer, who had clearly decided that he was dealing with a crazy lady, confirmed this by taking on what he probably thought was a kinder, gentler tone.
“Are you having car trouble, ma’am?” he asked.
“Wha-what?” I hiccupped. “Oh. Um. Yes. I mean, I think so. My car just stopped suddenly. I was hoping it was just taking a moment.”
“Taking a moment?” the officer repeated.
“Yes. I thought maybe it just needed to rest a bit. Then it would get over it and start up again,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” the officer said.
“I’m not crazy,” I said defensively. “I just have a very temperamental car.”
“Ma’am, please step out of your vehicle,” the officer said. He opened the door for me, which I first thought was gallantry and then decided was more likely a concern that I was so deranged, I’d lock myself inside and start waving a gun around at passersby.
I sighed—deeply, unhappily, resignedly—and climbed slowly out of my car.
Forty-five minutes later, my Volvo was hooked up to the back of a tow truck, on its temperamental way to the auto shop, and I was walking home. Officer Drurry, who had turned out to be quite nice and had even thrown a few hard looks at the irate drivers he’d waved around my stalled car while we waited for the tow to arrive, had offered to give me a ride. I’d declined. I was less than a mile from home, and I thought the walk might clear my head.
And it worked. It felt like a big empty bubble had swollen up in my brain, pushing out the sinkhole of worry and anxiety that had been swirling around in there. Maybe it was some sort of post-traumatic stress response. Or maybe something inside me had broken down with my car. Either way, as I trudged along I was able to keep my focus on putting one foot in front of the other and vaguely wondering if the distant hazy grayness meant that it was going to rain later. It was while I was looking up at the darkening sky that I noticed the sign for the local Quik-Rite.
Water, I thought. That’s what I need—a nice, cold bottle of water.
I headed into the store, grabbed a bottle of spring water from the cooler, and took it to the cash register. The blonde behind the counter looked like she was in her fifties, but maybe she was a decade younger and had just lived a hard life. Her skin certainly had the sort of raw, unhealthy pallor that suggested a diet rich in cigarettes and cheap liquor. It didn’t help that all of the color had been peroxided out of her hair, save for two inches of mouse-brown roots. She was wearing a faded peach tank top over sagging breasts, and there was a black and blue tattoo of a unicorn on her shoulder. She lit a cigarette, took a long drag on it, and looked at me with bored indifference.
I set the water down on the counter.
“That all?” she asked.
It was then that I noticed the lit-up display advertising the Florida Lottery. Flashing lights blinked: $87 MILLION!!!!!! PLAY NOW!!!!
“And a lottery ticket,” I said impulsively.
“One?”
“Yes.”
“Quick pick?”
“What? Um, just the regular lottery, please. The one with the eighty-seven-million-dollar jackpot,” I said.
The clerk sighed, as though I were the most annoying customer she had ever had to deal with. As she exhaled, two streams of smoke escaped out her nose, making her look like a dragon. A really mean dragon with a bad dye job. “You know what numbers you want to play, or you want the machine to pick ’em?”
“Oh. Um, I guess it can pick the numbers for me,” I said. She moved toward the machine. But suddenly remembering the conversation I’d had with Maisie, I said, “Wait. I want to pick my numbers.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “I already pressed the quick-pick ticket,” she complained. “If you want to pick your numbers, you’ll have to buy another ticket.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s fine.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“So what will your numbers be?” she asked, in a way that made it clear she wouldn’t be at all unhappy if a car suddenly burst through the Quik-Rite window and ran me over, killing me instantly. She nodded at a stack of cards standing upright in a Plexiglas box. “You fill in your numbers on a card, and then I put it into the machine here.”
“Oh…okay,” I said. I took a card and a stubby golf pencil. The card had the numbers 1 through 53 printed on it, each in the middle of a little bubble. To select a number, you had to pencil in the bubble. It reminded me suddenly, painfully, of the grading cards the students at Andrews Prep used for multiple-choice tests.
I shook my head, willing away all thoughts of school, and instead tried to focus on which numbers I should pick. Should I play Elliott’s and my birthdays? No. I’d just told Maisie that playing dates put you at a statistical disadvantage. Plus, considering how crappily my life was currently going, there was no way my date of birth would be chock full of good luck.
“Ma’am, there are customers waiting,” the cashier snapped.
I looked up and glanced wildly around. There were two men standing behind me, both wearing work uniforms with their names embroidered over their left nipples; one of them held a case of beer. They were both giving me hard stares.
“Oh…sorry,” I said. They didn’t respond. I had the feeling they, too, wouldn’t be upset to see a runaway car take me out. I quickly filled in the bubbles for 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, and 53—and instantly regretted it. What were the chances that six sequential numbers would be picked? And the last six numbers at that? But before I could change my mind, the cashier whipped the card out of my hand and stuck it into the machine.
“That’ll be three seventy-two,” she said.
I paid, took my tickets and my bottle of water, and left.
“Sorry about the wait,” I heard the cashier say loudly to the workmen, just as the door closed behind me.
Elliott’s car, an entry-level BMW he leased, was parked in the driveway. He claimed that it was important to “look successful to be successful.” A silver Mercedes SUV was parked behind it. I groaned. That meant Elliott had a client over again, probably to look at listings online or to review a contract. He had a home office set up for client meetings, but I wasn’t in the mood for it right now. I wanted to be able to walk into my house—our house, I quickly corrected myself—and change into sweats and veg out on the sofa with a pint of chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream. Or maybe a bottle of wine. Or both. Now I’d have to tiptoe around my own house, staying in the bedroom and discreetly out of view.
But then I remembered: I was out of work, so the success of Elliott’s fledgling business was all the more crucial. I’d just have to suck it up and be invisible.
I unlocked the front door, which opened directly into the living room. My French bulldog, Harper Lee, was nowhere to be seen. Elliott had probably closed her up in the kitchen, I thought, which was confirmed a moment later when I heard her high-pitched yip coming from that direction. I decided to change before I went in to greet her.
The bedrooms were off a hallway to the left of the living room. I set my bag down, kicked off my shoes, and padded down the hall. I didn’t hear any voices as I passed by the office, but the door was closed, and like many older homes, the walls were fairly thick. The bedroom door was closed too. I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
I was still holding on to the doorknob when I saw them. She was lying on the bed, stark naked except for her jewelry, of which there was quite a bit. Gold, mostly. Heavy chains of it roped around her neck and encircled her wrists. Her breasts were large and, from the way they were standing straight up off her chest, defying all laws of gravity, augmented with implants. The nipples were large too, and very dark. Her hair had been artfully highlighted with streaks of golden blond that perfectly complimented her lightly tanned skin. She didn’t have any tan lines.
Elliott was naked too. However, he was standing up. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, and he was holding on to her thighs as he rhythmically rocked his hips into her. He was very thin—too thin, really, with hip bones that jutted out sharply under his skin—and much paler than she was. I’d always thought that Elliott’s face was more interesting than it was handsome—the high clear brow, the long nose, the thin lips, the brown hair that flopped appealingly down on his forehead. His eyes were closed, and he started to groan, his breath escaping in small gasping puffs, the way he always did right when he was about to reach orgasm.
The blonde apparently knew the signs too, for she began to encourage him. “Come on, baby, come on. You feel so good inside me,” she said in a breathy, bad-porn sort of way that struck me as truly ridiculous. So ridiculous, I snorted. It wasn’t a laugh; more a sound of horrified disbelief.
Elliott opened his eyes then and saw me. He halted abruptly, mid-thrust, and the color drained from his face.
“Shit,” he said.
The blonde opened her eyes too. “What’s wrong, baby? Don’t stop now.”
I looked from her to him, while my tired brain—already on emotional overload—whirred to process what was happening, to accept that the last shreds of security were being stripped away from me. And then I burst into tears for the third time that day.
Three
I WASN’T SURE WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN next in this sort of situation. Obviously the blonde had to leave. Elliott too. But as I sat on the living-room couch, clutching a forest-green throw pillow to my chest like a shield, it struck me that it was taking them a ridiculously long time to dress and vacate the bedroom. I’d stopped crying, partly because I was sick of crying and partly because I felt suspended—not in numb disbelief this time, but in sharply edged disappointment.
Elliott was an asshole. An even bigger asshole than Maisie had always thought him to be. And I’d wasted the past three years of my life on this asshole. Three years of trying to coax him along into moving in together, getting engaged, marrying me, having children. Three years of putting up with his excuses and chronic commitment phobia and telling myself over and over again that he’d come around to appreciate the benefits of domesticity. Men always did. Even Joe, who had fallen head over heels in love with Maisie on their first date, had balked when it came time to get engaged. There was a three-month period where every time Maisie said, “I want a ring,” Joe would respond by trilling a telephonic “Riiiinnnngggg.” Maisie was not amused. The last time Joe did this, she promptly dumped him. He showed up on her doorstep three hours later with a dozen roses, a bottle of champagne, and a diamond engagement ring. Joe swore up and down that he had bought the ring weeks earlier and was just waiting for the right moment to pop the question.
But Elliott wasn’t Joe. As far as I knew—and I was pretty sure I would, since this was not a topic on which Maisie would hold back—Joe had never been caught fucking a blonde with concrete tits in their master bedroom.
And what was up with that sexual position, anyway? Maybe it was an irrelevant and even inappropriate point to dwell on, but Elliott and I had never had sex like that. He’d always been solidly in favor of the missionary position and hadn’t even liked it when I was on top. Once, when we’d both had a few too many Bloody Marys over brunch, he’d p
lucked up the courage to suggest anal sex. Actually, he didn’t so much ask as just head in that direction. I’d shrieked, jumped off the bed, and spent the next two weeks wondering if he was really a closet case.
Maybe the blonde has anal sex with him, I thought bitterly. Maybe she likes anal sex. Maybe that’s why he cheated on me. And what the hell are they doing back there? They couldn’t possibly be trying to finish…could they?
Just when I was contemplating this horrifying thought—really, how could they? It would be the very worst of manners—Elliott finally appeared. He had taken the time to button up his oxford shirt, tuck it into his pressed chinos, and put on his shoes. As he stood in front of me, he bowed his head, which made him look like a little boy who’d been caught being naughty.
“Lucy…” he began, and then—apparently having no idea what to say next—stopped. He stood silently, staring down at his feet.
“You’re not going to tell me that this isn’t what it looks like, are you?” I asked acidly.
“God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you…Well, I didn’t want you to find out like this,” Elliott said haltingly.
I stared at him. “Find out?” I repeated.
Elliott looked anguished. His face was pale and drawn, and he kept running one hand through his hair. If I didn’t hate him so much, I might have almost felt sorry for him.
“What?” I asked.
“I think it was all just happening so fast. Moving in together, all the talk of getting married. It was just…too much, too quickly,” he said.
“Too quickly? Elliott, we’ve been together for three years!”
“I just think…” Elliott let out a low groan and rubbed his head with both hands, as though to loosen his thoughts. “If it’s right, it shouldn’t be so hard to move forward, should it? It should just…well, flow. Don’t you think?” He looked expectantly at me, as though hoping for understanding.
“Flow?” I repeated.
“That’s how it is with Naomi,” Elliott explained. He suddenly seemed eager to discuss it, as though this were a theory he’d been working on for a while and was excited to finally be able to share it with me. “It just…flows. Do you know what I mean? Flow.”
Good Luck Page 3
