by Wendy Walker
But not tonight. The regrets of the past, along with the fragments of hope that she might someday reclaim her destiny, could no longer be indulged. Instead, tonight, her body was trapped in a kind of shock. She thought about the letter tucked away in a kitchen drawer, buried within a pile of papers no one ever bothered to sort out. She could see her father’s handwriting on the page, and through some kind of visceral subconscious connection, she could smell his cologne from nearly twenty-two years ago’the last time she’d seen him. Was he really going to do this to her? Would he expose her after all these years? Her secret, the one she kept hidden beneath this life, had become over the years a muddy river of memories and emotion that now flooded her body. She pictured her friends, what their faces would look like when they learned the truth about her. She imagined the agony it would inflict upon her husband, having thought all this time that he had seen her darkest corners and swept them clean. And she wondered how long it would take to reach her children.
With her sweet baby now fast asleep in her arms and her heart pounding within the walls of her chest, she could feel the fear inside her, searching for a place to take hold. From the moment she’d opened that letter, it had been growing like a fungus, corrupting her body, her mind. And she could not help but wonder if it was her own desire, her midnight fantasies of being more than what she had become, that had brought this about. She was her father’s child, no matter how much time was now between them. That his letter had arrived just as her desires had begun to resurface seemed more than coincidental. Yet it could not be more than that. For all his vast talents, Alexander Rice was not psychic. His letter was about nothing but himself, his world and his desires. Still, it was within this letter, and all that it held, that Love was beginning to sense her own undoing.
THREE
GAYLE
GAYLE HAYWOOD BECK HEARD the soft click of the brass door latch. Light from the hall sifted into the bedroom as the door swung open, then disappeared again. Across the floorboards, she heard him walk slowly past the bed, through the sitting area into his dressing room. Another door closed, then the light from the dressing room appeared from under the door.
Lying still, Gayle strained her eyes to read the clock. It was well past two. Surely he would be tired. Through the closed door, she could hear him remove his clothing’the clicking of the belt latch, the shoes dropping to the floor, one and then the next. His starched shirt was unbuttoned, pulled from his body and tossed on top of his shoes, where it would be left for the maid to sort out in the morning. Then it was quiet. Lying in bed, waiting, Gayle could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Still, she closed her eyes and began to breathe deeply, feigning the breath of sleep.
He went next to the bathroom. First to brush his teeth, then into the shower. But only for a moment. The room fell dark again. She heard the floorboards give way to steps as he approached their bed, then the pull of the covers as he crawled in on the other side. She could smell him now, the crisp lavender soap on his skin, his wet hair, mint toothpaste. She heard him sigh and roll over, settling into the bed to sleep, and it sparked a wave of relief that was nearly euphoric.
How quickly these moments came and went now, how easily her emotions were pushed and pulled by even the smallest event. First, there’d been the anticipation. Is he coming home tonight? It was so much easier when she knew from the start, when he gave her some kind of schedule. She could gauge her mood, her tolerance for her husband that night, and make the decision which pill to take, and how many.
She thought about the pills now, sorted carefully in small brown prescription bottles in the bottom drawer of her vanity. Dr. Theodore Lerner’ known affectionately as Dr. Ted to Gayle and the rest of the Haywood clan’had written out the instructions with great care and precision. Two blue Zoloft with breakfast. One white Xanax at lunchtime to prevent the afternoon anxiety. Then, if needed, Ambien just before bedtime. The regimen had started as just that’a strict menu of mood-altering drugs. Of course, over the years, Gayle had taken to some experimentation to see how much relief she could actually squeeze out of these resources, and she had become quite skilled as her own personal pharmacist. She took the Zoloft, a popular antidepressant, as written. Its effects were subtle and constant, making it useless for any immediate purposes. The Xanax was another story. There were some afternoons when two or three made their way out of the bottle, and others when she skipped it altogether. In the early evenings she could multiply their effectiveness with a glass of wine or a nice martini. She was careful not to overdo’rehab would not be good for someone as visible as Gayle Haywood Beck. She knew what she needed, when she needed it. Two Xanax and a drink usually made it possible to be Troy’s wife, and this was why it was so crucial to know her husband’s schedule.
Tonight had been left open. Troy had been invited to a late afternoon golf outing at the club, followed by a cigar dinner. Those always went late, and Gayle counted on this. But for some infuriating reason, he wouldn’t give her an answer as to whether or not he would attend.
“Does it really matter?” he’d asked after her third call to the office.
She’d made the excuse that she needed to let their cook know about dinner. “If you go out, I may have Paul make me a sandwich.”
He’d held out until nearly four o’clock, calling on his cell as he made his way back from the city. He was going to play after all, and stay for the dinner. It seemed like months ago, the blissful relief that had come at four o’clock. She’d skipped the Xanax and enjoyed just one glass of wine after her son went to sleep. Now it was the middle of the night, the drugs were out of reach, and Troy was home in their bed.
The scent of his favorite soap’his signature in Gayle’s mind’filled her nostrils as she inhaled, provoking a memory that struck like a fist to her gut. It was a memory of another time, the first time she’d smelled that smell, a time when she’d found it enticing, even comforting. That this same scent now made her recoil with fear was the very dilemma that formed the base of her illness.
The sessions with Dr. Ted had helped her understand this’the acute frailty of her demeanor’the underlying condition that her mother had always reminded her of. This was life. Marriage was tough. Ups and downs. Good and bad. Troy had his issues. What man wouldn’t be affected by a wealthy wife? The evidence was all around her, at the book groups and luncheons, the charity functions and bake sales’what woman was consistently happy in her marriage? They told her to take the pills and forgive herself for needing them to live a normal life. She had the first part down.
Troy Beck rolled over again, then cleared his throat. Across the mattress, his wife lay perfectly still, fighting to hold back the tears that might give her away. She calmed herself, breathing slowly, though her body was rigid, her every muscle tense as she prayed for him to fall asleep.
FOUR
MARIE
IN THE HOUSE NEXT door to Love Welsh, Bill Harrison, and their unruly clan, Marie Passeti stared at her husband. In the darkness of their bedroom, she could make out little more than a silhouette of his face, but it was enough. The evidence was adequately apparent. For the plaintiff, she thought, her head now propped up in the palm of her hand as she leaned over him for a closer look. Receding hairline, chubby cheeks, beer on the breath. Evidence of the downslide, the effects of their suburban existence. Work, beer, TV, golf, not necessarily in that order. Anthony Passeti hadn’t been to a gym in three years. Beneath the covers, she watched the rise and fall of the round ball now known as her husband’s stomach. Exhibit four. It was confounding, really. Men were fit in this town. After all, this wasn’t some middle-of-nowhere American suburb. It was Hunting Ridge, for Christ’s sake. There were certain standards to maintain, beauty being near the top of the list. Just beneath wealth, but slightly above college ranking, breeding, and social connections.
OK. It was time for the defense to make its argument. Exhibit one’stillsmart, very smart. Marie watched his eyes flutter beneath their lids. Where have you gone
? It had been a very long time since she’d seen exhibit one. They’d been here just under seven years, and in that time Anthony had gone from CNN to the Golf Channel, from The Economist to Golf Digest. From pondering the universe to air swings. Was it a disease? If it was a disease, maybe the twenty pounds were a good sign, a deviation from the norm that perhaps indicated some resistance to the illness that seemed to permeate the inhabitants of this quaint little village. Maybe it was Anthony Passeti’s quiet F- Uto the suburbs. But if he wanted to send a message of defiance, could he not have chosen one more beneficial to her? Like giving up his golf game and staying home with the kids on the weekends? Or emptying the dishwasher once in a while? No self-respecting Hunting Ridge man emptied the dishwasher. That would be a good one. Maybe he’d chosen the beer gut to drive her farther to the other side of their bed.
Go to sleep! These midnight wakings were doing her in. She’d pass out from exhaustion just after ten. But then the panic would strike, making her pop up, open-eyed, staring at the figure lying beside her, desperate to understand what was going so wrong. Still, as much as she resented the disruption, it was in these moments, and only in these moments, that she could get some of it back’the feeling that she actually knew this man.
It was the goddamn suburbs. That was it. Life had been sailing along just fine in the city. A fierce litigator, Marie had been on the fast track in a New York law firm before having her first daughter, Suzanne. She’d had every intention of going back after her maternity leave, but the pull of her child had been too strong, and that had been that. The first mistake. For all her intelligence and two Harvard degrees, Marie had been easily seduced by suburban lore. She’d quit her job, moved the family to Hunting Ridge where the air was clean and there was grass outside their door’grass that was now littered with black spots that some fungal epidemic had claimed. Olivia came next, and after her birth Marie resigned herself to joining the ranks of her peers. For two years’time that seemed to stand still’she had endured the endless talk of toys and teething and pediatricians. She went to the playgroups, met at the park, sang “Old MacDonald” sixty million times at mommy-and-me music class. It was mind-numbing, anxiety-producing. Crazy-making. And, in hindsight, it was inevitable that she would begin “dabbling” again in the law. By the middle of her third year as a stay-at-home mommy, she had signed a lease for office space in town.
On some days, it actually made her crazy life in Hunting Ridge tolerable. Up at six, get the girls ready for school’breakfast, lunchboxes, homework, notes for field trips and play dates. Shower and dress, organize the papers she’d brought home and worked on late into the night. Then clean up after her husband who, after staying out late at the club, would sleepwalk through the morning, leaving out the cereal boxes and milk, throwing his dirty shirts on the floor near, but God forbid inside, the laundry room. Then to the office, sorting through her work, making out the assignments for her small staff’the two associates whose part-time schedules looked like a small jigsaw puzzle. There wasn’t much that got pitched her way that she couldn’t hit out of the park. Marie Passeti was the very embodiment of efficiency.
That it had begun to belittle her husband, to shine an even brighter light on his domestic failings of late, was a consequence that could not be helped. Anthony Passeti was perfectly capable of dressing his children and putting away his cereal boxes. He’d done it for years, supporting her career, sharing the responsibilities at home. Then, one small task at a time, he had removed himself from the invisible chore chart Marie kept in her head. And one task at a time, Marie had picked up the slack. It wasn’t the only change that had taken place right under her nose. Not long ago, her husband had been fully present in their lives, doting on the girls every weekend, finding creative ways to please his wife’the occasional breakfast in bed, spontaneous dinner plans in the city. And when their second child had put a damper on their sex life, the reserved corporate attorney had surprised her with a series of Internet orders’small packages that arrived in the mail, discreetly wrapped in plain brown paper. Hardware for the hard up, he’d joked. And although most of it wound up in the bottom of Marie’s underwear drawer, it had returned a sense of mischief to their lives, a flavor that had since been diluted by Hunting Ridge vanilla.
Years had passed since she’d received a plain brown package. Now, all that came in the mail were bills and golf magazines. And while it amused her on some level that her husband had become so fond of sticks and balls, it wasn’t exactly her idea of foreplay. Still, despite his downslide, Anthony Passeti was a brilliant man, and on the days she didn’t hate him, Marie could still see traces of the man she loved so deeply.
She slid closer beside him and curled up next to the rising gut. She was an infrequent visitor to his side of the bed, and she remembered now how much warmer it was than her side where her slight body barely made an indentation. Carefully, she pulled her pillow next to his and dropped her head upon it, closing her eyes. It was important that he not wake. She was angry at him again, a far too ordinary state of affairs in their house, and snuggling would definitely be a sign of contrition. She heard him snore twice, then shift to the left. Good. He was out, which meant she would still have denia-bility in the morning. Sorry, must have rolled over in the night. She let out a deep breath and felt sleep return as she lay beside her long-lost husband.
FIVE
DREAMS
DREAMS TORMENTED JANIE THROUGHOUT the night. Waking to find two men in her bed, struggling for an explanation. Running after a stack of papers that had been blown from her hands. The feel of his rough beard on her inner thigh.
She slept in short segments, dreaming then waking, dreaming again. Each dream brought a new dose of panic or relief, tossing her back and forth like a rag doll. The sun peeking through the bedroom curtains should have been welcome, but she knew from the sickness in her stomach that the anxiety would only intensify as she moved through her day.
Daniel was still asleep next to her when she heard a noise from down the hall. The youngest of the four Kirk children was beginning to stir. Not ready to face what she might be feeling, or not feeling, she jumped from the bed without looking at her husband. In the bathroom, she checked for evidence. Clothes were in the hamper, a place with which Daniel would not concern himself. The contents of her purse were put away’compact, lipstick, comb, breath mints’the purse was back on the rack in her closet. She retraced her steps as she quickly brushed her teeth and pulled back her hair. The novel from the book-club meeting she’d ducked out of was on the kitchen counter. The remote for the garage door was in the basket by the kitchen door where such things were kept. Forgetting it there would be her reason for not pulling in the car. What else? There was nothing else, except the contents of her mind, which she knew from experience would not be detected by anyone living in this house.
She looked in the mirror, checking her neck, her breastbone. There was no trace of his lips there. Dressed in clingy cotton pj’s, no makeup on her face, hair uncombed, she would easily pass as the mommy and the honey they expected each morning’the embodiment of suburban perfection. Long hair, perfectly highlighted in shades of blond. Sculpted legs, firm ass, flattened stomach, new construction breasts’perky size Cs. And a face that was both provocative and subtle. Despite her forty-two years and four pregnancies, she looked damned close to herself twenty years ago. In fact, if she didn’t occasionally dress them up and parade them through town, there would be no visible evidence of the four children that she’d borne. And that was how Daniel liked things’just as they had always been.
It was ironic, really, that the things she’d done to herself to please her husband had opened the door to her infidelity. She was reality on hold’no saggy tits from years of breastfeeding, no loose, floppy skin that had been stretched to oblivion again and again. What man wouldn’t want the very things he’d once had but could never have again? It was all possible now with the surgical erasing of time. Janie had no illusions as to why she’d found hers
elf the object of pursuit.
She thought about it now, how all of this had transpired in a few short weeks. First, the typical Hunting Ridge cocktail party. Elaborate catered nibbles passed around by waiters, all dressed in white. Tendered bars set up in every room. Rented policemen parking the cars and ignoring the smell of alcohol on the guests when they returned to drive home. She’d gone to the small bar in the back of the kitchen to find a decent bottle of wine. These were friends, and she felt at home in spite of the formality surrounding her. The good stuff would be in the wine fridge, which had been her destination. But the short walk in search of a drink would only be the beginning.
“Check the bottom rack.”
The man’s voice was familiar, and she’d thought nothing of it as she turned from the fridge with a smile. She’d known him for years.
“I had my eye on a Kistler Chardonnay,” she’d said.
“Let’s break out the red.”
Stepping around her, he’d allowed his body to come closer to hers than it should have. And as they knelt next to one another to examine the bottles on the last three racks, she’d felt the jolt of a subtle, and surprising, seduction. The second step on her path to betrayal.
“Here we go,” he’d said, pulling a pinot noir from its slot. They moved back to the kitchen. He opened the bottle, poured two glasses, then handed one to her. His hand brushed against hers, and she smiled in a way that, upon reflection, was reflexively sultry. After years of nothing but benign interaction with members of the opposite sex’a suburban mandate’it had taken very little to sense the flirtation, and her body had responded as though it had been secretly training for this very moment. This was surely not the first time they had been alone in a room, but this time had been entirely different.
