by Clara James
With a huff, Paul reached for a slice of bread and slipped it into the toaster. “We’ll spend some time together when I get back, how’s that?” he suggested.
Not even slightly appeased, Lizzie sullenly slipped down from her chair. “I’ve got to get ready for school,” she muttered.
“Daddy,” Kate called, grinning. “Look,” she proudly cried, holding up a crayon sketch that she’d been working on.
“That’s great, honey,” he responded, almost automatically, giving no more than a passing glance at the picture.
Somehow, knowing that the children were slipping from his radar of importance made me even more angry than the fact our relationship had taken a sideline. “Paul,” I whispered, taking a step to his side. “You know, the kids really miss you when you’re gone. It’s tough on them; a few days for you feels like an eternity to them.”
“I’ll make it up to them,” he shrugged, as his toast popped up and he quickly grabbed it. “I better toss some stuff in a bag,” he announced, lifting his wrist to check the time.
Slipping my hand into the crook of his elbow, I held him still for just a few seconds longer. “I was hoping we’d be able to talk before you go,” I suggested quietly and with no small degree of discomfort. It wasn’t going to be an easy conversation to have.
“What about?” he replied testily, as he tugged his arm free of me.
“Well...” I hesitated, sure that he must know what I was referring to. “Last night,” I eventually said in a whisper.
With an impatient sigh, his eyes drifted to the floor. “Do we have to do this now?” he asked.
“If not now, then when?” I countered.
Paul’s gaze moved to Kate, who had gone back to adding more detail to her drawing, then Dylan, who was tearing about the open plan dining area as if he were an airplane. “Look,” he said under his breath. “I was a little selfish,” he admitted, but shrugged it off. “But you were the one complaining about how long it’s been since we had sex. Well, we had sex, so...?” he left his words hanging, challenging me to make a big deal out of it.
If I’d been able to wrap my head around what was happening, I would have made a big deal out of it. But as things were, I stood open-mouthed, stunned into silence by his complete disregard for what had happened.
“So, are we done?” he demanded. “Because I’ve got a plane to catch.” Without waiting for me to respond, he was already heading for the door.
Dylan ran after him yelling, “Can I come too, Dad?”
And sure enough, that was the end of it. We didn’t speak of that night again.
Paul was ready by the time his driver arrived at the door. He handed over his small suitcase, before turning to hug and kiss each of the kids goodbye. Once he was done, I received a wave of his hand as he climbed into the back of the vehicle.
After he’d gone, I still felt shell shocked by the callous way he’d rebuffed my concerns; both over the effect his repeated absences were having on the children, and indeed the trouble within our own strained relationship. And just when I thought the day couldn’t possible have started any worse, his mother arrived. As she was apt to do, she didn’t ring the bell, just let herself in. Paul had insisted she have a key, in case of emergencies, but Carole seemed to believe that gave her carte blanche to enter at will.
She strolled into the kitchen, finding me still in the midst of clearing up from breakfast. Lizzie and Dylan were arguing again, something I was too tried to deal with at that moment and unbeknownst to me, Kate had stripped off all of her clothes with the exception of her underwear.
The sight that met my mother-in-law caused her to tut loudly. “Having trouble, dear?” she asked rhetorically.
“Not exactly,” I responded defensively. “They’ve just got me outnumbered at the moment,” I added, smiling in an effort to lighten the mood.
It didn’t work; it had never worked. I no longer knew why I bothered. Carole Hayes had hated me with a passion almost from the moment she met me. She had it fixed in her head that I only wanted to be with her son because he was wealthy. Even agreeing to sign a rigid prenup that ensured I got nearly nothing if we divorced was not enough to convince her otherwise.
She was the kind of woman who made a sport of finding fault with other people; her favorite target being me. I wasn’t good enough for her son, never had been, never would be. And she was determined to prove it to him.
“Well,” she replied humorlessly. “I thought I might help you out by taking Elizabeth and Dylan to school.”
“Umm, thanks,” I said, busily loading the dishwasher.
“Do you want me to dress Katherine before I go?” she asked, turning to me with a disapprovingly arched eyebrow.
Driven to the point of caring minimally what she thought of me, I shrugged. “It’s no problem,” I said. “It’s warm out. I’m in the middle of potty training her anyway, so it makes things simpler for her if she needs to go.”
Scowling at me, she bit a tongue that no doubt had a stream of things to say on the matter. Rapidly she turned to the two older children, quickly breaking up their squabble. “Hey, grandma’s here,” she announced.
Dylan quickly ran to her, knowing, as I did, that she would have some treat for him. Sure enough, out of her Louis Vuitton purse came a sucker.
“Can I have this now, Mom?” he excitedly screamed, gratefully grabbing the candy.
“I don’t-” I began.
“Of course you can,” she interrupted.
My rule was always no sweets before school. “He’s just brushed his teeth,” I sighed, addressing Carole.
“He’s a young boy,” she smiled, relishing every opportunity she had to undermine me. “You’ve got to bend the rules and have a little fun now and then.” As she spoke, her hand delved back into her purse and she retrieved another piece of candy. This time, she offered it to Lizzie.
“Thanks, grandma,” Lizzie smiled, accepting the sucker and stuffing it into the pocket of her jeans.
“You can have yours now, too,” Carole assured her, nodding.
“I’ll save it for later, thanks,” Lizzie replied.
This seemed to rankle my mother-in-law, who quickly said goodbye and hustled the older kids out of the house.
I followed them to the door, giving Lizzie and Dylan a hug. “Have a good day at school,” I told them, before watching them trot down the steps and climb eagerly into the back of Grandma’s Mercedes.
With just me and Kate in the house, things were much quieter. However, with a mountain of housework to do, they weren’t going to be much easier.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT A MESS
Later that night, after an hour and a half and three stories, Kate finally went to sleep. At last, the house was silent and I breathed a sigh of relief. There was laundry to be done and dishes from dinner still to be washed, but I couldn’t be bothered with either. Instead, I plodded wearily to my bathroom and ran a nice, hot bath.
I couldn’t contain the long, deep sigh I exhaled as my body slipped beneath the warm water and it seemed as if a huge weight had been lifted from me. Under the spell of that glorious calm, my brain stopped whirring and, for the first time in longer than I cared to recall, I was at peace.
I made no conscious decision to move my hands. In fact, I surprised myself when I found them slipping over the slick skin of my chest and caressing my breasts. Quickly giving way to the pleasant sensation, I allowed my eyes to lazily drift closed, as I continued to move my fingers in slow, teasing circles. When I reached my nipples, I found them rigid and aching. Gently gripping those tight pebbles between my forefingers and thumbs, I pinched lightly. “Hmmm,” I mumbled longingly, my right hand leaving my breasts and smoothing over my abdomen.
With my eyes shut, I imagined another hand traveling to my navel and slowly sliding over my mound. It was Paul I thought about. It had always been Paul; except perhaps for a short time when I was sixteen, when mind candy for my self-exploration was the blonde-hair
ed guy from that boy band. The fact that Paul was, and always had been, the focus of almost all of my erotic fantasies wasn’t due to any misplaced sense of disloyalty via thought. It was simply a case of never having felt the need to focus on any other man. My husband turned me on – not everything about him, of course. The sight of him sprawled out on the bed that morning, for example, was not the stuff of my sexual dreams. However, there were always memories that I could hang my masturbating hat on. We’d had some really good times together, and it wasn’t difficult for me to focus on those.
My fingers moved leisurely over the neat triangle of short hair that covered my mound. Drawn further, they smoothed between my outer lips finding them smooth and plump. Bending one leg and sliding my foot up to my bottom, I offered my own roaming hand freer access. With the pad of my middle finger, I rolled carefully over my clitoris, which instantly responded.
Often, during moments like those, I’d think of the first time Paul touched me like that. It was several months before we went the whole way and not long after my eighteenth birthday. He’d been so nervous that his fingers were trembling. He didn’t know what he was doing, and truth be told, neither did I. Sure, I knew what felt good, but I hadn’t got a name for that small bud that sent warmth flooding through my entire body. We were both giddy and a little scared, but we laughed together and, eventually, he asked me to guide his fingers.
“Show me,” he’d urged. “Show me how to touch you.”
I was hesitant at first, sure that he’d much rather be in control of the situation. I was also reluctant to give the impression that he was doing something wrong. However, he continued to insist and, as I placed my fingers on top of his, it wasn’t close to being as embarrassing or awkward as I’d assumed it would be. That afternoon, I’d coaxed him into rubbing my clitoris, until I bucked and writhed in climax. What I didn’t know then, and would never have known had he not confessed it a couple of years later, was that the sight and feel of my orgasm had caused Paul to come in his pants.
Brought back to my present surroundings by the stirring of electricity between my legs, I started to increase the pressure of my touch. It had been several weeks since I’d pleasured myself and even longer since Paul had driven me to orgasm, so the speed of its climb caught me off guard. Usually, after long dry spells, my body is slow to reach boiling point.
I was close; so close. My mouth fell open and I began suck in shallow panted breaths. My hips were moving of their own volition, my backside swaying on the bottom of the tub in rhythm to the movement of my fingers. Sparks were triggering a restless warmth in my belly. And then, as I began to reach the summit, the phone’s harsh ringing ripped me from the high and yanked me back down. I tried to ignore it, I kept my eyes tightly shut and strummed my body with renewed vigor. However, as the beep of the answer machine cut in and my mother-in-law’s voice drifted to the bathroom from the phone on Paul’s bedside table, I removed my hand from between my legs with a muttered, “Shit.”
“Julia, it’s Carole,” she began in her hash, nasal tone. “I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay. I know you said you can cope, but I really think that things are becoming too much for you right now. It’s understandable,” she quickly added. “It’s hard for an inexperienced mother to care for three children on her own.”
The bath was suddenly no longer relaxing. My jaw had tightened and I felt my shoulders begin to rise to my neck. What she meant by ‘inexperienced mother’ I didn’t know. I’d been a mom for nearly eight years and certainly didn’t consider myself new to the job.
“All I mean is, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help. And I’m always here if you need me,” she announced, a smile clear in her voice. “Anyway,” she added briskly. “Call me, because it’s really quite late and I’m concerned about where you are.”
“Argh,” I growled, my hands gripping the edges of the bathtub and imagined it was her neck beneath my fingers. With the firm click of her phone being put down, I gave up all hope of a soothing soak in the tub, let alone any prospect of sexual release. Yanking myself up, I reached for a big, fluffy towel with one hand and held it loosely to my chest, not bothering to wrap it around me. After quickly tugging the plug out of the bath, I wandered bare foot and dripping into the bedroom.
Once there, I stared at the phone, with a red light blinking on its base, for several seconds. Should I call her? If I did, she’d jabber on and on for ages. If I didn’t, she’d just keeping calling all night long. Making a sudden decision, I lunged forwards and edged the bedside table out slightly. Then, I grabbed the cable at the back of the phone and pulled until I felt the mains pop out of the wall socket.
With a satisfied nod and a naughty grin, I flopped down onto the bed. Knowing exactly what Carole would think if she could see me making the bed wet with the outline of my buttocks, I dropped onto my back. Sprawling out, I let my soaking wet hair drench the sheets. However, my delight in doing something that seemed so rebellious was short-lived. Eventually, I sat up and, when I did, I was met with my first real acknowledgment of the car crash that was my bedroom.
Up until that time, I hadn’t been back in the room since leaving it that morning. And as I’d strolled to the bath, I’d failed to really take it in. Carole’s opinion that I was a lazy wife and mother came back to haunt me. Our bedroom certainly was a mess, not of my making but, apparently, it was my ‘job’ to clean up after my husband.
There were clothes everywhere. The ones Paul had worn the night before were strewn on the floor from where he’d stripped them off that morning. His damp towel had been tossed at the foot of the bed and now just a tiny corner clung to the mattress while the rest draped slovenly on the floor. A sports bag sat beside the wardrobe. It was open with a creased shirt spilling out of it. This was the bag he’d taken on his last trip and must have been placed in the closet when he got home. Paul appeared to have pulled it out and been rummaging for something. Thoughtfully, he’d left it in disarray for me to deal with.
I considered leaving it; just watching TV and putting all that mess off until the morning. However, I couldn’t take my eyes off the state of the room and was bombarded by the thought that I wasn’t being a good enough wife to Paul. I was supposed to want to take care of him, it wasn’t meant to seem like a chore. Perhaps he felt, like his mom, that I wasn’t doing a very good job – was that why we’d been so disconnected?
Pushing myself up from the bed, I quickly strode back into the bathroom, tossed the towel in the laundry hamper and grabbed a robe. It was a silk one that reached my calves; a present from Paul for my birthday. Carefully drawing the tie around my middle and securing it in place, I didn’t care that my damp hair was already soaking through the material at my shoulders.
Marching back into the bedroom, I pushed the sleeves of the robe up to my elbows and was ready for business. I moved quickly around the room, first picking up Paul’s towel and scooping that over my arm as I bent for his clothes. While I walked purposefully to the large bathroom hamper, I slipped my hands into his pants pockets, turning them inside out. True to form, a handful of change clattered onto the bathroom tiles.
“Paul,” I groaned, realizing that after a decade of begging him, he was never going to empty the pockets of his dirty clothes.
After tossing my armful into the laundry basket, I crouched and picked up each coin one by one. Two quarters, three dimes and five pennies. With a huff of weariness, I pushed myself upright and took the fistful of money to Paul’s bedside table. Right next to the phone was a sterling silver tray with ‘change is good’ engraved in the center. It had once belonged to Paul’s grandfather and, although he treasured it, he didn’t see fit to use it. With a satisfying clatter, I placed the coins onto the tray and spun on the balls of my feet.
The sports bag was the one remaining eyesore. I would have felt that I was on the home stretch, but the worst thing about being a housewife is that there’s never a home stretch. There’s always something to do; always more mess, be
cause while you’re cleaning someone’s making some more. But, for the time being at least, I was on the verge of having a clean bedroom.
I moved for the bag, gripping the thick shoulder strap and half lifted, half dragged it into the bathroom. Setting it down by the still open hamper, I crouched down and began tugging each item of clothing from the bag. Two dress shirts went straight into the basket. A white T-shirt followed and then there were three boxer shorts. Black dress pants and a pair of jeans dwelt at the bottom and, sure enough, both had change and receipts stuffed in every available pocket.
“For God’s sake,” I muttered pulling out all the junk and chucking it temporarily in the bottom of the bag. As I did that, my eyes flashed down at the black polyester lining that was speckled with tiny balls of white fluff. My gaze caught something shiny. Releasing their grip on Paul’s jeans, my fingers delved into the bag. I tried to tell myself that it was just a little scrap of foil; it couldn’t possibly be what it looked like; what I thought it was. Grasping it with my forefinger and thumb, I slowly pulled it free from its hiding place. It wasn’t just the tiny edge I had been able to see. It was a full square with a clear circular indent. The shiny, blue wrapper had been ripped at the top and its contents removed.
The hand holding the condom wrapper began to tremble, as the implications of it settled painfully in my chest. My mouth and throat went instantly dry, while palpitations caused my eardrums to throb with each deep, pound of my heart. Paul and I hadn’t used condoms since our engagement; he’d never liked them, we both wanted a family anyway and, shortly after Lizzie was born, I’d started taking the pill. There was no need for any other form of contraception.
The object in my hand could mean only one thing. God knows I tried to find other explanations. Most of them were wild, nonsensical excuses; anything to avoid the truth that was staring me in the face. But there was no way to avoid it. Paul had an affair while he’d been away.
Dropping the wrapper and swiveling toward the tub, bile suddenly rose in my throat. I dry heaved, nothing more than saliva dribbling from my bottom lip while my throat burned. I remained that way for several minutes, my empty stomach continuing to retch.
