by Deb Caletti
There was no question that it was a necessary divorce, but that didn’t make it less painful. You don’t think it will hurt, leaving a marriage like that, do you? But it’s the same misguided thinking that makes people ask, after your mother dies, how old she was. If she was ninety, the bereavement isn’t supposed to be as crushing. But of course it is. Of course. There’s no equation for loss.
The thing is, there was all that hope once. That’s at the beating center of what’s gone. Hope for the life the two of you might have had together, sure, but for me, even more, the hope that I would have given my child something whole; at least, something so much better than this. That’s what tore me up the most. The childhood I was giving her. Now that she lived in two places, Abby always kept her bag packed. Clothes spilled from it, but still. Every other weekend she had to remember the shoes that went with the outfit, the books that went with the homework, the gear that went with the sport. It was such an effortful endeavor to move between houses that she left the stuff in that bag, like a tired salesman waiting to leave on his next, wearying trip.
Somewhere in there it sinks in, the ways that it’s over but never over. Divorce is a chronic illness. After the diagnosis, you live with it your whole life long.
Ian had moved into a furnished apartment after he and Mary finally separated. I hated that place. It was newly built, and it smelled temporary. I tried to see its finer points when I visited, but its narrow living room seemed confined and claustrophobic, even with its large windows. There was a loft with a bed. His children stared out at me from photos on his nightstand after we made love.
And Bethy and Kristen refused to see him. Fifteen and thirteen now, they were not easily forced. There was a court order, but they would visit only at their own home with Mary there, insisting on old family nights where the four of them had dinner and watched movies and made popcorn. Mary shrugged her shoulders about it. There was nothing she could do.
I felt squeezed in that narrow apartment. I waited in the hall once while Ian talked to Mary about a crisis Bethy was having at school. There was always a crisis, an illness that was sure to turn life-threatening, an emotional outburst that undoubtedly meant a psychological calamity. I looked out at the lights of the city and wished myself anyplace else. The game was getting tiring, but it was a game I’d put in motion. I hadn’t stopped it, for my own selfish reasons, and now look. He was talking to his wife on the phone—a woman who’d just sent him a topless photo to lure him back; oh, the lengths she would go to that I never would. She wanted or needed him more, I guess, and now his children wouldn’t get in his car without her, wouldn’t see him in his new narrow apartment, wouldn’t hug him or meet his eyes kindly without their mother present. That bed next to the staring photos—I wanted out of it, but it was the one I had made.
How do you make a life that is really yours? How do you identify it when you see it? First, you don’t take one that doesn’t belong to you. You’re dead in the water from day one if you do that. In addition, though, I imagine you have to look inside yourself and listen without fear. You can’t see clearly otherwise. I’ve learned that, at least. I loved those ring-less, independent hands. I hated the small ways in which Ian was beginning to criticize me, ever since he left Mary for good. But I shut my eyes and saw no red flags, and I focused instead on his beautiful profile and the times we’d drive in the car with the windows down, singing loudly along with the songs we both loved. I told myself these things: He knows the names of trees. He thinks my third-grade picture—loud, plaid dress, huge teeth—is adorable. He freely confesses to crying at movies where the lovers are separated by death or war. He made me a bracelet out of Red Vines. He will never abruptly quit a job because he fought with his boss. He is generous with Abby, and they have fun together. He will never strike me. Back then one of his finest and most reassuring qualities was that he wasn’t Mark. Another was that he wasn’t no one.
You’re everything to me, he’d say.
I heard it in his voice, the clutching. And so I treaded water, rescuing the rescuer. I’m here, I’d say. I’m not going anywhere.
Some people have a blind, undying optimism. I, for one. I do. Did. It’s dangerous. It’s naïve. Maybe optimism is partly a desire to not face facts, because facing facts might require action. Facing facts might mean admitting how powerless you are. Maybe facing facts, too, would mean acknowledging failure and then another failure, and so you keep “trying.” You keep seeing the positives because you’re a coward.
I don’t know.
I once visited my sister in Santa Barbara, just after my nephew, Justin, was born. As I’ve said before, it’s strange the things you remember. We ordered a pizza. I even remember what kind. All-meat, part of a “Family Feast,” one of those stomach-churning combos that come with the same pizza dough in various forms—breadsticks, cinnamon rolls; dear God, you vow afterward to do broccoli penance.
Who wants to cook, though, right? Because, here we are: The baby is a week old, and my niece is a toddler, and everything is wet. Along with wet diapers and laundry, my sister’s shirts are wet, Nick’s shirts are wet, and I’ve got those damp splotches on my shoulders. There are spilled cups and tipped bottles and leaking bodies. Amy’s and Nick’s eyes—they’re intermittently vacant and love-filled. I’d forgotten how exhausting all that was, but, oh, oh, oh, that wrinkled back of a baby’s neck, those milky folds. Those tiny T-shirts that snap at the sides.
Anyway, Buck, Amy and Nick’s dog, hears the pizza delivery guy drive up. Actually, I swear, Buck hears him start up his car at the pizza place, because he begins to pace as soon as we get the paper plates out and set them and the roll of paper towels on the coffee table. Buck’s a sweet boy, but God help the UPS guy who passes through their gate. The mailman is his archenemy. He sees himself in the starring role—his family against the kidnappers, the fate of the world on his furry shoulders. It’s all up to him and he won’t let anyone down. Probably livens up his day a great deal.
The enemy is a pizza guy getting out of his car; he’s about twenty-one, with a thin build and shaggy hair, forced to wear that humiliating red vest and collect the dollar-off coupons. He goes home smelling like charred crust and red sauce, poor kid. But Buck starts to growl at the slam of the car door, and Amy can’t lunge, because she’s holding the baby, and Nick is unaware, because he’s hunting around for his wallet.
The doorbell rings. It’s the enemy’s first mistake. Buck is a weapon unleashed; he brings all he’s got. He flings his meaty German shepherd body against the door. It’s a side of him I’ve never seen. His teeth look huge in that snarl, capable of doing real harm. He’s standing on two legs and is taller than you’d imagine; he’s looking eye-to-eye with that pizza guy through the door’s three triangles of glass. He’s barking and leaping furiously, and if that pizza boy had any thought of pushing the red button to release the nuclear bomb on a major city in the United States of America, well, he’d be thinking twice now.
Buck—wow. It’s impressive, but it’s scaring the shit out of me. I get up and knock over Stephanie, my two-year-old niece, who’s walking around with some hard plastic toy piano; they clatter to the ground with dramatic C notes. I’m trying to reach Buck’s collar, then Nick appears, and he grabs Buck and manhandles him down from the door with some effort. Buck is still trying to leap and Nick is yelling at him, and Nick shoves his wallet at me. Buck is drooling with protective fury.
Whew. I open the door. The delivery boy’s face is kind. He’s just trying to make beer-and-rent money.
“Sorry,” I say. I think we’re sharing a moment of nerves and mutual shock. I imagine that he can’t wait to get the hell out of there. Behind us, Buck is frothing at the mouth as if he’s become possessed by the devil.
And this is when the pizza delivery guy says: “Oh, look at your dog. He’s excited to see me!”
Poor, poor soul. Poor, innocent sucker. It stuck with me, the way that boy tore off the credit-card receipt and handed over the goo
ds, smiling. Buck was rumbling a low warning in the back of his throat. But the boy only said a cheery thank-you. He strode down the path; he might as well have been whistling.
What could have accounted for this, his ignorance of the obvious, his lack of insight? Was he, too, nearsighted? Was there any part of him that did see what he should have been seeing, I wonder? Did he not read that look in Buck’s eyes that said that Buck would gladly sink his teeth into his thin, very white throat? There had to be a part of him that saw those fangs and the damage they could do. I believe that. We know the truth. Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, we know.
12
I once counted up how many days of Abby’s life I didn’t spend with her because of shared custody. Don’t do this. It hurts too much, first of all. Second of all, as I’ve tried to say before, you can’t count loss. Mark took Abby skiing for the first time, and I never saw it. They went camping, and she caught a fish that I never witnessed her catching. She sprained her ankle when they were on a hike, and I didn’t know they’d been to the emergency room until after they’d returned home. If a child falls in a forest and you aren’t there to see it, do you feel like shit for years after? She goes away for a weekend and comes back with a new haircut. She rides a horse for the first time, away from you. Put a number to that.
Sometime after I first met Ian, I had taken Abby to our suburban neighborhood pool. I had just parked in the busy lot. I was collecting my bag and our towels and was searching for my book, which had slid under the seat, when I looked up and saw Ian there, with Bethy and Kristen. It was unplanned, but it felt like especially good luck, the kind of good luck that makes you secretly believe in fate.
“Look who’s here! Guys! It’s Abby and her mom!” Ian had said. His smile was bright against his summer tan. His sunglasses were on his head. I could tell even from there that he smelled like suntan lotion. I was so happy to see that man.
We hugged hello. Just the day before, we’d spent a few illicit hours wrapped in each other’s arms on a blanket on the university campus. We were secretly in love and I was buoyant with it.
We walked as a group from the parking lot to the pool entrance, Abby and Bethy talking shyly, Kristen dragging a snorkel against the sidewalk. We parted ways as soon as we got in, because Ian was meeting Neal and his kids. But for those few moments, during that walk, as Ian and I each held a stack of towels and toted a bag, I imagined us as a family. A restructured family but still whole. The three girls and us, heading to the pool for a day of fun. This was what it could be like.
I was such an idiot.
Of course, you have your losses, and your children have theirs. In that iconic stepfamily, the Brady Bunch, there were no ex-wives or ex-husbands, and Jan didn’t resent Peter for the attention he got from her own mother, Carol. Marcia, Jan, and Cindy didn’t return home after a visit with their father, sporting new clothes and cellphones, eliciting feelings of jealousy in Greg, Peter, and Bobby. Mike Brady didn’t hate the girls’ father; Carol didn’t think Mike spoiled his boys. Greg didn’t bring up his mother and the good old days every two seconds, inspiring murderous annoyance in Carol. Cindy didn’t start wetting the bed, causing Carol to believe that her daughter was damaged for life and that it was all her fault, and Bobby’s mother didn’t phone every week (usually right during the middle of the Brady family dinner) to argue with Mike about school-picture money or Bobby’s missing shin guards.
Here is a stepfamily recipe: Take your pain and his loss and the children’s anger. Add his ex’s intrusions and your ex’s inconsistencies. Fold into a house with at least one shared bathroom and mutual holidays. Blend.
Anna Jane kisses me goodbye after a quick lunch at the houseboat. I wonder if she is as relieved to get away as that man in the store had been.
“I feel bad leaving you all alone,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“I can wait for Abby to get back.”
“No, no. You’d better get going. Traffic over the bridge …”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.” She gives my arm a final squeeze.
I watch her drive away. I know she’ll turn and wave, and so I wait until she does. I don’t want to wait, but I force myself to. And then, the very second her car turns the corner, I head back. That letter, that lie—I need to do what I can to find out what happened to Ian, and fast.
The party, the drive home, the grim face. The key, the dog, the heels. The cool sheets. The bliss of rest! Goddamn it! Remember!
The cuff link.
I could see why you’d be pissed … An argument.
I do remember. And I know I need to talk to Desiree Harris. Now.
“Dani?”
It’s my neighbor, Maggie Long. She wears a pair of culottes—who knew anyone still had those? She’s run out to meet me in those swingy, skirt-like pants; she even leaves her front door open, she’s in such a hurry to catch me. She’s probably been watching for me out her front window. Her brown hair is pulled back in a butterfly clip. Butterfly clip—the words make me think of a thorax pinched tight between thumb and forefinger. All those beer bottles in the Longs’ recycling bin—the alcohol is beginning to show on Maggie’s face. Alcohol really ages a person.
“We’ve been talking about you,” Maggie says. What had Ian been thinking, going away like this? There was no way everyone would not know his business now. Our business. You want everyone to think you’re perfect, and you do this? You blow it all up in one big move? Was this just a last giant fuck-you to everyone? To me and Nathan and his kids and his father and everyone who’d ever loved him and let him down? The police have visited every neighbor on the dock, of course. We’ve called every person in Ian’s life. Unless he has a very good, innocent reason for being gone (and what might that be? A kidnapping? Amnesia?), we’ll have to leave this place if he ever comes home. Domestic drama in a sprawling suburban neighborhood was bad enough for him; on this small dock, it would be intolerably humiliating. Every time he stepped out the door, there would be Jack or Maggie Long or Mattie or even old blissed-out Joe Grayson, with their awareness of his failures. Every day he walked into his office … He couldn’t live with that. I know that about him. Even if he comes back, our old life is over.
“I appreciate it,” I say to Maggie. “This has been hell.”
“I can’t even imagine.” Maggie shakes her head, but it’s an obligatory move. It’s the comma between two sentences, the pesky have-to before she gets to what she can’t wait to say. “Listen, Jack and I—we were going over that night. Replaying it. You guys went out to that party …”
“We did.”
“Later on, in the early morning, did you hear that boat?”
“No.” My chest clutches up, bracing for some blow.
“I can’t believe you didn’t hear it. It was sitting out there for a few hours! I’d forgotten all about it. This motor—one of those obnoxious ski boats. You know how the sound carries.”
“What did it do?”
“Nothing. I just remember waking up and hearing it, and Jack rolling over and saying, ‘Fuck!’ and thinking it was some stupid kids sitting out there drinking on Daddy’s toy. I put a pillow over my head and went back to sleep.”
I don’t know what to think about this news. I try to make some connection in my head, but there are noisy boats all the time, at all hours. It’s one of the negatives of living on the lake. I stand there with Maggie Long like an idiot, as she looks at me, waiting. I don’t know what she’s trying to tell me.
“Is it possible?” she asks. I shake my own head now. I have no idea what she’s getting at. She sighs. She squinches her nose, as if it’s distasteful to have to say. “Could he have left that way? By boat?”
I feel the air leave me, as if she’s socked me in the gut. I’ve played so many scenarios in my head, but never that one.
“Jack said, ‘His car is there, you know?’ I didn’t want to mention it to you, but Jack said, ‘You gotta tell her. Maybe she hasn’t thoug
ht of it.’ The car doesn’t mean anything, you know, necessarily.”
“It never occurred to me.”
“People get picked up on the docks every day.”
For dinner, for a boat ride to a Husky game. Not to disappear into a new life. I rapidly flip through the images: Ian standing at the dock with his wallet and cellphone, waiting to hop a ride. A boat cruising up, sloshing and rocking our home as I slept like the dead.
“I looked at my clock, too.” Maggie Long’s eyes are bright. This is more excitement than she gets on an ordinary day, doing the books for that accounting firm, or cooking Jack a mediumrare T-bone. God, she looks as excited as Pollux does when I shake the treat box. “I made sure to check the time. One-thirty. I always look at the clock when I hear an unusual sound in the night. You never know when it might be important.”
It’s obvious that she’s imagining herself the star witness at some trial. Thank you, Miss Marple! Thank you, you fucking nosy neighbor! This is as helpful as those psychics who claim they saw the missing person next to a red fence in a yellow field. I wonder if Maggie and Jack had their big revelation after their first six-pack of the night or their second. Maybe the news team could come, and Maggie could be interviewed. She’d be the perfect one to say, “They were just normal people. They kept to themselves. We always thought they were a little too quiet.…” All of her friends could come over to watch KING 5 at six. They could scream and point at the screen when she came on. They’d reassure her that she hadn’t looked fat on TV at all.
I’m losing my mind. This is getting to me. It’s changing me in ugly ways. I am transforming. There is all this anger, which is burning away my soft silk threads. I like Maggie. She’s only trying to be helpful; I know that. My rational self does. The self that began disappearing eight days ago, when Ian did. The self that is utterly gone now that Detective Jackson has my laptop with that letter on it.
