Leaving Sophie Dean

by Alexandra Whitaker

  He ardently hoped not.

  * * *

  Sliding Adam’s shirts into the drawer, Sophie’s fingers brushed something—several things, smooth and flat, with corners. She pulled them out and frowned at them, puzzled. Photographs. She carried them to the window, her heart beginning to race. There, in the good light, she examined them slowly, one by one, over and over.

  2.

  Worn out by the anxious nights spent doubting Adam’s courage and devotion, and lulled by the drone of the engines, Valerie dozed on the flight home, which meant she was not looking out the window as the plane came in to land. That was something of a pity, for on the patchwork below, easily visible from her vantage point, a scene was being enacted that would have interested her intensely, had she been able to interpret the events.

  The plane tilts to circle, and the urban sprawl beneath is suddenly revealed, laid out like a magnificent toy town. To the south of the city lies leafy, residential Milton, where the Deans live in one of the many sugar-cube houses centered on adjacent green rectangles. The door to one of the little white houses opens, and a fair-haired figure, barely visible from this height, darts out, rushes down the thread of a path to the street, and disappears into a tiny white car, slamming its door noiselessly. This is Sophie, clutching the photographs in one hand and her bag in the other. The white car pulls away from the curb and twists slowly through the residential lanes, now and then disappearing beneath a canopy of trees. At the end of the road, it merges onto a highway, then crosses an overpass so busy with traffic that it’s difficult to follow its… Oh, yes, there it is, slowing down to turn off and head across another residential neighborhood, stopping frequently at lights. Seen from such a great height, the traffic appears to move slowly, as if accompanied by the peaceful crooning sounds of a solitary child at play with his toy cars. It’s hard to imagine any sense of urgency down there. No one would guess that small white car could contain so much unhappiness.

  The car has reached a grid of streets flanked by modern town houses with small squares of green yard in front and longer strips of green behind, some dotted with red swing sets and slides, some not, some with patios and decks and tubs of flowers, some with laundry drying on lines, some studded with turquoise wading pools, one with a tiny brown shape moving back and forth lengthwise: a penned dog. Sophie’s car stops in front of one of the houses. The car door opens. First her foot appears and then the top of her head as she gets out. She slams the door, opens a little gate, walks in, closes it, runs up the path and up three steps, then knocks on a blue door. She turns back to the car while she waits, twisting her hands, then whirls around when the door opens, and she hands something—the photographs—to a larger woman standing in the doorway. The woman opens her arms, the blond woman rushes into her embrace, and they cling to each other for a moment. Then both disappear into the house, and the little blue door closes behind them.

  * * *

  “Do you know her?” Marion asked, keeping her voice neutral as she refilled Sophie’s coffee cup. The photos were spread out on her kitchen table, four of them, lined up in order. The first showed Adam and a slender, dark-haired woman with a fine face, both smiling politely, sitting side by side in the sunshine at a Parisian café; in the second the dark-haired woman had sprung onto Adam’s lap and they were both laughing, she audaciously and he in delighted surprise; in the third they were kissing, visible only in profile, her chin tilted down, his tilted up; and in the fourth they were smiling at the photographer, cheek to cheek, her arms around his neck, his around her waist. It was a progression, like single frames chosen from a scene in a film: “Exterior – Day – Happy Couple Frolic at Sidewalk Café.”

  “No. I don’t know her. But I know who she is.” Sophie wrapped both hands around the coffee cup, one of those coarse, handmade ones that are painted unevenly a drab blue and feel thick and gritty in the mouth, the sort of cup that overpowers the weak herbal tea it usually contains. Luckily, though, this was strong coffee with hot milk. It tasted terribly good, and Sophie, feeling shaky and wounded after crying, found it safest to concentrate on small, concrete things like this cup and its contents.

  “Who is she?”

  “They work together. She’s new. Been there about six months, I think. I saw her once… at Adam’s office. We didn’t talk.”

  “And how old are these pictures? When was Adam in Paris?”

  “In May.”

  “Four months ago. They didn’t waste much time!”

  “That’s the shirt I gave him for his birthday.” Sophie heaved a long, shuddering sigh. “He looks so happy.” She lowered her head, and tears began to slide again down her cheeks. She let them fall.

  “Oh, come on, now.” Marion swept up the photos and tossed them aside. Out of a cupboard she took a bottle of pills, the prescription kind with a typed label. “Listen. As strange as this might sound to you right now, don’t worry too much. I know it feels like the end of the world, but it’s not. Men do this, Sophie. The classic seven-year itch, so common it’s become a cliché. Even Gerald had his moment, if you can believe that. Here, take this.” She shook a tablet out of the bottle and handed it with a glass of water to Sophie, who took it without question, looking into the glass like a child as she swallowed. “You’ll feel better in a minute. You keep these. They’re just the thing for you right now.” She popped the pill bottle into Sophie’s bag, lying open on the table. “Adam has done a stupid thing. All the same, he is still, deep down, a responsible and sensible man. And he loves you and the boys. You are his life, not”—she waved dismissively at the pictures—“not that. So here’s what you do.” Marion knelt on the floor and took Sophie’s hands in hers. “You put these pictures back where you found them and pretend you know nothing.”

  Sophie pulled her hands away and stared at Marion.

  “It’s for the best, Sophie. I know you’re in shock, and it’s hard to rally, but this is a very important moment. You’ve got to pull yourself together and do the right thing. Your children’s happiness depends on how you react now.”

  Sophie swallowed. “I can’t pretend I don’t know.”

  “Yes you can. Listen, the very fact that he left these pictures for you is a telling sign. All right, he had a fling, like a typical forty-year-old man. But that’s all it was. If it were serious, he would confront you with it. He left these pictures like a guilty boy, as a way of clearing his conscience and begging your forgiveness. So you’ll exonerate him from his crime. It was selfish of him, no doubt about that. He should never have let you know. But he did, so that’s that. And now it belongs to the past. There’s no sense in dwelling on anything that’s in the past, because the past is by definition unchangeable.” Marion was a professional counselor, and sometimes it showed. “All that matters is now. So what do you do now? Nothing. If you simply allow this to blow over, it will. Believe me.”

  “Blow over,” Sophie repeated dully.

  “Put the pictures back. He’ll think you never found them. He’ll sigh with relief and burn them, break off this stupid relationship, and consider it all a very close call. And that will be the end of it.”

  “You think?” Sophie’s lips barely moved. She was feeling light-headed and as though everything were in slow motion. Those pills… what were they? She turned her head slowly on its long, long neck and felt the room dip a little, as if she were sitting suspended in a car in that fairground ride—the whirl-a-bird, it was called.… Whirlybird?

  “I don’t think, Sophie.” Marion cocked her head to one side and smiled. “I know.”

  “Oh, my God. What time is it?” Sophie looked around vaguely, without any real hope of finding a clock. “I have to pick up the boys at school.” She stood up, reached way down for her bag on the table, and gripped the back of the chair for balance. It was hard to remember that this was just a day like any other, with children to pick up at two-thirty. Finding the photos had winded her, like a blow to the stomach. It had hacked her day in two, chopped it like a me
lon, and the dripping, still-rocking halves were now alien to each other, scenes from different lives. She would never again feel as she had this morning. Without those photos she might so easily have had hundreds, thousands more days pretty much like this morning. But now she would never have even one more. And yet, across town in their school, the boys’ day was still normal and whole. The bell would ring at two-thirty, and the gates would open, the same as always. The school gates didn’t know that her life had just been flipped over onto its back and was kicking its little legs uselessly. The school gates don’t care, she thought with what seemed piercing lucidity.

  “Don’t worry about the boys,” Marion said. “I’ll pick them up and keep them here for a while so you can go home and pull yourself together before Adam gets home. Come on, you look all washed out. Let’s put some makeup on you.”

  “Makeup? What are you talking about?” Marion was coming at her with blusher in one hand and a fat little brush in the other, squinting like an artist. “No, stop that. I don’t wear makeup.” Sophie batted the brush to the floor and surprised herself by laughing. “If I go home looking like a clown, Adam will know something is wrong. Or maybe you should! Paint red circles on my cheeks and a bright, happy smile. Help me get into the part!” She swung her bag onto her shoulder and laughed again in confusion. “What’s happening to me, Marion?” Her laughter changed abruptly to tears, and Marion enveloped her in a strong, warm hug.

  * * *

  At the Meritage in the Boston Harbor Hotel, Valerie and Agatha were lingering over their celebratory lunch, sipping their way more slowly through a second bottle of champagne. Agatha was tracing designs on the linen tablecloth with a sharp crust of French bread as she spoke. “I just didn’t want him to jerk you around forever, that’s all. Hell, look at me and Howard. Three years of my life wasted, going from ‘You’re the only one who understands me’ to ‘Can’t you understand she’s my wife?’”

  Valerie laughed and lifted her glass in thanks to her friend, too mellowed by drink and victory to mind hearing about that no-hoper Howard and their squalid affair.

  “Speaking of the wife,” Agatha said, straightening up and looking interested, “how did she take it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know the details yet. He couldn’t talk at the office. We’re getting together tonight. No doubt I’ll hear all about it then. But I’m sure she knew about us already, or at least suspected. She must have been half expecting this to happen. Unless she was deliberately closing her eyes.”

  “The way I see it, you’ve done her a favor. He would have kept on two-timing the pair of you for as long as he could get away with it. At least now she knows where she stands. And she knows her husband is nothing but a rotten, cheating fink.” Valerie raised her eyebrows, but Agatha insisted, “From her point of view, he is. From yours he’s a wonderful man, obviously, the best. But from hers he’s a shit, let’s face it. First he cheats on her, lies to her for months, and reneges on his marriage vows, and now he craps out on his parental duties as well and leaves her flat with two young kids. How old are they, again?”

  Valerie masked her annoyance by feigning a yawn. “I don’t know, Agatha. You’re always asking that. They’re young—three and four, four and five? What does it matter? Oh, this champagne is making me sleepy.”

  “The point is, now she’s free to find someone who really loves her. She may even thank you for this one day. What I mean is, there’s no reason at all for you to feel guilty about what you’ve done.”

  “And I don’t.”

  “Right. And why should you?”

  Valerie shook her finger at Agatha. “Careful, now. No sour grapes.”

  “Oh, come on, Vee, that’s not fair.”

  Valerie yawned again, a real yawn this time, ruffled up her hair, and smiled. “I’d better get home for my beauty rest. Wouldn’t want Adam to regret his choice.” She wrinkled her nose and stretched. Then, “I don’t want dessert. Do you?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  Valerie caught the waiter’s eye and smiled.

  Agatha thought grumpily that it would have taken her ages to get his attention. She was feeling unsatisfied with the way the lunch had gone, not content for it to end just merely on this note of Valerie as the cat who ate the canary. There should be some of that, obviously, but something more as well. More thanks for her pivotal role in all this, for one thing. Come on, if it weren’t for good old Agatha, none of this would ever have happened, and while she didn’t like to take all the credit, what choice was there if Valerie wouldn’t give it to her? And another thing: Just where did this leave her? Okay, she had solved the problem of Valerie’s love life for her. (No small favor!) Now what? What about hearing from Valerie some of the old, Well, I’m all set, now it’s your turn for romance, so let’s talk about you for an hour or two? Agatha decided to get the conversation onto the right track. “So! That’s you settled, living happily ever after with the man of your dreams… with just a little help from your friends. I guess it’s my turn next, wouldn’t you say?” There. That should launch them deep into some juicy girl talk, the luxurious kind, where you kick off your shoes and reach languidly for the bottle to top up your glasses, and you blow smoke rings and laugh huskily, and they close the restaurant around you (then jail you for smoking in public).

  “Yep,” Valerie said, and then to the waiter, “The bill, please.” She stood up, stretched again, and smiled. “Well, now! Wasn’t that fun?”

  * * *

  Adam opened the front door and listened before stepping into the house. It was strangely silent. Sophie had not called the office all day, making it impossible for him to gauge the temperature of the situation from a distance and fine-tune his farewell speech in accordance with the reigning atmosphere, as he had hoped to do. And now this ominous silence at home… But then Sophie called out cheerfully from the kitchen, “I’m in here! How was work?” in her normal way.

  Something seemed to be wrong with his throat; he had to clear it a few times before he could answer cautiously, “All right.” He set down his briefcase softly, as though making a noise might be dangerous, and went into the kitchen, taut and alert—all ready, he realized with shock and shame, to duck. This made him angry, angry at himself and at the ridiculous life he was leading that had reduced him to this slapstick role, and his anger made him glad that this farce of a home life was coming to an end, so he could recover some goddamned dignity!

  Sophie was standing at the sink with her back to him. “Dinner’s nearly ready. Would you like a drink?”

  “I’ll get it. And one for you, too.”

  “Thanks.” She did not turn around when he came back with drinks but nodded at the counter beside her. “Just put it there.”

  Adam drank deeply and studied her from behind: long neck, silky ponytail, T-shirt, apron strings dangling over her jeans, small waist, shapely bottom, black sandals. Another day he might have walked up behind her and hugged her, nestling his crotch against her bottom, kissing her neck and tickling her, making her laugh. Instead he was going to leave her. He felt no regret; the idea merely passed through his mind as a fact. With a curious detachment, he registered the fact that he was at a crossroads in his life and that his actions in the next few seconds would take him off in a new direction. He studied her back a while longer, considering that, and then he asked, “How… did your day go?”

  “Oh, you know. A bit of this… and a bit of that.”

  If only she would stop playing games, stop faffing about in that damned sink, face him, and hear him out! But what if— Good God! It was only then that it occurred to Adam that Sophie might not be merely stalling—that it was possible she hadn’t found the pictures. The blood rushed out of his stomach at the idea of having to deliver his farewell speech “cold.” He dithered for a moment, then decided that the sensible thing would be to go up and see if the photos were still there. If they were gone, he would know she knew, and if they weren’t… well, he’d think about that later. He muttered somet
hing to her averted face about being right back and climbed the stairs two by two.

  The moment Sophie was alone, she sagged over the sink, exhausted by the effort of keeping her voice cheerful and her conversation inconsequential. She hadn’t known that lying could be physically tiring. The small part of her that remained a neutral onlooker, even in this intensely trying and emotional moment, took note of that fact to ponder it later. She doubted she would be able to make it through the evening without further chemical help. But where had she left those pills of Marion’s?

  Adam came quietly back down the stairs holding the photographs against his thigh, unsure of how to proceed. When he stepped into the kitchen, he surprised Sophie in the act of furtively gulping down a pill. She gasped and swung around to snatch the pill bottle out of sight, and in that moment Adam registered two things: that the bottle contained some sort of prescription drug (unheard of for Sophie) and that her face was pale and blotched from crying. So she had found them; he hadn’t been sure. She, in her brief glimpse of him, saw the photographs pressed guiltily to his leg. Pills, tears, photographs; the pretense was over.

  “Where are the boys?” he asked quietly.

  “At Marion’s,” she said, her voice coming out in a whisper. She swallowed and added in a stronger voice, “They’ll be home soon.” She stared at the kitchen floor, noticing the details of its pattern for the first time, an intricate geometric design. How sad—a piece of kitchen linoleum yearning to be the Alhambra.

  Adam cleared his throat, and like a high diver springing from the board and hoping someone has filled the pool, he said, “Sophie, this isn’t the life we wanted for ourselves. I don’t know what happened, but somehow it’s all gone very wrong. We have nothing to talk about anymore, nothing in common. We’ve come to a dead end. All we can do now is cut our losses. I’m… I’m sorry it’s come to this. But we have no option.” There was a stilted, rehearsed sound to all this that he was unable to avoid, and Sophie lifted her head to stare at him uncomprehendingly through the flow of trite phrases. “I’ll see to it that the children don’t suffer from… from this. I’ll spend as much time with them as possible. And of course I’ll provide for them, and for you, financially. You’ll have no worries on that score.” Pale and shaken, Sophie nonetheless remained dry-eyed. Heartened by how well she was taking it, Adam continued with more confidence. “What we have to do now is think of the boys. As responsible adults, we can—we must—put our own disappointment to one side and concentrate all our energy on our children and their well-being. It’s important that their lives be as little disrupted as possible. They need continuity, and it’s our job to see they get it: same house, same friends, same school. It goes without saying that I’ll leave you the house and everything in it. I’ll take only my personal belongings and half of our savings.” He paused for a moment. Then, “Well… there’s nothing to be gained by prolonging this. I’m… going out now. I’ll be back later tonight to pack up a few things. I’ll pick them up tomorrow after work. I think the best thing to tell the boys—for now—is that I’m going on a little holiday.”