The Idea of Him

by Holly Peterson

  This night, of all nights, the kids were winding each other up, so much so that Lucy threw up her dinner all over my bedroom carpet after Blake sent his hundredth verbal missive her way, including whispering in her ear that the Tooth Fairy wasn’t coming because she wasn’t . . . I stopped him again just in time. So much for their joyful innocence healing me; they almost put me under that night.

  As I placed the dirty laundry in the hamper in the kids’ room, with my back to Lucy just six feet behind me, my tears flowed. Especially at night when I was tired, when I let myself slide down the “I’m scared to be on my own” side of the slope rather than the “I will make it through this” side, the fall felt impossibly treacherous. No hot pants or shield would make any difference once the descent began, and I could feel myself slipping the moment I hugged my kids that night.

  Lucy was too intuitive to let me hide my red eyes. “Mommy. Why are you sad? Where’s Daddy?”

  Did my five-year-old just say “Where’s Daddy?” because she was looking for another adult to help me, because it’s unsettling to see a grown-up cry? Or because she instinctively knew that Daddy was the reason for the tears?

  “It’s allergies, honey.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s something itchy in the air that makes people’s eyes water.”

  “It’s in the air?”

  “Yes, honey. It’s called pollen.” I couldn’t even finish the word without my voice sounding weak and unconvincing.

  “Mommy. Why does the pollen make you so sad?”

  I was so anxious, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. How was I ever to leave my cheating, lying husband, find a new home, pay for that home, and, during it all, keep strong enough for Lucy and Blake? I lay down in the bottom bunk next to her.

  “Mommy, why are you crying?” Lucy wasn’t buying the pollen story.

  “Honey.” I had to stop this. I had to pull it together for her. “Mommy just feels frustrated. Like you do when your day isn’t working out the way you want. Like when Samantha canceled her play date last week and you were looking forward to it.”

  She nodded. Getting her engaged in a miniconversation stemmed my tears and fears for a moment.

  “You remember when we had all the ingredients out for your new ice cream maker?”

  “Yes. The strawberries and milk.”

  “Yes, honey. And the cream and the gelatin and everything the instructions said all laid out on the table and she didn’t even call to say she couldn’t come? And you so much wanted to do it with her and you were so stubborn and waited and waited and wouldn’t let me just go ahead and make it with you?”

  The fury and frustration of that day flooded back into her little psyche.

  “Well, that’s how I feel, because I was counting on not being sick with pollen and I have so much to do that I feel frustrated and angry like that. Just like you, the whole plan isn’t going to work out, so Mommy’s a little sad.”

  Try obliterated.

  She lay back and stared at the ceiling. I thought maybe for the first time in her life she was considering the outrageous, far-off possibility that her mother wasn’t just a dispenser of food and fun and warmth and hearth, but that maybe she was a person with her own feelings. She kept concentrating and squinting her eyes and nodding.

  “You are that upset?”

  “Maybe not as bad, but close, honey.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot. Why aren’t you crying more then?”

  “Because I have to be strong for you, honey. That’s what mommies are for. To take care of their children, which I will always do.”

  She nodded and took this in. She squinted again as if to help her concentrate. But this time her upper and lower lids were so close together that they simply couldn’t resist the pull to touch each other and stay stuck closed. She was fully out in twenty seconds. I could have tripped over a table with a complete tea service that went crashing to the floor and she wouldn’t have budged.

  Blake wasn’t so easy. He was curled up in a ball on my bed with his huge brown bear, worn out from three years of being his favorite stuffed animal, lodged between his legs.

  I wiped the smudged mascara from under my eyes with my fingertips before I lay beside him, flat on my back, hands clasped together on my stomach. These days, Blake often wouldn’t let me snuggle him until after a little conversation had warmed him up. But his impending slumber increased his need for his mom’s caresses.

  “Why was it the worst day of school?”

  “The kids played dodgeball and Jeremy told them all not to pick me. And it’s like everyone follows what he says.”

  “Everyone is that scared of him?”

  “Yeah, everyone but William. William just wants to play soccer with the girls and two other boys.”

  “Well, can you just join them for this week? Then Jeremy will see you don’t care about his rules. If he can’t bully you, then it takes his power away.”

  “I don’t know.”

  I smoothed down his hair. “Try for me, honey. Please. Do it for me.”

  “I just want to play football. No one wants to play football.” Then he turned his body on his side facing the other way and I curled up behind him.

  “I know it’s so hard, honey. Can you go to sleep?”

  “Where’s Dad?” he asked, as if he’d been holding the question in.

  “He’s at a dinner,” I lied. I didn’t even know where he was.

  “Why is he out all the time?” Blake asked softly.

  “Um, I don’t know, honey. I think, as we have talked about, the economy is really bad so companies are suffering still so the advertisers aren’t willing to give him ads. Daddy has explained this. When he is out at night, he is usually taking out people who work at the Vitamin Water company or the Gap to get them to place ads in Meter. After he takes them out to dinner, it’s easier for him to ask them if they want some ad space. Unfortunately, he has to do that more now because people aren’t spending as much . . .”

  “Are you getting divorced?”

  “What?” I sat up faster than a jack-in-the-box and grabbed his little shoulders, then pinned them down on the bed. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh no. You said something. You asked me a question, Blake, and I want to talk about everything with you.” I had absolutely no idea how he’d gotten to that question. Wade and I rarely fought in front of the kids, and there were no signs we could have possibly left that would lead our son to deduce this.

  “Why did Daddy sleep on the couch for two nights last week in his study? Right after Christopher’s dad slept on the couch, his parents got divorced.”

  Okay. Maybe we did leave signs.

  I didn’t know how to answer this question so I tried the truth.

  “Because Daddy and I got into a big fight, and it took us a few days to make up.”

  “Are you made up?”

  That was a harder question than the first one. “Your daddy and I sometimes argue about things. He and I are very different. Sometimes it takes us a few days to work it out. Just like with your friends.” I started massaging Blake’s forehead to get him to pass out and hopefully cut short this line of questioning.

  “How come Dad isn’t around as much? He used to rush home after work.”

  I felt relieved to be focusing on this tangent. “I tried to explain, honey. Everyone is saving money. We skipped our Florida trip last Christmas and stayed here in New York; just last week we talked about having dinners at home and not wasting money going out. Everyone in this country is spending less than they did. Now remember, we are so lucky to be doing much better than many people, and a lot of families are having a terrible, terrible time suffering with this economy, much worse than us.

  “But no doubt Father has to work harder than before to convince people to buy advertisements because all those companies have less money because people are spending less. His clients don’t have as much money as they used to, so he has
to take them out and really be nice to them to try to get them to see how great his magazine is.”

  “So is that where he is tonight?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  We lay quietly together for a little while. I buried my eyes in the crook of my arm and bit my lower lip so I wouldn’t lose it again. If I started crying, Blake would instantly know that it had to do with his line of questioning. I couldn’t believe things were this bad, that my home life had spiraled to the point where my kids were wondering about divorce. Blake would never drill me the way Lucy could, even though she was four years younger. He could wander from Eli Manning to the latest Xbox FIFA game to mean Jeremy to divorce without focusing more on one or the other. Little boys’ messy brains were like that.

  Blake’s eyes fluttered a few times before shutting, and while I waited for his breathing to even out, I held him tight. This whole week had rattled me in a way that only holding my children could cure. I turned the light out and lay there, still, alongside my son, gaining strength just from my pact to protect them.

  18

  Guests at the Masquerade

  “Goddamn it, Allie!” Murray let off steam behind a rope that cordoned off the gaggle of reporters in a chic downtown gallery space. They were covering the premiere of The Lost Boys of Sudan, a documentary for the Fulton Film Festival. “How many times did I tell you I want the reporters to say hello to Eri and take her photo? I can’t be the one to do that, it looks self-serving.”

  Did Murray not know that every action he ever took in life was self-serving?

  “My wife wants her photo in the society pages. She’s gorgeous; why can’t they just do that for us? It’s not like we don’t feed these reporters good leads every day; it’s the least they could do. Instead they keep asking me about Max Rowland.”

  I pressed my hand against my forehead. “My BlackBerry has been blowing up with news alerts all day about Max Rowland’s potential takeover of Luxor.” Of course it didn’t escape me that the computer company Luxor’s annual report had been hidden in my husband’s desk, but I had so much work for tonight I couldn’t focus fully on that noncoincidence. “Murray, Max is known as a criminal. Everyone knows you’re advising him on his comeback, so they’re going to go after you till he gets here.”

  I’d learned long ago to tell Murray the truth or he’d step all over me. “I’m sorry, Murray, you have to be realistic. We’ve gone through a very serious economic downturn in this country. Wall Street is up, but people’s jobs are still on the line. This whole event tonight is supposed to be focused on helping lost young souls in the world’s most brutalizing war zone, and you’re sending the opposite message. A criminal banker is fresh out of prison and the first thing he does is consider planting a stake in a hot, growing company. And when he says this, the stock climbs to record heights.” I pressed him. “Did you even know about the potential Luxor position?”

  “Of course I didn’t.” He twitched uncomfortably and scratched his cheek. “I would have told you last night so we could prepare for it. He hasn’t taken the company over yet; he’s just considering it.”

  He was lying, and at that moment, I started, just a little, to trust Jackie, the woman who slept with my husband, more than I did my boss of ten years.

  “Well, it looks like Max Rowland is up to his old tricks: somehow the public will suffer and he’ll keep gaining. You are seen as his enabler, like it or not, because you’re paid to go out there and defend and protect him.”

  “That’s just great, Allie, hoist me onto my own fucking petard, and make sure the press witnesses the execution. You’re a great help.” He sneered and looked at his watch.

  I ripped my sweater off to cool myself down before I spoke. “Murray, Delsie Arceneaux was on CNBB all afternoon blowing it up as if it might be the biggest takeover so far this year. She was so proud she’d broken the story—you could see it all over her face. She was so smug, it wasn’t normal.”

  Murray started scratching his face like a dog with fleas, something he did when he was piling on the world-class level of BS to clients. “Delsie is so fuckin’ pleased with herself all day no matter what she does. I just want my wife taken care of with the society reporters right now or she’s going to kill me.”

  People were now fully packed into the front lobby of the Paul Kasmin Gallery on Tenth Avenue in the mid-Twenties for a quick glass of bubbly before tonight’s Fulton Film Festival screening next door. At the bottom of the red carpet, Max Rowland and his wife, Camilla, finally arrived. They stepped out of their Mercedes, he in a dapper bespoke suit with a kelly-green-striped tie and coordinating green paisley pochette and she in a bubble-gum-pink St. John dress with matching pink pumps, as usual channeling more Vegas than New York. She looked like she had run through a cloud of cotton candy and was just emerging out the other side.

  Camilla held her husband’s Texan arm proudly as they walked the red carpet gauntlet up to the huge gallery front space: their first public outing into New York social life, photographers present, since his incarceration. “Max, Max!” they yelled under the stars of a warm May New York night. “Tell us about Luxor! Are you trying to be the new King of the Street?”

  It’s pretty easy to get cynical and assume all Max’s money kept Camilla loyal to him, especially since she was sporting diamond studs in her ears the size of headlights. But observing the way she held his elbow as he lumbered his weathered, but manly, frame up to the entrance, I chose to believe she loved him when he was poor and had a little idea for a parking garage in downtown Dallas right out of college, and that she still loved him the same when he began to run every major garage, hangar, and terminal across the land. You didn’t park anything with wheels in this country without Max Rowland taking a cut. And now it seemed he’d be taking a slice of Luxor, one of the hottest computer networking companies in the land as well.

  We watched the madness from the cordoned-off area in a side tent. The invited guests got their passes from beautiful young things sitting at tables with the letters of the alphabet displayed on cards reading A-I, J-Q, R-Z.

  A few well-known New York socialites posed on the red carpet for photos to show how engaged they were in policy issues facing the African continent. But they jumped right back into their waiting cars without any pretense of actually attending our Sudan screening once the society photographers were done clicking.

  Murray turned to a dogged reporter who had jumped the rope. “No comment,” he said, throwing the woman a charming, kinglike smile before turning to me and snarling.

  Jackie’s text came back into my thoughts: whatever he was about to lose, Murray did seem more anxious than during his “normal” big-baby freak-outs. I looked everywhere for Jackie to no avail.

  I checked my phone and saw a text.

  TOMMY: You wanna work out a few of your issues later?

  I felt a bright, guilty smile appear on my face and hoped no one was looking my way. This Tommy guy could cheer me up from anything, even a three-hundred-pound toadlike man hopping around in a rampage. I bit my lip and texted back.

  ME: You don’t have that kind of time.

  My phone pinged again.

  TOMMY: I definitely have that kind of time.

  “Hey, babe.”

  I looked up from my crush to find Wade standing over me with his vodka and cranberry half finished, all chipper amid all the potential social dragons he could slay. He was like the old Wade that night, but playing with an anachronistic full deck from the boom time, all glossy paper 1990s. Facing me, he massaged the back of my neck with one hand.

  “Whoa.” He massaged more. “Reeeeelax.”

  I swatted his hand. “Wade! Oh, God. Stop!”

  “What’s your deal?”

  “Sometimes, especially if I am running an event with two hundred fifty people, I want to be on edge. It keeps me on my game. The adrenaline makes me more on point.”

  “Chill, honey. It’s just a film screening.” Wade grabbed both my arms and looked deep into my
eyes and said to me, like I was a kindergarten friend of Lucy’s, “Your client’s going to do fine, honey. No biggie.”

  I spied a way out across the room and pasted on a smile. “Of course you’re right. Hey—there’s Bruce Cutter smoking in the corner. Didn’t you say you wanted him for a cover?” Bruce was standing in the shadow of a small terrace, chain-smoking, and not uttering a word. In Hollywood this meant he was a genius.

  Wade turned and fled toward the Ryan Gosling wannabe before the rest of the words were out of my mouth. I wanted to smack Wade for obscuring everything, or trying to. He had no doubt betrayed “us” again in some form or fashion because things were going on around me that he was lying about. He would do that in the future. I would either smile through or ignore the signs in the future. I would feel angry and lost and alone in the future. I would tear up photos again in the future that represented romantic ideals.

  I suddenly felt crowding around me a sea of whining VIPs, like cartoon toddlers with tears sprouting from their eyes, in full-blown panic over the impending grown-up game of New York movie premiere musical chairs. They also wanted to suck every last thing out of me they could.

  “Allie! Do I or do I not have a seat?” An ad executive named Jimmy Marton howled at me like I was his nursemaid.

  “There are three hundred seats in the theater, Mr. Marton. You will find one, no problem.” Cushy seats, in fact, which rocked a little for extra comfort. “You can take your drink in there with you. I promise you’ll find . . .”

  “Do I have a reserved seat?”

  Caitlin pushed her little gymnast body between us. “It takes starring in a movie, or being a subject of a documentary, or being a sponsor of the festival. I’m sorry, Mr. Marton, I wasn’t aware that you were . . .”

  “Neither. I got it. I just figured with my . . . never mind,” Jimmy said with a huff and turned to face the throngs.

  “Nothing changes,” I told Caitlin. “Seventh-grade cafeteria theory. I can’t stay for this all night, by the way; I’ve got way too much work to do back at the office. You’ve got it under control, right? Or I would never leave . . .”