by Merry Jones
Predictably, Dave began snoring, belting out long guttural, grating snorts. Nora couldn’t lie there anymore. She lifted his arm, got up, and stepped past the hulking dark bureaus, the cushioned divan, the crossed slats at the window and the slices of glowing moon beyond. She checked on the girls, inhaling their sweet shampoo when she kissed their foreheads. She tiptoed down the staircase. Maybe she’d make some chamomile tea.
On the way to the kitchen, though, she passed through the foyer. And the console table where Dave had left his wallet, his keys. And his phone.
Sunday, August 12, 2018, 12:40 a.m.
S
he hesitated for a heartbeat, long enough to decide that she wouldn’t hesitate. Dave’s phone would answer all her questions, would tell her which numbers he called most frequently, which ones called him. It would show her the texts he’d received and the ones he’d sent. Unless he’d deleted them, which he might have if he were actually hiding an affair. But then again, he might not have, since he had no reason to think she’d check his phone. Dave trusted her. He’d never consider that she might sneak or pry.
And normally, she wouldn’t. But this situation wasn’t normal. She had to get the absurd cheating idea out of her head. So she wasn’t snooping, exactly. She was simply reaffirming and solidifying her trust.
Nora snatched up the phone and hid it in the fold of her nightgown. She looked over her shoulder, checking to make sure she was unseen. Then, holding her breath, she crept toward the kitchen.
Don’t look for trouble, Marla scolded.
But Nora didn’t waver. What choice did she have? Hadn’t Dave been “working” way too much? Hadn’t he somehow learned definitely new ways of making love?
No, she wasn’t looking for trouble; she’d already found it, was sinking into it. Trouble was already up to her knees. Or her neck. Some body part, it didn’t matter which.
Nora turned on the kitchen lights and, soundlessly, set the phone on the table. She took a seat and, scarcely breathing, stared at the little piece of technology. A convenience. A weapon of treachery.
With jarring clunks, the ice maker deposited fresh cubes into the freezer tray, shattering the silence. Startled, Nora ran a hand through her hair, took a breath. She picked at a hangnail on her middle finger. Scratched at a water stain, wiped crumbs off the table. Why was she hesitating? She would put the phone back where she’d found it. Dave would never know.
Fine. Nora picked up the phone, unlocked it with Dave’s password. Clicked on the phone icon, checked recent calls first. Good God, there were a lot them. So many names and numbers. Of course there were. Dave was a busy man, used his phone for work.
Nora leaned in and studied the screen, scrolling through the list, catching several recurring numbers. Probably clients or other attorneys. Tennis buddies. Then she got up and went to the junk drawer, rifling through rolls of tape and takeout menus until she found a pencil and a notepad. She brought these back to the table and reviewed the list of names and numbers, eliminating men’s names and those she knew were impossibilities—Lois, one of the people Dave and Ted played mixed doubles with, for example, was gay. And Cynthia, a partner at the firm, was about twenty years older than Dave. Several calls, though, were listed not by name but by numbers. And one in particular showed up frequently—seven times, in fact, in the last two days. Nora read the number out loud as she copied it down. Her heart pounded, and her mother’s voice repeated its warning. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
It wasn’t too late. She could still stop. She could assume the number was a client in trouble, someone who’d called because they were about to be arrested or sued. But no matter how her heart beat or her mother’s advice battered her, Nora was determined to pursue the truth. She returned to the menu page and clicked on the text message icon.
The number she’d written down was at the top of the screen, along with a text. She clicked on it. “After I left you, I saw Nora and fought the urge to tell her. But you’re right, it’s better that she doesn’t know.”
Nora’s blood went cold, froze in her veins.
Shivering, she read the message again. Then again, slowly, one word at a time. Then again rapidly. No matter how she read them, the words didn’t change. Nor did their meaning.
The texter had seen Dave secretly. And was someone Nora knew.
Nora’s hands shook as she scrolled to another message. “I called but you didn’t pick up.”
Dave replied that he’d been in court. He asked what was up.
“Got time to see me today?”
He said that he’d make time. Asked where, when.
Nora stopped, bit her lip. He’d make time? The man who was too busy to come home to his family for dinner would make time for this, this secret slimy text-sender who knew her and was setting up trysts with her husband? Nora was blinking too fast, breathing too rapidly. She needed to slow down but couldn’t. Her finger trembled as it touched the phone screen once more.
“My place? Any time. Paul’s still away.”
Paul?
Nora knew only one Paul. The Paul who was Barbara’s husband, the handsome, wealthy, candidate for Senate, Paul. The Paul who traveled a lot, who was often away.
She shivered, hugged herself. Looked away from the phone, up at the wall, the waxy crayon pictures of rainbows, trees, a dog, or maybe a pony. Ellie’s perfectly symmetrical flowers. Their house. One, signed by Sophie with a backward e, showed a family of stick figures: three in red triangular skirts and a larger one with black pants and big hands standing higher than the others. Their family.
She read it again. “Paul’s still away.” Stop it, she told herself. The name didn’t mean anything. There were dozens, hundreds of Pauls, not just the one married to her friend. But who else but her friend would write, “After I left you, I saw Nora”? She continued to scroll. Saw that Dave had agreed to a place and time.
Nora stared at the tiny screen, shivering. She returned to the text she’d read first and read it again and again until her eyes ached: “It’s better that Nora doesn’t know.”
Saturday, August 11, 2018
I
t had to be Barbara. Her friend. Her Barbara. What other woman with a husband named Paul would have seen her and not want her to find out that she was seeing Dave?
Nora looked at the number she’d written on the memo pad. It didn’t look familiar, but of course it wouldn’t. She didn’t know Barbara’s number by heart, didn’t have any of her friends’ numbers memorized. Her phone knew all the numbers. All she had to do was punch up her contact list and touch a name. She’d go get her phone and compare the numbers.
The hallway tilted, off balance. Nora held her hand against the wall to steady herself. Barbara? The day before, she’d shown up late to book club, flushed and distracted. Was that flush the afterglow from a tryst with Dave? Nora heard a thud, a small crash, and registered a flash of white pain as she collided with the hall table. Damn. She hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going, had stubbed her toe on the table leg and knocked her phone and Dave’s keys to the floor. She hopped, cradling her toe, cursing the angry, explosive pain. Had the noise awakened anyone? She crouched, rocking back and forth, waiting for the throbbing to ease, and looked up the dark stairs. The landing was empty. She held still, listening to the night sounds, distant traffic, crickets, humming appliances. But no one startled awake by a thud and a crash. Or a heartbreak.
Nora pictured Barbara kissing Dave with her silicone-enhanced lips. Dave twisting his fingers through her perfectly gold highlights. Barbara panting steamy air from her freckle-dotted, surgically turned-up nose. Everything about Barbara’s body was altered, fake. Maybe Dave was attracted to her height? Barbara was five inches taller than Nora, almost as tall as Dave. Facing him, Barbara would meet him eye to eye, nose to nose, breast to breast, hip to hip. They’d fit together. Oh God. Nora grabbed her ears and squeezed. How was it possible? Barbara? Fucking her husband? When had it
started? Who’d initiated it? Had Dave? Had he approached her at, say, the book club Christmas party, and laughingly, playfully, teasingly whispered some tired line into her ear, maybe that she looked good enough to eat? Had Barbara’s body inspired those new movements of Dave’s tongue, the patient, nuanced motions of his fingers?
Nora let out a small wail, high-pitched like a choking hamster. She stood and hobbled into the kitchen, favoring her sore toe, and stood in front of the refrigerator with her phone in one hand and an empty glass in the other. When had she taken the glass off the shelf? She didn’t remember. Damn. Nora turned, saw a bottle of scotch beside Dave’s phone. She didn’t remember taking out the scotch, either. Damn. Nora shivered. Was she having lapses? Losing it? She was clearly getting ice and making a drink. She opened the freezer, reached into the ice tray, the cubes so cold that they stuck to her fingers, ripping at her skin as they fell, clinking into her glass. Pain shot through her toe as she stepped back to the table and slid into her seat, eased as she raised the aching foot onto the chair beside her. Situated, she reached for the scotch bottle, opened it, poured, and drank. Poured another. Seethed.
She’d first met Barbara in playgroup. Ellie and Barbara’s son, Colin, had been about a year old. Colin had been a bruiser, twice the size of the other babies. Barbara had shown off the biceps she’d developed from lifting him, joking that she was used to handling big men at the casino where she’d worked before marrying Paul.
Paul’s still away.
He’d been a regular at her table. Had tipped well.
It’s better that Nora doesn’t know.
Nora took another swig. Playgroup had turned into a support group for moms. Back then, chasing her toddler and pregnant with Sophie, Nora had hungered for adult companionship. But even in playgroup, Nora had felt different. When all the moms had sat on the floor in a circle, their babies on their laps, singing songs with hand motions, Ellie had squirmed to get off Nora’s lap and sat alone.
Ellie, in fact, had never been inclined toward group activities. When the group was adding muffin ingredients to a huge bowl, Ellie had wandered over to play with building blocks. While the others finger painted, Ellie had drifted over to the dolls. Nora had tried not to worry that her daughter would be friendless forever, that she’d become an outsider like Tommy.
Barbara had been the one to notice Nora’s concerns and offer support and insight. She’d assured Nora that she shouldn’t worry, that Ellie simply wasn’t a follower, that she was independent. Nora had appreciated the comments. But now, looking back, it seemed that Barbara had seemed overly interested in Ellie, including her in whatever she and Colin were doing— puzzles, books, the jungle gym—and upon learning that they lived only a mile apart, making playdates for Colin and Ellie. At the time, Nora had thought Barbara was just being friendly. But now, she wondered. Had Barbara had her eyes on Dave even then? Had she met him before she’d met Nora and been curious about his wife and child? Was it possible that the affair had been going on all these years?
Nora covered her eyes, her jaw tensed. Her stomach churned. No. It wasn’t possible. She ran her fingers through her hair. She fidgeted, trying to stop jumping to conclusions and condemning Barbara prematurely. Lots of women were married to men named Paul. And she hadn’t compared the phone numbers yet, couldn’t be sure that Barbara was actually the woman texting Dave.
Nora stared at the pair of phones, lying on the table side by side, his and hers. The answer was right in front of her. All she had to do was look. Her heart ricocheted against her ribs, bruising itself on her bones. But she had to find out.
She steadied her hand enough to reach for her phone, click the contact icon, and scroll down to her friend’s name. Barbara’s number appeared in big bold digits. Nora bit her lip. She eyed the scotch bottle, the melting ice in her glass.
She stalled, looking around the room, noting the girls’ drawings. Ellie’s dark-colored rainbows. Sophie’s picture of her family, four stick figures hand in hand. It was coming loose from the wall, the tape losing its stickiness. Nora would have to fix it.
Tomorrow.
Finally, she picked up Dave’s phone and looked again at his texts.
The numbers were the same.
Saturday, September 30, 1993
F
or once, Nora was glad to have Tommy beside her in the family room. Pouring over some insect book, he was breathing too loud, making maddening little whistling sounds through his nose. But what mattered was that Tommy was the same as always, wearing the same checkered shirt and khaki pants, emitting his same musty, stale, and faintly sweet smell, sprouting the same dark fuzz on his chin and upper lip, erupting the same red pimples, and growing the same matted patch of dark curls and stubborn cowlick. Tommy’s presence was comforting. As familiar as the aging leather sofa cushions and the tired La-Z-boy chair, as unchanging as the slatted patio and patchy lawn outside the sliding doors, as homey as the aroma of roasting onions and beef wafting down the steps.
Luckily, he didn’t look at her. If he had, he might have noticed her over-bright eyes and red, chafed lips.
From upstairs, Marla called Nora to set the table for supper.
Oh man. What if her mother asked about the red patches around her mouth? Nora began concocting stories about walking into a pole, or how the redness must be an allergy. Or, even better, she could pretend that she had no idea that her skin was red, let alone why. But wait, she probably wouldn’t need to explain, because what were the chances that Marla would even notice? Absorbed in slicing pot roast and mashing potatoes, Marla would only glance at Nora—if she looked at her daughter at all.
Besides, the redness might not be all that noticeable. It must have faded by now. Half an hour had passed since she’d removed the wadded-up tissues from the bra Annie had lent her, unsnapped it and given it back. And that was after she’d scrubbed her face—especially her lips—with the harsh green hand soap from the mall’s ladies’ room, rubbing herself dry with rough paper towels until her skin was raw.
Even now, sitting with Tommy in the family room, her face burned. She touched her mouth, felt the stab of a split lip, the sting of Annie’s laughter when she’d found Nora bent over the sink, scrubbing.
“God, Nora.” Annie had stared. “What are you doing?”
As if Nora had been doing something bizarre and outlandish—which she had been, kind of, scrubbing her face off.
All Nora had known was that she had to get clean, wash off what had happened, and get back to the way she’d been before. So she’d rubbed her mouth again with a fresh paper towel and started over with yet another glop of bitter and unforgiving soap, even though she’d seen in the mirror that the makeup was gone completely. Because even if the makeup had washed away, the kiss, its taste and smell, lingered and tingled, clinging to her still, and so she’d scrubbed, desperate to get it off.
In a way, it was Annie’s fault. No, not in a way. It was totally Annie’s fault. Annie had been the one to suggest getting decked out and going to the mall. Annie had been the one to spot the boys in the food court, two of them, way older than they were—probably as old as Tommy. One was tall and dark-haired and had worn a letter jacket from Cardinal O’Malley High. Annie hadn’t hesitated. She’d grabbed Nora’s arm and headed toward the boys, stopping a few yards away, pretending she hadn’t noticed them.
“I’m dying. We need to find some fun.” She talked just loud enough for the boys to hear.
In a blink, the boys had joined them. They’d stood so close that Nora had had to crane her neck to see the tall one’s face, let alone to talk to him. Not that she’d had anything to say. She’d stood silent and awkward, not sure what was happening or what she was supposed to do. She’d copied Annie, her smile, the cock of her head, the way she put her weight on one foot and thrust her hip out. Nora had laughed when Annie laughed, and lied along with her when the boys asked where they went to school, pretending to be a freshman at Kingsley, three years
older than she really was. Acting as if she knew what she was doing even as her stomach had flipped.
It flipped again as she sat next to Tommy, remembering what had happened at the mall, so she concentrated on the rhythm of his breathing. His stillness. Beside him, she began to relax.
He was probably the same age as those boys.
“Nora!” Marla called again, impatience clipping her words.
On the way to the kitchen, for a second, not much longer, Nora allowed herself to picture Tommy as a normal older brother, someone she could talk to. Someone cool, on the swim team or track, maybe even football. She imagined him as a high school senior, wearing his letter jacket to the mall. But the image of Tommy faded, replaced by that of Rick, the tall, cute one.
Rick’s blue eyes had twinkled when he’d said that he thought he’d seen Nora before. Maybe at Belmont pool? And she’d said something outlandishly stupid, that no, she’d just moved here from Maine. Maine? Really? When she’d said that Annie was actually her first friend in the area, her face had burned with lies and panic. But Rick hadn’t noticed, had asked her how long she’d lived here and whether she missed Maine. But while Nora was inventing an answer, Annie had slid between her and the guy named Rick. Annie had laughed, blinked her eyes, taken over the conversation and, a few awkward moments later, walked off with him, leaving Nora speechless and alone with the other one.
In the kitchen, Nora took plates out of the cabinet and silverware from the drawer. She answered Marla’s questions. Yes, Tommy was downstairs. Yes, he was reading. Yes, she’d remembered to put out the water pitcher. Did her mother really think she’d forget how to do what she did every single night?
Nora pressed her burning lips together and felt a throb. She should have walked away. Should have come home. But, she hadn’t. On unfamiliar turf and without Annie to give her cues, Nora had been paralyzed. She’d stood there with tissues wadded and crumpled into her borrowed bra and borrowed makeup painted on her face, wondering where Annie and Rick had gone, when they’d be back. And what she was supposed to do in the meantime.