“Dunk the dingus?” Lorraine said, but Jesse spoke over her.
“It’s disgusting,” he said. “The way men treat women like commodities, dating the same way you’d go shopping for a car or a watch. Lorraine has two daughters and I love them like my own. It kills me to think of men seeing pictures of them on their screen, then swiping yes or no.”
Lorraine’s throat tightened at the mention of her girls. Tanya, of course, was married and not on any such app. But she knew it was Nessa he was talking about. Jesse had a soft spot for Nessa; mostly because Nessa had a soft spot for him. She knew that Jesse brought Nessa up to punish Lorraine, to make her jealous. And that was what he was doing right now. Jesse was angry at Lorraine. She could feel it with every ounce of her body, the same way you feel nausea coming on. He was angry at her for dragging him to this party; for having once dated Raymond; for having the nerve and the wherewithal to have gone on a dating site fifteen years ago.
“Oh, but you know the girls do it, too!” Elizabeth went on. “They swipe just like the boys do. It takes two to tango.” She glanced at Raymond and grinned. “Or should I say, two to Tinder.”
Raymond laughed and Lorraine watched Jesse eye him sarcastically.
“You know,” Elizabeth said, turning to Lorraine. “You should tell your daughters about a dating website called Bumblebee. Or Bumbler. Something like that. The rule is the lady has to contact the gentleman first.” She smiled pointedly at Jesse. “How do you like that for switching things up?”
* * *
—
THEY LEFT SHORTLY AFTER, but not before Jesse downed two more beers and Lorraine hid in the bathroom for ten minutes and smoked a cigarette out the window. She found mouthwash in Diane’s medicine cabinet and rinsed her mouth out, and then she went back out and poured herself a few more sips of wine to cover up the mint.
They were silent on the walk from the house back to the car and Lorraine knew this was a bad sign.
“Are you okay to drive?” she asked once they reached the car, sensing before the words left her mouth that they would be the ones to ignite their inevitable fight.
“Jesus, Lorraine,” Jesse burst back, red-faced. “If you don’t want to get in the car with me, then have one of your fucking friends drive you home.”
“I’ll get in the car with you,” she said quickly.
As Jesse started the car and pulled away from the curb, she imagined a scenario in which she did not get in the car with Jesse and she did, in fact, ask one of her friends to drive her home. She imagined asking Raymond.
Jesse sped the entire way, going fifty miles an hour in mostly twenty-five-mile-an-hour districts. He plowed through stop signs and screeched around curves. At one point, Lorraine asked him to slow down, but this only made him drive faster, so she shut up for the rest of the way. By the time they got home she was crying. She ran from the car into the house and Jesse stormed in after.
“You knew that guy was going to be there?” he demanded.
They were standing in the living room, Lorraine on one side of the couch and Jesse on the other.
“Raymond?”
“Who the fuck else would I mean?”
“No, I didn’t know, Jesse,” she said. “I haven’t talked to the man for fifteen years.”
“You looked pretty cozy for two people who haven’t seen each other for fifteen years.”
“It was small talk, Jesse. We were making small talk!” She held out her hands. “What do I need to do to convince you that I love you and only you. You’re my husband. You’re the only person I want.”
Jesse stared at her, squinting, and for a moment it looked like he might be hearing what she was saying, like he might be reconsidering the past hour and seeing it for what it was. But then he smiled oddly and said, “Was he a good fuck?”
“What?”
“Well, was he?”
“God, Jesse. We never slept together.”
Jesse scoffed and traipsed around the couch, so he was just inches away from her. “Yeah, right.” Up close he smelled like beer and sweat and deodorant.
“We didn’t.”
“Like hell you didn’t. I know you, Lorraine. Just tell me.” Then he smiled. “Or what—was he, like, really small or something? And you’re trying to protect him? Or what? Limp dick? What’s his deal?”
“Not everything is about sex, Jesse. We went on a few dates. Four, probably, max. I never saw his dick.”
“Did you show him your tits?”
“Fuck this,” she said, turning away, and then he swung at her.
It had been a while since Jesse had done that. Months had gone by—almost half a year. Lorraine had convinced herself that that part of Jesse had gone away. He’d outgrown it, or maybe it was she who had changed. She’d grown stronger or more stable. A less easy target.
But there they were again. She fell to the floor and Jesse climbed on top of her, panting. He restrained her with one arm. With the other, he put pressure on her neck, not so hard that she wasn’t able to breathe, but enough that she was terrified. It was the first time he’d done that, restricted her air passage, and she panicked, gasping and thrashing beneath him. “You’re too old for him anyway,” he said then, calmly. “No man is going to want you anymore.”
When he finally let go, at first all she felt was relief. She gulped in air and rolled out from underneath him. She tried to say something, but she found that her vocal cords ached, that her entire body was trembling. She went upstairs and climbed into bed.
That was when the sorrow sank in.
* * *
—
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Jesse did what he always did afterward: he turned gentle. A soft place for Lorraine to land. This time, though, Lorraine found herself thinking about Raymond. She imagined what life was like for him and Elizabeth: Raymond coming home each evening from his chiropractic practice; Elizabeth coming home from whatever she did all day. The two of them making dinner and watching television. Elizabeth chatting in that loud, excited way of hers, Raymond listening closely and chortling. She could see they enjoyed each other, loved each other. She couldn’t imagine that they were intimate, though. She wondered if Raymond was the type to cheat on his wife, though the thought of it made her sad. Besides, her attraction to Raymond—if she could even call it that—wasn’t really about sex.
She found him on Facebook. It was her secret account, the one she used on her work computer. Jesse didn’t want her to have a Facebook. He grew too jealous, too suspicious of any new Facebook friends, so she kept it from him and used it sparingly; he didn’t know it existed. Her Facebook name was Lorrie Sal—Sal for Sally—and she didn’t have any pictures of herself, or identifying information available to the public. Her profile picture was a photograph she’d taken on her phone one afternoon, taking Sally on a walk. A yellow flower, sprouting up from some vines crawling up a fence. She’d liked the surprise of the flower, the unlikeliness. She’d actually shown the photo to Jesse, though he’d barely glanced at her iPhone screen. “Artsy” was all he’d said, mockery in his voice.
Raymond’s profile picture was of him outdoors at some sort of tourist attraction. He was wearing sunglasses and a backpack and was pointing to something outside of the frame. She imagined Elizabeth behind the camera instructing him to smile and point. Lorraine friended him and, after some deliberation, sent him a private message. “Hi Ray!” she wrote. “Great bumping into you after all these years. I hope it’s not another 15 years before I see you again! xx, Lorrie.”
Every workday she checked her account for a response. After a week of silence, she told herself that maybe he wasn’t an active Facebook user. He never posted anything, after all. But when a month passed, and he still hadn’t responded, Lorraine came to the conclusion that any interest in her that she’d picked up on that afternoon at Diane’s party—romantic or platonic—she must have i
magined. She didn’t know how this was possible, but she felt heartbroken.
Then one Thursday morning, she came to work and she had a notification. Heart racing, she clicked on it: “Raymond Schild liked your photo.” She clicked further, and her photograph of the flower on the fence popped up. Below it was Raymond’s name with a little thumbs-up. For the rest of the day, she carried around a warmth in her chest.
* * *
—
IT WASN’T EVEN a week after that when Selma, Lorraine’s boss at Stand Together, stuck her head into the kitchen where Lorraine was helping to prepare for that day’s lunch. “Someone’s up front to see you,” she said.
“Who?” Lorraine asked, surprised.
Selma shrugged and made a face, indicating her irritation. Pop-in visits weren’t encouraged. Lorraine nodded and checked in with the other staff on lunch duty and followed Selma back toward the front office.
At first, when Lorraine saw Elizabeth, Raymond’s wife, sitting in the waiting area, a pang of anxious excitement ran through her. Her first, albeit crazy, thought had been: maybe Raymond wanted to leave Elizabeth for Lorraine and Elizabeth was there to chew her out. But when Elizabeth stood, a concerned look on her face, Lorraine knew instantly this wasn’t the case.
“Lorraine, I’m Elizabeth, from—”
“I know, I remember you.”
“I’m sorry to bother you at work,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t know the best way to reach out to you.” Her preschool-teacher voice was largely subdued.
“That’s okay.” Lorraine glanced at Selma, who was watching them closely.
“Use the conference room,” Selma said to Lorraine, sharply. Lorraine knew she was treading on thin ice.
Lorraine led Elizabeth to the conference room down the hall and closed the door. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Elizabeth leaned over the table. “Raymond got a strange Facebook message the other day from ‘Lorrie Sal.’”
Lorraine could feel the start of a deep blush. “What?”
Elizabeth pulled out her phone. “We figured out pretty quickly that it wasn’t you and that it was probably your husband.” She handed Lorraine her phone.
Raymond, I want to see you. Meet me at the Compton Inn & Suites on Friday at 5 p.m. I’ll be in the lobby waiting for you. Don’t tell anyone else about this message.
“This isn’t me,” Lorraine said, at once relieved and sick to her stomach.
“I know,” said Elizabeth. “We thought there was something suspicious with this account. Look at it—there’s no posts on it or anything. We realized it was a different Lorrie Sal account from yours. A double.”
Lorraine clicked around and saw that other than the photo of the flower and the fence, the account was virtually blank; it had no friends or posts or other pictures.
“It was such a bizarre message,” Elizabeth went on. “After Ray got it, he showed it to me, and I showed it to Diane, and Diane told us that, well, Jesse had a history of being—” Elizabeth paused and looked at Lorraine carefully. “Manipulative.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Lorraine said. She was mortified. “I’m not sure how . . .” She trailed off.
“Lorraine, I’ve been noticing a car parked outside our house quite a bit. It’s a black Honda Civic with a license plate 134 GB2. I’m almost certain it’s your husband’s.”
“I—”
“If he doesn’t let up I won’t hesitate going to the police,” Elizabeth said, the way a parent would speak to a misbehaving child. “You might consider going yourself.” She leaned in and lowered her voice. “I have to ask. Does he hurt you?”
“No,” Lorraine said automatically.
“Even so. Impersonating you and sending out messages like this.” Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “I can’t imagine it feels very good.”
Lorraine stiffened. It gave her a strange feeling, thinking about Elizabeth and Raymond and Diane talking about her marriage. She wished then, with a sudden intensity, that she’d never sent that idiotic message to Raymond. It was humiliating, that Elizabeth knew about it, that Diane probably did, too. “I can handle my marriage on my own,” she said to Elizabeth. “I’ve been in it for ten years.”
Elizabeth nodded curtly. “Well. I wanted to let you know.” She hesitated for a moment. “I’m not sure what he’s up to, but it doesn’t seem good.” Then she stood. “I’ll let you get back to work, Lorraine.”
Lorraine stood, her heart thwacking miserably. “In the future, I can’t have visitors here. It’s not allowed, and it doesn’t make me look good.”
* * *
—
THAT EVENING WHEN LORRAINE got home, Jesse’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and she was relieved. She didn’t know how she was going to confront him about this.
Lorraine went inside, fed Sally, and started washing the dishes from breakfast that morning. When Jesse came up behind her, only a few minutes later, she barely had time to think, it all happened so quickly. He grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed her face down hard into the kitchen sink. Her nose, hitting the counter with such blunt force, screamed in pain. He did it again, six or seven times, each time harder than the last.
She felt her teeth slam up against her lips, her lips slam up against the steel of the sink basin. There was the cracking of several teeth coming loose, and then the scattering sound of teeth falling into the sink. Her nose was gushing blood. It seemed to happen fast and slow at the same time. The pain was terrible, but it was the amount of blood, and the feeling of not knowing when it would end, that frightened Lorraine more than anything else. He was screaming at her about Raymond’s car.
Then it stopped. Lorraine sank to the floor, holding her face, as though if she didn’t, the whole thing might fall off. Everything was slick with blood—her face, her hands, her clothing. She didn’t know where any of it was coming from. When she opened her eyes, all she saw was the red-black of it. She lost consciousness.
When she woke up, several minutes later, she was still leaning against the cabinet, and Jesse was holding ice to her face. “Hospital,” she managed to say. He didn’t respond and she stood, wincing, and he didn’t stop her. She found her teeth in the sink, stained pink with blood, and put them in her pocket. Then she drove herself, one-handed, to the emergency room. With the other hand, she held a wad of paper towels to her mouth. She didn’t cry because she couldn’t afford to. One of her eyes was already swollen shut.
At the hospital, adults in the waiting room pretended not to stare at her, but children just looked, so Lorraine closed her eyes. She didn’t have to wait very long to be seen. They attended to her wounds and took X-rays of her face. She was told she was lucky her nose wasn’t broken. She remembers smiling at the word lucky. The most damage had been done to her mouth. They told her she was going to need to see a dentist and an orthodontist. She was there for five hours, and by the time she left, her face had morphed into something unrecognizable—her bruises had changed from reds and pinks to eggplant purple and different shades of yellow, like some sort of deranged sunset. The size of her face had doubled. When she saw her reflection in her rearview mirror, she turned away.
* * *
—
A FEW DAYS LATER, sitting in the dentist’s office together, with three of Lorraine’s teeth in a Ziploc bag, Jesse admitted to Lorraine that he had made a fake Facebook account and sent Raymond a message impersonating her.
“What would you have done if he’d shown up at the hotel?” Lorraine asked, cotton-mouthed and woozy on pain medication.
Jesse looked down at his lap. “I would have killed him.”
She would leave him, she decided then. She had to. “Jesse.” Her s’s were th’s.
He looked at her.
“Look at me.”
“I’m looking, Lorrie.”
“No. Look what you did to me.” She started t
o cry then, and when he reached for her she shook her head and pushed him away.
He told her that he had discovered Lorraine’s secret Facebook account and figured out a way to hack it. He’d seen her message to Raymond, and since then, he’d been following both of them—Raymond and Lorraine—certain that he’d catch Lorraine cheating. That day when Elizabeth had driven to Stand Together to talk to Lorraine, she’d driven Raymond’s car; and when Jesse had spotted Raymond’s car in the parking lot of Stand Together, he’d grown irate.
Lorraine missed ten days of work. When she returned, still bruised and swollen, and with braces on her teeth, Selma called Lorraine into her office. She didn’t waste any time. “Lorraine, I’m sorry to have to do this, but this is no longer working out.”
Lorraine’s stomach sank. “Is it because of all the sick time?” she asked. “Because I can explain—”
“No.” Selma cut her off. “You’ve been off your game for a while, Lorraine. You’re only half here. With clients like ours, I need you all here, all the time. I need one hundred percent. Not seventy-five percent, not fifty percent.”
“I can do that,” she said. “I can give one hundred percent.”
Selma shook her head. “I’ve already made up my mind.” Then she sighed and for a moment she looked truly sorry. “I wish it wasn’t the case.”
Lorraine looked into her lap. She was doing everything she could not to cry, but the facts of her life were surfacing. She was almost sixty and unemployed. Soon she wouldn’t have health insurance. Her money was tied up with Jesse’s money, and they didn’t have much of it. The house on Winter Street was in both their names, but the new house in New Hampshire was only in Jesse’s. She tried to picture herself doing another job—waiting tables or babysitting somebody’s kid, or even another social services job, if Selma would still write her a recommendation. But then she imagined herself at the interview. Swollen and reeking of smoke. Nervous. She imagined Jesse showing up at a new apartment, a new job. He would find her, and he would be furious. She hated her life with him. But a life without him would be far more terrifying.
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