No, it wasn’t fair, but life never was, was it? And this wasn’t only about her. If Gary lost his practice, how would they pay for four years at MIT for Cameron? And what would Cameron think of his father? How would he face his schoolmates with his family on the news? Everyone would be talking about Gary’s sex life, their marriage, how cheap and sordid it all was.
And the girl would still be dead. Nothing would bring her back.
So . . . maybe Evelyn had made a decision, after all.
She showered first, giving herself time to let the choice settle. She tipped her head back and let the warmth slide over her, but instead of relaxing her, the steam filled up her lungs and made her feel like she was choking.
Was she really going to say okay to this? To all of it? Just go back to her life?
Maybe Gary would bring her flowers. Maybe he’d take her to her favorite restaurant and hold her hand and order expensive wine. Maybe he’d do a good job of being sincere and attentive for weeks, and she’d tell herself he was trying, it wasn’t over, he still loved her, they could get past this.
She turned off the water and let her head drop. She stared at her pale legs, cellulite-dimpled thighs, untrimmed pubic hair, and her stretched, striped belly, too fat and white for her to look at long.
She’d used up the best of her body on supporting Gary’s burgeoning career, then on carrying and nursing and raising his child. She’d let her youth trickle away like the water dripping from her skin into the dark slime of the drain. Whoever she might have been without Gary was gone now, and he’d moved on to another body. No doubt it was younger and tighter and, above all else, less familiar and contemptible.
Evelyn got out and dried her hair, moisturized the fine lines on her face, put on clothes to cover her never-quite-fit body, and unlocked the doors of the bedroom. Gary wasn’t sitting there in the hallway, red-eyed and weeping, waiting for her judgment. She found him downstairs in his study, the same place he’d spend any quiet Saturday. She could tell by the neatness of his hair and clothes that he’d already worked out and showered.
When he looked up, she closed the door behind her and sat in one of the leather armchairs he’d insisted on buying for twelve hundred dollars each. They were as uncomfortable as they looked, the leather ice cold and unyielding beneath her legs. Or maybe it was only that her flesh yielded far too easily.
“Are you okay?” Gary asked.
She ignored his stupid question. “If I agree not to turn her in, I want to know everything.”
He sat forward, his hands steepled. “What do you mean?”
“I want to know her name. How it started. What you did with her.”
“Evelyn—”
“No. Don’t tell me it’s not healthy or that it won’t help. I want to know what you did with her and any other women. In exchange, I won’t send your girlfriend to jail.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Well, whatever you call the woman you have sex with and take out to dinner and have long talks with in your office . . . I’m not doing this for her. Or you. It’s for me and Cameron.”
“I understand.”
“We’ll go to counseling. Assuming you’re done with her—”
“I am.”
“And assuming you want to save our marriage.”
“Evelyn, of course I do.”
Oh, of course. What the hell did that mean? Of course. As if he hadn’t nearly ruined everything with his stupid genitals already.
“So you’ll be one-hundred-percent honest with me. You’ll answer my questions. We’ll go to counseling. And you’ll never see her again.”
“You have my word. It’s already over.”
“Who is she?”
She saw the way his shoulders relaxed at the question. He looked steady and solemn, but he’d been scared that Evelyn wouldn’t agree to keep his secret.
“She’s a patient of mine—”
“I know that. I want her name.”
His lips parted, his eyebrows snapping down in a frown, but whatever he’d been about to say, he swallowed it. “Her name is Juliette.” In response to a jerky, “come on” motion from Evelyn, he sighed and added, “Whitman.”
“Juliette Whitman,” she repeated, hating the elegant name already. It sounded like the name of a Disney princess. “How did it start?”
His throat strained as he swallowed. “She was my patient. She started coming to me about a year ago.”
“For what?”
“You know I can’t answer that,” he said calmly. So calmly.
Evelyn clenched the arms of her chair and leaned closer to his desk. “Screw your doctor-patient privilege.” As soon as she said it, she laughed, a horrible barking sound. “The same way you screwed your patient.”
For a moment, he looked genuinely pained, his eyes softening with regret, hand starting across his desk as if he’d reach for her. “Let’s sit on the couch,” he suggested, but she shook her head. She wanted to do it like this. Like a business discussion. If he touched her she’d cry. She’d let him hug her, and she’d lean into him and be so weak.
For all his faults, she’d loved this man for twenty years. And he’d loved her too, once. They’d had picnics and gone to movies and snuck in a late-night round of sex in the hotel swimming pool on their honeymoon. They’d both cried at Cameron’s first ultrasound and they’d talked late into the night about who their son would be.
Yes, they’d drifted apart. Life had a way of seeping into the seams of a marriage and slowly prying them open, but things had been so good in the beginning. Gary had been a little older, and he’d been serious and secure and responsible, and after her fatherless childhood, Evelyn had loved that about him so much. She’d needed that. Someone a little better than everyone else. Someone not so casual and unanchored as all the other men she’d dated.
She’d loved him, and she couldn’t touch him while they had this conversation or she might remember what they’d had before.
Evelyn crossed her arms. “No. Stay there. And tell me everything about Juliette Whitman.” When he hesitated, she lifted her chin and set her jaw. “Everything.”
CHAPTER 13
AFTER
Evelyn wiped the sweat from her brow and zipped up the cranberry-red skirt, cursing the stuffiness of the department store dressing room. She was supposed to be at school in fifteen minutes, and she still hadn’t found the perfect outfit.
If she was going to stop by the gallery today, she couldn’t wear one of the three outfits she’d already worn, but there wasn’t much left that fit her. She’d thought she would wear the skinny jeans again with a striped knit shirt, but the shirt had been an ugly, boxy mess when she’d put it on. It had been washed too many times and become almost as short as it was wide. Funny that she’d never noticed until now.
After waiting at the doors for the store to open at ten, she’d spent too much time trying on clothes that seemed as if they’d fit, but were somehow tight in all the worst places.
Grabbing the black cashmere sweater the saleslady had brought her, Evelyn smoothed down the knee-length skirt and tried to ignore the way her flesh bunched above the waistband when she slouched. She wouldn’t slouch.
Hoping this last outfit would be a keeper, she tugged the simple, lightweight sweater on and looked in the mirror. “Oh, thank God,” she breathed. The sweater skimmed her body closely enough to give her a waist, but it didn’t cling. The cranberry skirt was a perfect flash of color between the sweater and her black heels.
The saleswoman knocked.
“I’ll take it!” Evelyn called.
“Wonderful! You should get that green blouse too. The color looked amazing on you.”
It was probably just an upsell, but Evelyn didn’t care. The green had been pretty and . . . what if she saw Noah again soon?
“I’m going to wear it out,” she said, tugging off the tags before she opened the door. She paid for the new outfit and the green shirt, shoved her old clothes into a
shopping bag, and walked into the school only five minutes late. “Sorry!” she called out as she sat at her desk. “I’ll write myself a tardy slip.”
She sent emails and text alerts to all the parents whose students had been absent from the first two periods, then helped a sophomore who’d tripped during PE limp his way to the nurse’s office. After the lunch rush, she processed fifty-seven permission slips for the annual trip to a local film festival that the theater classes took.
Only two hours into her shift and she was checking the clock every five minutes, hoping to see the little hand swinging closer to four.
She didn’t know who she’d been trying to kid last night when she’d told herself she couldn’t make it because of a thawed chicken. A thawed chicken. It was such a meaningless excuse that she was embarrassed for herself.
Was that the kind of thing that had been important in her life up to now? Ten dollars’ worth of chicken her family would finish in minutes before going back to things they did without her? That was her only hold on them, she supposed. The few nights a week when everyone came home at the right time and she insisted they sit down together. It meant they were a family. That she’d built something. Or that was what she’d thought. The reality was that she’d had to lure them close to her with scraps of food.
She wished she were home right now so she could throw that goddamn chicken in the trash.
“Evelyn?”
She jumped, and her gaze flew up to find Vonda Jenkins looking down at her with a tight frown of worry.
“Are you all right?” Vonda asked.
“I’m great, thanks!”
Vonda leaned closer and dropped her voice. “You looked upset.”
Evelyn forced a laugh for her favorite teacher in the school. She was one of the few people Evelyn believed might actually be concerned and not just nosy. “I was concentrating. Sorry.”
“Are you sure? You were out sick for so long. I emailed you, but—”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t get back to you. That stomach bug really worked me over.”
Vonda patted her arm. “Don’t think twice about it. I’m just glad you’re back. You look great.”
“Thank you.”
“Um . . .” Vonda’s dark-brown eyes darted to Evelyn’s shoulder. “You’ve got a tag. Want me to clip it?”
Evelyn reached up and her fingers brushed the hard corner of a price tag. “Oh my gosh!” she gasped, immediately hot with embarrassment. “I had to buy new clothes, and—”
“I can see you lost weight while you were out. Here, let me get it.”
Vonda plucked the scissors from a cup on the desk and brushed Evelyn’s hair aside. “There,” she said as she snipped the tag. “No problem.” She dropped it onto the desk, and Evelyn saw that it was the brand name’s tag, shining gold and black on the desk. She darted a glare toward the two other women in the office. Surely one of them must have seen it and said nothing.
“Thank you so much,” she said to Vonda with a little too much enthusiasm. What if she’d waltzed into the gallery like that? What if Noah suspected she’d bought this outfit just for him? She didn’t want him to know what a mess she was. She wanted to seem cool and sexy and serene. Or as serene as she could seem after crying every time they’d spent time together.
“How are you?” she asked Vonda. “How’s Tyrell?”
They both had only one son, and like Cameron, Vonda’s son was a natural at engineering. The boys had been in the robotics club together before Tyrell had left for college.
“He’s wonderful. He’s really thriving at school. Too busy to call home most weeks.”
“It must be lonely.”
“Oh, I get by,” she said with a shy smile that made Evelyn suddenly curious about Vonda’s personal life. She’d been divorced for years. She must date. What was it like at forty-something? Was sex awkward, no-nonsense, or amazing?
But she wasn’t close enough to Vonda to ask those kinds of questions. She wasn’t that close to anyone except her sister, and as she watched Vonda gather up a stack of papers and walk out of the office, Evelyn wondered why she didn’t have real girlfriends. Surely that was odd.
When Cameron had been younger, she’d hung out with other moms, but that had been less like friendship and more of a babysitting club. If you take Cameron this afternoon, I’ll take Cheyenne tomorrow.
And there was always a strange undercurrent among parents of preschoolers. A competition. Maybe one kid wasn’t quite potty trained, but at least he didn’t throw violent tantrums. And that other child might know the alphabet, but he also liked to kick the cat anytime it got close. The constant jostling for superiority had made her skittish. She hadn’t trusted any of those moms. Certainly not enough to exchange secrets.
Then school had started, and Evelyn had not only been an officer of the elementary school PTO, she’d also been a room mom every year. Busy, busy, busy. No time for girlfriends. No time for painting. No time for keeping up with fashion or music or trendy new restaurants. Life outside the home, besides the school, had been far away and vaguely distasteful.
The same hadn’t been true for Gary, of course. Most of his life had been safely outside the reach of Cameron’s sticky hands. There was work, of course. And networking. Continuing education. Medical conferences. Prestigious awards. Research. Training for the occasional triathlon. Golfing with colleagues. And sex with other women.
Amazing that it had taken her until now to resent what her life had become. Had she been happy with it?
She would have said yes. Yes, absolutely. But if she’d been happy, why had it been so hard to wake up some mornings? And why had it gotten so impossible to get to sleep at night that she’d resorted to asking Gary for a prescription three years earlier?
Too much responsibility, she’d told herself. Too many obligations, too many threads to weave together. Every month it was something else. Another fundraiser, another field trip, another school event that needed more volunteers. She’d been good at that. Too good. More and more tasks had fallen to her, and she’d never said no to any of them.
She hadn’t been able to shut her mind off at night. Instead of drifting to sleep, she’d lie in bed, the hundred tasks awaiting her the next day whipping through her consciousness like weapons. The first time she’d taken a sleeping pill had been the happiest moment she’d felt in years.
Thinking back on it now, she couldn’t believe that hadn’t terrified her.
Her phone chimed with a reminder she’d set a month before. Check on tables and chairs for the volunteer awards dinner!!!!!
The five exclamation points indicated she’d cared a great deal about that message last month. Today, she swiped it away with barely a glance.
The awards dinner. Stupid little plaques handed out to people who’d put in a few hours of work because Evelyn had begged them to. She probably put more time into planning that dinner every spring than they’d put in at the school in a whole year. Screw the awards dinner.
She stared at the clock and willed it to move faster. Two of her canvases were tucked into a tall bag in the backseat of the Range Rover. Her stylish clutch purse was in there as well, just in case. Maybe he’d lock the shop doors and take her to dinner again. Maybe they’d go for a drink.
Unable to concentrate on work, she grabbed her phone and texted Gary. I’ve got an awards committee meeting tonight. You and Cameron are on your own for dinner.
She’d throw the thawed chicken in the garbage as soon as she got home.
Her phone buzzed a few minutes later, and Evelyn smiled, anticipating a cajoling message from Noah. She hadn’t yet confirmed that she was coming by. He must be wondering, thinking about it, maybe even hoping.
But a little picture of Gary popped up next to the one-word message. Again?
Evelyn put her phone down without answering. It wasn’t really a question, was it? It was a complaint. Like poking a miserable animal with a stick.
A dozen students floated in and out of the offic
e with various requests. Evelyn took care of them all without really noticing what she was doing. When the final bell rang at long last, she hopped up from her chair and grabbed her purse. “I need to get to an appointment,” she said. “Is it all right if I slip out now?” That wasn’t really a question either, because she was already halfway out of the office and waving good-bye. No one could stop her. The principal wasn’t even in today. He was at a county meeting with two dozen other high school administrators. Evelyn was free.
Once she got past the doors of the school, she couldn’t stop grinning. Even the long line of cars waiting to get out of the parking lot didn’t ruin her anticipation. She’d flirted with Noah on the phone last night, and he’d flirted back. Would the same thing happen in person today?
Despite her agonizing doubts about the quality of her art, she wasn’t even particularly worried about that. He’d made clear that he wanted to see her paintings because they were part of her, not because he expected to discover a masterpiece. And once he’d said that, she’d wanted to show him. She’d needed to. Because she needed someone to see her.
It was nearly thirty minutes before she reached the gallery. She parked on a side street so she could take a moment to check her hair and makeup. She popped a mint into her mouth and dabbed on lipstick that matched her new cranberry skirt almost perfectly. She powdered her forehead and smoothed down her hair, then added a little black liner to her eyes. Between the lipstick and eye makeup, she looked brighter than she had in months. Maybe years.
She’d meant to look at the paintings one more time and decide whether she should bring one or both but, worried that the pause would break her momentum, she just grabbed the tote and locked the SUV behind her before swinging toward Main Street. She deliberately lifted her chin and kept her stride long. Today she wasn’t a mom or office worker or school volunteer. She was a confident artist. A sexual being. A woman scorned. She was a force to be reckoned with.
Evelyn, After: A Novel Page 9