Sometimes she wondered if Ben loved his anger more than he loved his family. Given the choice between biting back a rant and the relief of bellowing, he’d release his steamy rage every time.
Maddy pushed away the memory. The present had enough pain without her grasping for more.
“I need to pick up my kids,” Kath said. “Come with me. Have supper with us. I don’t want you home alone.”
Being with Kath’s unscrewed-up family sounded unbearable.
“I can’t.”
“How about I drop you off with Olivia?”
She wrapped Maddy’s scarf tighter around her neck, as though Maddy were one of her daughters. Poor Kath. She needed to fix, to help. All the shrinks, guidance counselors, social workers, and nurses, they were all obsessed with the halt and the lame. Had that been her?
“Want to go home,” she said.
Traffic was heavy. She gave in to sleep as Kath drove, barely finding the strength to kiss her good-bye as she pulled up to her house.
• • •
“Maddy?”
Ben knelt next to the sofa where she’d been sleeping.
“Maddy? Honey?”
An afghan that hadn’t been there before now covered her.
“You’ve been asleep awhile,” Ben said.
“What time is it?” she croaked.
“Six thirty,” Ben said. “I came to get the kids for supper, but they weren’t here. Your mother took them to her house. She left a note.”
Anne the matchmaker. Maddy chewed on her rising anger.
“Are you hungry? When I saw you sleeping, I made soup. Mushroom barley. I used the recipe from that vegetarian cookbook you like.”
Mushrooms. A cure for what ailed them. Is that what he thought? Soup would solve their problems?
Ben reached over and brushed hair off her face. Despite everything, his touch still soothed her. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
She held up seven fingers, praying for him to hold up three. Thirty percent, Ben. Come on. Tell me you stayed in the right group.
“Ben,” she asked. “Who did you sleep with??”
When he didn’t answer, her stomach juices curdled and rose to her throat.
“Someone. Saw you. With a woman.”
Yes or no, Ben.
“Did you sleep with her?”
His hands remained at his sides. She waited. He stared. She stared back. She tucked her thumbs under rigid fingers. She willed him to show three fingers.
Please. Tell me that you’re not a complete asshole, Ben.
Slowly, finally Ben nodded yes, looking as though the effort exhausted him. Yes, he nodded. Yes, I slept with her.
“Who. Who. Who?” she asked as though who mattered. As if that were the point.
“Elizabeth,” he said. “Elizabeth Fullerton. My intern from this summer.”
Elizabeth. Elizabeth the whore. She nodded. Maddy remembered her from some picnic. Memorial Day? A moneyed do-gooder type. Straight hair falling around her horsey bitch face.
“She came to my hotel yesterday, but I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t touch her. I drove her home. It only happened once. Before. While you were—” Ben stopped, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Then he resumed. “In the hospital. Yesterday she came to try to get me—but I wouldn’t.”
“Want medal?” she asked.
“She had a crush on me.”
Who cares, Ben? “Sounds like her crush. Had great success.”
“She just showed up yesterday. Out of nowhere. And I told her she had to go. I drove her home. That’s all.”
“Who cares?” She screamed as well as she could ever scream now. “Who the fuck cares? Yesterday? Shut up, Ben. Why? Why sleep with her? How. Could. You?” Waves of rage made everything inside her tumble, knocking her heart into her guts. How could such hatred stay inside a body? She waited to erupt in boiling pus-filled hives of anger.
Ben dropped his head into his hands, scraping deep furrows through his thick hair. Gray strands she’d never seen before shot through the brown. “It’s nothing. It meant absolutely nothing. I was scared. About you, Maddy. She—she was just there. I was tired. I was depressed. I was worried. The kids needed so much. You. You might not make it. Seeing you lying there had me terrified. Doing what I did, it was like having ten shots of bourbon. Trying to drown out the pain.”
“Depressed? Scared? Drink. Rip things up. Cry to. A. Goddamned priest.” She pulled the afghan off. “You should have. Drunk the bourbon.”
“I didn’t look for her. It just happened.”
Right. She jumped on top of him—Supergirl, able to leap tall penises in a matter of seconds. How could he sleep with that shiny, shiny girl while she slept like the dead?
“Things never. Just happen, Ben. Get. Out.”
“Maddy. I’m telling you the truth.”
“Do you think. Truth is a free pass? Old truth?”
CHAPTER 37
Emma
Audubon Circle looked like an expanse of suburban gardens crossed with the stuffiness of Beacon Hill. Before meeting Zach, she hadn’t known this Boston neighborhood existed. Emma walked by glowing houses, incandescent rooms visible through open drapes that revealed giant china cabinets and dining room tables the size of cars. Sculpted bushes outlined generous lawns.
Where would her father live if he never came back? Two nights before, at yet another McDonald’s dinner, he’d hinted that he was looking for an apartment. “It’s been a month, kids,” he’d said. Gracie wept so horribly that he’d backtracked—talking about options as though their family were some stupid corporation.
A brass lion’s head stared out at her from the middle of Zach’s glossy red door. Running her tongue over her teeth, she searched for stray bits of popcorn from the bowl she’d shared with Gracie that afternoon. Then she’d popped her last pill, wanting to be fun and smiley for Zach’s family.
She lifted the heavy door knocker once.
At least tonight she wouldn’t have to sit through another depressing dinner with her father, acting as if everything were normal and he wasn’t looking for an apartment and living in a hotel, and leaving them.
“Emma!” Zach’s mother greeted her as though she’d recently cured world hunger.
“Hello, Mrs. . . . I mean, Dr. Epstein.”
“Please, I told you last time—it’s Shoshanna—there’s no doctor here tonight. Give me your coat, dear.”
Emma wished she’d worn something better than her grimy down jacket with the feathers poking out, not to mention the pilled sweater underneath. All of her clothes were limp with being overworn. Her bras were getting too small. She’d heard Mom talking to Kath about money, and now she was frightened to ask for anything.
At least Emma could still squeeze into her clothes. Poor Gracie was busting out of her skirts, and her brother’s stomach showed from above his T-shirt every time he moved.
Zach’s mother reminded Emma of Grandma Frances’s good china, all muted and expensive-looking. When Zach’s twin sisters, Gabrielle and Alana, walked in, wearing their cashmere sweaters and candy-pink lipstick, Emma wanted to turn, leave, and never come back. The sisters, miniature perfect, appeared to be female versions of Zach. Three Epstein females smiled with Zach’s magazine-perfect grin.
“Welcome!” Gabrielle swung a college-girl version of Dr. Epstein’s perfectly layered bob. “Happy Chanukah!”
“Happy Chanukah,” Emma repeated. She didn’t know they’d be making such a big fuss. For God’s sake, it was already like the third or fourth night. If it weren’t for Zach, she’d have totally forgotten it was Chanukah. This year the holiday fell weeks before Christmas—that’s probably why nobody in her family even noticed the holiday.
Last December her mother’s holiday display had driven Grandma Frances a bit insane, but the rest of them loved the mixed-up display. Her father had hugged her like she’d hit a home run when he saw the mantel lined with religious decorations of the holidays—a bright red cros
s; a silver Star of David; a green, red, and black kinara; a flaming star and crescent; a saffron-colored Ganesha; a black-and-white yin-yang; and a golden Buddha—all intertwined with twinkling white lights.
Plus, they had a Christmas tree and a menorah.
Emma followed the sisters Epstein into the living room, where Zach and his father were playing chess. Grandma Anne had been right; she should have brought a box of candy or something.
Zach looked up. “Hi.”
“Emma, so glad you could make it.” Mr. Epstein rose from one of three velvety couches making a giant chocolate-colored U.
Vacuum cleaner lines showed in the pale cream rug covering half the living room. There wasn’t a television anywhere in the room. In her house, TV had become the living room shrine.
“Sit,” Mrs. Epstein said. “Have a cracker. Some cheese.” Zach’s mother held out a white plate with crackers, cheese, and grapes. Fanned out on the shiny living room table were tiny blue-and-white napkins. Cloth.
“No, thank you,” Emma said.
Instead of pushing it at her again, as Grandma Anne or her mother would have—Come on, take something. At least try it!—Zach’s mother simply put down the plate.
“You must be happy school vacation is almost here,” Mr. Epstein said.
“Oh, yes. Very happy.” Her words fell in a heap at her feet. Brilliant conversation she was making. Had Zach lost his power of speech? “It gives me a chance to catch up. On my reading.”
Catch up on watching SpongeBob with Caleb was more like it.
“Do you celebrate Chanukah?” Alana asked.
“Umm. Usually at my grandmother’s house.” Emma picked at the edge of her sweater. “She made potato pancakes last night.” That was a big fat lie.
“Do you light candles?” Gabrielle fingered the silver Tiffany bean hanging from the faceted chain circling her neck.
“Remember what I told you?” Zach asked. “About her mother?”
“We light them. Always.” Emma sent Zach a shut up look. “Especially now.”
“Zach mentioned you were Jewish,” Mrs. Epstein said in a phony-sounding not-that-it-matters voice.
“Half,” Emma said. “I’m half Jewish.”
“Who’s Jewish? Your mother or your father?” Alana asked.
“My mother.” Emma hadn’t realized Zach’s sisters were religious fanatics. She took a chunk of cheese and put it on a cracker, placing a tiny napkin under it. Every little crumb would show on this couch. Velvet. Why would anyone make a couch velvet? And who was stupid enough to buy one?
“That makes you Jewish,” Gabrielle said as though giving Emma first prize in the Judaism contest. “It comes through the mother.”
Emma stuffed another cracker in her mouth, not having a clue what to say, wanting to say something sarcastic and stupid that would get her thrown out.
Really? Do tiny dreidels float through the mother’s umbilical cord?
Zach’s mother leaned forward and patted Emma’s knee. “Let’s give Emma a break from the Epstein third degree. How is your mother, dear?”
Emma nodded, blinking back sudden tears. She wanted to be on the couch with her mother and Gracie, even if Gracie did have a disgusting snuffling cold. Her father had taken Caleb to a basketball game. Mom and Gracie were watching A Christmas Story and Bad Santa. Her mother said they might as well get ready for the kind of Christmas they were probably going to have—screwy as her brain. It had been funny the way she said it. The Epstein family would probably choke on their kosher cheese and crackers if they knew her family celebrated Christmas.
“My mother’s fine.” Even if that was a lie, her mother did seem much stronger lately.
“It’s difficult when families go through these tragedies,” Mr. Epstein said. “So often it’s the children who are forgotten.”
Zach sent his father a warning look. She could imagine what he’d told his family. Poor Emma with her messed-up family. Then they’d all gazed at each other in gratitude for their perfect non-messed-up home.
“I’m lucky,” Emma said. “We have a great family. Super close—in fact, my mother’s accident brought us even closer.”
• • •
“What was wrong with you?” Emma asked the moment she and Zach left the house. She zipped her coat to her chin as they walked to the bus. “You hardly said one word.”
“Because my family wants to get to know you. They already know me.” He put his arm around her shoulders.
“You mean they want to see if I’m good enough for their precious son.” Emma batted him away. She stopped in front of the bus stop, watching her breath float away in cold winter puffs. “Your family is wrapped too tight.” She stamped her feet from the cold. “It’s not like we’re engaged or something. That was like an inquisition.”
Bands of pressure went across her stomach. She felt like throwing up. Last time she took the pills the same thing happened.
What if she’d poisoned herself?
“They were only trying to talk to you. You turned into a mummy.”
“That’s your family’s idea of talking? How are your grades, Emma? Are you thinking about colleges yet?” she mimicked. “It was a second degree to see if I deserved to be your girlfriend.”
“My parents care about me,” Zach said.
“And mine don’t?” Emma jammed her mittened hands into her pockets to keep from throwing something, anything. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the pulsing from her stomach cramps, the nausea.
“You’re the one who’s always complaining about how your dad doesn’t even know what you’re doing.”
“That’s because my mother almost died, idiot.” Her chest burned with hating him. “My father worried about me all the time before this, and even now he’d never have been rude to you. Nobody at my house would quiz you about being Jewish.”
Zach put a hand on her shoulder. “Relax, okay? I was upset at how stuck-up you were acting, but I’m not mad at you anymore.”
“Stuck-up?” Emma lifted her puffed-up jacketed arms and pounded the air. “News flash. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Zach’s drawn-out sigh made it seem as though she were dating some old man.
“Okay, I’m sorry. Can we drop it?”
“Just go home,” she said.
“I’m riding home with you. That’s it.”
They rode the bus in near silence. Emma pressed her forehead against the dirty window each time Zach tried to talk, the cold glass comforting against her hot skin. Taking shallow breaths helped with the cramping.
When the bus arrived at Emma’s stop, Zach followed her off and took her hand.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said, his voice indicating his interest went beyond walking.
“I don’t want to,” Emma said. “Go home.”
“Come on,” he begged. “Just for a while.”
Zach no longer looked cute, but like one more person in this world who needed something from her. He squeezed her hand as she tried to pull away.
“Don’t ruin the whole night,” he said.
Without answering him, Emma slipped her hand out of her mitten, leaving Zach holding the empty blue wool, and ran the block to her house.
Once inside, she slammed her backpack on the hall table, tore off her jacket, and stomped into the living room. Gracie and her mother sprawled on the couch, her mother resting her hand on Gracie’s ankle.
Afraid that she’d throw up right then and there, she ran into the small hall bathroom, landing on her knees in front of the toilet just in time. Everything she’d eaten at Zach’s came out in waves. Her hands shook as she tried to grab the towel from the rack.
“Here.” Her mother stood in the open doorway holding a half-full glass. “And here,” she added, handing the towel to Emma.
“What’s that?” Emma croaked out, pointing her chin at the glass.
“Coke.”
“We don’t have Coke,” Emma said.
“I’ve always kept some in
the basement. Hidden. For when one of us. Got sick. Drink a little. It helps with nausea. Or if you. Throw up again. You’ll need something in your. Stomach.”
Emma took the chilled glass. Smashed ice floated in the Coke. That’s what her mother had always done when any of them got sick—smashed ice in a plastic bag so they had the soothing feel of ice chips in the medicinal soda. She glanced at her mother’s hand to make sure she hadn’t bashed a finger or something, but they all looked intact.
She pulled herself away from the toilet and sat cross-legged on the cool tile. Her mother leaned over and flushed away the horror that had been the Epstein dinner. She wet a washcloth, sank beside Emma, and took her hands. Scratchy hot fabric soothed away the awful bits of sick on her hands and face. Her mother’s touch brought forth a bout of tears.
“Do you feel any. Better? Bad food? Maybe a stomach flu?” Her mother held her damp hand. “Should I call Daddy?”
“No!” Emma wrapped her arms around her mother. “Please don’t tell Daddy!”
“Okay. Tell me. What’s wrong?”
Emma spoke into her mother’s robe. “I did something bad. Very bad.”
Her mother said nothing, just stroked Emma’s hair from her forehead in a soothing rhythm, reminding her of . . . of her mother.
“I . . . Caro gave me . . . I didn’t feel like I could do everything. And Caro gave me pills.”
“What kind?”
“Legal ones. She had a prescription. Ritalin.”
Her mother nodded. “So many kids. Get that pill. It’s stupid.” She took a breath. “Though not as stupid. As her giving it. To you. And you taking them.”
“I know it was wrong, Mom. And they made me feel awful.” Emma sat up and looked into her mother’s eyes. “Well, not every one felt awful. Some made me feel good.”
“That’s very, very scary. For you. And for me.”
“Once I felt so bad I took one of your pills. One of your ‘relaxing’ pills.”
“More scary.” Her mother put a hand to her chest. “We need to make this. Stop. Now. I have to talk. To Daddy.”
“Please, please. Don’t tell Daddy right away, okay?” Emma clutched her mother’s hands. “I swear to God that I won’t do it anymore. It was stupid. I know. There was just . . . I was so—”
Accidents of Marriage Page 31