HA. That does sound frightening. Did you try the muffin?
Yes. It was wicked good—as promised. You could have warned me about the receptacle thing though. The guy behind the counter was pretty harsh.
Ha! I know. I once asked him for a straw for my iced coffee and he acted like I had murdered a dolphin right before his eyes. I hate the whole straw thing.
Same. And I hate when people say “clean food.” I mean where did that even come from?
I think it’s from Fight Club. And sorry for talking about Fight Club!
LOL—too funny.
Jackie was psyched that he had made her LOL. If she didn’t think he was a woman, he would definitely suggest they meet at the Café Karma Sutra. “I can bring the receptacles,” he would say, probably making her LOL all over again. He took it further:
The bulletin board is kind of like a virtual Fight Club, no? Did you see that cheating post? It pushed me right out of the number one spot.
Though trained to be the picture of discretion, Alison was bursting to talk about her day with someone who would get it.
You have no idea what happened to me today.
What?
I can’t.
Yes you can, it’s like Fight Club, remember.
I shouldn’t.
As she typed, she knew she was going to. She was usually a vault, yet here she was gossiping. Soon she would be watching the Real Housewives franchise, she thought—she had always secretly wanted to.
You can totally trust me.
Jackie forgot for a moment that he was misrepresenting himself.
OK. I’m usually not such a yenta, but I met a woman today who read it too and thinks she’s the one being cheated on. She completely lost it in the middle of Karma Sutra.
That’s horrible.
I know, right? I feel awful for her, just awful. And to make matters worse, she has an infant!
No way. What a douchebag!
Exactly. If it’s true and it really is her husband, then I’d bet it’s been going on for a while. The post says he followed her here. If it’s him, the timeline suggests he was cheating throughout her pregnancy and childbirth.
Maybe he’s one of those serial cheaters. I know some guys like that at work. Total tools. Or maybe she’s imagining it.
Maybe. Those new mother hormones can make you think crazy things, remember?
He remembered having all sorts of irrational worries when Jana was born. Checking the batteries in the baby monitor almost daily; resting his hand on her sleeping back in the middle of the night to make sure she was still breathing. Though he knew his struggles weren’t estrogen induced, he answered with a warped sense of honesty.
Yes! It was awful.
It’s weird though. From the outside it would look like she had the perfect life and that I must be struggling on my own. But it’s really quite the opposite.
It may feel good now, to be in control of your own life, but take it from me, being a single parent can be very lonely.
Well, it doesn’t have to be forever. I’m sure I’ll have a relationship again. With better birth control! Lol.
I guess Zach’s dad is not in the picture?
Nope. Not at all. Like the song says—It’s Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody.
Jackie was happy to hear they were singing the same tune, though he knew it was selfish of him. He had wondered about Alison’s relationship status. It was left blank on her Facebook profile. He had done his due diligence after the first time she reached out. She wasn’t a big poster on Facebook like some people, but not as lame as he was. Aside from his profile picture of Jana as a baby, his page consisted of a few people leaving yearly birthday messages that he never even acknowledged. From her profile he knew that Alison was thirty-eight, a partner in her law firm, went to Wesleyan for undergrad and Harvard for law school. Her page was somewhat political with articles and photos regarding immigration policies and nativism mixed with a spattering of similarly pointed political cartoons from the New Yorker and the Atlantic. The photos of her were mostly group shots at company outings like baseball games or the occasional benefit or black-tie event. She was very pretty and seemed tall. Jackie loved tall women. He loved being able to look a woman in the eye.
He had mentioned his connection with a woman in the group briefly to Lee and Skip when he filled them in on the thrashing he had taken for the tampon post. They had both laughed at him.
“What I like most in a woman is her unavailability,” Lee jokingly imitated Jackie.
Jackie defended himself. “Men meet women online all the time now!”
“Yes, but not men pretending to be women,” Lee retorted.
“That’s you, Tootsie,” Skip added, laughing at both his own joke and Jackie’s bent logic.
Truth was, Jackie loved a good roadblock. He had been with a handful of meaningless women over the years since Ann died, but the only other woman he had mentioned crushing on before was a client. It was against company rules to fraternize with clients, and he was a big rule follower, so he never saw it through. This ruse he was involved in now might be the most unconventional thing he’d ever done. He wished he could undo it. Maybe he should just come out right now and tell her that he was a dude, but instead responded with:
That’s become my theme song lately. I pathetically brought home dinner, dessert, and a movie tonight without asking Jana first, and she had plans. I think it may be time I get a life as well. I watch so many of those medical shows on TV; I swear I could do a thoracostomy.
Me too! I think I could even do one with a ballpoint pen!
Actually, you may have to clock a few more hours at Seattle Grace Hospital. I think you’re referring to a cricothyrotomy.
Hahaha! What about those fire department shows?
Love them. Fire department! Call out!
Yup! Me too. And I watch all those shows with the initials.
Please, CSI, FBI, SVU, NCIS. I can figure out who the unsub is before any of them can.
Ha! Who needs a man when you can spend your nights with a whole cast of them? We should ask for vibrator recommendations on the bulletin board—then we can really be all set.
Not quite the relationship goal Jackie was hoping for. He typed and deleted and typed and deleted. He was at a total loss. On the receiving end of his radio silence, Alison wrote back in a panic:
Only kidding.
She realized she might have made Jackie uncomfortable. She reflected on how they met and felt foolish for thinking that a tampon-fearing woman would enjoy a sex-toy joke. What was she thinking? She waited for a response, but still nothing.
Are you there?
Sorry, I ran upstairs to my nightstand to look through my bag of tricks.
Alison laughed from her gut. What a relief.
Ha. Do tell!
This time, I’m only kidding.
OMG. Maybe we should end this conversation.
Good idea. Have a good night, and good luck with your new friend, and I’m not referring to a dildo.
Haha! And thanks. I’m taking her to the city on Monday to meet with my detective friend. Hopefully, she can help us figure things out.
Hope so. Keep me posted.
CHAPTER 16
Amanda & Eliza
Amanda looked out across her lawn in time to see Luke packing up the car with suitcases. As the twins left the house, she realized that if she didn’t run over right away, she wouldn’t get to see them. Well, this time at least; she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t still be here when they came home for Thanksgiving. She threw on her shoes and ran across the street. Kayla saw her first.
“Aunt Mandy!”
They embraced. Luke and Kevin put down the bags and followed suit.
“Wow! I have to look up at you now!” Mandy said to Kevin.
�
��Well, it’s been a couple of years, I think.”
“It has. Too many,” she said, hugging both the kids again.
“On Wisconsin!” she added awkwardly with her fist in the air. They both laughed.
“Where’s Mom?”
“She’s inside.” Kayla pointed toward the front door with her chin.
“Go in. She’s not coming to the airport,” Luke added.
“We have to fly, literally,” Kevin chimed in, realizing the time.
Amanda waved goodbye from the driveway, as Eliza did from the living room window. They caught each other’s eye and their hearts both swelled. Eliza waved her in. They embraced in the front hall where any bad feelings about who had called who last immediately disintegrated. They had grown up like sisters, and each of them could really use a sister right now.
“Welcome home!” Eliza hugged her again. “How are the girls?”
A hug from Eliza felt like a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll after a night of excessive drinking—the cure.
“They’re hanging in there. Your kids are so big, it’s crazy! You didn’t want to go to the airport?”
“Nah. It makes me sad.”
Amanda looked at her skeptically. Eliza was all about fanfare. The high drama of an airport goodbye was the equivalent of a Broadway show in her books.
Eliza quickly changed the subject. “How long are you planning to stay?”
“I don’t know. It’s not safe for us there. The paparazzi are relentless and even my so-called friends will be talking behind my back.”
“Ugh. It must be good to be home.”
“It is. Dorothy was right. There’s no place like it.”
They looked each other over, standing in Eliza’s foyer. They could still see the girls they once were under the fine lines that had developed around their eyes. Amanda was infinitely more kempt, but stress had taken its toll on them both. They both had the same choice to make—open up to the one person they could truly trust or keep up the silly banter that barely scratched the surface. Eliza’s face registered concern. Mandy recognized it.
“What? What is it?”
“You’re just so thin, I mean, even for you.”
“I haven’t had much of an appetite.”
“That never happens to me. Come on, I’ll make you something. I have a ton of leftovers and I want to hear the whole story with Carson.”
Even after all of these years, Eliza didn’t know very much about Carson Cole. Only the little scraps that Mandy fed her and the occasional mention in People magazine. He was a decade older than Amanda and not attractive in a conventional way—or in any way. He was diminutive in size but turned on the charm on a dime. His dime. It was probably why so many women ended up alone with him. That, and of course his ability to make or break them.
Hudson Valley was very far from Hollywood and Amanda was always careful to paint a pretty picture for Eliza and the world to see. It was hard to know where to begin, or if she even had the strength to reveal the truth. She followed Eliza to the kitchen and began with the here and now.
“I’m raw, enraged, humiliated, and just sick about all of it. Obviously, it goes so far beyond infidelity. I think people assume I’m complicit—that I must have known what was going on. And if I say I didn’t know, they say, ‘How could she not have known?’”
“Well, you didn’t know, and you only have to answer to yourself and your girls.”
Eliza noticed her wince when she brought up her girls. She couldn’t imagine having to explain such things to her own children.
Amanda peeled off her shoes and saddled up to the counter on the same stool she’d been climbing on since she needed a boost. It didn’t take long for her armor to come off as well.
“Dealing with the girls is the hardest part. They would never have put up with what I did. And I’m the one who taught them to be that way, to speak out, to stand up for themselves.”
As usual, thinking about her girls and what this was doing to them sent her mind reeling. She worried about them endlessly. How would they ever trust a man if their own father made them cringe in disgust? She was especially worried about Sadie. At just eleven, Sadie still pretty much worshipped her father, and people were bound to say horrible things about him to her. Even if they didn’t, the newspapers, the Internet, and the magazines at the checkout counter would all be waiting to fill her in on the tawdry details. There was no hiding from it. She thought her older daughter, Pippa, seemed to know more than she let on. People talk, and Pippa had always seemed to have eyes in the back of her head. She admonished herself again for not leaving when they were younger. They were probably embarrassed by her as much as they were by Carson. Two girls brought up in the midst of the “Me Too” movement by a mother who remained silent.
She took a deep breath and spoke the painful truth. “I taught them to be brave, while I acted like a coward.”
Eliza thought about her own daughter, about her own silence, while responding. “You’re being very brave now, and they will learn from that.”
Amanda wanted to believe her, but it was hard.
Eliza continued. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you. I had no idea.”
“It’s not your fault. I went to LA to become an actress, right?” She laughed. “I could win an Oscar for my performance as the happy wife.”
“I’m your best friend. I should have seen through it.”
“How could you have? I wasn’t exactly honest with you over the years—or with myself really. I wasn’t even completely honest with my therapist because I didn’t want to deal with her advice. There were so many times that I almost told you. But once I did I feared there would be no turning back. You would never have let me continue living like that.”
Eliza understood that more than Mandy could ever know. They were both members of a different silent generation. As she placed her plate in the microwave, she assured her, “I understand, really I do. But there’s no point in bottling it up now, right? You left. You’re here. We are here, together.”
With that the floodgates opened. The conversation was tough. Painful to hear and painful to speak. But having someone know all she had been through over the years brought Amanda an unimaginable release. She spoke in great detail about everything that had happened and the effects that years of emotional abuse had had on her. It was painful to relive, and by the time she took her first bite of food it was cold again. She struggled to swallow.
“It’s cold again,” she muttered, sounding more like a child than a woman.
They both laughed as Eliza took her fork and placed her plate back in the microwave. Amanda watched her closely; her right eye twitched and she was all buttoned up to her neck.
What is she hiding?
“Why didn’t you go to the airport, Eliza?”
Even though Amanda was sitting in front of her cracked wide open, Eliza fell back into her usual m.o. and went for the joke: “The FOGO—it’s back again.”
“Fogo?”
“I renamed it, as part of my plan to combat my waning relevancy—fear of going out.”
Mandy knew Eliza wanted her to laugh, but she didn’t give in. It wasn’t funny then, and it certainly wasn’t funny now. Eliza saw the concern on Mandy’s face and came clean.
“I’ve hardly been able to leave the house since the twins’ graduation.”
“Oh, Eliza.” Mandy took her nail-bitten hands between her manicured ones. “Do you know what triggered it?”
“I have no idea.” She looked away as she said it, and Mandy knew she was lying. It was the same thing she’d said in high school—she didn’t believe it then, and she didn’t believe it now.
Mandy remembered the day Eliza first retreated to her house like it was yesterday. They were supposed to meet after school by her locker, as they always did, to walk home. Mandy waited and waited, and fin
ally left without her. When she went to Eliza’s house, her mom said she wasn’t feeling well and had “taken to her room.” She remembered her exact words, remembered thinking it was such an old-fashioned way to put it. She went back every day after school for a week, and when Eliza’s mother still wouldn’t let her in, she climbed through the window. She was all set to ask Eliza what the hell was going on, but one look at her and she thought better of it. She would climb back in every day after school and just lie next to her friend, running her hand through Eliza’s hair or gently tickling her arm, if Eliza would allow it. Eventually she asked, “Did something happen to you, Eliza?” Just like today, Eliza insisted that nothing had. On both occasions Mandy knew it was a lie, but she didn’t push her. She could tell, even after all of this time, that she still wasn’t ready to say more. She loved her so much and didn’t want to cause her pain.
“I’m so, so sorry. Is Luke being supportive? The kids?”
“No one knows, Mandy, no one, except now you. All summer I’d get dressed to go wherever we were headed, and half the time I couldn’t make it. I made excuses. By the time we brought the twins to college, it had come back in full force.”
“Why don’t you tell Luke? Eliza, he’s your husband. He adores you. He would do anything for you.”
“I’ve tried, but I just can’t. I feel like I lied to him to begin with by never telling him that it happened in high school.”
She put the plate back down and continued. “Some days are better than others. I’ve never been a big fan of crowds, or elevators, and he knows that, but to just spill this on him like it’s out of the blue, when it’s not—it seems so wrong.”
“Not telling him is wrong, too.”
“I know.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He would want so desperately to fix me. The pressure of that—the pressure that would come from him knowing—it’s too much.”
Eliza Starts a Rumor Page 9