I caught Cal in his lie that day. But this time, the bar wasn’t the other woman.
His young, married co-worker was the literal other woman. Lana the Convenient.
Cal told me all about how he’d been making out with her in his car at the local park- and yes, he told me all about it in front of our three children- when he got home that day. Oh, how our babies cried. Anger, sadness, confusion. It could have been gentler. Easier. Delivered in a way that didn’t cause every single one of them to suffer from PTSD.
Well, maybe. I was the close your eyes and count mom. He was the rip-the-Band-Aid off dad. Either way, it hurts.
We had been nearing the end. I kept a lawyer’s business card in my wallet for the next time he raged at me. Choked me. Pushed me. Slammed my head against a wall.
I’d built a support system. I’d been to therapy. I had an escape plan. I saw him start to turn his rage to our children and it was time to get out.
He knew it. I asked him to get help for the bazillionth time.
I’ll be there for you, I’d tell him.
I’ll help you fight your demons.
I’ll be your best friend.
I’ll support you through it all.
But, he would never change.
You never really know yourself until it happens to you. For some reason, bruises and abuse weren’t enough to leave, but my husband putting his tongue (and other little parts) into another woman’s body was a hard NO from me.
I had screamed at him to leave. He looked at me almost dumbfounded, like he couldn’t believe that I was actually making him leave. That I wasn’t begging him to come back to me or demanding to know where I could find this little cunt to slice her face.
“But I love you both. I know I love you. I think I love her.”
I wanted him gone.
I packed all his shit into our family suitcase, as much as I could stuff, and told him it was over. Forever over.
And it was.
So, the next day, on Thanksgiving, I cooked a turkey for our kids. No one ate.
We put up the artificial family Christmas tree. I threw away all the old bulbs and bought new ones. Leah decorated.
We turned off the music because we couldn’t stand it.
We became our own little country. Me, Leah, Clay, and Lilly.
The four of us... when there was four.
Their dad was gone that night, and life as they knew it was over.
I put them all to bed and sat in the dark, staring at the blurry, white Christmas tree lights through tears.
FIVE
I was dreaming.
I was falling down a hole, but I was inside a house. A vast old mansion with too many staircases. I was in the kitchen helping Leah bake, but Leah was older. Not eighteen. Much older. Her long, blonde hair was gathered into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. Her fingers were long and graceful as she rolled dough in flour.
Her scars were gone. Scars that started on the inside of her wrist and hashed their way up her arm to the inside of her elbow- completely gone. Gone as though she never tried to make all her pain disappear after Cal left.
But it wasn’t Leah.
The fall was slow. Right through the middle of the kitchen floor.
“Lizzie? You’ll get a crick in your neck if you sleep like that, dear.”
I blinked rapidly, realizing I’d dozed off in the oversized, wing-back armchair. Virginia smiled down at me warmly, taking the open book from my lap to close with a snap. She slid The Scarlet Letter back in its place.
“You have an amazing collection of books. Have you read them all?” I asked, trying to stretch my neck.
“Oh, yes. Every one. They are so precious to me. Some were gifts and some I managed to win in auctions, but every one of them remind me of a different time in my life.”
I stood, nodding. “I completely understand. I’m the same way, with books I read or write. Books are like markers on my timeline. Whatever I’m going through becomes part of the story. You know.”
“I do.”
“Is Jake still in the garage?”
“He is. I hope he comes in for lunch soon. I’ve whipped up some fresh BLTs. Does he like bacon?”
I chuckled. “Does he like bacon. I’m pretty sure he’ll dig through the L and the T just for the B. He calls it rabbit food.”
She laughed, that musical laugh that made me think maybe she was a singer. I took my phone out of my pocket, checking.
No bars. No texts.
“Are you ready for the grand tour?”
“Sure. Thank you again,” I managed, still not quite awake. I wondered how I managed to doze off after three cups of coffee. My usual morning routine included one cup and maybe I’d finish the second, depending on whether it got cold. Her coffee must be weaker.
“Good, good. No need to thank me. I’m thrilled you’re here.” She gestured around to the bookshelves. “We may as well start here! This is the back parlor. Traditionally games are played here, or a dining table is used for hosting, but I have a specific room for dining.”
I nodded and made active listening noises as I followed her throughout the lower level of the mansion. I’d read enough Nancy Drew mysteries that I began to wonder about secret passages.
“Any hidden staircases?” I joked as we moved through the scullery into the kitchen.
“Oh, yes,” she answered, and I widened my eyes.
“Really?”
“Of course. This house is full of surprises. But they’re hidden for a reason.” She gave me a conspiratorial wink, and I smiled in return.
She looked away and I made a face at the wall.
The second level proved far more interesting than the first. “Linen cupboard, master chambers, second chamber. My quarters are on the other side of the house. I’d show you the master here, but Cal and Lana are occupying that room, and I wouldn’t want to invade their privacy.”
“Of course.” I was so engrossed in her tour I’d almost forgotten Cal and Lana were occupying anywhere in my vicinity. I frowned. “What’s this tiny room?”
“Oh, that’s a bedroom, actually.” Virginia opened the door to the small room. One window and a chaise lounge. “Sometimes it was called a ‘fainting room.’ As you probably remember reading, corsets were very restricting. Women would often need to lie down but didn’t want to disrupt their neatly made nighttime beds. So, they’d rest here. Sometimes,” she went on, lifting her eyebrows, “they’d just be overly medicated. Laudanum. Opiates. Doctors would recommend for even children to take laudanum to quiet their crying, vomiting, and hiccups.”
“That’s awful. It’s hard to believe that medicine was used so ignorantly back then, even as recently as the late nineteenth century.”
“Turn of the century brought all sorts of new medical practices. Doctors would prescribe psychiatric patients to be tied in bathtubs, submerged in water, for days. Depressed patients would be given Metrazol, inducing convulsions. They believed convulsions were the cure to depression, you see,” she continued thoughtfully. “Following that logic, electric shock therapy was first used on a person in 1938. Controllable convulsions, they called them.”
Controllable convulsions.
I shuddered, nodding and backing away from door. The romantic notion of high-born ladies with tiny waists and expensive gowns sprawled out on chaise lounges was quickly replaced by images of schizophrenic patients being strapped to metal tables and biting on leather straps.
Just no.
“And that narrow staircase?” I asked, gesturing to the stairway I’d seen that morning. “Is there a third floor?”
Virginia met my eyes.
“Yes. Once the servant’s quarters, as you may have guessed.”
I waited for her to offer for the tour to continue, but she was already leading me back to the grand staircase.
“Were you able to remodel up there as well?” I pushed.
She looked at me again, as though deciding.
Finally, after a
long pause, she turned for the narrow stairs. “I’ll show you. But only you, Lizzie. You mustn’t tell Cal or Lana about it, not even Jake. Alright?”
I swallowed hard, nodding.
I mustn’t. And I was totally telling Jake.
“If that’s a private area, please don’t let me intrude-”
“No, come along. I want you to see.”
Well, now I was curious. Goosebumps erupted over my arms and I rubbed them through the material of my hoodie. I was probably overreacting. After all, Virginia clearly had a flair for the dramatic and probably gave tours all the time. I couldn’t imagine another guest not asking about the narrow staircase if she skipped it during the tour of the upstairs. I couldn’t have been the only one.
She probably had an informal script in her head and created suspense by making the third floor exclusive to only me.
The red-carpeted stairs were incredibly steep, no more than a foot and a half across. There was an oversized bannister to hold on to, but the sheer drop below, all the way to the first floor, pricked at my fear of heights.
“It’s best if you don’t look down. Wouldn’t want you to have to use the fainting room,” she teased.
After our electric shock therapy chat, I could barely muster a laugh.
“Oh,” I breathed as we reached the top of the stairs.
A beautiful sitting room came to life before me, with dynamic walls of bright, foil flowered paper. A two-person dinette with a silver tea set. A cedar toy chest. A three-story Victorian dollhouse that appeared to be an exact replica of the B&B.
“Molly loved flowers,” Virginia said, her voice soft and distant. She gestured to the two doors on our right and left. “Bedroom on either side, with the sitting room in the middle. This was Molly’s playroom. This bedroom is where my ex-husband, Martin, kept his hunting gear and gun cabinet. The other bedroom was Molly’s. She insisted on having the ‘highest room in the tallest tower’, like a princess.”
“Oh, Virginia. I’m so sorry.” I shook my head, fighting the familiar burn in my eyes. “I’m sorry I asked you to show me. I should have known this would be your daughter’s space.”
“No, no, it’s quite all right. I haven’t brought anyone up here since Molly passed, and it feels good to share it with someone.”
I nodded, feeling like an intruder. The room was both soft and feminine, yet bold and dramatic. It reminded me so much of Lilly. Lilly had been full of imagination. She had her father’s attention deficit, but not enough for her pediatricians to be concerned. Her mind just turned and turned, and every day she was interested in something new.
Leah loved soft colors. Pastels. Dresses and dolls and all the stuffed animals I could fit in her room. Even at eighteen, she was still a very nostalgic young lady, keeping the tattered yellow bunny on her bed that she’d had since she was an infant.
Lilly had roared with dinosaurs. She had a movie-sized poster of Jurassic Park on her wall, right next to a shelf of ballet trophies. She was tutus and cleats. Crinoline and denim. Dolls and volcanos.
But when it came time for a formal occasion, my Lilly would put on the pretty dress I’d buy her and morph from a punky caterpillar into the most beautiful butterfly I’d ever seen. She always wanted a teal dress. Her favorite color was teal, the color of an open heart and open mind.
My Lilly was a butterfly.
I missed my Lilly. My insides churned, and I felt nauseous. I wanted to hug my children more than anything at that moment.
“I didn’t like that Martin kept his hunting gear up here, but Molly knew never to go in that room, and it remained locked at all times,” she explained, almost defensively.
“Oh, I understand. Jake’s a hunter. I tease him about the arsenal in his safe.”
She smiled thankfully at me, as though she expected to be judged and was relieved she wasn’t.
I thought about Cal waving his guns around in front of the kids, quickly pushing the memory from my mind.
Who was I to judge anyone?
“Would it be alright if I didn’t show you Molly’s bedroom?”
“Oh, Virginia, of course. Please. Let’s go downstairs,” I said, gently leading her toward the stairs.
“Maybe in a bit. Now that you’re here, I don’t feel so alone. I wouldn’t mind telling you about Molly, if you’re willing to listen.”
I saw her gesture to the dainty white couch against the foil-flower wall and nodded in sympathy.
“I’d be honored,” I said.
She sat next to me, turning to face me and taking a deep breath.
“I met Martin in college. He was older than me, but just two years. Just enough for him to be months from graduation and prepared to work on Wall Street with his father. Family money, you see.”
I nodded. I had no idea what that was like. I was raised upper-middle class where my mom stayed home with me and my brother and sister, and my dad provided the sole income. I was told wait until payday many, many times as a kid.
“I came from a big family,” she went on. “We didn’t have much, but I earned scholarships to go to college. I’m a swimmer,” she explained, and her revelation was no surprise given her lithe figure. Strong shoulders and upper back. Tall and graceful.
Jake swam competitively in high-school, and he always attributed his upper back strength to years in the pool.
“Anyway, I met Martin and that was it. I was a goner. He was so dreamy, with dark hair and blue eyes. Like Clark Kent. And he asked me out right away. We dated for less than a year before we were married.
Molly came along a year later. We started off in a flat in New York City, but I didn’t want to raise a child in such a busy way. I wanted peace and quiet. Wide open spaces. Because I’d majored in architecture and design, I had an affinity for old homes. I’d pour through books about the different eras, fascinated by the rooms. The structure. The architecture. The history of it all.”
“I can see why,” I acknowledged, encouraging.
She nodded in agreement. “Just fascinating. Martin surprised me with the deed to this home for our third anniversary,” she revealed. “He explained that, because he was so busy with the stock market all the time, and because we had so much money, there was no reason we couldn’t have a second home. He would travel to the city during the week and stay in our apartment but come home here on the weekends for me and for Molly. Meanwhile, I began the restoration of this home, just in time for Molly to be ready to attend preschool.”
I listened, trying to picture Virginia here, all alone with her little girl while her husband worked in the big city. It seemed like a good idea on paper, but I couldn’t imagine spending weeks apart from Jake. I’d miss him too much.
“We continued this arrangement for two years. Molly was five. She started kindergarten and flourished. She made friends and sometimes invited them over. They’d play together right up here, especially with the dollhouse. I built her the dollhouse for her birthday. A replica of this house. Martin bought her a little family to go inside the house; a mother, a father, a daughter, and a baby. The baby had a tiny cradle and an even tinier blanket to go with it.”
She smiled then, distantly, quite taken by what must have been a precious memory.
“Molly began asking for a sibling. After all, most of her friends at school had siblings. When I talked to Martin, he was thrilled with the idea. He even promised to be home more, to help with the baby. We’d hire a nanny. We’d turn the room adjacent to our chamber into a nursery. We had so many plans.”
She grew quiet for a long moment.
I waited, toying with the zipper on my sweatshirt. She hadn’t mentioned another child, so I had a feeling this wasn’t going to turn out well. I didn’t know what to say, so I waited some more.
Finally, she continued.
“I got pregnant right away. We started on the nursery. Martin moved home, just like he promised, and only went to the city when it was absolutely necessary. A few times a month. Molly was filled with excitement. Sh
e went with me to the first ultrasound and heard the baby’s heartbeat, and the way her eyes lit up... whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.”
She imitated the fetal heart monitor sounds.
“We all went for the second ultrasound at sixteen weeks. The technician moved the wand all over my belly. She just kept moving it through that gel they use. You know. That really cold, sticky gel.”
I nodded slowly, waiting. I could already feel what was coming.
“Molly kept whispering whoosh whoosh whoosh under her breath, and for a second I thought I heard it through the speaker. I yelled at her to shut up. It was awful of me. I felt so awful. She was just a child. She didn’t understand what was happening.”
“You were scared,” I hushed.
She reached into the pocket of her sweater and retrieved a tissue. Her eyes misted over, and she dabbed at the corners. “Martin took Molly out of the room. I stayed and waited for the doctor to come in. We were supposed to find out of it was a boy or a girl. If it was a girl, she’d be Veronica. A boy would be Vincent.”
V names. Like Virginia, I thought.
She went on rapidly, as if trying to move through this part of the story as quickly as possible. Like passing a car wreck on the highway. Jake would slow down and look to see what was happening; I would speed up and keep my eyes forward.
Everyone dealt with trauma differently.
“You can probably guess what happened. I was scheduled for surgery to get cleaned out. The doctor said we should wait a few months before trying again. But Martin didn’t want to try again. He took it all as a sign of what was meant to be. He talked a lot about ‘meant to be’ back then. I hated those words. Meant to be. Did they imply fate? Religion? Karma? Meant to be was an arbitrary statement used by extremely happy or extremely sad people. Meant to be was a socially acceptable response to the disclosure of an extremely happy or extremely sad event. It was cheap. It meant nothing. It meant my husband didn’t want to sleep with me anymore and I didn’t need the nursery anymore.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until then. I exhaled, fighting the sudden urge to look at my phone. I needed to know the time. The date. The weather. Receive a text. Anything to pull me away from this stranger’s woeful story.
ABOUT HER Page 5