All the Wrong Places

by Joy Fielding

  His attention is diverted by a couple of older women laughing under a Coors Light neon sign, and he mulls going over and introducing himself, giving the old biddies a thrill.

  Normally he doesn’t waste time with older women, but what the hell, it might provide an interesting diversion. He’s heard they make great lovers, that their experience more than makes up for their wrinkles. Older women are just so grateful for the unexpected attention, especially the ones over sixty, the ones old enough to be his mother.

  Maybe one night it might be fun to give one a try. But not tonight. Tonight he has research to do. He intends to find out everything he can about Paige Hamilton. This is one wildflower ripe for the picking.

  He stares toward the hallway that leads to the washrooms at the back. He’s been in Boston three months, and he never stays in any city more than six. Maybe it’s time to consider leaving. Women here are a little more sophisticated than they were in Denver. And they’re understandably cautious, given that two women have been reported missing already. That silly little Tiffany Sleight’s picture has been all over the news for days. Probably what spooked Lulu.

  He orders her another white wine spritzer and settles with the bartender. “Wish the fat lady goodbye and good luck,” he instructs the bemused young man behind the long bar. Then he walks purposefully toward the entrance without so much as a glance in Wildflower’s direction, opens the door, and disappears into the night.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Chloe heard the giggling from behind the closed bathroom door.

  “What are you guys doing in there?” she asked, pausing before opening it. She prayed they weren’t playing another one of those “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” games she’d caught them at the week before. Then she’d been the model of parental calm, careful not to shame or embarrass them, assuring them that while it was natural to be curious about the physical differences between boys and girls, their bodies were private and it was important to respect them.

  “What’s ‘respect’?” had come four-year-old Sasha’s immediate response.

  Chloe couldn’t remember her answer. Her mind was a roiling mess of conflicting thoughts and emotions: her husband was an unrepentant womanizer; he was a liar and a cheat; she hated him; she would divorce him, take him for every cent he had. Yet how could she leave him? They had two beautiful children together. And despite everything, she still loved him. Love didn’t just disappear overnight, not when you’d been together for virtually all your adult lives.

  He hadn’t really wanted to get married. She was the one who’d pressured him into a commitment by getting pregnant. They’d been dating since high school. It was time to shit or get off the pot, she’d told him, stopping just short of an ultimatum. But he wasn’t ready. And she knew that. So his acting out this way wasn’t altogether his fault. Didn’t she share at least part of the blame?

  “No, you do not,” she heard Paige say. “You are in no way responsible for Matt’s bad behavior. Your husband’s the guilty one here, not you.”

  But maybe if I’d been more attentive, Chloe thought, continuing her silent argument with her oldest and best friend. Maybe if I’d taken more of an interest in his work, paid less attention to the kids and more to him, maybe if I’d been more adventurous in bed…

  “No!” Chloe said loudly, pushing open the bathroom door with such vehemence that it slammed against the wall. “Oh, God,” she said, her eyes widening in alarm at the sight that greeted her.

  “Sorry, Mommy,” Sasha whimpered, backing toward the white enamel tub.

  “What have you done?” Chloe’s eyes darted between Sasha and her brother, her voice teetering dangerously close to a shriek.

  “We were just playing,” Josh said.

  Chloe noted the total absence of an apology in his voice. Were males incapable of taking ownership of their misdeeds? Did it start this young? Or was it something in their DNA? “Look at this mess,” she cried, feeling all semblance of control slipping away. “There’s toothpaste all over everything.”

  “We were just brushing their teeth,” Sasha said, offering up the stuffed pink bunny in her hands for her mother’s inspection.

  Chloe stared at the dozen dolls and stuffed animals littering the white tile floor, their plush exteriors covered in thick blue toothpaste. “They’re ruined.”

  “You can wash them,” Josh said matter-of-factly.

  “The hell I will,” Chloe shot back.

  Sasha gasped. “Mommy said a bad word,” she whispered, her big brown eyes widening in a combination of surprise and fright.

  Chloe felt her body recoil in horror as she acknowledged the fear on her daughter’s face. It was a look she understood all too well. Hadn’t she stared at her own mother with that same look? Of course, her mother had had alcohol as an excuse for her outbursts, outbursts that were predictable only in their frequency. What excuse did she have?

  Stop this, Chloe told herself. Stop this now. There are worse things in life than toothpaste covering a bunch of plush toys. Things like an unfaithful husband, things like a man who has so little respect for his wife that he advertises his infidelity on dozens of dating websites, that he uses his real picture.

  “What’s respect?” she heard Sasha ask.

  What answer had she given? What did she know of respect?

  “These things are going in the garbage,” Chloe said.

  “No!” Josh cried, bursting into tears as Chloe began gathering up the toys.

  They glommed onto her Rolling Stones T-shirt, the toothpaste coating the giant teeth and protruding tongue. Could anything be more fitting?

  And suddenly she was laughing at the absurdity of it all. She sank to her knees, falling back against the cabinet beneath the sink and letting the toys drop to the floor beside her. Sasha was instantly in her lap, her little arms surrounding Chloe’s neck, pulling her mother’s face into her delicate blond curls, while Josh went about the business of removing the stuffed toys from the danger of his mother’s wrath.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” Sasha said again.

  Chloe kissed her daughter’s forehead, sudden exhaustion replacing her anger. “I’m sorry, too, sweetie.” She looked up at Josh. “It’s okay, Joshy. I won’t throw them out.”

  “You can put them in the washing machine,” he said, erasing his tears with the back of his hand. “It says right here that they’re machine washable.” He pointed to the paste-covered tag protruding from a powder-blue teddy bear’s seams.

  Chloe felt a burst of pride at her son’s growing ability to read. “I know. I’m sorry I yelled.” She beckoned him toward her.

  It took a few seconds for him to be coaxed into his mother’s outstretched arms, and even then, he refused to let go of the stuffies in case this was some sort of trick.

  “What you did wasn’t good,” Chloe told her children, careful to keep her voice soft and steady. “You made a big mess, you wasted all that toothpaste, you created a lot of work for Mommy…”

  “You were screaming,” her son said, not ready to forgive her.

  “I know. I was very angry.”

  “Are you still angry?” Sasha asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you happy?”

  “That’s pushing it,” Chloe said, tears falling down her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry, Mommy,” Sasha said, using her hair as a tissue to wipe the tears away. “Be happy. We’ll clean everything up.”

  “No. That’s okay. I’ll do it,” Chloe said. “Just please…don’t do it again. You have to take care of your things, you have to respect them…” That word again, she thought.

  “Like we have to respect our penises,” Sasha agreed solemnly.

  Dear God, Chloe thought.

  “You don’t have a penis,” Josh told his sister, rolling his hazel eyes toward the ceiling. “You have a regina.”<
br />
  Help me, Chloe prayed. “It’s a vagina,” she said, gently extricating herself from her children and struggling to her feet. “Now, while I go throw these stuffies into the washing machine, I need you to get out of your dirty clothes and into your pajamas. And I need you to brush your teeth. Assuming there’s any toothpaste left. Can you do that for me?”

  “You promise you’re not going to throw the stuffies out?” Josh asked, still not convinced.

  “You promise you’re not going to do this ever again?” Chloe asked in return, unconsciously lifting her hand to her cheek.

  “I promise it’ll never happen again,” she heard Matt say.

  Both children nodded.

  “Okay,” Chloe said, banishing Matt’s voice from her brain. “I promise, too. Now get moving. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  The children disappeared into their respective rooms as Chloe finished picking up the toys. She carried them to the combination washer-dryer in the small, rectangular laundry room beside the master bedroom, and tossed as many as would fit into the bin. The rest would have to wait, she thought, dropping the remainder to the floor, along with her T-shirt, then walking into her bedroom and pulling a lightweight gray sweatshirt over her head.

  She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror over the chest of drawers opposite the queen-size bed. “You look awful,” she said to the woman in the glass. Her hair was a mess, dozens of stray hairs having come loose from her ponytail, and her face was devoid of makeup and streaked with tears, her eyes threatening more. “And this stupid sweatshirt,” she said, pulling at its sides. “No wonder your husband cheats on you. Maybe if you wore makeup and dressed up once in a while…”

  “Stop this,” she heard Paige admonish, as she had admonished herself earlier. “Stop this right now.”

  “I need a drink,” she said, marching down the stairs into the kitchen, and reaching into the fridge for the bottle of wine she and Matt had shared at dinner the night before.

  No, a drink is the last thing I need, she decided, returning the bottle of white wine to the shelf and closing the fridge door. Alcohol was her mother’s way of dealing with unpleasantness, not realizing that it succeeded only in making her equally unpleasant. Or maybe she just didn’t care.

  Chloe shook thoughts of her mother out of her head. She had no time for unnecessary distractions. Her mother wasn’t the problem right now. Her husband was. And it was important that she be sober when Matt came home. She needed to be calm and coolheaded, not give him a reason to lash out.

  Not that he needed a reason.

  She looked at her watch. Almost seven o’clock. Matt would be home soon, tired from showing houses all day, complaining about the capriciousness of buyers, the stubbornness of sellers. He’d gobble down the dinner she’d made earlier—meat loaf, his favorite—then retreat to his laptop, ostensibly to go over his paperwork, to prepare for the next day.

  At least that’s what he’d tell her, but who knew for sure? It was just as likely he’d be checking his various dating sites to see which women had responded favorably to his picture and expressed interest in getting to know him personally. How many times had he sat there swiping to the right, right there in front of her nose?

  Was that part of the thrill?

  The phone rang.

  Chloe answered the landline on the counter in the middle of its second ring.

  “Hi, babe,” Matt said.

  “What’s up?” Chloe asked, already knowing what his response would be.

  “Looks like I’m going to be stuck at the office for a while,” he told her. “My clients have some last-minute changes in the offer they want to present, and I can’t risk passing it off to my assistant. You know how incompetent she is.”

  “I understand.” Chloe reached for her laptop with her free hand and clicked onto Perfect Strangers, scrolling past her husband’s profile to check out the seemingly endless display of male pulchritude. It would serve Matt bloody well right if she swiped right on one of them. How she’d love to give her husband a taste of his own medicine!

  “I might be pretty late,” Matt said.

  “Okay.”

  “Is everything all right? You sound kind of funny.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “The kids giving you a hard time?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.” She almost laughed.

  “Okay. Well, I should be home by ten.”

  Chloe closed her laptop and took a deep breath. “I’ll be waiting.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  They’d met during her first year of high school and almost immediately became a couple.

  She was fourteen and a virgin. He was seventeen and had already had multiple partners. A classic bad boy with a hair-trigger temper, as quick with his fists as he was with his charm, he was the captain of the football team, the captain of the swim team, the captain of the basketball team. “The captain of fucking everything,” Chloe used to tease him, trying to sound less virginal. What better match for the captain of fucking everything than the prettiest girl in school? And not only pretty, but with the biggest breasts, the lushest lips, the bluest eyes. She was smart, too, although that seemed to matter less.

  He started pressuring her to have sex almost immediately. “Men have needs,” he’d told her with all the swagger a fifteen-year-old boy could muster. “Come on, Chloe. You’re my girl. You can’t expect me to wait forever.”

  She’d tried talking to her mother about it, but Jennifer Powadiuk could rarely be counted on for parental advice of any kind. Her second husband had just left her and she was drinking even more than usual. Chloe would often come home from school to find her passed out on the couch. “It’s called a power nap,” her mother would snap when Chloe raised the issue. “And don’t give me that look. You remind me of your father when you look at me like that. And you know what a prick he was.”

  Actually, Chloe had no idea what kind of man her father was, as he’d disappeared from her life when she was barely three months old. She wasn’t even sure her mother’s first husband had been her biological father. She looked nothing like the photographs of him she’d found stuffed into a box at the back of her mother’s closet, and Chloe often suspected the reason he’d left was because he realized he’d been duped.

  “What difference does it make?” her mother had demanded when questioned about it. “They’re all the same.” She’d poured herself another scotch. “They all leave eventually.”

  Chloe couldn’t risk Matt leaving.

  By the time Chloe’s fifteenth birthday rolled around, she was no longer a virgin. And Matt, all smiles, was still captain of fucking everything.

  Of course, there were rumors, even then. Chloe heard the whispers in the halls—“I saw Matt making out with Shannon Philips on the Common.” “Krista says he has the biggest you-know-what she’s ever seen.” “Do you think Chloe knows about Eva? Should we tell her?”—but was determined to ignore them. The other girls were just jealous, she convinced herself. Matt loved her. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  They moved in together after graduation and Chloe got a job at an upscale women’s clothing store on Newbury Street, courtesy of her mother’s third husband, who knew the owner, and she helped put Matt through college, intending to complete her own degree at some point in the future. That point never came. Matt, as restless and unfocused as ever, kept switching majors, then dropped out altogether, two credits short of graduating, when he decided he’d rather sell real estate.

  “The market’s hot and so am I,” he’d told her with a laugh.

  A joke—but not.

  “Kidding on the square,” Paige’s mother would have said.

  Chloe smiled at the thought of Paige’s mother. How often she’d wished she’d had a mother like Joan Hamilton—kind, warm, thoughtful. The kind of woman who put her daughter’s happiness
ahead of her own, the kind of mother who was there when her daughter needed her.

  She’d always found it puzzling that Paige had been more of a daddy’s girl. As much as Chloe had liked and admired Paige’s father, she’d always found him a bit overwhelming, his alpha-dog energy tending to suck up all the oxygen in the room. The kind of man you assumed would live forever. And then suddenly he was gone.

  “They all leave eventually,” she heard her mother say.

  She’d met Paige ten years earlier when Paige moved into the studio apartment across the hall from the one-bedroom apartment Chloe shared with Matt. They’d become fast friends, which was unusual for Chloe, who’d never really had any female friends. But she’d liked Paige immediately. Paige looked you in the eye when she talked to you. She seemed genuinely interested in what you had to say. Her attention didn’t automatically shift to Matt when he entered the room.

  Maybe that was why Matt had never really taken to Paige. “I just don’t get what you see in her,” he’d say with a shrug, a refrain he’d returned to repeatedly over the past decade. “I mean, she’s okay. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with her. I just find her cousin Heather much more interesting.”

  By “interesting,” of course, he meant interested—in him.

  Although she’d never confided her suspicions to Paige, Chloe had always suspected that something might have happened between Matt and Heather. Heather, it seemed, had a thing for other women’s men.

  Chloe hadn’t planned on getting pregnant. She was on the pill. But then she forgot to take it for a few days, which threw her whole cycle out of whack. Or maybe she’d forgotten “accidentally on purpose,” as Matt always claimed. And so, she and Matt got married—a small ceremony at City Hall, attended only by Paige and a handful of Matt’s coworkers. His parents were long divorced and living on opposite sides of the country. He wasn’t close with either of his brothers. Chloe’s mother had developed a sudden and intense passion for ballroom dancing, and was too busy practicing for an upcoming event in Florida to attend the wedding of her only child.