by Mary Kubica
Why didn’t you tell us you were being bullied? Will clarified then, and that was when Otto said he did. He did tell. He told me.
In that moment, my heart sank so low it slipped right out of me.
Violence throughout the city was on a rise. That meant more and more patients showing up in my emergency room with bloodied bodies and gunshot wounds. My everyday routine started to resemble the sensationalist portrayal of ERs you see on TV, and not merely all fevers and broken bones. Add to that the fact that we’d been understaffed. Back in those days, my twelve-hour shifts looked more like fifteen, and it was a constant marathon during which there was little time to empty my bladder or eat. I was in a fog when I was home, tired and sleep-deprived. I forgot things. A dental cleaning, to pick up a gallon of milk on the way home from work.
Had Otto told me he was being bullied and I’d dismissed it?
Or had I been so lost in thought that I didn’t hear him at all?
Will’s eyes had turned to mine then, inquiring in that single incredulous stare whether I had known. I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, made him believe that Otto hadn’t told me. Because maybe he had and maybe he hadn’t. I didn’t know.
What made you think it was okay to take a knife to school? Will had asked Otto then, and I tried to imagine the logic that went through his mind that morning when deciding to take the knife. Would there be legal recourse for what he had done, or would a slap on the wrist suffice? How could I possibly stand to send him back to the classroom when this was through?
What did you think you were going to do with it, buddy? Will asked, meaning the knife, and I braced myself, not sure I was ready to hear his reply.
Otto gazed over a shoulder at me then and whispered, his voice breathy from crying, It was Mom’s idea. I blanched at his words, turning all shades of white because of the preposterousness of the statement. A bold-faced lie. It was Mom’s idea to take the knife to school. To scare them with, Otto lied, his eyes dropping to the floor while Will, the police officer and I watched on. She’s the one who put it in my backpack, he said under his breath, and I gasped, knowing immediately why he said it. I was the one who always had his back. We’re cut from the same cloth, Otto and me. He’s a mama’s boy; he’s always been. He thought I would protect him from this, that if I could take the blame for what he’d done, he’d get off scot-free. But he didn’t pause to think of the ramifications it might have on my reputation, on my career, on me.
I was heartbroken for Otto. But now I was also angry.
Until that moment, I didn’t know he was being picked on at school. And far be it from me to suggest he bring a knife, a knife!, to school to threaten teenage boys with, much less slip it inside his backpack.
How did he possibly think anyone would fall for that lie?
That’s ridiculous, Otto, I breathed out as all eyes in the room moved in unison to mine. How could you say that? I asked, my own eyes starting to well with tears. I pressed a finger to his chest. I whispered, You did this, Otto. You, and he winced in the chair as if he’d been slapped. He turned his back to me and once again began to cry.
Soon after, we took Otto home, having been informed that there would be an expulsion hearing before the board to see if Otto could return to school. We didn’t wait for an answer. I could never send Otto back there again.
Later that night, Will asked me in private, Don’t you think you were too harsh on him?
And there it was. The first rift in our marriage.
Until that moment, there’d been no breaches in our relationship, no gaps, none that I knew about at least. Will and I were like diamonds, I thought, able to withstand the crushing pressures of marriage and family life.
I felt sorry for the way things had unfolded in the principal’s office. There was an awful pain in the pit of my stomach knowing that Otto had been enduring the bullying and abuse for so long and we didn’t know. I felt sad it had come to this, that my son thought taking a knife to school was his only option. But I was angry that he tried to lay the blame for it on me.
I told Will no, I didn’t think I was too harsh on Otto, and he said, He’s just a boy, Sadie. He made a mistake.
But some mistakes, I soon came to learn, couldn’t so easily be forgiven. Because it wasn’t two weeks later that I discovered Will was having an affair, that he’d been having an affair for quite some time.
Next came the news of Alice’s death. I wasn’t sure, but Will was. It was time to leave.
Happenstance, he called it.
Everything happens for a reason, he said.
Will promised me we could be happy in Maine, that we just needed to leave behind everything that happened in Chicago and start fresh, though of course it struck me as ironic that our happiness came at Alice’s expense.
As we sit now at the table, eating the last of our dinner, I find myself staring out the dark window above the kitchen sink. Thinking about Imogen and the Baines family, about Officer Berg’s accusation this morning, I wonder if we can ever be happy here, or if bad luck is destined to follow us wherever we go.
CAMILLE
After that first time together, my meetups with Will became a regular thing. There were other hotel rooms, ones that became more fancy the more I begged. I didn’t like the hotels he first took me to. They were dank, dingy, cheap. The rooms had stuffy smells to them. The sheets were scratchy and thin. They had stains on them. I heard people on the other side of the walls; they heard me.
I deserved more than that. I was too good for budget hotels, for the criticism of a minimally paid staff. I was special and deserved to be treated as such. Will should have known that by then. I dropped a hint one afternoon.
I’ve always dreamed of seeing the inside of the Waldorf, I said.
The Waldorf? he asked, standing before me, laughing at my suggestion. We were deep in the alcove of an apartment complex where no one could see us. We never talked about his marriage. It was one of those things that’s just there. One of those things you don’t want to believe is there, like death, aliens, malaria.
The Waldorf Astoria? he asked when I suggested it. You know that’s like four hundred dollars a night, maybe more.
I asked, pouting, Am I not worth that to you?
As it turned out, I was. Because within an hour’s time, we had a room on the tenth floor, champagne compliments of room service.
There’s nothing, Will said as he opened the door to the lavish hotel suite and let me in, that I wouldn’t do for you.
In the room, there was a fireplace, a terrace, a mini bar, a fancy bathtub where I could soak, staring out at the views of the city from the luxury of a bubble bath.
The hotel staff referred to us as Mr. and Mrs. Foust.
Enjoy your stay, Mr. and Mrs. Foust.
I imagined a world where I was Mrs. Foust. Where I lived in Will’s home with him, where I carried and raised his babies. It was a good life.
But I didn’t ever want to be mistaken for Sadie. I was so much better than Sadie.
Will meant what he said: that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for me. He proved it time and again. He showered me with sweet nothings. He wrote me love notes. He bought me things.
When no one was there, he brought me to his home. It was far different than the gloomy apartment where Sadie and I used to live, that two-bedroom in Uptown where drunks and bums hung around, accosting us for money when we stepped outside, not that we had any to spare. Even if I did, I wasn’t about to share. I’m not known for my generosity. But Sadie was, always digging away in her purse, and they clung to her, the drunks and the bums did, like lice to hair.
They tried the same with me. I told them to fuck off.
Inside Will and Sadie’s home, I ran my hands across the arm of a leather sofa, fondled glass vases and candelabras and such, all clearly expensive. The Sadie I once knew could never afford these thin
gs. A doctor’s salary came with all the perks.
Will led the way to the bedroom. I followed along.
There was a picture of Sadie and him on a bedside table, a wedding picture. It was charming, really. In the picture, they were standing in the center of a street. They were sharply in focus while the rest of the picture gradually blurred. The trees canopied over them, full of springtime blooms. They weren’t facing the camera, smiling cheesy grins at some photographer’s request like most brides and grooms do. Instead, they were leaned into each other, kissing. Her eyes were closed, while his watched her. He stared at her like she was the most beautiful woman in the world. His hand was wrapped around the small of her back, hers pressed to his chest. There was a spray of rice in the air. For prosperity, fertility and good fortune.
Will caught me looking at the picture.
To save face I said, Your wife’s pretty, as if I’d never seen her before. But Sadie was a far cry from pretty. She was ordinary at best.
He wore a hangdog look, said, I think so.
I told myself he had to say that. That it wouldn’t be right for him to say anything else.
But he didn’t mean it.
He came to me, ran his hands through my hair, kissed me deeply. You’re beautiful, he said, the superlative form of pretty, which meant I was prettier than her.
Will led me to the bed, tossed pillows to the ground.
Don’t you think your wife will mind? I asked as I sat on the edge of the bed.
I have little moral compass. I’m sure that much is clear. I didn’t mind. But I thought maybe he did.
Will’s smile was mischievous. He came to me, slipped a hand up my skirt, said, I hope she does.
We didn’t talk about his wife anymore after that.
What I’d come to learn was that Will was a ladies’ man before he got married. A philanderer, the kind of man who thought he’d never settle down.
As they say, old habits die hard. It was something Sadie tried to keep in check.
But, try as we might, we can’t change people. So she kept a tight rein on him instead, same as she once did me. Long ago, my lighters, my smokes would disappear if she found them, locks would change when I’d forget to close the apartment door behind myself. She was quite the disciplinarian, quite the despot.
I could see in his eyes the way she enfeebled him, the way she emasculated him.
I, on the other hand, made him feel like a man.
SADIE
It’s seven thirty. Imogen still isn’t home. Will doesn’t seem worried, not even when I press him on it, asking who she’s studying with and where the friend lives.
“I know you want to believe the best in her, Will. But come on,” I say to him. “We both know she’s not studying Spanish.”
Will shrugs and tells me, “She’s just being a teenager, Sadie.”
“A delinquent teenager,” I retort, my face expressionless. Otto, at fourteen, is a teenager, too. But it’s a school night and he’s at home with us as he should be.
Will wipes down the table from dinner and tosses the dirty dishrag into the sink. He turns to me, smiling his magnanimous smile, and says, “I was a delinquent teenager once, and look how I turned out. She’ll be fine,” as Otto comes into the room with his geometry folder.
Will and Otto spread out at the kitchen table to work on homework. Tate turns on the living room TV and settles in, snuggled up under an afghan, to watch a cartoon.
I carry my glass of wine upstairs. A long soak in a warm bath is what I have in mind. But at the top of the steps, I find myself drawn not to the master bathroom, but instead to Imogen’s room.
It’s dark when I enter. I press my palm against the door, opening it wide. I ignore a sign on the door that tells me to keep out. I let myself into the room, feeling the wall for a light switch and turning it on. The room becomes visible and I discover a jumble of dark clothing strewn across the floor, enough of it that I have to move it to avoid stepping on it.
The room smells of incense. The box of sticks lies there on Imogen’s desk beside a coiled snake–shaped holder. The sticks go inside the snake’s mouth, the smell still potent enough that I wonder if she was here, after school, burning incense in her room before she disappeared to wherever she is. The desk is wooden and old. Imogen has carved words into the wood with the sharp edge of some sort of blade. They’re not nice words. Indeed, they’re angry words. Fuck you. I hate u.
I take a swig of my wine before setting the glass on the desktop. I trace my finger across the wooden trenches, wondering if this is the same handwriting that was left on my car window. I wish, in retrospect, that I had thought to take a photo of my car window before blasting that word away with the defrost. Then I could compare the handwriting, see if the shape of the letters is the same. Then I’d know.
This is the first time I’ve stepped all the way inside Imogen’s room. I didn’t come with the intent of snooping. But this is my family’s home now. It feels within my right to snoop. Will wouldn’t like it. I just barely make out his and Otto’s muffled voices coming from the kitchen. They have no idea where I am.
I look inside the desk drawers first. It’s just what you’d expect to find in a desk drawer. Pens, paper, paper clips. I stand on the desk chair, running my hands blindly along the bookshelf above the desk, coming up with only a palmful of dust. I ease myself back down to the floor.
I leave my wine where it is. I go to the bedside table, pull on the drawer knob. I sift through random things. A child’s rosary, wadded up tissues, a bookmark. A condom. I reach for the condom, hold it in my hand a moment, debate whether to tell Will. Imogen is sixteen. Sixteen-year-olds, these days, have sex. But a condom at least tells me Imogen is being smart about the choices she makes. She’s being safe. I can’t fault her for that. If we were on better terms I’d have a conversation with her, woman to woman. But we’re not. Regardless, an appointment with a gynecologist isn’t out of the question now that she’s of a certain age. That might be a better way to handle things.
I put the condom back. Then I find a photograph.
It’s a photograph of a man, I can tell, from the body shape and what’s left of the hair, that which hasn’t been scuffed off in apparent anger. But the man’s face, on the other hand, has been obliterated like a scratch-off lottery ticket, scored with the edge of a coin. I wonder who the man is. I wonder how Imogen knows him, and what made Imogen so angry that she felt the need to do this.
I drop to my hands and knees beside the bed. I look beneath, before foraging in the pockets of the misplaced clothing. I rise to my feet and go to the closet, sliding the door open. I reach in, feeling blindly for the light string and giving it a pull.
I don’t want Will to know I’m nosing around in Imogen’s room. I hold my breath, listen for noises coming from downstairs, but all that I hear is Tate’s cartoon on the TV, the sound of his innocent laugh. If only he’d stay this age forever. Will and Otto are quiet and I envision them folded over notebooks on the kitchen table, lost in thought.
Not so long after what happened with Otto, I read an article about how to best snoop in your teen’s room, the places to look. Not the obvious spots like desk drawers, but instead: secret pockets in the lining of coats; inside the electrical sockets; in false-bottomed soda cans. What we were to look for wasn’t so obvious either, but rather cleaning supplies, plastic bags, over-the-counter medicine—all of which were easily misused by teens. I never actually snooped through Otto’s room. I didn’t need to. What happened with him was one and done. Otto had learned his lesson. We talked about it. It would never happen again.
But Imogen is a closed book to me. She hardly speaks, not more than a sentence at best, and even that is never forthcoming. I know nothing about her, about who she’s having sex with (and does she have sex here, in this room, when Will and I are gone, or does she sneak out the bedroom window at night?),
about those girls she smokes cigarettes with, about what she does in these missing hours that she’s not with us. Will and I should have a better handle on these things. We shouldn’t be so uninformed. It’s irresponsible that we are, but every time I’ve broached the subject with Will—who is Imogen really?—he puts me off, saying that we can’t push too hard. That she’ll open up to us when she’s ready.
I can’t wait anymore.
I search the closet. I find the letter in the pocket of a charcoal sweatshirt. It really isn’t hard to find. I check the shoeboxes first, the back corners of the closet where only dust resides. And then on to the clothing. It’s on the fourth or fifth try that my hand folds around something and I pull it out of a pocket to see. It’s paper, folded many, many times so that it’s small, no more than an inch tall by an inch wide, and thick.
I bring it out of the closet. I gently unfold it.
Please don’t be mad is scrawled on the page, the ink pale like maybe the sweatshirt was run through the washing machine with it. But it’s there and visible, written in print, far more masculine than my own spidery script, which leads me to believe it was written by a man’s hand, which I could have guessed anyway from the content of the note. You know as well as I do how hard this is for me. It’s nothing you did. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. But I can’t keep living this double life.
From downstairs, the front door suddenly opens. The door slams closed.
Imogen is home.
Inside my chest, my heart begins to hammer.
Will’s voice greets her, more cordial than I wish he would be. He asks if she’s hungry, if she wants him to warm her up some dinner—which goes against the rules we laid down for her, that she eats dinner with us or she doesn’t eat our dinner at all. I wish Will wouldn’t be so obliging, but it’s the way Will is, always eager to please. Imogen’s replies are short, brute—no, no—as her voice drifts toward the steps.