The Husband Hour

by Jamie Brenner

  “I’ll get that,” Howard said. She’d almost forgotten he was in the room.

  Beth pushed back from the table and walked without purpose to the sink. She ran the water for a minute, taking deep breaths and splashing her face, willing herself to stay calm. We have to put our issues aside and be parents, Howard had said. And he was right. They had to lead during a time of crisis. She could fall apart later, on her own time.

  “I’m really sorry, Mom,” Stephanie said. Beth turned around to look at her daughter who had committed a betrayal beyond Beth’s wildest imagination. Even when the evidence had been right in front of her all along.

  She realized, gripped with a terrible rage, that she had never been truly angry with Stephanie before. Not when she had trashed the Green Gable as a teenager on prom weekend. Not when she became pregnant by accident without so much as a boyfriend or a job. Not even when she cruelly cut off her sister for no apparent reason.

  But now? She was angry enough for all the bad behavior of Stephanie’s life, and then some.

  “I don’t want your apology!” Beth screamed, feeling out of control in a way she’d never experienced. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do: You’re going to stay sober, get a job, and spend time with your son. You’re going to be a goddamn mother.” Stephanie looked as if Beth had slapped her in the face, then burst into tears just as Howard walked back into the kitchen.

  “Who was at the door?” Beth asked.

  “The real estate agent,” he said. “I asked her to come back tomorrow.”

  Beth didn’t bother telling him to call off the agent. She didn’t have the energy to fight it any longer. She thought of a line she’d read somewhere: Only an idiot tries to fight a war on two fronts, and only a madman tries to fight on three. Maybe it was no longer worth fighting with Howard about the house. Her dream of unifying the family was over.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Matt woke up facedown on his computer keyboard. He lifted his head, blinking at the screen, the same image of Ethan Adelman he’d been scrutinizing before finally passing out after editing for twelve hours straight.

  He checked his phone, trying to orient himself to the day and time. Twenty-four hours since Lauren had dropped the bombshell, and it hit him fresh.

  He turned back to his computer, clicked through the reel to just about eighty minutes into the film. It was footage he’d shown in the opening, Rory scoring a hat-trick goal in high school, then pulling his left arm sharply in, bent at the elbow, his fist tight: score. The first time the footage occurred in the film, it was accompanied by a voice-over from a former high-school teammate: “Rory was selfless on the ice. He was ruthless against the opponent but generous to his teammates. He was the definition of team player.” Now, the second time the footage ran, it was with Stephanie’s voice-over. The audience had already seen Stephanie’s interview, already knew her in the context of Lauren’s sister. She was blond, she was beautiful. Her words, over the action of Rory’s goal: “Rory wasn’t a hero.” Next, a clip of Ethan running to his mother, kicking the ball into the ocean, then making the arm gesture that exactly mirrored Rory’s just a few frames earlier.

  Score.

  It was a game-changing version of the story he had been trying to tell for the past four years, a piece of the puzzle he’d never imagined. The man who was arguably the most famous casualty of the war in Iraq had left behind a son.

  He considered a new name for the film: American Son.

  Pushing away thoughts of Lauren, he told himself it was the nature of the work. This is real, this is true, and the truth has a way of coming to the surface. He was just the vehicle.

  Of course, Lauren wouldn’t see it like that. Oh, what a massive, unprofessional mistake, sleeping with an interviewee. But in his defense, he’d thought the film was all but finished and that she was comfortable with how Rory would be represented—valiant but flawed, betrayed by the system. But the betrayed became the betrayer.

  He logged off the computer, took a quick shower, and packed up the last of his equipment. Whenever he stayed someplace for an extended period, he felt a pang at leaving, almost like he needed to say good-bye to the room. He felt it especially in that moment, knowing that after the movie came out, he would not exactly be welcomed back.

  Or maybe, if he was lucky, by the time the movie came out, Lauren would have come to terms with everything. The worst part was that she thought he’d been playing games with her—using her. It couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t sneak off without saying good-bye!” Henny said, surprising him with a hug.

  “Oh, hey there, Henny. Yeah, well, it’s early. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I brought you something. A little parting gift.”

  She handed him a sea-blue sign that read I LEFT MY ♥ AT THE SHORE, with the ♥ made out of seashells.

  “I thought you might like a reminder of the beach when you’re back in New York,” she said.

  “Oh, Henny. You shouldn’t have.” Really, you shouldn’t have. He didn’t need a reminder.

  “Are you kidding? The fact that you were my first tenant would be reason enough. But you launched Hen House Designs, and let me tell you—that, my friend, is the gift that keeps on giving.”

  She looked around the room, toying with the rope of turquoise around her neck. “All packed up, eh. Well, I’m sorry to see you go.”

  Sadly, she was the only one who felt that way.

  Lauren jogged in place waiting to cross Atlantic Avenue. A breeze blew off the ocean, raising goose bumps on her sweat-soaked arms and legs. Every muscle throbbed, and her breath came fast but even and strong. She wished she didn’t have physical limitations, that she could keep running and running to the end of the island. To the end of the earth. She couldn’t stand the stillness of Nora’s house. Her body at rest was at the mercy of her merciless mind.

  And as she returned to Nora’s house, she was sure it was her mind playing tricks on her when she saw Matt sitting on the front porch. She’d been trying so hard not to think about him.

  He stood and walked toward her.

  “I should have guessed you were out running. Though it’s a little later than usual, right?”

  “Go away,” she said, suddenly light-headed. She leaned over, hands on her thighs.

  “Just hear me out for a minute. I had no idea about Ethan. I’ve gone over all of my interviews, everything, in the past twenty-four hours, and frankly, there’s no way that I could have known. I simply didn’t have enough information to piece it all together. Maybe if I’d been looking for it. But I wasn’t.”

  “Why do you have footage of him?”

  “Lauren, I’m a filmmaker. I have footage of the inside of Sack O’ Subs. I saw a cute kid, I thought maybe it could be used for juxtaposition…there was nothing more to it.”

  She stared at him, and he met her gaze, unblinking. It made sense. Maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth.

  He glanced back at the porch. “Can we sit?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m leaving town and I just want a few more minutes with you.”

  Lord help her—she wanted that too.

  She sat on the wicker bench, remembering the night he’d first appeared, when she’d been swinging on this same bench, never imagining what the summer had in store for her. And now here they were.

  “So…now what?” she said.

  “Lauren, I meant what I said the other night. Come visit me in New York.”

  She looked at him, incredulous. “I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about the film.”

  “What about it?”

  “You can’t make this movie,” she said. She spoke the words before the thought had fully formed in her mind, but as soon as she said them, she knew they were true, and they were absolute.

  “Lauren,” he said, touching her shoulder. “Come on. You know that’s not realist
ic.”

  She jumped up. “You said you weren’t out to make Rory look bad.” And then it hit her: Why was she still protecting Rory? She was murderously angry with her sister. Why not at him?

  “I’m not trying to make him look bad. He was a flawed person. We’re all flawed. But Rory Kincaid’s highs were higher than most people’s, and his lows might have been lower than most. That’s what makes him an interesting subject. It’s not about him being a terrible person.”

  “What about the rest of us? I’m not just thinking about myself, though that’s part of it. God knows I don’t want this humiliation made public. But I’m thinking of…my nephew. He doesn’t know, and if you open this up…you have to leave Ethan out of the movie!”

  He shook his head sadly. “Lauren, I can’t do that. It’s my job to tell the whole story—the truth about Rory’s decisions and their consequences.”

  Furious, all she could say was “I never want to see you again.”

  A car pulled up in front of the house. Her father?

  She watched, dumbstruck, while he parked and calmly headed up the walkway. He spotted her, and she saw the surprise on his face when he noticed Matt.

  “Dad, how did you know I was here?”

  “Your mother is a good guesser,” he said. He turned to Matt and shook his hand. “Howard Adelman.”

  “Matt Brio. Nice to meet you.”

  Um, no. This is not happening.

  “You need to leave,” she said to Matt. Maybe if her father weren’t there, he would have refused. Maybe he would have said something to give her hope that he still might choose her feelings over the film. But as it was, he just nodded. When he said, “Good-bye, Lauren,” she felt her entire body run cold.

  And then he was gone, and her father said, “I’m here to take you home.” And she didn’t have the strength left to argue.

  Chapter Fifty

  Beth had to hand it to Howard: when he said he was going to do something, he did it.

  “Do you want some French toast?” she asked Lauren by way of greeting.

  Lauren mumbled something, brushed past Howard, and dragged her bag upstairs.

  “Well, at least she’s here,” Howard said.

  “What did you say to her?”

  “Not a hell of a lot, to be honest. She doesn’t want to talk.”

  “But you told her that Stephanie was still here, right? That the answer isn’t to run away? The things we discussed?”

  He poured himself the last of the coffee. Beth retrieved the bag of coffee beans from the freezer to make a fresh pot.

  “There was a man with her,” Howard said. “Matt somebody. Do you know about this guy? Is she finally dating after all this time?”

  The filmmaker. Howard still didn’t know anything about the documentary. “It’s a long story,” Beth said.

  “You’ve been holding out on me?”

  She turned sharply but then realized he was teasing her.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I couldn’t deal with this alone.”

  “Of course I’m here.”

  “Mom!” Lauren yelled from the second floor. Beth, with a quick, alarmed look at Howard, bolted up the stairs. She found Lauren standing in the doorway of Stephanie’s bedroom. “What is all of her stuff still doing here? When is she moving out?”

  Across the hall, Ethan’s door clicked open. When he spotted Lauren, he dashed over, threw his arms around her legs, and gazed up at her with adoration.

  Lauren looked down at him and burst into tears.

  It’s just a house, Lauren told herself, throwing her clothes into a suitcase and then emptying her drawers; she’d pack the rest in garbage bags or whatever she could find. It’s just a house and it was never truly yours and it’s time to move on. That’s all.

  Lauren would have to find her own apartment. Maybe it was something she should have done a long time ago. Every summer, year after year, she’d felt encroached upon, but instead of staking out her own private space and doing the hard work of moving on, she’d just told herself it was temporary. Now the day was here, and she would not cry about it. She was just thankful that she’d been working hard, had saved her money, and was in a position to take care of herself and rent an apartment. As for tonight, for the next few weeks, a hotel would have to do.

  But the boxes. She could not lug all the boxes with her, and yet she could not leave the artifacts of her life with Rory behind in enemy territory.

  Or were the boxes themselves enemy territory?

  She would not, could not, think about Rory. But when she let down her guard, the thoughts slipped through, like water seeping through cracks in plaster walls. All she could do to battle them back was tell herself this: It was not possible that he had known about Ethan. Yes, it was possible that he had betrayed her during that summer apart. But it was unthinkable that he would have fathered a child with her sister, known about it, and still asked her to marry him.

  And yet, she was stuck in this hell of wondering and never being able to confront him about it, because she would never hear from Rory again.

  It had been one of the hardest things to wrap her mind around in the beginning, the permanence of it. The notion of never hearing his voice, never being able to seek his counsel, never making another plan or sharing another hope with him, was as vast and incomprehensible as thinking about Earth as just one planet orbiting one star out of millions of stars in the galaxy. Once, Rory had played her a video that showed Earth’s size in relation to the other planets’ in the solar system, then the solar system in relation to the Milky Way galaxy, and then the galaxy in relation to all the other known galaxies in the universe. It mapped out the travel distances between the stars in light-years, and the vastness of it all felt like something her mind was not built to contemplate. But this was exactly what Rory loved about astronomy. Maybe, if she had been the one to die first, to die young, he would have known how to reckon with infinity. With permanence. More than four years out, she couldn’t. That was why she had left the letter unopened. It was her safeguard against good-bye forever.

  She stared at the boxes taking up most of the space inside her closet.

  The boxes were all still open from the night she’d looked through them, poking around for things to share with Matt, hoping to make Rory more balanced, more human in the film. How arrogant, how naive she’d been to think she was the custodian of the truth.

  How could you do this?

  She couldn’t remember what box she’d stuffed the letter in, and by the time she found it, the floor around her was littered with yearbooks, photos, and clothes. Sitting among the relics of her former life, she pressed her back against the closet door, staring at her name rendered in Rory’s tightly looped handwriting.

  If she wanted answers, if there was hope for any kind of response to the question that would haunt her for the rest of her life, she had to open it. It was time to face forever.

  She peeled open the envelope carefully, thinking that it had been his hands that had sealed it. He had planned for this moment, just her and his words.

  The letter was handwritten on yellow legal paper. He’d taken a page from one of the pads she left on the kitchen counter for her grocery and to-do lists. The routine had not carried over to her life in Longport, and the memory of such a mundane, day-to-day habit took her breath away.

  January 15, 2012

  Dear Lauren:

  If you are reading this, it’s because I’m gone. I’m so sorry, because I promised you it would be okay and I was wrong. Please forgive me for this mistake.

  I wish I could say it was my only one.

  I tried and failed with so much, but my biggest failures were in this relationship—the one thing I cared about the most. I know it didn’t seem like it at times, but I wrote this because I want you to know that it’s true. I love you and loved you even in my worst moments.

  It’s hard for me to imagine you reading this, being the cause of your hurt and at the same time not
being there to help you through it. But I know you are a strong person. Don’t let whatever you are feeling today ruin your tomorrow. You deserve to be happy.

  To me, you will always be the girl I saw running around the track on Arnold Field. I have no right to ask anything of you, but I will: Be that happy girl who loved running, writing, and her big sister. Please know that the worst mistakes were mine alone. And Lauren, if you’re out at night and you look up at the stars, remember that once upon a time, there was a boy who loved you and always will.

  Rory

  Lauren reread it and reread it. The date told her he’d written it before his first deployment but long after he’d betrayed her with her sister. The sentence that jumped out at her, that defined the entire letter, was the entreaty that she go back to being the girl who loved her big sister. The worst mistakes were mine alone. Well, technically that was not true. And maybe that event wasn’t even what he was referring to. But she felt that it was, that he wanted to take the blame.

  The one thing she couldn’t find, even with the most creative interpretation of the letter, was any sense of whether or not he knew about Ethan.

  She had to know. Unfortunately, the only living person who might have had the answer was the one person she’d sworn never to speak to again.

  The house was quiet and empty. How many times had she wanted solitude but was instead surrounded by her family? And now she needed to talk to Stephanie and everyone was gone. Figured.

  Late afternoon, close to four, was optimal beach time. The sun had peaked and ebbed; it was the perfect hour to doze off under an umbrella, read, or just comfortably watch the waves until dinner. She remembered when she was a kid, her grandmother had always been the last one off the beach, reluctantly dragging her chair back to the house only after her husband had showered, dressed for dinner, made a cocktail, and sent Lauren out to fetch her.

  Out on the deck, Lauren cupped her hand over her eyes against the sunlight and looked toward the ocean. Sure enough, four beach chairs were lined up at the water’s edge. She didn’t bother walking around to use the gate; she just pulled off her sneakers and climbed over the wall separating her property from the beach.