The Wrong Family

by Tarryn Fisher

  She winced. So this was what Nigel liked? Twentysomething women with hard, round asses and shaggy, pullable hair. It was unsurprisingly predictable, and yet still painful.

  Winnie’s own blond hair was smooth and flat, her ass much the same despite how often she lunged and squatted. She had always wanted larger breasts, but Nigel insisted that he liked her as she was. Clearly not. Clearly her short little gymnast husband was looking for something wild to ride. Winnie poured water into a glass from a carafe on the table. She drained the glass and poured another, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. A swatch of lipstick came away with the droplets of water. She must have smeared it all over her face, but Winnie didn’t care. Dulce returned to the table and there was more grinning. They conferred over the menu as the server waited, pen poised.

  Someone came to take Winnie’s order, and by the time she was alone again, she saw that Nigel and Dulce each had a mimosa in front of them. Winnie felt sick. So far nothing had happened other than her pathetic, dumbass husband taking a much younger woman to lunch and staring at her ass. Winnie had ordered coffee, but she’d only held the mug to her lips, never taking a sip. She wanted to drink something stronger, but she didn’t know what to order. Their food arrived and Winnie’s heart began to slow. They were...eating. Like two colleagues. She felt ridiculous, stupid. Amber had probably seen them at lunch just as Winnie was now and had jumped to conclusions. Amber had been cheated on recently; it all made perfect sense to Winnie. God, she was embarrassed. She was about to pull out a ten to leave on the table for her coffee when it happened.

  It was, in Winnie’s opinion, as intimate as a kiss. Dulce extended her fork toward Nigel, French toast held on the tip; from where she was sitting she could see the syrup swinging from the bread. He must have opened his mouth for the bite because she returned her fork to her plate, grinning. Winnie could see his ears move as he chewed, hear the laughter as he wiped syrup from his face.

  She’d seen enough. Setting her coffee down on the table, she lifted her phone from her bag. She had several missed calls from Amber, and one from her friend Courtney. She scrolled past these until she found her husband’s name.

  Hi, where are you?

  She saw his head dip to look at his phone. For a minute Winnie thought he was going to ignore it but then the little bubbles appeared to say he was typing. With Nigel’s attention on his phone, Dulce’s expression was unguarded as she watched him text his wife.

  Winnie felt something hard and primal unfold in her belly. Her immediate anger was directed at the woman and not the man. She recognized this as being off-brand with her feminism, but she didn’t care. What was feminism to a woman who was being betrayed? This bitch had cozied up to a married father, and all she could do was grin like the Cheshire cat. She wanted to hook each of her index fingers into the sides of Dulce’s mouth, and pull that grin wide enough to rip her face open. She’d never, in her life, had such a violent thought, and it made her whole body shake with satisfaction and disgust. Winnie stared down at the screen of her phone, her hurt burning like a fever. She read Nigel’s answer, panting slightly.

  At lunch

  He wasn’t lying. But omissions were the same as lies in Winnie’s opinion.

  With who?

  She finally took a sip of her coffee, but when the server came by, she ordered a glass of white wine. If she was going to drink something cold, it needed to make her feel better. White wine was the medicine of the basic bitch, wasn’t it? Winnie had never felt more basic in her life as she watched her husband pay the bill with cash. Dulce didn’t even offer, she noted.

  When Nigel finally answered her text, they were standing up to leave and Winnie had drained her glass.

  Some people from work...

  What was that? Winnie thought—an omission or a straight-out lie? Things got murky in that department.

  She watched as he shrugged on his jacket, a lingering smile on his lips from something Dulce said. He glanced down at his phone once more before pocketing it. It was then that, in tandem, Nigel and Dulce turned toward the door, flipping up the collars of their coats. Nigel was walking straight toward Winnie, who was looking at him squarely, willing him to see her. It was an awful few seconds as realization kicked in; she was getting ready to scream and rail and cry at him, but what if that was what he wanted: a reason to finally leave her? A second later, his eyes found Winnie, and she leaned forward eagerly to see what he would do. Maybe it was the white wine medicine that made her so brazenly thirsty for conflict. Nigel stopped abruptly, like someone had yanked him back by an invisible string. Dulce didn’t look back until she was at the door and Nigel wasn’t opening it for her. The smile dropped from her face as she looked from him to Winnie.

  “I’ll catch up to you,” he said, waving her off. He didn’t have to tell her twice; she was out the door and hurrying past the window, her head bent like a shamed dog. Nigel slumped into the seat opposite Winnie. She searched his face to see what he was feeling, but his expression was neutral. He’d always been better than her at hiding his emotions.

  “So you follow me now?”

  “So you have lunch with work whores now?”

  Nigel’s head jerked back in offense and Winnie felt rage.

  “She’s a colleague,” he began. “Don’t be ridiculous—”

  “She fed you food from her fork. Do you do that with Brady when you have lunch together?”

  He was momentarily speechless. Nigel looked stupid when he was speechless; Winnie had never noticed that before. He looked like what her father used to call a dumber-than-shit idiot. His eyes were cantering around, blinking like the room was too bright.

  “Have you slept with her?”

  He’d been preparing for this for the last minute, thus the neutral expression, she thought. His systems were in overdrive trying to wiggle out of this.

  “What? No!” But Winnie already knew it was true. She could see it in his eyes. He was ashamed. He was bowing his head a little like Dulce had when she walked away.

  “Nigel,” she said firmly. “Tell me the truth. I deserve the truth at least, don’t you think?”

  He stood up, almost sending the table toppling. “You don’t get to come in here and accuse me of things.” Winnie was so lost in her shock that she found nothing to say. He was red-faced, though his lips were shockingly white, like he’d bitten into a powdered doughnut. It was Nigel’s tell; when he was lying, when he was guilty. His outburst immediately embarrassed her.

  Recoiling in her seat, she felt hurt rise in her throat, making her want to moan out loud. He slammed out of the door as she sat, still as a statue. People were looking; of course they were—Winnie would have looked, too. And then she knew—he’d done it to throw her off—to buy time for a better lie. Using her weakness against her was an all-time low for their marriage. She drained her water glass, left a generous tip, and took an Uber home.

  Five hours later, Nigel walked in the door after work. Winnie had spent those five hours finding out everything she could about Dulce Tucker. She could hear him depositing his work bag in the junk closet, then his heavy tread up the stairs as he went to change out of his work clothes.

  He came down a few minutes later wearing sweats and a T-shirt. Seating himself at the table, he folded his hands rather piously on the tabletop. “Can we talk?”

  “I would say we need to,” she said calmly. She’d been nursing a tea for the last few hours, just pouring hot water over the same tea bag again and again. It didn’t matter; Winnie wasn’t tasting anything.

  “Winnie,” he began. “There’s just been a lot of stress lately—on both of us—I wasn’t myself.”

  Winnie waited a few beats for him to say more, to apply some salve to the wounds he had inflicted with his actions. More, anyway, than just “I wasn’t myself.” She leaned closer—just an inch or so to urge him to finish his sentence.

&nbs
p; “Oh...oh,” she said. “Is that the end, are you—?”

  “Goddammit!” Nigel slammed his fist on the surface of the table. Winnie’s salt and pepper shakers wobbled. “Nothing is good enough for you.”

  She blinked at him for a few minutes in disbelief. Nigel was acting like she was chiding him for not picking up the right brand of yogurt.

  “I didn’t say that. Was that an...admission?”

  Nigel’s compact frame was tense, despite how relaxed he tried to appear. Her attraction to this man was primal because, even as gaslighted as she was, she wanted him in a way that made her feel shameful.

  “Why are you like this, Winnie? So suspicious. I’ve never given you reason. It makes me feel like I’ve done something when I haven’t.”

  “But haven’t you?” Winnie couldn’t help it, her face was incredulous. Was it really happening this way? She’d caught her husband having a cozy lunch date with Dulce fucking Tucker, and now he was angry with her? It felt too weird to be real. Winnie had met Dulce during the last Christmas party at Nigel’s work when she was a new hire. She’d come over from a temp agency when their secretary was out on maternity leave, and then later, when said secretary decided to be a stay-at-home mom, they took Dulce on permanently. Nigel used to make jokes about her name, and Winnie joined in, figuring it was better than wondering if he was attracted to her. Turns out he was.

  “Winnie—” he tried again. “We’ve both made terrible mistakes—”

  “Have you slept with her or not?”

  He dropped his head. “No.”

  She didn’t believe him, but he’d never change his story. When Nigel lied, he stayed committed to that lie. She knew that better than anyone.

  “But you were planning to?” She could see him mulling over this one—stewing would be a better word. Under the table her hands grabbed at each other, holding tight.

  “Yes.” He seemed almost relieved to say it.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know...boredom.” He said it with a challenge. “You’re always inside your head. I can’t get in there.”

  “Ohh, that’s not it.” She pressed her lips together so hard she imagined they looked like Nigel’s.

  “Isn’t it?” Something else had settled across Nigel’s face. Winnie recognized it; Nigel got like that when he was playing a game and winning. She thought about the way he moved his bottle of liquor around to throw her off. Everything was a game to him.

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Nigel.” The truth was that she didn’t feel capable of talking about it anymore. A line had been crossed, the trust they’d worked so hard to rebuild, kicked out from under them like a wobbly stool. She didn’t know how to put into words what she was feeling because there were no words for it.

  Everything in her life was coming off the rails: her marriage, her relationship with her son, and her mental health. She was either being stalked, or she was imagining being stalked, and quite frankly Winnie didn’t know what was worse. There was no one to turn to, not a soul who would understand. She couldn’t leave him because of what she’d done, and he couldn’t leave her because of what he’d helped her do. They were tied together in this life. Winnie locked herself in the bathroom, wishing she had a bottle of wine.

  Nigel retired to his den, where Winnie assumed he’d be spending the night. After he’d gone, Winnie made some tea and sat at her computer, trying to get her mind on something else besides the storm that was her life.

  She was checking her email, aggressively sipping at chamomile tea, when she clicked on a message sent by the King County Library system. Winnie had seen enough of these back in the day to know what it was before she clicked on it. After Samuel was born, she’d read voraciously for years, making regular trips to the library with him strapped to her chest. Occasionally she’d read a book she really liked and then, instead of returning it, she’d read it again; that always amounted to fines. But she hadn’t cared, they’d been worth it. And sure enough, when the body of the email downloaded to her screen, Winnie’s suspicion was confirmed: a library fine.

  But that couldn’t be right. Winnie hadn’t been to the library in years, like at least four or five. Not to mention she didn’t have a clue where her library card was. It had to be an error in the system, or a ghost email haunting her from her inbox past. Looking more closely, she saw that it was a fine for a book that had been checked out on October 5 of this year. Winnie leaned closer to the screen to read the name of the book she’d supposedly checked out; it was in fine print like a little librarian elf typed it—Child Abduction: A Theory of Criminal Behavior.

  For a moment it felt like someone had plugged her into an electrical socket. Fear charged through her limbs, settling in her bowels like greasy food. She doubled over, hitting her forehead on the lip of the desk, but hardly feeling it. Bent with her head between her knees and her hands clutching her calves, she pushed air through her lips to keep from wailing. Everything inside Winnie was screaming, but she had to keep control. She lifted her head again, glanced briefly at the screen before exiting out of it, and turned the computer off. She wanted to ask Nigel if this was some sort of cruel joke, but she knew in her gut he’d never do something like that, not when his hands were as covered in guilt as hers. There was also the fact that neither Nigel nor her son liked to read library books; it was new or nothing. Either way, she had to find out.

  She texted Samuel. Did you check out a library book lately?

  Last time I went to the library was on a fourth-grade field trip.

  Why couldn’t he just answer her? It was yes or no—that simple. Everything had to be a snarky little game with him. If she’d said that to her own mother when she was Samuel’s age...

  And then all of her anger evaporated. She was lucky he’d even answered; lately, he wanted nothing to do with her. That was the essential difference between her mother’s parenting and her own: her mother didn’t care what her kids thought of her. Winnie tried not to think about how much she cared as she got up from the desk to check the junk drawer for her library card. She rifled past a hairbrush with a broken handle, a jump rope, and a box of press-on nails before she found it. It was under the stack of instruction manuals and receipts, pushed to the far corner of the drawer. She held it in her palm, staring at it hard. The library must have made a mistake; she’d sort it out.

  But when she called the library, they said she had indeed checked out Child Abduction: A Theory of Criminal Behavior on October 5.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said firmly. “I haven’t been to the library in years. I don’t even know where my library card is!” She glanced guiltily at the junk drawer.

  “Well then somebody else has your card,” said the guy on the other end of the line. “And they owe five dollars and seventy-two cents in fees. Will you be paying it? I can take your debit card right over the phone.”

  When Winnie ended the call, she cried. She hadn’t cried in a long time and it felt good to let the drama loose, as her mother used to say. She’d been too busy to be scared lately, but here it was: a library book, reminding her that at any moment her entire life could be torn apart.

  If she told Nigel about this, he’d just blow it off, and then it would end up in another big, fat fight. She was tired of those, obviously, since she even refused to fight about his infidelity. She was desperate for peace and for her son to like her again, and for her secrets to stay secret.

  She went to look at the library card again, really examine it under the light. There was chocolate melted on one corner and most of the writing was scratched away.

  She walked straight to the pantry and pulled out Nigel’s secret bottle of Jack Daniel’s—this time hidden in the bread box. Without bothering to get a glass, she unscrewed the cap and drank directly from the lip. A trickle of whiskey ran down her chin as she coughed and sputtered. Her eyes burned like she’d poured the whiskey s
traight over her pupils, and she squeezed them closed as her stomach lurched in protest. Better, Winnie thought. When I’m retching my guts up, I don’t think about the scary shit.

  No wonder her husband liked this stuff. She held the bottle up to the light, swirling it around. Her father had been a whiskey drinker, and when Nigel ordered it stiff on their first date, just as her father would have, she’d fallen for him right then and there. And then of course she’d banned him from drinking it (after the death of her father, due to said whiskey), but that was only to put the fear of God in him. Winnie knew he drank, but because he wasn’t supposed to, he watched how much, and where, and who with.

  She wandered around the rooms downstairs, holding the bottle of whiskey by its neck and occasionally taking tentative sips. By the time she walked through the kitchen for the second time, the bottle was considerably lighter, and Winnie could feel every single ounce of alcohol chortling through her system. It was awful and wonderful at the same time. She made a right out of the kitchen and found herself swaying near the computer, and all of a sudden she remembered everything she was trying to forget, only now she was drunk. It was worse drunk than sober. Winnie was a sad drunk, a dark drunk; she thought of bad things when there was alcohol in her. It had been like that since before her dad died, the nature of his death only solidifying her distaste for the foul stuff.

  She leaned her hip against the wall and a few seconds later, her head. Winnie was dizzy and she wanted to hurl. That’s what her dad used to say—hurl. She started to cry, and then she did hurl.

  20

  WINNIE

  As it turned out, the alcohol wasn’t the only thing swirling around Winnie’s stomach. The following day unearthed the virus. It hit them in tandem, so it was hard to know who to blame. At first Winnie thought she was being punished with a hangover the size of Kilimanjaro, but when she heard Nigel stumble through the door at noon, heading straight for the downstairs bathroom, she knew Samuel would probably soon follow. Winnie, who had never left for work, was upstairs in a similar position, her face noticeably green as she leaned over the toilet, expelling her bad choices along with the virus. They met in the kitchen accidentally, both in search of water. It was an awkward standoff, one in which Winnie felt like the victor when Nigel looked away first and skulked toward the fridge. It was as she watched the back of his head that it occurred to her that he had brought home this sickness, brought it right from Dulce fucking Tucker. Winnie and Nigel had both shared the same almost empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s, slurping after hours to hide their sin. It was the insult that sent her over the edge, the audacity of Nigel to humiliate her by entertaining another woman. How he hid his bottle all over the pantry, too drunk to put it in the same place as before. Was life with her so unbearable? It wasn’t like she’d let herself go, or that she ignored her husband. He’d just chosen to do this to her and now she was sick as a consequence, sick as a dog. She couldn’t wait her turn for the water, her stomach was rolling. Winnie ran for the stairs angry as all hell.