“Cut it self,” Izzy said when Josie began to slice her pizza into bite-sized pieces.
“No, Iz, I don’t—”
“Self!” Izzy bellowed.
The knife was plastic and flimsy; Izzy couldn’t hurt herself with it. “Fine.” Josie sighed, trying to remember how long this stage had lasted with Zoe.
She raised her own slice to her lips, opening her mouth to take a big, greedy bite, and two things happened simultaneously: Zoe knocked over her cup of lemonade, which splashed the liquid across the table, and it began dripping onto Josie’s lap. And Josie caught sight of a pretty woman in a flowered sundress sitting at the next table over, enjoying a healthy lunch of apple and avocado slices and string cheese with her perfectly behaved daughter.
The woman was staring at Josie, too.
• • •
“All I’m saying is it isn’t fair for me to come home after a long day at work and have to clean up the house!” Frank snapped that night.
“I work, too!” Josie yelled. “I have never worked harder. I actually made a big sale today, Frank. I’m supplying all the toys for a new summer camp. And I did it while the girls were napping.”
“I’m not saying you don’t work hard! But this is the third night in a row I’ve had to clean up the kitchen and it doesn’t seem fair when I’m working so late.”
“I clean it up eighteen times a day! All I do is clean and clean and clean and things get messy five seconds later.”
“Zoe is big enough to help you,” Frank said.
“Really?” Josie put her hands on her hips. “You’re welcome to start teaching her, Frank. Why don’t you do it this weekend?”
Frank loved to do this, to say that it was time for Izzy to give up her pacifier or for Zoe to keep track of her own library books. Then he’d back away and expect Josie to undertake the hard work of implementing the change.
But maybe that’s what stay-at-home mothers were supposed to do; the avocado woman’s daughter probably cleaned up after herself with a miniature dustpan and broom.
Frank exhaled slowly. “Is there anything for dinner?”
“Hamburgers,” Josie said. “Yours is in the fridge.”
Pizza for lunch and hamburgers for dinner; she’d never even thought of packing a nutritious snack to bring along on their errands.
“I’m going to bed,” she said.
“Jos, it’s only nine thirty. Come on.”
She shook her head. “I’m exhausted.” When she’d come home from the disastrous trip to the mall and had discovered the email message from the director of the summer camp, she’d felt her body unclench. It wasn’t just the money, although her commission would be several hundred dollars. The email had been a victory she’d needed desperately.
But Frank didn’t even care about that; he only saw a sink full of dishes and an inadequate meal. She’d felt alone all day, but never so much as in this moment. It felt as if Frank were jabbing at the most tender, vulnerable parts of her.
She ducked her head so Frank didn’t see her blinking back tears. He didn’t have to criticize her; she knew all too well that she wasn’t doing a good enough job.
She climbed the stairs, her footsteps heavy. As she neared the top, she could hear the sound of the television coming to life. Frank would remain on the couch, eating his reheated dinner and watching a baseball game. She’d read in bed for a while. By the time he came to bed, she’d be sound asleep.
She knew this, because it was becoming their pattern.
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
* * *
Present day
SHE’D COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT the Valentine’s Day party for Zoe’s class. Frank had been the one to remind her. All of the parents were invited to attend. There would be games, a valentine-making station, and a snack table.
“Is it still okay if I go?” Frank asked that morning.
“Zoe would be disappointed if you didn’t,” Josie responded.
She’d felt some sympathy for him after his confession the other night in the darkened kitchen, but now she was back to hating his guts again. If he’d just come to her and said he felt disconnected and that he missed her, she would have acted. She would have called a therapist. She would have talked to him. She would have worked with him to fix things.
Instead of turning in toward her, though, he’d looked outside of their marriage for a solution.
“It’s at two o’clock, right?” Frank asked.
He knew the appointed time. He was just trying to reestablish communication with her. She picked up her mug of coffee and said “Mmm-hmmm” as she strode out of the room. She didn’t look at him. But somehow she knew his shoulders were slumping.
• • •
Frank was in charge of running the bingo station. He’d printed out special cards from a website, with Valentine’s images like Cupids and hearts forming the columns. He sat on a small metal chair, a circle of kids around him, pulling various images out of a paper bag.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the next picture in my hand. Who’s ready to see it?”
Predictably, the kids erupted in shouts and squeals.
“All right, I think one or two of you is ready . . . Who . . . has . . . this . . . word?” Frank asked, holding up a square of paper.
“It’s backward!” “We can’t see it!” “Turn it around, Zoe’s dad!”
“Oops,” Frank said, playing to his audience. “Is this better?”
“Now it’s upside down!”
Kids were literally falling out of their chairs with laughter by the time Frank showed them the clue, a picture of the word “love” written in puffy red letters.
Josie circled the table, pointing out the square to a child who hadn’t noticed it on his bingo sheet and handing out a napkin to another kid who had cupcake icing on his face.
“Bingo!” a girl shouted.
“Let’s see your sheet,” Frank said, peering at it. “Oh, sweetie, you are so close! See, you put a marker on the fish kissing but I haven’t pulled out that image yet. You just need one more and you’ve got it. Keep an eye out for the smooching fish.”
“Smooching!” “Eew, that’s gross!” “Why do fish kiss?”
A mother Josie didn’t know well leaned over and whispered: “He is so amazing with kids. I wish my husband were more like that!”
Josie dredged up a smile. “Yeah.”
She could tell her lackluster response surprised the woman, but Josie was in no mood to do damage control. She circled the table again to escape more conversation.
When the game ended, she accompanied Zoe to the valentine-making table. There were lacy doilies and construction-paper hearts and stickers and glitter and glue.
“Who do you want to make one for?” Josie asked as Zoe sat down and reached for a pink doily.
“It’s a secret,” Zoe said. “Don’t watch.”
“Okay,” Josie said. She went to tidy up the snack table, to the sounds of Frank’s next raucous bingo game.
The party wrapped up fairly quickly, its end coinciding with the conclusion of the school day—first-grade teachers were savvy enough to put time constraints on anything involving kids and sugar—and Josie and Frank helped Zoe gather up her backpack and lunch sack and coat before they walked down the wide hallway toward the school exit.
Clustered in a group right by the front door were several parents Josie recognized, including Amanda. Her stomach clenched. Surely Amanda wouldn’t say anything, not here in front of Zoe and everyone else.
“Why did you stop?” Zoe asked Josie.
“Sorry,” Josie said. “I just— I wanted a drink of water.” She walked over to the silver fountain attached to the hallway wall. When she pressed the button for the water flow, the lukewarm spray hit her in the chin. She wiped it off with the palm of her hand and straightened up without taking a sip.
Amanda and the other parents were still there. Amanda looked up and caught Josie’s gaze. She waved an
d smiled. Then her eyes widened and the grin left her face as she took in Frank walking beside Josie.
Don’t say anything. Josie willed Amanda the message. She didn’t truly believe Amanda would do anything overt. But she could very well touch Josie’s arm and speak in the sort of hushed, sympathetic tone one used at a funeral. It would draw the attention of the other parents and spark their curiosity, even if all Amanda said was a simple “How are you?”
She was only a few feet away now. Josie reached for Zoe’s soft little hand and held it. If need be, she’d yank her through the front door quickly.
She drew close to Amanda, then passed her. Amanda kept staring at her, but she didn’t say a word.
Josie pushed through the heavy double doors, and then she was outside.
Frank came through the door after her, completely unaware of the near miss.
“Do you want to drive home with me or Mommy?” he asked Zoe.
Zoe looked confused. “You didn’t drive here together?”
“No, Daddy came from work,” Josie said quickly. She hoped Zoe’s sense of direction wasn’t well enough developed for her to realize that their home was between the city and the school.
“Let’s keep walking while we figure it out,” Josie suggested. Amanda could still come through the door at any moment.
“I’ll go with Daddy,” Zoe decided.
“Okay,” Josie said. A few weeks ago, she would have been glad for the chance to run a quick errand on the way home unencumbered. But now it felt like rejection. Frank was the fun, spontaneous parent; she was the steady one who preferred schedules. When Frank moved out, would the girls beg to go with him?
“What’s this?” Frank was saying.
“It’s for both of you,” Zoe told him. “Read it together!”
Josie looked at the pink folded heart in Frank’s hand. She moved closer to him to view it.
I love Mommy and Daddy, Zoe had written. She’d put kitten stickers around the edges of the heart.
“Oh, sweetie.” Josie’s voice sounded strangled. It was the kitten stickers that did it, that caused a lump to form in her throat. Zoe was still so very little, and so innocent. She believed in Santa Claus, and the tooth fairy, and in the security of her family.
“Josie?” Frank whispered. She shook her head. She could feel herself begin to shake.
She was going to lose it, right here in the parking lot. She was going to begin sobbing and she wouldn’t be able to stop, and Zoe was going to see everything, then Amanda and the other parents would come through the door . . .
She felt the pressure of Frank’s hand briefly squeezing her arm, and then he shouted, “I love it, Zoey-Boey! And I love you!”
He scooped up Zoe in his arms, blowing platypus kisses on her cheeks and tossing her around while he walked to his car. She was laughing and squealing and she didn’t even look in Josie’s direction. Frank opened the rear door to his car while still holding Zoe, then flipped her right side up and eased her into her seat. “Buckle up, and let’s race Mommy home!”
He closed the door and met Josie’s eyes over the roof of his car. He raised his eyebrows and she understood the question conveyed by his expression: Are you okay now? She took in a deep, shuddering breath and then she nodded. Frank nodded back. He held her gaze for another few seconds, then he got into his car and slowly drove out of the parking lot.
Josie climbed into her Sienna and sat there for a little while before she turned the key in the ignition and headed home.
• • •
The counselor wasn’t what Josie expected. He was perhaps fifty, and very fit. He wore an earring, and there was a mini basketball hoop hanging on the back of his office door. “I’m Michael Ambrosi. Call me Mike,” he said, and Josie wondered whether this was a thing now, that every therapist wanted to be called by their first name.
There was a large leather sofa in the seating area, across from a single chair that Josie assumed was for Mike. What Josie liked about the sofa was that it was big enough for her to stake out a spot far away from Frank. The therapy sofa didn’t try to force them together.
“Tell me what brings you here,” Mike said, leaning forward like an athletic coach.
Josie looked sideways at Frank.
“I screwed up,” Frank began. He laced his hands together over his knee. “I, ah, I had an affair with another woman.”
Mike nodded. “And you are here because you wish to try to save the marriage?”
“I’m on the fence about that,” Josie interjected.
Mike smiled. “Noted.”
“I want Josie to know how much I love her, and how sorry I am,” Frank said.
Mike looked at Josie. “If you’re comfortable doing so, I’d like to try a technique to ensure the two of you really hear each other.”
Josie shrugged. “Sure. Okay.”
“Either you or Frank can start, whichever you’d rather. And you can say whatever you’d like to each other. The person listening should repeat back exactly what they’ve heard.”
“Frank can start,” Josie said.
“Okay.” Frank twisted so that he was directly facing Josie from the other end of the sofa. “I want you to know how deeply sorry I am. How much I regret what I did. I feel awful.”
The thing about doing this in front of a therapist was that it encouraged better behavior, Josie thought. No one wanted to seem like a shrew in front of a witness.
“Josie? Can you echo what Frank just said?”
She felt silly, but she complied. “You’re sorry and you regret what you did.”
“Could you try to repeat him as close to word for word as possible?” Mike asked.
“You are deeply sorry and you regret what you did.”
“And I feel awful.”
“And you feel awful.” She felt her posture relax.
Saying those words made Frank’s feelings incrementally more real to Josie. That was unexpected.
“Josie, is there anything you would like to say to Frank?”
Frank kept his eyes trained on her, but she refused to allow herself to feel pressured. She knew she could say no, or get up and leave the therapy room. She’d told Frank on the ride over that she wasn’t promising to stay for the whole fifty minutes.
When she spoke, the emotion in her words surprised her: “What you did completely devastated me, Frank. Nothing has ever hurt me so much.”
Fresh pain filled his eyes.
“Our family was everything to me. And I felt like you made me a laughingstock, that you just threw away everything we built together.”
Mike waited a beat, then prompted, “Frank? Could you repeat this back to Josie?”
“I hurt you more than anyone ever has before,” Frank said slowly, looking into her eyes. “Our family was everything to you. And you felt like I made you a laughingstock. You felt like I threw away everything we built together.”
Josie had considered this exercise silly. She didn’t see any point to it. But when she heard Frank carefully echo her without making an excuse or apology, something happened. She didn’t know what it was, exactly. Maybe it was simply the relief that came with the fact that she and Frank were truly listening to each other, and being heard, for the first time in a long while.
“Would you like to schedule another appointment?” Mike asked them at the conclusion of the session. “I can see you next week.”
“I would like to,” Frank said. “Josie?”
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
• • •
It had been seven weeks since Josie had learned about the affair. Frank’s affair had also happened over the course of seven weeks. The dual passages of time had each lasted an eternity.
Josie sat on her back steps, bundled up in her coat, a wool blanket over her shoulders and head. It was a clear, icy night, and the sky held a scattering of silvery stars.
The girls were asleep, and Frank was attending a business dinner. “I’ll leave my phone on the whole time with th
e ringer turned up high,” he’d said. “Call anytime. I’ll be home by nine at the latest. I can come earlier if you need anything.” But Josie was grateful for the time alone.
Frank would move out next week. His lease was temporary, though. They would need to make another decision when it expired.
Josie had no idea what her life would look like seven weeks from now. But something had compelled her to come outside and sit in the absolute stillness on this strange, sad, sort-of anniversary.
She wanted to ensure that whatever decision she made carried intention. That she went forward with clear eyes. She could not slide back into her marriage because she didn’t know how to be without Frank, or out of guilt because of the children.
Whatever happens, I will be happy again, she promised herself. I will make the right choice carefully.
She peered into the sky, hoping to see a shooting star or some other physical manifestation to mark this moment, to sear it into her memory. But the sky remained stagnant, so she closed her eyes and cemented the vow within herself.
* * *
Chapter Nineteen
* * *
“I WANT TO COME over every night and help put the girls to bed,” Frank said. “I can bring dinner, too, or make it here. Whatever you want.”
Josie nodded. They were in the car after their second therapy session with Mike.
“I thought I could pop by in the mornings, too, and see them before school,” Frank said.
“But that’s going to make you late for work.”
“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re going to be with them all the time.” Josie’s voice broke. “We’re still going to do stuff as a family.”
“Izzy is so little.” Frank blew his nose on a crumpled napkin he pulled out of his pocket. “She’s not going to understand. What if she thinks I don’t love her and that’s why I’m leaving?”
“She’s not going to think that, Frank. She knows you adore her. You’re a good father.” When Frank shook his head, she added, “You are!”
The Ever After Page 17