by Swan Huntley
“I know you,” she said.
“Yes, Mrs. West, that’s right.”
“That’s Catherine’s fiancé,” Caroline said. “Not Fernando. William.”
“You and William have been playing checkers together, remember, Mom?”
“Oh?”
“Checkers?” Caroline said.
When I looked at William, he didn’t seem uneasy or pissed off or even surprised. He just sat there twirling his hair with an eerie smile on his face.
“William’s been going to see Mom because they have a history together.”
“What?”
How to explain? There was nothing to do but just say it. “They had an affair.”
“That’s not true,” Caroline said. “That doesn’t even make sense. Catherine, what’s going on with you today?”
William looked down. His eyes were closed. He was toying with his cuff link. My mother had no idea what was going on. She was buttering a piece of bread with a fork.
“William?” Caroline said.
“Please, I can explain,” William said.
“Good. Please explain.”
“Oh my God,” Caroline said, and turned to our mother. “Mom?”
Our mother didn’t answer because her mouth was full.
“Mom, did you have an affair?”
Mom inhaled sharply, too sharply, and then she was choking on her bread, coughing into her napkin.
“Drink water, Mom.” I pushed the glass toward her. She drank, composed herself, patted her chest.
“Dear,” she said.
“It was a long time ago,” William said calmly.
“Oh my God. How old were you?” Caroline said.
“He was seventeen,” I said.
“What?”
The waiter dropped off the martinis. Caroline took a big sip, took another.
“Are we ready to order?” the waiter asked.
“I will have the salmon pasta, light on the cream sauce, please,” my mother said.
Caroline handed her menu over. “I’m not eating.”
“Neither am I,” I said.
“The martini is fine,” William said.
“What is wrong with you?” Caroline glared at him. “She was married! And Mom, what is wrong with you? Oh my God! Seventeen! And what…why…Wait, and then you came back to marry her daughter? What the—why? Why?” Caroline waited. William said nothing. Caroline said it louder. “Why?”
“Stop shouting right this instant,” Mom said.
“Calm down, Caroline.” William was stern. He was pointing a finger at Caroline. “Act like an adult, please.”
Caroline looked stunned. “Excuse me?”
“William came back because the bribe ran out,” I said. “How much did my dad pay you anyway?”
“Wait.” Caroline’s hands were up in the air, like she was angrily clutching an imaginary ball. “Dad knew?”
“He knew and he paid them off,” I said.
“This is so disturbing.” Caroline looked at my mother, who was staring into space, no longer part of this conversation. “Mom!”
“Yes?”
“How could you do this to us?” Caroline was basically yelling now. “How could you do this to us?” A guy eating spaghetti shot her a look. “How could you have an affair?”
I remember how my mother closed her eyes so slowly then. All that blue eye shadow. Weakly, she said, “I’m sorry.”
And then Caroline, always so quick to forgive, let out an animal “Uuuaaahh” sound, surrendering, and wrapped our mother up in her arms. “It’s okay, Mom.”
“Catherine,” William said, “I know it seems sick, I know that, I do. But when I saw you there at the gala, you were so…lovely.” His face was strained. I hated how much I wanted to believe him. A huge part of me wanted to say, It’s okay, let’s go home now, let’s forget the past. I was so tired. “Please,” he said, “please forgive me for not telling you. I meant to, but in the end I couldn’t.”
In the mirror my face looked upset, more upset than I wanted it to. “Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been going to play checkers? I still don’t understand that.”
He sighed. “Elizabeth and I have an old bond. Even if she can’t remember me most of the time. I wanted closure. I wanted her to get to know me now, as the man I am now. As your fiancé. I did it for us. If we spent enough time together, I thought she might let go of her negative feelings toward me.”
“No,” Caroline said, with sudden energy, as if she were about to spring up and grab his neck. “Catherine, this is bullshit—I’m not letting you fall for this. And you,” she said to William, “you need to leave. You’re not getting anything from us. You need to go pack up your dog and go back to the hole you crawled out of.”
I loved Caroline in that moment—how fierce she was, how angry. I was angry, too, but I was too drained to show it.
William put his hand on the table next to mine. He was smart enough not to touch me. “Catherine, please.”
“Leave!” Caroline yelled. Her face was red in patches.
The guy eating spaghetti threw his napkin on his plate, as if to say, I’m never coming to this restaurant again!
“Catherine?” William asked. His voice was soft and begging.
“Catherine!” Caroline smacked her palm on the table.
“The truth is, Caroline,” William said, not raising his voice, “Catherine and I have an understanding. We both understand that we need the money from your father’s trust. And in order to access that money, we need to be married.”
Caroline looked like she’d just seen an explosion. “No. No, Catherine, no. You can’t marry him. No. I’ll give you money, I’ll help you. Please don’t do this.”
“This is the problem, William.” I pulled up Ted’s e-mail on my phone, handed it to him. “Apparently no one gets any money if they’re involved with your family.”
“Dad wrote that in his will?” Caroline said.
“Apparently,” I said.
“Is that a good thing?”
“It means that neither of us gets any money. It means you get nothing, William.”
“Ha!” Caroline said. “Fuck-face.”
William set the phone down and drank his entire martini. And then he was laughing. “You people.” He slouched back in the chair like a bored teenager. He pressed his finger to his lips. “You disgusting, self-righteous, greedy fucking people.” I couldn’t believe he had cursed. I couldn’t believe how he was sitting—I’d never seen William slouch like that. And at a restaurant? He looked like a thug. “You people ruined my family. Your father, the greediest person I’ve ever met in my life. What he paid us? Next to nothing! Only enough to scrape by. My parents settled for crumbs. But I—no, no, I will not settle for crumbs. And I will not leave this restaurant until I get what I want.”
“What do you want?” Caroline said. She was still angry, but she looked a little scared now.
“First”—he looked at my hand—“I want that ring back.”
“Fine.” I tugged it off my finger and tossed it at him. It landed on the floor. He had to lean awkwardly to pick it up.
In a cool, menacing voice, he said, “Please don’t make me any angrier, darling.” He slipped the diamond onto his pinkie and slid it down until it touched the turquoise ring he never took off. “I leased this diamond,” he said quietly.
My mother, who was working on her pasta now, stopped to say, “How tacky.”
“Sshhh, Mom.” Caroline’s shoulder blades crept closer together. She seemed to be making herself as small as possible. She made an X across her chest with her arms, as if that would protect her.
“I can’t give you much money,” I said.
“I know that. But Caroline can. I want $10 million. I think that’s very fair.”
“And then you’ll leave us alone?” Caroline said.
“You might not want me to leave you alone, Caroline.” His eyes flickered. “You might have questions for me.”
&nbs
p; Caroline tightened the X across her chest. “What does that mean?”
He looked at Caroline. He looked almost sad. “Things could have been different,” he said. “I am not a bad man.”
Caroline’s face twisted. She pulled at a piece of her hair, rolled it between her fingers. She blinked hard and then opened her eyes as if that would make her understand. It didn’t work. She still looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
William rubbed his lips together. He didn’t respond. He touched the nape of his neck. He looked at my mother, who was drawing a line down the side of her water glass with her thumb. He looked at Caroline, who was tugging her hair now, her face still twisted in confusion. He didn’t look at me.
“What are you talking about?” I said. My voice was only slightly trembling. “You will leave us alone. All of us. That includes the baby. I don’t want you to have any contact with this child.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” He sighed. “It wasn’t a problem last time.” William tapped the spoon on the table. “Elizabeth?”
My mother wiped her chin with the napkin. “Yes?”
“Who is Caroline’s father?”
Her nostrils flared. She was doing something with the napkin in her hands—kneading it like dough. She tried to stand up and failed. She was panicking.
“Elizabeth!” William held up the spoon. “Tell them. Who is Caroline’s father?”
Her eyes were darting around the room. She kept opening her mouth, about to speak—the words were right there, but all that was coming out was an r sound. I remember thinking, Please, God, please say Bruce and let it be true.
“Say it!”
The second he smacked the spoon on the table again, she did.
“William Stockton is the father.”
Caroline and William looked at each other. They seemed to realize at the exact same second that they were both twirling their hair.
44
The end happened like a fire. It was amazing to me how everything we had built together could be burned down so quickly. Within the span of a day, a contract had been circulated and signed by the three of us, Caroline had wired the money, and William had moved out.
I stayed in the hotel for a few nights. When I went home, there were only traces of him: hooks in the walls where his art had hung, empty cardboard boxes the movers hadn’t used, dust patterned around the feet of his desk.
But he had left one thing. Conspicuously, on my pillow, was the turquoise ring and a note: For our child, on his or her tenth birthday.
I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t cry. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed my coat and walked straight to the Hudson. It was freezing cold that day. My face had gone numb by the time I reached the end of the pier.
The water was so still, a barely moving reflection of the sky. The ring sent ripples through its clouds, and the note, pushed by the lapping tide, eventually joined the rest of the trash floating in the water.
•
We formed new routines, new ways to mark time. In the morning, after she sent the kids off with their nannies, Caroline would come over. Midafternoon, she’d go home again to make dinner for them, help with Spencer’s homework. “This whole thing.” she said. “I want to be a better mother.”
Most of the time we propped ourselves up with pillows and stayed in bed. Life had become about the small comforts, maybe, the things you could count on: a pillow, a shower, a glass of water.
Every day we ordered too much takeout for lunch and promised ourselves that tomorrow we’d get less. We never got less. I think the extra food was another comfort. We were comforted by abundance, and always had been.
We watched the movies we had watched as children without really watching them. We knew the scenes by heart; we knew how these stories ended. Mostly it was background noise, something to look at during the pauses in our never-ending conversation about William.
•
“How are we ever going to trust anyone again?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you think he’s a sociopath?”
“I hope so. That makes him less human.”
•
“Do you think I look like him?”
“A little bit, but you look more like us than him.”
•
“I can’t believe Mom let me watch them have sex,” I said.
“There has to be more to that. I have a really hard time believing Mom would do that to you.”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Spencer walked in on Bob and me a few months ago.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we were playing a game.”
•
“Do you think he stalked me? Like, do you think he ever followed me to school when I was a kid?”
“I hate to say this, but I don’t think he cared enough to do that.”
“At least I had Dad. I’m glad they stayed married. Can you imagine where I might have grown up if Mom had left Dad for William? And who I would have become? I could be a completely different person right now.”
“But you’re not.”
•
“Maybe I’m an artist because my grandfather was an artist.”
“Maybe.”
•
“It makes sense now why Mom never liked me.”
“She loves you, Caroline. I’m sure she just feels guilty when she looks at you.”
•
“I decided I’m not getting a boyfriend. It’s too complicated.”
“Bob really does love you.”
“I know. And at least he told me about his affair. At least he was honest.”
•
“Do you think he’ll ever come back?”
“No.”
“I hope he dies.”
•
“Do you love me less now?”
“No,” I said. “I mean that.”
45
Time passed. It passed in a way that felt both too quick and endlessly monotonous. Get up, brush teeth, drink water, pee, drink water, drink one cup of coffee, eat pregnant-safe foods, get dressed, get undressed. The weather got colder. I bought new sweaters. The leaves on my tree turned the colors of a baked and muted sunset.
I changed the configuration of the house to erase William. I put beanbag chairs where his desk had been. I had planned to hang my art in the empty spaces he had left, but then I didn’t know if I liked my art anymore. The art I owned and the art I saw was either complete shit or so beautifully heartbreaking that I couldn’t bear to look at it for too long. And I was having trouble telling the shit from the heartbreaking. How were you supposed to know what was good and what was bad? How were you supposed to know what you liked? How were you supposed to know what was you and what was someone else? Especially when you were scone-heavy and hormone-crazed and all you wanted to do was sleep?
And so I hung nothing. The blank white walls were soothing. They said, You don’t have to be anyone right now.
Sometimes, especially in his closet, I thought I could smell that particular scent of his. It didn’t make sense. I had already sprayed everything down with perfume. But I would spray again. And again and again and again, sometimes at three o’clock in the morning.
One day Lucia found a tie of his, rolled up in the couch. He must have taken it off after work and rolled it up and put it in his pocket, like he’d always done, and then it must have fallen out of his pocket. The tie was blue, striped. I didn’t remember it. He had so many ties. When I went out later that day, I hung it on the side of a trash can.
•
Caroline was still coming over, but less. She’d moved on. She didn’t want to ruminate anymore. Somehow she had completely forgiven our mother. As usual, but especially given the circumstances, I didn’t understand how forgiveness came to her so easily. She kept asking me to come to lunch—“When are you coming to lunch? We miss you!”—but I just wasn’t ready yet.
•
One day she showed up with cupcakes and said, “I have a surprise for you.”
“Cupcakes?”
“No. Check your bank account.”
“What did you do?”
“I decided it was only fair to give you $10 million too.”
“Oh my God, are you serious?”
“Yep. And I’m not even worried, because guess what?”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant again.”
•
It was such a relief to be able to shop the way I wanted to again. I bought myself tons of shoes and hats and stretchy pants. One emotional day I bought a $2,000 poncho I was pretty sure I would never wear.
Shopping for the baby opened me up to a whole new world of necessity. I bought parenting magazines and then I bought everything they recommended. I bought eco-friendly onesies and an entire zoo of stuffed animals. Handmade rattles from South Africa. A rocking chair from Roche Bobois, and a crib. At A Pea in a Pod, the salesgirl said, “You’re basically getting the whole fall line—that’s amazing,” as if this were a real accomplishment.
With everything I did to prepare for the baby, I imagined how my mother must have prepared for me. All the care that went into this. I kept her journal by my bed and read it sometimes. I bought myself a journal, and I wrote my name in the front, and the date on the first page. And then, I don’t know, something distracted me. A phone call. A pain in my side, in my foot. Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe I didn’t know what to write about my life. Maybe I didn’t know where to begin.
I bought a massage chair. Dan started coming twice a week. I needed the muscle work; I was stressed. He asked no questions about William. He was unconditionally sweet. He brought me little things from Brooklyn: a beaded bracelet to invite good energies (energies was plural, apparently) and yellow flowers he had picked from his garden.
He also taught me about holistic ways to feel better. Arnica gel for my sore hips, castor oil to keep my skin soft. One day we did a sage-burning ceremony at home to clear out the bad energies. We burned extra in the closet. We didn’t mention William’s name. We used words like renewal and strength instead. When the smoke from the sage set off the fire alarm, we ran to open the windows, me in a tizzy, screaming, and Dan quiet and useful, fanning the air with the newspaper.