Keep Me Posted

by Lisa Beazley

  Master of denial and avoidance that I was, I managed to parlay the few days I allotted for perspective into nearly two weeks, during which time I had come up with all kinds of explanations as to why this whole thing was a nonevent. It happened in August. A throwaway month. Nobody remembers things that happen in August. We were into September now. The city was running as it should, and everything was back to normal. The blog going viral was a blip. Fifteen minutes of fame? Try fifteen seconds. It was done. I still punished myself silently, but I saw no reason to upset Sid and Leo if this whole thing was blowing over.

  There was one little problem with my line of thinking, though: After my initial total immersion, I had avoided the Internet as best I could while I instinctively hunkered down with my family. Knowing that my character might soon be called into question, I was too busy shoring up my key witnesses to root around the Web. Unfortunately, any dummy knows that just because you don’t follow baseball doesn’t mean they canceled the World Series. My campaign wasn’t totally manufactured, though. I was getting on with what I had set my mind to do before the awful discovery. I became playful and sentimental with the boys and more loving toward Leo. The constant undercurrent of fear and dread didn’t work wonders for my patience levels, but it was offset by my determination to be remembered as a good person, should I be dragged away to jail for crimes against common decency. My whole Jake fantasy disappeared as quickly as it had started. I suspect it would have died out on its own, but things getting real between us turned out to be a turnoff. I shifted my energies in that department to where they should have been all along: my marriage. I became bolder in bed with Leo, initiating sex at least as often as he did. Instead of feeling like we each had a heavy weight in us that rolled around under our skin, constantly pulling us down to the bed, I now visualized the backs of my hips and shoulders attached by long strings to the ceiling. The living room floor became our spot. With a solid wall and two doors between us and the kids, we had leeway for more than the hushed quickies our bedroom allowed. My self-preservation instincts led me to figure that if Leo found out, he’d be less likely to divorce a sexually available wife than the sexually distant one I’d been for longer than I cared to admit. Simultaneously, I was bracing for the worst. I made myself a punishment playlist: Lots of Morrissey, Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” Rihanna’s “Take a Bow,” Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable,” plus some extra-angry Fiona Apple and Lily Allen, all of whom I’d imagined singing to me. As if to further castigate me, Sid’s letters kept coming in at a good clip. Singapore

  Sept 10 Cass,

  First, I love that stitches story. Scars are cool! Send me a photo of Quinn and his badass scar, please. And don’t beat yourself up. It takes an exceptional person to recognize her own failures in a relationship. I’d say you are going to be fine. You love Leo, right? He’ll forgive you, Cass. I think you should tell him about the kiss. XO, Sid When Leo came home from work on Tuesday night two weeks after our return from the shore, the boys and I were sitting on the floor listening to Birds of Chicago and eating Peanut Butter Panda Puffs right out of the box. I was nervous and distracted. Tonight was the night. I had to tell Leo. Instead of rehearsing my lines in my head, I was in a total daze, focusing on the loud rhythmic crunching in my head. “Daddy!” the boys screamed, snapping me out of it. Leo always got the rock-star greeting from the boys. The three of them collapsed in a hug-wrestle pile while I shoved the last of the cereal in the box into my mouth. “Hey, you cheated!” Leo said, still smiling. He was looking at me. Is this it? I thought while I blinked in confusion. “Real food week,” he said, nodding to the box of cereal, which I’d been clutching like a security blanket most of the day. “What?” I said. “Real food week! It was your idea. I thought we started this morning.” “Oh. I didn’t realize we were really doing that. I thought we were just talking hypothetically,” I said. We’d exchanged e-mails yesterday regarding this. There was a blogger who’d pledged to feed her family only real food—nothing processed or artificial or packaged—for one hundred days. I had suggested we try it for a week—but not this week. “Yeah, that sounds about right,” Leo said, with a sudden edge. “Leo. We can do the real food thing. I didn’t realize it was that important to you.” Shit. How did this happen? These were not the conditions under which I imagined telling him what I needed to tell him. Things had been going so well between us. I opened my mouth to apologize, but he was busy getting the boys drinks of water and telling them about a huge rat he saw on the subway platform earlier. There was a lot of information I had to relay to him, and I had to do it quickly—before the boys did, because they knew that I was leaving on an airplane to visit their aunt Sid in the morning, that I would be gone for four days and Grandma Rita would be here with them and Dad. They did not know the more crucial information—that thousands of strangers knew intimate details about Mommy and Daddy’s marriage and that I’d made out with an ex-boyfriend and broadcast it to the world. Nor did they know about the troubling events of my day leading up to and just after my purchase of the single airline ticket. Still, I wanted to tell Leo everything myself before they could start spilling the beans. “Sorry. I’m just irritated because I have to go back to Fourteenth Street in an hour,” Leo said. “Seriously? For how long?” “Yeah—the new membership cards aren’t scanning, so I’ve got to figure it out. No idea. Maybe an hour, maybe more. I just got the message but I was almost home, so I thought I’d come up and have dinner and say good night to the boys.” Dinner? Since when did I have dinner waiting for him when he came home? And now apparently there was some rule about it being “real.” “Uuuuh. The boys ate at the Hudson. I thought we’d just order Thai—I mean, or something more healthy?” “That’s all right. I’ll pick something up on my way back.” When Leo had left for work earlier that morning, I was still happily biding my time, with vague plans to tell him soon. But after the day I’d had, a confession moved to the front burner. “I love starting the workweek on a Tuesday,” he’d said on his way out. “Oh my God—it’s Tuesday. Wanda’s coming today!” “She is?” “Yeah, just today and next week, until school starts. She needs the money, and we haven’t been great about those weekly date nights I told her we’d be using her for.” “It’s cool. Enjoy your day,” he’d said, and left. I calculated that once Wanda arrived, I’d drop the clothes off at the Chinese laundry on the corner, buy groceries, prep lunch and dinner, and maybe even squeeze in a quick pedicure. But I didn’t get the pedicure, nor did I drop off the laundry or even buy groceries. Because when Wanda left with the boys for the park, I decided to check my Yahoo account. Since I’d switched to Gmail for personal mail years ago, my Yahoo account was almost exclusively spam, but I still checked it and occasionally read the e-mails from BabyCenter or the West Village Parents. I had forgotten that this was also the address I had used to set up the blog. There were four urgent e-mails from Fishfood, the blog’s host, instructing me to check and reset my privacy settings because many of their blogs had their settings wiped out when a server crashed. Ah, so that answers that, I thought, taking a moment to imagine the brief panic followed by quick relief I’d have experienced had I read the e-mails in time. I didn’t get to revel for long, though, because my in-box contained several personal e-mails with subject lines such as “Seeking Representation?”; “Book Deal and Speaking Opportunities”; “Introduction.” Confused, I read a couple of them. They were from agents, one of whom outlined a plan for a speaking and talk-show tour. Another promised a lucrative book deal with one of a number of publishers. The one I found most distressing was this: Dear Cassie, I am a producer with It’s All Relative, a program on ALM Radio. We’ve been alerted to your blog, The Slow News Sisters. I would like to speak with you about doing an interview for our segment, which will focus on ways long-distance siblings stay connected. Jessica Ronan, author of the bestsel
ling book Sisterhood, will participate. I hope that you will join us on air, as the story is pegged on the sudden popularity of your blog. Please let me know if you’d be interested in participating. And would you mind putting me in touch with your sister, Sid? I can’t seem to find a valid e-mail address for her. Regards, Caroline Stein Senior Producer, ALM The e-mail was three weeks old, and I had two more recent e-mails from her, asking if the blog was down. My family listens to ALM. It’s on in the kitchen at my parents’—and my grandparents’—house around the clock. The little Tivoli radio on our windowsill was tuned to its local affiliate. This had to be stopped. I grabbed that same box of Peanut Butter Panda Puffs off the table and started pacing. I finally worked out the perfect handful size and chewing pace so that I could get a fresh mouthful at the same spot where I turned on the ball of my foot each time, when I realized what I needed to do. I checked for flights to Singapore and bought a single ticket for $1,700, then called Mom and asked if she could come back to New York. She assumed I was going to be there for Sid, given the whole mess with Adrian, and I didn’t correct her. I had just completed purchasing Mom’s ticket and was wondering what the chances were of Leo checking the credit card statement online today. I was about to search ALM Radio’s website to confirm my hope that the story had gone forward without mentioning my blog, figuring that if not, I’d call Caroline Stein and beg her not to include me in her story, but the buzzer rang. Assuming it was Wanda with the boys, I buzzed them up without checking the intercom. I was disappointed that they were home so soon, but when I opened the door and poked my head out, instead of Quinn’s and Joey’s voices, I heard heavy breathing and quiet cursing. A few moments later, up came Sal with the glass top for Rachel’s coffee table. “No, no, no, no, no! Sal! Not here. It goes to my friend’s place in Hoboken. Remember?” Ignoring my comment completely, he said, “Wednesday. There is no way Quinn could have busted through this thing. It weighs sixty pounds at least.” “Sal, listen. This has to go to Hoboken. Not here.” “Hoboken? I just came from Hoboken! Why didn’t you say so?” He stopped in the hall and rested one side of the plate-glass oval on his knee. It wasn’t even wrapped in anything. “Be careful. Here, I’ll help you get this back downstairs,” I said, slipping on my flip-flops and rushing to grab a corner of the glass, which was indeed heavy and thick. Out on the sidewalk, Sal and I stood facing each other, each holding a side of the tabletop and waiting for his ride to circle back around the block, when Jenna and Valentina approached. Jenna had been leaving notes on my door and sending me text messages, but I’d been ignoring her and didn’t want to deal with her now. “Oooh. Pretty,” Valentina said, pointing at the glass, the side of which was sparkling blue in the morning sun. And then, before anyone realized what she was doing, she removed a sticker from the sheet she was holding and affixed it to the glass. “What the fuck?” said Sal. Jenna hurried to peel off the rainbow sticker, but not before holding up a hand to Sal and saying, “Please. Language.” Sal just stared in astonishment. As she picked away at the sticker, licking her thumb to get the last remnants of the adhesive off of the glass, Jenna said, “Valentina, do we put stickers on other people’s glass?” I shook my head at the sky, and Sal said exactly what I was thinking. “What a stupid thing to say.” “Sal, this is my neighbor, Jenna, and her daughter, Valentina.” “You know them?” he asked, disgusted that I would associate with such low-grade characters. I smiled and shrugged at Jenna, who stood there, mouth agape. “Leo’s uncle,” I said, by way of explanation. This was the most fun I’d ever had with Sal. “Cassie, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. Is everything okay?” “Yeah—why?” I said. “Oh—I’ll talk to you about it later. But wait—you have a sister, right?” “Yeah,” I said. “What’s her name again?” “Why?” “Ride’s here!” Sal interrupted. I looked up to see Mary Costa’s black Suburban pulling up. I don’t know who I was expecting—some crony of Sal’s with a limp and a gold tooth, or even Deena. Mary was definitely a surprise. “Okay, well, I’ll talk to you later,” said Jenna. And then, “Oh—your sister’s name?” I pretended not to hear her, which wasn’t a stretch since Sal was shouting, “Bad news, Mar. We gotta take this thing back to Hoboken.” “Hoboken! We were just there!” Mary yelled back. “Hi, Cassie, sweetheart. Where are the boys?” “They’re at the park with the sitter. But wait. I thought you guys knew this table wasn’t for me,” I said. “You said it was for your upstairs neighbor!” Mary yelled. “Naw. I remember now. She did say this gal had moved to Hoboken,” Sal yelled back, although Mary was now two feet in front of us. I noticed Jenna and Valentina turning to leave. Mary threw her hands up to the sky and then slapped her thighs like an umpire calling a play. She looked from Sal to me, and I got the impression that she was expecting an apology. Normally I would have obliged, but I had plenty of real apologizing to do, and I was not about to start handing them out for free. “Arright, hon. You know where this thing needs to go? You hop in and show us the way,” said Sal. I let out a groan. But they were doing this for me, so I ran upstairs to get my phone and my purse. I had a sick feeling in my stomach that I hoped was hunger, so I grabbed the only food I had in the apartment—that box of Peanut Butter Panda Puffs—locked the door, and then ran back down and into the back of Mary’s truck, not bothering to say anything to Jenna when we passed in the hall. I texted Wanda, asking if she could stay an extra hour and maybe even later. And instead of wondering whether Mary was also a mobster and if she had ever transported any dead bodies in this very truck, I was anxious about the radio thing and what to do about Jenna, who almost definitely had seen the blog. The phrase “lucrative book deal” also bobbed around inside my head, tempering the stress and dread with a mysterious thrill. “So, Wednesday, when are we gonna get to that blog?” Sal shouted. I reacted as if a tarantula had just landed on my shoulder. Luckily, I didn’t have to speak, because Mary started in. “Blogs,” she said. “I don’t get it. Why do people think their every thought needs to be out there for the world to see? It’s ridiculous, if you ask me.” “No one asked you,” Sal shot back. “Oh, Jesus, why the hell are you driving uptown? The Holland Tunnel is right around the corner!” “I told you I hate the Holland Tunnel! When you drive, you can take whatever tunnel you want. Hell, take a boat, for all I care. I always take the Lincoln. So shut up and let me drive,” Mary yelled. He looked back at me and pointed at Mary. “Some things never change. She’ll always be my big sister.” I had to smile, because the subject had changed, and because I was thinking the same thing, that there are only a few people in the world you could talk that way to and not have it damage your relationship. If you’re lucky, a sibling is one of them. In some ways, I envied the relationship Mary and Sal had. They saw each other all the time and seemed to have no secrets. Maybe they were a bit abrasive and careless with each other’s feelings, but beneath it there was genuine affection. Through the tunnel, I read Rachel’s address off to Sal, who laboriously punched it in the GPS mounted to Mary’s dashboard, even though I told them I knew how to get there. I was still unsure as to the origins of the table and whether I was paying for it or not. “So how much do I owe you for the table?” I asked Sal. “Don’t worry about it. You help me set up my blog, and we’ll call it even.” “My blog.” Mary shook her head and snickered. “Are you sure, Sal?” I asked. “Sweetheart,” Mary interjected. “If you’re lucky enough to have people to help you out of a tough spot, just go with it.” Fair enough, I thought, and took out my phone and began searching ALM’s website for “sisters,” “communication,” and “slow news.” When nothing turned up, I started an e-mail. Dear Caroline, Thanks for your interest in my blog. I’m a huge fan of your program and completely tickled that I’m even on your radar. Unfortunately, I cannot participate in your segment. In fact, I’m writing to implore you not to even mention my blog. The truth is, it was never meant to be p
ublic. It’s a long story involving privacy settings, a server crash, regret, etc. Maybe one day I’ll be able to tell the whole story, but if I did it now, it would cause too much pain to the people I love. I hope you understand. Please let me know what you decide to do. Kind regards, Cassie Sunday Once we got the table into Rachel’s place, I felt fairly certain that hers had been a fake. The one we brought—a real one, or a very good counterfeit, with legitimate-looking papers from Herman Miller and a little signature on the side of the thick plate glass—looked significantly better than I remembered hers looking. Rachel must have thought so, too, because she let out a gasp when we set it down. Then she started gushing. “Oh, thank you so much. It was really sweet of you to bring it over. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until just now.” I suspected that she was slowly figuring this out and hadn’t deliberately bilked me for a sixteen-hundred-dollar table, but still, I found the whole display so off-putting that I doubted our friendship would survive. Mary asked Rachel where the Windex was and gave the table a shine herself before we went on our way. I felt a bit sick over the whole thing. Is Rachel purposefully duping us, or is she innocent? What is wrong with her that she’d let my mother-in-law clean her table? Are Mary and Sal sketchy or just helpful? Do I have only myself to blame, literally lying down on the job while my son seriously injured himself, setting this whole chain of events into motion? At any rate, I couldn’t bear to be around any one of those people a second longer. I convinced Mary and Sal to drop me at the PATH station and let me take the train back home, saving them the trip. Before I went underground, I texted Leo to see if he could meet for lunch, so I could come clean to him before I left. Sorry. Swamped all day. Hopefully not too late tonight, came his response. Okay, I will just have to tell him tonight, I thought. Stevie and Emma’s place was just around the corner, so I decided to drop in on them. I might need Emma in my corner in the near future. If the family found out while I was in Singapore, she would need to be prepared. U home? I texted her. Yep. Need to talk to u. I rang her doorbell, opened the door a crack, and immediately kicked myself for having been so engrossed in my phone that I hadn’t noticed Mary’s car parked outside. I could hear her talking right away. Emma appeared, shooing me back out, and hissed, “What is going on? Becky just showed up here, running her mouth about your diary being online. She’s got everyone gathered at the computer.” “Who’s at the door?” hollered Mary. “None of your business,” singsonged Emma, audible only to me. “Nobody!” she yelled back next. “Is it true?” “Well. Sort of. But it’s gone. I swear. So I don’t know what she’s showing them.” “Maybe you should get out of here,” she said. “Becky wants your head. I’ll call you when they leave.” When I exited the train back in Manhattan, I called Emma right away. She didn’t answer but called me back two minutes later. “So apparently Becky’s friend e-mailed her a letter or something that she claims you wrote, where you call Becky a bitch and talk about having sex with Leo in a taxi. She said it was on some blog, but Becky couldn’t find it.” “Fuck. What did Mary say?” “She was like, ‘Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like Cassie.’ But Becky’s obsessed, so she’s rooting around the Internet, trying to find this blog and prove that it’s real. Honestly, everyone’s kind of lost interest, and now it’s just her sitting at the keyboard and texting her friend nonstop.” “Okay. Listen, it’s all true. All of these letters between my sister and me were on the Internet—but they’re gone now. Jesus. Do what you can to cover for me, would you? Leo doesn’t even know yet. I’m telling him tonight. But there is a ton of incriminating shit on there. I’m going to Singapore tomorrow to talk to my sister about it.” “Oh my God. Okay, Cassie. I’ll see what I can do.” “I love you.” “Love you, too, Cass. Can I help with the kids while you’re in Singapore?” “It’s all right. My mom’s coming.” “Okay, well, keep me posted on all of this.” “I’ll tell you everything when I’m back.” I was packed and ready by the time Mom arrived. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before. Leo finally came home again well after midnight, and though I had managed to tell him that I was going to Singapore, he’d immediately assumed it was to be a shoulder to cry on for Sid, which put me in an awkward position. He seemed exhausted from his day, surprised that I was leaving on such short notice, and a touch annoyed that he and my mom were going to be roommates for the next four days. Instead of just telling him then, I suggested we meet for a coffee in Union Square before my three p.m. flight the next day. During the short taxi ride to Union Square, I wished I’d chosen a less frumpy outfit than my old leggings and hoodie and taken the time to dry my hair or put makeup on my face, which bore the marks of sleep deprivation and stress. I sighed and shook my head; this was really a conversation I should have looked my best for. I was also worried that it would seem to Leo like I was squeezing him in for a hasty or offhand apology before Sid’s. To be fair, I thought Sid deserved to know first; they were her letters, after all. Plus, I needed her on my side before I faced him. Of course nothing about any of this was going as planned but there was no way to delay telling him any longer, lest Becky or Jenna get to him first. Leo and I found each other near the Gandhi statue and kissed hello. I handed him the coffee I’d just purchased from the Mud truck. “Where’s yours?” he asked. “I didn’t think I could carry two,” I said, nodding to my roller bag. “Hang on. I’ll get you one,” he said, running over to the truck. I stood there, scanning the benches for a place to sit where we’d have the most privacy. When he returned with my coffee, I led him to the spot I’d identified. Afraid that I’d lose my nerve if we started chatting about something else, I got right down to business. “Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath and looking him in the eyes. But the intimacy of that was too much, and I shifted my gaze to a bird’s nest built into the “A” of the Shoe Mania store across the street. I stared at that nest hard and launched into a presentation of my misdeeds. I was careful to be factual and get everything out so I had to do this only once. I covered setting up the blog with care to make it private, the server crashing, the reason I didn’t see the e-mail alerting me to the problem, and then moved on to the blog going viral, the letters that contained sister-talk about our marriage and sex life, and the kiss with Jake. At one point, Leo got a confused look on his face and turned around to see what I was staring at, prompting me to do the adult thing and look at him in the eyes again, just as I was getting to the part about the kiss. “And that’s what I needed to talk to you about,” I finished. And then I added, “And why I’m going to Singapore. I have to tell Sid.” Leo opened his mouth to speak. I don’t think he said anything, but I can’t be sure because my heart was beating so loudly in my ears. Then, as if to check my hearing, he let out a short burplike sound, a quick stop that emanated from his throat. Made nervous by his silence, I spoke again. “I know. The whole situation is crazy.” It sounded glib, and I immediately regretted saying it. Leo didn’t respond, so I continued. “I need you to know that there is nothing going on with Jake. I deeply regret the kiss, which was a stupid mistake that I barely even remember.” And then, realizing that I hadn’t yet said the most important thing, I added, “I am sorry, Leo. I am so sorry.” The more I said, the shakier I felt. He made a praying gesture with his hands and then dug his index fingers into the corners of his eyes, pressing down hard. He gave a half exhale and said into his hands, “How could you be so stupid?” “I know. I was so drunk. It’s not an excuse, but this year has been really tough for me, with so little adult contact and the schlepping around in my mom clothes all the time, and we never had sex, and then I was around all these beautiful party people and I got caught up and made a really bad call. It was a terribly immature and thoughtless thing to do. I know.” It all came out in one breath, and afterward I searched his face for a signal that he maybe sort of understood a little bit. He was still quiet but looking at me like I was deranged. I started wonderi
ng if he’d ever strayed. He’s good-looking, smart, and decent—a catch by any standard. Maybe he’s got other options. Maybe’s he pursued them. Maybe he’s been having amazing tantric sex with one—or several—of his hard-bodied gym girls. And if not, maybe I just gave him permission to do so. I felt off-kilter and unable to trust my thought process. When he finally spoke, his voice was cold. “No. Not the kiss. A blog, Cassie? A blog was the best place you could think of to store your private letters? Do you even know what a blog is? I mean, what’s next? You wire our life savings to a guy trying to flee Nigeria?” I reflexively snorted, an unbeautiful sound. He wasn’t smiling. I thought about reminding him that I’d used a private blog without incident at the magazine for three years, but didn’t want to seem argumentative. Instead I tried to look at it from his point of view. It was bad. I was not only his frumpy, haggard, cheating wife. I was also his stupid wife. I had offended his most basic sensibilities when I deemed the Internet a safe place to store my most private thoughts. He got up and started walking away. I sat there watching him walk, feeling small and dumb and wondering if he was just taking a cooldown lap. But when he didn’t circle back around, I unfroze myself and jogged after him, leaving my coffee on the bench and pulling my cheap wheelie carry-on behind me while hoisting my bag back onto my shoulder. I touched his arm and winced when he turned around with a look on his face like a teenage boy might give an embarrassing mom. “What can I do?” I asked him, now near tears. He shook his head. “Just. Leave me alone,” he said. “Okay.” I gulped and nodded, as if we had a plan. But as the meaning of his words sank in, it became impossible not to cry. “I need to get back to work,” he said flatly. I held my breath and went in for a hug, circling my arms around his back and under his arms, one of which he raised to limply pat my back. Releasing him, I told myself that a limp pat was better than nothing, and turned to go. CHAPTER TWENTY