Safe with Me: A Novel

by Hatvany, Amy

  “And the French don’t get married?” Hannah asked, unable to disguise her amusement.

  “But of course. And then they take lovers.” Sophie grinned. “I’m simply skipping a step.” Hannah knows that like her own, Sophie’s cautious nature when it comes to relationships has more to do with a badly broken heart, but she never points that out to her friend. Hannah understands that sometimes, the stories we tell ourselves about the choices we make are the only things that keep us from being crushed by the truth.

  Seeing Hannah’s parents now, Sophie throws her hands up into the air. “Steven and Marcy!” she says, and steps across the small entryway to give them both kisses on the cheek. “Welcome to Ciseaux, part deux!” She sweeps her arm out from her body, gesturing to the rest of the room. “What do you think?”

  Hannah takes in the space the way her parents might, seeing it for the first time. The pale-blond bamboo floors set against the periwinkle walls; warm cherry vanities with their matching mirrors adding an elegant Victorian feel to the otherwise modern-edged room. There are two low black couches in the reception area, and bright splashes of fresh yellow roses in tall silver vases on the reception desk. It’s a different look than their downtown Seattle location, which is more chrome and black leather with red accents, softened by white linen paint on the walls.

  “It’s absolutely lovely,” Hannah’s mother says, and her father nods in agreement. They wander over to the back wall, where Hannah’s father crouches down to inspect the hair-washing stations, verifying, Hannah assumes, that the plumbing was correctly installed.

  Happy to see them momentarily occupied, Hannah leans over to whisper in Sophie’s ear. “You were a little harsh with Veronica, don’t you think?”

  Sophie rolls her eyes dramatically. “You didn’t hire her with that thing in her nose, did you?”

  Hannah smiles. “No. She wasn’t wearing it during the interview. I was planning to give the dress code talk later, but now that you’ve scared the shit out of them, I won’t have to.”

  “You’re welcome.” Sophie kisses her cheek. “Now, I must make sure the caterer has the hors d’oeuvres scheduled to come out in the right order.” She flits down the hall to the kitchen.

  “What can we do to help?” Hannah’s mother asks, having wandered back to stand next to Hannah. Just as Hannah is about to respond, she sees Isaac pull up behind her car by the curb. Perfect, she thinks. He can keep them busy for me.

  “Isaac!” she calls out as her brother enters through the gate. He looks up, his face brightening as he sees her waving. Irish Twins, her parents always called them, born less than fourteen months apart. Isaac was older, but they were close enough in age as children to be either inseparable or at each other’s throats. Both she and Isaac share their father’s slim build and height, but while Hannah inherited her mother’s black hair and blue eyes, Isaac has their father’s stiff, blond buzz cut and brown irises. “Poop Eyes!” Hannah used to taunt him when he irritated her. “Scarecrow!” was always Isaac’s retort. Hannah smiles now, remembering how they alternately teased and played with each other. She’d often considered giving Emily a sibling so her daughter wouldn’t miss out on what Hannah cherished in her relationship with Isaac, but she’d never quite worked up the energy to get pregnant again. Now that Emily is gone, Hannah wishes she had made a different choice.

  Her brother lifts her up in a huge bear hug, spinning her around before dropping her back to the ground. “Hey, Sis,” he says. “How goes it?”

  “Good,” she says, tucking her flyaway hair behind her ears. “Better, now that you’re here. I thought for sure you wouldn’t make it until this afternoon.”

  Isaac grins, eyes sparkling. “What, and leave my little sister to fend for herself with the parental units? No way.” Her brother understands her need for solitude more than her parents do. More than Sophie, even. He’s the only one who didn’t tell her that moving out of the house where Emily grew up was a bad idea. “You do what you have to to get by,” he told her. “Everyone else can screw off, okay?”

  Even though Emily’s death hit him hard, too, he was there for Hannah. She knew that he couldn’t have loved Emily more if she had been his own daughter. Isaac packed her room so Hannah wouldn’t have to, and carefully moved her daughter’s possessions into storage with the rest of their things, save the bare minimum of necessities she took with her to her new apartment. When Hannah expressed enthusiasm about the salon renovation, he made sure to connect her with the best architect and contractors he knew. He gave her room to grieve without telling her how she should do it. He treated her like he normally would, instead of like something he might break.

  “Thank god. Mom already hit me with the whole ‘I think you should move back to the farm’ campaign.”

  “Oh no,” Isaac groans. “Really?”

  “Really. And an attempt to preach grief management according to Dr. Phil.”

  Isaac laughs. “Guess I got here just in time.” He pauses, his expression suddenly serious. “You hanging in there, Hannah-banana?” Hannah’s throat closes once again, and all she can manage is a brief nod. Isaac stares at her a moment, unsure if he should believe her, but then glances around the yard. “Everything looks awesome.”

  “Thanks.”

  Isaac smiles again when he sees their parents standing on the front porch. They wave excitedly, and Isaac waves back. “Go,” he tells Hannah. “Take care of whatever you need to. I’ll keep them entertained.”

  Hannah gives him a quick, grateful hug, then heads inside the house to check on the stylists’ progress on the gift bags. She’s happy to see that they’re all filled, but her blood suddenly runs cold with a memory of shopping with Emily to pick out what to put in her birthday party grab bags.

  “I want sparkly purple pens, not pink!” six-year-old Emily insisted. “And Dora the Explorer is dumb—I want Hello Kitty erasers. And then I want chocolate Kisses and jelly beans, too!”

  “You can pick one candy,” Hannah said gently, and Emily proceeded to throw a tantrum right there in the Target toy aisle, knocking a few things off the shelves as she flailed. Minutes later, Hannah carried her out of the store, kicking and screaming, both of them in enormous need of a nap.

  Why didn’t I just give her want she wanted? Hannah thinks now. Why did I fight with her on every little thing? If I’d known how little time I’d have with her, I would have said yes more. I would have played Barbies instead of telling her I needed to clean the house. I would have let her have ice cream for dinner, I would have read her that extra story after the six we’d already read.

  “Hannah?” Veronica’s voice snaps Hannah out of her thoughts. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course,” Hannah says, blinking rapidly. “Just a lot on my mind today. What were you saying?”

  “These were left over.” Veronica holds up a few packages of caramels. “Do you have any kids? They might like them.”

  Her words slice into Hannah’s chest. The question Do you have any kids? is the one she dreads most. How is she supposed to answer it? Saying no is too painful, but saying yes, but my daughter died is unbearable, akin to stripping naked beneath bright lights in a roomful of strangers. Just the thought of her daughter wrings her dry—she still can’t fathom speaking casually to other people about her loss.

  “You keep them,” Hannah says. Her voice cracks on the words, and she wonders how many hidden land mines she’ll face today, how many times her mother will tell her what she needs to do to process her grief and get on with her life. She doesn’t want to join a bereavement group. She doesn’t want to talk with a therapist or move back to the farm. The only thing she wants is the one thing she can’t have. She wants her daughter back.

  Olivia

  The morning of Maddie’s first day at Eastside Prep, Olivia lies in bed, watching her husband get ready for work. At four a.m., it’s not light out yet, though she can hear a few early-rising birds chirping in the cherry trees outside their bedroom window. James sta
nds in front of the mirror that hangs over the long, low mahogany dresser, carefully looping his tie into a Windsor knot.

  “You look handsome,” she says sleepily. Whatever their problems, the attraction she feels for her husband rarely falters.

  “Well, thank you,” James answers, turning to look at her with one corner of his mouth curled upward. “Want me to come back to bed?”

  She smiles. “I think that’s a fabulous idea.” She pauses to stretch and adjust her pillow. “As long as you do all the work.”

  James laughs as he finishes with his tie, then takes a couple of steps over to sit down on the edge of their bed. The weight of him rolls her toward him. He places his hand on her hip and runs it down her thigh. “Another time, okay? I need to get to the office.”

  “Isn’t there any way you can work from home for a little while so you can drop Maddie off with me?” Olivia asks, keeping her voice low and neutral. It makes sense to her that the least he could do is drive her to school, since he was the one insisting that Maddie attend his alma mater.

  His hand freezes on her leg and a shadowy tension falls in a curtain across his face. He doesn’t even have to speak. She knows his answer. She knows that tension is only a precursor to what could come next—a pebble next to the boulder of one of his rages—so she shuts her mouth and pulls the covers up to her chin. He finishes dressing and she pretends to be asleep when he kisses her good-bye.

  Olivia tries to get back to sleep, but her thoughts spin too quickly, remembering the first time she really understood where that shadow on her husband’s face could lead. She was seven months pregnant, it was a Tuesday night, and he’d come home late from a long day at the office, an occurrence that was more common than not. Olivia could almost see the stress rising off his body in wavy little lines, like steam from warm, wet pavement, and she wondered if a deal had gone wrong or if one of his VPs was giving him a hard time. She greeted him as she always did, at the front door with a martini and a kiss, but after the first sip he took of his drink, he stared at her like she’d done something wrong and the shadow appeared.

  “What? Doesn’t it taste okay?” she asked him.

  “It tastes like shit.” His green eyes were glassy, as though he might have already been drinking. James didn’t drink often, but when he did, something about him shifted.

  “What?” Olivia said, scrunching her eyebrows together over the bridge of her nose. She’d reapplied her makeup two times since six o’clock, waiting for him. “You’re gorgeous no matter what,” he’d said the few times she’d happened to go bare-faced, “but it makes me feel like you love me more when you make a little extra effort to look good.”

  Her initial, but silent, reaction was that he should love her no matter how she looked. In the end, however, she decided he was right. The only things she had to do during the day were clean the house, shop, and occasionally have lunch with her few girlfriends. Just because they were married didn’t mean she could let herself go. She needed to stay the same woman he fell in love with in Florida, when she would spend at least an hour getting ready for one of their dates. Marriages ended because one or both of the people stopped doing the things that attracted their spouses to them in the first place, so makeup was the least she could do for the man who gave her so much.

  Now, James dropped his briefcase to the marble floor with a loud thunk and loosened his tie. “I said, it tastes like shit.” He took another sip, then promptly spat it back into the glass.

  Olivia flushed and took it from him. “I’m sorry. Let me make you another one. Maybe I used too much vermouth.” She started to turn away, but James grabbed her arm, causing most of the vodka to splash onto the floor.

  “I don’t want another drink.” He looked at her with half-closed eyes and ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip.

  “James!” she said, managing to set the glass on the entryway table. She tried to wriggle away from his grasp. “Please. You’re hurting me.”

  He pulled her in close and she could smell the alcohol on his breath. He kissed her then, hard, slipping his tongue into her mouth. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he murmured against her lips. He reached down and caressed her swollen belly. “How’s our baby girl tonight?” James had been thrilled when they found out she was pregnant, making sure the cook stocked the house with food that would benefit the baby, then pulling some serious strings to get Olivia in to see the best gynecologist in the city, who at the time had a waiting list of a year. The only thing he didn’t like about her pregnancy was her weight gain, though she exercised every day and denied every ice cream craving she could to ensure she didn’t put on too much.

  Olivia laid her hands flat against his chest and pushed him away. “She’s good,” she said, trying to keep her breath even. She’d grown accustomed to his flares of temper, which tended to blow in quickly and then evaporate, but when he drank, his tongue grew sharp and more dangerous. She knew the best thing to do was feed him and get him to bed. Everything would be better in the morning. “Dinner’s on the table,” she said, taking him by the hand and leading him toward the dining room. “Roast chicken and broccoli.” A few months after their wedding, Olivia had convinced him to let go of their chef, reasoning that since he didn’t want her to get a job, she was more than capable of learning to cook for her husband. It had actually turned into a task she enjoyed.

  They sat down together, though she had already eaten. James hunched his shoulders over his plate, forearms resting on the edge of the table as he ate.

  “I had lunch with Sara Beth and Waverly today,” Olivia said, knowing that he liked to have a full inventory of how she spent her time. “We walked a few miles on the Burke-Gilman Trail and then had a salad at the Bellevue Club.” James grunted in approval; Sara Beth and Waverly were the wives of two of James’s friends. He’d introduced Olivia to them the first week she lived in Seattle, when the three couples went out to dinner to celebrate their new marriage at Seastar, one of John Howie’s premier restaurants.

  “Now those two are the kind of wives a man can be proud of,” he said when they got home that night. From then on, Olivia took note of the women’s sleek blond hair, toned bodies, and tanned skin; she watched the way they allowed their husbands to lead the conversations, throwing in the occasional witty, but always appropriate, comment. She saw how they made looking good for their husbands a full-time job. They gave her the name of the stylist who gave them their matching highlights, took her shopping, and helped her pick out more items for her wardrobe that accented her figure but didn’t flaunt it. They were younger than their husbands, too, something that made Olivia feel like she could open up to them the way she did with the couple of girlfriends she’d left behind in Tampa.

  “Don’t you want to work?” Olivia asked them one afternoon over a late lunch. Though she enjoyed the fact that she no longer had to worry about pinching together enough pennies to support herself or her mother, Olivia did miss the complexities of her legal cases. She missed plunging into research, smothered by facts in the library, taking notes, writing reports for the lawyers in her firm. If she’d had the money when she was single, she might have gone to law school herself, but needing to take care of her mother had erased that particular dream. After high school, she cocktailed nights to put herself through the paralegal program at a community college, then found a job as quickly as she could. And then, she met James.

  “It’s a full-time job to look this good for our husbands, sugar,” Waverly responded, laughing. Sara Beth agreed, and Olivia smiled and went along with what they said when really, she didn’t believe it. In fact, it was a bit appalling to her that these women thought so little of themselves. Olivia knew James loved her for her, not just for the way she looked. She knew this because he had cried on her chest one night in Florida, after they made love for the first time. He told her that his own mother had never loved him, that his father constantly told James he was a worthless son. “He beat us,” James revealed. “Me, mostly. I’d get
between him and my mother and just . . . take it.”

  “Oh, honey,” Olivia said. Her heart ached hearing how James had been treated, and she understood more than ever why a stable, happy relationship was so important to him. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I never thought someone like you would love me,” he said, shuddering as he pressed his face into her neck. “I never thought I deserved anything this good.”

  So when James lost his temper or threw out a painful verbal jab, she remembered that moment. She remembered his tears, how his face was like a little boy’s, scared of what she’d think once she knew the most vulnerable parts of him. She remembered that moment after he told her the drink she’d made him tasted like shit. And she forgave him one more time.

  “We were talking about the baby shower,” she said, thinking that the meal had improved his mood. He seemed much calmer than when he’d first walked in the door, so she figured it was safe to bring this subject up. “And they were wondering if my mother is going to come.” She gave him her most charming smile. “I wasn’t sure what to tell them.”

  James looked up from his plate, chewing a mouthful of chicken. “You tell them you need to ask your husband if he’ll pay for your mother’s flight.”

  Olivia bowed her head a bit, averting her face from his gaze. There was a strange light in his eyes—she wasn’t sure what it meant. “Of course. If it’s too much trouble—”

  “You think I’d let you tell your friends that I wouldn’t pay for your own mother to come to your baby shower? What kind of man do you think I am?”