by Roz Nay
“Of course. Thanks for understanding,” Saskia said.
I went straight to my car and called my mom. She let her phone ring for a while before picking up. “Mom, can I come home?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she gushed like a high wind down the line, “of course you can come home. It’s been deathly dull here, and I’ll be happy to see you back.”
“They’ve asked me to leave.”
“HP has?” Why didn’t she sound more surprised?
“I think it’s more Saskia. But yes.” My voice caught and I coughed to conceal it.
“Angela Petitjean, don’t you dare cry. Don’t you dare. You’ve been doing great. Don’t let this pull you down. Do you want me to come and get you?”
“I’m on my way to work. And I’m not leaving until Sunday.”
“Sunday? Why not today?”
“They need me to babysit tomorrow night.”
“Are you joking?” Her voice was hard and flat. “Is that a joke?”
“Just—it’s okay, Mom. I want to do it. You know how much I care about Olive.”
“Whatever you think is best, Angela. But you give too much, you know. Soon you’ll have nothing left.”
I stayed in my room that Friday night and spent the whole of Saturday at work, sorting through registrations of births and deaths. There was no reason for me to put in overtime, other than that I didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Saskia was ready for book club by the time I got back to their place. She waited in clothes more suited for clubbing, and didn’t direct any conversation my way. Finally, she’d given up pretending that she liked me.
“You got everything you need?” HP stood by the screen door once his wife had left, waiting for Ez to pick him up for baseball.
“I’ve babysat before.” I sat in an armchair, and Olive crawled into my lap.
“Okay, well, you have my cell if anything goes wrong.”
“We’ll be fine, won’t we, pumpkin?” I stood up, looping my arms around Olive’s legs and carrying her in front of me. “Let’s find some food! Then it’s bath. Then it’s bedtime.” I waddled his daughter out of sight through the swing door into the kitchen as Ezra’s truck pulled up, the bass bumping from the stereo.
“Thanks for doing this, LJ,” HP called after me as he grabbed his house keys.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I set Olive down and, as she meandered away, pulled out the bottle of New Zealand Pinot Noir they’d been saving for a special occasion and sliced at its neck with a paring knife.
Once Olive had eaten enough, I ran her a bath and sent her to find pajamas and a hairbrush. I don’t know why, but I wandered into HP and Saskia’s bedroom with my glass of wine. How had I never noticed the scarlet throw Saskia draped across the white comforter, the tea candles scattered on every windowsill, the fairy lights over the dark oak headboard? She’d hung themed pictures of trees, all of them cone-shaped and Tuscan-looking, though she’d never been to Italy.
Her jewelry box overflowed with long-stringed pendants—feathers, arrows, keys—and bulbous rings. Behind that was a cluster of lavish perfume bottles.
“Godmother Angie,” Olive said suddenly behind me, and I jumped to find her in the doorway. Her belly was nut brown against the yellow fabric of her underpants. “What are you doing in here?”
“Oh, just looking.”
“I’m not allowed,” she confided, padding over to me in her bare feet. “Mommy says I mustn’t touch her jewels.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Olive pulled down the jewelry case from the dresser, standing on tiptoes with her tongue sticking out. Once she had the box in both hands, she crouched and set it on the carpet. “Which one’s the best?” Her chubby fingers played with the silver strings, ran over the smoothness of the pendants. “I think this one.” She held up an elephant pendant on a chain, her dark eyes watching the light as it caught on the jade and aqua.
“It’s pretty. Your mom has a thing for elephants.” I hated the necklace. It took me straight back to that beer tent at the May Ball.
“Mom says elephants are good at being sad.” Olive folded the silver necklace into the small curve of her palm. “You have it.” She held her closed hand out to me.
“No, Olive. Thank you, but no.”
“Mommy would like you to have it. She’s says it’s nice to cheer people up.”
I wanted to laugh, long and loud and dry, but instead I pushed her hand away gently. “Put it back. Good girl. Now give me a hug—there, that’s a great one—and go find your hairbrush. Wait for me in the bathroom; don’t get in.”
I watched her trot away and picked up my wineglass, sipping as I surveyed more of the room.
There were no signs that HP slept in there. No baseball caps, no watches, no shorts left crumpled by his side of the bed. To the side of me was a heavy, beach-washed dresser; I slid open the top left drawer. Here were Saskia’s socks, paired at the neck with a decisive fold, two by two. I closed that drawer.
The one below was double the size and harder to open. Inside lay all the T-shirts, ironed flat and nudging shoulders. Burrowing in between them, I dug farther, looking for some sign of their marriage that wasn’t humdrum. A pair of handcuffs, zebra-furred? A blindfold? Leather? Didn’t every couple have some secret hidden away in a corner of their room?
The top right drawer held all of Saskia’s underwear: I dipped my hands into the softness, letting the fabric fold like water over my fingertips. Pulling out a pair—pink with a chocolate ribbon and lace around the stitching—I reached up under my skirt and gently tugged my own underwear down, rolling them off into a straight line by my bare feet. The slipperiness of the new silk fabric slid against my thighs. I turned around and stared at my reflection in the long pine mirror by the wardrobe. The sight made me giggle: my butt looked pert and perfectly hoisted by the expensive cut of the cloth. Two steps backward and I pressed my flesh to the mirror, leaving a round, crescent imprint on the glass. Before I straightened my skirt and walked back out toward the bathroom, I kicked my old underwear under their bed, wrong side out.
The bath was ready. Olive came in with her pajamas and a hairbrush piled above the level of her chin and I sat her in the piping-hot water and gave her the cork from the Pinot Noir. She prodded it with her forefinger, trying to make it sink. Now and again she stood to stamp on it with her bobbly toes, exposing a ring around her plum belly where the bottom half of her body glowed hotter.
“Wash everywhere,” I said as she made a beard out of bath foam.
“I’m Santa,” she said, peering at her mirrored face in the shiny disk below the tap. “Do you believe in Santa?”
My wineglass already needed a refill. “Santa is to kids what God is to grown-ups. We all need bedtime stories to keep ourselves cozy.”
She stood suddenly and slapped her round red belly with both wrinkly hands. On the rack were three fluffy white towels, each embroidered with a first-name initial in the lower left corner. I rolled my eyes and grabbed the S one. Olive clambered out of the bath and I wrapped her up. I made sure to dry her well.
“Can I have a bedtime story to keep me cozy?” She stepped her rosy knees into her matching pajama bottoms, which were covered with owls.
“Sure. I’ve got lots in my head.”
She crawled into bed quickly, curling with her hands pressed palm to palm under her cheek. I pulled the blanket over her and turned off her Tinker Bell lamp so that shadows from the landing light split her ceiling.
“Once upon a time,” I said, stroking the white-blond strands of hair at the crest of her forehead, “there was a little girl who grew up by a lake. She was a pretty girl and very clever. Everybody loved her.”
“Does anyone die in this story?” Olive rasped. Her eyes were closed.
“I’m not sure yet. When the little girl was born, her mom and dad were the proudest parents in the land. They threw a huge party with cake and balloons and sparklers. But at the party an evil, jealous witc
h snuck in and she poisoned the cake and her mom ate it and fell down asleep for five whole years.”
“The mom was poisoned?” She was captured the way kids always are with dark stories.
“For five whole years she was asleep and the witch took the place of the mom and tricked the little girl and the daddy.”
“How did she trick them?”
“By pretending she was the mom.”
Olive opened her eyes. Her little-girl tummy pressed against her pajama top. “Does the real mom wake up and kill the witch and the family lives happily ever after, The End?”
“Well, life’s not always like that.”
Olive sighed sweet hot breath toward my face and rolled over, tumbling toward sleep. “Poor Godmother Angie,” she mumbled.
“Why poor me?”
“There’s a mommy and a daddy. You’re the witch.”
“I’m not the witch! Why am I the witch?”
But she’d fallen asleep. I left her room quietly, my face hot with injustice.
* * *
Novak’s pager beeps and he stands up jerkily. “There’s someone who wants to see you.” His exit is rushed like a new idea.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When the door to the interview room opens again I expect it to be Novak with my mom. It’s the kind of move he’d make: drag the parent into the principal’s office to make the disappointing kid feel worse.
But it’s not her.
HP walks the few steps to the chair alone, and my stomach twists with a longing to hug him. His flip-flops clack. I haven’t seen him for two weeks and he looks tired and frayed, although he’s recently shaved.
“Hi.” He doesn’t smile, but he’s not giving off rage, either. “Are they treating you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry about Saskia,” I say.
He nods slowly and gives me another look I can’t read. “LJ, I know it’s crazy, but I can’t help thinking that she’s left me. You know, just walked out.”
“That’s what I keep telling Novak!”
“Yeah, you get it. And you know what? Maybe she was right to. I mean, we’ve been having some … Well, it doesn’t matter, but this kind of shock gets a guy to thinking. We should have spent more time together, you and me.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“I’m sorry about stuff I did to you in Oxford and all the years since.”
I don’t dare exhale. There’s a flood buried inside me. This is all I’ve ever wanted.
I take a deep, steadying breath. I hadn’t expected an apology. “What are you going to do about Saskia? I mean, when they find her or she comes back?”
He looks toward the door, then at his feet. “Novak told me he has a new lead. Do you know anything that could help him?”
There it is. At the very center of his soft blue eyes, I can see the truth, the pickax-metal hatred he’s trying to hide.
“You fucking bastard,” I say.
He sits back and flounders, “LJ, what do you—?”
“You come in here and manipulate me?”
“She’s my wife, Angela. And she’s disappeared. Do you understand what that even means?”
“Does that give you a right to lie to me? To manipulate me? Oh, Novak must have thought it was a masterstroke, sending you in here. Who’s to say you didn’t hurt her yourself?”
He’s suddenly glacial, his eyes cold. When he launches, it’s feral how fast he moves. He has one hand around my throat before my chair even tips back, before it clatters to the floor. Part of me is excited by the swiftness with which he grabs me, but I can hardly get air.
“Where’s my wife?” he yells.
My feet are off the floor now, my eyes bulging and wet. The door is flung open and Novak and a couple of cops barrel in behind him. It takes all of them to pull HP off me. When the white of his fingertips finally slips from the skin of my throat, I slide down the wall, my lungs burning. Novak speaks into HP’s ear while I gasp for breath. I can’t hear Novak’s words but he calms HP down fast, then guides him out of the room, leaving me on the ground with the feel of HP’s hands still on my skin.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’m still trying to catch my breath when Novak comes back in, and as he takes his seat, he has just one question for me: “What did you do to make HP hate you this much?” But all I can think about are the years I’ve put aside for HP, all the times I’ve tried to show him how much I care. And still he doesn’t know me. In the end, all roads lead to Saskia Parker, however hard I try. Whether or not Novak finds her, she isn’t the great disappearance. She was never the most serious theft.
Novak, for his part, has been trying his best to follow the bread crumbs I’ve scattered along the way. At least he’s making an effort. Maybe he deserves the rest of the story now. It’s time to tell him what I did.
* * *
That Saturday night, my last at HP’s, he didn’t get in at nine like he said he would, and Saskia’s book club ran even later. HP got in after ten and he was drunk. When I heard the fridge door clank open, I crept from the spare room to the top of the stairs.
A bottle cap clattered onto the tile floor and I heard him sit with a sigh at the table and the sound of his bottle clunking on the wood in between sips. When he stumbled up again, screeching the chair on the tile, I quickly padded back to my room. From the crack in the hinges of my door, I saw him tiptoe to Olive’s room. He swayed in the doorway, his shoulders and head craning forward in the dusk. Then he bundled his way up the hall to his own room, nudging a framed picture with his shoulder as he passed it. I waited, then followed, watching from the door.
He’d gone to sleep so fast, his chest lifting and falling as he drifted with dreams. This poor, poor man. I crossed the threshold, thinking I’d better check that he wasn’t so drunk that he’d vomit on himself. Maybe I should move him, so he wasn’t in danger on his back. I knelt on his side of the bed, let his breath wash my face; if I timed it right, I could inhale everything he breathed out. I could smell the alcohol, potent on the fullness of his lips.
He hadn’t changed so much over the years—a few laugh lines at the sides of his eyes and mouth. He’d thickened in the chest and shoulders, but his skin was still soft and olive-smooth. I ran my index finger down the side of his neck from his earlobe to his collarbone; he shifted his knees under the blanket.
I moved around the bed and by Saskia’s table, lit by the glow of her digital clock, lifted my T-shirt and stood naked apart from the pink silk panties. I stretched, yawning my arms up so that my breasts curved beautifully, my shadow silhouetted against the far wall. When I crawled under the covers, the sheets smelled like apricots, the weave rich and luxurious against my legs and ribs. For a second I lay quite still, living a moment of what should have been mine all along. My husband, my child, my house.
I slipped my hand across and over the wall of him, reached down into the cleft of his chest muscle, and stroked fingertips along the broad swath of his stomach. My entire torso pressed against his back. Slowly I threaded my top leg around his, intertwining us at the calf and the thigh. His breath changed rhythm; he was surfacing. Leaning on my elbow, I breathed into the back of his neck, my nipples dusting his shoulder blades.
My hand traveled down from his stomach and under the waistband of his shorts and he breathed out pleasure, his throat croaky and bubbled with sleep. He couldn’t turn without squashing me, so he reached his hand back and felt for the silk of the panties. His fingers played there for a while, toying with the fabric and me inside it; he was teasing, slow, enjoying the opiates of sleep and beer and sex, that drowsy indulgent line between wakefulness and sleep. I wriggled the silk panties down, pushing them with my feet toward the base of the bed.
“Baby,” he murmured. “You just get back?”
“Mm-hmmm,” I said softly, and I moved across so I could straddle him. And that was when he opened his eyes.
“What the … Jesus Christ!” With one arm he swiped me sideways, knocking me off him to
Saskia’s side of the bed.
“What the fuck are you doing here? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. You’re insane!”
I pulled the comforter up over my belly and stared at him blankly. “I’m actually the opposite. If you’d just think clearly for a minute.”
“Get out! Get fucking out!” he hissed as he ripped the blanket away from me.
Outside, a car pulled into the driveway, the music thudding as a passenger door swung open. From where I lay I could hear the tinkle of Saskia’s voice and footsteps crunching on the gravel beneath the window.
“Are you going to tell her or shall I?”
HP grabbed me by the wrist and flung me out of the bedroom, throwing my shirt at me before shutting the bedroom door. I could hear Saskia arriving, taking off her heels in the hallway. I rested against the spare room doorjamb, arms crossed against my naked rib cage. I let her pause at the sight of me, squinting into the shadowy hallway.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, covering myself with my T-shirt. “It’s a shame you had to find out this way.”
She took two steps toward me. “Find out what?”
Before I could answer, their bedroom door flew open and HP blundered out, bare-chested in his boxers. He had both hands on his head. “Saskia, it’s not what it looks like,” he slurred.
I watched as she took in more details. My near nakedness. HP’s disheveled hair.
She tottered, spindly and adrift down the hall, pushing past to inspect the bedroom. Then she turned to face HP, sinking down onto the edge of the bed.
“Saskia, it’s not what you think,” HP said. He rushed toward her. “She was in our bed. I thought it was you!” He sobbed the last word.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, pushing forward from my doorjamb, striding into their room. “You’re not that drunk.” HP covered his mouth with the cupped palm of one hand. Saskia’s face went pale.
I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for Saskia to spring up at me, all claws, kicks, and bitter spittle. She pushed at my throat with her nasty little hands, her clenched fury knocking me off-balance, and I staggered sideways onto their carpet. “You want a fight, you fucking mole?” she whispered, her knees pressing me flat.