Another ten minutes pass with no sign of Ryan. No answer on any screen. Texts, calls, silence. Ryan has disappeared, either into a closed-door meeting or an alien abduction. Facing the special panic reserved for working mothers, Cass flips the switch designed to help in emergencies. Usually, this adrenal gland kicks in for manageable disasters, like having to change a diaper while pressing mute in the middle of a conference call while in a public restroom. And usually, the call goes off with only minor reputational damage with an awkward, self-deprecating apology about a babysitter’s untimely departure and halfhearted patronizing murmurs from others that “we’ve all been there.” But today’s work-life emergency offers no such respite. She has one of two options: cancel class and be docked for irresponsible behavior, or take the baby to class and pray that the smug millennials have mercy on her and deem her child care malfunction more endearing than tragic. And that they don’t complain to the dean that their teacher is wasting their parents’ tuition.
One last lifeline. Cass is nearly too proud to call her.
“Nora Hall Real Estate,” says her assistant. “Home is where the heart is.”
Cass hangs up and starts the car. “Looks like you’re coming to class, kiddo.”
* * *
Her students are unfortunately less compassionate than she hopes. They smirk with the dispassion reserved for the young and wealthy. But Cass will not be shamed. She is not so easily broken. She fixes her hair, wipes baby drool off her shirt, and, with Sam on her hip, walks gamely to the chalkboard. Sam makes an adorable sound, much to her students’ amusement. But Cass is stone-faced. No special treatment for mothers. She delivers a solid attempt at a lecture, intermittently holding Sam on her hip and placing him on the floor with a stack of pens and paper. Finally a young female student takes pity on her situation, taking Sam by the hand and leading him out of the classroom. He goes quietly with one last heartbreaking glance at his mother. It is an act of mercy but comes too late for salvation. For the last half hour of class, Cass abandons her lecture to classroom discussion, but she is too distracted to offer much, her attention divided between Sam’s babbling just outside the door and flickers of rage and concern over the whereabouts of her husband.
By the time class is over, Cass is exhausted. She leaves the university building, upset and depleted. She carries Sam in her arms, balancing her bag, books, and his belongings. Now, as opposed to during the class, Sam is calmly sleeping.
Ryan is standing outside when they emerge from the building. He is leaning against his car like a high school suitor and lunges toward Cass when he sees her, opening his arms to take the baby. She instinctively holds Sam tighter and keeps walking.
“Where were you?” she asks.
“I’m so sorry, Cass. I got trapped on a call. It was a total disaster.”
She continues walking. “You’re right. It was a disaster.”
“I nearly lost my job today.”
“That makes two of us,” she says. “I showed up to class with a toddler.”
Ryan takes Cass’s anger and matches it with defiance.
“Look, I need to keep my job unless you’re planning to pay the mortgage. Last time I checked, your teaching salary did not cover our expenses.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me where you were instead of trying to make me feel bad.”
Ryan looks down, takes a long breath. “Kevin called me in for a conference call at the last minute. He’s up my ass already. I had to show up. I know that’s no excuse, babe. I should have called. I’ve been so stressed. Scared. I’m under a lot of pressure. I really don’t need more.”
And just like that, in a matter of seconds, he has deployed his classic tactics: shifting the blame, turning the tables, and transforming his apology into further evidence of Cass’s failure.
“I accept your apology,” says Cass.
They drive home in separate cars, Cass stopping to pick up the kids at the neighbors’. Cass heads straight upstairs with the sleeping baby and falls asleep on the chair in his room, determined not to speak to Ryan until the next morning.
* * *
It is two o’clock, and Cass is at her nightly vigil. Tonight she is riled by unanswered questions. Cass doesn’t need much sleep. She has always prided herself on this. She has never been able to sleep on command, either for a nap or for the night. She is a sleep anorexic. She needs less sleep than most to get through the day, to complete basic bodily functions. She has spent so many afternoons watching children nap in their cribs. She has spent so many nights watching men sleep in her bed. First boyfriends, and then husbands. She has traded envy for their apparent respite into pride in her deprivation, pride in how little she needs to survive, pride in the fact that she can make do with less than most people—or, seen differently, make more of fewer resources.
So heavy and hearty is Ryan’s sleep as she crosses the room, removes his cell phone from its cord, and crosses the threshold of trust to lock herself in the bathroom, which is, for all intents and purposes, the interrogation room. She moves confidently in this haven of hers, this hell of her own making. There it sits in its factual glory like the mercury in a thermometer: an email from Ryan to a male colleague earlier in the day, in which Ryan excuses himself from the very call he claims detained him.
“Cover for me on the call?” he writes. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”
But before she has considered the implications of this statement, the proof and countervailing evidence, she has darted out of the bathroom, away from her torture and its chamber and marched down the hall to the bedroom, where she crouches on the edge of the bed, shaking Ryan’s shoulder.
“Where were you this afternoon?” Cass is saying.
“I told you. I was on a call.”
She is still shaking him. Or now, she is just shaking. “Where were you really?”
“Cass, don’t do this. We’ve been through this already.”
“I saw the email, Ryan. You told Kevin to cover for you. You told him you had a doctor’s appointment. Why don’t you try again, and this time tell the truth from the beginning.”
Ryan sighs and turns away. It is the sigh of a confessor. It is the sigh of someone who has done something he knows will not be forgiven.
“Why did you say you were on a call?”
“Because,” he says. He sounds like a child, and he knows it.
“Because what?”
“Because,” he says, “I knew you wouldn’t believe the truth. That would be too easy.”
“You what?” she said. This would not do. This turning of the tables, this process by which, in seconds flat, his crime became her crime, and worse, a crime for which she would be sentenced, punished. No one but the two of them will witness this double insult, the manner in which insult turns to injury. Only two witnesses, one liar and one listener to debate the veracity of each other’s statements. A jury of two defendants does not make for due process. And so she says it again, as though for a jury, as though restating his lie will force him to admit the absurdity of his statements. “You lied because I wouldn’t believe the truth? That doesn’t make sense, Ryan.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense, Cass. But that’s where we’re at now. That’s what you’ve driven me to. You overreact to everything.”
Cass is lost, torn between his explanation and her intuition. “Stop. Stop turning the tables.”
And then, at just the moment when she expects a confession, he says, “I’m trying to confide in you, Cass. You’re too obsessed to listen. I’m having a really hard time at work. There’s so much pressure on me. Three kids, the insurance, the mortgage,” he continues. “I could lose my job, Cass. I wish you could be more supportive.”
Cass feels herself doing it, trying on his version. She is doing this against her will, helping Ryan lie to her, colluding in her own deception. Now the charges have changed again: she is no longer just the suspicious wife, driven crazy with paranoia, but has failed him with a de
arth of tenderness, the most basic female virtue.
“I wish you had some compassion for my situation.”
“What is your situation?” says Cass.
“That I could lose my job right now.” A single tear slides down his cheek, gets caught in his stubble.
“Why?” she says, regaining strength. “Because you’re fucking your assistant?” This is the first time she has said this out loud, truly considered it in earnest, made the mental passage from the purgatory of presumption to the hell of provable wrongdoing. But after seeing the photos of Stephanie’s aerosol tan and manly muscular body, countless photos in painted-on pencil skirts, and then, ass splayed, legs oiled, arms flexed in her winning poses as reigning bikini champ of South Florida—and of course, her conspicuous absence, Cass can no longer dismiss the most obvious possibility, the biggest cliché in the marriage textbook. Common sense has begun its dull rap on her intuition.
“There’s no affair, Cass. The only crime here is your mistrust. That’s what’s destroying our marriage.”
Once again, she finds herself in a cage of her own making, questioning her conclusions, regretting the confrontation. He turns away, and she sits on the bed, replaying the conversation, reviewing every word he has said, as though for a legal record. Which was the comment that made him snap, which word, which moment? Has her mistrust become so corrosive as to conjure a fictitious affair, dream up an imaginary mistress? Or is she trapped in some middle ground with shared inculpation? If he has indeed been unfaithful, does she bear some of the burden? Did she drive him to it by fearing it, by scrutinizing him so cruelly, by expecting the worst from him, and chasing him like a vengeful ghost in a haunted cemetery? In seconds, she has flipped from conviction to confusion, from self-respect to self-loathing. One of three things is possible: her husband is having an affair; she has imagined the whole proceeding; or her incessant nagging has driven him into the arms of another woman, in retaliation. None of these possibilities is good. All roads lead to heartbreak. Regardless, trust has been breached. The only question is who bears more of the blame, Ryan or Cass, his or her betrayal.
The fight continues into the night without resolution. By three o’clock, both are in tears, exhausted from physical fatigue and emotional depletion. Just before dawn, Ryan turns the tide with a dramatic mea culpa, insisting he wants to make things work and begging for forgiveness. He does this without confessing per se, but rather with a promise—a pledge to be a better man, better husband, better person—in a wholesale prostration that is, for all intents and purposes, a willing act of submission, the last act of a fight like this, a total surrender. But despite the apparent win for Cass, the fight is a loss for both opponents, and they fall asleep, weakened both as people and a couple.
SIX
It’s morning, and Cass drops the kids at school with the usual set of emotions—pride, relief, a flash of sadness, and bone-deep exhaustion. Alice is unnerved this morning because she has not finished her homework. Pete is happy to join a throng of kids chasing one another around the school courtyard. The baby is home with Marta, the unlucky sitter who, according to Ryan’s decree, has been put on notice and has exactly two more days of employment. Cass is depleted from the late-night fight. She is just about to drive away when Alice appears at the car, rapping on the window.
“What?” says Cass.
“Mom!” she says. Her mouth is moving, but sound is silenced.
Cass lowers the window.
“Mom,” says Alice.
“What, sweetie?”
“You have our backpacks.”
Cass turns to the passenger seat, sees the bags in question, two lumps of blue and green with the customary fluorescent patches. Would that every item of evidence, every guilty party, was so easily spotted in a lineup.
Alice opens the car door, heaves both bags onto her shoulders. “Get some sleep, Mom,” she says and slams the car door behind her. And then, as she sprints into school, “Love you!” for good measure.
* * *
Cass feels as unsettled at work as she did at drop-off. She needs ten minutes for basic hygiene and mental restoration. Instead, she arms herself with caffeine—three tea bags in the morning’s dosage—and a splash of icy water on her eyes in the bathroom, and sets aside her grading deadlines for another urgent project. She logs into a website she has used with some success on various occasions to find sitters since moving to Portland. She pulls up an old job description: “Seeking Nanny for Three Great Kids to Help Working Parents.”
She scrolls through a list of applicants, scans their eyes and smiles, profiling for intelligence and kindness, if these two qualities can be profiled, or better yet, if either one can predict behavior. She stars a gray-haired granny, a smiling Peruvian woman, and stops on the post of a young brunette with unusually wide-set eyes and a toothy smile that is equal parts welcoming and feral, with even more inviting young breasts that seem likely to entice her husband to push her into a closet. Cass moves on quickly. She scrolls back to the elderly lady in a pastel caftan, her friendly face all but obscured by bushy black eyebrows. Unfortunately, further review reveals she speaks mostly German and describes herself as “deeply religious”—a good candidate either for proselytizing or kidnapping her children.
Five more minutes are spent sifting through a dispiriting roster, evaluating with no particular criteria other than gut instinct a parade of women who look, in turns, cute and creepy. It is not beyond her self-awareness to acknowledge the potential flaws in her logic, but she still has the conviction of most women to know this saying usually applies: always trust your gut. A knock on the door—the first student lined up for office hours—interrupts her planning.
“Who is it?” she says.
“It’s Daniel,” he says.
“Come on in,” says Cass. “Just getting settled.”
She grabs the ungraded pile, frantically flips through in search of Daniel’s latest. She takes a last glance at the sitter site, appraises the paltry submissions, then chides herself for her pettiness and moves back to the pretty young one. If Ryan is going to cheat, better he do it under her roof than in some tawdry hotel room. At least that way she will have proof of his indiscretion. Amused and chilled by the idea of conducting this real-time experiment, she turns her attention to Daniel.
“I was just rereading your piece,” says Daniel, “‘Season of the Witch.’ It’s really amazing.”
“Thank you, Daniel,” says Cass. “How long do you need for the extension?”
Daniel smiles, mortified by his transparence.
“Friday work for you?” he asks.
“That’ll be fine,” says Cass. Even when distracted, she’s got excellent intuition.
Daniel leaves, and Cass resumes her previous project. She opens the sitter site, scrolls through the pics, and emails the feral brunette to set up an appointment.
* * *
A few minutes later, she receives an email:
My name is Marley, I think I would be the perfect fit for your family! Please take a look at my résumé and let me know if you agree. I look forward to hearing from you! Marley
* * *
Cass sits in a coffee shop in downtown Cumberland. She is starting to have a feeling that she has had a handful of times when visiting foreign countries, on the first day of high school, or when she watched the towers go down on a television affixed to a wall in a train station. A bit like an astronaut trapped in orbit, condemned to watch but not to inhabit, estranged enough to notice things for the first time, close enough to see them—but now, with no entitlement, rather the fear, the knowledge that she has lost access to something dear and familiar.
It is not a coincidence, she considers now, that she is feeling this way on this day of all days. Today is Cass’s birthday. She has made a decision to ignore it, not only because her husband seems to have forgotten but because this decree exonerates him—and her—from further introspection. This year, she will not engage in the ritual rumination, the
taking of stock, the making of lists, the plaintive hand-wringing and navel-gazing, that she gave up her career too quickly, made that trade that mothers make, fractured her ambition, leaning on the crutch of her children. No, she will not be indulging in this. Today she will go only so far as to listen to the music in the café and stare melancholically out the window.
The coffee shop is painted a lovely shade of gray, a color as soothing as the activities that take place within it. Pleasant music shares the air with a breeze from the bay. Lively people in warm clothes drink things that soothe or invigorate. They talk, they drink, they laugh and chat. They communicate. Cass feels somehow unlike the people in this room. She feels loneliest in public places. The isolation she has come to know is bearable when she is alone. When she is surrounded by others enmeshed in their lives, it is harder to shake the sense that she is a satellite condemned to her own private orbit.
A chipper smile interrupts Cass’s dreary notion. A young woman—at twenty-four, she is more a girl than a woman. She is wearing a checked collared shirt over a camisole and leggings, and a pair of lace-up round-toe boots that look like something from a Victorian novel. She looks less horsey in person than in her photos but still distinctly rural. She has the face and hair of a girl, but the confidence of an older woman, and the wrinkles in her forehead that suggest time in the sun or intense life experience. She calls the waiter to their table and orders coffee with impressive command. From the intensity of her need for caffeine, Cass assumes, she is currently working a late shift or a grad student. But before Cass has time for any further assumptions, she launches into a compelling audition, revealing, in addition to her good looks, a charming Southern accent.
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