“That’s not for ages,” Pete says.
“It’s less than two months away,” says Ryan.
“You see.”
But Ryan has already moved on to the baby, holding him and gazing with total adoration. He throws him into the air while the driver approaches to help with his luggage.
Cass looks on as Pete watches Ryan shower attention on Sam. She steps toward Pete and puts her arms around him.
“You’re back Friday?” Cass says.
Ryan puts down the baby. “Yes, Cass.”
“Can you send me your flight information?”
“It’s ridiculous that I have to.”
“What?”
“Report to you like a teenager.”
Cass bristles at his words, the usual characterization. His outrage fuels her outrage, his anger her indignation. She can’t help entertain the usual question: Is it possible this is all her fault, that she has created the problem, that her mistrust is the root of their ills, as opposed to his indiscretions?
Ryan picks up on her self-doubt. He has a portable detector. He jumps at the chance to gain leverage, to compound Cass’s gnawing doubt with the renewed possibility that she is unbearably paranoid and he is entirely innocent.
“Why don’t you do something nice for yourself? Book a massage at the Lakehouse?” He is moving toward her and smiling now. When Ryan shines his light on you, all the world is summer.
“Maybe I will.”
He opens his arms, and she collapses into them. And again, she feels herself giving in, giving away her convictions for the prize of Ryan’s attention. She is like a puppy the way she begs for affection, so quickly trading her beliefs for one kind gesture.
“Do it for me, if not yourself,” he tells her. He holds her face and strokes her forehead. She looks up and into his eyes. They are light and gray now like a mirror. “If you want this to work, you’re going to have to work on your issues.”
Cass pulls away quickly. Why must he always do this? Take every chance to create shame, turn the sweetest moment into a chance for degradation. “This is about trust,” she says, “not some made-up mental illness.”
Ryan smiles and pulls her back. “You said it. I didn’t.”
“You know what I mean,” Cass says.
“Yes, I do.” He kisses her on the forehead.
Now he turns back to the children who stand on the porch, waiting. He hugs each kid in rapid succession like a pope receiving disciples, then descends into the waiting car and sets out for the airport. Cass and the kids watch his car pull out of the driveway. It might as well be a funeral hearse based on their look of dejection. Ryan waves, and they raise their arms, swaying at the horizon. The car recedes, rises up the hill, turns left, and again the street is still and silent. As they turn and walk back into the house, Cass cannot shake the image of Ryan, waving with a look of love, smiling with deception.
Later, as she lies in bed, she imagines his destination: a beach town shaded by mirrored condos, dirty sand paced by aging men and plastic bimbos, where crooked businessmen come for the tax shelters and cheating husbands come for asylum. A smoke-stained hotel room, decorated in beige and salmon, a waiting bucket of cheap champagne, melted ice, and the gasps of her husband’s lover as she stands above him and he drags his tongue through her.
* * *
At the kitchen table, later that night, Cass “works on her issues.” She considers Ryan’s advice, his diagnosis. Perhaps, he is right on one count. She is stressed, taxed to the limit. She is like some fey Victorian woman, suffering from hysteria and hot flashes, banished to convalesce for the summer, prescribed to follow a program of sunshine, salt water, and the occasional electric convulsant. Long live Frances Farmer. Was she a credible or crooked witness to her own perceptions? Or merely a canvas for wildly distorted opinions?
It is with this doubt, her innate skepticism coupled with her conviction, that Cass considers the validity of Ryan’s thesis. She picks up her phone and dials the local luxe hotel, as he has suggested.
“I’d like to book a massage.”
“Sure, have you been here before?” asks the receptionist.
“No, but my husband comes often,” said Cass. “The last name is Connor.”
A pause. “Yes, I see him right here. He was here last Tuesday.”
“Oh,” says Cass. “Right. He said it was wonderful.”
“Fabulous,” says the receptionist. “I’m glad the two of you enjoyed it.”
“What?” says Cass. Something fills her throat.
“I’m glad you two enjoyed it.”
“Oh, we did. We did,” she says. The substance that clogs her throat has now spread across the surface. “Just confirming for my records. The two massages on Tuesday, and…”
“Tuesday, the third, Tuesday, the seventeenth. And the couples massage last week.”
“Two massages or the couples massage?” asks Cass.
“The couples massage last Tuesday.”
“Right. Of course,” she says.
“People really seem to love the ‘his and hers’ package.”
Cass manages a few more words before hanging up. The thing that fills her throat—rage, shock, terror—is now making it hard for air to enter. The call ends, and she buckles, reaching the ground in stages until her head is resting between her knees, palms against the floor, trying to figure out whether it has fallen away or remains directly beneath her.
She takes a long breath, straightens, and dials the same number.
“Reservations, please. Hi, this is the assistant for Ryan Connor. I’m calling to confirm the bill for a recent hotel stay. Great. Could you read those dates back to me? The third and the seventeenth. Thank you.”
She hangs up the phone. Paralyzed with repulsion. She touches her wedding band in disgust. Bile rises from her stomach.
* * *
Ryan is set to land at eight o’clock this evening. At 8:16, as promised, he texts Cass to let her know he’s landed. But Cass, now fortified by hours of futile searching, days during which to digest her shock and formulate its by-products, rage and understanding, knows enough to second-guess Ryan’s every assertion.
“Just landed,” he writes.
After receiving the text, she picks up the phone and dials the airline. She is not surprised to find a discrepancy between her facts and his fiction.
“Just calling to check on the status of Flight 342. Jamaica to Portland.”
A pause. An endless pause during which Cass tries and convicts her husband.
“Still in flight,” says the voice. “Scheduled to land in forty minutes. Rerouted due to storms in the Caribbean.”
“But my husband just texted to say he’d landed.”
“You sure you have the right flight?” says the voice.
“Flight 342,” says Cass. “Jamaica to Portland.”
“Scheduled to land in forty minutes.”
“Thank you,” says Cass. She hangs up the phone. She scrolls to Nora’s number, but something stops her. Pride. Shame. Humiliation. Staving off panic, she gets very still and quiet. Another hour passes without a word from her husband. Finally, just after ten, the sound of the doorknob turning, the rustle of his jacket as it is hung on the hook, and the clumsy, irregular footsteps of an intoxicated person.
She is sitting on the living room sofa as Ryan stumbles toward her. He kisses her in a way designed to stop further conversation.
“Shitty flight,” he declares.
“Yeah,” she says. “You look it.”
He collapses onto the sofa.
“Took you a while to get back,” she says. “From the airport.”
“I texted you as soon as I landed.”
“You meant to,” she says. “But you didn’t.”
“Oh, Cass. You’re so pretty. Why do you frown so much? It makes you look so much older.” He furrows his brow, turning himself into a cartoon of consternation.
“Couple more drinks than usual,” says Cass. “For
a short flight from Jamaica.”
“I told you it was a bad flight,” he says. “Turbulence. You wouldn’t have liked it.” He is referring to Cass’s flight phobia, for which she is mocked in the Connor household. She is constantly told it ages her, makes her stodgy, boring, the antithesis to his fun-loving companion who, she imagines, loves nothing more than to climb into a ramshackle puddle jumper, scarf tied over her head, peering out into the great unknown a mile above the horizon.
“You texted to say you’d landed, but the flight on your itinerary was still in the air. I’m trying to figure out how that happened.”
Ryan is lying down now, sprawled across the sofa. He looks up slowly, first curious, then grinning. “Oh, you’re good, Sherlock. Now you’re really getting going.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Cass says. It feels as good as she hopes.
Ryan remains lying down in a calm show of defiance, a body-sized middle finger stretched out across the sofa.
“Remember the turbulence I told you about? There were storms all over the Caribbean. Some sort of hurricane brewing. I knew you would freak if my flight was delayed, so I found one that went through Orlando. It only cost a few hundred bucks. Some thanks I get. You’re welcome.”
“Did Stephanie like Jamaica?” Cass says. She regrets it as soon as she says it, but something happens to her restraint when her husband lies. Anger and speech are intimately connected.
“Oh,” he says. He sits up now. “You’re going for the win tonight.” There is a new look on his face, something lighting the stupor. He still wears the stupid grin of a drunk, but now his eyes are shiny, like a hungry animal.
“Stephanie says she likes to fly,” she says. “On her Facebook page, she says she loves adventure. She went to Negril three years ago. For spring break. Her senior year of college.”
Ryan stands up now. He falters as he does this. “You know what’s really pathetic? A grown woman stalking a twenty-four-year-old girl who could be your little sister.”
Cass straightens her back. “You’re the one who’s fucking her.”
Ryan’s face changes forever in this moment. The goodwill that remains might as well be heated water. It leaves his body and is replaced by something different altogether. His face is transformed, contorted with the bile of hatred.
“You like to look at pictures of her? You like to watch her?”
“I may be gullible, Ryan, but I’m not stupid. This is the last time you’ll make me doubt myself. This is the last time you’ll blame your victim.”
“Oh yeah? What makes you so sure?” Now he is walking toward her. “If you ever say that name in this house again, this will be the last night we spend in this house together.”
“You can threaten me all you want,” says Cass. “But I won’t be censored. Maybe I should ask your boss. With all the recent news in the press on sexual harassment, I don’t think they will take too well to the threat of litigation.”
Of course, she doesn’t mean this. Not with any true intention. It is more of an accident than a bluff, but it forces him to admit the scope of his deception. She realizes, after saying it, that it has been too effective, achieving two things quickly: inciting a volcanic amount of rage and the fear behind it, the fear of a guilty person—and incensing Ryan such as to send him off the reservation. Before she has time to react, Ryan is upon her, his hands clenched around her neck, his cheek against her cheek. His spit is flying into her mouth. His face is touching her face, not an inch between them, and he’s whispering into her eyes, as though her eyes can hear him.
“Life as you know it is over.” His fingers compress around her neck.
And then, by way of punctuation, he shoves her against the wall. And stays there, slowly pressing.
“I’m having terrible thoughts,” he whispers.
“Thoughts about what?”
“Thoughts about killing you and chopping you up. Hiding your body in the backyard. You’ve driven me to this, Cass. Can’t you see what you’re doing?”
The fight spans several hours. She remembers it in fragments. She remembers a scuffle over his phone. She remembers him pinning her against the wall. She remembers promising to tell his boss, and then, his hands on her shoulders, bashing her head against the wall. She remembers, with the shock of this blow, a simple revelation, that her husband has an unknown skill, that he knows how to turn their own wall into a deadly weapon. He knows how to turn her haven into a homicidal weapon.
A temporary détente is called by way of cell phone. Cass tries to call the cops, but he pries the phone from her. Ryan, always tactical, uses his phone to dial them. Both regret the call equally when the cops arrive ten minutes later. Remembering a cautionary tale about a wife who called the cops on her husband only for both to land in adjoining cells for the evening, they minimize the fight to the officers at their doorstep and agree to sleep in separate rooms and talk it out in the morning. Ryan sleeps in their bedroom, and Cass curls up next to Alice. The kids have miraculously slept through the evening’s bout of violence.
* * *
It is very late now, well past three in the morning. Cass sits on the bathroom floor, dazed but determined. She is in her private torture chamber, studying images on her phone and computer. She is focused on Stephanie’s Facebook page, scouring for clues, logistics. Her face changes as she is confronted by a new photo: Stephanie surrounded by seven girls, huddled together in front of Big Ben. “Greetings from London!” This deflates Cass completely, calling everything she believes into question.
* * *
It is dawn in Cass and Ryan’s bedroom. The house is still and quiet. The only noise is the sound of breath. In. Out. In. Out. Air invades and escapes with more freedom than any of the residents. Ryan lies in bed, awake, watching zombies. Cass silently gets into bed, turns away from her husband, and lies like this, listening. Moaning. Eating. Dying. Her right temple is throbbing. Her ribs are tender.
“I love you,” she says. Why does she say this? She does not feel it at this moment. She says it for one reason: because she needs to hear it.
Ryan says nothing.
“I love you,” she says again. It is a question, not a statement. She knows, even as she says it, that she has lost some part of herself, some essential facet of being human and replaced it with something that seeks her own destruction.
More silence. She pulls the sheets from her waist to her shoulders.
“Why won’t you say it?”
“Why do you need me to?”
“When you’re married, it’s common parlance.”
“It’s not common to make someone say it,” he says.
“I’m not making you,” says Cass. “I just wish you would say it of your own volition.” She hates herself for saying these things, for caving so quickly. But she has lost her discipline—along with other qualities that seem to be depleting: her self-respect, her common sense, her peace of mind, her leverage. She has come to fear her husband’s hand less than she fears his rejection.
Ryan says nothing. His knees are up, feet flat on the bed. His legs are so beautifully muscular, so perfectly proportioned.
“When did you start to hate me?” she says.
“Why would you say that?” says Ryan. He does not say that he doesn’t.
“Your whole way of being has changed. The way you talk to me. The way you look at me. Your body language.”
“Body language?” Ryan says. “Now you sound like Alice.”
“Ryan, please.”
“I don’t like to be pushed, Cass. You know this about me. And yet you still do it.”
Cass turns toward him, a plea made by her body. He flinches ever so slightly.
“Love is like this.” He holds up a stuffed animal that belongs to the baby, a droopy matted elephant—long ears, shaggy. “Made up.”
“We make it up together.”
“Why would you want to hear something made up?”
“We decide what it means. We define it together.”
“The kids need to pretend, Ryan. It’s how they figure out what they believe.”
“Who decides what it means,” he says.
“Most people agree on this one.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“Warmth, admiration, commitment. A promise for protection.”
Ryan turns away again, goes back to his movie. Zombie sounds continue in contrast to the quiet house. Moaning. Gnawing. Begging.
“We might as well start praying to this.” He waves the elephant over her head. “An imaginary fuzzy being.”
“That serves a purpose too.”
“Such as?”
“Hope, morality, peace of mind.”
“Now you’re making this about God. Come on, Cass. That’s offensive.”
“God and love are the same,” she says. “Concepts that are defined by us and how we treat them.”
A pause, a pause that is long enough for Cass to wonder if she has finally gotten through to him.
“Why do you always have to be so heavy? Can’t you just relax and enjoy a movie?”
“Yes, of course.” No such luck. Not even when he seems to have heard, when she can feel him in the act of empathy, compassion.
“Thanks,” he says.
More zombie sounds. Cass rolls over, turns her back to him.
“I love you,” says Ryan. It’s the standard bedtime version.
She turns to him quickly. “Then why wouldn’t you just say it?”
“Because I object to you trying to make me.”
Cass nods and turns back to the wall. “I love you too, Ryan.”
NINE
The sound of clanging pots wakes Cass in the morning. The Connor family is back at the family project. She walks downstairs to find the house in a state of busy planning. Ryan and the kids have just returned with a massive load of groceries. The counter is piled high with overstuffed bags, and spirits are even higher. Ryan has commandeered the kitchen with his typical ardor, enlisting the kids to prepare an elaborate breakfast. Alice has been tasked with whisking eggs. Pete rinses berries in a strainer. Sam sits on the counter, banging two wooden spoons and repeating his father’s orders like a tyrannical parrot. Better still, they have treated Cass to a rare luxury, sleeping late on a Saturday morning.
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