Surface

by Stacy Robinson

  When she returned to her circle, Carolyn was literally balancing on the edge of her chair, and Claire knew she couldn’t get her friends’ insights about Michael and what to make of their situation until she’d satisfied their curiosity about Andrew. And so, standing with the dignified bearing her mother had always commanded for important occasions, she recounted the story of the man who’d set her into the shoals, and her ceaseless regret over her failure to right herself. “It was all so . . . alluring,” she whispered. “He made me feel substantial. And sexy, and valuable, and all those ridiculous things I wanted to be. And I just let myself get sucked in.”

  “Fucker,” Gail said.

  Jackie nodded.

  “It was the wrongest, worst thing I’ve ever done,” Claire continued, cautiously tiptoeing over the torrid interlude in the guest room, and hoping Gail wouldn’t ask her to describe the sex.

  “Claire, you’re the last person in the world I’d imagine doing something like that!” Carolyn suddenly blurted, sounding like a tamped-down and tipsy Cora. “And unfortunately, when you play,” she went on, flat-eyed, “you pay.”

  Stunned, Claire slunk into the chair next to Jackie, her sense of feeling embraced and empowered, all but eviscerated.

  “Okay, this isn’t helpful,” Jackie said, her protective instincts clearly on tilt, as she grabbed Claire’s wrist to stand. “And I think it’s time to go.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Carolyn yelped, the harshness of her words only then appearing to register on her face. “I’m so sorry, please don’t go. That was my husband talking, one of his stupid golf analogies. And it was uncalled for. I know how awful it can be, sweetie. Really, I do.”

  “Ladies,” Gail said, easing everyone back into place, “we all have a need to be desired. Men included. Right, Carolyn?” she added between clenched teeth, leaning in and grasping Carolyn’s knee, as if to keep her from raising foot to mouth again.

  Carolyn gave her a pleading don’t-go-there glance, the gloss on her lips bleeding from their tight, pinched lines. And Claire wondered if she had missed some unfortunate development in Carolyn’s world while she’d been away, which was just the incongruous little shot of camaraderie she needed to keep her from decamping.

  “It’s all right,” Claire said. “I know the whole thing seems so incomprehensible. I get it. It’s not that I was itchy. I was just lost and . . .” Her voice trailed off. “And I didn’t know it.”

  Resuming her role as distracter, Gail poured the last of the champagne into their glasses and lit scented candles around the room.

  “Are you okay?” Carolyn asked sheepishly.

  “I hate myself for being so impulsive. And I hate him,” she murmured. “It’s hard to even say his name.”

  Jackie fixed her raised eyebrows on Carolyn and Gail. “Well, then let’s not. From now on he’s . . . Voldemort.”

  “That’s perfect. And I think we can all agree that we hate Voldemort, too, honey. But you know,” Gail said, coming to kneel beside Claire, “finding the right person is what life’s all about. And I think it’s a downright miracle that anyone can marry in their twenties and still love the person their spouse has become in their forties. We’re not the same people anymore, we grow, we change. So sometimes we delude ourselves. And sometimes we do these crazy, inexplicable things when we haven’t gotten it right.” There were faint murmurs all around. “Take one part distracted husband, two parts intelligent, unfulfilled wife, add dazzling, passionate stranger, and stir—it’s a surefire recipe for fireworks, wouldn’t you say?”

  Claire smiled awkwardly and readjusted the pillows behind her, remembering the good and bad of having outspoken girlfriends, and thinking about delusion and denial, and rattled cages. And when she looked back into their empathetic faces she felt them moving solidly into her corner, which gave her the resolve to finish her saga and get it out of their way for good. “Fireworks, yes,” she replied after a beat. “That’s an understatement. I remember catching myself in the mirror after . . . he left the house,” she said, recalling that oddly visceral moment in the bathroom. “My lips looked bee-stung and my hair was wild. I’d never felt like that in my life.”

  “God, I love that look,” Gail said in an obvious attempt to pierce the intensity that stretched around them. “It’s especially great if you can achieve it just before going out in the evening. Hell, who needs Juvederm when you’ve got that!”

  “Well, for those of us who don’t get regularly screwed before dinner parties and charity events, Juvederm is not such a bad thing,” Carolyn slurred.

  “Oh my God, hon, you really should get in better touch with your lower chakras!”

  “Ugh. My lower chakras are all about batteries these days. Double-A sized.”

  Claire turned to see Jackie trying to contain the champagne in her mouth, just as Carolyn speculated that the Percodan must have kicked in.

  “You really are something when you’re medicated, honey.”

  “I’m something? What about you, Mrs. Robinson? Tell me again how many times twenty-nine goes into forty-four,” Carolyn said to Gail with a woozy grin.

  “Ah, yes, young Austin of the six-pack abs and insatiable drive. Boys do have their benefits. But that’s another story for another cocktail hour.”

  After a welcome digression into the topic of Gail’s boy toys, Carolyn asked Claire about Nicholas, which caused the lightness that had briefly reclaimed the room to vanish. Claire heaved herself up once again, and though her legs taunted her with their unsteadiness, the scent of ylang ylang reminded her that all was not so bleak, and that there was, at long last, warmth around her.

  “C’mon,” Gail said, walking them all out to the terrace for lunch.

  The four women sat shielded from the midday sun by a magnificent awning with an Italian-inspired trompe l’oeil mural painted on the underside. Claire leaned back to admire the craftsmanship, and was reminded of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” The woman above her stood naked with outstretched hands and pleading eyes behind her smile. Lucy appeared on the terrace with a lunch of poached Mahi.

  “You don’t have to talk anymore if you don’t want to,” Jackie said.

  “But I do.” Claire placed her napkin in her lap, feeling as if the situation called for a new language—but all she had was her truth. And so she continued, feeling the frazzling months at Nick’s bedside and her failed attempts at rescuing her marriage come alive like a vivid post-traumatic dream.

  They all sat silently when she had finished—just short of the lockout fiasco and their current domestic arrangement (for which she had no remaining energy or courage)—and listened to the soft whisper of a fountain somewhere below them. The last remaining paperwhites of the season shivered with the gentle breeze in their cachepots, and warm tears rolled down Claire’s cheeks as Lucy arrived to serve the dessert no one wanted. Gail’s eyes brimmed with tenderness, and Claire noticed that Carolyn’s eyes, too, shared her pain.

  “I look at Nicky now, at what my selfishness did to him, and it’s so hard to accept,” she said in a voice overcome with remorse and shame. “Michael certainly can’t. He’s so . . . irritable and out of reach.”

  Carolyn stood, taking a moment to catch her balance, and walked over to Claire and entwined their hands. “You’ve been through more than I knew, and I’m so sorry.” She kissed Claire on the cheek. “I think you’ve had enough for one day. Maybe we could all get together at my house again next week? And if there’s anything I can do to help with Nicholas when he comes home, I’ll be there.”

  They all waited for Claire to signal something.

  Finally she took a small bite of the dessert in front of her but then pushed it away. “You know, maybe next week’s a good idea,” she said as exhaustion put her on final lockdown.

  CHAPTER 30

  Claire pushed the up button in her lobby as she ran through a list of adjectives to summarize the previous three hours. Wrenching. Thorny. Helpful? But as depleted as she felt, she also had to a
cknowledge that the emotional toll was bearable if the process would lead toward some sense of normalcy and connection again, to some perspective. Surely it had to. That, and she hadn’t come up with a Plan B.

  When she stepped out of the elevator on six, Claire looked out through her uncertainty and saw an enormous cellophane-wrapped basket sitting in front of her door. Upon closer examination, she saw that it was a cookie bouquet. Peanut butter, no doubt. The envelope on the cellophane simply read, “Smitty.” She opened the door and brought the package inside, removing the enclosure card. Saw one of these at Mrs. Fields and thought, what the hell?! Hope they don’t taste like socks. Hope you’re settling in. Call if I can help. R.

  The man’s timing was impeccable. And she felt guilty for the meager e-mail she had sent him with only a brief hello and her new contact information. But an evening alone with a mountain of cookies seemed like the perfect analgesic postscript to the afternoon at Gail’s, especially since she opted out of the lasagna party at Jackie’s. She sliced open the wrapping and inhaled the luscious, buttery fragrance of her bouquet, and pondered her decision to open herself up so honestly to Gail and Carolyn. And something about sharing the trauma aloud with the support of friends felt useful. Like she was beginning to unearth small clumps of subterranean truth. She bit into one of the chewy cookies, and noticed, too, that her feelings of isolation were beginning to crumble.

  In the country of denial, life had been comfortable and beautifully adorned, so easily navigable. Claire closed her eyes, pondering the truths she’d tried hard not to see and all those little white lies she’d wrapped them in. There had been too much neglect on both of their parts. Too many missed opportunities to make their relationship the source of fulfillment they’d pledged. She wondered what slights Michael had felt from her over the years before her deepest cut. What could have changed him from the thoughtful guy who, unsolicited, would take care of a parking ticket she’d left sitting on the counter, to someone who failed to even acknowledge the greeting card in the bathroom telling him “the best thing to hold on to in life is each other,” or the other missives she’d scribbled on Post-its? Once attentive and buoyant, Michael had become remote and overgrown with dark vines long before Andrew. Yet righting her compass now, when that once-shiny picture with Michael had for so long been her north, was daunting.

  She licked crumbs from her fingers and squinted at her bedside table. And for all her desire to stop bedazzling the past and accept the truth in all its screwed-up bleakness, she did the only thing her brain and eighteen years of habit knew to do. Because some habits, in spite of their glaring badness, are hard to break. And because she was still raw and drawn to the irresistible glimmer of reassurance. Much like a bug to a zapper.

  Shoving another bite into her mouth, Claire picked up her phone and pressed his name on her Favorites screen, cursing her obvious need for some kind of intervention even as she waited for him to answer.

  “Michael?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It wasn’t always a lie, was it?” she asked, choking a little on all that she was swallowing.

  “What? What wasn’t a lie?”

  “We had true moments in our marriage, didn’t we?”

  “Claire, why are you doing this?”

  “I just need you to tell me that most of it was good. That over the years you felt it, too.” She hated herself for her weakness.

  She could hear annoyance and impatience in his voice, and she inched deeper into the covers, wondering if whatever he was feeling for her now had also distorted his perceptions.

  “Of course there was happiness along the way. A lot of it. No one’s saying there wasn’t. But things obviously shift. And when you play, Claire”—he paused, sounding utterly worn down—“since you keep questioning everything that seems so obvious, I’ll say it more clearly: You pay. I don’t know why you can’t see that.”

  She sat bolt upright against the headboard.

  “So there’s really no point in doing this again,” he continued. “It’s just not helpful, you know?”

  An unintelligible tangle of shit and right and okay spilled from her mouth as she absorbed the impact of his words.

  “Look, Nicky and I are set to leave at noon on Monday. He’s dying for a Larkburger, so if you want to take him to dinner after we get in, that would be good. I have a late business meeting.”

  Claire hung up, picturing a golf course conversation between Michael and Robert Spencer, the two of them playing judge and jury to her crimes and misdemeanors. She had been responsible for this catastrophe, so she should remedy the mess and suffer appropriately—that was the penance Michael had levied upon her. And it was a penance she was prepared to do a million times over for Nicholas to be well again. But with that bargain, Claire also had to accept the gobsmacking truth that she could no longer live in a world—obviously of her own creation, and Cora’s—where surface and subtext did not jibe.

  She texted Richard an effusive thank-you for the cookies, then flipped on the TV remote and stretched her arms and legs across the sheets like snow angels. A little less stuck in the amber of what was.

  CHAPTER 31

  “The ghosts of better days are hard to banish,” came Al Roker’s response to the bleak Monday morning Today Show segment about a Louisiana shrimp-boat captain’s woes.

  No kidding. Claire switched off the television and tried to focus instead on the future. Her anticipation over seeing Nicky later that afternoon was nearly trumping her unease over the “family reunion” that would come with his arrival. How would she stay positive in the face of what was clearly going to be a confusing welcome home for Nicholas? His social worker at Rancho had done some more “home life integration” prep work with them after the tray-hurling episode, and Nick had responded surprisingly well, if abstractedly, to these sessions about the new living arrangements. But that was there, and Denver was miles and days away from the comfort of the therapist’s office, and she couldn’t predict how Michael would handle her presence at the house now. A little buttressing of the whole plan, she felt, wouldn’t hurt.

  Outside, the early gasps of a sudden cold front had left a light dusting of snow on the streets, and just a smear of yellow peeked from behind the clouds as Claire drove to the Tattered Cover. She ordered an Earl Grey with steamed milk from the bookstore’s café, and browsed her way around the main floor of what was once a grand old theater, until she found the Relationships section. She had never seen herself as the gal in the self-help aisle, but there she was, looking for answers to the surprising circumstances she’d thrust herself into, searching for some strange magic in a book.

  Passing the shelves on tantric sex, Mars & Venus, and finding husbands, Claire slowed at the section on divorce and parenting. The titles there—Joint Custody with a Jerk, Co-Parenting Through a Difficult Divorce—seemed so harsh and final. All she really needed was advice on reiterating the concept of a separation to a teenager who happened to have special needs, some words and phrases that would tell her exactly how not to shatter his world any further. She ran her fingers along the spines of several books, but none of them seemed right. She sat down on the floor, leaning against the step-families stack, still scanning for something that resonated and didn’t shout This Is Not Your Beautiful Life quite so loudly. Taking a sip of her tea, Claire found herself staring at the red-lettered title directly in front of her: Your Denial Called and Said It’s Worn Out and in No Shape to Carry On. She slid the book from the shelf and began to read.

  And there, in authoritative Arial font, Claire found her resonance.

  Your marriage is in trouble for any number of reasons (infidelity, lack of connection/intimacy/fulfillment, financial challenges)—this much you know. But are you optimistic things might still work out despite the fact that your spouse:

  Has become distant and/or hostile?

  Refuses to go to marriage counseling?

  Is making other living arrangements?

  Has mentioned divorce/c
ontacted a lawyer?

  Is taking money from your bank accounts?

  And having experienced 3 or more of the above, are you still under the impression that:

  Your separation (impending or current) is only temporary?

  Your spouse really isn’t serious about divorce?

  If you don’t hire a lawyer, you’ll have a better shot at rescuing your relationship?

  Your marriage can be saved?

  The signs are unmistakable, but you are unable to face the fact that your marriage is over. To this we say, Get off the hamster wheel of denial now!

  “Jesus,” Claire whispered to the picture of an exhausted hamster, wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. But all she could do was read on, thinking that if the authors had asked, “Is Your Mother’s Name Cora?” instead of the money-siphoning question, she’d have had a full-bingo blackout over the last several months. “Denial is a powerful compulsion,” the chapter continued. She crossed her legs Indian-style, and settled in for a deeper examination of the material. And in the examples of women who thought it indulgent to fret over some niggling ennui in their marriages, or who were afraid to face hard relationship truths because the idea of divorcing and starting over was even harder, Claire saw herself. The more window dressing she had put up, the more paralyzed she had become. She pictured herself running on an endless, though attractively appointed treadmill, eyes closed, feet blistered. And it occurred to her that she was the one, and not her husband, who’d had her head in the sand for far too long. Hunched over the book, she felt like a feeble parenthesis to Michael’s exclamation point about the state of their marriage.