“Will you eat this watermelon if I leave it out?” I call to Ben.
He doesn’t answer. My hands are unsteady. Before I drop the plates I’m carrying, I stop and take a deep breath. Collin is lounging on the other side of the table with his feet resting on a kids’ foldout chair. He looks up from scrolling through news stories on his tablet.
“You okay, hon?”
“Oh yeah. Yes. Of course. Just clumsy today.”
I realize that I lack the ability to know if my guilt is transparent. Am I forcing prolonged eye contact with Collin for fear of involuntarily avoiding it? Is my voice strangely high-pitched, am I trying obviously hard to be upbeat and excessively friendly?
Collin doesn’t really seem to be aware that I’m acting shifty. Maybe I’m not. Then again, what does that say about me, that I could do something this unforgivable and not be crippled under the weight of it? It’s strange how incapable I am of having a clear idea if I’m playing the role of the person I was only weeks ago with any authenticity. For a moment I think about confessing to him. He’s the kind of man who would probably forgive me. Not that it wouldn’t be the cruelest thing I could ever do to him. The fallout would be too devastating to even think about.
It seems kinder to promise myself to never do anything like that again, and keep Collin’s world intact.
“Why don’t you let me get that,” he says, as I come back to clear the coffee cups. “Relax a little.” He pulls me down on his lap playfully and kisses me.
“Eeew,” Rachel says, covering her head with a towel.
“So when do I get to read it?” Collin asks.
“Read what?” I ask sharply, my face reddening. I fear, momentarily, that he is talking about Luke’s book, hidden away in my bedside table.
“This story of yours that’s got your head in the clouds,” he says, cheerfully.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be...distracted with...”
“No. Babe. That wasn’t a complaint. I think I put that the wrong way. I love that you’re doing this. It’s actually...” he pulls me closer and whispers “...kinda sexy.”
I laugh playfully in response, pushing him away.
“I don’t know about that.” I stand and continue to gather the breakfast dishes into a pile at the edge of the table. He glances down at his phone, furrowing his brow. No doubt more news about their recent investment tanking. Ben runs up, dripping water everywhere, and grabs some watermelon. Collin stands to take a work call and steps away from the racket. The topic is officially behind us.
Ralph only moves when necessary, and he takes the opportunity to eat the piece of fruit dangling from Bennett’s hand under the table. Ben wails. He throws the rind at the dog, just missing him. Collin, now inside the sliding screen doors, gives an apologetic look, indicating that he can’t help because he’s on a call, and moves farther away from the noise. I hold Ben’s flailing hands and tell him it’s not okay to throw things at Ralph—that he’s just a little dog and it’s not fair to be mean to him.
He growls in frustration, pulls away from me and kicks over his chair. Rachel knows the drill and gets up to help. Ben kicks the chair over and over, screaming that it’s not fair. Rachel wheels her grandmother inside because now Claire is awake and the corners of her mouth twitch, her fingers grip the sides of her chair and her breathing quickens. She’s fragile, and this sort of chaos unsettles her in her confused state.
Collin has seen that it’s a bad one and comes out to help. Ben swings at me but hits Collin in the back. He’s small so Collin isn’t hurt, but it never gets easier to be hit by your son. For either of us. I have to remember each time that it’s not his fault. Each time I take a moment after it’s over to recite all of the reasons I love him and remind myself that he’s going through something inside that hurts him too, something I’ll never understand. I pray for patience. Each time.
I’ve studied the difference between a meltdown and a temper tantrum. If he’s melting down, he’s completely overwhelmed, and he can’t turn off the emotion. “Usually a tantrum will stop if the child gets what he wants,” I read in one of the dozens of books I bought when we learned Ben was on the spectrum. I admit that I don’t usually know if I’m getting played and he’s having a tantrum to get what he wants, or if it’s out of his control. I ask Collin to grab some more watermelon to test the theory this time. When I try to give it to Ben, he throws it and cries. I guess that means that we are in meltdown territory.
Ralph comes over to comfort Ben, but he gets up and moves to the other side of the deck. Collin gives me a gesture indicating that he’ll go deal with it. I go into the kitchen, scraping breakfast plates into the sink and watch them from the window. They’re sitting on the deck stairs, Ralph in between and Collin reaching behind to gently pat Ben’s back. I love them so much.
I wish that guilt was enough to erase it all. As soon as I dutifully bathe Claire or cuddle with Collin on the couch until he falls asleep and I slip the cell phone from his loose hand and cover him with a blanket—as soon as I make Rachel laugh about something silly before bed and she actually says “I love you, Mom,” and especially when Ben sits gleefully in front of his earned video game time, laughing, happy, that’s when it creeps back in. I feel like no one has been hurt and things are under control. It’s back to the way it was a couple weeks ago, as if nothing happened at all. Then I let myself think about him again. Sometimes late at night, and even though the damage I’ve caused is invisible, it’s there, like the wind.
The rise and fall of Collin’s sleeping chest next to me should be the only reason I need to shun all of this from my mind, but just sometimes, safely, in the dark, I let my thoughts wander to fantasies of Luke Ellison. And not always the sex either. Sometimes I have to wonder if that part was real. It feels so otherworldly.
What would a life with Luke look like? A month in Italy writing a book. I see us there together, ordering mimosas from room service, making love in the morning, and spending sunny days on the veranda overlooking the sea. I know how stupid it is. It sounds obnoxious, naive even to say out loud. Does anyone really have that life? It looks like he does. He did exactly the opposite of what I did. He kept after the pipe dream. He didn’t marry, buy a house and have kids like the rest of the world. He valued good red wine, world travel and artistic pursuits over the minutiae of the domestic day-to-day.
To him, my world looks like snippets of television commercials. A couple enjoying their new elaborate deck extension behind their town house with friends while the kids play on a jungle gym their father built. Where the ladies wear khaki capris and blouses and carry out bowls of fruit salad and shrimp cocktail while the men stand around a propane grill, holding cans of Budweiser and poking at meat patties on the grill. To him, it’s probably a sad cliché.
Maybe that’s why he did it. It’s a life so foreign and far away from his own—why not sleep with a married woman? There are no consequences for him. I feel a sharp prick of anger at this realization. All of those sickly sweet compliments and longing looks. It was likely nothing more than his version of a one-liner, not a real connection.
Collin shifts and drapes a heavy arm sleepily over my hip. I lace his fingers between mine and kiss the top of his hand. The fantasy fades as the remorse resurfaces. How long will this go on?
* * *
In the morning, I busy myself with mundane tasks. I empty the dishwasher, fold a basket of laundry and make a fresh pot of coffee. The kids have been back in school a week, and sudden freedom during the day is ill-timed. There are no distractions. Claire is sitting in the sunroom with an afghan. God knows why. It’s ninety-four degrees outside, but she likes to stay covered. As I sit at the counter writing a grocery list and thinking about what Collin would like for dinner, I notice Claire looking at me, staring, actually. I am probably mistaken, but it looks like she’s glaring at me. I smile at her. The corners of her mouth turn up in something
resembling a smile, and then she looks away. It makes me uneasy. Being in the house is suffocating, so I ask her if she needs anything before heading out, and I hurry out of the house for air.
Driving around town feels dangerous. It’s so small that it’s very possible I might run into Luke, unless of course he’s already flitted off abroad to write his romance novel. I stop at the bank, the cleaners, then sit at a café to eat some lunch. A café dangerously close to the bar we had drinks at only a few weeks ago. Am I looking for him?
I’m sitting outside midday in this heat, so I must be. I must be ill, acting like this—almost involuntarily wanting more. Beads of sweat collect across my shoulders and drip down my back; my dress is becoming translucent with sweat. I feel like a character in one of his books. A housewife, a heaving, sweaty housewife, out on the prowl for hot, anonymous sex. But it wasn’t anonymous, was it? We shared laughter, life goals, fears and even family. I ended up telling him about my sweet Ben. It was as intimate as it could possibly be.
And what has he been doing all these weeks? Was I that disposable to him? I can’t help but wonder if he never contacted me again because I said never to text or call my number, or if he was just having fun, passing through, and it was just a steamy one-night thing to him and that’s all. I should be elated if it’s the latter. But I find, instead, that I’m resentful.
I have my trusty notebook open. I try to sort some of this out on paper. It’s dangerous, maybe, but I’m just writing fiction. I mean, that’s what I’d say if it were ever read, which it won’t be. I’m jotting down scattered entries to string together later. It’s just fiction, no harm in that. I try to find a way to articulate the anger and guilt and how one could reconcile that with ongoing desire, but my confusion crowds my thoughts. I close my eyes a moment and fan myself with a cocktail menu. Then, I’m startled by my name being spoken.
“Melanie Hale. Hi!” a perky voice says. “Look at you working away.”
It’s Vanessa from the writing group. She’s wearing black skinny jeans and an overabundance of eyeliner, neither of which she’s sweating through.
“Oh, hi. No. Just a grocery list. How are you?” I turn my notebook over.
“I’m good. Just going to work.” She nods toward the Tipsy Cow Pub. I thank God Luke and I hadn’t gone there instead that night.
“We’ve missed you at the group. Your story.” She stops, hand to chest and takes an overdramatic breath. “My goodness, wasn’t that something. You’re coming back, I hope.”
“Oh yeah. I want to. Things just got busy with school starting and all that.”
“You’re in school?” she asks, matter-of-factly.
“No. My kids.”
“Oooooh. Right. Sorry,” she says. She’s so young that the whole world is from her twentysomething perspective. She doesn’t see other people in her circle as adults with crushing responsibilities. She gets to be a bar hostess, smoking pot and writing bad poetry. Good for you, I think. Hold on to those years.
“Well, there are no more book readings this month, so we can hear each other talk at least. And it puts Jonathan in a better mood,” she jokes. That’s what I needed to hear. No more Luke. He’s long gone.
“I actually thought I’d come back tomorrow, now that everyone is settled into routine at home.”
“Great.” She fumbles with a vape pen and exhales a cotton candy–scented puff of smoke. “See you then.”
* * *
It’s Thursday. It’s been almost three weeks since I attended the last writing group. I know the reading series is done and I won’t see him, but still, I prepare as if I will. I can’t help myself. I wear a dove-gray, A-line dress that falls just below my knee. I feel a little like Jackie Kennedy. I’m aiming for classy; I want to feel less like the three-dollar hooker I’ve been feeling like in recent days. I roll up my hair into a French twist clasped together with a barrette encrusted with faux pearls.
The bookstore is quieter tonight. There are no excited women lined up to hear Luke Ellison read from his new book. The rows of chairs that were filled with eager fans a few weeks ago are now stacked up against a wall behind the café, sad looking in the shadowy corner.
Only three of us show up tonight. Labor Day has thrown off everyone’s schedule this week, so it’s a very short meeting.
Mia reads from a story she’s working on as Jonathan and I listen. It’s an angsty tale of unrequited love and revenge. She’s going through a divorce, and so her story is about a woman who poisons her husband slowly and painfully by putting antifreeze into his whiskey every evening so she can kill him and get his life insurance money.
“‘And when it was done,’” Mia reads, “‘I thought about cutting his nasty T-shirt with the barbecue stain on the chest right off his flabby, hairy body and into bits, and while I had the scissors, maybe cutting off his lips along with that porn mustache I hate, but I knew it needed to look like an accident, so I just dialed 911 and pretended to think it was a heart attack or something.’”
I look around with bulging eyes to see if anyone else thinks this sounds a bit too specific, but everyone is reading along, reactionless. My eyes wander through the café and down to each shelf of stacked books. Did some part of me think he was going to keep coming back every week until he saw me again—just waiting quietly at a café table as if he has nothing more important in his life to do?
I deny to myself that the prickly heat across the back of my neck is a brush of disappointment that he’s not here. I don’t share the story I’m working on.
“I’m just here to learn. I’m here to keep myself accountable and keep writing,” I say. “Maybe next week.”
Since there’s no pressure to share your work, it’s very supportive and everyone is kind to me.
As our small group disperses, I walk out to the parking lot with Mia. She jokes that if she ever got up the guts to kill her ex-husband, she wouldn’t have the patience to do it slowly with antifreeze, she’d just shoot the fucker in the head. I give a courtesy laugh even though the comment makes me a little uneasy because there’s something in her eyes that suggests she’s thought about this a little too much.
When I open my car door and sit in the driver’s seat, I see a flyer flapping from beneath my windshield wiper. Annoyed, I reach my hand around to snatch it. But before I crumple it up, I realize it’s handwritten. It’s not addressed to anyone and it’s not signed by anyone. It just says “Meet me at my place.”
I hear my heart pounding in my ears, my pulse racing. I wonder if I’ve been set up. But nobody else knows, I’m certain of that. I should throw this in the public trash can in front of the doors, I should drive home and pretend I didn’t see it. Luke Ellison will be out of the country very shortly and I’ll probably never see him again. I have no right to contemplate this another second.
I take a few deep breaths. I’m sweating, I’m panicking. I should go home. Instead, I text Collin and tell him I’m hanging out with some of the group members but that I won’t be as late as last time.
I leave my car in the bookstore parking lot. I don’t dare have it seen anywhere near his house. I walk, casually, down the main street, past the busy bars and restaurants, not pretending to hide something at all, and then I duck into a gas station parking lot. I make the walk across the wooded area that butts up against his house. A few yards from the house, I stop. I decide I need to just turn and go. But then I tell myself that I’m just here to see why he left the note. I knock.
He opens the door almost immediately. The second it closes behind me, he gently pushes me up against it, holding my hands over my head, and kisses me. And just like before, he pulls me up, my legs around him, and we claw at each other’s clothes, pulling them off ravenously. When he sets me down on the kitchen island, that’s when I know the story I’m quietly telling myself—that I won’t let it go too far this time, that I just wanted to see him before he left to say
goodbye—is a lie. We make love fast and hard.
When it’s over, we sit in the dark of his remodeled kitchen. Me, cross-legged on the counter, and him pouring us a drink.
“I don’t have long,” I say.
“That’s too bad, but I understand.”
“How did you know that was my car,” I ask, “to leave the note on?”
“It’s a very small town,” he says, smiling, and hands me my drink.
I instantly wonder where he has seen me. Was it schlepping the kids to some practice, running errands with no makeup, wearing an oversize sweater and leggings? Oh my God, did he see me with Collin somewhere? I don’t ask, I simply nod in agreement.
“It is.”
“Your kids are in school now, during the day, right?” he asks. I don’t know why I feel a sense of anger at his mention of my children. It’s not rational, it’s just that he shouldn’t know anything about them. I just nod yes.
“I’ll be here working. I usually drive into the city or hang out at coffee shops to write, maybe do a little work at home. But I’ll stay here, I’ll work from my office every day, so we don’t have to arrange anything or have any traceable contact. You just show up whenever you want and I’ll just be here. It’ll be safe.”
“I should go,” I say, putting down the drink and standing. I bend to slip on my shoes; he moves over to me, running his fingers through the back of my hair, kissing my neck. I let myself lean my head back and feel it. Then he kisses my mouth and looks at my eyes. “It’s an open offer.”
Just then my phone hums, and I can tell by the happy percussion chime that it’s FaceTime. I carry my shoes in my hand as I pull away from Luke and dart through the muddy stretch of field toward my car. I duck under a low-hanging arm of a bald cypress tree and catch my shoulder on a firethorn as I try to slip through a spread of wild pyracantha bushes along a sagging wooden fence at the edge of the property.
Such a Good Wife Page 6