Four: Stories of Marriage

by Nia Forrester

  Today, he was happy to slip unnoticed into the backseat of a yellow cab, while the others made their way slowly through the small crowd that always gathered to watch them get their game on. Shawn would be spirited away in a black SUV, Scaife would get behind the wheel with his guy riding shotgun and cussing for people to get out of the way; and Turner would be chauffeured in his own ride.

  The plan was to meet in two hours, so Brendan wouldn’t make the trip back to Brooklyn, but instead head over to the condo that he and Tracy still owned. It used to be his bachelor pad, and when they lived together before getting married, they spent most of their time there. Only in the second trimester of her pregnancy did they decide to move to Brooklyn practically full-time.

  He was less than half a mile away when the call came in from the landline at the house in Brooklyn. Brendan picked up immediately, prepared to hear Tracy’s voice, steely, cool, and still holding on to her anger from the night before. But it wasn’t Tracy, it was Trish.

  “Hey, Mr. Cole,” she said. “I was wondering whether you’d be much longer? I promised the Griersons that I’d get to their place by three and it’s already …”

  Brendan squinted in confusion. “Trish?”

  “Yes. This morning Mrs. Cole told me that it would be no later than two-thirty when you got here, and it’s already later than that, so I wondered if I needed to call the Griersons and let them know?”

  “Let them know … Wait. Trish, where is my wife?”

  “I don’t know. She left around 10:30 and said you’d be back by two-thirty or so to take over with Layla.”

  Brendan searched his memory and then exhaled as it came to him. Brunch.

  Tracy, Riley and Robyn had brunch whenever the guys were playing basketball. And sometimes those brunches ran a little late and got a little boozy. Normally, Tracy would remind him that she was going, but since they weren’t speaking, it was no surprise that she hadn’t.

  He couldn’t recall whether she was going to Jersey, or to Riley and Shawn’s place in the city, but either way, she probably wouldn’t take too kindly to him calling and asking her to head home, just so he could go sit around at a bar.

  “Sorry about the mix-up, Trish,” he said. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. But, yeah, you should probably call the Griersons and let them know you’ll be a little late.”

  When he hung up, he told the cab-driver to turn around, and that instead, they would be heading over the bridge and into Brooklyn.

  “Your turn, Dada.”

  Brendan glanced over at Layla who was sitting with her knees up to her chest, her sooty, dirty feet planted squarely on the beige sofa. They would leave smudges that Tracy would notice the moment she walked in the door.

  Except she wasn’t walking in the door.

  It was after five now, and for the last two-and-a-half hours, Brendan had been playing games with Layla, the most recent being something with frogs and logs on her tablet, the two of them passing it back and forth. He hadn’t even taken a shower when he got home, because he expected that any moment Tracy would arrive to take over.

  But she hadn’t come, and now, not only was it past time for him to have cleaned up after the hot, sweaty basketball game he played earlier, it was time to think about what he needed to be doing for Layla as well. He couldn’t decide whether to be worried or pissed.

  Worry won out at first when he reminded himself that Tracy was not one to leave their daughter for more than a couple of hours without checking in at least once. And then he was pissed when he recalled that this was precisely the kind of crap Tracy pulled when she wanted him to feel her displeasure—disappearing acts were her specialty.

  “This is bullshit,” he mumbled, before he recalled that Layla was sitting next to him.

  But she was too young to even realize she’d heard a cuss-word, and was already tugging her tablet back, since he hadn’t bothered to restart the game. Brendan looked down at her, with her reddish-brown curls, messy and falling into her face as she looked down. She had a slightly sweaty, sweet little-girl smell mixed with the aroma of fresh-cut grass from her time in the park with Trish; and at the corners of her mouth were traces of ketchup from the hot dog he made her as soon as he got in.

  “Time to call your momma,” he said, as Layla pressed the Home button on her tablet with a chubby finger. “You want to call her?”

  Layla nodded wordlessly. She wasn’t missing Tracy yet, but Brendan wondered how much longer he had before his daughter recognized that her life’s rhythm was just a little bit off.

  Although he didn’t like the idea of giving in to Tracy’s emotional terrorism, he had to make sure she was alright, and to let her know that their daughter was going to be wondering about her mother soon.

  The phone rang only once before his wife answered.

  Tracy had been waiting since just after two that afternoon for her phone to ring. She guessed that the call would come shortly after three, which was about when she expected Trish would reach out to Brendan, wondering where he was. And then he in turn would call her.

  But now, it was well past five.

  Reaching for the glass of wine she poured herself, that had been sitting on the coffee table growing warm, she took a breath and answered.

  “Tracy?” Brendan’s voice was tense with anger, or maybe anxiety.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You planning to get here anytime soon?”

  “No. I don’t,” she said.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  She took a sip of the wine, hoping for a little liquid courage, and put it back on the coffee table, where it clattered a little, and almost toppled over before it settled.

  “I told you, last night.”

  “What did you tell me last night? When we have meaningless fights just before dawn, the details tend to be a little fuzzy the next day.”

  Meaningless. He called their fight about having another baby, meaningless.

  Shutting her eyes, Tracy took a breath. “I won’t be home tonight.”

  “That’s what you told me last night? I must’ve missed that part.”

  “You said you were leaving, and I said I would instead. And you told me to do it. So, I have.”

  “What about Layla?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s with her father.”

  “I smoked a little weed so you’re runnin’ away from home? Is that what this is?”

  “You always make me sound so ridiculous. Like the things that concern me are so inconsequential. We’re trying to get pregnant, and you’re getting high. Do you not see how that …?”

  Hearing her voice, and how shrill it was becoming, she was unable to finish her thought. And hearing his voice after they had argued, as always made her forget herself, just the tiniest bit. Brendan’s impact on her hadn’t diminished, not even a little bit, despite how long they had been together and how far they had come.

  On the other end of the line, he exhaled. “You want to talk to Layla?”

  When they disagreed, this was how he sounded—disappointed, tired.

  Tracy knew she was supposed to feel lucky that she had a husband who rarely lost patience with her. But it was always unsettling and probably always would be. There was no way to tell when Brendan might be reaching the end of his rope, no way to tell whether she was in danger of him being done with her for good.

  “I’ll talk to her for a minute,” she said.

  When Layla took the phone, she sounded distracted. In the background, Tracy heard the cartoonish sounds of a kids’ videogame. When she was home, she had strict limits on Layla’s screen-time, but chances were, Brendan wouldn’t care about that.

  She asked Layla about her day with Trish, told her she should listen to her daddy, and that momma would see her when she woke up. The news that her mother wouldn’t be there to put her to sleep, Layla greeted with complete disinterest.

  She’s practically a baby, Tracy reminded herself. She has no concept of time. I
t isn’t that she doesn’t miss me. It isn’t that she doesn’t need me.

  “Okay, Momma,” Layla said almost cheerfully, once Tracy asked her to give the phone back to her daddy. “Night-night.”

  It wasn’t yet evening, and not dark out, but her daughter seemed totally fine with the idea that she might not speak to her again, even at bedtime. Suddenly, the hiatus from home felt silly.

  When Brendan took the phone once again, he still sounded resigned, and now a little detached.

  “You’re in the city then?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “At the condo.”

  “Yes.”

  Brendan gave a short, mirthless laugh. “I was on my way there when Trish called. So that’s where you were all afternoon?”

  “No. I was at brunch with the girls first, and then …” She let her voice trail off.

  Brendan sighed. “Y’know what?” he said. “I’m not going to press you. If you need to be away for a while, you should do that. But you know how I feel about stuff like this. We can’t work on being together by being apart.”

  “Are we still doing that? After all this time? ‘Working on being together’?”

  “Apparently so. Because my wife just told me she’d rather sleep elsewhere.”

  She had no answer to that.

  Riley and Robyn didn’t get it either. When she told them she was planning to stay at the condo for a while, they’d exchanged a look that Tracy knew meant she had been the subject of conversation.

  Tracy’s at it again, she imagined one of them saying.

  “Look,” Brendan said after a few moments of silence. “If you felt like you needed to get away, needed some time for yourself or whatever, why not just say that? Why do it this way?”

  Because she wanted to provoke a reaction. She imagined a huge fight, a blow-up so huge that it would give her the chance to lay everything out there on the table. Except now, the ‘everything’ she wanted to lay out there seemed much more nebulous than it had when she first thought of how this conversation might go.

  “Just call me before you go to bed, alright? Let me know everything’s cool over there. And so you can say goodnight to Layla.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Tracy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she said, her voice breaking.

  When they hung up, far from the triumph she expected when she’d concocted this plan, Tracy felt empty.

  12

  The sound of the phone woke her from what was a drugged and heavy sleep. The kind where you wake up disoriented and unable to remember where you are, or how you got there.

  Tracy moaned and reached for her cellphone, taking a moment to try to restore some moisture to her papery mouth, and to clear her throat. And a moment more to recall that she wasn’t in Brooklyn, but still at the condo in Manhattan.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounded like a croak.

  “Tracy. Love? Are you sick?”

  Tracy’s eyes widened, and she shot upright, her head clanging in protest. After speaking to Brendan, she had finished the entire bottle of wine she had opened around four that afternoon. And things hadn’t improved later that evening when she found herself unable to fall asleep from the worry of being away from Layla.

  “Nancy,” she said, trying to sound more alert. “No. I’m … It’s just …” She cleared her throat again.

  “Well you sound sick. Is that why Brendan called me?”

  Brendan called his mother?

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. Did he call you?”

  “This morning, yes. He asked whether I could come stay for a few days and then he was fussing in the background with the baby and the sitter came so he had to go. Promised to call me when he got to work but never did, and I haven’t been able to reach him since.”

  Tracy glanced at the time and silently groaned. It was almost eleven a.m. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept this late. Probably the last time she’d consumed an entire bottle of pinot by herself.

  “Tracy? Is something wrong over there?”

  Dammit, Brendan! One night, and he was calling his mommy for reinforcements? She loved Brendan’s mother. Loved both his parents, actually; and in many ways viewed them as her surrogate parents as well. They certainly treated her that way, and she was as preoccupied with never letting them down as though they had borne her themselves.

  She sighed. The only thing to do was tell the truth.

  “Nothing’s wrong exactly,” she said. “It’s just … I’m not home. At the moment.”

  “What do you mean? Are you on a trip, or …?”

  “I’m at the apartment in the city,” Tracy admitted. “Brendan and I had a … We had a disagreement and I told him I would be staying here for a little while, so I guess he thought …”

  On the other end of the line, Nancy sighed. Tracy prepared herself for the expression of disappointment.

  “Oh. Is that all?”

  For a moment, Tracy was stunned silent.

  “Yes. But I plan to go back … soon,” Tracy managed, not wanting to lie about when that might be.

  In the harsh light of morning, her return to Brooklyn seemed imminent. She already missed her baby, and not sleeping with Brendan had only been manageable because she had been in a stupor.

  “What happened, love?”

  Nancy always called her that. ‘Love’. Sometimes Brendan did, too, though his favored endearments were ‘baby’ and ‘sweetheart.’ Tracy often heard Nancy call her husband and son ‘love,’ so it never lost its impact on her when she was included in that exclusive group as well. Having never heard those kinds of pet-names from her own mother, Tracy still sometimes felt the threat of tears pressing at the back of her eyes when Nancy addressed her with such affection.

  “Nothing happened, really. It was just … one of those fights where you have to …”

  “Say no more. I understand. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. Except, let me ask you—should I come? Brendan said he needed some help with Layla, but …”

  Tracy thought for a few moments. On the one hand, if Nancy came, she would worry a lot less. Layla would have all her routines intact, and the time with her No-no was always fun for her. Nancy didn’t mind playacting, and letting Layla put lipstick on her, or ‘style’ her hair. She didn’t mind messy games with Play-Do, or water.

  “I think I’d rather we work this out on our own,” Tracy said. “Because that’s kind of what …”

  “No explanation needed. I’ll let Brendan know I can’t make it up there just yet. But Tracy, I’m going to check in on you every now and again. Until you and Brendan get this—whatever it is—sorted out.”

  “I’d … I think I’d like that,” she said, struggling to swallow the lump in her throat.

  “So.” Nancy’s voice was brisk. “If you’re not sick, I’m guessing you’re just waking up.”

  Tracy didn’t bother denying it.

  “Nothing wrong with sleeping in, especially if you have a little time away from the baby,” her mother-in-law continued. “But you’re not over there wallowing, are you? Because that’s not who you are.”

  Except that was precisely who she felt like. On a good day, her friends considered her high-strung, and on a bad one, they told her to her face that she was behaving like a crazy person. Last night, listening to Brendan say he loved her, she wondered whether they might be right. She had a beautiful and healthy daughter, an amazing life full of friends and material comforts and the secure knowledge that she had her husband’s love. What the hell was her problem?

  “Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Tracy said, trying to sound confident. “I promise, I won’t be wallowing.”

  “Okay. Good. So, get on up, take a shower and get out of that apartment. If the weather is anything near as beautiful as it is here, then you won’t want to waste another minute of the day inside.”<
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  He ignored it the first three times, but the fourth time his phone went off in the middle of the meeting, Brendan grabbed it and excused himself from the conference room. Standing in the hallway outside the room, he answered, sounding every bit as impatient as he felt.

  Then the moment he heard Trish’s voice, he panicked. He hadn’t locked her name into his phone so what appeared to be a call from a random number, all this time had been his daughter’s sitter repeatedly trying to get in touch with him.

  “Mr. Cole, I’m so sorry to bother you, but Layla is …”

  She didn’t need to finish her sentence, because Brendan could hear her, screaming in the background.

  “What happened? Is she alright? Did …”

  “She was fine,” Trish said, sounding a little desperate. “It’s just that after your wife left …”

  “My wife? Did she …?”

  “She stopped by to take Layla to dance class, and then once she brought her back here and Layla realized she wasn’t staying, and that she wasn’t going with her mom, she kind of … melted down.”

  Exhaling, Brendan ran a hand over his face.

  “Put the phone to her ear for a minute,” he said.

  “To her …”

  “To Layla’s ear,” he explained. “I want to talk to her for a minute.”

  “Okay, but I don’t think …”

  “Thank you. Lemme talk to her.”

  There was a brief sound of rustling, then Layla’s screams grew louder, presumably as Trish brought the phone closer to the action. Grimacing against the sound, Brendan lowered his voice, and cupped it at his mouth.

  “Layla,” he said. “Layla. It’s Dada. Layla …”

  She took a breath, hiccupped and stopped crying so Brendan kept talking.

  “Layla, calm down,” he said. “I need you to …”

  She listened to him for all of five seconds before she resumed screaming, except this time with the gusto of someone who has her preferred audience. It seemed to take Trish a few moments before she realized that whatever he was saying wasn’t working, but she finally spoke again, and Layla’s screams receded into the background.