The Spires

by Moretti, Kate

  Later, as they were cleaning up, Penelope said, “‘Both Sides Now,’ right? Joni Mitchell?” It was just the two of them. She didn’t know why she said it but just felt like the answer would be important. A litmus test of some kind that she could ponder later.

  Willa smiled, all teeth, and laughed. “Your memory! You’ve always had that gift. I’d forget my head, you know? Of course that was it. How could we forget?”

  She hummed a little, the tune I’ve looked at love this way, her eyes closed and dreamy as she danced a little across the room. She waved good night and went upstairs, leaving Penelope alone in the living room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  February 23, 2020

  “Willa brought Linc condoms. And Tara birth control pills.”

  Penelope kept her voice low. The high ceilings in the ten-year-old house had a tendency to echo, and Willa’s room was right next to the master bedroom. She sat on the bed and traced the bedspread pattern with her index finger. Brett had come home from the gym—his wicking-fabric T-shirt tight across his new abdominal muscles. God, who looked like he did at forty-two? She should have felt luckier than she did; her husband was actually hot. Like, magazine and movie hot—no beer belly for Brett. She didn’t feel lucky. She felt precarious. Like living on a bobbing boat.

  “Why?” He rubbed his floppy hair with a microfiber gym towel and didn’t look furious enough for Penelope. She had been livid. Yes, she’d softened in the face of Willa’s apologies, but it still weighed on her. Where was his rage?

  “I don’t know. Tara asked her, I guess?”

  “Why didn’t she ask you?”

  “Isn’t that the million-dollar question.”

  “Maybe she felt like you would blow her off? Or get mad?”

  “Wait. This is my fault? Brett, she bought our kids birth control.”

  “I get that, Pen.” He splayed his hands as though searching for a word. “But our kid asked her.”

  “So. You say no. You say, ‘Talk to, I don’t know, your mother.’”

  “And then what if Tara didn’t talk to you? What if she just decided ‘I’ll figure it out’ and in a year, winds up pregnant. Isn’t this better?”

  He was too nonchalant.

  “Did you know?”

  “Did I know what?” He turned toward the bathroom and tossed the balled-up towel into the hamper.

  “Brett. Don’t be coy. Did you know that she got Tara birth control?”

  Brett sighed. Looked at the ceiling, then his hands, the bright gold band around his finger flashing in the lamplight. “She told me the night I came home from the hospital. She said you were too stressed but felt obligated to tell a parent. She was trying to do the right thing. She wanted to tell you and said she would. I promised I’d give her a few days, that’s all.”

  I won’t tell her if you won’t.

  Was that all it had been? Wait, all? Penelope took about ten deep breaths, trying to find a focus, a center. Which was worse—Willa sleeping with her husband or buying her kids birth control? Obviously the adultery. Of course.

  “I’m going to talk to her tomorrow. She has to come up with a plan. She can’t stay here anymore.” Penelope expected Brett to agree—wasn’t it only ten days ago that he stood in that very same spot and asked her, What’s the plan with your little friend?

  “I feel like it’s helping us right now,” Brett said, shrugging, pulling off the T-shirt with a wet thwack—impossibly soaked with sweat.

  “You think having Willa here—what, permanently?—is helpful?” Penelope felt her eyes narrow, her hand clutch the bedspread, white knuckled. Breathe, dammit.

  “Look. Your job has been an issue lately—your boss is acting up. Linc and Tara have an impossible schedule. I’m job hunting every day. Willa is like our . . . live-in housekeeper.” He sighed and then shrugged. “Not permanently, no.”

  “That’s awful!” Penelope insisted, her voice pitching, and Brett held his hands out, a shh gesture. Besides, was he actually job hunting? She had yet to know of him attending an interview or a meeting. She did, however, know when he went to his Himalayan salt sauna class.

  “I’m just saying, if she had to stay longer, it’s actually helping us. I feel more relaxed than I have in months.”

  “Oh, good, as long as you feel relaxed.” Penelope unclenched her fists, stretched her fingers. “Brett, there is something not right. She stole a necklace out of my jewelry box.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Are you sure she just doesn’t have a similar one?” His head cocked maddeningly to the side.

  “No! It was on her neck. I asked her about it, and she acted like it was hers. Then the next day, it was back in my jewelry box.”

  “Wait, so is it missing or not?” Brett asked.

  “It wasn’t there. It was on her neck. The next day, it was there. When I asked her about it, she acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. Like our conversation had never even happened.” Penelope could feel her nerves starting to fray. She also didn’t want the necklace itself to become a focal point.

  “Maybe she has the same necklace. Which one was it?” Brett asked.

  “It doesn’t matter! I’m not crazy. She organized my closet—”

  “Which you love!”

  “It’s too much! Then you asked her to pay the credit card bill! I feel like she’s getting her hooks into our lives or something.”

  Brett closed the distance between them, took her hand. “You have been trying to keep all these balls in the air—the house, the kids, your job. Then I got sick. And Linc and Tara were still going to lacrosse and theater, and she was looking out for us. Besides, I’ve changed the password now, so even if she did have any . . .” He rolled his wrist in a circle and smiled at her. “Nefarious plans . . . they’ve been thwarted. Okay?”

  He was placating her. Nefarious plans, like a television villain. Thwarted!

  “Stop! Just stop!” Penelope stood up. “I am not crazy. I am not stressed. I mean, I am stressed. But I’m not delusional. She is fucking with me, somehow.”

  “How?” Brett laughed. “By picking up your kids? Organizing and cleaning our house? Cooking us gourmet dinners? Paying a bill while I’m in the hospital so we don’t get a late fee? How exactly is she fucking with you?” He shook his head. “I mean, what would have happened if she hadn’t been here?”

  The implication, of course, being that she couldn’t manage their lives. Was that what he meant? Or was she projecting?

  Penelope sat down, hard, on the bed and watched him shake his head as he turned and walked into the bathroom. She felt a wash of rage.

  “Do you have a thing for her?” Penelope asked softly. He stood still as stone in the doorway between the bedroom and the bathroom.

  “I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer,” Brett said and looked away.

  “She called you at the hospital. How many times?”

  “Just the once.” Brett shook his head. “Not that I have to justify any of that to you. I don’t know how to convince you: she was helping us. She is doing what you can’t.”

  “What can’t I do? Do the laundry? Pick up the kids? Cook?” Penelope sucked in a breath, quick and punching. “Be your wife.”

  Brett was in front of her like lightning, his hands on her biceps, his fingertips biting into her skin, his face red. “That’s a shitty thing to say.”

  He’d never touched her while angry before. Never. Penelope swallowed, thickly, her pulse pounding in her ears, her vision swimming with fury.

  “Well, it’s a shitty thing to feel.” She shook herself loose and grabbed her purse.

  “I’m sure you’ll just leave, Pen. That’s what you do. The end of every argument with you is just a slamming door.” His words were cutting, sarcastic, but his voice was resigned. Almost defeated.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, her breath coming in quick, hot gasps. Her heart hammering a beat against her ri
b cage. Brett wasn’t wrong—many of their fights ended with Penelope leaving the room. The house. Mostly just getting in her car and driving around to calm down.

  I will not go to his house. I will not.

  She didn’t always go to Jaime’s. But sometimes she did.

  But it didn’t matter what she told herself, her car seemed to drive itself there. Up the street, around the corner, three houses down.

  This was insane. She didn’t dare pull in the driveway. She drove past the house, intending to park a block away and walk up, like a true adulterer. She wasn’t going to sleep with him—she never had. She just wanted his comfort. It was selfish for so many reasons, the way she showed up at his front door whenever she needed him. Lately it seemed like all the time. He was always just there, letting her be whatever and whomever she wanted that day.

  Brett was right—she was a shitty wife. But she felt a deeper stab of guilt for how she was using Jaime. How she’d been unable to cope without him. How was that fair? It wasn’t, of course. While she was juggling her husband and her—what, lover? No, that sounded like something from an Ingrid Bergman film—Jaime, he was stuck with her. Not dating other, emotionally available women. She was tying them all up with her need.

  Penelope had the faint tang of vomit in her throat—she was literally making herself sick.

  Her headlights caught on a figure on Jaime’s front porch. No, two figures. Kissing. The woman’s legs wrapped around a man’s waist—a passionate dark-night-on-the-sidewalk kind of kiss.

  The bright flash of blonde, the expanse of shoulders Penelope would know anywhere. Willa and Jaime.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Willa, present

  She wondered if he missed the phone yet. It was tucked in the bottom of her small black purse, blending into the lining, practically ticking like a bomb. It had died before she’d been able to look through it, and Willa scoured the house for a charger but came up empty. The whole house was powered by Apple, it seemed. How stupid and frustrating. She’d finally found it in Linc’s room, under his bed—a micro USB charging an e-reader.

  Brett moved back in with his wife. Too bad. Some fun could have gone down, if she’d felt like pushing it. A middle-of-the-night “sleepwalking” visit? She chewed her nail and thought about the juiciness of that. She kind of wanted to feel the differences in the men: Brett’s lean, angled frame versus Jaime’s broad, solid build. She had a good feel for the latter, felt his strong back beneath her hands, his flannel shirt soft and thin under her palms.

  He’d kissed her yesterday. On the porch of his little house, right where he’d kissed Pip. The only difference was, she hadn’t cried like Pip. He was confused, in love with Pip for no earthly reason that she could see, but he was still a man. She wore a little angora sweater and a pair of tight black jeans tucked into boots. Everything about it screamed kiss me, and then he had, with breathless passion. Like a little trashy paperback romance, she had wrapped her legs right around him.

  She was not supposed to like it this much, but what the hell—a girl could have fun, right? He was a great kisser, soft and ripe as a plum, and he smelled good enough to eat. She tried to push it—Wanna go inside to warm up? What did she care how fast they moved? She wasn’t going to love him. That didn’t mean she couldn’t fuck him.

  Well, anyway. He hesitated, and she backtracked. Definitely a bad idea. She’d been the one to say it first, but she could tell the little moan into his mouth—like a desire held back, she wanted him so bad—almost did him in. She’d give him no more than two more dates before he caved. Middle of the day, no one home? Yes, please. Sign her up.

  She waited for the phone to power up. These little burners took fucking forever. She saw Brett the other day digging through the kitchen drawers, the end table drawer in the living room. She’d asked him if he was looking for anything, did he need any help. He just waved her away, a big smile: Nah, don’t worry about it. Just misplaced my gym card.

  Ha. Gym card, my ass.

  Anyway, Brett was out, sans phone—back to his early-morning ways, claiming to job hunt, but she followed him one day, just for fun. The gym, a smoothie shop, a therapist’s office. Job hunting happened at home, on a computer. Applications and emails and LinkedIn. Pip swallowed it all—she had to know it was a lie, right? She was too smart.

  With the whole house asleep, aside from Brett, she could take the time to really dig in, now that the phone was charged. The weekend after the “big fight” had flown by. She made amends. Acted the part. Apologized profusely. They threw her a fucking birthday party. It wasn’t even really her birthday. Pip accepted her apology, but she could tell she wasn’t over it. Good.

  The phone finally buzzed to life in her hands. There were only two text strings in the phone—both phone numbers, no names. Both contained unread texts. She clicked on the first one.

  Hey, babe. Where you been? Miss you.

  Are you avoiding me?

  Brett? What’s going on. It’s been days.

  Holy shit, Landon just said you were in the hospital. Are you okay? God, I want to come see you. Fuck. Please call me.

  I’m kinda going crazy here.

  I need to see you. Please come by the office. I’ll meet you outside.

  The last one, this morning:

  Look I know I said I wouldn’t but I emailed you. You aren’t even reading these okay? Don’t be mad.

  Well, now. Brett had a girlfriend. Maybe from his old office? This family was endlessly fascinating. She clicked the second string of messages and felt her heart speed up. As Penelope would say, it was a whole different kettle of fish.

  Later, she stood outside Brett’s old office building and waited. It was a risky thing, cruising around his old office building that he’d been laid off from. She was starting to wonder if he was “laid off” . . . or was he fired?

  Soon enough, his car rolled up. She ducked between two commercial buildings across the street and watched easily from the alley. Oh, this was idiotic.

  A dark-haired woman, small boned and lithe, bounded down the steps, looking up and down Pillar Street. She couldn’t have been more obvious about it if she’d tried. Brett waited in his car, his face impatient, for her to see him. She finally did, nodded once, obviously—no subtlety at all with this woman. She suddenly felt protective of Pip—at least Pip would have handled this whole thing with more aplomb. The little brunette ducked into the alleyway between buildings directly opposite where Willa stood. She sank back into the shadows of the buildings to watch.

  Brett exited his car and followed the woman into the alley. A heavy make-out session started, but Brett stopped, held her wrists with two hands, and they talked. She pushed against him once, said something indistinguishable. He went in, tried to kiss her again, but she pushed against him, angrily, shouted something, and left him standing in the dark. She disappeared back inside the gray-metal high-rise, and Brett ran a hand through his shaggy hair. He was so fucked. Or not fucked, more like.

  Men got desperate. No one knew that better than Willa.

  She was counting on it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Then: Alone. Together.

  Willa had a date. A different man than last time, or so Penelope gathered. She was tight lipped about it, but Penelope thought maybe that was because of the drugs. Willa had always dabbled in drugs, and Pen had always quietly disapproved. In their years together, Willa had likely learned to keep it quiet, away from Penelope’s judgmental eye.

  Bree and Flynn drove into the city to go to a club—for what reason, Penelope couldn’t fathom. Flynn had left in his khakis and button-up shirt, and she almost, almost, asked him if he knew Bree meant the nightclub not the golf club but bit her tongue at the last minute.

  Jack stood at the stove, stirring a pot of chili, a loaf of bread browning in the dutch oven. On the kitchen island, a portable speaker played unplugged Clapton, and Penelope swirled her third glass of rosé around her glass and felt a little bubble of happiness p
op in her chest. Silly, really, but they were almost never one on one with any other housemate. It was usually all five of them, but sometimes a smaller group. Almost never one on one.

  “How’s the book?” Penelope asked.

  With his back to her, he rolled his shoulders inside his shirt. “It’s . . . coming. You’re not supposed to ask that, you know.”

  “Why not?” God, this rosé was good. She’d never even known she liked rosé—she’d always drunk white, but this was like a light, bubbly party on her tongue. She giggled at that and clamped a hand over her mouth.

  Jack half turned and gazed inquisitively at her. “Are you . . . drunk?”

  “No. NO!” Penelope rarely got drunk. She didn’t like to lose control, the room tipping sideways, her thoughts careening. She drank a glass or two, let the edges of the room get a little soft focus, then happily drifted off to sleep. They teased her about it quite a bit. While the rest of them stumbled around after dinner, slurring and acting ridiculous, making grand plans for imaginary trips to Africa and Greece, Penelope snoozed in the easy chair until the last one standing nudged her off to bed.

  “Why don’t you ask a novelist about his book?”

  “Because if it’s going well, they don’t shut up about it. If it’s not—and that’s more likely—they want to kill you for asking.”

  “Do you want to kill me for asking?”

  “A little.” He laughed and turned to face her, pouring his own glass of red. “It’s just the murky middle. No idea what’s going on. If I was a real writer, I’d have to finish it. Someone would want it. This is why first novels take ten years to write. No one cares if you finish it or not.”

  “I care.” Penelope took another swallow of wine.

  “Well, you don’t count.”

  “Why not?” She asked hotly, her face flaming red.

  “Because you always care.”

  “What does that matter?”

  He hesitated, picked an olive, and popped it in his mouth. His blue eyes held hers, and he cocked his head sideways, intent. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s just like knowing someone is always in your corner . . . it’s not very motivating.”