“Oh—shit,” he said, lifting himself up onto his elbows and half opening his eyes. “What happened?”
“She fell off the play structure or something. I don’t know.”
“What’s a play structure?” said Clay.
“You know—a jungle gym,” said Karen, swallowing her words. Socially conscious parents didn’t use the term anymore; it was considered retro, if not vaguely racist, though Karen wasn’t entirely sure why. But Clay probably wasn’t up on stuff like that.
“Kar—I’m sure it’s not that bad,” he said.
“Why are you so sure?” she said, shimmying her skirt over her hips.
“Kids fall all the time. That’s, like, the whole point of being a kid.”
“Clay, she got taken away in an ambulance!” said Karen, fitting her feet into her sandals while she tried and repeatedly failed to button the top of her skirt. “I’ve got to go back to the airport.”
“Karen—wait—you’re panicking for no reason,” he said.
“Of course I’m panicking!”
“But, I mean, isn’t your—husband there to deal with it?”
“Yeah, but I’m her mother!”
“Okay but—”
“But what?” Karen paused to search his face.
Clay grimaced, looked away, sighed. “It’s just—we have a whole day and night left.”
Did he really expect her to fit in a last day of kite-surfing or beachcombing before she left? “Clay, I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’m disappointed too. But I can’t stay.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do here all alone?” he said, sitting upright and sounding almost—was it possible?—peeved. As if she were letting him down, ruining the weekend. It was all about Clay, even when it was about someone else. And this was apparently Clay in a crisis, looking out for his own interests.
Or maybe those were the only interests he was able to recognize. “I don’t know—pick up one of those tiki-bar waitresses at the other end of the beach,” Karen shot back.
“Gee—thanks for the permission,” Clay replied, his tone sarcastic.
But Karen had more pressing concerns than her married lover having to fend for himself for twenty-four whole hours. She dialed Matt from the side of the pool, her heart thumping so hard it hurt. The phone rang. Please let Ruby be okay, she prayed to an old man with a white beard, just in case he turned out to be real.
Matt picked up on the third ring. “Where the hell are you?” he said. She hadn’t even said hello, and he was already screaming at her.
Karen couldn’t entirely blame him. “I’ll explain in a second,” she said. “But please tell me about Ruby first.”
“She swung off the monkey bars and landed on a fucking bike rack—don’t ask me how. But she’s in horrible pain and asking for Mommy.”
“Oh my God, my poor baby,” said Karen. She started to choke up. “I’m going to get the next flight out of here. I just don’t know when that will be. There aren’t that many flights.” A mosquito landed on her arm, and she swatted it away.
“Out of Miami? You can’t get a fucking plane out of Miami?” cried Matt. “Or are you even in Miami? I called you like six times and you never answered. I even called the Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne, and they said no one with that name ever checked in.”
Her time was up. Karen saw that now. Matt would hate her forever, but at least she’d be telling the truth. She took a deep breath and found that she felt strangely undaunted by the task ahead. Maybe it was because, in that moment, her husband knew so little about what was actually going on in her life that he might as well have been a stranger. He wasn’t the only one she’d pushed away. When your whole life was a lie, you had no choice but to keep others at bay, lest they get too close and learn the truth. Karen saw that now too—that she’d become an island unto herself. “I’m—I’m actually in the Grenadines,” she told him. “I never went to any conference in Miami.”
There was silence. In the distance, she could hear the ocean swelling, then receding. “You’re having an affair,” Matt said. When Karen didn’t deny it, he burst out laughing. And Karen experienced the honking guffaws that came out of his mouth as more excruciating than any amount of yelling could ever be. He laughed as if her very existence were a joke and therefore not even worthy of anger. Maybe he was right.
“Yes,” Karen finally answered and gulped out, “with Clay Phipps, the hedge-fund guy.” Clay himself was only fifty yards from her, but their association had already begun to seem unreal. “He invited me away for the weekend and I accepted. Before this weekend, we’d slept together only one other time. I tried to put a stop to it after that night. But then at some point I stopped trying…If you want to leave me, I understand. Though I hope you don’t.”
He was laughing again. Then he let loose an exaggerated sigh and announced, “Classy, KK. A really classy conclusion to our decade of marriage. In the meantime, while you’re busy sucking off your billionaire friend in Tahiti, or wherever you are, our daughter had a bad accident. So can you please come home and comfort her?”
Karen cringed at Matt’s crudity. But she deserved it, didn’t she? “Of course. I’m packing right now,” she told him in a whisper.
There was never even a discussion about whether Clay would take Karen back to the city a day early in his own Jetstream. He never even offered. He didn’t offer to help pay for her return flight either. Apparently, they didn’t have that kind of relationship. And the revelation—both of Clay’s stinginess and his selfishness—came as a shocking corrective to the fantasies of domestic harmony that Karen had been busy weaving for the previous twenty-four hours. Angry and worried, she packed her bags and, with a forced smile, said, “Thanks” and “It was fun.”
“I hope your daughter is all right,” Clay told her on her way out, his hands in the pockets of his shorts. But even as he wished her well, he continued to sound hurt. As if Karen were walking out on him. Maybe she was.
Karen took a taxi to the island’s tiny airport and paid an astronomical sum for a one-way ticket on a hopper to Barbados. Fittingly, it was the most nauseating flight of her life. As the plane shook and bounced up and down and from side to side, Karen gripped the seat in front of her, half convinced that she was about to fall out of the sky. When they landed, she felt lucky to be alive.
In Barbados she bought another exorbitantly priced one-way ticket—this one to home. The flight wasn’t due to leave for another two hours. But at least it was a proper plane with an aisle and seats on either side of it…
It was close to midnight when Karen finally landed in the city. She took a taxi straight to the hospital. She found her daughter still awake and lying prostrate on a bed watching her favorite vaguely inappropriate tween Nickelodeon sitcom, her leg elevated and bandaged all the way up to the thigh. There was a giant laceration on the side of her face. “Mommy,” Ruby murmured in a slurred voice.
“My poor baby!” cried Karen, throwing her arms around her daughter. Matt was in a chair at the side of Ruby’s bed, looking at his phone. He didn’t say hello when Karen walked in. Karen didn’t say hello to him either. But after five minutes, she turned to him and said, “Thank you for taking care of Ruby. If you want to go home and get some sleep, I can handle things from here.”
“What a kind offer,” he answered in a deadpan voice. But he accepted it. He buckled his messenger bag, gave Ruby a kiss good-bye on the forehead, told her he loved her, and walked out.
Not feeling that she could abandon her daughter again, not even to go to the hospital commissary, Karen had a candy bar from a nearby vending machine for dinner. Under any other circumstances, the very idea would have nauseated her. But in that moment, high-fructose corn syrup seemed like the least of her problems. Besides, she hadn’t eaten since lunch.
As it turned out, Ruby had broken her leg in two places—one quite badly. Karen felt as if it were all her fault. Obviously, an accident of the same nature could have happened on her watch. But it hadn
’t. And the fact that it had happened while Karen was sleeping with a man who wasn’t Ruby’s father filled Karen with a bottomless pit of guilt and remorse. She felt she’d lost sight of what mattered. It somehow followed that all her lies of the past month, including her theft of money from the Mather PTA, suddenly became an intolerable burden to her. For the relief of airing them, she decided she was willing to suffer whatever consequences awaited her, even if it meant humiliation, ostracism, and criminal charges.
In the meantime, Ruby needed a metal rod placed through the middle of her femur. She went in for surgery late the next morning. All went as expected and, two hours later, she came out groggy and with a giant cast on her leg and thigh. Four hours after that, Karen, feeling half alive herself, was able to bring her home.
It was almost evening by then, and Matt was unwinding on the sofa. On the TV screen, a ball was being passed between men wearing bright-colored jerseys. Matt addressed all his words to Ruby and glared at Karen, who did her best to avoid eye contact. In short, it was just like it always was. Except, somehow, everything had changed.
After Karen put Ruby to sleep, she went into her bedroom to finally unpack her weekend bag. Mustique already seemed a million miles away. In fact, were it not for the jarring sight of her new skirt and top, both of them now wrinkled and soiled, she could almost have convinced herself that she’d never been there. Karen quickly stuffed them in a dry-cleaning bag, which she placed in the back of her closet along with the snakeskin stilettos. Then she e-mailed her boss, Molly, to apologize in advance for not coming to work the next day and explaining that she’d had a family emergency. Molly wrote back immediately and, possibly because she loved nothing more than others’ hardship, urged Karen to take all the time she needed. Karen was relieved and grateful. But the far more difficult task of apologizing to Susan Bordwell still lay ahead.
Dear Susan, began the e-mail Karen composed that evening. Hope all is well on your end. I was wondering if we could get together to talk. It’s kind of important. Please let me know when you’re available. I’m out of the office this week, so I can work around your schedule. Thank you.—Karen.
As agreeable as ever, Susan wrote back ten minutes later.
Of course! Any time. How’s Monday after drop-off?
A text from Clay arrived at the same moment. It read,
Just got back to the gritty city. A tad lonely in paradise—despite the hot French maids. Ha-ha. Dinner? xo CP
As Karen stood staring at the words—Clay’s words—regret coexisted with astonishment. Had he really not noticed how furious she was when she left? Or did he think that was all in the past now? She also couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t even asked about Ruby. Maybe that was why, despite having been in his arms thirty hours earlier, Karen experienced his latest invitation as, above all, an imposition. As if it—and he—were one more thing on her to-do list that needed checking off.
Karen didn’t blame Clay for their affair—far from it. She was a grown woman; no one had seduced her without her full consent. But at some point in the past day and a half, she’d ceased to find him amusing or charming. It wasn’t just that he’d shown a paucity of concern for her daughter. It was the realization that he didn’t really care about anyone or anything. Because of it, he seemed as hollow as the conch shell she’d found on their private beach. If you held Clay close, you could almost convince yourself you heard the magnificent roar of the ocean itself.
Almost—but not quite.
The next morning, Ashley came over to watch Ruby, and Karen went to meet Susan at Café Beggar, the new coffee shop that held the current distinction of being the Mather Moms’ post-school-drop-off café of choice. Predictably, it had unfinished floors, Edison bulbs dangling from a vintage tin ceiling, a menu written on a chalkboard, and a variety of four-dollar anemic-looking gluten-free muffins in faux-healthy flavors like blueberry-yogurt-flax. Before it was Café Beggar, it had been a check-cashing place that took some predatory commission against the paychecks of poor people who couldn’t afford to maintain actual checking accounts at real banks.
To Karen’s surprise, Susan arrived in what appeared to be pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt with no bra, her hair falling out of a ponytail, her teeth looking a tad yellow. It seemed she wasn’t always the model of an orderly life (or wife). “Hello there!” she called.
“Hi!” said Karen, realizing how much harder it would be to confess her misdeeds to Susan’s face, especially now that she appeared half human after all.
“If you don’t mind, I’d love to hit the smoothie station before I sit down,” she said. “I haven’t had breakfast yet. It’s been one of those mornings.”
“Of course.” While Karen waited for Susan, she contemplated her opening. Should she preface her remarks with political rhetoric or just get straight to the point? Bjork’s latest album was playing on the sound system, and Karen felt as if the singer’s atonal ululating were drilling a hole in each of her temples. Finally, Susan returned with a large clear-plastic cup filled with a pasty, violet-colored liquid. Probably Berry Blast, thought Karen.
“Sorry about the wait,” said Susan, taking her seat.
“No need to apologize,” said Karen. “I mean, I’m the one who’s here to apologize.”
Susan cocked her head and blinked. “For what?”
Karen fixated on the mortar between two exposed antique bricks. “For not being straight with you,” she began, her shoulders shrinking into her chest, “or really with anyone at the school. Ruby doesn’t actually belong at Mather. What happened is that”—Karen took a deep breath—“I sort of walked by your house one night earlier this spring and saw a gas and electric bill that you or your husband had tossed out. And I used it to register Ruby at Mather. I never thought I’d end up meeting you.” Although still fixated on the bricks, Karen looked quickly over at Susan, whose mouth was now ajar, revealing a hint of purple tongue. “And then, by a total coincidence in the universe,” Karen said, refocusing on the bricks and forcing herself to go on, “you e-mailed to invite Ruby over. And then you asked me to help fund-raise. And I already felt so indebted that I didn’t know how to say no. But once I looked at the numbers and saw how much money the PTA had raised—to be honest, it kind of shocked me. I know you guys don’t get Title One funding. But I just couldn’t quite believe that a school like Mather, where everybody is basically upper middle class or above, wasn’t sharing the wealth at all. Ruby’s old school just had to close their library because they couldn’t afford a librarian. And it seemed like you guys had so much money that you didn’t even know how to spend it.” Karen paused to sneak another glance at Susan, whose lips had now tightened into a fish-pucker. “Anyway,” said Karen, her gaze falling to her lap, “after I organized Fund in the Sun, I was paying myself back for various expenses when I suddenly had the idea of anonymously sending a small amount of money to Ruby’s old school. In retrospect, I realize I should have run it by the executive board first. In total, I—”
“In total?” said Susan. “There was more than one time?”
“Yes. In total, I diverted—”
“You mean stole.”
“Okay, stole,” said Karen, swallowing, “not quite twenty-five grand of Mather PTA money and sent it to Betts Elementary and also to this one poor family who live in the projects and whose kid used to be in Ruby’s class. I’m just hoping that, if I promise to get all of the money to you by Friday, you will keep this between us. Of course I’ll resign from all PTA duties as well.” In search of a shard of sympathy or understanding, Karen tried to make eye contact with Susan. Although humiliated by her confession, she was relieved to have gotten out the truth—or at least most of it. Cutting herself some slack, Karen had decided to omit mention of both the three hundred and fifty dollars in petty cash and the snakeskin heels.
But Susan seemed to have little compassion to offer. “So, you’re trying to tell me you’ve been siphoning off money from the Mather PTA the entire spring?”
“Well, not the entire—”
“I really don’t know what to say, Karen,” Susan said, shaking her head, “except I’m shocked and disappointed. As for keeping this between us, given the circumstances, I’m loath to make any promises right now.”
“I understand,” said Karen, shivering on the inside.
“But if you return every last cent by Friday,” she went on, “and if my vice president agrees, I will recommend that we not press charges. However, I need to look into the legal ramifications of the whole matter first.” A lawyer once, a lawyer forever, it seemed.
“I appreciate it—thank you,” mumbled Karen, head now hanging and horrified at the thought of a public scandal, her name a punch line in a tabloid story, her job prospects decimated.
“Please have a check for me waiting in the PTA office by three p.m. tomorrow,” Susan continued. “I will also need you to surrender your keys to me within the next six hours.”
“That’s all doable,” said Karen. “In fact, it’s doable now. I actually have the key on me, so here you go.” She unhooked the PTA office key from her chain and slid it across the tabletop. Susan promptly scooped it up and deposited it in her monogrammed canvas tote. “And here’s a check.” Karen removed a blank one from her wallet and, as painful as it was to write the number, made it out for $24,187. The sum represented about a sixth of her and Matt’s life savings. “But I’d appreciate it if you waited until tomorrow to deposit it,” she said as she handed it over. “I have to transfer some funds.”
“That’s fine,” Susan said sharply. “And now, if you have no more crimes to confess to, I’d like to leave.” As she stood up to go, her breasts, which turned out to be surprisingly large, flopped to and fro.
But a little fire had begun to burn inside Karen—an underground conflagration that was still seeking oxygen and that didn’t feel right about ceding the entire expanse of high ground to Susan Bordwell. “Susan, can I say one more thing?” Karen asked.
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