The light shifts from yellow to red, and a rush of emotion overwhelms me. I reach for the door handle and look at Bobby one more time before unclicking my seat belt and pushing the door open. I can’t be in here one second longer.
“Emma!” he shouts, but it’s too late. I’m gone, taking off on the crowded sidewalk, hiding my sadness among a sea of strangers. The streets are narrow and difficult to maneuver in heels, but more so on a Saturday night in season. It’ll be impossible for him to get to me, but Bobby might find a way. I don’t know where I’m going. The jeans I’m wearing hug my hips and thighs, slowing me down. I hear him honking, which incites the other drivers, and they honk back, cursing at him to get out of their way.
I slip inside the throngs of people strolling up and down the street. Young couples in flip-flops and shorts. Scantily clad women. They steer themselves on platformed feet, and nearby men gawk. All walks of life. All heading toward something or someone. And then there’s me, walking away. The Ross is a mere block ahead. I can’t go back. What once welcomed me and sustained the balanced rhythm of my heart is now a sentence in isolation. I need to be somewhere else, somewhere that doesn’t remind me that I am somebody’s mom. And how much it can hurt.
The Sagamore comes into view, and I take the steps to the rounded driveway. We’d always had an affable relationship with the hotel and recommended each other’s properties or amenities when in need. I long to tuck myself into something familiar yet foreign. The Sagamore lobby with its trendy, bustling crowd is just the place.
I take an empty seat at the bar and signal for the bartender. He greets me with a smile.
“Mrs. Ross, nice to see you again.” I’m polite and friendly, but offer very little. He hands me a Perrier with lime, and I thank him for remembering. I twist around to study the crowds filling the nearby tables.
Bobby descends on me before I have a chance to take a sip. He is large and looming, regret in his eyes. “Emma.”
The bartender greets him, though Bobby rebuffs his pleasantries.
“Leave me alone, Bobby,” I say, wresting my arm from his grip.
“What are you doing?” he demands.
I can’t take the pounding of his stare. Sliding off the stool, I grab the Perrier and make off into the crowd. He’s behind me, dropping cash on the bar, and follows me down the bright hallway covered in expensive art. When I exit the doors to the pool and beach, I’m greeted by the sound of loud music on the patio below. A party is in full swing, and hundreds of guests spread across the lawn, dancing and celebrating. I make it to the bottom of the stairs, and a Caribbean tune overtakes me, buoying me in its rhythm.
I’m floating through the crowd, my white, off-the-shoulder top rustling in the breeze. I let myself relax to the music. It’s not long before Bobby takes hold of my fingers and leads me away. I don’t resist. The rhythm steers me. I shut my eyes and let him guide me the way he did long ago.
The area is enclosed by security and tall shrubs. Beach access is restricted, and there is nowhere for us to go. He presses my hand tighter in his, leading me to the edge of the property. The music isn’t as loud, but the vibration cushions us as we stand face-to-face. Nearby, a tiki torch burns.
“You promised you’d never hurt me,” I say, placing my empty glass on the rim of the wooden fence. He stares past me at the ocean. I say it again. “You’re hurting me.” The words break through the noise around us and crash into him.
He whispers, “I’m doing the best I can.”
“It’s not enough.”
His palm sweeps across my face, and he stares into my eyes like when we were kids and I’d give in. This time, I turn away. His fingers slip down my neck and along my shoulder.
I have to move. I step back, and his hand drops. “That won’t work.” Torment fills his eyes. “You need to talk to me, not touch me.”
He comes closer. His breath is all that’s between us. “I love you,” he says.
“No.” I shake my head. “We need to talk about Zoe.”
He turns away. “You think I hurt you?” he asks, his voice rising over the drumming sounds around us. “What about what she did? That hurts.”
The beach is so beautiful. The breeze caressing the waves. The smell of salt. But his words chase it all away. There’s nothing beautiful about being here with him.
“I don’t know how to love her,” he says, looking back down at the ground.
And then I have to say it. “You loved me when I wasn’t perfect. I’ve made mistakes.”
“What do you want from me?” he asks, his eyes trained on my face, unaware that I’m inching toward the truth. “How did this happen, Em? How did this happen to our girl? One minute she was five, climbing on my back, and the next she’s . . .” He can’t finish. The only time I’d seen him this grief-stricken was at his parents’ funeral. The music blares, loud and pervasive.
“I try,” he says. “I tell myself, Today I’m going to talk to her . . . I’m going to take her to that juice bar she likes, and she’ll sit and talk to me, and she’ll be Zoe again, drinking her favorite smoothie.”
“She’ll always be Zoe.”
“Do you remember the first day of preschool? She grabbed our legs and wouldn’t let go.”
I nod, blinking back the tears.
“And the time she asked us where babies came from, and we told her from in here?” He points at his chest.
I finish the sentence for him. My voice is hoarse and dry. “We told her that Mommy and Daddy’s hugs created her and her sister.”
“And she believed us.”
“It was true,” I say.
“Then why wasn’t it enough?” he asks. I search his eyes for some fleeting recognition of family, some memory of what once was—how it could still be—but he’s lost inside himself, and I can’t break through. “Why the hell wasn’t it enough?”
I’m going to tell him the truth. Right now. He needs to know. He needs to know who I am so he understands love and acceptance and how nothing is ever as it seems.
“There are girls who are okay with their sexuality, Bobby. They accept themselves. They make peace with it.”
“Impossible,” he says. “No young girl can feel good about that kind of behavior.”
“Is that what you think?”
“That boy used her!”
I try not to sound defensive. I try to sound calm. “What if she used him?”
“Are you crazy?” His eyes narrow, and a scowl covers his face. “What did she get out of it? Girls like that do shit like that because they feel bad about themselves. They think getting with a boy will make them likable. It gives them some bullshit confidence boost.”
I stare into his eyes. Is that what it was for me? Is that what you think? All this time, Zoe’s been trying to tell me something. She doesn’t feel the way I felt. She never felt the way I felt. I’m the one who needs to be like her. And the first step is telling him the truth.
“Bobby.” It begins as a whisper. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
But his phone rings. Of course it rings. He walks away from me, the noise, and the music. I follow while my heart pounds so loudly it drowns out the sounds. She’s not you, I remind myself. She’s living with her truth. Accepting it. The idea begins to free me from the well of despair I’d been drowning in. It’s going to be okay. He’ll be angry, but he’ll understand.
He covers his ear with one hand and holds the phone with the other. “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”
I’m ready. As soon as he hangs up.
“Wait, can you repeat that?”
I practice saying it again. “Bobby, I have something to tell you.”
The beating of my heart continues, louder and sharper. Bobby moves the phone between us and puts Jo Jo on speaker. “The person who uploaded the video didn’t cover their tracks. The IP address is irrefutable.”
She must be using her inhaler, because I hear the faint whistle through the speaker. When the sound fades, she says
, “We’ll have the name very soon.”
I’d reached the top of the mountain but was told there was another one to climb. The dread of what’s to come moves closer and closer, like the waves along the beach. My courage drifts back out to sea. The secret folds itself back up, but it no longer fits inside. I have no choice but to wait.
“This is good, right?” He’s yelling over the music and wind. “We can catch the person?”
Jo Jo is silent. When she addresses us, her voice is cautious. “There’s more. As predicted, all evidence confirms it’s a peer. Someone who goes to school with the girls, most likely a friend or acquaintance.”
I am shaking my head. Nameless and faceless was much easier to accept.
“This makes it tricky,” she says.
I let it simmer and find Bobby’s eyes. He’s cursing at the sea.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says. “Hang in there. We’re close.”
He leans against the fence, and the ocean’s wails sound a lot like his cries. I stand beside him and feel the wind against my face. I was moments from shattering his reality. Now we’re faced with a different wound. He makes no effort to console me. The remoteness of it all hurts, reminding me how far apart we are. The bargaining returns. It started with praying it wouldn’t be some sexual deviant filming Zoe through a window. Now it’s praying it’s not someone we know.
“They’re no friend to Zoe if they can do something like this,” he says, more to the black sky than to me. “This was deliberate. I have no problem going after them and their entire family.”
“I can’t believe this,” I say.
“Believe it,” he sneers. “I told you this was bad. I told you she messed up.”
Oh, Zoe. We all mess up. “This is going to destroy her,” I say.
He backs away from the railing and heads toward the crowd. I follow him. The music blares. People laugh and shout. Suddenly, the noise feels like it’s suffocating me. I hold my hands to my ears and try to keep up with Bobby. He walks fast, as though it’ll make everything around him disappear. Soon we’re on the street and the short path connecting the two hotels. I am behind him. There’s more than a foot between us.
We cross through the doors of the Ross with our heads bowed low.
He says, “This is unconscionable.”
The lights are dimmed, and the soft candlelight exudes warmth. The glow makes the floors appear flawless, but it’s easy to be fooled. It’s unconscionable, and he doesn’t know the half of it.
When we arrive upstairs, we don’t talk about what we’ve learned. He’s plotting revenge, and I’m still bargaining. He pours himself a drink and closes himself off in his office. I switch on the TV and wait for the girls. After an hour, he joins me, and I play Words With Friends on my phone while he flips through the news and Saturday Night Live. He’s on one side of the couch, and I’m on the other. During commercials, he mutes the TV, and the only sound is the clinking of the ice in his glass. When I look at him, all I see is disgust on his face.
When he finally came to visit me in Vermont six weeks later, the traces of that night lingered on my body. The touch of his fingers made me freeze up; it wasn’t easy letting him in. I was in a state of constant fear that he’d find out, that we’d be somewhere and someone would slip. And when his hands rubbed against my belly, I froze. His fingers splayed across my secret made me jump from the bed and into the bathroom, where I proceeded to vomit. He eyed me curiously, counting back to his last visit. “Are you feeling okay?” He even chuckled when he said, “Maybe you’re pregnant.”
And in bed, when he whispered in my ear, “I want a daughter one day who looks just like you,” my face gave it away.
“Emma?” he asked, suddenly sitting up. “Are you pregnant?”
We were a couple about to be married. It wasn’t planned, but even the best-laid plans went awry.
“Oh my God,” he said, a smile covering his face. “You’re pregnant!”
He was so happy, I didn’t have the heart to let him down. He mistook my tears for joy, and the blank expression on my face for something else. “We’re getting married, Em! We’re going to be a family! With our little baby.” He placed his hand on my stomach, kissed me gently on the lips, then pulled back, smiling ear to ear.
I stared hard into his eyes while thoughts burned my pupils: How can you not see through me? Love means you’d know I’m a liar. And that’s when I understood what it means to know someone, really know someone.
He wrapped me in his arms, already convinced it was a girl, and took the news home with him to Miami. We’d agreed to keep it our secret, my dirty little secret, and the shame made me physically sick. The stress shook me to the very core, and the resolution came a week later in the form of stabbing cramps and a fiery red liquid.
I had miscarried.
Feelings of relief and sadness mingled, though Bobby was devastated. He mourned the baby girl who would’ve looked like me, while I bit back a well of tears. I accepted my fate as a sign of some greater power. I’d never know if it was my greatest loss or my greatest shot at a second chance.
I swathed myself in the cocoon of wedding plans and buried the terrible slip. We would be husband and wife; we would have plenty of time to think about children. I also quit acting that final semester, something I loved more than anything.
Time went on, and the wound healed. There were moments I felt guilty and exposed. When we’d hear of a couple’s indiscretion, when we’d talk about trust with the girls—being honest with us whatever the cost. And when we recited to one another “Solo tú,” I’d freeze but quickly bounce back. Cover it with the love I felt. Deep love. I was an actress. I slipped inside the new role, the memories began to fade, and we were again Emma and Bobby. And I marched forward with a good life, a healthy marriage, and two girls he was sure looked just like me. The past was where it belonged, behind us. There was no sense looking back.
His laugh startles me, and I blink. He has no idea where my mind has traveled, but I’m going to tell him.
The girls come in simultaneously, because it always happens that way with twins. Lily talks a mile a minute about the Edition and how the manager, Scott, let them go bowling after dinner. “Everyone asked for you, Zoe. You were missed.”
Zoe smiles, but she also looks tired and uninterested. She doesn’t sit for very long. She’s careful to take a seat next to me on the couch, far from her father.
“How was the show?” he asks.
“Good.”
“You hungry?”
“No.”
I brush her hair with my fingers. He doesn’t look at her when he asks. He focuses on Michael Che on the SNL news, and she follows Lily to their room. I am sick for what she’s about to learn and the cruelty of it all. Then I wonder if the person who did this was at the girls’ birthday party. And I can’t think of anything worse than a friend’s betrayal.
“I’m going to bed,” I announce.
When I’m almost out of the room he asks, “What is it you wanted to tell me?”
I stand there contemplating turning around and emptying my soul. Every nerve and muscle in my body wants to get rid of it, but something stops me. Maybe it’s Zoe. Maybe it’s fear. Whatever it is, I back away. “Nothing.”
CHAPTER 21
Morning arrives with a surge of threats. In my latest dream, Bobby screams. He knows the truth, and I’m chasing him down a dark, deserted street. He won’t stop. He won’t turn around. I’m running and the road zigzags and I can’t see him. All is black. I wake up trembling. I lift myself out of the bed and go into the bathroom, where I study myself in the mirror.
The wide glass can’t hide what’s in front of me: brown hair tickling the bridge of my shoulders, delicate features, gray eyes framed by thin eyebrows. My complexion was always my best feature, making me look years younger than the other moms, but today the shadows and lines are more pronounced. I tug on my forehead to see what I’d look like with a face-lift, an injection, anything.
I’d definitely look more awake and alert. When I let go, the skin puckers in its usual spots. Concealer has become a very good friend.
I see him in the mirror as he comes up behind me. His face is worn. The youthfulness all but vanished. He avoids getting too close and hovers in the doorway. I step out of my pajama bottoms and drop them in the hamper.
“How long are we going to do this?” I ask, as he slides closer and sits on its metal top.
“As long as I have to. As long as someone is held responsible.”
I’m wearing nothing, only my silky pajama top, grazing my thighs. It makes what’s coming out of my mouth more difficult to say. “Isn’t there a way to fight your cause without treating her like some cheap whore?”
Neither of us hear Zoe approach, but she enters the bathroom and drops her beach bag on the floor. “Is that what you think of me?” she cries. “Jesus, Mom, put on some clothes.”
I wrap a towel around my waist and move toward her, but she pulls away.
“Zoe, that’s not what I meant . . . you misunderstood!”
“I understood perfectly!” she screams.
I gaze at Bobby, pleading for his help. He’s tight-lipped, which makes it worse. “Zoe, you’re taking it out of context.”
“You called me a whore!” Her flip-flops smack the floor as she storms away from us and into our bedroom.
Each time I hear the word I cringe a little inside. I try to get closer. “That’s not what I meant . . .”
“But that’s what you think. That’s what everybody thinks.”
Bobby lets me fight her. Alone. I’m pissed, but I have to convince her. I can’t let her think I’d ever call her that horrible name.
“No, honey,” I argue, in her face, latching on to her eyes. “That’s not true.”
“How can you say that?” she pleads, tugging on her terry-cloth cover-up. “You know it’s true. You said it yourself.”
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