Carpool Confidential

by Jessica Benson

  Rage, white hot, rolled over me. Damn you, Rick: Jared hadn’t sucked his thumb in over two years.

  I tiptoed out of Jared’s room, thumped down the hall to the study, and threw myself into my habitual place in the chair by the window. The East River was as still as I’d ever seen it, and a huge, yellow moon hung in the sky. It looked cold out, like anyone with any sense should be inside. Did the policemen in the boat under the bridge have a heater in there? I needed to get my ass in gear and take that pregnancy test that had been burning a hole in the drugstore bag all night. But now that the moment was here, I was reluctant. Afraid to know.

  It kept hitting me in a series of reverberating shocks. He took the money. He’s gone. I might be pregnant. Alone. Two children. Maybe now a third. With each shock came a little burst of terror from which I’d talk myself down, and then the next would hit. I’d calm down and then the next, in a circle.

  If I was pregnant, what did it mean? When I’d first realized I was late I’d had the desperate, flashing thought that it was the key to undoing all of this. That Rick couldn’t continue this way in the face of a pregnant wife who needed him. Did I really want this man back? He actually seemed to feel no remorse or guilt. No longing, no doubts. In short, no human emotion at all. It was like he’d turned from a loving, caring person into a sociopath overnight. And I was so scared and so desperate, I’d been willing to take him back. I felt sick with shame.

  I stared at our desks without really seeing them. Believe it or not, Rick and I have matching desks (the decorator’s idea, not mine). They are a pair of flamed mahogany Regency writing tables—exquisite to look at, have almost no storage space, and I’m afraid to sit at mine with a drink because I know I will one day knock one over and ruin the priceless patina, so I have always done all my desk work at the kitchen table, where I can consume beverages like hot tea and water with reckless abandon. And Rick had never really ended up working at home. For some reason the waste of this beautiful room felt heartbreaking to me tonight.

  There was a teetering stack of mail and bills on my desk, mostly unopened. I’d always paid the bills, since Rick, like many financial geniuses, couldn’t seem to remember to pay the mortgage or phone. Since he’d left, I’d been telling myself daily that I’d get to it tomorrow, but tomorrow so far hadn’t arrived. Now, I started ripping them open, statement after statement, bank, credit card, you name it.

  My hands were shaking so badly I could barely get the envelopes open. None of his cards had been so much as swiped in the past month. I could verify every transaction as mine. I started clicking on the computer, pulling up statements. Again, nothing. He had even canceled his cell phone before leaving.

  I stepped over the mountain of discarded paper and went to Rick’s desk. In retrospect I’m not sure whether I was a very trusting wife or a very stupid one, but I had never before had a snoop through it. His BlackBerry and cell phone sat forlornly, like abandoned children’s toys left on the lawn in the aftermath of an accident. I turned on the phone and a NO SERVICE message came up. The BlackBerry came on, too, but wanted a password. Once again I felt like the world’s biggest fool—a sensation I was becoming a little too used to—but I had no idea what his password might be. I tried the kids’ names, my name, his name, Cad’s name, all our birthdays, to no avail, before it locked me out.

  I sat back in the desk chair and looked at the magnet board that spanned the wall over our desks. It was loaded with little remnants of family life. Vacation photos, Christmas cards with pictures of other people’s children, invitations, reminders, business cards, a card from October 2001 announcing Rick’s firm’s relocation from the damaged World Financial Center to new offices in Midtown, dry cleaning receipts, and a card from Rick’s dentist reminding him to schedule a cleaning, receipts for business expenses.

  There was a picture of all of us, taken this summer on Nantucket on our friends Mike and Zoe’s boat (I felt a pang of guilt—Mike and Zoe were among those I had subsequently lied to about Rick being on a business trip). I looked happy, if a little frizzy. The kids, squished between Rick and me, and on the receiving end of a bit more sun than our pediatrician would have liked, also looked happy. And Rick, damn it, he looked happy too. But he must already have been planning his escape. That night—and how many others?—I had slept next to him, made love with him, contentedly oblivious to the fact that my life wasn’t what I believed it to be.

  I reached up and took the stack of receipts out from under the magnet and began shuffling through them. DB Bistro, Alain Ducasse, Masa, Citarella, Le Bernadin, Sparks, Nobu. They read like some bizarre Zagat’s entry on how to spend the most money in the least amount of time. Then credit card statements—Rick’s AmEx bill. Jesus. $80,765. 23. Well, no wonder. It included plane tickets to Hong Kong, Atlanta, and London, first class, of course, along with meals and hotels in all three cities. Also first class, of course.

  None of which told me anything. Well, nothing except the fact that he hadn’t bothered getting reimbursed for expenses that could considerably reduce my financial anxiety for, like, a year. I wondered if I could submit them now. If they’d been out-of-pocket expenses, it was from community pocket, so worth a try at least. Maybe I’d give his secretary, Paulette, a call in the morning and see if she knew.

  I realized with a shock that I’d been so wrapped up in my misery, I hadn’t given Paulette a thought. She and I had spoken probably somewhere between three and five times a day for the past ten years, and now we were over, finished, just like that, which was a sobering reflection on how quickly someone could disappear from being an everyday part of your life.

  Paulette was an odd duck. She was obnoxious and officious, spoke with a bizarrely cultivated accent, and always called people by their full names (Rick was Ri-Chard), which she erroneously seemed to believe disguised her Staten Island origins. She also tended to tell me things about his life as though I were a stranger: i.e., He’s verra, verra busy today, Cassandra, as he’ll be out of the office on Wednesday. He’s goin’ to Cincinattiy and consequently everybodda wants a piece of him today. In short, she had her flaws, but she was devoted to Rick and must have been devastated by his leaving. I felt like a selfish jerk for not having thought about her before.

  I eyed Rick’s desk, my heart pounding, which it had done so much lately, it was a wonder I hadn’t had a coronary. Or maybe it was the opposite: maybe it was like a cardio workout to be so anxious all the time. I opened the drawer and started pulling out random papers. I had no real idea what I was looking for. I’d have loved to have had access to his work computer. And what had happened to his laptop?

  Everything seemed to be old and work related, but I kept sorting through the stacks. In the middle of one there was a manila envelope with what felt like computer discs in cases in them. I opened it and dumped out a couple of CDs. Oops, DVDs with naked women both doing and getting ready to do, um, things…on the covers.

  Cyndi Does Cinci and Wet All American Lesbo Gangbang. I stared at them. My thoughts felt like they’d been tossed into an atom splitter and fractured pieces of them were bouncing everywhere. Was Cinci a woman or the city of Cincinnati? He’d hidden it. Did he have more? Was Ohio some kind of porn heaven? Why hadn’t he told me he liked it? Could lesbians have gangbangs? We’d never even come close to discussing porn. Should I have asked? Would it be insulting to Jen if I asked her if lesbians could have gangbangs? What if one of the boys had found it instead of me? Was there anything to these both being all women? I didn’t see a tattooed guy in sight on either cover. Was the Barry Manilow show G-rated? Had he needed these siliconed-to-the-max babes to gear him up for the ordeal of coming to bed with me? Did this have anything to do with him leaving, or was this just a sidebar, another way in which I’d turned out not to know him?

  I leaned over and slid one of the DVDs into the computer. It booted and then—wow, lesbians definitely can have gangbangs. No need to ask Jen after all. I ejected it I think just in time to save myself seeing something
going somewhere it definitely did not belong and as far as I knew, could no way fit.

  I was sick, shaking, dizzy. I’d already come to understand I didn’t know him, but finding more proof of how little I did was profoundly hurtful. I unfolded the piece of paper that had been on top of the DVDs and ran my fingers over the creases. It was a photocopy with a yellow post-it stuck to the front that said Rick. FYI. In loopy feminine handwriting—the kind that looked like the i’s should be dotted with hearts. It bore the thrillingly exciting title “Popular Music and Postmodern Theory.” Which wasn’t much compared to Wet Lesbians (or whatever). Until I started to read. The first paragraph had been blocked out in yellow highlighter.

  …The debate about postmodernism is certainly not notable for the precision of its definitions; as many commentators have observed…unclear whether postmodernism is a cultural condition or new theoretical paradigm.

  There is also confusion around the question of whether post-modernism deploys irony, or a post-ironic discourse of—

  Blank parody. You don’t have to hit me over the head with the obvious more than twice. Jesus! He had left me by parroting lines from an article, the fuckhead. Not only that, he hadn’t even bothered to go beyond the first page—hell, the first paragraph. All that crap he’d been spouting was right there. He hadn’t even bothered to read all the way through.

  Rage, absolute and undiluted, was boiling through me. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced fury like that before, and I didn’t know what to do with it. All this fury and nowhere to vent it. I picked up the phone and dialed the last number he’d called from, not really expecting any answer. I slammed it back down after ten rings and tried to decide whether to throw the DVDs out. What if the super found them? I stuffed them back in, covered them with miscellaneous papers, and slammed the drawer shut.

  I closed my eyes. Why did I care? Why did I care whether the semi-alcoholic, BO-riddled super thought I was watching porn DVDs? That I’d been such an idiot I’d never even really known my own husband? That I was going to end up blogging about trying to create a dating and sex life I didn’t even want? What did I really have to lose here?

  I shouldn’t care. But I did. Since the second I’d discovered I was pregnant with Noah, Rick and I together had devoted ourselves to making our children’s world a safe and happy place. But now he was gone and it was just me. If I became notorious for slinking around writing about my experiences with vibrators and the suddenly single mom, before I could blink everyone would be talking about those poor Martin boys. I stood up, my hands still shaking with rage and shock (Cyndi does Cinci? I mean, come on, really) and went to get the EPT test so I could figure out whether I was going to have a third child whose life I could destroy too.

  15

  Apartment 4j: Talk to Me

  I simultaneously grabbed the pregnancy test and shoved the debris of discarded kids’ shoes, socks, instruments, tennis racquets, and books under the bench just as the doorman buzzed. “Hi,” I said as the elevator doors slid open. “Oh!”

  Instead of Randy and Jen, it was Letitia. With Bouvier securely tucked under the giant dead-animal collar of her coat. He gave me the evil eye. I reached covertly behind me and dropped the pregnancy test on the table.

  Letitia planted her heels on my parquet. “He left you, didn’t he?”

  “Hello, Letitia.” “GO AWAY” seemed liked it would be rude. I closed the door behind her. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “I don’t know.” She was standing just inside the door as though she couldn’t decide whether or not to come in. “I’m not usually intuitive, but I just somehow…knew.” She sounded surprised at herself.

  “Since it seems as though you’re here to stay, can I take your coat?” Now, that was gracious, the little voice of my conscience chided me.

  I had very few feelings about Letitia in my own right. They were almost all based on her relationship with Rick, which had been strained, according to him, for as long as he could remember. It was hard to love a mother-in-law who seemed not to love her own son. He had essentially been raised by a series of nannies, Letitia preferring to shower her attention and affection on Tamagachi-sized dogs, before being sent to boarding school at eleven. Tuition there, he often said, was the last penny he ever received from Letitia. He worked his way through college (and I worked his way through grad school). When we moved to New York, I’d had sort of a rosy fantasy that common geography would bring a rapprochement between them, but it never did. We had the occasional duty get-together. She had no particular interest in her grandchildren (and clearly not the vaguest notion of how easy it would have been to buy their affections, since she always sent toys that were of educational value or Scandinavian origin, eschewing anything tacky and plastic).

  “Thank you.” She fished Bouvier out of her coat and held him out to me.

  He directed a look of hatred in my direction. He was wearing some kind of lemon-yellow embroidered silk lounging pajamas. As if it wasn’t humiliating enough that my mother-in-law looked better than me, her dog did too. His fur was so glossy I thought he might have highlights. I took him gingerly. “Wow.” I held him away from pointy-little-tooth range of my body. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this on a dog before.”

  She pulled off the mink to reveal a matching outfit.

  I handed Bouvier back and took the coat, almost staggering under its weight (not to mention choking on the waft of Clive Christian perfume that rushed at me) as I struggled it onto a hanger. Being of the cheap, wire, dry cleaner variety, it buckled, sending the massive heap of fur slithering to the floor. “So, what’s with the ponytail thing he’s got going?” I asked. Not that I was really interested, but getting her talking about Bouvy was always the best bet for ease of conversation.

  “It’s a mandarin topknot.” She frowned at the coat debacle. “Not many male dogs are secure enough in their masculinity to wear one.”

  I located a wooden hanger, holding up Rick’s bespoke cashmere overcoat. I hoped it was subzero wherever he was and that he was at this very moment thinking longingly of it. I slid it off the hanger, leaving it in a crumpled heap on top of the vacuum cleaner. “So he’s sort of like a canine David Beckham.”

  “Who?” Letitia looked completely blank.

  “David Beckham. He’s a soccer player, and he sometimes wears his hair almost sort of like that, actually, and nail polish, and if you believe the tabloids, he’s very secure in his masculinity. He’s married to Posh—um, never mind.” I turned toward the kitchen. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Herbal tea would be nice.” Her heels clicked behind me, then stopped, suddenly. “Cassie?” When I turned, she was holding the pregnancy test. “Are you—”

  “You might have noticed the box hasn’t been opened yet.”

  “Is it…it is Rick’s, isn’t it? There’s no question, that’s not why he—left?”

  My head throbbed. It felt like at least a decade since I’d sat down in Murray’s office. “You know, Letitia, I think I’ll ignore what you just implied. Why don’t you come have a cup of tea and tell me what brings you to Brooklyn for the first time in probably two years.”

  She settled herself on one of the stools at the counter. “I don’t suppose you have any Splenda?”

  Oops. Should have stolen some from Ken Ebersole. “Nope. Just sugar.”

  “You really should get some.”

  “Yeah, and maybe some arsenic, too.”

  “I’ll take it black.”

  “Good idea.”

  Cadbury ambled in and directed a disinterested look at Bouvier, who instantly went on alert, topknot shaking, teeth bared.

  “Cad, this is your stepbrother, Bouvier,” I said. “Bouvier, Cadbury.”

  Letitia looked down at Bouvier. “It’s—well, I’ve come because—” Oh, disaster, a little choked sob escaped. Or maybe it wasn’t a sob? Her face was just as smooth as usual, but, then, that’s what a little Botox and a good plastic surgeon will do f
or you. But, no, there was another. Oh, my God! Letitia Felber Martin was crying! She was sitting in my kitchen and crying. Two little crystalline drops were actually making their elegant way down her elegant cheekbones.

  Now what was I supposed to do? I shouldn’t have been so mean about the Splenda. “Um, Letitia?”

  She leaned over, buried her face in her arms, and started to sob. She was going to make water marks on her silk. I forced myself to put a hand on her shoulder, and to my surprise, it didn’t feel either cold or lizardlike through the silk of her shirt. Having gone this far, I gritted my teeth and patted, which brought on a fresh bout of sobbing.

  “It’s all my fault,” she wailed into her arms. “I was a horrible mother.”

  So now I was conflicted. No, no, no, don’t tell me anything, part of me was screaming inside. I don’t want intimacy with you. If you played him Barry Manilow albums in the womb or had secret portraits on velvet or beat him with a wooden spoon, I just plain old don’t want to know.

  And yet, how could I not want to know? The status of Rick’s relationship with his mother had never been a secret: distant if you were being polite, awful if you weren’t. But was she going to tell me something that would give me some insight, even just a drop of understanding, into what had happened here? Because if she was, I sure as hell couldn’t afford to turn it down. “I, uh, you—” The door buzzed.

  16

  Could it be Magic

  Cadbury, realizing that it was her canine obligation to make sure the impending guests weren’t dangerous interlopers, gave Bouvier a final look of disgust and retreated down the hall to sleep, undisturbed by duty, in her favorite bathroom.