Carpool Confidential

by Jessica Benson

  I hope I don’t sound like some neurotic germaphobe. I’ve managed to coexist happily with two small boys, a dog who isn’t exactly a trip to L’Artisan Parfumeur, and now, a teenager. Forget toilet seats that haven’t been put back down. Ones that were never lifted in the first place are a standing feature of my life. But I’d forgotten how much work it took to maintain Rick, physically and emotionally.

  “It’s not there!” Jared screamed.

  The missing shoe. “Try under the bench in the hall,” I hollered back.

  The depressing part was that no matter what I did, someone was going to get the bad end of the stick. Either I was going to suck up what he’d done, or my kids were going to suck up relosing their Daddy. And regardless of his sins, they adored him.

  “IT’S NOT THERE EITHER.”

  “WEAR YOUR OLD ONES!”

  “THEY’RE TOO TIGHT. THEY MAKE MY TOES NUMB.”

  “WEAR YOUR BLUE ONES.”

  “THEY HAVE A HUGE WAD OF GUM IN THEM. CHEWED GUM.”

  I looked at M.A. “I’m assuming he means on them.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve seen it. He means in them. Long story, apparently.”

  “HERE’S YOUR STUPID SHOE, STUPID DUMBWIT,” Noah shrieked. “IT WAS IN THE STUPID BATHROOM.”

  “CAD MUST HAVE TAKEN IT. I’M NOT A DUMB-WIT, YOU—”

  “Both of you!” I yelled. “Stop it NOW! Jared, put your shoe on, Noah, make sure your backpack’s ready.” I was distantly aware that I was feeling bad about the shouting. And only partly because we sounded like a family of dysfunctional imbeciles. The rest was worry about disturbing Rick. Which was ludicrous, since he should be up, spending time with the boys, helping me get them off to school. He deserved to be woken up. What was wrong with me?

  If only there was a support group for people whose lives were totally confounding on a daily basis like there had been for new motherhood.

  “There is,” my mother said into my ear on my cell as I walked home. “It’s called the psych ward.”

  I winced. A vague moment, like a déjà vu but not quite, brushed past me. My father leaving and then my mother gone, too. A nanny bringing us to the bus stop, Katya tucking me into bed at night, silently bringing tissues. “My God.”

  “Your cowardly father deserted me with three children,” she said to my unasked question. “What did everyone expect?”

  “Yeah, but the psych ward? Did you go voluntarily? Were you suicidal?”

  She laughed. “More like homicidal. Of course it was voluntary. I needed rest and quiet, so I checked myself in. We didn’t have Canyon Ranch back then.”

  I was genuinely confused. I knew exactly what she meant about barely functioning, but had she done what she’d needed to do to save herself? Like putting on your own oxygen mask before your child’s when the plane depressurizes, or had she just checked out on us? I needed more time to pull up the memory. “I’d like to do without that if at all possible.”

  “Of course you would, because that’s your way. You always run around putting everyone else’s needs ahead of your own until there’s nothing of you left.”

  I wasn’t getting less confused here. Was she right, that I was overly selfless? Or was I? That she saw the world only from her own self-serving perspective? Or was the truth somewhere in those shades of gray?

  I stopped so Cad could sniff a tree. I couldn’t figure out how much of this was about Rick and how much was about my father, her, me. It was all blurred together. Why couldn’t any of this just be simple? Cad, having decided the tree was not the one, started walking again. I trailed behind.

  “So you know what I figured out on our couples therapy weekend?” she asked. I thought it was a given that I did not. “Your father’s a sex addict. All those years he was in the grip of an illness. He couldn’t help himself.”

  Was there no end to the gut-churningly disgusting things I had to hear?

  “My life has been shaped by loving a man who was incapable of fidelity or intimacy.”

  My call waiting beeped. Despite myself, my stupid heart tripped. It was sometimes like it didn’t share a body with my head. “Could you hold on a sec? I’ll be right back.”

  “For God’s sake. I’m pouring my heart and soul out to you, Cassie, and you’re asking me to hold?”

  “It could be something with one of the kids, or M.A. or—”

  “Rick.” It was an accusation.

  It beeped again. “Or Rick.” I hoped the mildness of my agreement would defuse the sting of her words. This was me, my life, not her and hers.

  She sighed. “Go ahead,” in a way that made it clear just how pathetic I was.

  I did it anyway. “Hello?”

  “Cassie, hi! Glad I caught you.” Sue. Was it anyone else, ever? “Listen, I know you probably just left school, but could you come back? We’re in the conference room, Ken’s been doing a little cross-referencing and—”

  For once I didn’t care what it was. My kids getting black-balled from Princeton by extra-early decision, genetically modified oregano in the pizza, whether I’d been unmasked as the blogger. “Sue, I’m sorry, I just can’t. Not this morning.”

  “Cassie, is everything OK? You sound stressed.”

  “Yes, a little stressed. I’m having a crazy morning.”

  “No problem, give me a call when things let up. And, Cassie—let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thanks.” My first inclination was to hang up without giving anything away. But…why not? “My life feels like it’s crumbling around me right now,” I confessed. “It’s nice of you to offer, but I doubt you’re equipped for this one.”

  “I don’t know.” She was quiet for a minute, too. “You might be surprised. Talk to you soon.” Then she hung up.

  I already was surprised, actually. I clicked back over to my mother, hoping she might have been cut off. No luck there. “So I’ll treat this as I would any other addiction,” she said.

  Cad was tugging the lead, trying to get across the road to investigate the macho-looking Dalmation on the other side. “Cut it out. You’re neutered and geriatric,” I told her.

  “Excuse me?” my mother said awfully.

  “Not you. The dog.”

  “Oh. Anyway, it’s been a lot to absorb, very stressful. I was thinking I might come visit for a few days after Christmas. Spend some time with M.A., take in a show.”

  After Rick left, I’d so much wanted her to offer to come. But she hadn’t. And she wasn’t coming to help now either. She was coming to dump her pile of emotional baggage on top of the physical and mental one Rick had already strewn across the apartment. It was very well for her to lecture about me not prioritizing myself, but here she was trying to hand me one more burden. “I’m sorry.” My voice wavered. “But you can’t right now. Everything’s too crazy, I just can’t.”

  “I see.” She sounded really hurt.

  I felt awful. How could I not be there for my own mother? “I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I’m just trying to take care of me for once,” I said. “Like you said I should.”

  She hung up in a huff. I started home, feeling like crap. There was nothing I could do about her. She was and always would be exactly who she was. She was right about one thing. I had to deal with me. If I wasn’t going to prioritize myself, no one else was going to either.

  On that note, I took a deep breath and headed inside to find out why my husband had left me, why he was back, what he’d done with our money.

  “He was already gone when I got home,” I said. Randy eyed me over her chai latte. We were having an emergency summit in Starbucks with Jen.

  “Gone where?”

  “This may come as a surprise, but he didn’t leave a note.”

  “So you don’t know if he’s in Park Slope or Park City, Utah? Whether he’ll be home for dinner tonight or not again until May 7, 2017? How can this be?”

  “It just is. I realize you’d have depo
sed him before you let him eat—”

  She laughed. “Forget eating, I’d have done it before I let him pee. They’ve had excellent results with that at Guantánamo, apparently.”

  “See, that’s my problem. I’ve taken the whole Geneva Convention stuff way too seriously.” I told them how he’d obviously showered while I’d been bringing the kids to school. How the boxers and T-shirt he’d slept in, along with two wet towels, had been dumped on the bathroom floor, dirty dishes left in the sink. “It was almost like he’d planned it to jump out of bed, get ready, and leave while I was out.”

  “I don’t know why you just didn’t do a Lorena Bobbitt last night while he was sleeping. He’d have gone nowhere this morning.” Randy glared into her chai, probably debating what I should have used for bobbiting—sharp, dull, rusty, surgically honed.

  “So what happened with the house?” I asked Jen.

  “They accepted.”

  My heart flipped. I’d known we were going to end up star-crossed lovers, the house and I, but it still hurt. “That’s great! Are you OK about it?”

  “Actually, I’m great.” She had a huge smile on her face. “We talked and talked last night, and we’ve agreed to put things on hold for the time being.”

  “Jen, that’s great. But what’s going to happen with the house?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “The owners were very gracious about us withdrawing the offer. I’d imagine someone else will buy it.”

  “A stranger,” I blurted out. OK. I was getting a little weird here, and I knew it.

  She gave me a funny look. “That’s usually the way it works, isn’t it?”

  My phone rang. I fished it out. The number was private. Was this another of Rick’s little games? “Hello?”

  It was Betsy. “So, Cassie, have you read the latest blogs?”

  “I’ve glanced at them in passing.”

  “Have you noticed how she’s getting really chatty with the readers? Telling them how she has this lunch date and asking them questions in the blog and they’re responding in the comments and she’s talking about the responses?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it, but, yeah, I guess so.”

  “There’s something about the style of it that’s, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s familiar.” I felt the fear curl inside me. Not now, there was too much going on. “Anyway, I have a weird question—you don’t think Jen would—well, you know, say Nora’s a guy in something like this, do you? Because that would be the perfect cover, don’t you think? And, honestly, when was the last time you saw Nora?”

  “She works really long hours,” I said.

  “And the lunch date could be another woman. Or it could even be a man. Jen’s awfully feminine for a lesbian, don’t you think? You don’t think she plays for both teams, do you?”

  “Want me to ask her?” I said. “She’s sitting right here.”

  “Never mind,” Betsy said. “Gotta run, but I’ll be in touch later.”

  “You’re up as the mystery blogger,” I told Jen.

  “Speaking of which?…” she raised a questioning brow. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “No idea,” I confessed. “You know I feel almost like it’s taken up the portion of my life that used to be devoted to being a wife. I update like three and four times a day, I store up little thoughts and ideas, think about how things will play out. It’s part of the fabric of my days now. So does it just end? Have I run out of material if he’s back? Am I going to be a contented wife again with nothing to blog about? Am I obligated to tell him what I’m doing? It’s all just more stuff I don’t know the answers to.”

  “Do you want to still be married to him?” Trust Randy to get to the heart of it.

  “The kids are beside themselves they’re so thrilled he’s back.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I know that. I don’t know what I want. We were married for a long time. I loved him. And despite the fact that he’s done everything in his power to extinguish that, I guess there’s still a spark of it somewhere, or at least the belief it’s still there. And”—I looked at them, they both had kids, they could understand—“if there’s any chance of it working out, it’s hard to rationalize walking away when there are two children involved.”

  They both nodded. “I know,” Randy said. “And I’m worried he does too.”

  “That was a good list of reasons to try,” Jen said, “but it didn’t cover what you want.”

  “I’d have to be a moron to want a man who comes back after an unexplained absence of several months and leaves a trail of laundry, whiskers, and skid marks before sneaking out for parts unknown while I’m bringing his kids to school.”

  “So?” Randy smiled. “Are you a moron?”

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “I wish I knew why he was back. It’s pretty clear from his behavior that he’s not dying to answer that question. I’m also not getting a he-loves-me-and-missed-me-and-is-recommited-and-we’ll-all-live-blissfully-ever-after vibe.”

  “You can insist, you know,” Randy said.

  I nodded. “I know. But I’m not ready yet. And as long as he’s here and I’m not aggressively driving him away, I have a better chance of figuring out what’s happening and if there’s any money left.”

  “Definitely something to that,” Randy agreed. “Be accommodating and unaggressive but don’t call off the PI or the lawyer.” She raised a brow. “Can you do that?”

  “It seems kind of underhanded,” I said.

  “I meant can you do it without killing him. I couldn’t.”

  “And the orgy?” Jen asked.

  I put my head in my hands for something like the fifteenth time since this little sit-down had convened.

  Randy brightened. “Now that’s a question. Are you bringing Rick?”

  “I already have a date.”

  “You do?”

  “The story is in today’s first blog. Luke knows someone who just moved to New York two weeks ago, knows no one here, and—here’s the kicker—owes Luke money. I was reduced to having my younger brother extort his friend to take me to an orgy. Is it any wonder I’m considering giving the marriage another chance?”

  “Just don’t sleep with anyone,” Randy warned.

  “Are my morals at issue?” I asked.

  “You just need to be really careful. New York is a no-fault state, but equitable distribution doesn’t necessarily mean half and half. Adultery, misuse of marital assets, abandonment, potential future earnings—a judge would take all of that into account on custody and division of assets.”

  “That’s assuming there are still assets,” I said gloomily.

  Randy sounded confident. “Oh, there are assets, all right. It’s just finding them and, frankly, I think you’re right about keeping him under your nose. The thing is, you have to tread incredibly carefully. Sleep with him and it’s considered legal forgiveness, meaning you lose your right to cite adultery. Let him back in the house, which you already have, and it sets you back on abandonment, and sleep with anyone else and Rick can claim recrimination, which means that even if he was committing adultery, so were you.”

  I wished it was still hard for me to imagine the man I’d loved for so long setting me up to get screwed legally. Unfortunately, those days were forever gone. “So regardless of what Rick’s done, every breath I take from this second on should be beyond reproach?”

  Randy nodded as she pulled out her BlackBerry and started tapping.

  “Hey,” Jen said, “I thought you got rid of that.”

  “Addict,” I explained at the same time as Randy said, “Emergency use only.”

  “Here’s what you need to do.” Randy was scowling at the BlackBerry. “Take as much money out of any joint accounts as you can and open new ones in your name. You know that list of dates, times, and phone numbers of places he called from?” I nodded. “Get everything to the PI including the Time Out article and tell him to get in touch with whoe
ver wrote it, find out how Rick got transported to all those places, how it was paid for, where he stayed, who he was with, that kind of stuff. A troupe of Manilow wannabes checking out performance spaces shouldn’t be that hard to track.”

  I looked at her. Her face looked tight, closed. “But I’m still considering working things out,” I said, almost as a warning to her not to go too far.

  “I get that, but it doesn’t mean not protecting yourself appropriately, as is warranted by past conduct.”

  She was turning into a lawyer. “You’re scaring me, Randy.”

  “And he’s scaring me. Cass”—she reached over and took my hand—“just promise me: guard your heart and the boys’ too, OK?”

  I looked at Jen. She nodded dead serious agreement.

  My heart was chasing itself around my chest. “OK,” I said. “I will.” Even though I knew where the boys were concerned, it was already too late.

  Oh, and he was home by dinner, ruling out Randy’s Park City, Utah, hypothesis.

  35

  It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve

  It was hard to live with so many unanswered questions, but I told myself that if I’d been able to live with the total uncertainty of the last few months, I could live with this. We managed a pretty nice family Christmas, at least as far as the boys were concerned. We went to the Christmas sing at their school as a family, and Rick videotaped it, like a real father. We made loads of cookies for the shelter and ourselves. We cooked and ate, went to church (about a three-times-a-year occurrence), walked Cad, went to a few parties, played the new Nintendo Wii. Rick built fires in the fireplace and, while it wasn’t Nantucket, the apartment smelled and felt Christmassy and well loved. The boys had the enormous box of toys from Letitia, they had their cousin, who was on her least surly behavior, and better than anything, they had Rick. They were in heaven. Letitia came over on Christmas afternoon. The boys and I were thrilled to see her. She and Rick were…cordial.

  But things between the grown-ups were not good. My break from blogging was leaving me edgy. Several times I snuck into the study and pulled up the site just to see that my last entry hadn’t disappeared. And Rick seemed edgy, too. He was there physically, but in every other way he was clearly somewhere else. Patience, I reminded myself fifty or sixty or a thousand times a day, be patient.