Carpool Confidential

by Jessica Benson

  “This is an unexpected but not unhoped for surprise,” he said.

  “So you were just kind of lying there thinking, you know what would be nice? If Cassie Martin called and woke me up right about now.”

  “Word for word.”

  I smiled to myself. “I’m a lot less married than the last time we saw each other.”

  “So what about that big old band of diamonds?”

  I slid it off. “Gone.” I thought about walking over, dropping it, watching it sink and rush away in the mud of the East River, but stuck it in my pocket instead. Maybe one of the children would want it one day. “My life’s a disaster area,” I said. “I come with two children who are my absolute priority. Things are bound to get worse before they get better. If you were smart you’d run in the other direction.”

  “Yes, I probably should do. But I’m still here.”

  I flagged down a taxi.

  “I’m not looking for anything permanent or even necessarily serious,” I announced when I got there. He was in jeans and a T-shirt. I suspected just out of the shower, because his hair was damp and he smelled like expensive soap. I, on the other hand, smelled like pleather and a long night that included about fifty drinks with a splash of eau de holding tank thrown in.

  He took my coat and his brow went up. “Oh, right. Sex club. I forgot.”

  “You’ve been reading.”

  “I hadn’t heard from you in a while. I had to check your progress.” He smiled. “How’d it go?”

  “It did convince me I’m a one-on-one person.” I repressed a tiny sliver of sadness that my husband had apparently not been.

  “What do you know? Me too.”

  He made eggs and coffee and juice and toast while I took an endless shower with his expensive soap. And then—well, there was a tiny bit of awkwardness with condoms (been a while for me) and then it was just the two of us, acres of cool, white sheets. It was weird at first, but not a bad weird and not nearly as much as it could have been. And then I forgot to think about it any more. Because back when we had lunch? He wasn’t kidding about the senseless part.

  It was the nicest day I’d had in a long time. Much later, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until it was almost dark. I sat up in his bed and stretched. “Time to go.” I was both reluctant and eager. I hadn’t seen my boys in what felt like a year. As I headed to the shower, he asked if I’d like him to run to the Gap down the street and pick up some clothes for me.

  A half hour later, as I was brushing my wet hair with his seriously adult-looking silver hairbrush, he picked up the discarded pleather. “Do you want me to throw this in a bag?”

  “No.” I put the brush down and put some Blistex on my lips. “Keep it.”

  He laughed. “Maybe I can donate it to a needy prostitute’s home.”

  “Just make sure you keep a receipt so I can use it for a tax write-off.”

  “Am I going to read about myself tomorrow?”

  “Probably.”

  “Will you mention that you’d never before seen such an enormous—”

  I stopped in the doorway. “Jamie, you have no idea some of the things I saw last night. I’m really trying not to go there in my mind.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, laughing.

  “I’m sure I’ll forget in time.”

  “I didn’t mean about that.” He kissed me. “Come back?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why don’t we have dinner next week? Notch this down a little.”

  I looked at him. “Why?”

  “Because you might not be as ready as you think.”

  “If we have dinner, aren’t you going to ply me with alcohol and try to get me back here anyway?”

  “Probably. But as you pointed out at lunch, I have excellent self-control.”

  “We’ll see.” I put my coat on, but I was laughing, too. It seemed like I might learn to do that again.

  Traffic was slow on the FDR Drive. I called Charlotte and filled her in.

  “I can’t believe you’re the same person who called whining about her husband having dumped her.”

  “I still feel the same,” I assured her.

  “Well, you’re almost unrecognizable from here. So, was the doc really that good?”

  “Better.”

  She sighed. “You’re inspiring me. Maybe I’ll cheat on Gray, the Rabbit.” I laughed and she went on, “So are you over Rick?” Thus proving that relationships with Rabbits are not at all like those with humans.

  “No”—the sadness came rushing back—“not by a long shot.”

  “Mommy!” My greeting from the boys, so enthusiastic it almost knocked me over.

  “Hi, guys.” I held them both against me. When I looked up, it wasn’t M.A. coming down the hall behind them. It was Rick.

  “Hi, Cassie.” He actually looked kind of comical, with his glasses and a big thing over his nose.

  “Daddy got in an accident.” Jared was practically dancing up and down.

  “I see that. Where’s M.A.?”

  “She went to spend the night with Katya,” Rick said, looking right at me. “They had a lot to talk about.”

  We walked down to Grimaldi’s, under the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, for pizza, and then over to the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory so the boys could gorge themselves. I had a chocolate shake.

  “Aren’t you worried about the fat and calories in that?” Rick asked. “There must be like a thousand. Not that I’m saying you should be,” he added when he saw my face, “just that you always were.”

  “No.” I sucked another mouthful through the straw. It tasted like a million pieces of simplicity.

  We walked home quickly. It was freezing. I was still wearing the jeans and white shirt from the Gap. I turned the heat up and Rick said, “After you get the boys ready for bed, let’s talk.”

  I looked at him. “How about after you get the boys ready?”

  If he’d been about to object, he thought better of it. I hoped the acquiescence was based on the impulse to do the right thing, be the father he needed to be, and not fear of assault. He headed down with the boys, and I went into the kitchen and listened to the messages.

  Jen asking if I was OK.

  Randy checking up on me.

  Betsy telling me that Sue had solved the blogger mystery. It was a woman named Cynthia Klapper whose kids were at Columbia Prep.

  Sue, saying, “Hi, Cassie, um, just wanted to see how things are and say hi.” I figured there was no reason for her to ever know that I knew.

  Sue again, sobbing, “Cassie. Call me, OK?”

  I did. She answered on the first ring, sounding like she’d been crying a lot. “I know it’s you, Cassie. When I realized it really was you I felt bad for having started it all, so I made something up to call everyone off.”

  I didn’t deny. “How did you know?”

  She laughed. “You have a very recognizable writing style. I’m probably the only one around who read your old stuff. And when I added it to Rick being gone, how distracted you’ve been, your credit cards being declined. It just clicked.”

  “Are you mad about Trudy?”

  “Being me? No.” She laughed again. “That Sue that you were parodying wasn’t really me, more like my evil twin. Randy told you.”

  I hadn’t planned on letting her know that, but it wasn’t a question. “That’s why I spent so much time on school stuff. So I could be near him. Oh, God. What a mess. I’m in love with him. I’m leaving Tim. He’s”—I could hardly make out her words through the onslaught of sobbing—“boring, so boring his breathing makes my teeth ache. The marriage has turned me into a zombie, trying to be at a meeting every night so he doesn’t try to tweak my nipple like that’s some magic shortcut to having me beg for frenzied fucking. Fuck fucking fish fingers, who gives a flying frenzied fuck about fish fingers?”—she giggled, hysterically—“Alliteration! Sort of. I’ll call you.”

  I hung up and pressed for the next message. By the time I got done li
stening to my mother’s explanation of having met the husband of a woman in my father’s 12-step program, realized it was love at first sight, and run off with him, I was assuming I was hallucinating from the combination of lack of sleep and emotional trauma last night. And maybe I was, but more power to my mother. It was about time she gave my father a taste of his own medicine.

  Charlotte wanting to know when they’d be getting the next blog.

  Letitia checking in.

  Fortunately, the next and last was Katya. Unfortunately, it was not a happy, let’s-have-a-fond-reunion Katya. I called her back and let her blast me in-person (well, over the phone in-person) for a while about how I always had to be perfect and run everything and know everything, and how dare I get involved in her business and her life?

  This made me wretched with self-doubt and humiliation, but I swallowed it and told her, very calmly, which was a stretch to manage, that I loved her and was sorry if she was going through a difficult time, that I appreciated everything she had done for me from childhood onward and that I’d always be there for her. Then I asked to speak with M.A. I held my breath in the silence, wondering what I would do if she refused. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. “You mean Harmonye.” She sounded pissed, with a capital P, but handed the phone over.

  “Hi.” M.A. sounded tearful and subdued.

  “Hi, hon. You OK?”

  “Yeah. Not great, you know? But OK.”

  I told her more or less the same thing I’d told Katya, but I added that however my life changed, I would always welcome her as a part of it. I hoped she understood that I was saying, obliquely, that I was putting my concern for her over my loyalty to my sister. A miserable choice.

  I could tell she did, by the squeak in her voice. “Thanks, Cass. I like need some time to think, but thanks. I’ll let you know.”

  I had a ball of nausea in my stomach. “Can I speak to Katya one more time?” I told her that I hoped it wasn’t disloyal, but I really wanted to see M.A. happy, whatever that took.

  “Me too.”

  At least we had the same goal.

  Rick called me to come kiss the boys goodnight. I tickled them and rubbed their backs and tucked them in, safe and secure, all the while knowing I held the fuse that was going to detonate their worlds—I was kicking their father out. Tonight.

  42

  Give my Regards to Broadway

  “So is there any hope?”

  “Of what?” Once again, whatever was supposed to translate words between my ears and my brain wasn’t kicking in.

  “Me. Us.” I wondered whether it was coincidence that he was sitting in almost the exact same spot in the exact same position as the night he’d left. Other than that, the similarities were elusive. His hair was longer and he was thinner, he had two black eyes, his glasses were held together with electrical tape, and his nose was swathed in bandages. And the differences weren’t just physical. The night he’d left he’d looked like a confident, entitled, master of the universe. Now he just looked like a very flawed man.

  “How can you even ask that?”

  He shrugged. “You never know if you don’t try.”

  “I’m sorry I assaulted you last night.” I figured I could start generously.

  “I’m sorry I pressed charges.”

  I shrugged. “It didn’t matter. The police said they’d have had to arrest me anyway.”

  He looked pained. “Was it awful?”

  “I don’t need to do it again.”

  He grinned, which made him wince. “No. Me either. Cassie, I know I have no right, but would it be all right if I asked a question?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I nodded.

  “Is—did you sleep with him?”

  “My date?” I shook my head. “No.”

  “Not him.”

  Oh. I looked at him for what felt like a long time. “Yes.” I felt like I was daring him to make something of it. “How did you know?”

  Something that could almost have been a smile if it hadn’t looked so sad came and went across his face. “You left the blog bookmarked on the computer. I read it, and I just knew where you’d gone. I know you, Cassie. Still.”

  I couldn’t deny that.

  “It’s good. Really good. You’re going to go far.”

  “Thanks.” I was thinking that if he tried to take credit for getting me started on the blogging path by leaving me, I might have to re-assault him. I folded my arms. “So.”

  “Where”—he ran a hand through his hair—“should I start?”

  “Jordan Hallock,” I suggested. “How about there? Or”—I didn’t think it was possible for this to still have the power to make me sick—“is there more?”

  He took a deep breath. “It didn’t start until after she was done with the apartment. I’d always found her attractive, but nothing more than that. Cass, this is going to be a really tough conversation.” Then he got up and walked out.

  I sat there, wondering where exactly he thought he was going. Was that it? All the answers I was getting? Just as I was about to go after him, he came back with two glasses of his precious, rare scotch.

  “I should probably be grateful you didn’t eBay this.” He smiled as he handed me one.

  “It was already open, or I might have.” I took a sip. Barbecued gasoline. “Very nice, thanks. Why don’t you go on? I’m pretty tough these days.”

  “OK. I’d never had an affair before Jordan, but to be honest, Cass, I’d wanted to.”

  “I see.” Despite everything I said earlier about the hurt being less, this really did hurt. Hugely. “And why didn’t you?”

  “Because I never wanted to be that kind of person. I loved you, I still do, and the boys—”

  “But you’re not in love with me,” I reminded him.

  “I’m sorry I said that. I guess I was trying to make myself feel better about what I was doing.” He closed his swollen eyes for a second. When he opened them, he was crying. “For a long time I’ve just felt like I was quietly dying, becoming nothing. Work stopped being fun and a challenge, we stopped being a couple. Then one day, Jordan came to my office with one of those eighteenth-century oils, you know the hunting scenes—”

  I couldn’t resist. “That reminds me, the study’s going to look awfully bare when I send those out to the guy who bought them on eBay.”

  “Cassie.” His voice sounded strangled. “Those are—”

  “I know, Rick, relax. I was just kidding.” And I had been. But his response had been barometric to me: even if he was experiencing major emotional turmoil, and I believed he was, he’d been able to focus on that.

  “Anyway, she brought them to my office, and, honestly, I have no idea to this day how it happened, but we ended up— you know.”

  “Not really. Going to a hotel? Arranging a meeting? What?”

  He looked incredibly shamefaced. “On my desk.”

  “I see.” There really was no getting around each revelation striking like a fist. I could only hope recovery time got successively shorter. “And?” My heart was thudding so hard I thought it might drown out the answer. No such luck.

  “It was great.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “Not in that way. More like I was terrified of being caught, of catching an STD, that she’d turn out to be a bunny boiling maniac. All of that was there inside me the whole time. But I felt unbelievably alive. Immediately afterwards, honestly, my pants weren’t even up”—I know I’d asked for honesty, but come on, that was TMI, wasn’t it?—“I started feeling awful about you and the kids and what I’d done, but somehow that awfulness felt better than the nothingness.”

  “How long ago did it start?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe a year, a year and a half.”

  God, that hurt. Nothing like putting a time frame on how much of a joke your life, your marriage, has been. And speaking of STDs. “Did you use condoms?”

  His face told me all I needed to know. “I see.”

  “I trusted
her.”

  “Good move.” So now I was going to get the humiliation of going back to Elizabeth Katz.

  “Then Paulette caught us.”

  “You hadn’t moved it to a hotel?”

  He shook his head. “Well, actually, that’s not true. Sometimes. But the danger was what I needed. If it was just an affair, it stopped doing what it was supposed to. If it was safe, I could take it or leave it. Frankly, in a hotel it wasn’t that different than being married.”

  My head was pounding. I, apparently, had been the blindest, stupidest, most head-in-the-sand wife in the entire universe. “But how did you go from there to Paulette? I mean, I guess she clearly is, but I never had her pegged as your type. Actually, Jordan either.” I wrinkled my nose. “They’re both really fake, somehow. Couldn’t you have picked nicer people?”

  He did a little barky laugh, but he was still crying. “I think nicer people wouldn’t have participated. And I went from Jordan to Paulette because she offered to do a threesome with me and Jordan.”

  “Oh, God.” I thought maybe I was going to faint now. Or puke. Or both.

  “It never happened, though.”

  “Is that the truth? That’s what you wanted?”

  “Yeah, it is the truth. And, yeah, that’s what I wanted. I mean, what man doesn’t on some level?” I flashed on Lesbo Gangbang. Looked like it had been his. “But it wasn’t so much sexual. More that it seemed riskier, worse, more dangerous.”

  “I see.” I didn’t, though, not really.

  “But after a while, you build up a sort of immunity. The familiar stops feeling dangerous.” He put his glass on the table, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. Another time I might have been tempted to go comfort him, but not today. I was having that dizzy sensation. He sounded almost exactly like Letitia said his father had been, women, dangerous cars, drugs. “When that stopped giving me the feeling, I started doing stuff, risky stuff, with my trades.”

  “What, Rick? How bad?”

  “Pretty bad. I made some bad decisions. Risky buys that…tanked.”

  “But surely that happens? You can’t always be right. People know that going in.”