by Minka Kent
Graham reaches down, ruffling Sebastian’s hair, and I catch the hint of a black glove sticking from his chino shorts. His tan arm plays nicely off his teal blue golf polo. He’s dressed for eighteen holes.
“Golfing?” I ask. “On Rose’s birthday?”
He nods.
“Didn’t you golf Thursday morning?” My back is to him now, my hand clenched on the sprayer nozzle.
“It’s just a quick nine holes with Trey DuMont.”
I’ve never known Trey DuMont to do “a quick nine holes.” It’s always eighteen and two rounds of beer at the Pueblo Cantina. On the days he spends with Trey, I’m lucky to get him back before dinnertime, and even then, he’s usually so loaded up with beer and bar food he isn’t hungry for the elaborate family dinner I’ve prepared.
The jingle of Graham’s keys tells me there’s no changing his mind, and I won’t bother. It was a waste of time the last time I tried, and the time before that. I’m rarely able to convince this man to spend a quiet day off with his family, and I’m not sure why.
“What time will you be back?” I ask, as if it’ll make a difference. When Graham gives me a time, I usually know to tack three or four hours onto it.
“Not sure.”
I turn to him, eyes hot and stinging, but I refuse to cry. I refuse to look pathetic and lonely in front of my own husband who somehow always has it together.
“The party starts at three, so . . .” my voice trails. I don’t know why I bother.
“I’ll be back before then. What are you guys doing today?” he asks.
You guys.
He sees us four as one unit. It’s not just me and the kids. It’s always you guys, like he’s separate from us.
I don’t answer. He should know I’ll be baking a cake from scratch, assembling gift bags for the guests, setting up games, and minding the children all at the same time.
“Okay, well . . .” He’s looking down at his phone, gliding his thumb up and down like he’s scrolling through a fascinating article that’s worth his full attention. “You know, kids these days don’t get enough exercise.”
“That’s random,” I exhale my words and roll them into a small groan. He doesn’t notice.
Our kids get plenty of exercise, but of course Graham wouldn’t know. He’s not around when I’m carting them from dance practice to soccer to karate.
“So when are you going to be back again?” I try my question again, hoping for a better answer this time.
Graham looks up from his phone, eyes squinting. “Just depends, honey. Holidays at the club are busy. We’ve got our tee time, but it depends on the people ahead of us, and whether or not Trey’s bringing his A-game today.”
He chuckles, padding across the kitchen to the garage entrance.
“Maybe after the party, we can open a bottle of red and watch a movie when the kids go to bed? Just us?” He flashes me a dimpled half-smile, his gaze intense and direct, and I temporarily forget my irritation and the fact that he’s snubbing his family on his daughter’s birthday. “How’s that sound, yeah?”
I nod, wiping my hands on a dry dish cloth.
“When was the last time we had a real date?” I ask.
He glances to his left, mouth pursed. “Good question, honey. I don’t know. It’s been a while.”
“Why don’t we get a sitter next Friday? There’s a Broadway show I’ve been dying to see, and it’s a limited run. We could get tickets. Have a nice dinner. Maybe even stay at a nice hotel? Make a weekend out of it? Like a mini vacation?”
Graham pauses by the door, his fingers loose on the knob. “Next weekend, next weekend . . .”
“I could ask my mom to watch the kids.”
“Your mom’s in Boca Raton.”
“I’ll fly her up for a couple of days. She’d love to see the kids.” My brows lift as I wait for his approval. My lips curl into a smile, almost willing him to show an ounce of excitement about my proposed weekend away. “Especially if it’s on our dime.”
He exhales, pulling the door open. “Yeah. Give her a call. If you set it up, we’ll go.”
Graham’s monotone response slices through my enthusiasm, and in an instant, he’s gone. The gentle clamor of the garage door precedes the near silent departure of his Tesla. Within seconds, he’s zooming down our shady, tree-lined street.
I’m losing him.
Or maybe I’ve already lost him.
Maybe I’m clinging to the ghost of what once was and what will never be.
My skin is on fire, eyes burning. When my lower lip trembles, I know I’m fighting a battle I won’t win. The sound of my children laughing from the next room is the last thing I hear when I yank the back sliding door and find myself on the patio, struggling to breathe.
I need a minute to myself. I need to let it out, and I don’t want them to see me upset. They’re just children. They’re my babies, and I don’t want them to worry.
Collapsing in a wicker chair under the covered patio, I bury my face in my hands and have a quiet cry, my palms muffling escaped sobs as best they can.
I miss the Graham I fell in love with.
This Graham, this increasingly self-centered version, is a stranger to me.
I don’t know him.
I don’t recognize the man he has become.
What does it say about our marriage when I can’t recall the last time he held my hand? The last time he planned a special date night? The last time he whisked me off to some business dinner and slipped his hands under my dress at the table?
We used to be inseparable.
We used to be insatiable.
When did I stop being enough?
When did I stop being the apple of his eye?
Over the course of a few minutes, I let it all out. Our lot is oversized, a little more than half an acre, and surrounded by large shade trees and wrought iron fencing that separates our section of the neighborhood from the older, quainter homes behind it. We’ve always meant to replace it, to put up a privacy fence that matches the rest, but over the years it slipped off our to-do list once we realized we’d yet to actually see a neighbor from the homes behind us.
When I’ve had my cry and my fill of shameless self-pity, I dab my tear-streaked cheeks on the back of my hand and draw in a breath of foggy morning air. Rising from my seat to head back inside, I stop when I notice something in the distance.
A woman.
Staring out the window of the house directly behind us.
At least I think it’s a woman. I can hardly be sure from this far away.
Good god, I’m an idiot. I should’ve run up to my room and had a cry like a normal person, but there are days when my sanctuary feels more like a prison cell, and today was one of them.
My cheeks burn, and I offer an apologetic smile before heading back inside. I’m truly sorry she had to see my meltdown.
At the last moment, I stop to offer her a wave.
She stands there. Sullen. Unmoving. Watching.
And without warning the blinds close, and she’s gone.
Ten
Autumn
It’s just before dusk when we pull into our driveway, the entire day gone just like that. Poof. One minute I’m sipping coffee and admiring the view. The next minute I’m being forced to shop for vintage teacups for Ben’s mother in Forrest Hills because he insisted on a day trip to get us out of Monarch Falls for a bit.
At least lunch was good: tomato bisque and a house salad for me. Ben inhaled his plate-sized quiche Lorraine like a starving man-child.
I pretended it didn’t embarrass me.
I’m sure to anyone else we looked like your average, run-of-the-mill, Caucasian, twenty-something couple. Boring and ordinary in every way. We look like the newlyweds who just moved in next door, ready to lend a cup of sugar or the use of our shiny new lawnmower.
Sometimes I wonder if Ben has secrets. If he does, he does a grade-A job of hiding them. I don’t think he has any though, and I kind of wish he di
d, if only to spice things up a bit. He doesn’t disappear at odd hours. He never has a cat-who-ate-the-canary look on his face. He doesn’t have any quirks or idiosyncrasies that make me question who he is or who he claims to be.
The man doesn’t even have a hidden porn folder on his laptop, and believe me, I’ve looked. He doesn’t have any kinky requests between the sheets. Ben, in all his simplicity, just likes plain vanilla sex. His favorite position is missionary.
Guess that makes things easier for me.
“What are you going to do, babe?” he asks as the car creeps into our garage. He kills the engine, unfastens his seatbelt, and turns to me. “You want to get ice cream or something?”
No.
No, I do not want to get ice cream, Ben.
We just got home. I want to stay home.
Besides, not all of us were blessed with the metabolism of a twenty-year-old Olympic swimmer. Ben can eat anything. And he does. I’ve seen him put down an entire large supreme pizza, half a pan of cheesy breadsticks, two-thirds of a package of chocolate chip break-and-bake cookies, and still complain that his stomach is growling.
If I ate the way he did, I’d be the size of a house by now, and yet Ben is strapping yet lean, still wielding a runner’s physique despite the fact that he doesn’t run nearly as much as he used to.
Not all of us have the luxury of good genes.
Some of us were born with less desirable junk that clutters our DNA.
Some of us were born with DNA that makes us want things we shouldn’t have and do things we shouldn’t do, and at the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that we are all made a certain way, there’s nothing we can do to change it, and that’s just how it is.
Ben and I climb out of the car and make our way inside. I can already hear the dog scratching at the door, so I hurry in to let her outside. Grabbing her leather leash, I hook her up and step into the backyard, grateful for some alone time and a bit of familiar fresh air.
She wastes no time doing her thing and returning to my side, jumping on her hind legs and whimpering for me to pick her up. I scoop her up in my arms, letting her lick my face as I linger outside a little longer. Her breath smells like shit. Literal shit. But I don’t mind because she’s my baby, and she can get away with murder and I’d still love her just as fiercely.
Love is cracked like that, I suppose.
Gazing across our lot, I peer through the iron fence that separates our land from the McMullens. Party lights are neatly strung, hanging from their covered patio, and a woman whom I don’t recognize, hired help probably, is cleaning up abandoned pool floaties and wrinkled towels.
Sighing, I take a seat on one of the patio chairs and let the dog cuddle in my lap.
“I missed it all,” I say to her, nuzzling my nose into her ear.
A light chill runs through me as the wind picks up, and the leaves of the oaks that canopy the McMullens’ backyard paradise rustle as if to signal a storm is coming. A flash of lightning zips across the sky, followed by droplets of water that land on my nose and cheeks. I love a good summer rainstorm, its nature unapologetic and intense.
Ginger jumps from my lap, trotting to the back door and scratching. She hates thunder, and she knows it’s coming. I follow, stealing once last glance at the remains of Rose McMullen’s seventh birthday party.
Ben is seated on the sofa when we step inside, already dressed in sweats and his favorite Red Sox t-shirt. He’s hunched over, elbows on his knees and eyes glued to the sports highlights flickering across the TV screen. Ginger takes a running jump to his side.
Traitor.
“It’s starting to storm,” I say, heading upstairs to change.
“You didn’t know that?” he asks, keeping his attention on the screen.
I don’t watch the news. Ever. I couldn’t care less about weather and current events. It’s too depressing. I suppose that’s why I gravitate toward social media. Everything posted is picturesque because most people only share their highlight reels and never the ugly, unusable footage that lands on the cutting room floor. It’s the exact opposite of the evening news.
It’s always sunny on Instaface, even if that sun is artificial.
Save for Daphne. She’s as authentic as they come. She doesn’t need to hide behind faux news stories and staged pictures of her family. They are, in not so many words, genuine perfection.
You can’t fake their kind of love.
Eleven
Daphne
“You again.” Mitch pretends like he’s unhappy to see me, but that slow smile spreading across his face gives him away. He pulls his side door open, and I inhale a lungful of sweet marijuana smoke. “How goes it, Uptown Girl? You have a nice, uh, Memorial Day weekend? What’d you do? Go boating? You guys boat at all? Shit. What do rich people do in their spare time?”
“You live in this house,” I say, following him to the dingy room with the Grateful Dead blankets, “but I refuse to believe you’re as poor as you claim to be.”
He chuckles, plopping down in the middle of his sunken sofa. “Never said I was poor.”
“When you use the term rich people, it has an insinuation of exclusivity,” I say. “You can’t tell me you’re dealing because it’s a lifelong passion of yours. The reward has to outweigh the risks or you wouldn’t be doing it.”
“You’re not wrong.” He grabs a small baggie of weed and pinches some leaves between his thumb and forefinger, dropping them along a single rolling paper. “You can’t live like you’ve got money over here. Not in this part of town. I’d need security and some vicious dogs, and truth be told, I just want a simple kind of life. I don’t want to worry about some knuckleheads breaking into my house at night looking under floorboards and mattresses. Trying to keep a low profile.”
“That’s smart.”
“And rich folks like you don’t need guys like me setting up camp in your fancy neighborhoods.”
He rolls the paper then licks the seam before retrieving a lighter from his pocket. His thumb flicks it twice, a flame appearing the second time. His eyes find mine as the joint is pressed between his lips.
My body craves this release, this high, and my fingers drag edgily along the arms of the chair I’ve taken. Mitch takes two slow drags and hands it over. I’m all over it, greedy and desperate. I’m well aware that this isn’t a good look for me, but in here, with Mitch, none of that matters.
He accepts me exactly as I am. My carefully crafted exterior doesn’t fool him. He sees through it all: my flaws and imperfections, my ugliness and inadequacies. And still he doesn’t push me away.
“You ever going to tell me your name?” he asks, peering down his nose. “Thought we had a deal last time. I tell you mine, you tell me yours, remember? I told you mine and then you bolted.”
“I wasn’t bolting. I told you, I had to go.”
I take another drag from the joint and lean back in the chair, my body starting to feel lighter with each slow second that drips past.
“Anyway, I kind of like when you call me Uptown Girl,” I say.
“Not cool. You tricked me. That shit wouldn’t fly on the streets, just so you know. Nobody deserves to be baited and switched. That’s just disrespectful.”
“It’s not that I don’t want you to know my name,” I say. “I just don’t want to be me when I’m here. Does that make sense?”
“Nothing about you makes sense.” He sits forward, elbows resting on the ripped knees of his jeans, studying me. “And that’s kind of the best thing about you.”
“I can’t tell if you’re insulting me or not.” I take another drag. He hasn’t asked for it back, but he seems preoccupied. With me. “I can never tell with you. You’re impossible to figure out.”
“Good,” he says. “I don’t want to be the kind of guy people can figure out. Nothing good can come of that. People figure you out, they take advantage. That’s how it works. They find your weaknesses and they exploit them.”
I wonder if Graham ha
s figured out my weaknesses. Maybe he’s known them all along. Maybe he’s been exploiting them, and I’ve never even noticed.
“Am I easy to figure out?” My relaxed body braces for his answer. If there’s anything I know about Mitch, it’s that he’s incapable of sugarcoating.
He leans back in the couch, arms loosely folded and head cocked as he pulls in a hard breath.
“Yes and no,” he says. “Certain things about you are mysterious. Other things . . . incredibly cliché and predictable.”
“Ouch.”
He finally reaches for the joint. “You asked. Don’t ask if you don’t want to know.”
“Fair enough.”
A warm peacefulness sinks into my bones. My body feels like it’s been sliced open at the cellular level with an obsidian knife, but in the most enlightening way.
“I feel different with this,” I say, my voice just as mellow as my body. “I feel like I could . . . I don’t know, paint something.”
I realize I sound utterly ridiculous, but I don’t care. I’m not sure I’m capable of having a care in the world right now.
Mitch laughs, his hand resting on his flat stomach. “We’re smoking Lamb’s Bread today. It’s new to the area. Just got it in last night from my West Coast supplier.”
“Lamb’s Bread?” For a moment, I consider how something like this would have traveled across the country, where it would’ve been stuffed and hidden to make such a trek.
I decide I don’t need to know.
“It gives you more of a euphoric high,” he says. “Makes you introspective and creative and shit. Bob Marley used to smoke this.”
“Oh.” I settle into the worn cushions of his chair, arms relaxed at my sides. Closing my eyes, I wrap myself up in this amazing, exultant state. “What do you normally give me?”
“Blue haze,” he says without pause. “For your anxiety.”
“My anxiety?” I smirk. “You think I’m anxious?”
“Are you joking right now? Good god, woman, I’ve never met anyone more tightly wound than you. You make me all tense just looking at you.”