by Liz Kay
It’s true. I do feel ruined. I stand there, looking at the place she’d been standing, and then I turn back toward Tommy. I throw the dishrag at him, and he flinches. “You happy now?” I’m so exhausted and my hands are covered in crumbs and soap. Tommy’s just standing there with his head down, staring at the rag where it’s bounced off of him and landed on the floor. I walk to the sink next to him and rinse off my hands. He’s standing right in front of the towel, so I shove him with my elbow. “Move,” I say, and he does.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he says.
I finish wiping my hands, and I sit down at the counter and prop my head up with my elbows.
“You want me to leave?”
I think, Yes. I think, Maybe. I think, No. But he does. He walks upstairs, and I can hear him talking to Sadie. I can hear her crying, but I can’t hear what she says. I turn my head toward the window, look at the snow. It’s weeks old. It’s thawed and frozen, thawed and frozen so many times that the top layer is clear as glass.
• • •
When I start the treadmill, I have my earbuds in, but I can’t find a song that fits my mood. Everything is too happy or too fucking slow. I pull them out and drop my iPod down onto the carpet beside me. I turn the speed up another click. I think about pushing it higher, but I want to be able to run and run and run. I don’t want to have to stop. At five miles my legs are on auto, and my head is finally clear. It’s nothing but air. Three more and my right knee starts to twitch. I don’t know how long I can ignore it. Probably longer than I should. I hit stop and step down onto the carpet, but I can’t straighten my leg, can’t put my weight on it without feeling this awful pinch deep in the joint. I sit on the floor, pull the leg into me, try to stretch it back out. I know it’s not really an injury, it’s just worn out. When Michael was alive, we used to run together on weekends. He’d plot out the routes, keep me from doing too many hills. He was faster than me by a lot, but he kept this really slow pace, so I never got ahead of myself, never got out of breath. These days, my lungs are always on fire.
• • •
Phillip calls three times between appointments, but I don’t answer till it’s close to five o’clock.
“Hi,” I say when I finally pick up.
“Where have you been all day?” he says, but he doesn’t sound suspicious.
“I was running when you called. I think I tweaked my knee.” I try sort of maneuvering it around, and it still feels sore.
“You want me to look at it?”
“Maybe. I don’t think it’s swollen or anything.”
“How’s your friend’s kid?”
“Oh, she’s fine, you know, trying to run away, but then not really.”
“Huh?”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “She’s just being sixteen. So are you coming over tonight?”
“I don’t know. It might be pretty late. I have a meeting with my realtor.”
“I hope you’re just talking about selling your place.”
“For now, but I think we should talk about that.” I can hear him tapping a pen against his desk. He’s obviously nervous. “Stacey, I don’t want to live in your late husband’s house.”
“It’s not his house. It’s the boys’.”
“I think they can adapt.”
“They are little boys, Phillip. I don’t think they should have to.” I twist the ring around my finger. I must be puffy from running. It feels a little tight.
He sighs. “Look, maybe we should wait to talk about this face-to-face.”
“Can we please not do it tonight? I’m really … I’m exhausted. I just … I can’t.” I can’t take another fight.
“Okay, not tonight, but we are going to talk about it, and soon.” He sounds, I don’t know, firm. I really don’t like it on him. “Look, I’ll call you when I finish up and maybe I can make it over.”
• • •
There’s the dull hum of the garage door opening and closing, the chime of the door as Phillip comes into the house. Michael’s bay has just been sitting empty, so it made sense to give the second opener to Phillip, and now when he comes over late, I don’t have to wait up. Besides, I like listening to him let himself in, the sound of his shoes on the carpeted stairs.
“You look tired,” he says when he comes in the room, and he crosses to my side of the bed and sits beside me. “Let me look at your knee.”
He pushes the sheet out of the way and pulls up the thin flannel of my pajama pants. He presses his fingertips gently around my knee, bends and straightens it, asks where it hurts. “It’s a little swollen,” he says, pulling my pant leg back down. “Did you take anything?”
“No,” I say.
“I’ll get you some ibuprofen. Where do you keep it?”
“Top drawer to the left,” I say, pointing toward the bathroom.
He comes back with two tablets and sits back down in front of me. I take them with a swallow of the water sitting on my night table.
“No running for a while. I think you could use the break.” He smiles at me, rests his hand on my cheek.
“You should get ready for bed,” I say.
I turn on the TV to watch the news while he’s undressing, brushing his teeth, and when he slips into bed beside me, I curl into him, let him cradle my head against his chest. He slides his hand just inside my waistband, starts to rub his fingers lower and lower on my back.
“I’m so tired, Phillip.”
“Sure,” he says, moving his hand back to my waist. “Okay.”
• • •
Sadie calls me the next night while I’m making dinner.
“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “I’m just mad at my dad.”
“You shouldn’t be mad at anyone,” I say, but I can’t really say more than that because Phillip is here, and he might act like he’s reading the magazine he’s holding, but I know that he’s listening.
“No,” she says. “He’s an asshole. He treats women like they’re disposable.”
“Maybe you’re confusing this with how you felt Matt treated you?” I try to say this in a really gentle tone so she won’t get defensive.
It must work because she just sighs and says, “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry he made you feel that way, honey. I really am. That’s a shitty thing to do to a person.”
Now I know that Phillip is listening because he gives me this look like, Who are you talking to? and I shake my head.
“Dad never made you feel disposable?” She says this like her relationship with Tommy hinges on my answer.
“No,” I say. “Never.” And when I say it, it feels like the truth. I probably would have said it anyway, but it does, it feels true.
• • •
Stevie’s picking through his stir-fry and only eating the tofu.
“Baby, eat the broccoli too.”
“Broccoli’s really good for you. Lots of vitamin C,” Phillip says, and honestly, his tone is a little School House Rock. I mean, the four of us could be in a fucking commercial right now.
Ben rolls his eyes, and I point my finger at him and say, “Hey,” and he just looks back at his plate.
“You know who hates broccoli?” he says a minute later. He looks up, looks me in the eye, and I’m thinking, You had better not, but he does. He says, “Tommy.”
“Well, it’s good he’s not here then,” I say, and I take another bite like nothing’s happening. There’s really nothing to see here at all.
“But he likes blueberries,” Stevie says, probably because he just doesn’t like to be left out, and he kind of wiggles in his seat. “Blueberries in his oatmeal, like me.”
“Just eat your dinner,” I say.
Phillip hasn’t said anything. He’s just staring at me with this dumb look on his face.
“Yeah,” Ben says, and he turns to Phillip. “That’s what we all had for breakfast yesterday.”
“That’s enough, Benjamin.” Though, really, it’s way past enough.
Phillip sets his fork down. “Stacey,” he says, “what’s going on here?”
Ben has this little smile on his face, and Stevie’s still wiggling, though he is actually eating his broccoli now.
“It’s nothing,” I say, and I stand up to take my plate back to the kitchen. “Finish up, boys. It’s almost bedtime.”
Phillip follows me, stands next to me with his arms crossed while I’m rinsing the plate. I glance over at him and smile. “Ben’s just trying to upset you.”
“Breakfast?” he says.
I sigh, dry my hands. “Tommy’s daughter ran away, and she ended up here, and he had to come get her. I told you all of this already.”
“No, Stacey, you didn’t.” He shakes his head. “You didn’t say it was him. Or that you had breakfast.”
“I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”
“This didn’t just slip your mind, Stacey. You decided not to tell me.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to upset you? Maybe I expected this?” I hold my hand out in a gesture like he’s the problem. You’re the problem, Phillip, my hand says. “Honestly, you have already been on edge about me going out for the Oscars, so maybe I didn’t want to deal with the suspicion and the jealousy. I mean, you can see how your complete lack of trust feels a little disrespectful?”
“So you’re lying to me to build trust? That’s a stretch.”
“I’m not ‘lying,’ Phillip, and if you really want to know everything, I’ll tell you.” I take a step backwards and shrug. “He came to get his daughter. He slept in the guest room.”
“He slept here?”
“In the guest room. And then in the morning, he ate oatmeal, and there were blueberries, but no broccoli because he doesn’t like broccoli, and apparently, neither do the boys. So that’s everything. Now you know everything.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
“Really?” I say. I cross my arms and turn my head to the side. I hope this looks like I’m just too angry to look at him. I hope he can’t tell I’m shaking. I hope he can’t tell that I’m coming apart.
• • •
“So you fly in Saturday morning,” Daniel says. “We’ll get you in about ten.”
“Sure,” I say. “That sounds fine.” I’m in the grocery store, trying to find a decent mango. They’re Stevie’s favorite fruit, and there’s a sale.
“Tommy wants you to know you can stay at the house if you want”—his voice sounds really tentative, really gentle—“or we can put you up at the same hotel as Sarah.”
“Yeah, I think the hotel.” I feel like I’ve squeezed every damn mango in the pile, but nothing is ripe.
“Stacey,” Daniel says, “you have to work this shit out. This thing with you and Tommy is getting ridiculous.”
“Tommy’s ridiculous. Come on, Daniel, you know how he is.” The woman across from me selecting apples looks up and catches my eye. She must hear something in the tone of my voice because she gives me this sad smile, and I turn away.
“I know he’s different with you,” he says.
“I don’t really want to hear it,” I say, and I know my words sound sharp, clipped. I leave the mangoes, push my cart toward the bananas, the oranges, the kinds of things that are always safe.
“Yeah, I forgot, you don’t want to hear anything, do you? I warned you. I fucking warned you. But you didn’t want to listen then either. And now you’re all pissed off because he is who he is.”
“I’m not pissed off, Daniel. I just don’t need this shit.”
“What shit? Honey, he fucking dotes on you. You think all this is normal for him? You think this is just what he’s like?”
“Daniel,” I say, but he’s on a roll now, he’s not shutting up, and I’m standing here, in the middle of the grocery store with my eyes closed, willing him to stop.
“I get that he’s an asshole. I really do. But you know what, sweetie, you’re a fucking asshole too. And at least he’s trying. At least he didn’t bail on you.”
“Jesus, Daniel. Whose side are you on?”
“You and Tommy? There are no sides. You both want the same thing, and he’s not even fighting you on it. You just need to figure out what the fuck you’re going to do. Because this is it. After this weekend, he’s got no reason to bring you out.”
I don’t know what to say, so I say, “I’m getting married,” though it’s actually kind of hard to get the words out.
Daniel sighs. “Yeah, I’ve heard all about that. You using him to get back at Tommy, or just to get away from him?”
I lean back against the display of bananas and brace my arms on the cart. I feel like I can barely hold myself up. I try to brush the tears off my cheeks, and the woman from the apples hands me a tissue. She doesn’t ask, Are you okay? and I feel so grateful about that I almost hug her.
When he speaks again, he doesn’t sound angry anymore, just sad. “Sweetie, please. He seems like a nice guy, you know. Don’t drag him into this shit.”
“Would you stop? Please. Would you please just stop?”
“Okay,” he says finally. “The hotel. I’ll set it up.”
• • •
I flip the lights off in the boys’ room and stand in the hallway for a long time, but tonight they aren’t really talking. It’s probably for the best. Lately, they have nothing good to say. Maybe none of us do. I just listen to them breathing, rolling over in their beds, and then I walk downstairs to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of wine. Phillip’s in the living room watching the news, and when I walk in, he picks up the remote and turns it off.
“You want a glass?” I say, raising mine, even though I know he won’t.
“I have an early morning,” he says.
I turn back toward the kitchen to cork the bottle, but Phillip says, “Stacey?” and I stop. “We need to have that talk.”
I turn back around to look at him, but I don’t say anything. I can’t place what he’s talking about.
“The house,” he says. “We need to talk about your house.”
I just sigh. I say, “Not tonight.”
“You say that every night.”
“Then maybe you should stop bringing it up.”
“Do you need to tell me something?” he says. “Because it seems like between Ben and the house, we’ve got some problems here. I mean, I don’t expect all of it to be easy, but at some point we’re going to have to deal with it. Right?”
“But not tonight,” I say. I shake my head.
“I’m not here to just fill a vacancy,” he says.
And I say, “No one asked you to.”
“I don’t want to live in this house, Stacey.”
“Then don’t,” I say. “Don’t live here. Leave. I don’t care. But the boys and I aren’t moving.”
“You don’t care?” He stares at me, tilts his head like he’s trying to figure me out.
“I don’t want to have this conversation, Phillip. How are you not getting that?” I turn and walk out of the room into the kitchen. I set my glass on the counter and lean over, holding my head in my hands, and I think, I can’t do this, I can’t fucking do this.
• • •
Tommy is hosting a party Saturday night at his house, and it’s supposed to be small, just the people at the top of the food chain, producers, director, leads. Maybe the dozen or so most important people on the movie. And their dates. And me. I don’t really know why they’ve invited me. I ride with Sarah. John won’t be getting in until tomorrow, so it’s just the two of us in the back of this Town Car.
“No fighting with Tommy tonight,” she says, and she pats my hand.
“We’re not fighting anymore,” I say. “We’re totally fine.” Or totally done. Whatever. Either way, we won’t fight.
“You sure about that?” she says. “Because this shit between you is exhausting.”
“Sarah, I said it’s over. Can we fucking drop it?” I look away from her, out the window.
“Oh yeah,” she says.
“You sound fine. This’ll be great.”
“Maybe you should worry about tomorrow,” I say, and honestly, this is a little unfair of me. I know she’s seriously worked up about tomorrow. She had me write her a speech just in case, and she’s been practicing it all day. I love Sarah, but this is obnoxious.
When we pull up to the house, there’s another car in front of us, and when I step out, I see that it’s Jason.
He turns and spots us. “Stacey, come meet my wife.” The woman beside him is blond and thin, with disproportionate breasts.
“This is Trina,” he says, and I shake her hand.
While I do, Jason must look me over carefully, because he says, “Holy shit, Stacey, you getting married?” and he grabs my left hand and holds it up.
“Mm-hmm,” Sarah says. “To a doctor.”
“Shit, that sounds boring,” Jason says, and I laugh.
There’s a part of me that wishes I’d just left the ring in the hotel room, but it seems kind of stupid to take it off now.
The door is wide open because the people ahead of us haven’t made it all the way in. Tommy has staff tonight, letting people in, taking bags and coats. I don’t have anything to hand over. It’s not Nebraska. It’s not that cold.
Tommy’s at the end of the hall, by the fireplace in the great room, and I don’t know who he’s talking to, but when he looks up, I smile, and then I turn left into the living room and go straight to the bar. I lost Sarah by the front door. She’s still talking to Jason, and I didn’t want to wait.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks, and I say, “Red.”
“Pinot? Malbec? Grenache …”
“Malbec, thanks.”
Then I hear Tommy’s voice over my left shoulder. “Stacey.”
When I turn, he hugs me and says, “Hey, how are you?” and I don’t say, I’m so fucking miserable. I just say, “Fine.”
When he lets go, he sort of squeezes my hand, but it’s my left hand, and he looks down and says, “Congratulations, honey. It’s very pretty.”
“Thanks,” I say, and I turn to get my wine. When I turn back, Tommy’s slipped off to the next group. He spends most of the night circulating. I spend most of the night pretending not to notice where he’s standing, and who he’s talking to, and whether she’s pretty.