That’s how this feels.
And the worst part is that I am unsure of what to do next. Especially without Mark here to guide me. He’s like my compass. I don’t know if I’ve always been this way, or if self-doubt is part of the legacy Paul left me.
I don’t trust my own instincts.
For years, I questioned whether I deserved to be in art school, whether I was really any good like he had said. Maybe that had been a lie, too, a part of the bigger lie: That I was special. That I was lovable.
Stop it.
I turn off the water. I need to distract myself. Watch something silly on TV. I slosh a bit more wine into my glass, promising myself that three’s the limit, and move through the house, switching on all the lights as I go. I feel safer this way, electricity bill be damned.
This is the first house I have lived in, except the one my family lived in before my father died. I don’t remember it, but I have a photo of the narrow blue wooden house. It stood in a neighborhood packed with them, all different colors, each one close enough to the others that you could lean out your kitchen window and pass a saltshaker to the person next door.
After my father died, everything changed. We moved to Connecticut and began a pattern of moving from apartment to apartment every few years. Sometimes we came home from school to see all our belongings packed and a lost look on Sharon’s face, like she had wandered in from some other life and didn’t know what she was doing. Other times, we moved in the middle of the night, all our clothes stuffed into giant black trash bags like we were sneaking out on our lives.
I blamed my mother at the time. Losing jobs, unable to make rent. But she was overwhelmed trying to raise two little girls on her own.
When Daisy showed Mark and me the house we live in now, she declared, “This is not a starter house. This is a forever house.”
If this were happening to Sharon, she would pack us up in the middle of the night and we’d be in a new part of town by morning. But I’m not Sharon, and I don’t want to run. I want to face whoever is doing this.
In the dining room, I turn on the two slender lamps that grace the credenza when a noise from outside crashes my thoughts. I stop to listen. Just as I am about to write it off as typical suburban nighttime noise, I hear something again. Like the dragging of metal across concrete. It sounds close enough that, if I could reach through the dining room wall to the outside, I might touch whatever was causing it.
In the mudroom, I open the back door and look outside but see nothing, only an empty bird feeder swaying in the night wind. The wind swishes in the trees, but there is no sound of metal against concrete.
“Hello?” I call into the darkness.
I take a tentative step down the walkway that runs alongside the house toward the street. My skin prickles. There’s someone here, even if I can’t see him.
I remember what the detective said. If they call first, they aren’t coming. But that does nothing to alleviate the drumming of my heart.
A flash of movement across my sight line makes me jump. A shriek escapes my throat.
Then my vision focuses on a figure by the curb.
It’s a raccoon, rounded on its haunches, gazing at me with two mirror discs for eyes. We stare at each other for a second, and then the creature trots off into the darkness.
My heart thwacks in my rib cage. I begin to collect the garbage strewn on the walkway. That was the clang I heard, the animal knocking the metal garbage can lid to the ground.
He’s done a good bit of damage. Following the contents of the ripped garbage bag takes me halfway to the street.
I’m picking up the last piece of debris, an old take-out container, when I see him.
Dustin is standing across the street, something in his hand.
“Hey,” he whispers loudly and begins to cross.
I freeze, unsure of what to do. Before I can decide, he is right in front of me, raising his arm, his hand gripping something. A weapon?
“It’s a universal remote,” he says. “Like the one Steve Wozniak invented?”
I laugh nervously and take it from him. “Thank you, Dustin.”
“Did you ever figure out who was behind all that online stuff?”
Something at the end of the street catches my eye—a familiar car on the corner.
The black Audi with FCS plates.
“I have to go.” I turn and run back inside and lock the door. Rushing from room to room, I shut off all the lights. Once I am sure I cannot be seen, I peer out the front bay window. The Audi lurks there in the dark, but I cannot see if anyone is inside.
I have to do something. I call Mark.
“When are you coming home?” I try to keep the panic out of my voice.
“Soon. I just have about another hour of work to do. What’s going on? Cole all right?”
No! I want to shout. The police think I killed Rob Avery. Someone hacked my computer, and I lost my job. There’s a black Audi following me. Instead I say, “Cole’s fine.” I step away from the window, wondering how much I should share.
“What’s going on, Allie?” Just hearing the warmth in his voice relaxes me a little. I remember how in Chicago he used to walk beside me so his body blocked the wind.
“There’s a car on our block that doesn’t belong there.”
“It’s probably someone visiting Leah or Heather.”
“No. I’ve seen this car before, Mark. I think it’s been following me.” I hate how I sound. Overdramatic, like a shut-in who can no longer discern reality from fantasy. But I know what I know.
“Following you? Is it possible maybe you’re just spooked? Letting your imagination run wild?”
“No, I don’t think so. I recognize the plates.”
“Allie, don’t get mad, but have you been drinking?”
I open my mouth in disbelief. His question deflates me like air being let out of a tire. “Forget it. Forget I even called.”
“No, I’m glad you called.” He sounds genuine, but I can’t tell if he’s condescending to me, or if he takes me seriously. “Describe the car to me.”
“It’s a black Audi.”
“Can you see who’s driving it?” he asks with the patient tone he uses when planning birthday parties with Cole for our son’s imaginary friends.
“I don’t know, Mark.” I sound snippy. My nerves are jangly and raw. Instead of soothing me, this conversation has left me feeling more isolated.
“Tell you what: lock the doors and go to bed, and I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’m sure it’s just someone visiting a neighbor.”
When I peer out the window again, the street is empty. “It’s gone.”
“See?” he says. “Nothing to worry about. Now go to bed. I’ll be home soon.”
After hanging up with Mark, I break my own promise and down a fourth glass of wine. I need to pass out, not just fall asleep.
* * *
I am jolted awake and sit up, disoriented. The clock reads just after midnight. Alcohol does this to me—it sends me off to sleep but can’t keep me there. Like a boat that’s been launched, I lose speed halfway across my journey and end up drifting across the dark ocean.
I’ve been asleep about two hours. My head feels heavy on my neck. I look beside me and see Mark is not there.
I sit in my bed for a few moments, gauging whether I will be able to fall back asleep. But the day’s events come rushing at me.
Maybe a cup of tea will help. I throw back the covers and step into the hallway. From the darkened second floor, I can see the bright lights in the kitchen. I’m sure I turned them off, so Mark must be home.
I am halfway down the stairs when the low murmur of Mark’s voice reaches me. I pause and then continue softly, not wanting to be heard, although I cannot articulate to myself why. It’s not that I want to spy on him, yet I am cautious. At the bottom of the staircase, I can hear Mark’s voice coming clearly from the kitchen.
“—and I’m telling you, she knows. She described the car.”
The shock of his words sends me reeling back a step. I grip the banister to right myself, and as my weight shifts from one leg to the other, the stair emits the tiniest of creaks. I hold my breath, praying he did not hear.
“Hello?” Mark calls, and then a few footsteps. “Allie? That you?”
I turn and run up the stairs as quietly as possible like a naughty child. I slip under the covers and squeeze my eyes tight. My heart feels like it is throwing itself against my rib cage, pounding so loudly I am sure Mark would hear it if he entered the room.
Moments later, he does enter.
The door squeaks as it is cracked ajar. I peer through the black bars of my eyelashes of one partially opened eye, not daring to move my head for a better view. All I can see is a sliver of light on the ceiling. I watch it grow wider as the door opens farther, Mark’s elongated shadow stretching taller and taller.
I squeeze my eyes ferociously and breathe in deeply. Time seems to slow down, and the seconds tick by. Finally, the door clicks shut.
I am alone.
38
On Tuesday morning, neither Mark nor I mention what happened the night before. I’m not sure what’s stopping me from just asking him about it, but I want time to think about how I am going to formulate my questions.
And maybe a part of me just does not want to face any more disappointments.
What if his answers are ones I cannot handle?
We stick to the familiar morning dialogue that goes on in suburban households across the country. During our morning routine, I see no good time to announce that I’ve been fired. That’s not a five-minute conversation. It’s not that I want to lie to Mark, but between finding a shirt that doesn’t make Cole itch and packing lunch, it’s easier just to avoid the topic.
Mark does not ask me anything.
He seems preoccupied and distant.
“I’m distracted,” he says when I catch him putting the box of Grape-Nuts in the refrigerator and the milk in the cupboard. “This deposition is turning out more complicated than we thought it would be.”
We both know it’s more than that.
Mark leaves without saying anything, and I can’t help but take it personally. He never leaves without kissing me goodbye.
Curiosity gnaws at me. I rush through getting Cole off to school, allowing him to walk the last half block by himself so I can get home quickly. I’m not sure where to begin or what I am looking for, exactly. I start by opening random drawers, looking for anything that might be a clue as to whom Mark might have been talking to last night. If only I could access his cell phone.
Then I realize I can.
I open my laptop and log in to our shared cell phone account. It takes a while, but I finally navigate to the page with the call logs associated with Mark’s phone.
Nothing. No calls last night.
I frown. Then it hits me. His work phone. Of course he would make any private calls on that. I have no way of checking it.
I hate that I suspect Mark, but I know what I heard last night.
I continue my search in the third bedroom, for which Mark and I have yet to find a use. When we toured the house, Mark said it would be perfect for a nursery, and I said that I’d like to make it a home office for when I start my own studio. Now it looks like neither of us may get our wish.
One side of the room is stacked with moving boxes I haven’t unpacked. They are filled with the sort of knickknacks and odds and ends that stymie even the most type A people, which I most decidedly am not. After two months, I still cannot seem to find the time to tackle them. Where to put the twine, the extra furniture pads, the fifty-dollar collapsible picnic basket we have used once?
I do a preliminary search of Mark’s boxes. Old yearbooks from high school and college. Baseball trophies. Papers he wrote in law school.
But no answers to my gnawing questions.
No hint as to whom he might have been talking to last night.
In a far corner, I find a box marked Allie’s photo stuff. I sit down and pull out film-developing canisters, tongs, and plastic trays that I once slipped paper into and watched as images emerged bit by bit. All rendered obsolete in the digital age.
Mark suggested many times that I should let it all go, sell it on eBay. But I can’t.
Something flat sits at the bottom of the box. I hook one finger under the object and yank it out. In my hands, I hold a scrapbook, one I haven’t opened in more than sixteen years. I stare at the familiar, plain black cover, a bittersweet mixture of nostalgia and shame sweeping over me. I was sure I had thrown this out when we moved Sharon out of the Westport house.
The thick cover, coated with dust, resists as I turn it.
There he is—Paul Adamson.
The shrill sound of my cell phone ringing from downstairs startles me. I ignore it and turn back to the photo album.
Each stiff black page features one single photograph of Paul, as if he were the only person on earth. The photos are devoid of all other humans.
Madeline’s words come back to me. You used to spend hours in that darkroom blacking her out of all your photos.
She and I would spend afternoons skulking around the cobbled streets of the historic New England town where our school was located, I like a sharpshooter, armed with my camera, hunting my crush.
Then I’d head to the darkroom and excise anyone besides Paul who wound up in the frame of my photos. I remember the meticulous scissoring of card stock in the exact shape of Paul’s outline and placing it precisely over his image as I exposed the photographic paper for such a long period of time that everything else around him turned black.
Goodbye, students or colleagues he was talking with.
Goodbye, innocent bystanders.
Goodbye, wife.
I had created a universe in which no one but Paul existed. In which I could pretend he did not have a wife. After all, if she wasn’t in the pictures, maybe she didn’t really exist. Maybe he was all mine.
I shut the album. Where is Paul now? Could he be somewhere nearby? Is that him in the black Audi?
And why now, after all these years?
The phone rings again. This time, I get up to answer it. Somebody wants to reach me, and it might be important.
I’m able to make it to my cell in the kitchen before voice mail picks up.
“Hello?” I ask, slightly out of breath.
“This is Ms. Lippman from Eastbrook Elementary School,” a woman says. “Principal Flowers would like to see you.”
39
Cole lies curled up like a newborn kitten on the bench in the school’s main office.
I rush to him and kneel down. “Are you okay, sweetie?”
He throws his arms around me and buries his head in my neck. “I miss you. I hate school.” I breathe in his scent, lavender shampoo mixed with his tangy sweat.
“It’s all right, baby. I’m here now.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” he says in a tiny voice.
I pull back and look straight into his brown eyes, Mark’s eyes. “I believe you.”
Mark taps me on the shoulder, and I stand up.
A plump woman wearing a corduroy dress and bright red clogs introduces herself as Principal Flowers. She looks like a character on a kids’ PBS program from the seventies. “Mr. and Mrs. Ross? Please follow me.” Then she turns to a girl in braids who looks to be about ten, who is dropping off a folder of papers. “Gigi, could you please walk Cole back to Mrs. Liu’s class?”
Cole grabs the sleeve of my coat and shakes his head.
“It’s all right, honey.” But a part of me just wants to grab him and head home. I watch as, shoulders slumped, he shuffles out the door after Gigi. Mark and I follow Principal Flowers into her office, where she shuts the door and motions for us to sit. Plastic daisies, chrysanthemums, and sunflowers adorn the room—stuck to the wall, poking out of vases, attached to pens, staplers, every conceivable surface.
“People just give them to me,” she
says. “At least I don’t use my maiden name—Dix.” She guffaws at her own joke. Mark and I exchange a look. I place her in her fifties, the kind of woman who would rather bleed to death than be considered unpleasant. She reminds me of Susan in that way.
“So Cole was involved in an altercation today.” Her words have the cadence of a child’s rhyme.
“Let’s define altercation.” Mark’s voice cuts through her Kumbaya bubble like a sharp knife. I love him for it.
Flowers blinks twice before continuing. “In this particular case, it means your son cut off the ponytail of another child.”
“He what?” I look to Mark to see how he is taking this news, but he is staring straight ahead.
Flowers’s tiny, blinking eyes shift back and forth from Mark to me like one of those old-fashioned Kit-Cat clocks whose bulging eyes flit with every passing second. “He took a pair of scissors—a pair of adult scissors, I might add, which he must have taken from the teacher’s desk—and he cut off a fellow student’s ponytail.”
Mark remains as still as a statue. “And you know this how?” he asks.
“We know this, Mr. Ross, because the victim informed Ms. Liu what happened, and we found her severed ponytail in Cole’s backpack.”
Mark snickers. “I see. And we’re supposed to take this girl’s word for it?”
“Noooooo.” Principal Flowers stretches out the word, a sappy smile plastered on her face. “We don’t need to take her word for it. Cole has confessed.”
“Why would he cut off some girl’s ponytail?” I ask.
“Well, and this is not to excuse Cole’s behavior in any way,” the principal says. “But apparently, this other child had been picking on Cole.”
Mark shifts in his chair. “What do you mean, picking on him?”
Flowers offers up a toothy smile. “This is a tight-knit community. Word travels fast. Kids hear things, they see things. They don’t always understand what they’re seeing and hearing, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to process it or discuss it with other children.”
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