The Arrangement

by Sarah Dunn

  “Yes, it was pretty gross!” said Wyatt into the phone now. “Yes, it was super-gross and very bloody!

  “Okay, I’ll get him for you.”

  Wyatt bouncy-tiptoed over to the kitchen table and handed Owen the phone. “Izzy wants to talk to you,” Wyatt said to his dad. “She says it’s very important. Very, very important.”

  Owen took the phone from Wyatt and immediately powered it down. Lucy stared at her husband, completely enraged.

  “Have you been spending time with this person with our son?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then how does he know who she is?”

  Owen took a deep breath. “He met her in the grocery store once. A long time ago. Before anything even happened between us. You know how good his memory is. And Izzy is an unusual name.”

  “So you knew Izzy before we started everything?”

  “No! Absolutely not. I happened to meet her early on, but after we started this. I swear. And then I met her again in the grocery store, and Wyatt was with me. That’s it. That’s the whole story.”

  “And then you just started having sex with her? No, stop, don’t tell me.”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” said Owen.

  “I don’t want to know anything.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, the offer stands. And I think it would be best to stop it all right now.”

  “You’re free to do what you want, Owen.”

  “I’d like us both to stop it.”

  “You want me to stop it, you mean.”

  “I want it to be over. The Arrangement. Fight Club. All of it.”

  “What do you think I’m doing, exactly?” Lucy asked. “I’m curious.”

  “I have no idea. Probably nothing. I just want to end this whole thing now before things get any more out of hand.”

  “I see,” said Lucy. “So I should stop doing ‘probably nothing’ because you picked a girlfriend who is unstable and erratic and more trouble than she’s worth.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. She never was my girlfriend.”

  “Is this all the same person? Is Izzy the air-conditioner cat-hair lady? Or is she somebody new?”

  “She’s the air-conditioner cat-hair lady.”

  “You two have been at this for quite a while, wouldn’t you say?”

  “This, this thing, is not anything. And it’s over,” said Owen.

  “She doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “It’s because I’ve stopped responding to her texts. She knows it’s over, I’ve told her it’s over, but she won’t get the message and I don’t know what to do.”

  “I really don’t feel like giving you dating advice, Owen.”

  “I’m not asking for—I’m just telling you that this is the situation.”

  “We both realized a lot of things could happen. Maybe there’s a reason I don’t want to quit early.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe something happened,” Lucy said.

  “Wait, what?” Owen asked. He looked genuinely confused. Like the conversation had taken a left turn somewhere back when he wasn’t paying close attention, and now he was heading down a road he didn’t want to be on.

  “I don’t know, Owen,” Lucy said, her voice filled with disgust. She climbed up the stairs and said, “Maybe. Something. Happened.”

  What the hell happened?

  Of course something happened. What had he thought? That Lucy wouldn’t do anything? That was insane! She was a very attractive woman! And she had come up with the idea, now that he thought about it. Maybe she had tricked him! Maybe she’d had someone waiting in the wings!

  The truth was, Owen had sort of thought that she wouldn’t do anything. And now he was sure something had happened between Lucy and somebody.

  But who?

  An old boyfriend? Some guy in her French class? One of the husbands up here? Larry the handyman? Some dude she met online? The whole thing was harder for him to imagine than it should have been. He wished she hadn’t said anything. There was a part of him that had thought the Arrangement should follow the script of the wives who say, “If you cheat on me, don’t tell me. Don’t try to clear your conscience by confessing. I don’t want to know. Ever.” Weren’t there women like that? Women who said things like that, casually, dropped into a conversation on a car ride while the kids had their headphones on in the back?

  He didn’t like it. That was for sure. But he would let Lucy have her little bit of whatever it was with whoever he was and run out the clock. Never ask about it and never acknowledge it.

  That was his plan.

  * * *

  Two days after her surgery, as Kelly drifted in a narcotic daze, Gordon clutched a glass of Laphroaig eighteen-year-old scotch—delivered without a whisper—and watched a freighter loaded with cargo cut through the chop of the East River. Shipping, he thought. High risk, but still…

  Gordon’s reverie was interrupted by a doctor poking his head into the room, followed by the rest of him. To Gordon, he looked about twenty. And Indian, which Gordon liked. He’d heard they sent their smartest students over here to become doctors, and the best and brightest of them never went back.

  “How are we feeling!” the doctor chirped to the very obviously zonked-out Kelly, half her face wrapped in bandages, the other half bruised beyond recognition, as he flipped open her chart.

  “She’s a little out of it,” said Gordon.

  “Yes, well, that’s to be expected.”

  “How does it look?” Gordon asked, setting aside his glass of scotch out of a sense of decorum.

  “We got some tests back,” the doctor said. He flipped through the chart with an inscrutable look on his small brown face. “Well, um, this is not what I was hoping to see.”

  “Say more,” said Gordon.

  “It looks like she’s going to lose it.”

  “What do you mean?” Gordon asked. “She’s going to lose her sight?”

  “Well, yes, on that side,” the doctor said. “She’ll have some trouble with depth perception, possibly get headaches while her brain adjusts to the new reality.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Gordon. “A few headaches.”

  “And also the eye.”

  “What’s that, now?”

  “The eye,” the doctor repeated. “Ball. She’s going to lose the eyeball.”

  Years later, looking back, Gordon could never be sure who had first noticed Kelly was awake.

  What he remembered perfectly was the whoosh of the Baccarat vase missing his face by mere inches, and then Kelly’s voice, clear as a bell, saying, “I want a divorce!”

  Twenty

  The idea that one’s marriage should be a primary arena for self-actualization can be profoundly destabilizing. The truth is that growing while married often means growing apart.

  —Constance Waverly

  The Eros Manifesto

  Three days after the Death of Fat Black, Owen and Lucy received an e-mail from Gordon Allen’s attorney. He arranged to meet them at their house while Wyatt was off at school late the following week in order to discuss “the events that transpired inside the church.”

  “What does he mean by that, ‘the events that transpired inside the church’?” Lucy said to Owen. “Gordon Allen’s Doberman killed our son’s chicken. Is he going to try to turn this into our fault?”

  “I think that’s just the way lawyers write e-mails.”

  The attorney introduced himself as Hugh Willix—Lucy remembered him from the school-board meeting; he had a very distinctive look, bald and birdlike, with a razor-sharp nose—and he accepted Lucy’s offer of a cup of coffee and complimented them on their lovely home and asked about their experience with the local school system and basically chatted for a good ten minutes like this was a purely social visit.

  It wasn’t until Lucy topped off his cup of coffee that he brought things around to the matter at hand.

  “I’m guessing you two realiz
e why I asked to meet with you,” he said. “Gordon Allen is very upset about what happened at the church. He wasn’t there, as you know, and his son Rocco was in the charge of his nanny, but Gordon is very concerned about what took place and he would like to offer you compensation for the, uh, chicken and for any and all emotional toll that might, either now or at some unforeseen time in the future, spring from the events in question.

  “Perhaps an education fund for your son,” he continued. “Or a trust to make sure he is taken care of in the event you are no longer able to care for him. Even some money to make your lives easier. I understand, and I hope I’m not out of line by mentioning this, well, I understand Wyatt has some special needs. Mr. Allen is truly sorry for what transpired in that church, and he wants to make sure your family and your son are well taken care of.”

  “We’re not going to sue Gordon Allen,” said Owen. “We’re not those people.”

  “See, I appreciate that. And Mr. Allen appreciates that. But here’s the problem. I’m an attorney. I get paid to worry. Right? That’s what I do. I worry, I wake up in the middle of the night worrying, and in order to stop worrying, I have to do things a certain way to protect my clients. I have to dot my i’s and cross my t’s. And if I just walk away now, and we all agree nobody is suing anybody, and everything is fine, I will have to worry about this for the next forty years or so. I’m kindly asking you to save me from that.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Lucy.

  “I want you to take a few days, a few weeks, even, talk about it with each other, and think about what you want. Mr. Allen is in a unique position to be generous, and he is deeply saddened by any distress he has caused your family and your son.”

  This is my blank check, Lucy thought.

  It could all be so easy. Life had been so hard for so long, and now she could feel the tide turning, and she was floating on a raft down a stream with the sun on her face. She could feel problems falling down in front of her like dominoes, and this one, the last one, how to make it all work, had, by some miracle, been solved.

  “Here’s my card if you have any questions or concerns,” he said on his way out the door. “And I’ll get in touch with you before too long. Just give it some thought.”

  Later that night, after dinner, Lucy was loading the dishwasher when she said quietly, “I don’t want to say no to the money.”

  “What?” said Owen. He looked up from his laptop. “You mean Gordon Allen’s money? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious. I’m very serious.”

  “It was a chicken, Lucy.”

  “It might have been traumatic for Wyatt,” she said. “We don’t know if it was or not. There’s no way to tell for sure.”

  Just then, Wyatt hurried down the stairs pulling his six-foot-long stuffed boa constrictor behind him like a tail. He walked through the kitchen on the balls of his feet.

  “Heels down, Wyatt,” said Lucy.

  Wyatt put his heels down for two steps and then unthinkingly resumed his toe-walking into the playroom.

  “Do you want to be that kind of people?”

  “What kind of people, Owen? Rich, lucky people? Yes. Yes, I do want to be those people, Owen. I’m tired of everything being so hard.”

  “You want this to be the story of your life?” said Owen. “That you sued a billionaire over something that was truly nobody’s fault? I mean it, Lucy, have a little integrity.”

  “We don’t have to sue anyone,” said Lucy. “You heard him. He’ll give us whatever we want.”

  * * *

  Owen went into the downstairs bathroom with his cell phone.

  He sat down on the toilet and powered it on. Ninety-eight texts, all from Izzy.

  He scrolled through, not really reading them. This was not going to be easy, it seemed. No matter what he did, Izzy would not stop with the texting. It was getting to be a problem. He thought about changing his number. He really didn’t want to, his entire work life was tied to that phone number, but it was starting to look like it might be his only option.

  A slew of new texts started popping up on his screen while he was scrolling.

  I know you’re getting these

  I can see you reading them

  You’re sitting on the fucking toilet

  Come outside, please

  I’d rather not have to knock on your door

  I’m going to knock on the door in three minutes, Owen.

  Owen quickly fired off a text that said, Can we do this later? At your place?

  No.

  Now.

  Two minutes till I knock.

  Owen walked into the kitchen and told Lucy he had to go outside for a bit.

  “How come?” she asked.

  “There’s, um, kind of a situation I have to deal with.”

  Lucy just stared at him. “Is she here, Owen? Is she on our property? That is not okay. Tell her I’m going to call the police. No, actually, let me tell her.”

  “Let me handle it.”

  “You’re not handling this well, Owen. You seem to have lost control of things,” said Lucy.

  “I’m taking care of it,” he said. “That’s what I’m going outside to do.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Lucy.

  “Neither do I,” said Owen. “But do not call the police.”

  Owen slipped on his jacket and opened the door. Izzy was standing in the backyard, next to the trampoline, in the dark.

  “Izzy, this is not cool,” he said. “This is really not okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Owen. I just really needed to talk to you.”

  “No, Izzy. It doesn’t work this way. You can’t do this. You have to leave, now.”

  “I have cancer,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I have cervical cancer,” she said. “I went to the doctor today like you told me to.”

  “You don’t have cancer. You have to wait for the results of the test. I know how this stuff works.”

  “They could see it, Owen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They could see it.”

  “What. What could they see?”

  “The cancer! It’s, like, bad. Bad, bad. There was a medical student in there, this sweet Japanese girl, and she fainted.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She looked at my cervix and she fainted.”

  “She’s a student. That doesn’t mean anything, Izzy.”

  “It’s the worst my doctor has ever seen.”

  “Your doctor actually said those exact words?”

  “Yes. And she started crying. And she got mad at me for skipping my Pap smears. She said her office had figured I’d moved out of state or something when I never returned their calls.”

  “Oh my God, Izzy. I’m so sorry.”

  “Damn you, Owen,” Izzy said. She hit him on the chest.

  “What?” Owen said. He was genuinely confused.

  “I wish I didn’t know.”

  “I’ll help you through this,” said Owen. “I’ll help you get through this.”

  “I wish I didn’t know.”

  “It’s better to know. They can do something.”

  “They could see it,” said Izzy. “They can’t do something about it when you can see it.”

  * * *

  Lucy watched the whole thing. She stood at the kitchen sink with a glass of wine in her hand and stared at them through the window the entire time. She knew Izzy and Owen both saw her staring at them, glowing in the lit-up kitchen window, and that’s the way she wanted it.

  Izzy’s hair was in a real crazy-lady ponytail, sticking out of the very top of her head. She was wearing tight ripped jeans and a turtleneck sweater and a puffy silver vest.

  She pounded him on the chest with both hands. He didn’t kiss her or even try to touch her. She started to cry. She hit him some more.

  I’m watching my husband break up with another woman, Lucy thought, taking a big sip of wine. That�
�s what this is.

  Lucy didn’t notice when Wyatt dragged his stuffed snake out of the playroom and pulled it silently through the kitchen behind her. He spotted a set of red Mardi Gras beads on the floor and immediately forgot about whatever he had planned for the snake, dropping it in the middle of the floor.

  He took the beads over to the bay window where he liked to do his bead flicking.

  “Izzy and Owen!”

  Oh, shit, Lucy thought. She looked over at Wyatt, who was smiling a big smile, staring out the window at the scene, and shaking his beads more and more furiously.

  “Izzy and Owen!” Wyatt said again. “Izzy and Owen! Izzy and Owen! Izzy and Owen!”

  “I don’t believe her,” said Lucy.

  “Lucy.”

  “I don’t. I think she is lying.”

  Wyatt was upstairs in bed with the iPad, watching God knows what. Owen and Lucy were in the living room, fighting.

  “I don’t think people lie about cancer,” said Owen.

  “People lie about cancer all the time. Especially crazy ones.”

  “Lucy—”

  “I don’t believe her. I’m sorry. You picked a crazy woman who lives in our town, you introduced her to our son, and you made it virtually impossible for us to keep any of this a secret from the people that we know. So, no, I don’t think she has cancer. I think she’s lying so she can keep you in her life. Which is fine with me. You’ve got a few more months, and if you want to spend your time shuttling that nutjob to imaginary chemotherapy appointments, be my guest.”

  “You sound like a horrible person right now, Lucy. Honestly, do you hear yourself?”

  “I don’t believe she has cancer, Owen! I think she’s making it up!”

  “She’s not making it up.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “I know she hadn’t been to the doctor in years, and I made her go, I told her I wouldn’t see her again until she went. It’s not like she just showed up and said she had cancer. There are parts of this you don’t know.”