by Cate Holahan
As Chris has the wine covered, I move on to the fresh produce aisle. The crudité components are bestsellers and thus in a metal shelf at the front. Baby carrots, heads of broccoli, bell peppers, grape tomatoes. I grab all these along with some vegetable dip.
Chris pouts. “We’re not rabbits.”
“I need to lose five pounds.”
“You do not.” She leans back and assesses my figure. “You’re what? A size four?”
I pat my belly, rounded from the preparation for a nonexistent zygote.
She lowers her voice. “Being too thin makes it harder to conceive.”
I try not to bristle. Chris means well, though she’s under the mistaken impression that home remedies and old wives’ tales can cure infertility. Every time I see her, she’s gushing about a new vitamin supplement or sex position that some questionable study has linked to improved conception rates.
“What are you in the mood to eat?”
Chris places a bright radish into my cart. “For your salad.” She pinches my waist. “I’m relieved that you’re here. Honestly, I couldn’t have made it through another dinner alone with my parents.” She tilts her head toward her basket. “My mother’s antiquated dating advice demands too much medication.”
I wince for her. “What’s her latest suggestion?”
“Christian Mingle.”
I snort and continue to the fresh fish display. “Doesn’t she know you’re looking for a Jewish doctor?”
Chris elbows me in the side. “Anything other than a Scots-Irish prosecutor from Pennsylvania. Come to think of it? No lawyers at all. George has poisoned the well.” She turns her attention to the glass-eyed whole fish in the display. “How is David?”
I shrug. “He ditched our romantic weekend.”
“Well, people can’t be romantic all the time.” She elbows my side. “Lest we forget, you had the lighthouse.”
Tears burn behind my eyes, no doubt triggered by the hormones. I force a laugh, as though they’re fueled by mirth rather than melancholy. “That was a while ago.”
I could never forget the lighthouse.
*
Montauk is home to the oldest lighthouse in New York State, a pristine white cylinder sitting on a bluff overlooking the Block Island Sound, surrounded by scraggly sea grasses and sheared rocks. Chris and I would hitchhike to it as teenagers, grabbing rides from the young moneyed set who rolled into town every summer with their foreign sports cars and January bank bonuses. Someone was always happy to give a couple of jailbait locals a ride to a secluded state park, especially if you hinted that the Atlantic Ocean wouldn’t be the best part of the view. I loved it there. For ten dollars and a pair of burning thighs, I could press my nose to the glass in the lantern room and watch the ocean stretch to the horizon before falling off the edge of the world. After my father left, I would imagine that’s what had happened to him. The cartographers had lied. The world was flat and he’d gone over.
Chris must have told David it was my favorite place. One winter break, long after the summer crowds had abandoned their beach houses, he asked if I wanted to go for a drive. He had this cherry-red Ford F-150 that his dad had gifted him for high school graduation. David wasn’t a pickup type of guy, but the bed of the vehicle had been big enough to cart all his belongings from Texas to Manhattan. I think he loved that truck for that. It had let him leave without a trace.
I climbed into the cab without any idea where we were going except that it would be colder than the city. David had told me to wear gloves and my down jacket, the one I thought made me look like a roll of Rapid Fill packaging. He’d put on a black ski jacket and cargo pants. The pants should have tipped me off—he’d needed pockets.
We drove for three hours listening to Sigur Rós’s lead singer wail in his unique mix of Icelandic scat, the voice drifting in and out of the piano riffs like a warm wind, each too nervous to interrupt much. By the time we arrived at the lighthouse, it was well past midnight. I’d never seen the park after dark. The building and grounds closed at sunset, and the park rangers policed it strictly in the summer. Without a car, I’d never been able to come past high season.
Millions of stars speckled the sky. They stretched across the landscape in glowing waves, an endless school of phosphorescent algae swirling in a black ocean. Looking through the truck’s moonroof, I could understand how ancient explorers had navigated at night and named constellations after animals. Finally, there were enough pinpoints of light to trace the lines.
David asked that I stay inside the truck while he took things out of the bed. I listened to him banging around the back, trying to guess the reason for this whole surprise trip by the flashes of him in the headlights with bulky items tucked beneath his arms. I waited with the heater on full blast until he tapped the passenger window with the butt of a flashlight. He grasped my hand and led me over the snow-dusted grasses to a narrow strip of sand. There on the rocky beach, he’d laid out a plaid blanket. Massive hurricane lanterns weighed down the corners, each containing glowing candles. At the edge of the blanket, there was a basket with wine and a pyre of driftwood.
The wind ripped through my coat. David noticed my shivering and hurried us over to the woodpile. From one of his bulky pants pockets, he produced a lighter. Newspaper beneath the logs immediately glowed red and yellow. David wrapped his arms around me as we waited for the driftwood to catch.
I’d never seen anything so beautiful. The red and yellow flames from the paper gave way to an electric blue with purple tips. Driftwood, David explained, burns differently than white oak or pine. Something about being soaked in salt water gives the flame electric colors.
“Did you learn that in Boy Scouts?” I asked.
“A friend taught me in high school,” he said. “He called them rainbow fires.”
“They look like flowers.”
David proposed that evening. I needed to remove a glove to put on the ring, and my hand didn’t fit back inside with it on. But I didn’t care. After saying yes, all I wanted to do was lean into my future husband and watch my diamond sparkle in the purple flames beneath the stars.
*
Chris snaps her fingers in front of my face, calling me out of my daydream. She knows that I didn’t hear her continued condemnation of her mother’s antiquated dating advice because I also haven’t noticed the fishmonger in front of us. They’re both pointing to a deep-pink salmon with narrow bands of white fat between the meat. Wild caught. Expensive. Delicious, especially when grilled with a hint of lemon.
“That looks great,” I say.
She taps the glass. “My treat. The last client loved the living room so much, she hired me to finish the entire house. God, what they pay! I wonder why I ever was a journalist.”
“You thought you had a higher calling.”
“Hell with that.”
“The house is the one on Washington Drive, right?”
“Giant pool. Overlooking the beach. Hedge fund guy.”
Chris explains to the fishmonger that she wants a pound of the wild Alaskan and “not the tail piece.” He cuts and weighs it on a flat scale facing us, then waits for Chris to give him the go-ahead when it comes up a few ounces heavy. As he folds white paper over it, I ask if Mr. Hedge Fund and his wife have any single friends.
“He’s much older. I doubt it.” She winks. “But hey, what about David?”
The hairs stand up on my arms as though my body has just noticed that the seafood aisle is several degrees colder than the front of the store. “What do you mean?”
“Any law school buddies as hot as Nick?”
I remember the photos on the missing poster. What does David hope to accomplish by tacking those along the river? He can’t honestly think that someone is going to pass by a flier and think, Hey, I know that guy. He’s been begging on a street corner, telling everyone he can’t remember his name. Is he hoping that someone will come forward with information about where Nick might have been that night? Where his body might
be? Is he simply trying to seem helpful to police so they’ll work the case harder?
“Ranking Dave’s friends one through ten?” Chris teases. “I’ll take seven or above.”
“No. I . . .” My skin itches as though I’ve seen a bug crawling on someone nearby. “Nick was the only really handsome one.”
Chris slams her palm against her forehead. “Shit. I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry. I forgot. I mean, I didn’t forget, I know he’s missing. I didn’t think before I spoke.”
The grocer interrupts with the wrapped fish and an instruction to have a wonderful evening. I thank him as Chris places the salmon atop her wine collection. “Maybe that’s why I can’t get a man,” she says as soon as the grocer is out of earshot. “Foot-in-mouth disease.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. I forget he’s gone sometimes too.” It’s a lie. David won’t let me forget Nick for a second.
“Such a shame.” Chris looks into her basket of bottles, probably wishing she could uncork one of them in the store. “I’d hoped maybe one day . . .” She laughs. “But I wasn’t Nick’s type.”
I think back to his last girlfriend. She’d had a blonde pixie cut that had accentuated her big blue eyes but made her square jaw appear even more masculine. I remember telling David that she couldn’t quite pull off the Linda Evangelista look. He said I was being catty.
“Ugh. I hate being single. Every man pushing forty is still fishing in the fry pond. I should have lined up my next relationship in my twenties, when I was still married. If only I’d known.” She looks up at the store’s paneled ceiling. “Whoever said ‘cheaters never prosper’ didn’t date.”
For a moment, I think she might cry. There’s little I can offer for solace. Truth is, the real world isn’t fair. George, the philandering husband, got the girl, while my friend had to explain to her daughter why Daddy and Mommy “grew apart.” The faithful often find themselves blindsided. They don’t suspect anything because they can’t imagine doing something so awful themselves.
I drape my free arm over her shoulders. “Oh, Chris. If only life was one of my novels. George wouldn’t have survived the second act.”
Chapter 5
Dr. Williams opens the door as I’m wheeling the stroller down his narrow hallway. Seeing the bassinet shade pulled all the way down, he holds up a finger and ducks back into the room. He must hit a dimmer switch. When he welcomes me inside, the office is the shade of an unlit room on a cloudy day.
He settles on his chair and gestures to the couch. “How are you?”
It sounds as though he cares. I blame the mild accent. The way his intonation rises and falls with every other syllable causes him to stress the word “you,” as though the fact of my existence is particularly important. Dr. Williams’s body language also helps: head cocked, tilted so his ear is inclined toward me.
My butt lands on the leather couch. I pull the carriage protectively in front of my legs. “As well as can be expected, I guess.”
“Three days ago, you hadn’t confronted your husband. Has that changed?”
The answer is humiliating. I examine the pattern on the rug beneath his feet. It’s a busy oriental style with rings of red-and-beige flowers, something that belongs beneath grandma’s dining table. It doesn’t fit with the minimalist decor.
His suede oxfords shift. The hem of his khaki pants hits his ankles, showing a sliver of brown leg. He’s paired a striped white shirt with the slacks today. Fine blue lines trace the curve of his pectorals. His chest rises and falls slowly, as though the good doctor is deliberately smoothing out his breathing.
“I tried,” I say. “I kind of set it up so that I might catch him in the act. But it didn’t work out.”
“He might lie even if you catch him red-handed. People often continue to be untruthful in the face of overwhelming evidence. They’ll lie to themselves, convince themselves that they didn’t do anything really wrong . . .”
He trails off, and for a brief moment, his pupils follow suit. Breaking eye contact isn’t something shrinks really do. I consider that he’s tired of listening to women wailing over their husbands’ affairs. I’m tired of doing it.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about Jake. I don’t even want to look at him. Every time he’s come home this week, I’ve pretended to be tired and gone into my room with Vicky.” I run my hands through my hair. The strands feel slimy. When was the last time I washed and blow-dried? When was my last shower? What must this man think of me? “I can’t. I . . . I’ll talk about anything else.”
“All right, then.” He smiles. “Let’s talk about you. Why do you think confronting him is so difficult?”
The question stings. It suggests that I am doing something abnormal. Does he think accusing a spouse of sleeping around is easy? That it won’t be crushing to hear the man I love admit that he is bored with me, that he wanted something more than I could provide? I try to quench my building anger by looking at my baby. Vicky’s pupils move behind her thin eyelids. There’s a red splotch on one, a broken blood vessel from birth. I’m good at recognizing when a thin vein has burst under the skin. Growing up, my skin was dotted with finger-sized red blotches.
I feel Dr. Williams staring, urging me to speak. The leather couch is tufted. I poke at the button hole nearest my thigh, looking for lint. An agonizing minute passes. Isn’t he supposed to be giving me practical advice to make me feel better?
“Do you think confrontation is difficult for you in general?”
I meet his gaze, letting my smirk convey the simmering fury. Confrontation is not difficult for me. I’d just rather go into it with all the necessary ammunition. “No. I don’t.”
“When you were younger, did you find it easy to speak up for yourself? To talk to your dad?”
“This is when I’m supposed to tell you about my childhood damage, huh?”
“Well, yes, if you think your childhood is a reason that you’re reluctant to talk to your husband.”
“Aren’t childhood patterns the reason we do everything?”
“Sometimes people do things as adults because they’re repeating models with which they’ve become accustomed.” He leans back in his chair with a shrug as if nothing I say will bother him. “We humans are a strange lot. We tend to prefer familiarity and predictability over nearly everything. We repeat what we’ve seen, even when we know it’s a mistake.”
He gives me a weak smile, a peace offering. The look robs me of my rage. I mimic his shrug. “My father was an alcoholic with a temper,” I sigh. “But that’s not Jake.”
“What is Jake?”
I remember him when we’d first started trying for a baby. Doting on me. Always asking if I needed anything, if the hormones were making me sick, fixing a water-and-toast breakfast on the days when the smell of everything made me hurl. Preparing pancakes on the better mornings. I don’t know what Jake is.
A tear tumbles down my cheek. I swat at it like a mosquito has landed on my face and then resume picking the lint from the tufted couch. Again, the white tissue materializes out of nowhere, the dove up the doctor’s sleeve. I hate that he is so prepared for me weeping.
“This is really humiliating, you know? I mean, I don’t even know your first name and I’m confessing all my secrets.”
His sympathetic grimace morphs into surprise. “I apologize. I thought you would have seen it on the website—”
“No. Jake booked you. I only see the T. abbreviation on your plaque.”
“Geez. I’m . . .” He shakes his head, admonishing himself. “Tyler. It’s Tyler.”
The tissue still hangs between his fingers. I take it. “Beth.” I manage a little puff of air out my nostrils. “We have to stop meeting like this, Tyler.”
A cry sounds from the basinet. I peer inside and see Vicky’s dark-blue blinking eyes. Her mouth opens with a kitten’s yowl. She pulls her chin in toward her neck and screws up her face. A sound, air slowly escaping a balloon, comes from the carriage. Someone is pooping. I lau
gh. “Sounds like time’s up.”
Tyler glances at the clock. Technically, our session can go another fifteen minutes, but I doubt he wants me changing a diaper in his office. “Do you want next Wednesday again? Same time? Wednesdays and Fridays?”
Two meetings and all I’ve managed to do is mortify myself in front of a painfully handsome person. Where’s the value in that? I stand beside Vicky’s stroller and flip the handheld break lock. “I’m sorry. Thank you for talking to me. But it’s not helping.”
He grimaces.
I instantly hate myself. The stress of Jake’s affair has afflicted me with foot-in-mouth disease. I’ve become incapable of tact. “It’s not you. I’m sure you’re a very good psychiatrist. I just have to talk to Jake.”
His full mouth parts, as though he’s about to protest. Something about the way I’m avoiding eye contact—or perhaps the increasing volume of Vicky’s tooting—stops him. He nods, stands, and extends his hand.
“I understand that you feel that way right now. I’m here if you change your mind.” His grasp is strong and warm. This is the first thing he’s done to make me feel better.
“Good luck, Beth.”
“Thank you, Tyler. I’ll need it.”
LIZA
Fresh fish doesn’t smell. The fragrance wafting from the grill is all citrus and salt. I shut off the gas and don my mother’s ancient paisley oven mitts to cart the foil-wrapped salmon to the deck table. Chris sits on a cushioned stool beside an uncorked bottle of Pinot. We already polished off the prosecco, though I cut my two glasses with orange juice and she drank her two straight.
She pushes a carrot into the veggie dip and then wags it at me like a slimed finger. “Can you believe that? I ‘made him do it.’ Oh, I ‘only care about Emma.’ Well, maybe I wouldn’t have needed to focus so much on our child if that bitch had done her job and not been busy bedding her boss. The audacity, right? Telling me that I’m too busy with our kid when he’s been fucking her sitter.”
I’ve heard Chris recount this conversation before. It’s her favorite story to share when she drinks, though not because she relishes the telling of it. Dr. Sally once told me that the mind has two ways of dealing with trauma. One is to bury it deep within the subconscious, building up walls of gray matter so thick that our waking brain never senses the event itself, though it dictates our knee-jerk reactions. The second way is to fixate on the injury, burning every detail into our mind in an effort to avoid similar circumstances in the future. Chris’s brain has done the latter with the final argument of her marriage. She never wants to have it again, so she can’t help but repeat it.