* * *
—
For the next hour, I followed the inspector—Tony—as he methodically deconstructed my childhood home. “This roof’s a sieve,” he declared, pointing at water stains with his flashlight. “And look at the seal on your chimney. Rotted away. That’s how come the birds got in.”
“Birds?”
He swept the floor with the light. Droppings were everywhere.
“See that?” We were in the second-floor bathroom. Tony pointed at a dark patch on the ceiling next to the shower.
“That’s dirt,” I said. “The house hasn’t been occupied in a while.”
“Lady, that’s black mold.”
I shrank away. “You mean, the really bad kind?”
“Toxic as all get-out.” He clambered onto the toilet and scraped a sample into a vial.
There was rot under the floorboards. Cracks in the foundation that Tony could put his hand through, and did (the guy had a real flair for the dramatic). A decaying party wall. The mother of all rat warrens in the backyard. Oh, and a problem with our sewer connection.
We didn’t have one.
The beam from his flashlight flickered across the unholy mess in the basement. “I gotta bring the guys over to see this,” Tony murmured. “It’s like something outta Game of Thrones.”
We returned to the stoop, and I tried to summon a bit of my litigator’s spirit. “Why wasn’t I notified you were coming? Who told you to snoop around on my property?”
“Somebody called it in.” Tony was scribbling on his clipboard. “They call it in, I gotta come and inspect.”
I glanced at the perfect brownstone next door. That hipster was behind this, no doubt. I’d deal with him later.
I made a final plea to Tony. “I’m renovating. It’s going to be good as new in no time.”
“Yeah?” He snorted. “Best of luck with that.”
I returned to the car. Kate craned her neck to watch as Tony affixed a red sticker to the front door. The words UNSAFE AREA screamed out in 48-point type. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means the property has been condemned.”
The girls gaped at me, horrified. I couldn’t blame them. My fury had blinded me to the house’s problems when we moved in. But at some point, clarity should have prevailed—enough at least for me to notice that I’d dragged my daughters out of their safe, comfortable home into a toxic, vermin-infested cesspool.
What was I doing?
“Jorge, will you please take us to the Marriott on Sixth Avenue?”
“You bet, Miz Moore.”
Maisie stared out the window as the car pulled away. “I can’t believe you made us live in a condemned house.”
“It wasn’t condemned when we moved in,” Kate pointed out.
“Way to miss the point, genius.”
They began squabbling. I sank back into the seat and closed my eyes.
ELEVEN
At four the next morning, Sarah opened her front door.
“Careful,” she warned me. “You’re using up all the punches on your crazy card.”
“Can I please come in?”
She glanced behind her, up the stairs. “This really isn’t a good time.”
“I promise I won’t wake the kids. I need your help.”
Reluctantly, she stepped back. I headed for the kitchen, flipping the light switch. “How about some chai?”
She slumped into a chair. “This is a nightmare. I’m like a woman in one of those Lifetime movies, held hostage in her own home.”
I made two mugs of tea and sat down across from her. “On Wednesday, you told me that Aaron was typical. That every guy is the kind who cheats. Is that true?”
“I can’t believe that’s why you’re here.” She rubbed her sleepy face with both hands. “But yes. Not every guy, but many. Many, many guys.”
“Many?”
Sarah tasted her chai, grimaced and reached for the sugar. “Look around, Raney. Tad. My father. Half the partners at your firm. Remember Tom Kratchovil, from Con Law? He left his wife for his secretary. Jasmine, from my moms group? Her husband hooked up with a college friend via Facebook. Here’s one you haven’t heard yet. Remember Heidi Frota? Sat in the front row of our Civil Procedure class?”
“Heidi Frota,” I said. “Heidi Frota.”
“Tinyface.”
“Oh, Heidi Frota! Of course. She married the skinny guy who was always cold.”
“They’re divorced now,” Sarah said. “She caught Scarfy screwing around right after she gave birth.”
“Scarfy didn’t seem like the type.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Nobody seems like the type, because there is no type. Still, Scarfy took it to another level. He fucked her lactation consultant.”
“What?”
“Scarfy,” she paused dramatically, “had sexual intercourse,” pause, “with Tinyface’s lactation consultant.”
“Ouch,” I said.
She sipped her tea. “Ouch doesn’t begin to cover that shit.”
“Okay, I get it. Men are pigs.”
“Women, too.”
“Not as often.”
“I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head. My neighbor Vanita got drunk at a conference last year and went to bed with her boss. Fiona from my moms group hooked up with a man she met on the Internet. They spend an afternoon at a Midtown hotel every week.”
“What is going on with your moms group?”
Sarah reached across the table and flicked me in the head. “My point, Raney, is that people cheat. Not just men.”
At that moment a tall man wearing only boxer shorts and a pair of black-framed eyeglasses wandered in from the hallway. He bent down and kissed the top of Sarah’s head.
“Holla, ladies. What’re we drinking?”
“Who are you?” I said.
He gave me a sunny smile. “I’m Clem!”
“Are you the Latvian?”
“Nope.”
“The automotive engineer?”
He reached out and tousled Sarah’s hair. “Somebody’s been busy!”
She smiled up at him. “Wait for me upstairs, okay?”
“You bet.” He shuffled back down the hall.
I was astounded. “Are the kids here?”
“Of course not! They’re with Tad.”
“Right,” I said. “Sorry. So, about what you said. Cheating requires opportunity. Does that mean Aaron was enticed? That he wouldn’t have done it, but she—”
“Raney,” Sarah said.
“What?”
“Stop.”
Her eyes were as kind as ever, but her voice was firm. I drooped a little.
“I want to be here for you,” she continued. “When I was going through this shit, you were my rock. But honey? You don’t make it easy.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I confessed.
Sarah gave my arm a comforting little shake. “Here’s the good news. Nobody expects you to know. And nobody expects you to do anything. When really bad things happen, most of us lie on the floor and cry and eat too much ice cream. And we talk, Raney. We share what we’re feeling. You’re rushing around asking questions and working yourself up, when maybe you should take a deep breath and just…be. It’s okay to sit and be sad. It’s okay to be mortal.”
I gazed into my mug. Be normal. Be mortal. Good advice, no doubt. But I wasn’t sure I knew how.
* * *
—
Eight hours later, I left a meeting on the forty-eighth floor and took the stairs back to my office. When I walked into the suite, Renfield was on the phone. She waved. She pointed at my doorway. She scowled. I sidled up and peeked in.
Aaron was sitting on the sofa, reading a book.
&nbs
p; He turned a page. The light from the window shone on his dark hair. I pulled back. I hazarded another glance. He checked his watch, then returned to his book.
Most of the time, Aaron loses himself in books, quickly becoming oblivious to the world around him. Not that day. Every few seconds he would look up, check his phone, cock his head to listen to the sounds of the outer office. Then he’d sigh, shift in his seat and start over.
I watched him prop his elbow on the arm of the sofa. Rest his chin in his hand. Drum the fingers of his other hand on the page.
I watched him for a long time. Then I backed out and left the suite.
* * *
—
My next appointment with Bogard wasn’t until Monday. I rushed to his office anyway. His afternoon was booked. I could see from Tilda’s face there would be no appeal.
I scanned the waiting room. The only other occupant was a wan, stringy kid slouched in a chair, scratching his throat slowly, deliberately. Possibly pathologically. I sat down.
Ten minutes later, I was sitting down across from Doctor Bogard.
“I have a situation,” I said.
“And I have a sudden cancellation.” His eyes narrowed. “Go figure.”
I remained silent. The check I’d written to the scrawny neck-scratcher was either going to be the best five hundred dollars I’d ever spent, or the worst.
Bogard relented. “Spit it out.”
“I love my husband,” I said.
He nodded.
“What’s with the nod?”
“I thought that might be the case.”
“You did? That’s nice. If you have any other major insights into my psyche, Doctor, don’t be shy. Sharing is caring.”
He waved a weary hand. “Talk.”
“I walked into my office about twenty minutes ago, and there he was. He didn’t see me. I was able to look at him without interference. And by ‘interference,’ I mean not from him, but from me. From my brain, and my anger, and my hurt. I simply…looked.
“And it hit me. I love him. He’s a good person, Doctor. So much better than I am. Kinder, more patient, more open to the world. He’s funny, generous, endlessly curious. I love his rambling e-mails. I love how good he is with Kate and Maisie. I love how good he is with me. I love him. And I don’t know how to stop.”
Bogard digested this for a moment. “Your plan for getting rid of him. That involved, what? Gathering information.”
“Pestering people,” I admitted.
“You said you needed to understand why it had happened. You talked to everyone but Aaron. Asked everyone but Aaron.”
As soon as he said that, I knew.
“I didn’t ask him because I didn’t really want to know.”
“Ah.”
“I was searching for a plausible explanation. The last thing I wanted was the truth.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it’s the truth,” I said. “It might hurt.”
“So you tried to reduce him to a type,” Bogard suggested. “A statistic.”
“I wanted a tidy resolution. Something that would allow me to say, ‘This is not the person I love.’ If I could kill my love for him, I could dispose of this mess and move on. But it didn’t work. My husband isn’t an entitled jerk or a sex-addicted creep. He’s not a capital-C Cheater. He’s not all men, or some men, or most men. He’s Aaron. And I still love him.”
We were quiet for a while. Then Bogard spoke.
“What do you want to do?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I want to go home.”
“So go home.”
“And let him win?”
“Win? It’s not a competition.”
“Wrong, Doctor. Everything’s a competition.”
He adjusted his eyeglasses. “I see we have a lot of work ahead of us.”
“I don’t want to be that woman, Doctor Bogard.”
“What woman?”
“You know the woman. The one whose husband betrays her, humiliates her, disrespects her—and she stays. The one we’ve seen at a thousand press conferences, standing stone-faced as her dearly beloved apologizes to the world for whatever deceitful, depraved thing he did. That’s not my story, Doctor. I reject that narrative. But…” I stopped, flummoxed. “What is my story? I thought I knew how this worked: the faithless man, the devastated wife. Crime, cover-up, revenge. It’s different when you’re on the inside. I’m a character. And I don’t know my lines.”
Bogard tossed his notebook aside. “You want some advice? Forget the damned narrative. This predicament you’re in isn’t some grand plot. It’s not about archetypes, or stereotypes, or any other types. It’s about you.”
His little gray eyes bored into me. “It doesn’t take a genius to see that you’re someone who likes to be in control. That you are accustomed to managing most situations you find yourself in. I regret to inform you that you cannot do that here. You cannot shape the truth of what happened to your liking. To get through this, you’re going to have to deal, head-on, with what actually happened. You’re going to have to talk to your husband. And you’re going to have to work through how you feel.”
Feelings again. There was a print on the wall above Bogard’s head. A dramatic swirl of dark and light gray. It was highly stylized, but not abstract—there was a figure captured in the sharp lines and shadows. I squinted, trying to make out what it was.
“Raney?”
“Hmm?”
“What do you think about what I said?”
I sighed. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“You always have a choice. You can keep avoiding your husband. But confronting him might give you the answers you seek.”
The print clicked into place, so obvious once I grasped it. A racehorse, flying out of a gate. It looked so swift, so weightless. So free.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll go home.”
TWELVE
On Saturday morning, the girls and I met Arnault the mover at the house in Brooklyn. He and his team packed up everything and loaded it into the big truck. He offered us a ride in his van, so we crammed in beside him on the bench seat for the bumpy ride home.
When Kate and Maisie saw Aaron waiting on the porch, they jumped out and swarmed him with joy and hugs. Arnault pulled the parking brake and turned to me. His dark eyes were so compassionate, I had to look away.
I followed my daughters up the walk. I looked at the ground, the lawn, the hedge, the house. Finally, at Aaron.
“Hi.” He gave me a hopeful smile.
I thought, How do I feel?
How do I feel how do I feel how do I feel how do I—
No idea.
Aaron was in a good mood. Why wouldn’t he be? He had his family back, and his professional woes were abating. Slate had published a sympathetic article on Thursday. PBS issued a statement of support. He wasn’t totally in the clear—the climate panel was still investigating, and his publisher had concerns—but there was a growing consensus that he’d been the victim of a sophisticated hack.
“Nobody knows you masterminded it,” Kate had noted at dinner on Friday. “You’re lucky people don’t know what a psycho you are.”
“Yet,” Maisie added helpfully.
We spent Saturday reshelving books and hanging up clothes. Kate and Maisie vanished after dinner. I spent an hour organizing my office. Then I knocked on their door.
They were sitting up in their beds, laptops on knees. I stepped inside. “Homework?”
Kate pulled off her headphones. “Porn.”
“You’re so dumb,” Maisie told her.
I sat at the foot of Kate’s bed. “Are you happy to be home?”
“In some ways, yes,” Maisie began.
“In other ways, no,” Kate finished.
“It’s weird, being around Dad.”
“We’re glad to be back. And we love Dad and all…”
“But thinking of him doing that? It’s…” Maisie shuddered, “messed up.”
“What’s messed up is how you got thrust into the middle of this. You shouldn’t have to know these things about your parents. But since we can’t fix that, you should try to be yourselves. If you’re glad to see him, say so. If you’re upset, tell him.”
“What’s going to happen?” Maisie asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to get a divorce?”
Kate threw a pillow at her. “She said she didn’t know!”
“We’re going to try to work it out. But we need some time. And space. I hope you understand when we’re not willing to go into too many details.”
Kate put her arms around me. “Are you okay, Mom?”
I hugged her back. “I think so.”
In truth, I had no idea.
* * *
—
Halfway down the staircase, I paused. From where I was standing, I could see Aaron on the sofa in the living room. The night had turned cool, and he’d lit a fire. I experienced a moment of dislocation, a sense of unreality so strong I reached for the banister to steady myself. This could be any night. Any ordinary night. I could be coming down from my office to ask Aaron a question, to get a glass of water or to join him on the sofa.
But it wasn’t any night. It was my first night home after our great upheaval. It was the first night of the rest of our marriage.
I had no idea if it would last.
He’d been watching the flames. Now he saw me on the stairs. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m scared,” I said.
“Me too.”
I sat beside him. I could see the weave of his button-down, the scattered threads of silver in his hair. I could smell his familiar blend of soap and aftershave and…Aaron-ness.
He slid onto the floor. He wrapped his arms around my legs, pressing his face against my knees. “You can’t leave again, Raney.”
“Aaron.” I tugged at his arm. “Come on.”
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