Suffer Love

by Ashley Herring Blake

  Mom exhales so loudly, Dad flinches.

  “She has a graduate degree,” I say. “Did she get it at Vanderbilt? Your department, maybe?” Ms. Artigas did get her master’s at Vanderbilt, which I know full well, but in education rather than literature.

  Dad twists his mouth to one side. “As much as I love the Bard, you know Shakespeare’s not my department.”

  Oh, I know. “It’s all literature.”

  “I hadn’t heard either way, Hadley. You’ll have to ask her.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Mom releases a tiny cough and I shift my eyes to her. She’s not looking at me, but she’s smiling slightly, like the two of us are in on some secret joke. I wait for a smile to lift my own mouth, but it never happens. Dad presses two fingers to his temple and rubs, chewing robotically.

  I stuff some rice in my mouth to keep from screaming.

  Mom scoots her chair out and grabs the wooden pepper mill from the island. Leaning over Dad, she grinds a small black mountain of pepper all over his chow mein. He blinks down at his plate, his nose already twitching.

  “Hadley?” Mom says sweetly, holding up the mill.

  “Uh . . . no, thanks.”

  She places it back on the counter before sitting down. Dad sneezes, but digs into his food with a wordless sigh.

  “So,” he says after a few more sneezes. He clears his throat. Twice. “The Spring Kite Festival is in May.”

  My fork clangs against the plate. “And?”

  He takes a sip of water. “And I hoped we could enter this year. Make a kite from scratch like we used to. Remember our sled kite? I would really love to finish it.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mom mumbles, bring her glass of wine to her lips. Dad frowns, but says nothing.

  “I remember,” I say. Last spring, we had planned to do this beautiful and ambitious sled kite, with silky blue and green inflatable spars. We never made it to that festival. The kite’s packed in a box somewhere in the garage, half made.

  “Had, I understand why you didn’t want to do it this past year. But this festival . . . we’ve participated in it since you were three. It’s part of our family. Can’t we at least try to get back to normal?”

  Normal? Dad’s been clawing his way back to normal for months and still hasn’t figured out that it no longer exists.

  “I don’t know, Dad, you tell me.” I’m so tired of this whole scene. “What level of normal is normal enough for you? Me back on a swim team? Me proofreading your papers and sharing a laugh over how you always confuse y-o-u-r with y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e when you type too fast, just like old times? If that’s normal, then . . .”

  My throat rebels against me, tightening, and I scoot my chair back. It scrapes against the tile and Mom winces. “May I be excused?”

  “No.” Dad sniffs and rubs at his red nose. “No, you may not. We need to talk about this.”

  “About what? There’s nothing to talk about!”

  “Hadley, I can’t keep—”

  “Jason.” Mom’s voice is all jagged edges, and it silences him. “Let her go.” She nods in my general direction as her thin fingers wrap around her wineglass, lifting it over her untouched food to her pale lips.

  Dad’s face darkens. “Annie, we need to—”

  “We don’t need to do anything. Hadley, go on.”

  I don’t waste any time. Bolting upstairs, I barely close my bedroom door behind me before falling onto my bed and unleashing a scream into my pillow. Once my throat is loose and raw, I roll over, my eyes grazing over my bookshelves packed with neglected favorites. I pluck a small rectangular strip of paper from the drawer in my nightstand. I’ve handled it so much, stared at it so many nights, it’s wrinkled and as soft as cotton.

  There used to be a lot more of them, maybe fifty or so, but my dad fed them through the shredder. I sat on the porch steps, open eyes seeing nothing, while he raked his hands down the front door to dislodge the accusations. One got loose and floated toward me. I pocketed it. A reminder that nothing is ever as it seems.

  I had come home early one day this past April from my private swim session with Coach Lyons. My shoulder was sore from an exhibition meet the week before, and she sent me home with instructions to ice it and rest up. I knew my mom would still be at work, and Dad rarely got home before seven because of a big paper on T. S. Eliot he was preparing for some academic journal. I parked in my usual spot at the end of the driveway, but had barely clicked off the ignition before I noticed the papers blanketing the front door. They danced lightly in the afternoon breeze, graceful and deceptively beautiful.

  When my feet hit the sidewalk, I could see the handwritten words, but I couldn’t really read them until I was standing on the steps. Even then, the writing blurred and I barely recognized the name on the paper. I remember releasing a single laugh. When the sound first split the warm air, I thought it was all a joke. By the time my voice died, a thousand little puzzle pieces had snapped together. All the late nights. All the Saturdays spent in his office.

  I plucked one of the papers from the red painted wood. A piece of clear tape came with it and stuck to my finger. I could still smell the strong, pungent scent of permanent marker.

  I read the messy scrawl.

  JASON ST. CLAIR IS FUCKING MY MOTHER

  That’s all it said. Every single piece of paper said the same thing, though some were barely legible. No signature. No Hi there, just thought you should know on the back. Nothing but my father’s name and an ugly verb and the whole heavy reality when you put all the words together.

  Mom came home first. I was sitting on the porch steps, my bag in the grass, my hair still wet and laced with chlorine. A few neighbors had passed by, curious about the weird door decorations, but I didn’t acknowledge them. I had thought about taking all the notes down. Going to my dad privately and asking him what was going on. But I didn’t do that. And honestly, I have yet to regret that little act of revenge.

  Mom usually entered the house through the garage, but she saw me and called out with her usual broad, straight-toothed smile, arms full of contracts that needed revising. When she approached the door, her face went so white, it was nearly translucent. After she read every little note, barely blinking, she went inside without a word.

  Dad came home soon after that and stared at the door with shaking hands, shaking mouth, shaking head. Even his tie was shaking. We locked eyes and that’s when I knew for sure it wasn’t a joke or a mistake. His eyes said everything. They always did.

  He went to work on the door. It was clear in under a minute, a pile of accusations on the porch. I followed him inside and everything got really weird. I expected yelling, crying, gnashing of teeth, and the mournful tearing of clothing. My mother was famous for her frankness. Underneath her cool exterior lurked a fireball who never had any problem calling you on your crap. She didn’t do soft or subtle.

  I hovered in the doorway of the kitchen while my parents faced each other. I braced myself for the rumblings, the eruptions, and the groveling. Or the leaving.

  But she didn’t say a word.

  Not one damn word.

  She just stood in the kitchen and stared at my dad over the island.

  “Annie, let me explain.”

  She put up a hand.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to . . . I’m sorry.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I’ll end it. It’s over. Right now, I’ll end it.”

  She left the room. I watched her go, my jaw on the ground.

  “Hadley,” Dad said. “Honey, I don’t . . . I’m so sorry.” He reached out, trying to soothe me with a hand down my hair the way he always did when I was upset or sick. Part of me wanted him to because I suddenly felt unmoored, like a kite with severed strings, and I needed something—anything—to hold me down.

  But his touch only rolled my simmering anger into a boil. I yanked away from him, disgusted at everything he had done, everything the verb on those notes implied. �
�Don’t ever touch me again,” I said through my sudden sobs.

  That’s at least one request he’s honored for the past six months.

  He heaved a trembling breath and raked both hands through his hair. A silent minute passed, but my heart’s hammering didn’t soften as he dug his phone out of his pocket. After he scrolled through it, supposedly landing on her number, he went out onto the back porch and closed the door behind him.

  We never found out her name. He said she was a graduate student and he had been seeing her for a year.

  An. Entire. Year.

  365 days. 8,760 hours. 525,600 minutes.

  All lies.

  Mom said she didn’t want to know any other details. She asked Dad to delete all emails and texts and the woman’s contact information from his phone and computers. She asked Jocelyn to go through all of his devices afterward to make sure it was done. Jocelyn did it, leveling him with a terse “Who’s this?” every time she came across a name she didn’t recognize. I’ve never seen my father look so small as he did that day, standing in his study while my mother’s best friend sifted through his electronic life.

  There was a part of me that didn’t understand my mother’s need for ignorance. The Annie St. Clair I knew would want to know more about the woman her husband chose over her. But I never asked for an explanation for his affair either, and he never offered one.

  My parents started counseling, which I refused to attend, even when the therapist requested it. If they’ve ever discussed anything outside of therapy, I’ve never heard a word. In my opinion, they’re just throwing away three hundred dollars an hour. A sort of cold war broke out in our house, and divorce started sounding as enticing as a Hawaiian vacation. No one spoke beyond the logistics of running a household. No one touched. Dad seemed to know that I didn’t want to talk to him, could barely look at him, and the space he gave me in the beginning morphed into habit. I kept waiting for Mom to talk to me about it all and help me understand, for some sort of alliance to form between us. I figured we were in this together, on the same team wading through enemy territory, but instead, she filled up whatever void Dad’s affair created with work. With tasks. With black pepper on her allergic-to-pepper husband’s dinner. Other than a few shared glances that only made me feel uncomfortable as opposed to comforted, I’m pretty sure she forgot I was in the house half the time.

  I think what really kept me up at night—what still keeps me up—were those notes. I’m not sorry my dad was outed. I’m not even sorry he was humiliated. But I’ll never forget how I felt when I first saw those words, when their meaning first penetrated through my unbelief. It felt like part of my life was dying right before my eyes.

  We moved from Nashville to Woodmont in June. Life was supposed to change. Dad tried to make things right, texting me all the time and asking me about Sunday-afternoon swims and movie marathons. But the only thing that really changed was that I started looking for a distraction. I started looking for something to make me forget that I was lonely even when I was with Kat. What changed was that I started craving some kind of validation, some comfort that I never got—or wanted—from my parents anymore. Even Kat seemed afraid to touch me, like I was a grenade and one hard tug would set me off.

  That’s the nice thing about guys. They’re never afraid to touch you.

  Chapter Five

  Hadley

  Kat knocks on my door a little past eight. I’m over my memory-fest, the note tucked safely away, and my dad finally stopped tapping on my door after a record-low four attempts. Jinx is sprawled across my feet on the bed while I flip through an SAT vocabulary book. Last May, when a lot of juniors were preparing to retake the SATs, I was watching life as I knew it disintegrate. So I’m taking the test again in December. It’s my last chance before most college application deadlines.

  “Meow!” I call, knowing it’s Kat by her coded one long, two short knock.

  “I wish you’d stop mewing your greetings.” She flops next to me on the bed.

  “What? It was Jinx.”

  “She didn’t say anything, did she?” Kat reaches over and scratches Jinx behind the ears.

  “Well, she does tend to purr when people pet her like that.”

  Kat pinches my thigh and I yelp. Jinx’s ears go flat.

  “Your mom, genius. About the locker.”

  I smirk. “What do you think?”

  Kat releases a frustrated grunt and Jinx flinches again. When I started messing around with purportedly single guys behind closed doors, Kat nearly had a stroke. As a result, she doesn’t stop Jocelyn from reporting any disturbing details of my life she gets wind of to my mother. And therein lies Kat and Jocelyn’s naiveté—thinking that information of my declining reputation will enliven my mother into action.

  “Look, it’ll be old news by tomorrow,” I say, waving a hand. Then I stuff it under my butt because I realize it’s shaking a little. “I just messed up with Josh.”

  “Jenny dumped him. I talked to her in Trig. Apparently they’d just gotten together near the end of the summer, but he told her he really liked her and then something happened with meeting her parents and he totally freaked. She seemed okay, though.” She runs her hand over my comforter. “I don’t think she had anything to do with the whole locker thing.”

  I scratch my head with my pencil, squeeze my eyes closed. “Can we not talk about this right now? It’s been a crappy day.”

  Kat puffs out her cheeks. “Right. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” I flip through vocabulary, tracing over the words with my capped pen. Absolution. Blighted. Credulous.

  “So get this,” Kat says, crossing her legs. “You would’ve been proud of me at practice today.”

  “Oh?” Defunct. Exculpate. Fractious.

  “Like, buy-me-a-pint-of-Peanut-Butter-World-ice-cream proud.”

  “That’s serious.” I lay down my vocab. “Peanut Butter World is not intended for the average accomplishment.”

  She nods, a half smile on her face. “I talked to Rob.”

  I let my eyebrows speak for themselves.

  “Yep. For warm-ups, I was anchor on a freestyle relay and my team won. He complimented me on my form.” Predictably, her cheeks pink up. “Can you believe it?”

  “Yes, I can.” Kat is one of those girls who has no idea that she’s beautiful or funny or talented. Her dad’s been out of the picture since she was ten, but until Jocelyn finally kicked him out, he enjoyed whittling his daughter down like a piece of wood about everything from her nonexistent weight problem to an A-minus on a spelling test. When Kat met my dad in the swim class and his gentle voice actually encouraged her through the water, I’m pretty sure it took her a week to realize he was talking to her. Several years later, Rick, who would become her stepdad, wooed her mother with such swoon-inducing tenacity that he restored Kat’s confidence in romance, but not so much in herself.

  “And what did you say back?” I ask.

  “I said thanks.”

  Again, I let my eyebrows do the talking.

  “What?” she says. “That’s a lot for me. Plus, I got flustered. He was just standing there, smiling down at me, and his chest and stomach were all wet and slippery-looking and there were little drops of water on his lower lip, just hanging there, and—oh my God, what is so funny?”

  “Nothing, nothing!” I laugh into my hands. “You’re just so hilarious when you get all hot and bothered about Rob. It’s as if you’ve spent your pubescent years underground and have just now been set loose. Hide your teenage sons, Woodmont! Rawr!”

  She crosses her arms, hands hooked on her elbows. “No. No ‘Rawr’! I’m not hot and bothered. I’m . . . appreciative of his . . . his . . . form.”

  “You’re horny.”

  “Hadley!”

  “Concupiscent. Libidinous.”

  “Hadley Jane!”

  “Prurient.”

  “I don’t even know what those words mean.”

  “They mean ‘horny.’”
/>   “God help me.”

  I grin and lean my hands on her knees. “Come on, Kitty Kat. Admit it. Rob is so hot that whenever you see him, your panties get a little—”

  “Okay, okay!” She slaps her hands over her ears. Kat hates the word panties. “Just stop. I want him, all right? I want him so bad, I accidentally moaned a little during Government today when I imagined his Speedo slipping off when he dives into the pool.”

  I laugh so hard I snort. “You moaned?”

  “I was quiet. At least, I think.” Her face is full-on scarlet now, and she picks at her bottom lip, trying to glare at me. “I actually like Rob, you know.”

  I nod slowly. Yes, I know. Romance, true love, yadda yadda.

  I’m still laughing when my phone rings. I grab it from my pillow and nearly fall off the bed when I see the name flashing on the screen.

  “Oh. It’s Sam.”

  “Sam? The new guy? You know him?”

  “Yeah. I’m paired with him for that Shakespeare project in English.”

  She jumps onto her knees. “You didn’t tell me that! He’s in my Government class. He’s sort of hot.”

  “Did he hear you moan too?”

  She smacks my leg. “Answer it!”

  I stick my tongue out at her and slide my finger over the surface of the phone. “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Hello?” I say again.

  “Hadley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s Sam Bennett.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. So, listen, I need to change our plans for tomorrow.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was wondering if you could come here.”

  “To your house?” Kat’s mouth drops open. “Wouldn’t the library be easier?”

  “Not for me. Is that a problem?” His voice sounds weird. Not that I know his voice really well or anything. It just sounds . . . strained and sharp. In class, he sounded so relaxed, so amiable.

  “Is everything all right?” I ask, my heart suddenly hammering.

  “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I’m not sure. You just sound . . . funny.” Kat raises her eyebrows at me and Sam clears his throat.