“She’s better than that,” Matt said quietly. Julia looked up at him, and he squeezed her shoulder. They shared a long, silent conversation filled with private innuendo before I put Abby in the car.
As I drove away from Matt’s house with my daughter in the backseat, still in her nightgown, I wondered why exactly I had felt like a bolt of lightning had struck my chest when he said those words. “Everything can be fixed.”
CHAPTER 32
It took me two days to get the courage to go into the house after the fire. The floors on the first floor were still soaked through, and it took every ounce of willpower not to start shop vac–ing everything. The police officer who had followed up on the fire told me not to repair anything until after the insurance inspector could get into the house to assess the damage. So, I had to wait and allow the beautifully restored floors to once again warp with moisture. What was new, was old again. I had made my way up to the second floor, a lump growing in my throat. The walls were singed with black marks, like the flames had quickly shot against the wall before they were extinguished. The floors had scorched marks running across them, and the wood was buckled in the hallway where the flames had licked at it.
In each of the four bedrooms, plaster had melted off the walls and fallen to the ground, exposing the wiring and the plumbing. Yet the room that took the most damage was the smallest bedroom. Not only was the plaster missing from the walls, but the plumbing had been exposed and damaged, and the wiring was burned to a crisp.
I had run my hand lightly along the only strip of plaster that remained in the room, and it collapsed with an exhale, all the damage complete.
I sat down on the floor, my head in my hands, the darkness of the house around me. I thought of Matt’s words—“Everything can be fixed”—and wondered how that possibly could be true. It didn’t seem like anything this badly broken could ever be fixed.
And I let myself go back to that terrible day.
It had started like any other morning. Abby woke up in her crib around 6 a.m., first talking to herself for a few minutes and then quickly progressing to screams, interspersed with the occasional “Mama! Come!” as I hurriedly brushed my teeth and stumbled around for my glasses. Her cries still produced a fight-or-flight response in my bones. An oh, shit reaction of panic, even though I knew she was fine and just hungry for her breakfast. But every morning I would rush through the basics to fling her door open and rescue her from the crib like there was a tornado down the block.
She immediately stopped crying when I went in and picked her up, her fat, eighteen-month-old hands slapping at my shoulders in excitement as she said, “Pancakes!”
I made my way downstairs, and noticed that Matt had already left for work. The bundle of rumpled blankets and his pillow on the couch were empty.
He had started sleeping downstairs when Abby was about nine months old. She wasn’t sleeping through the night, and I was still nursing her one or two times before dawn. So when I would return back to bed, Matt’s snores made me irrationally angry in the way that only a sleep-deprived person can be. I would shake his shoulder until he turned over, and the snoring would stop for a few moments, just long enough so that I almost felt back asleep, before it started again. This would continue for several more turns, until I would wake him up and angrily hiss that I was exhausted, and he would go downstairs and snore on the couch until morning.
Usually he would be awake when I came downstairs with Abby, in the shower or shaving in the bathroom downstairs, but that morning he was already gone.
“I guess Daddy had an early meeting,” I said to Abby as I strapped her into her high chair. She immediately began trying to climb out, shrieking, “Out! Get down!”
I began to methodically slice up a banana, tossing the pieces onto her tray as fast as she could squeeze them in her fingers and aim them toward her mouth.
I glanced down at my to-do list for the day. Every night before I went to bed, I made a list of tasks for the next day. At times, it was embarrassingly pathetic, and filled with things like laundry, mail bills, and buy diapers. Yet, it gave me a sense of accomplishment, of control. I used to do the same thing when I worked in public relations for the Grand Geneva Resort, taking great satisfaction in crossing things off with a scratch of my black pen.
The adjustment to staying at home with Abby had been a hard one for me. It wasn’t anything like I had pictured. I imagined walks to the park, a regular naptime, and blueberry pancakes made from scratch, with berries we had picked from the farm down the road. Instead, I experienced a profound sense of loneliness, that had progressed to mild panic every time Matt left the house for the day. Every day was so long, and her needs so constant, and the job was without a sick day policy or even the positive reinforcement of an annual review and salary increase. But Matt still thought I was living a dream life.
I didn’t yet have any mom friends, despite a few friendly conversations here and there. So my only real social interaction each day was with my husband.
I glanced down at the to-do list and sighed. Abby screamed, and I handed her another piece of banana. It was only 7 a.m., and I was already exhausted.
I forced a smile. “Let’s do something fun today, okay?”
Abby grinned, banana squished into her teeth.
“How about we get some sandwiches from the deli and take them to Daddy at his office?”
She grinned again in agreement.
If I had been watching the scene unfold in a movie, it would have been so clearly obvious what would happen next. It was so cliché, so suburban. So expected.
Matt wasn’t in his office, but his assistant told me that he was in a meeting across town and due back in about twenty minutes. Abby and I waited in his gray-toned office, and I tried to occupy her with pens and my car keys, instead of her heading straight for the computer wires like she really wanted.
From the desk, Matt’s cell phone buzzed, and I realized he had forgotten it, which was why he didn’t see my text that we were headed over. It buzzed again, and I reached over to check the message so it would stop impatiently trying to deliver it.
On the text preview, was my message from an hour before, but that was at the bottom of the screen. On top were two other texts, from an unknown number with a Chicago area code. The first read: Great to see you again. It had been too long. And then the next message said, sent just a few seconds before: I hope you had as much fun as I did. Next Thursday still work? Can’t wait to see you again! Followed by a winky face.
I grew very still, but the phone in my hand began to shake. I wasn’t stupid. I knew exactly what those texts meant.
There was a crash as Abby pulled herself up on the other side of Matt’s desk and yanked his monitor over, the screen cracking on the ground. I dropped the phone on the desk and grabbed her, right as Matt walked through the door.
“What the . . .” he said as he took in the sight of his computer. “What happened?”
I clutched Abby to my side, my insides burning. I felt my face flush. “Exactly. Or, what’s been happening?” My voice shook, and tears sprang to my eyes.
“With what?” he said.
I pointed to the phone on his desk. “Better respond. Sounds like you had a great afternoon.”
His walk from his doorway to the phone was the longest few moments of my life. A small, miniscule part of me hoped he would give me some plausible explanation. Lie, or at least try to lie. He read the text and didn’t look up for a long time.
I shifted Abby on my hip and detached her hand from my hair. “Not going to say anything?”
He slowly put the phone down and exhaled, a sound that cut through my heart. He was relieved. I assumed it was because he didn’t have to sneak around anymore.
He tried to apologize, say that it looked worse than it was. That it had just been a flirtation and nothing had happened.
“Yet,” I finished. “And you don’t have to sleep with someone to have an affair. Who is she?”
“
Just a client,” he said slowly.
“Which one?” I volleyed back.
He sighed, and rubbed his forehead. “She’s an assistant to one of my clients from Waterview Developers.”
“Sounds like she must have her hands full with all of the assisting she’s been doing,” I said.
He reached for me and said that things between us had been different, but he didn’t want them to be.
But I just walked out the door, away from him, and back to the house. I called Traci, and when she arrived, I had thrown all of his clothes onto the front stoop, just like in the movies. She played with Abby while I made phone calls, ignoring his repeated calls and texts. And when he showed up an hour later, she ran interference and made him leave.
I refused to speak to him for almost a week afterward, packing Abby up and taking her to my parents’. He had said his family meant more to him than anything, and keeping Abby from him was the one thing I could do to hurt him back.
I don’t know where he was when they served him the divorce papers two months later, but I do know that he didn’t fight me on any of it. I found that the hurt deepened again when he didn’t contest anything. I was angry, but where was my big show? Of him chasing me down the highway and making me pull over so he could beg me for forgiveness? Where was my big Hollywood moment of him showing the world just how stupid he had been and how much he wanted me back?
I didn’t realize it until later, but if he had done something like that, I might have taken him back. I might have agreed to stay together and work on things. Instead, he gave me everything that I asked for, and nothing that I hadn’t. It was easy, and all he did was sign on the line. Within days, I had the divorce agreement back in my lawyer’s office and it was done.
A couple of months later, we went to court and filed the papers, and I walked out divorced. During that waiting time, I think a part of me still didn’t really believe it, like it didn’t fully register. Yet, on that morning, it was all finished so quickly. What had taken years to build, only an hour to dissolve. I remember that I got into my car and read the document over and over again, in hopes that it would sink in. It never really did, and I went and picked up Abby from my parents’ house without saying a word to them.
I am divorced. We are done. It’s over, I wrote later that night after she went to bed. I made the period at the end of each sentence large, finite. There was no comma at the end of the story. It was done.
CHAPTER 33
Two days later, I met the insurance inspector at the house. After the walk-through, he said later that afternoon he was going to work up a report and send it to me for how much they were going to cover. Even as he said it, he had a hard time looking me in the eye. We both knew that whatever amount they were going to front, it wouldn’t be near enough to fix the house the way it should have been.
After he left, I went to the hospital to visit Elsie and told her about the fire.
“I’m so sorry that I wasn’t home, Alex. I just can’t imagine what you’re describing.” Elsie lifted a shaking hand to her forehead, rubbing it so that the wrinkles moved back and forth, sticking in one place before they returned.
“It’s probably better that you don’t,” I said. “Enough about me, and my house. How are you feeling?” I asked her, forcing a smile onto my face.
Her eyes grew soft. “The doctors say I’m healing, but . . .” She lightly touched the bruise on her forehead, which had changed to an ugly purple slash. Her left eye was still swollen shut, and it gave her face a lopsided appearance. She, too, forced a smile.
I hadn’t told her about the document I’d found in the wall, with the name of the original adoption lawyer. I had exhausted Google searches for his name that morning, trying to find any connection or living family member to contact, but I came up blank. And if there was anything else hidden in the walls, any clues as to where the baby was, it would have been destroyed in the fire.
I had also scanned all of the adoption message boards and public registries posted by people wanting to find their birth parents, but there was nothing that matched.
“Just as soon as I get this mess with the house figured out, I’ll keep looking for your daughter,” I said quickly. My voice was thin, easily broken, and barely reached her.
“Don’t worry yourself about that. You have enough to think about right now.” She looked down, and folded her hands in her lap. “Besides, it might be that I’m never to find her. I made choices long ago, and I shouldn’t keep looking back. Maybe we should give up.” Her eyes grew watery, and she twisted the hospital blanket under her hands.
“No, I’m sure there’s more we can do. More searches, maybe we could hire a lawyer to look into it for you,” I said quickly.
“If it’s that difficult, it might just be that I should let this lie. She might be happy, and this would disrupt her life. No, I think we should stop here,” she said.
I opened my mouth to protest, but she shook her head again. I slowly closed it and leaned forward, putting my forearms on my thighs. My head dropped down, and I exhaled.
She looked out the window, and pointed toward the trees that sloped downward toward the lake in the distance. “You know, David once took me on a boat, a few weeks before he died.” She smiled, but her gaze was still out the window. “It was a wooden boat that belonged to the parents of one of his friends from school. Oh, it was just beautiful, with gleaming sides and a brightly polished steering wheel. Of course, those boats were all over the lake during that time, before the kind you see now.”
I nodded. Wooden boats used to be all the rage on the lake in the 1950s and 1960s, before fiberglass boats became popular. Now, they were relegated to the very rich who could afford to buy them from collectors and restoration companies. Whenever a wooden boat pulled up to a dock or passed others on the lake, people would always crane their necks at it and smile with nostalgia.
“We drove over to Buttons Bay on the town, and stopped. It was the middle of the afternoon, and there weren’t any clouds in the sky. It was hot and hazy, and we lay back against the back of the boat, dangling our feet in the water. The lake water was still cold from the winter, but I remember how good it felt against our hot skin.” She looked at me, and folded her hands over her lap. “I remember he put his arm around my shoulders and it felt like I was going to melt right there in the boat.”
I nodded; the teenage memories of butterflies and nerves felt like they weren’t that far in the past.
“It was the first time I knew we were meant to be together. And later that night, well, we were.” Her eyes twinkled at the memory, and she leaned forward and whispered, “We were still on the boat, after sundown, of course.”
I laughed. “Well, that was certainly a memorable evening cruise, I’m sure.”
She didn’t answer, but looked out the window toward the lake again. “Some days it feels like it was yesterday. Some days, I wish it was yesterday.”
I tucked my legs up on the chair and wrapped my arms around them. “I get it. I really do.”
“I loved Harold,” she added firmly. “We had many wonderful years together. But . . .” She trailed off.
“It wasn’t like what you had with David,” I finished, and she nodded slightly.
After a pause, she shook her head. “Letting go is hard,” Elsie said with a sniffle. “Sometimes we don’t get a second chance, and we have to accept that. We don’t always get to live the lives we imagined.”
I didn’t lift my head but nodded in agreement. I knew that statement to be true more than just about anything. With the house, with my love life. It all seemed to be just beyond my reach, and I felt like I had been grasping at air for so long. I was afraid that things that I so desperately wanted would always remain on the horizon, a mirage that would convince me to keep going instead of stopping and looking around, accepting where I was instead of where I wanted to be.
CHAPTER 34
“Mom, when can I see the house again?”
Abby and I
sat on the white public pier in the town of Williams Bay, tossing stale bread to the sunfish below. She had paused, bread crumb pinched between her forefinger and thumb, and asked about the house before she flicked another bread crumb into the water.
“When it’s safe, honey.” I tossed a piece of bread into the water and watched as the biggest sunfish darted forward and nudged the others out of the way to grab the crumb.
“Hey! That wasn’t very nice,” Abby shouted to the fish.
“No, it wasn’t. Those big fish tend to take everything from the smaller ones,” I said. Like Waterview Developers, I silently added.
“Well, I’m going to throw some bread to the side, away from the big guy, so everyone else can eat,” she said confidently. She threw a handful of crumbs in the farthest possible direction from the big fish, but he still darted forward and ate most of it. She frowned. “How do I stop him?”
I sighed and looked out onto the water. The sun was just beginning to lower toward the shoreline, the trees growing closer and closer. A few boats remained out on the water, basking in the last few minutes of daylight. I could see a boat pulling a wakeboarder—something that could only be done, really, after the busy daytime rush of boats—and a group of people anchored not far off the shore in the bay, enjoying a few sunset cocktails.
It was so beautiful, and so full of different memories. Of Matt and me as kids, of Elsie’s description of her and David. Of the future that I had hoped for the buyers of the Maple house.
The sun fell behind the rows of trees ringing the lake. I turned to Abby and kissed the top of her head. “I don’t know how to stop him. Sometimes we can’t.”
As we left the pier, my phone buzzed with a text message from Gavin. I had given him the CliffsNotes version of the fire at the house, and he asked if we could meet for dinner this weekend. He added at the end, If you’re not up for it, I totally understand.
Cicada Summer Page 21