FORTY
MARI STARES AT
the file boxes. The piles of folders. This is the work her husband has been doing. The book he’s writing.
About her.
“How long?” She sounds calm, but her fingernails are once more cutting into her flesh. She keeps her voice low because she doesn’t want to wake her kids. She doesn’t look at Ryan. She can’t stand to see his face.
“I’ve always known parts of it. I mean...you’re a textbook case study, Mari.” He sounds miserable.
“So you knew. All of this. For how long?”
“Not all of it for that long. When the stuff at work happened, I thought I could take my dad’s research and turn it into something. He always talked about it, you know. Writing your story.”
“Not to me,” Mari says, lip curling but fists unclenching. She turns to him then. “He never asked me! And neither did you!”
Ryan looks contrite, but she knows that look. It’s the face of a man sorry he’s been caught at what he was doing wrong, not sorry for doing it. And in that moment, she remembers that she loves him but can no longer feel that love.
This is betrayal worse than his infidelity—the truth is, Mari always expected Ryan to cheat on her. There were so many other more beautiful women, smarter women. Women who didn’t catalog everything in the cupboards or wander the house naked at night. Who’d been raised by families, not by a pack of dogs and a silent, senile and demented grandmother.
No matter what Ryan did with another woman, or women, he came home to Mari and their children, and that is what matters to her. There is a disconnect here, and she knows it. She should rail and scream, slap his face, sob into her hands at her broken heart, but the fact is she only wishes she could unknow about it so they could move on with their lives.
But this other business of him knowing her whole life, planning to use it for his advantage and worst of all not telling her—as though it wouldn’t matter! That gouges her so deeply she isn’t even sure what she feels could be called pain.
“It was never a secret,” Ryan says hesitantly. “I knew who you were, Mari. It never mattered to me.”
“It matters to me.” The words come out on a hiss she keeps from becoming a growl. She chews her lower lip and tastes blood, slicks it away with her tongue and rubs the sore spot with one fingertip. “You brought me back here, to this place!”
“I didn’t know, I swear to you, how bad it was. Until we got here and I really started looking at all the notes. Until you—” Ryan breaks off.
They stand and stare. Mari wonders if this is how she should’ve felt about learning he’d been cheating. This feeling of trying to breathe and not finding the air. The feeling that everything in her life was going to slip through her fingers like water through a broken vase.
She taps a pile of the papers. “If I’m not the baby she had in the bathroom, who was it?”
“She gave it up for adoption. It was a girl.”
“I have a sister.”
Ryan shrugs and scratches his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. The rumpled look usually suits him. Now it makes him look tired. “Yes. But it was a closed adoption.”
“So I can’t find her?”
“If she comes looking for your mother, she could find you. But other than that, I don’t know where to begin. Do you want to find her?”
Mari isn’t sure. That baby would be a woman now. She might have a family. She might not want to discover a sister, and Mari might not want to see what her own life might have been like if their mother hadn’t pretended she didn’t exist. Still...a sister. Mari has never imagined having a sister. The thought of it is overwhelming. Frightening.
“And my mother? You really have no idea where she is?”
“After she gave up the baby, she was diagnosed and hospitalized for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. You’d’ve been about two years old. She was admitted to Harrisburg State Hospital and was there until at least 1989, when she was released.”
Mari swallows hard. “What happened to her?”
“No records. Either she was never hospitalized or arrested again, or she changed her name. Or couldn’t give anyone her name.”
“She could be alive.”
“She could, yes.” Ryan pauses. “But it’s really unlikely. Babe, I am so sorry about all of this. I hope you believe me.”
“I believe you. I’m not sure it matters, but I believe you.”
She’s pleased to see the way that sets his mouth, like he sucked a lemon. She sees so much of his father in him now, with his rumpled hair and the lines around his eyes. Ryan had always been her prince but it seemed she’d been his fool.
He hangs his head but gives her a sideways look. “Your story is inspirational. Really. You’re a success story.”
“For who? Your father? You?” She manages a bitter laugh. “What do you think that book would do to us, Ryan? Our family? The kids? Did you think of anything beyond yourself?”
“Of course I did! Everything I’ve done is for this family!” Ryan shouts so suddenly it sends her back a step. “If I could sell that book, if it was as popular as I think it could be, it would be entirely for this family! We’re drowning in debt, Mari, but you wouldn’t know a goddamn thing about that, would you? No! Because you don’t pay the bills, I do. Because you have no idea of anything beyond your tiny little world. You’ve spent your whole life being taken care of!”
“Not,” Mari says, “my whole life.”
“Your whole life with me.”
“Why did you marry me, Ryan? Was it because you loved me? Or because I just kept going after you until you couldn’t say no?” Mari pauses, the words bitter. “Or was it because I was some sort of prize you could take from your father, get what he didn’t.”
“I loved you. I still love you. Christ,” Ryan says with a swipe of his hand over his face. “What do you want me to do? What
can
I do but say I’m sorry?”
She thinks on this for only a second or two. “Leave.”
Clearly, he’s not expecting this. “The hell I will!”
She gives him a steady, solid stare until it’s his turn to step back. “I want you to leave, Ryan.”
“In case you don’t remember, sweetheart—” the pet name does not sound kind “—someone’s renting our house until September. That’s four weeks away. And frankly, we can’t afford a hotel bill.”
“Go stay with your mother.” She spits this suggestion. She needs time to herself, to think. “Take the children,” she adds. “She’ll be thrilled to have you all.”
“For how long?” Ryan asks again.
She wants to tell him forever, but knows that’s not a practical answer. Because what
will
she do without Ryan? Does she really want to find out? “The weekend, at least. Maybe a week.”
“What will I tell the kids?”
“Tell them you’re taking them to see Grandma, Ryan. It’s not like you’ve never gone to visit her without me before.” In fact, most of the time they visit her without Mari, who has no issue with her mother-in-law but is all too aware of the former Mrs. Doctor Calder’s issues with her.
“Fine.” He’s angry.
She doesn’t care. Ryan turns to fuss with a pile of papers on the desk. She stops him when he goes to shove them in his briefcase. “No.”
He looks up, still clutching the papers.
“Leave that. I want to look at all of this. I want to see it.”
He shakes his head. “I really don’t think you do.”
“Oh, Ryan, you’re so wrong.”
He flinches at that, which makes Mari happy and sad at the same time. She knows the flavor of fear. The weight of frustration. Those are longtime friends. But anger? She’s worked very hard in her life to keep anger far from her. It’s never served her purpose. Now she wonders how she could never have known its power.
“I want to know this. I have memories, Ryan. Of this house. Of what happened here. Of what I was.”
“You were a little girl,” Ryan says gently, “who had the misfortune to be neglected and abused. None of it was your fault, Mari. And now look at you. You’re a strong, beautiful woman. A good mother. A good wife.”
“I ate scavenged food I fought the dogs for. I hid from people because my gran had made me so afraid I’d be taken away. I lived in filth, Ryan. I remember those things and yet so much of it is blurry.”
“Maybe it’s better if it’s blurry.”
She shakes her head. “How can I stand knowing you know when I don’t!”
“Fine.” He doesn’t say it angrily this time, but in resignation. “I’ll leave the files. I’ll take the kids to my mom’s but only for a few days. And when I come back, we’re going to talk about all of this. We’ll talk about what happened at work, about the book, whatever you want to talk about. We’re going to make this okay, Mari. I promise you.”
Ryan has always been her prince. He has promised her so many things in her life and always made them happen. She wants to believe him this time, too.
But she doesn’t.
Still, Mari nods. She turns her cheek when he moves to kiss her, but she allows him to hug her. Ryan sighs.
She doesn’t follow him to bed. She waits until he leaves and then turns to the stacks and boxes of folders and files. She doesn’t look up when he murmurs good-night.
Instead, she starts to read.
FORTY-ONE
GRANDMA CALDER’S HOUSE
smelled like the candles she liked to burn year-round. Vanilla, sugar cookie, apple pie, pumpkin spice. All the sorts of treats she never actually baked. Underneath it, the hanging odor of cigarettes she always said she was quitting but never did. Kendra breathed it in and wanted to pinch her nose closed, but didn’t because Grandma was hugging her so close.
“Kendra, sweetie. My God, you’ve grown. Look at you. You’re going to be as tall as your dad. And Ethan, c’mere and give your grandma a kiss.” Grandma kissed and hugged them both, then turned to their dad. “Ryan.”
“Hi, Ma.”
She offered him her cheek. His kiss looked as if it pained both of them. Kendra hoped she never felt that way about her kids—or her parents. Though the truth was, she sort of felt like that about her dad at the moment.
Something had gone down, she didn’t know what, just that her parents had been fighting and now her dad had put on this big, fake smile and dragged them here to his mom’s house. Grandma liked to call them a lot and send emails, usually stupid forwarded jokes or warnings about urban legends she could’ve easily disputed by looking them up on Snopes, but they usually only visited her every couple of months. Every once in a while Kendra and Ethan might stay the weekend while their parents went away on a grown-ups-only trip, and there’d been a few times when they were younger that Kendra by herself had gone for a whole week, then Ethan after her. Never at the same time, because Grandma said it would overwhelm her. It wasn’t that Kendra didn’t love her grandma, she just didn’t really like the way Grandma treated her mom.
“I bought cookies. They’re in the kitchen—go grab some,” Grandma said to Ethan. To Kendra, she said, “I suppose you don’t eat cookies anymore?”
“Of course I do, Grandma.”
Grandma’s brows rose. “I thought all teenage girls were obsessed with diets.”
“Only ones with eating disorders.”
Grandma snorted. “Please tell me that’s not you, Kendra Jean.”
As if. “No, Grandma.”
“Go on, then.”
Ethan had already jumped ahead, and Kendra followed him. She knew an invitation to get lost when she heard it. She slowed her steps when she got to the hall, though, listening.
She didn’t hear what her dad said, but her grandma was a little deaf and therefore thought she needed to talk extraloud.
“Well, what do you expect from her, Ryan? I warned you.”
“Ma. Not now, okay? Jesus.”
“I’m just saying, how can you be surprised?”
Kendra’s dad’s voice dipped again. She realized she’d totally stopped. If either her grandma or dad shifted a little bit to look down the hall, they’d see her eavesdropping. She took another couple steps.
“Can’t you just enjoy this visit, Ma? Do you have to bring up the past over and over again?”
“Watch your tone with me, Ryan. I’m your mother.”
“And Mari’s my wife,” Kendra’s dad said. “No matter what happened in the past, no matter where she came from and what she was.”
“You’re just like your father.” It was clear Grandma didn’t mean this as a compliment. “Well, I suppose you should come in. Have a cup of coffee. We can go out to that new place for dinner, if you want. That buffet place.”
“Sure, Ma. Whatever you want.”
At the sound of that, Kendra ducked quickly into the kitchen. “Hey, brat, don’t eat all the cookies.”
The monkeybrat looked up with crumbs around his mouth. “I miss Chompsky.”
“He’s staying behind with Mama.”
“To protect her?”
“What does she need protection from, doofus?” Kendra snagged a cookie.
“Whatever ate the peacock. That’s why Daddy said we needed a dog, remember?” Ethan rolled his eyes, making it obvious who was the real doofus.
“Whatever.” Kendra poked him. He poked her. They’d have gone at it, but then their dad and grandma came into the kitchen and both of them pulled their hands back, acting innocent.
“Not too many cookies,” their dad said. “Apparently your grandmother’s taking us to the Belly Buster Buffet.”
That sounded disgusting, but gave Kendra an excuse to escape upstairs with her suitcase to the small sewing room with the daybed that was always hers during visits. She heard the mutter of her dad’s voice in the room next door and pressed her ear to the wall to listen.
“Mari. It’s me. I wish you’d answer. Anyway, we got here okay. The kids are fine.” There was a long, long pause. “I know you have every reason to be pissed off at me. But I want you to know that no matter what, I do love you. I always have. And not because you were something I had to steal from my dad or a prize or anything like that. I love you for who you are and who you were when I met you. Not whoever you were before that. I love you. Call me, babe. Bye.”
Blinking, Kendra sat back, uneasy. That’s what happened when you listened to private conversations. You heard things you didn’t like. What had her dad done?
And why did everyone keep talking about what had happened in the past? Rosie, the manager at the Red Rabbit, Grandma...now Daddy. It wasn’t the best thing in the world to have your mom give birth to you in a bathroom, but it wasn’t like women didn’t have babies in weird places all time. There was a whole TV series about it on the Discovery Health Channel.
Somehow, Kendra didn’t think that’s what everyone was going on about. Something worse had gone on in her mother’s life. Which was probably why she never talked much about it. But what was it?
What could possibly have been so bad?