Carpool Confidential (32 page)

I tried to figure out what I was feeling while we were eating dinner and he was waxing lyrical on the joys of returning to my lasagna—which was actually (an almost unthinkable luxury financially these days) from Balducci's, yet another reminder that things aren't necessarily as they look. And all I could come up with was a mix of trepidation and skepticism. Why was he here?

After dinner, he went down to the living room with the boys to hear everything about everything until they ran out of breath and were ordered to bed. I cleared the table, listening to the distant bursts of excited chatter from down the hall. I couldn't make out any of the content, but the tone was clear. Noah and Jared were absolutely beside themselves with joy. Me, maybe less so.

“Don't sleep with him,” Randy said when I called to announce the Return of Rick. “And I'm not saying that just because I'm on a strict schedule and don't want anyone else having recreational sex. I'm saying it for your own good. Oh, and keep the appointment with the P.I. and still make one with the lawyer.”

“Just don't make love with him. I don't trust this at all. Damn. I have to go. That's the broker calling back. We just put an offer in on the house,” Jen said.

“Jen, that's great,” I croaked. “Congratulations.”

“Cross your fingers they didn't accept it,” she whispered before hanging up.

Believe me, I was.

“For God's sake. Whatever else you do, do not have sex with him. You could nullify your chances of citing abandonment as a cause of divorce,” my mother said. “In fact, that's probably what he's back for. To lure you into bed so he'll come out better financially.”

“Oh fuck! No wait, don't. Cassie, whatever you do, do not fuck him,” Charlotte whispered from the bathroom stall of the restaurant at the Hotel on Rivington. “Because then you'll have to write about it in the blog and it's going to make decisions for you that shouldn't be made that way.”

I put down the phone, closed the dishwasher, dried my hands, and went to put the kids to bed. I could hardly wait for them to go to sleep so Rick and I could really talk. “Hey, Cass,” he said mildly, “are you going to be long?”

“As long as it takes,” I said, sounding pissy and martyred even to me.

He shot me a look that could have been anything from irritation to pity.

Why couldn't he do some of this? I couldn't envision the situation in which I'd be sitting on my ass watching TV while he hustled around cleaning up, organizing, and putting the kids to bed. Especially my first night back after being AWOL for months. Of course, since I couldn't imagine circumstances in any realm of fantasy or reality that would make me go AWOL for months, the whole thing was kind of academic. Anger was starting to rise in my face.

“Mooommmmmy,” Jared bellowed. “Where are you? I neeeeed you now. RIGHT NOW!”

“Be right there,” I yelled back. “Rick, do you think you could go talk Noah into bed while I see what's going on with Jared? He's not being incredibly cooperative. I think he's sort of over the top with excitement because you're back.”

“I'll go give them a kiss in a few minutes.” Rick was looking at the screen more intently than he was looking at me.

He hadn't helped out much at bedtime before his departure, so I don't know why I was expecting it now. In fact, when was the last time he'd really been an active participant? More than doling out last kisses and tuck-ins? I couldn't remember. I felt like I was seeing something about our life in clear black and white for the first time. When had he become such a hands-off dad? He certainly hadn't started out that way.

In recent years, his job had become so crazy stressful that I'd compensated, taking on more and more of his share on the home front until I guess he'd slid into doing pretty much nothing without me, or maybe either of us, even noticing. But he hadn't worked a long, stressful day today. So why were we still stuck in those same roles? Why was it just assumed I'd do it all?

I tried it from a different, more charitable, perspective, as I went to Jared. He'd worked so hard for our financial security that he'd ended up alienated from his own life and family. Maybe this whole thing had been a last gasp for help. Was it possible that the break, which had clearly not come in a good way, could in the end turn out to be a blessing-in-disguise kind of situation? A sort of dividing line between the old and the new? I felt a surge of hope, and some of the skepticism felt like it was sliding away. Perhaps a new beginning
was
possible. People made mistakes, learned from them, changed. It happened all the time, so why not Rick?

I wasn't going to find out tonight, though.

By the time I'd switched the laundry and taken Cad for a quick before-bed walk, Rick was tucked in, sound asleep.

“He's back?” M.A. was suitably shocked when she came in at eleven, as promised. “Well, where the hell has he been?”

“Good question. We hadn't quite gotten to that yet, and now he's asleep.”

She gave me a look of profound understanding. “God, imagine if you guys weren't too old to like do it. How disappointed would you be that he was asleep?”

Rick was still asleep when I left to take the boys to school. I'd had to practically physically restrain them from waking him up.

“I just wanted to make sure he was still back, Mom,” Noah said, succeeding in tying my heart in little knots as I dragged him away from my bedroom door to brush his teeth. “I checked a few times in the night, too.”

“Hey, Cass, do you want me to take the boys to school this morning?” M.A. offered. I had my head in the cleaning cupboard looking for dog poo scooping bags.

I backed out of the cupboard. “Thanks, M.A. That's so sweet of you, but I think I should do it, keep things as normal as possible.” I didn't want to come right out and say
He'll probably be taking off again before long
. “You know?”

“Mo-om-
my
,” Jared shrieked down the hall. “I can only find one sneaker!”

“Try looking in your room,” I yelled back.

“No prob. I just figured since Rick was like asleep and everything last night, you guys probably haven't had a chance to, you know, talk,” M.A. said.

No, we hadn't. Last night's burst of optimism about making things work had pretty much burned itself out during the six-and-a-half hours I'd spent staring at the ceiling being un-fucking-able to believe that after months of gone-ness, Rick had passed out while I was walking the dog and was now sleeping like a dead person (one who'd died halfway across my side of the bed). Except for the snoring, which was a real and not altogether welcome reminder, he was very much alive.

Half his clothes were lying on the bedroom floor, the other half on the bathroom floor. I knew he'd showered and shaved before bed last night because the bathmat had been left drenched on the floor and there were whiskers in his sink. He'd used my toothpaste—I knew because he was neurotic about squeezing from the bottom, rolling up, and recapping. I like squeezing from the top, OK? And I frequently don't recap. He habitually needed five pillows, and, because he was always hot at night, had taken off my down comforter. He'd—not to be indelicate, but, well—declined to use the toilet brush after using the bathroom. He'd been home less than twelve hours, his presence was everywhere, and I was already sick of him.

I hope I don't sound like some neurotic germaphobe. I've managed to coexist happily with two small boys, a dog who isn't exactly a trip to L'Artisan Parfumeur, and now, a teenager. Forget toilet seats that haven't been put back down. Ones that were never lifted in the first place are a standing feature of my life. But I'd forgotten how much work it took to maintain Rick, physically and emotionally.

“It's not there!” Jared screamed.

The missing shoe. “Try under the bench in the hall,” I hollered back.

The depressing part was that no matter what I did, someone was going to get the bad end of the stick. Either I was going to suck up what he'd done, or my kids were going to suck up relosing their Daddy. And regardless of his sins, they adored him.

“IT'S NOT THERE EITHER.”

“WEAR YOUR OLD ONES!”

“THEY'RE TOO TIGHT. THEY MAKE MY TOES NUMB.”

“WEAR YOUR BLUE ONES.”

“THEY HAVE A HUGE WAD OF GUM IN THEM.
CHEWED
GUM.”

I looked at M.A. “I'm assuming he means on them.”

“No,” she said. “I've seen it. He means in them. Long story, apparently.”

“HERE'S YOUR STUPID SHOE, STUPID DUMBWIT,” Noah shrieked. “IT WAS IN THE STUPID BATHROOM.”

“CAD MUST HAVE TAKEN IT. I'M NOT A DUMB-WIT, YOU—”

“Both of you!” I yelled. “Stop it NOW! Jared, put your shoe on, Noah, make sure your backpack's ready.” I was distantly aware that I was feeling bad about the shouting. And only partly because we sounded like a family of dysfunctional imbeciles. The rest was worry about disturbing Rick. Which was ludicrous, since he should be up, spending time with the boys, helping me get them off to school. He
deserved
to be woken up. What was wrong with me?

If only there was a support group for people whose lives were totally confounding on a daily basis like there had been for new motherhood.

“There is,” my mother said into my ear on my cell as I walked home. “It's called the psych ward.”

I winced. A vague moment, like a déjà vu but not quite, brushed past me. My father leaving and then my mother gone, too. A nanny bringing us to the bus stop, Katya tucking me into bed at night, silently bringing tissues. “My God.”

“Your cowardly father deserted me with three children,” she said to my unasked question. “What did everyone expect?”

“Yeah, but the psych ward? Did you go voluntarily? Were you suicidal?”

She laughed. “More like homicidal. Of course it was voluntary. I needed rest and quiet, so I checked myself in. We didn't have Canyon Ranch back then.”

I was genuinely confused. I knew exactly what she meant about barely functioning, but had she done what she'd needed to do to save herself? Like putting on your own oxygen mask before your child's when the plane depressurizes, or had she just checked out on us? I needed more time to pull up the memory. “I'd like to do without that if at all possible.”

“Of course you would, because that's your way. You always run around putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own until there's nothing of you left.”

I wasn't getting less confused here. Was she right, that I was overly selfless? Or was I? That she saw the world only from her own self-serving perspective? Or was the truth somewhere in those shades of gray?

I stopped so Cad could sniff a tree. I couldn't figure out how much of this was about Rick and how much was about my father, her, me. It was all blurred together. Why couldn't any of this just be simple? Cad, having decided the tree was not
the one
, started walking again. I trailed behind.

“So you know what I figured out on our couples therapy weekend?” she asked. I thought it was a given that I did not. “Your father's a sex addict. All those years he was in the grip of an illness. He couldn't help himself.”

Was there no end to the gut-churningly disgusting things I had to hear?

“My life has been shaped by loving a man who was incapable of fidelity or intimacy.”

My call waiting beeped. Despite myself, my stupid heart tripped. It was sometimes like it didn't share a body with my head. “Could you hold on a sec? I'll be right back.”

“For God's sake. I'm pouring my heart and soul out to you, Cassie, and you're asking me to hold?”

“It could be something with one of the kids, or M.A. or—”

“Rick.” It was an accusation.

It beeped again. “Or Rick.” I hoped the mildness of my agreement would defuse the sting of her words. This was me, my life, not her and hers.

She sighed. “Go ahead,” in a way that made it clear just how pathetic I was.

I did it anyway. “Hello?”

“Cassie, hi! Glad I caught you.” Sue. Was it anyone else, ever? “Listen, I know you probably just left school, but could you come back? We're in the conference room, Ken's been doing a little cross-referencing and—”

For once I didn't care what it was. My kids getting black-balled from Princeton by extra-early decision, genetically modified oregano in the pizza, whether I'd been unmasked as the blogger. “Sue, I'm sorry, I just can't. Not this morning.”

“Cassie, is everything OK? You sound stressed.”

“Yes, a little stressed. I'm having a crazy morning.”

“No problem, give me a call when things let up. And, Cassie—let me know if there's anything I can do.”

“Thanks.” My first inclination was to hang up without giving anything away. But…why not? “My life feels like it's crumbling around me right now,” I confessed. “It's nice of you to offer, but I doubt you're equipped for this one.”

“I don't know.” She was quiet for a minute, too. “You might be surprised. Talk to you soon.” Then she hung up.

I already was surprised, actually. I clicked back over to my mother, hoping she might have been cut off. No luck there. “So I'll treat this as I would any other addiction,” she said.

Cad was tugging the lead, trying to get across the road to investigate the macho-looking Dalmation on the other side. “Cut it out. You're neutered and geriatric,” I told her.

“Excuse me?” my mother said awfully.

“Not you. The dog.”

“Oh. Anyway, it's been a lot to absorb, very stressful. I was thinking I might come visit for a few days after Christmas. Spend some time with M.A., take in a show.”

After Rick left, I'd so much wanted her to offer to come. But she hadn't. And she wasn't coming to help now either. She was coming to dump her pile of emotional baggage on top of the physical and mental one Rick had already strewn across the apartment. It was very well for her to lecture about me not prioritizing myself, but here she was trying to hand me one more burden. “I'm sorry.” My voice wavered. “But you can't right now. Everything's too crazy, I just can't.”

“I see.” She sounded really hurt.

I felt awful. How could I not be there for my own mother? “I didn't mean—”

“Yes, you did.”

“I'm just trying to take care of me for once,” I said. “Like you said I should.”

She hung up in a huff. I started home, feeling like crap. There was nothing I could do about her. She was and always would be exactly who she was. She was right about one thing. I had to deal with me. If I wasn't going to prioritize myself, no one else was going to either.

On that note, I took a deep breath and headed inside to find out why my husband had left me, why he was back, what he'd done with our money.

 

“He was already gone when I got home,” I said. Randy eyed me over her chai latte. We were having an emergency summit in Starbucks with Jen.

“Gone where?”

“This may come as a surprise, but he didn't leave a note.”

“So you don't know if he's in Park Slope or Park City, Utah? Whether he'll be home for dinner tonight or not again until May 7, 2017? How can this be?”

“It just
is
. I realize you'd have deposed him before you let him eat—”

She laughed. “Forget eating, I'd have done it before I let him pee. They've had excellent results with that at Guantánamo, apparently.”

“See, that's my problem. I've taken the whole Geneva Convention stuff way too seriously.” I told them how he'd obviously showered while I'd been bringing the kids to school. How the boxers and T-shirt he'd slept in, along with two wet towels, had been dumped on the bathroom floor, dirty dishes left in the sink. “It was almost like he'd planned it to jump out of bed, get ready, and leave while I was out.”

“I don't know why you just didn't do a Lorena Bobbitt last night while he was sleeping. He'd have gone nowhere this morning.” Randy glared into her chai, probably debating what I should have used for bobbiting—sharp, dull, rusty, surgically honed.

“So what happened with the house?” I asked Jen.

“They accepted.”

My heart flipped. I'd known we were going to end up star-crossed lovers, the house and I, but it still hurt. “That's great! Are you OK about it?”

“Actually, I'm great.” She had a huge smile on her face. “We talked and talked last night, and we've agreed to put things on hold for the time being.”

“Jen, that's great. But what's going to happen with the house?”

“I don't know.” She shrugged. “The owners were very gracious about us withdrawing the offer. I'd imagine someone else will buy it.”

“A stranger,” I blurted out. OK. I was getting a little weird here, and I knew it.

She gave me a funny look. “That's usually the way it works, isn't it?”

My phone rang. I fished it out. The number was private. Was this another of Rick's little games? “Hello?”

It was Betsy. “So, Cassie, have you read the latest blogs?”

“I've glanced at them in passing.”

“Have you noticed how she's getting really chatty with the readers? Telling them how she has this lunch date and asking them questions in the blog and they're responding in the comments and she's talking about the responses?”

“I hadn't really thought about it, but, yeah, I guess so.”

“There's something about the style of it that's, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's familiar.” I felt the fear curl inside me. Not now, there was too much going on. “Anyway, I have a weird question—you don't think Jen would—well, you know, say Nora's a guy in something like this, do you? Because that would be the perfect cover, don't you think? And, honestly, when was the last time you saw Nora?”