Laura recoiled. “Sometimes.”
“Since when?”
“Since the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“Starting on our wedding night.”
“You faked an orgasm on our
wedding
night?”
She was grateful when the doorbell rang once again. She dashed off, relieved to leave Roger alone to digest that one.
“Oooh, the Little Mermaid!” she cooed with forced cheerfulness. She never let on that her head was spinning. She’d scored a victory, but instead of feeling better, she felt worse. She wished the Ninja Turtles would come back so she could follow them into the sewer. “Don’t you look sweet. And what are you supposed to be?”
The little boy in the dark suit and striped Harvard tie opened up his huge plastic shopping bag, much bigger than any of the other kids’ had been. “An IRS agent.”
Laura wished Roger would leave. When she saw him still sitting in the kitchen, as much a fixture as the dishwasher, a tremendous rage rose up inside. It wasn’t rooted only in the moment, either. Too many weeks living in the same house with the one person in the world she wanted most to get away from was finally taking its toll.
“Look,” she breathed, trying to remain in control, “we can’t go on living like this. It’s crazy, all this fighting, all the tension in this house. You have to move out.”
“
I
have to move out? Why me?”
“In the first place, most of the mortgage payments came out of my paychecks, not yours. Or weren’t you aware that the International House of Pancakes doesn’t pay dividends to its regulars?”
He opened his mouth to protest, but Laura didn’t give him the chance to speak.
“In the second place, since I’m the one who takes care of our son, I’m the one who needs to provide him with a home. The only house he’s ever lived in seems like an obvious choice to me. And I have a feeling any judge in the world would agree with me.”
“Great.” Roger folded his arms across his chest and stuck his chin up in the air. “So I’m supposed to slink away, just disappear, leaving you with everything—”
“Not everything! You’re welcome to take half. Isn’t that what’s in style these days? To split everything right down the middle?” The rage was growing, taking on a life all its own. Laura strode across the dining room, picking up one of the decorative hurricane lamps. “Here, take this. Lisa gave us two, so one of them is yours.”
When he sat there, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind, she thrust it at him.
“Take
it!”
Her eyes darted around the kitchen, lighting on the loaf of French bread on the counter. She grabbed it and tore it in half. “Here!” she shrieked. “You want half? Take half! Take it and get out!”
“Laura, stop it!”
She knew she was out of control. But that feeling of being on a roller coaster was stronger than ever. This time the car was plummeting down, down, down, so fast she couldn’t catch her breath. Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Adrenaline set her muscles tingling and her mind racing. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. She gave in to it, deciding that for once she wasn’t going to resist.... The feeling of release was as intoxicating as the high from a drug.
“You want half of this?” she cried, grabbing the salt out of the cabinet. “Here. You got it.” She turned the cylindrical carton upside down on the table in front of Roger, experiencing a bizarre sense of satisfaction as she watched a white mound form.
“Laura, you’re acting crazy! Get hold of yourself!”
“Here, take half of these, too.” She’d taken a bunch of overly ripe bananas down from the wooden bowl on top of the refrigerator. Tearing off two, she hurled them at Roger. “Take them!”
They came flying too quickly for him to react. Instead, the bananas hit the floor—and exploded.
Suddenly everything was coated with banana. Mushy white bits clung to the counters, the floors, the baseboards. Smaller clumps stuck to the coffeepot, the ceramic canisters, even Evan’s red plastic lunch box, tucked next to the microwave.
Laura froze. Part of her wanted to laugh—the throaty, hysterical laugh that, in the movies, always elicited a slap in the face. But she was afraid that if she started, she’d never be able to stop.
“All right,” she heard Roger say, his voice strangely quiet. “You’ve made your point. I’ll move out. I’ll start looking for a place right away.” Casting her a peculiar look, partly amazed and partly fearful, he added, “But it’s only because I’m afraid of what you might do if I don’t.”
A sudden loud rapping at the back door startled them both.
‘Trick or treat!” several high-pitched voices called happily.
* * * *
“At least you got your ‘awful wedded husband’ to agree to move out,” Claire said, handing Laura a glass of white wine. “That’s quite an accomplishment, believe me.”
“But I was completely out of control!” Laura protested. “I threw bananas at the man!”
“That’s not so terrible,” Julie assured her in a soothing voice. “It’s not as if you have a whole history of throwing fruit.”
With a long, tired sigh, Laura leaned back against the soft cushions of Claire’s couch. As upset as she was, she still felt she’d come to a place of refuge, surrounded not only by friends and the biggest bottle of chardonnay she’d ever seen, but also by a warm, familiar environment.
Laura had always found Claire Nielsen’s apartment to be very much like Claire herself: stark, angular, no-nonsense. The predominant color was a creamy white, so much like her hair it could have come out of the same Clairol bottle. The shade had been used on the walls, in the carpeting, the important pieces of furniture, and even the bricks in the fireplace, which Laura had never once seen used during the decade or so Claire had lived in Oyster Bay.
That was just the backdrop. Superimposed over this blank canvas were splashes of color, undoubtedly designed to shock, if not actually to cause migraine. The throw pillows on the white couch were hot pink, purple, and jade green. The silk-screened prints on the walls, meaningless blobs and rectangles that Laura could have sworn changed shape every time she saw them, favored colors like orange and lime green. An ottoman covered in a fabric that was halfway between a Hawaiian print and a Matisse rested underneath a windowsill.
The effect was startling, to say the least. Despite the decor, Laura had always felt comfortable here. Even if Claire wasn’t the most competent hostess—making a pot of coffee but forgetting to mention she had neither milk nor sugar; serving muffins that were still frozen in the middle—the argument that “Claire meant well” always went a long way.
Tonight, as she sat curled up on the white couch, taking tiny sips from her glass of wine, Laura thought about how lucky she was to have such good friends. Both Claire and Julie were in a particularly upbeat mood, or were at least pretending to be for her benefit. When Laura had called Claire earlier that day, in tears over the argument she and Roger had had the night before, Claire had insisted she and Evan come over for a Chinese take-out dinner. At the moment Evan was happily watching television in Claire’s bedroom, the impressive amount of General Tsao’s chicken he’d consumed slowing him down to couch-potato speed.
“Think of it this way,” said Julie, perched on the ottoman, sipping a cup of Chinese tea, which fortunately required no sugar. “Last night’s fight may have been one of your worst, but maybe it’ll end up being your last.” She was dressed in a flowered granny dress that came almost to her ankles, giving her a reassuring maternal look.
“It certainly was one of the worst,” Laura agreed with a shudder. “After fifteen years, one person really knows the other’s weak spots. When Roger and I were married, we always had an unspoken agreement about leaving certain things alone, no matter how angry we were. But boy, now that we’re no longer pretending to be a couple, there are no limits.”
“What do you mean?” asked Julie, puzzled.
Laura hesitated. “Well, one of the things he accused me of last night was having never opened up to him sexually—”
“Oh,
that’s
original.” Claire snorted. She stretched her long legs across the oversized, overstuffed easy chair that looked as if it should belong to Papa Bear. Tonight she was wearing nothing but purple, a startling contrast to the jade green canvas that covered the chair. “Right off page twelve of
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About How to Hurt Your Wife.”
“There was something else, too....” Laura swallowed hard. “He told me he used to go downstairs late at night, pretending to watch
Star Trek
reruns when what he was really doing was, um, masturbating.”
“Oh, my.” Julie covered her face with her hands.
But Claire’s face lit up. “You’re kidding!” she cried, wide-eyed. “Now I understand why there are so many Trekkies running around!”
Laura laughed. “And you thought it was Mr. Speck’s ears that had all those middle-aged men so intrigued.”
She was trying her best to sound lighthearted. Tough, even. But all of a sudden she could no longer control her tears. They started by running down her cheeks unobtrusively, but before long she’d succumbed to a sobbing fit.
“I—I—I’m sorry,” she sniffled. “The last thing I want to do is ruin everybody’s evening.”
“You’re not ruining our evening!” Claire insisted.
Julie had already come over to the couch to hug her. “Cry, if it makes you feel better. Don’t hold back, Laura. Let it all out.” Glancing up at Claire, she said, “Get her some tissues.”
“I don’t actually have any tissues....” Claire, standing by helplessly, looking like a disoriented flight attendant in her purple space-age-style cat suit, thought for a few seconds. “How about a paper towel?”
“That’ll have to do.” Julie smoothed Laura’s hair. “This is such a difficult time. Just remember that it will pass. Think of it as something you have to go through to get yourself to a much better place—”
“And you will,” Claire reassured her. ‘Take it from somebody who’s been there.”
“Laura,” Julie asked gently, “how is Evan handling all this?”
“I think he’s pretty angry. Every once in a while he explodes. But most of the time he’s just quieter than usual.” Laura bit her lip. “I think it’s better when he’s crying and yelling and throwing toys all over the room.”
Julie nodded. “You might think about finding him somebody to talk to. A counselor, somebody who knows how to talk to kids.”
“I’ve thought about it. I’ll probably act on it one of these days, too. I’ve just been so busy trying to find myself a lawyer....” Laura shrugged. “I’m feeling so overwhelmed by all the stuff that’s going on with me that I can’t even bear to think about how much it’s affecting Evan.”
“Poor Laura!” cried Claire. “You’ve got so much to deal with right now!”
Julie was nodding. “I’ve been thinking. This is a time in your life when what you really need is to be nice to yourself. To concentrate on Laura Briggs.”
“She’s right,” Claire agreed. “You shouldn’t be sitting around, marveling over how crummy it’s possible for a fairly well-adjusted human being to feel. You need to get out, to have some fun. You know what they say.”
Laura and Julie stared at her blankly. “No,” Laura finally said. “What
do
they say?”
“ ‘Living well is the best revenge,’ “ Claire replied. “Although I still think you can come up with a much more creative form of revenge, Laura. More dramatic, too.” She smiled sweetly. “How about something involving permanent scarring?”
“Forget revenge,” insisted Julie, waving her hand in the air. “How about concentrating on having some fun? Speaking of which, I’ve come up with the perfect solution. Can you field Evan out to your parents’ house some weekend soon?”
Laura nodded. “They said they’d do anything they could to help. I don’t think parking him in front of their TV for three days is too much to ask.”
“Perfect.” Julie’s face lit up. “Laura, have you ever been skiing?”
“Skiing?” Laura blinked. “Well, no, I—”
“I think it’s exactly what you need. Going to a place you’ve never been before, trying something new ... It’s precisely what the doctor ordered.”
“Skiing!” Claire looked alarmed. “Where’d you come up with that idea?”
“It’s one of my favorite sports,” Julie replied, slightly indignant.
“But Laura is ... She and I are ...” Claire waved her hands in the air. “Let’s face it, Julie. You may be an old hand at slip-sliding around on the snow, but aren’t Laura and I a little old to start schussing?”
“Not at all. Just today I was talking to a new patient who didn’t take up skiing until he was in his late forties.”
“Don’t tell me,” Claire said dryly. “His twenty-year-old wife—his
second
wife—got him into it.”
Julie frowned. “He didn’t say anything about a wife. He is divorced, though.”
Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Claire let out an exasperated sigh. “What is it with these guys? During their first marriage, you can’t get them to do anything but sit in front of the boob tube. If you even suggest anything the least bit adventurous—like going to the movies or trying a new salad dressing—they fight you so hard you’d think you were trying to talk them into getting a tattoo.
“But when the second wife comes along, they go skiing, they go bungee-jumping—”
“He didn’t say anything about bungee-jumping,” Julie said thoughtfully.
“I guess the thing to do is be a second wife,” Laura commented.
“Well, this man hasn’t remarried. At least I don’t think he has.”
Claire cast Julie a meaningful look. “Or maybe he just wants you to think he’s single.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a tad cynical?” asked Julie. “He’s a nice guy, that’s all.”
“I take it this ‘nice guy’ isn’t exactly Jean-Claude Killy,” Laura observed.
“Poor Bob twisted his knee. He told me all about it while I was massaging his pectineus.”
Claire’s eyebrows shot up. “Why, Julie Cavanaugh! You wicked thing!”
“Relax. It’s a thigh muscle.”
“Not nearly as interesting as the image that first came to mind.”
“Anyway,” Julie went on, “the reason I brought him up in the first place is that I think he’s doing the right thing.”