“Jeez.” Dwayne was shaking his head. “You got a real problem, man.”
It’s not real, Laura was thinking. It can’t be real. It’s a trick. Or a crazy new game show.
But she was already on her feet, heading toward the desk in the living room where Roger stashed the household papers. A terrible dizziness had come over her. Her heart pounded so hard her chest hurt. With trembling fingers she opened the bottom right-hand drawer and pulled out a stack of bank statements.
One by one she looked into the envelopes, something inside her collapsing a little further with each discovery. The mutual funds: liquidated. Two of their IRAs: liquidated. The passbook savings ...
Laura felt as if all the breath, all the life, had been taken from her in one fell swoop.
The money was only part of it. What mattered even more was the lying. The duplicity. The betrayal.
Gradually she became aware that across the room, the telephone was still off the hook. Moving like a zombie in a low-budget movie, she headed back to the dining room. As she did she glanced at the TV one more time. Passionate violin music played as a handsome actor slid a diamond-studded band of gold onto a woman’s finger.
“Show her you’d marry her all over again,” the voice-over urged.
Laura picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said dully.
“Ma’am?” the Paperazzi manager said patiently. “I could hold some of these napkins for you.”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“Hello? It’d be no trouble for me to put some aside.”
“Uh—” Her voice was hoarse, barely recognizable even to her.
And then she took a deep breath, a mysterious strength suddenly rising from deep within.
“Thank you,” she said slowly, “but I don’t think I’ll be needing them after all.”
* * * *
“Come on, you guys!” Evan cried in frustration, racing after a swirl of dried leaves, which were moving just fast enough to elude the clawed ends of his bamboo rake. His oversized sneakers were festooned with small clumps of bright orange, and a brown oak leaf stuck out of his hair like a feather on an Apache brave.
Gazing out the kitchen window, Laura thought that any other day, she would have been amused by her eight-year-old’s awkward attempts at corralling the leaves strewn across the backyard. Today, however, Evan’s antics offered only an ironic contrast to the tears streaming down her cheeks.
As she gripped the counter she was surprised to find that her hands were trembling. She simply stared at her ragged fingernails, at the cuticles that three chipped layers of Hard As Nails had done little to protect. Then she noticed her entire body was shaking. She shuffled across the room and sank into a kitchen chair. Blinking hard, Laura tried desperately to focus on something—anything.
Through the blur created by her tears, she took a mental inventory of the items surrounding her. The coffeepot, the microwave, the cheerful ceramic canisters filled with tea bags and sugar and flour. The decorative touches she’d so painstakingly added: the wreath made of dried herbs and flowers hanging next to the back door; the houseplants lining the windowsill; the cheerful curtains, a perky shade of blue that with the bright yellow walls gave the room the happy feeling of a kindergarten. She’d tried so hard to create a home. Yet sitting here, trying to stop shaking, Laura realized she had no home.
She finally had no choice but to admit that her marriage was a sham. She and Roger had done an excellent job of fooling the rest of the world. The two of them routinely showed up at PTA events. They had collected all the usual gadgets and photographs and memories over the years. She even made a point of mentioning him in the author’s biography inside the back covers of the dozen children’s books she’d had published, the adventures of a jungle sleuth named Gertrude Giraffe and her sidekick, Carol Cobra. Yet their household was like a tree that had died: still standing, continuing to give the appearance of a strong and substantial entity but, underneath its thin layer of bark, completely rotted away.
Now, suddenly, she could no longer pretend. No longer rationalize. No longer convince herself that their marriage would be wonderful ... if only this or that happened. If only Roger got a job that satisfied him. If only she made enough money from her chirpy accounts of Gertrude’s adventures that it no longer mattered whether or not he worked. If only they could find a common language that would enable them to communicate. If only she lost ten pounds or made herself over into a more fascinating woman or became a better lover. If only, if only, if only ...
There was no magical
if only.
No quick fix. No one thing—or five things or ten things or one hundred things—that could breathe life back into a marriage that she now admitted had been kept alive not by love, not by honesty, not by commitment, not even by loyalty, but by nothing more noble than inertia.
Wrapping her arms around herself protectively, Laura reflected on the fact that this moment had been a long time coming. For months, even years, she’d woken up every morning with a heaviness in her chest, the nagging feeling that something was wrong. She would lie in bed, struggling to clear the cobwebs of sleep from her mind. And then she’d remember.
Today I’m going to make this marriage work, she’d resolve with the same regularity with which she brushed her teeth. Somehow, I’m going to find a way to get through to Roger.
Yet she never did. The distance between them stopped being painful, instead becoming the norm. Too many times she lay in bed alone late at night, after Roger had insisted he wasn’t tired. From downstairs she would hear
Star Trek
reruns, the voices of Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk fading to background noise until she finally succeeded in drifting off.
Now, sitting at the kitchen table, the house strangely silent, Laura waited, curious to see what she would feel. It was like being at the movies, watching the lead actress confront a horrible truth, wondering, What’s she going to do now? How is she going to react? She had that same sense of anticipation, the feeling that any minute she was going to be surprised. Her heart pounded and adrenaline rushed through every vein. What next?
Watching herself this way, Laura braced for a rush of anger. There was so much to be angry about. One more in a long line of financial fiascoes, the continuation of a trend that had started even before their marriage. The way Roger had kept it all from her, ignoring the fact that husbands and wives were supposed to be partners. The bizarre way she’d discovered that, all melodrama aside, her husband really had been living a secret life.
But Laura felt no anger. Surprised, she waited to see if perhaps she would be overcome by sadness. As she clasped her hands, still struggling to quell the horrible trembling, a long-forgotten memory flashed into her mind. It was from the first year she and Roger were married, when she’d still basked in the certainty that she’d found her happily-ever-after.
The two of them were in bed, limbs intertwined, cloaked in perspiration and body heat and the intoxicating air of intimacy that lingers after making love. She delighted in the sensation of his hard, muscular thigh pressing against hers, marveled over how perfectly her head fit into the gentle slope between his shoulder and his collarbone. In those days, she and Roger lighted candles, wanting to banish the brightness of electric lights but still be able to read the subtlest changes in each other’s expression by the soft, flickering light.
Running her fingertips lightly across his chest, she had reflected that her commitment to him and their marriage was so strong it could withstand anything.
Drowsily she told him, “We won’t be like everybody else. I won’t let us. This marriage is going to work because I’m going to
make
it work.”
She had truly believed it, that day and every other that followed. Only now, looking back and recognizing how tenaciously she’d been clinging to her vow, she realized that holding a marriage together wasn’t something a person could do alone.
She should have been filled with sadness. Yet she felt none, just as she’d felt no anger. Instead, sitting alone in a silent house, Laura was filled with fear.
She was frightened because she knew that deep inside—in her heart, her soul, that undefinable part of herself from which it was impossible to hide the truth—she had finally made her decision. She could no longer remain married to Roger. Having made that decision, she had no choice but to take action. And that was guaranteed to throw her entire life into turmoil.
Slowly Laura rose. Standing in the doorway of the dining room, she caught sight of the party brochures strewn across the table. They seemed to mock her. What a fool she’d been, planning an event meant to celebrate a man and a woman who hadn’t really been a couple at all.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, a deep, painful sob rising up out of her chest. In one swift, unanticipated motion, she swept all the papers onto the floor.
Suddenly Laura felt a strange sense of calm. Of finality. Of the relief that came from resolution—a resolution that was long overdue.
She was finally free to admit the truth.
Chapter Two
“Okay, tiger. Hop into bed.”
Sitting on the edge of Evan’s bed, waiting while he decided which of his two dozen stuffed animals would be his sleeping partner that night, Laura was amused by the way both her son’s past and his future were mixed up in his room. A wide-eyed teddy bear was pushed in the corner with his rap-singer-style sneakers. Picture books about bunnies and squirrels were lined up next to wrestling magazines. Hanging above his dresser were two posters, one of Curious George, one of a sleek race car.
He’s at an in-between age, she thought. Just a few more years and he’ll be a teenager. As she tucked the blankets under his chin she noticed he was growing so tall that soon there’d hardly be any room for her to sit at the end of his bed.
But for now, he was much more of a child than he was a man. He lay in bed with his arm wrapped around the neck of a polar bear named Snuffles, staring up at her expectantly. Looking into his clear blue eyes, Laura swallowed hard. It took every bit of her self-control to keep back the tears.
Yes, I’m lying to him, she admitted. Pretending nothing’s changed, calmly discussing which book I’m going to read to him tonight…. But I’ve been lying to him all along. Every day for months. For years. Instead of feeling guilty, I should be grateful. After all, the lying is about to end.
She reached over and smoothed back his hair, forcing herself to smile. “You did a terrific job today, Ev. Raking leaves, I mean.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Earnestly he glanced over at the money he’d earned, stacked up in full view on his night table.
“You’re getting pretty big. Before you know it, you’ll be mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, digging cesspools—”
“Mo-o-om! I don’t want to—” He cut his protestations short. “You’d pay me, right?”
“Look at you. Eight years old and ready to join a union.”
He handed her the slim paperback they’d been working on together all week. “Not until you finish reading me and Snuffles this book.”
* * * *
Once the house was quiet, Laura settled onto the living room couch, covering herself with the afghan her mother had crocheted the first Christmas she and Roger celebrated as a married couple. Turning on the television for background noise but unable to concentrate on the sitcom unfolding before her, she waited.
All evening she’d been trying to imagine the scene that would play out when Roger came home. Yet even with her overdeveloped writer’s imagination, she couldn’t bring it into focus. Instead, she agonized over the details that were under her control: how she would act, what points she’d make ... even where the confrontation would take place.
This last concern was of no small consequence. She certainly didn’t want to conduct such an important conversation lying in bed, barefoot and vulnerable, even though that was the obvious place to be at this hour. As for the kitchen, it had already been the scene of too many late-night discussions, with Roger delivering endless monologues justifying his latest escapade and Laura ending up apologetic, if confused, by the time they went to bed.
So Laura sat on the couch, her heart pounding as she attempted to calm herself. Desperate for some distraction, she looked around the room. She scanned the rows of novels she’d already read, neatly lined up on the bookshelves. Untouched sections from the previous Sunday’s
New York Times.
Haphazard piles of papers, Evan’s schoolwork and junk mail and obsolete telephone messages that begged to be sorted.
Finally her eyes lit on a thick white volume, tucked away on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. Her stomach lurched. Her wedding album.
Maybe she
should
take a look, she thought, sort through the pieces of her life and evaluate them in the same way she so matter-of-factly sifted through the clutter that accumulated on the end tables and kitchen counters.
Slowly she rose, letting the afghan fall onto the carpet. She hesitated before retrieving the white photograph album from the bottom shelf, then reminded herself, Ebenezer Scrooge reviewed his past. Look what it did for him.
She settled back down on the couch and ran her hand over the smooth white leather. She’d rejected the idea of a professional photographer who lined up warm bodies according to size and arranged them in stiff, unnatural poses, like the inmates of a wax museum. Instead, she’d asked her friends to take personal, informal pictures. One long, rainy afternoon a few weeks after her wedding, she’d painstakingly arranged the scores of photographs to tell a story.
As she opened the album, Laura was instantly whisked back in time. First came snapshots of the huge ramshackle Victorian mansion on eastern Long Island where the wedding was held, the summer home of friends of Roger’s who were as generous as they were wealthy. The Darlings’ summer home was like something out of a movie. It had, in fact, been the setting for one, a tragic, terribly romantic story filmed in soft focus, its pastel shades blending together like the paint in a watercolor.