House of secrets, p.16
House of Secrets, page 16
“You sure you’re alright?” Andras pressed, reaching out to tap my hand.
“Yeah. Just trying to sort all of this shit out in my head.”
“You know, in my experience, she’s probably just trying to hide from her own problems by casting the spotlight on yours. Maybe she’s a hoarder”
“Of what? Rat turds? Actually, I could picture it. They’ll write about it in her obituary one day.”
Andras perked up.
I rolled my eyes, “Like in a long time when she dies from old age. Not right now.”
He waved me off.
“Here lies Bethany Nilsen and her menagerie of shit.”
“Bethany…Nilsen,” Andras repeated, narrowing his eyes.
“Do you know her?”
“No, not at all. But…”
Andras clasped his hands together, grinning with evil delight like a Bond villain.
I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously.
“What is that look? You look like you’re plotting. Don’t plot. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m a grown-ass woman, and I can handle this by myself.”
He huffed a breath and leaned into the table to close some of the distance between us, his expression sober.
“No doubt you can handle it alone, love. But you shouldn’t always have to,” he whispered.
Something in my chest cracked open at that. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just offered a warm smile.
We said goodbye at the cafe door and parted ways. I plodded through the newly fallen snow towards my car parked a block away, turning only once to glance back at Andras, crouched down on the sidewalk to hand a stack of money to a homeless woman wrapped in a dusty pink blanket.
I tossed and turned in bed that night, alone, the house quiet and dark. Steven had resumed sleeping in the guest house, and while it was close, every sound and shadow rattled me. My phone buzzed. The too-bright screen blinded me temporarily, but once my eyes adjusted, I could make out enough to see that I’d received a text from an unknown number. Assuming it was going to be some aggressive reminder about the various volunteer opportunities at Liv and Ria’s school, I almost shoved the phone under my pillow. I didn’t need one more thing bouncing around in my head. Then again, I wasn’t sleeping anyway, so why not? I tapped the screen. The message opened to a single image that was hard to make out until I expanded it. I gasped. Clear as day, I could see a blonde woman with long hair dangling out of a window in the freezing cold, wearing nothing but her underwear and snow boots. I knew that window. It was around the corner, right across from Andras's house. I knew that hair and body, too.
Bethany. Bethany looked like she’d been caught in the middle of something indecent and tried to flee the scene in secret without enough time to fully dress. I gasped. No way! Holy shit! I couldn’t believe it.
“Is Bethany having an affair with Kim’s husband?” I asked the anonymous number that I deduced belonged to Andras.
“Close. But no, he actually just got home, and then Bethany launched herself from the window. I’m guessing that she’s having an affair with Kim. At least now you know why she’s obsessed with finding dirt on you.”
What! I sat the phone down and covered my mouth. A very cruel part of me wanted to destroy her, to blow up the picture of her dangling out of the window and put it on a fucking billboard. However, an affair with Kim? No matter how much I wanted to throttle her, I wouldn’t out her. That was her secret to keep. But it might have been the leverage I needed to get her out of my life for good, so I hatched a plan in the lamplight, like a supervillain. I couldn’t risk confronting her in person in case someone overheard. So instead, I’d wait until she’d dropped her son off at school and pulled away, alone in her blinding white SUV. Then I’d send her this picture and tell her that it was time to stop this fucking madness. And that’s exactly what I did the following school day.
I sent the message and watched her slam on her brakes a moment later, nearly hitting the curb. Bubbles started and stopped on my screen. They started and stopped again. And again. And again. Finally, the word “Okay” appeared. Then her SUV lurched forward, taking her and her secrets with it.
GOODBYE, STEVEN
A perky waiter set a glass of white wine on the linen tablecloth in front of me. “Your order will be right out,” he said, looking from me to Steven, before buzzing across the patio to another table. We hadn’t been to that restaurant together for years, but at one time, a lifetime ago, it had been our favorite weekend brunch place. My throat tightened. I reached for my glass of wine and drank half of it in two gulps before setting it back down on the white tablecloth with a muffled clunk.
Steven pursed his lips together and ran his fingers over the salt and pepper stubble on his left cheek.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice a little higher than usual.
I nodded, inhaling so deeply that my chest swelled, popping the top button of my black cashmere cardigan. I rolled my eyes in a self-deprecating way; look at me; I’m an idiot, in hopes that I’d beat Steven to the punch. Over the years, he’d criticized me so much and made so many comments on my imperfect clothes or my chaotic way of being that I had a hard time being perceived by him at all. My fingers worked to push the pearl button back into its slot.
“Wow, this is really hard,” I chuckled nervously. The papers finalizing our divorce had arrived, and we’d agreed to sit down and talk about what to do moving forward, how to co-parent and co-exist, together but separate, until the girls were grown and beyond.
“We have a lot to talk about, and it feels a little overwhelming,” I admitted. We’d already sorted out the big things in mediation and basically just agreed to split assets, finances, all of it, evenly. We agreed on a sixty-forty split for custody because his job didn’t allow him to be there half of the time. Easy peasy. But the smaller things, like how to best communicate, or how to tell the kids, we had yet to discuss. In my naivety, life after divorce could be easy, we both just needed to accept that it was the best thing to do, make a plan, and execute that plan to raise our kids as two platonic friends.
“I just hope we can find a way to be friends.” I said earnestly, “We clearly aren’t meant for marriage, but we’ve shared a lot for a long time. We share children. And at one time, I think we were in love. We should try to remember that, right?”
Steven squeezed his eyes shut and opened them wide like he was double-checking to make sure the world was real. He cleared his throat, opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it. He confused me.
The perky waiter once again bounced up to our table. “Here you go. Salad for youuuu!” He placed a fennel and orange salad in front of Steven, who glared at him for the interruption, “and the carrot ginger soup for you!” He set the small ceramic bowl in front of me. “Enjoy!” he sang, and skipped off, the whole restaurant his personal runway. I had no idea where the positivity or energy came from, but I wanted it.
“I know it’s too late,” Steven said carefully, his eyes big and doelike. He poked at his salad with a fork, “but just for the record, I still love you. I think we could still make it work. Honestly, it started as jealousy; I felt neglected after you had the girls, and I think I became resentful. I know I can do better–.”
“–Steven. No.” I shook my head, “that’s not why we are here.”
He dipped his chin once, begrudgingly accepting the rejection of his last ditch effort, then put a finger in the air, signaling the waiter to bring him a glass of wine.
“I love you, too.” I admitted.
Should I be totally honest or keep it amicable? It wouldn’t do anyone any favors to hold back but fuck I didn’t want to say it but I needed to.
“I’m just,” I searched for the words, “I’m just not in love with you anymore, Steven. You haven’t been good to me. You had a million chances to do better, and you didn't. It’s too late for us to fix that; I can’t get past it; I’ve spent a billion hours in therapy trying. But I don’t think it’s too late for us to build a friendship.”
He stared into his lap, sniffling quietly, and when he looked up, his eyes were glossy and red.
“Okay,” he whispered.
I forced a smile, lips tight and awkward as I battled internally. See, I cared about Steven, so I wanted him to be okay. And I was so sick of his shit that I wanted to slap him. Because after everything, I had to sit across from him while he cried or performed crying when all he had to do was care enough to do better for all those years.
The waiter brought wine, and we sat quietly for a while, nursing our wounds and sipping from our glasses. Steven ate a few bites of his salad, I swirled my soup, and the silverware clanked, a choir of church bells within the silence of our miserable little world.
A toddler at a nearby table yelled, “Oh shit, man!” His horrified parents turned crimson and frantically scanned the perimeter to see if anyone else noticed. Steven and I looked at each other and lost it, our laughs bouncing off of the walls, carrying our collective joy and sorrow with them, until the tension dissolved within me, and I pictured it traveling out of my body like a black cloud, gathering in my chest and billowing out of my mouth like a smokestack. Like a dragon.
“Oh damn,” I dabbed at my eyes, “I needed that.” I chuckled. “Remember Ria’s swearing phase?”
Steven cleared his throat.
“Mmhm. Who knew a preschooler could drop the F-bomb with so much conviction.”
“And in the right context, too.”
He nodded, “Yep.”
It felt good to laugh together again. It had been years. A weight lifted off of us–and there we were, under all the muck, two old friends reminiscing about our beautiful children together.
And just like that, we slid into the semantics of the divorce, agreeing that he should stay in the mother-in-law apartment above the studio in the backyard since he traveled so much. It didn’t make sense for him to pay rent, which would only take away from the girls’ college funds.
It was better, immediately better. The anger I’d been carrying around diminished, because we were treating each other with respect for the first time in a long time. He couldn’t afford to take me for granted, and I didn’t feel like I was walking on eggshells.
We grieved the relationship over the main course–scallops for him, halibut for me–and we both cried, laughed, mapped out our lives, apologized, and after a glass of dessert wine, walked back to our cars happier than we’d been since the girls were born. I had no doubt that many battles lay ahead of us. But damn, I thought, I should have done this a long time ago.
Back at the house, we sat the girls down in the backyard next to the playground we’d all built together and told them that we had decided to raise them together as friends, instead of as married folks. Victoria cried and ran to her room, then Olivia panicked and followed. We spent the rest of the evening outlining what life would look like moving forward, ensuring them that we would love them exactly the same, forever. Seeing the girls upset made me wonder, more than once, if I’d made a huge mistake. But I reminded myself of what my therapist had said about how “everyone’s hard comes for them at some point in their lives, and divorce would be their hard. I could love them through hard, but I couldn’t prevent hard from happening.” It became a sort of mantra. That and “don’t model bad love for the sake of good parenting,” among a dozen others. When I got really desperate, I just chanted, “What would Dolly do?” Because Dolly Parton, patron saint, y'all. Our lives were changing and it terrified me, I’d bit my nails down to the quick and had gnawed my lip raw, but for the first time in years, I felt hope, too, that I’d get to wake up one day not too far off, and feel like myself again.
MIND-WEAVING
In the back corner of Blotto, I sat at a small table illuminated by two tea candles arranged near a small vase of fresh wildflowers. I stared into the flame, feeling the heat radiate off of it while it danced and balanced atop the wick. I was painfully aware of a number of things: it was very early in the evening, and I was one of only five patrons, which made my reckless plan more likely to fail (this might have been subconsciously intentional); Annette Hanshaw’s song, “I’ve Got A Feeling I’m Falling,” rang from the speakers, and that music, mixed with the dim lights and smell of “locally made” gin, was incredibly romantic, maybe too romantic. I’d showered, done my hair and makeup quickly, and chosen an outfit that made me feel powerful and sexy. I knew that I looked good in the drop V-neck and high-waisted jeans, my back straight and tall, eyes sweeping the room. I hoped, almost painfully, that I’d run into Andras. After all, this was one of the places he came to meet dates.
It had been a few weeks since I’d run into Andras in the cafe and chatted with him about Bethany. A few weeks since he’d somehow–I didn’t even want to know how–snapped a photo of Bethany shimmying out of Kim’s window in a lacy thong and snow boots. And one week since my divorce was final. Ever since, I’d been successfully fighting the urge to go to Andras's house for some kind of distraction, some kind of release. Steven was in China again. Victoria and Olivia were home with Jess, watching a Santa movie, and I had fuckall to do. So here I was.
I’d have two drinks alone, and if Andras didn’t turn up, I’d call Sebastian or Sam and go get dinner and spend the night dancing and laughing and filling the hole in my chest with friendship and mirth. I needed it. Not just because of my new single status but because I needed to carve out a place in the world that was just for me. Since having the girls and my marriage tanking, I’d been stuck in survival mode, in routines, in unhealthy habits, just going through the motions to get through each day. I loved being a mother but was unhappy with how I’d abandoned myself in the process. Not that long ago, Jess, Sebastian, and Sam had all not-so-subtly pointed out that my eyes seemed empty, shadowed, at times, that I’d stopped laughing and resembled a storm cloud in a jogger set. At the time I’d ignored them and smugly wrote them off as “clueless childless folks.” What did they know about being a mom and stumbling around in a crumbling marriage? Everything, apparently. I didn’t realize just how right they’d been until, well, now. Until I’d stopped focusing all of my energy on holding onto Steven and started thinking about myself and what I needed to be happy, without him.
I could be happy. I could make this life anything I wanted, if I were so bold, if I were so brave. Leaving Steven was the first step in casting fear aside and reaching for joy. Ripping my life away from Steven’s felt daunting, yet there was peace in it, and a hunger for love, for touch, for passion, excitement, and life. A drive to make up for lost time.
I tapped the candle’s liquid-hot surface with the tip of my finger, then peeled the dried wax off and let the pieces drop back into the candle, where they melted back into _____. A figure appeared in my periphery and my gaze slowly drifted up. A waiter in an old-timey uniform, a vest, and nineteen-twenties arm garters flipped open his notebook, asking, “What can I get ya?” I felt a slight pang of disappointment and then smiled, ordering, “A very dirty martini?” He nodded and sped off towards the bar. I turned back to the flame. It’s probably better if he doesn’t show up. What am I going to do with him, anyway? Plus, he’s going to live for a billion years, and I’ll probably die around eighty from some kind of cancer caused by turpentine exposure. I’d pulled out my phone to text Sebastian, “what are you up to?” when a figure appeared again next to me. I turned eagerly to accept my martini and froze with my arm partially extended, then awkwardly dropped it to my side.
“Well, hello again,” Andras purred. His blue eyes raked over me and then flared with delight. He lowered his head and whispered, “what brings you here all alone?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat.
“You have to know that you sound so creepy right now.”
He tipped back his head and laughed with wicked amusement, then took a step toward the empty seat across from me, before pausing.
“Can I sit? Or will we cause another scandal?”
I gestured to the chair, “go ahead.”
Andras prowled to the chair and slid in. He adjusted his jacket sleeves before resting his forearms on the table's edge. He leaned in conspiratorially, whispering, “You know, the strangest thing just happened. I went outside to take my usual evening stroll, and when I got to the end of my street, I caught a whiff of a very distinct floral perfume lingering in the air, which led me here. You wouldn’t know anything about how that scent got there, would you?”
I shrugged sweetly, “I may or may not have gone a block out of my way to rub my wrists on a tree near your house. Like a sloth. I wasn’t actually sure that would work, but I was curious about your sense of smell. And apparently, it is amazing. How long can you smell someone after they’ve walked by?”
Andras thought about it, working his bottom lip with his teeth. I tried not to stare.
“Hmm, about twenty minutes, but since you nearly dry-humped that big oak tree on the corner–nicely done, by the way, it lingered for longer.” He angled his head like a cat playing with a mouse, his tongue resting between his teeth. “Is there a reason you wanted me to follow you here?”
“First of all, I did not ‘dry hump’ anything. Ew. And yes. I wanted to buy you a drink for snapping that photo of Bethany hanging out of Kim’s window.” A partial truth. “I have no idea how you caught that, and seriously don’t want to know, but thank you. Thank you so much,” I spoke sincerely and meant it. It worked. “Bethany barely even makes eye contact with me at drop off and hasn’t bombarded me via text or email, either.”
