Between Husbands and Friends (31 page)

Kate’s Mercedes station wagon is parked in the shadows at the side. My heart lurches, races.

They could simply be talking, I think. They could be sharing a bottle of wine and talking about all this, trying to figure out what the best thing is for both families.

My knee hits the set of keys hanging in the ignition and starts them chiming. Through the large picture window at the front of the building, I see the ghostly room, empty desks illuminated by one lonely light. They must be back in the staff lounge.

I have the key to this building. I want to know. I need to know.

Heat flares up my face, as if my heart is a fiery caldron. So it’s true, that cliché,
my blood boiled.
My hand is shaking so hard I can scarcely get the key in the lock. I feel frightened and furious, and oddly enough,
guilty.
This is a shameful thing I’m doing, close to voyeurism. I feel like that awful-sounding word, that snakelike creeping thing, a
sneak.
I am sneaking. I am literally sneaking as I softly shut the door behind me and stand in the dark offices. Enough light shines in from the street to illuminate the various hulks of computer-laden desks and a soft gleam
of lamp in Max’s private office shows that the room is empty.

I walk back toward the staff lounge. The door is closed. My heart drums loudly in my ears, as if geysers of hot blood are shooting up my neck. It is a sickeningly uncomfortable feeling. I force myself to stop and take a deep breath. I put my hand on the doorknob.

I open the door.

Kate and Max are lying on a blanket on the floor. Naked, they lie side by side, facing each other, Max dark, angular, and masculine, Kate blond and feminine, her hip swelling up from her slender waist like the lines of a cello, the two of them curved together, a living yin/yang symbol.

They are not making love; they have finished making love. It was not spontaneous, accidental: both Max’s and Kate’s clothes are neatly folded on chairs. On the floor near their heads are two half-full glasses and a bottle of red wine. On several of the tables, candles flicker. Candles. I wonder who thought of this, this
romantic
touch, that makes the act seem not so completely about revenge, but about the two of them, together. Perhaps they have wanted to do this for a long time.

They have been talking, it seems that they have been lying here after making love and talking.

Kate looks up at me and smiles an oddly goofy smile, embarrassed and challenging at the same time and for a moment she looks just like Matthew. She doesn’t try to cover herself. She says, “Lucy.”

Max doesn’t look at me but rolls on his back and brings his arm up to hide his eyes.

I close the door. Good, I think. Good. This is what I deserve. This is the least I deserve.

Back home, I walk through the dark house, checking on my children. Both sleep soundly.

I take two sleeping pills and lie on top of my bed, because that’s what one does at night. I think: If Max was the one who brought the candles, then he’s not depressed. That’s not something a depressed person does.

I search my heart for jealousy, knowing that I should not have to search. Jealousy always comes unbidden, like desire. Perhaps I’m just too full of fear for Jeremy to feel much else. In an odd way, I’m grateful to Max and Kate, as if their act will balance out some eccentric scale, making me less culpable, or at least more forgivable.

On this thought I fall asleep.

With children, so much of life is routine. You just have to keep going. In the early days of
September we shop, as always, for school clothes. After the freshness of the sun and sea, the electrically modulated glare and air of the malls are exciting. Margaret brings friends, who attend to her serious deliberations with much squealing and discussion. Jeremy is simply patient; he hates trying clothes on, he doesn’t care what he wears, he just wants to get out of this store. He has gained weight and height over the summer. He has gone up a size in boy’s clothing. I stand in the boy’s section of Filene’s, holding a size 6 polo shirt in my hands, staring at the label, wanting to fall to my knees with joy. He’s growing normally. Perhaps they got the tests wrong, made a mistake, mixed up his results with another child’s. I’ve postponed our visit to Children’s Hospital for a week. He seems so healthy now; it’s as if he
will
be healthy if we can just keep away from that hospital, those doctors. It may be irrational, but it’s what I need to do, for now.

“When’s Dad coming home?” Margaret asks as the three of us sit around the kitchen table, eating spaghetti.

“I don’t know. I wish I did.” I have told the children the truth, or a version of it: Max is sleeping at the newspaper. He’s so busy, he doesn’t have time to come home.

“I’m going to call him,” Margaret says, her face dark.

“Please do,” I respond. “Maybe he’ll make time to talk with you. He’s always too busy to talk to me.” That is the truth. And Max
should
talk to Margaret. She shouldn’t be punished for what I’ve done.

“Can’t we just go to the newspaper and see Daddy?” Jeremy asks. “Just drive down and surprise him?”

Little boy. Jeremy has lost another tooth and lisps now when he speaks; it’s kind of cute. He’s insisted on wearing the one outfit he chose himself, something the kids will probably tease him about at school: a blue-and-white-striped button-down shirt and a navy blue sweater vest. He looks like a miniature copy of his father.

Or, rather, his clothes are like his father’s. After our month in the sun, his hair is bleached almost blond. He looks much more like Chip right now than like Max.

We should know any day now whether or not Max and Chip carry the CF gene. We should know who Jeremy’s father is. If Max is his father, then I believe Max will be able to get past all this, to forgive me, to come home, to help me tell Jeremy about his illness. But if Chip is his father …

“Go ahead,” I prompt my children, letting irritation color my voice. “Call your father at work.”

Margaret eyes me suspiciously but takes up the phone and dials. She hands it to Jeremy.

“You ask, Germ. He’s always nicer to you.”

“That’s not true!” Jeremy and I protest together. Then Jeremy goes quiet, listening. After a while, he says, “Dad? This is Jeremy West, your son. When are you coming home?” He clicks off, hands Margaret the phone. “Just the answering machine,” he tells us.

I rise from the table. “All right, I’ve got some work to do in my study. Margaret, you rinse the dishes and stack the dishwasher, okay?”

“Mom, you haven’t eaten anything.”

“Oh, sweetie, I ate tons at the mall.” I kiss the top of her head and hurry from the room.

School starts, and I’m grateful. Both children are preoccupied with thoughts about teachers, friends, schoolwork; they don’t have time to worry about whatever idiocy their parents are up to.

Tuesday morning I watch Margaret and Jeremy run through the rain to the school bus, then turn back into the quiet of the house. Usually morning is a luxurious time for me, like a drift of new age music after a rock-and-roll opera. But this will be the first time in two weeks that I’ve been in the house without the children to protect me from my thoughts.

I take a mug of coffee into my office. Since I’ve been home, I’ve managed to sort through the month’s mail and pay the necessary bills, but I haven’t called Jared Falconer yet; my thoughts clog up whenever I consider such a decision. I
could
start thinking about Write?/Right. I could call Stan. I should call Stan. But I’m seized with a restless energy, like we feel on the island when a storm approaches. When we can see the black clouds rolling toward us. When we feel the shimmer of the air. When the leaves on the trees rustle nervously.

I want to board my windows, bolt the doors, and hide my family in the depths of the house.

But I am the one who caused the storm. I have brought the danger into the center of my family’s life.

The doorbell rings.

“Chip!” My heart stops. “Come in.”

Meticulously he shakes the rain off his umbrella, folds it, and sticks it into our umbrella stand. He looks so
judicial
in his beautiful gray wool suit and wing-tip shoes. I’m in sweatpants and a loose blue cotton shirt.

My heart hammers. I lead him into the living room. “Would you like to sit down?”

He sits. We look at one another.

“The test results came back positive.”

I lick my lips. “I see.”

“I carry the CF gene.”

I feel myself flushing violently from head to toe, as if just now, right now, I’ve been caught in some embarrassing act. “Well.”

“Have Max’s results come back yet?”

“I don’t know. He won’t talk to me.”

“It seems pretty unlikely that he’d carry the CF gene, too.”

“Unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible.”

“Kate’s moved out of the house. She’s living with Garrison. She talks to the kids on the phone but she hasn’t seen them for two weeks. I had to take them shopping for school clothes.”

“Garrison is dying, Chip. This won’t last forever.”

“Yes, well, when he dies, I’m sure she’ll take on some other hopeless cause.”

“Why does that make you so angry? It’s a wonderful thing Kate is doing. These people really need her help.”

Chip takes his time, considering my question. “I suppose it makes me angry because she needs them as much as they need her. You’d think that having a husband and a home and two great kids would be enough to fill a life, but no, she’s got to go be Florence Nightingale.” He runs his hands through his blond hair. “It’s like we’re not enough for her.”

“Perhaps no one person is ever enough for anyone. We’re all so complicated.”

“I want you to tell me about Kate’s sexual infidelities.”

“For God’s sake, what can it matter now?”

“I think it matters a lot.” Chip leans toward me, fixing me with his steady blue gaze. “Lucy. If she had an affair, affairs, then that somehow makes me feel less guilty, but more important, it’s a sign that our marriage isn’t strong, not as complete, as I’d thought. It means that you and I—”

I stand. “Don’t do this, Chip.” I’m shaking and I lock my arms around my body, hugging
tight. “It’s enough, what I’ve done to Jeremy, to Max, to all of us. Don’t ask me to do any more damage to your marriage than I’ve already done.”

Chip rises, too. “Lucy, you’re looking at it the wrong way ’round. We did what we did because of something missing in our marriages.”

“No, Chip. Stop. I mean it.”

He moves toward me, as if to hold me. “Lucy. You and I—”

I shake my head once, decisively: no. “Please go. Please.”

He studies my face and something like pity softens his gaze. “All right.” He walks to the door, then stops. “You’ll call me when Max finds out his test results.”

“Of course.”