Fix You (3 page)

             
Dylan cringed as they crinkled and doubled over and began their drunken descent to the carpet. He’d always been so handsome and classic and posh – but standing on the other side of his suitcases now, he was the ugliest man on the planet.

             
“I took the liberty of packing for you,” she said when he continued to stare at her. “I’m sure your whore can put you up for the night.”

             
His mouth twitched, a muscle in his jaw flexing as he clenched his teeth. “So that’s it, then? You’re kicking me out?” He had the audacity to sound angry.

             
“No, I’m divorcing you.”

             
His frown became more severe. “See? This is exactly your problem, Jessica. You can’t just tell me - ”

             
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She sat up straighter in her chair, feeling as solid and unforgiving as stone. “How rude of me. Why don’t we get in bed and you can tell me how different it feels to be inside of her compared to me.”

             
He glanced down at the toes of his spit-shined shoes, raked a hand through his hair. “I’m too tired for this shit. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

             
“Talk?” Jess bit out. “What on earth could I possibly have to
talk
to you about, you adulterous whore?”

             
His head snapped up, face an angry jumble of planes and angles. “You’re being a bitch.”

             
She met his glare, unshrinking, chin lifted in challenge. “I have the right to be one.” People had called her a bitch her whole life. She’d been told that she was cold and blunt and unfeeling. She didn’t believe in sugar coating. She didn’t believe in sacrificing her principles in the name of a love that didn’t exist. “Now get your shit,” her voice didn’t even shake, “and get out of my house.”

2

             
“
W
hy do you need a lawyer?”

             
As the second oldest sibling, Jess had only one older brother, and she rarely turned to him for advice. Really, no one turned to Walt for advice anymore, thanks to the ridiculous feud that still hung between him and Jo, and as a result, he was no longer any good at handling pleas for help.

             
“For legal reasons,” Jess deadpanned as she braked her Tahoe to a halt at a red light. In the passenger seat, Tyler was tugging at the collar of his polo shirt, trying to get the buttons undone. She waved for him to stop and he shot her a sulky look that every six-year-old in the world had down to a science.

             
Walt made an impatient sound on the other end of the cell phone she had pressed to her ear. “Did you finally run someone over in a parking lot? You drive like a maniac.”

             
“Can you give me his number or not?”

             
“Jess –”

             
“Walter.”

             
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I’ll text it to you.”

             
“Good. I’ll see you at the house.” And she disconnected the call before he could say anything else.

             
She hadn’t slept the night before, hadn’t even attempted to, really. She’d sat curled up in her leather armchair, legs asleep and full of needles, staring in blank, numb shock at her neatly made, empty bed. She hadn’t felt…anything. The numbness had persisted. At eight, she’d showered, covered the dark rings under her eyes with makeup and prepared breakfast for Tyler and herself. She’d kept him out of school so they could be at the graduation lunch at one o’clock, but she’d worked on his handwriting at the kitchen table after syrup residue from pancakes had been sponged up. Dylan had called eighteen times. She’d finally put her phone on silent. Barefoot, in her favorite yoga pants, late spring sunlight warm and golden across the harvest table in the breakfast nook, she’d practiced Ps and Ls and Js with her son, ruffling a hand through his dark, downy-soft hair every so often, pretending everything wasn’t about to change forever.

             
“Will Chase and Logan be here?” Tyler asked as they reached the front entrance to Randy and Beth’s neighborhood. He’d given up on his itchy shirt collar and had his temple resting against the window, watching the mailboxes flash by.

             
“They’re supposed to be.” She could hear the unusually sweet sound to her voice and knew she was being gooey with her baby: overcompensating for his father’s sins.

             
“Is Daddy coming?”

             
She swallowed. “Probably not.”

             
Her old childhood home – the brick box with blue shutters and door – was planted for spring, Beth’s flowers overflowing their beds and spilling onto the front sidewalk. A plastic Little Tikes red and yellow car under the flag pole meant Willa had been “driving” that morning. The drive and curb were full of cars – Mom and Dad, Jo and Tam, Mike and Delta, Jordan and Ellie, Walt and Gwen. Jess parked along the street in front of Ellie’s new Explorer and gathered a deep breath as she killed the engine and disengaged her seatbelt.

             
Her three younger siblings had always been the ones with romantic troubles. And now they were all married, with babies in hand or on the way, and she was about to walk into the house the only woman whose husband had a mistress.

             
Her stomach rolled over.

             
Tyler had finally gotten big enough to take off his seatbelt, unlock his door and let himself out – he’d been four when he’d mastered that – and he scampered off toward the house while she was still gathering her composure. She wished, for a moment, as she watched him bound across the yard, that he was still small enough for her to carry. She wanted something in her arms aside from the two carefully wrapped presents she tucked under her arm and toted up to the house.

             
Dad met her at the front door, Willa in one of his meaty arms. “Hey, sweetheart!” His voice was too loud and too friendly against all her ragged nerves.

             
Willa lifted her tiny hand in a wave, a smile splitting her face that was frighteningly like Tam’s. “’Essssie!” she greeted, because she hadn’t mastered J sounds yet. Likewise, Jordan was “Ordie”.

             
Without her own daughter, Jess loved keeping Willa for Jo during the days, trying to impart even the smallest touch of femininity onto the tomboy-in-training. She was a sweet, busy kid, always laughing. Lately, being Mommy and Aunt “Essie” had been better than being Mrs. Beaumont by far…and there she went back to one of the many root sources of her current predicament.

             
“Hi, pretty girl,” she reached up and smoothed a wild wisp of black hair that had come loose of Willa’s barrette. She flashed a fast smile up to her father. “Hi, Dad.”

             
His gaze went over her shoulder and out across to the car before he asked the question she’d been dreading. “Where’s Dylan?”

             
“He couldn’t make it.” Which wasn’t a lie.

             
Inside, the house was tumultuous with voices, all of them loud and celebratory. Ellie’s dress was black and tucked in all the right places, she’d even worn heels for what it was worth, but she was very pregnant with twins. Tam’s hair was shorter than Jess had ever seen it and for once, he hadn’t pulled his tie all the way loose. Jess took a deep breath in the threshold of the living room, then she painted on a smile and launched herself into the fray.

             
Hugs and hellos were traded. Ellie loved her necklace and Tam pretended he’d actually wear the watch Jess gave him. Her numbness pervaded, only the tiniest flicker of emotion breaking through to rake its claws across her mind every so often, until Walt put his too-big arm around her shoulders and towed her into the dining room.

             
“Why do you need a lawyer?” he repeated his earlier question against the top of her head, her hair ruffling, the smell of his cologne overwhelming and semi-geriatric.

             
“To sue you for smelling like Grandpa’s medicine cabinet,” she said with a grimace and ducked from beneath his arm. “What the hell are you wearing?”

             
He sighed as she stepped away from him and put her back to the long, high-gloss table. Sunlight fell in through the windows as warm panels swimming with dust motes, picking up all the smudges on the wallpaper and the places where buttons and belt-buckles had scarred the front of the buffet. Beth had left a neat stack of folded clothes that needed mending in the chair nestled in the corner between the front wall and the china cabinet. Plastic zoo animals gave proof that Willa had been relocating her toys.

             
“Why do you need a lawyer?” Walt persisted, arms folding, mouth getting stuck at a stubborn angle on his big square face.

             
“You’re obnoxious,” she said and the way his brows plucked together told her he knew it.

             
“And you’re acting strange.”

             
Strange
didn’t begin to cover what had happened in the past twenty-four hours. “Last time I checked,” she heard the bite to her voice and couldn’t seem to check it, “you specialize in drive-by life advice when it comes to your sisters. So let’s skip the heart-to-heart and you can give me your guy’s number.”

             
His expression went blank with shock. “Jesus. Who pissed all over your day?”

             
“I…” she sighed and her fingers went to her temple unbidden, a headache building behind her eyes. “Sorry. I’m just…”

             
Her eyes swept out through the windows and across the lawn to the silver Infiniti coupe that was pulling up at the curb.

             
Her hand fell away from her face and curled into a fist at her side. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

             
“What?” Walt’s head swiveled toward the window. “Jess - ”

             
But she was already moving, heels clipping as she hit the old scraped pine of the foyer. The only thing that soured her stomach worse than the sight of Dylan was the thought of him coming into the house. With her family. To think that he had the gall to bring their fight here, in front of her parents and siblings…

             
Or, even worse, the thought that he expected her
not to fight with him
in front of her parents and siblings…

             
Jess felt a white, hot, throbbing bolt of anger streak through her – the kind that made
anger
too small and too meaningless a word. Her fingers curled into claws as she let herself out the front door and started across the lawn at a march. Dylan was still disentangled his long legs from the floorboards of his penile-replacement car, the midafternoon breeze catching the short lengths of his dark hair, his black sport coat pulling away from the lean frame his white oxford showcased so well.

             
“Jess,” Walt said behind her.

             
And then Tyler’s call of “Daddy!” caught her breath for one horrifying second.

             
No
, she thought, and even as she turned, Tyler dashed past her and toward his father.

             
Father
.

             
She remembered the night they’d made him: the frost on the windowpane; the smell of sandalwood soap and the taste of too-expensive wine on his tongue; the way everything had clicked and the world had melted away for a few perfect, preserved minutes that still reminded her of the brush of silk sheets against her naked skin even now. That memory, all the memories like it, were tainted. She couldn’t know what she now did and go back to where they’d been,
what
they’d been. Remembering the exact breathy sound of Dylan’s voice when he’d said
I love you
the night their son had been created couldn’t compete with her anger, her fury.

             
“Tyler, sweetie,” she said, voice taut, as Dylan set him back on his feet, “why don’t you go back inside with Uncle Walt and let me talk to your dad.”

             
The glare Dylan shot her over the top of their son’s head was terrible; he’d never looked at her that way in all their years of marriage.

             
“Tyler,” Jess said.

             
The change in Walt’s pocket rattled as he came up behind her in the yard.

             
“Go inside with Walt, please.”

             
Tyler looked to her, and then back to his dad, his brown eyes full of a confusion she wished she could spare him. No amount of numbness could shield her from the great big squeeze Tyler gave her heart when he said, “But I want –”

             
To stay with Daddy
, was what he was going to say, but Jess cut him off. “Go on,” she used the light, short mother-tone her own mom had always used when she wanted something done right away. “You can visit with him in a bit.”

             
“Hey, Dylan,” Walt said and Jess could hear the question in his voice.

             
“Hey.” Dylan bobbed a nod of greeting before his eyes came back to her, dark and furious.

             
“Walt,” Jess started again.

             
“I - ”

             
“
Walter
.” She turned just far enough to glimpse the maze of creases across his face: the jumbled layers of shock, disbelief and sudden understanding of her lawyer request. After a long, stupid moment, he took Tyler’s hand and started leading him back to the house.

             
“Come on, buddy. Have you seen Logan’s new Gameboy? I don’t even know if they call them ‘Gameboys’ anymore, but you should…” his voice became a low, indistinct rumble as they drew further away. Tyler did not, Jess noted with relief, look back at them.

             
Which made it easier when her eyes snapped back to her husband’s face and her lips skinned back off her teeth in a snarl she couldn’t control.

             
“Where the hell do you get off coming here?”

             
“Your whole family’s here.” His face may have been clouded with anger, but his voice was nothing but calm and reasonable. He was going to pretend she was unreasonable, play the poor abused husband. “Did you think I wouldn’t come?”

             
“My whole family
is
here,” she snapped, “but that doesn’t include cheating assholes.”