Lies of the Heart (49 page)

Her mother wagged her head at him.—Jimmy, that girl had long blond hair and was at least two hundred pounds.

—Haircut and a dye job, he said, ignoring his wife and looking suggestively at Michael and Jerry now.—And a fat suit. You can buy those at costume shops, you know.

Jerry had giggled, turned to Katie.

—Don’t listen to him, Jer, Katie had said, and Jerry giggled again, twirled one finger in a circle at his head.

After dinner Katie scooped up the damp patches of crumbs at the corners of the table: wiped by Jerry, who had left long wet streaks over the entire expanse. Katie pulled them into her palm, ignoring her mother’s impatient sighs on the phone. She was calling Nick, who was missing Sunday dinner for the fourth week in a row.

—At least he can stop by for coffee and dessert, her mother said, cupping the mouthpiece.

—I don’t think he’s there, Mom.

It was the second time her mother had tried to get in touch with him, and somewhere between the cleaning of the table and the talk of coffee and dessert, Dana had escaped to the back porch to smoke, Michael tagging along with her.

—Nick? It’s Mom. Are you there? Hello.
Hello?
She glared at Katie like it was her fault.—What in the
world
is more important than manicotti and my homemade tiramisu?

Either Nick was ignoring her mother’s call, Katie thought, or he wasn’t home. Again.

—He’s been spending some of his free time doing research on cerebral palsy, Katie said, wishing she believed her own explanation.

—He’s having some trouble with a client.

—He works too hard, her mother said, raising her eyebrows meaningfully at Katie.

The implication was clear. Katie didn’t work hard enough, never had. She spent too much money on her “films” and then abandoned them halfway through, the same way she abandoned her degree, which was useless in the first place.

In the kitchen her father and Jerry prepared the dessert and coffee. Katie turned away to listen to Jerry’s giggling; her father probably had his notebook out, tallying up Jerry’s bill for the day. A few minutes later, the back door opened, and Dana walked into the dining room, smelling like smoke and fruit spray. Their mother eyed them both, apparently dissatisfied with their company, and picked up the phone again.

—You smell like a watermelon ashtray, Dana, she said.

Dana rolled her eyes at Katie.—She’s calling Nick
again
?

—I can hear you, I’m not in another room.

With a small nod of her head, Dana signaled Katie to follow her. They walked through the kitchen to the back door, found Michael, Jerry, and Katie’s father sitting on stools at the island, the small notebook in between them.

—Coffee’s almost done, girls! her father called to them.

—Kay-tee, Jerry said, grinning and pointing to her father.—He say I own him two million dollars!

Katie’s father winked at her.—Oh, wait a sec here! he said, his finger running down the page.—I forgot to add a cup of coffee. That’s two million dollars and sixty-five cents. Hand me that pen, will you, Michael?

Out on the back porch, Dana lit another cigarette.—Where do you think he is?

—I don’t know. Katie left the back door open a few inches so she could listen to the happy sounds of her father’s teasing, to Jerry and Michael’s silly laughter.—Wherever he goes these days.

—Be patient, Katie. He’ll feel better when he makes some headway with Joey.

—I think it’s more than that this time, Katie said.—It’s like I’m not even there anymore. He walks around the house ignoring me most of the time, and on the weekends he’s barely talking to Jerry either. And I know Jerry doesn’t understand what’s going on, and his feelings are hurt.

—Maybe Nick only has room for one challenge at a time.

—It isn’t just work, Dana, Katie said. And then, more quietly: —We haven’t had sex in over two months.

—All couples go through dry periods, honey. Especially when there’s stress.

—
We
don’t. Or at least we hardly do, Katie said.—How are we going to have a baby if we aren’t even trying?

Dana blew out a long stream of smoke.—Did he ever take a look at those pamphlets I dropped off?

—He doesn’t want to adopt.

—What about the one on in vitro? I know it’s expensive, but it’s an option.

Katie watched a squirrel furtively digging for nuts in the backyard. It bounced to another spot, bushy tail swishing, and started digging again.

—Dana, I see him looking at other women all the time, and I don’t know what he’s thinking. Maybe he wants to have an affair, or maybe he’s thinking that if I can’t give him a baby, someone else can.

—Nick wouldn’t have an affair. That’s crazy—

—You don’t know that. He could, Katie says.—Sometimes I can actually see him with another woman, and it’s like I can’t even breathe, Dana. I couldn’t handle it if he decided to be with someone else, if he wanted to start a family with another woman.

—Kate, even if that happened, even if there’s the off chance he
is
seeing someone else, then you would still live your life—

—No, Katie said.—No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want to.

Dana sighed, started to lift the cigarette to her mouth, stopped; her face filled with panic. Katie turned, saw Jerry standing at the door, peeking out. His eyes wide with terror.

—Your dad say to tell you coffee is done, he said, covering his face with his hands.

She told Nick that she was going to Sarah and Arthur’s to film the last interview, and since he never asked questions anymore, he had no idea that she had wrapped up with them in the fall. The strain of the filming schedule had started to show with Sarah—she lost her concentration easily, her focus wavering and wandering back to Katie and Nick’s marriage, her questions endless and prying—and Arthur had suggested that they double up on their sessions to keep her on track. Katie hadn’t understood how interviewing them two times a week instead of one would help, had her own suspicions about why they were speeding up the process. Arthur had a long bout of coughing one day, and she was afraid that he was sick, that time was running out for him. Sarah’s concerned look when he passed a handkerchief across his lips only added to Katie’s fears for her friend.

She was parked on Warwick Neck Avenue, a block up from her own street, waiting.
This isn’t stalking,
she told herself,
not when it’s my own husband.
There were still a few hours until Nick picked up Jerry for the weekend, and Katie’s gut feeling was that he would leave the house soon after her, on his way to wherever it was he went these days. She thought of finally catching them, what she would say after she had pulled the nose of her car right up to his, snapping on the high beams blinding them temporarily. And then Nick’s face—the quick succession of anger, guilt, and apology playing across his features. And the woman he spent all his time with now, too. Her hands coming up to shield her face.
Gotcha!

Fifteen minutes later Nick’s car turned out of their street and onto Warwick Neck. The darkness settled quickly, the traffic heavy on a Friday night. She kept a two-car distance behind Nick, followed him onto Rocky Point Avenue, and then left onto Palmer. Past the Seven Seas Chowder House on the right, where Nick and Katie had their first official date, Nick devouring a bucketful of steamers by himself, dipping each one in the plastic cup of butter, because Katie was too nervous to eat.

When he turned right onto Samuel Gorton Avenue, toward the Longmeadow Fishing Area, Katie pulled to the side of the road: there was only one way in, and Nick would see her if she followed him.

For the next hour, she tracked his progress around Warwick—next to Conimicut Point then to Gaspee Point, passing Jenny’s Ice Cream along the way, Jerry’s favorite place to get pineapple sundaes—following Nick’s trek to see the ocean from every available access road that led to it. She almost lost him on the way back on Warwick Avenue—an accident near Korb’s Bakery had clogged traffic—but she caught up with him again when he took a right onto Sandy Lane, and then another right onto Strawberry Field Road. She thought he might be headed to the airport—Strawberry Field Road dead-ended into Industrial Drive, the access road on the other side of T. F. Green—and wondered if this was it: Nick finally escaping forever, taking flight from his life with Katie. But then he made a sudden left onto Burbank Drive, a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood, and pulled in to the driveway of a blue house.

Katie raced to the curb, threw her car in park. Popped open the door and started to jump out until she realized it wasn’t Nick’s car in the driveway at all. She had followed the wrong person, had lost Nick somewhere in the dark.

A
fter an hour of watching her life behind closed lids, Katie rises, walks to the bedroom doorway. Looks down the hall toward Jerry’s room. After all the months of internal remonstrations—
it is the spare bedroom now, the
spare
bedroom
—it is still this: Jerry’s room. She trudges to his door, her legs heavy. Takes in a deep breath, opens the door.

The last thing Katie expects is the pungent, clean smell of lemons. She was prepared for the heaviness of stale air, thick and peppery with dust, maybe even a sour odor, because sometimes Jerry would leave glasses of half-drunk milk or juice on the floor. She could have missed it that day in May when she tore the room down, ripping his pictures from the walls, tearing the sheets off his bed—trying to remove every trace of his having lived in it before she shut the door behind her for the last time. But there isn’t the clinging mustiness she expected, no curdled milk, just lemons and fresh air, evoking memories of childhood springtimes and her mother’s frenzied cleaning and screen washing as soon as the first buds flowered on the trees.

She clicks the light on, sees that her mother has organized this room, too: the pile of Jerry’s drawings that Katie had let drop to the floor stacked neatly on the mahogany dresser now, the dark wood polished and shining. The bed that Katie had stripped and shoved against a wall lined up perfectly now underneath the window—the moonlight pushing through the lace curtains and falling across the mattress in patches. Against the opposite wall, Jerry’s books and pads and boxes of pens and colored pencils in a row, instead of scattered on the rug beside it—moved back onto the bookshelf, so her mother could vacuum the rug, which still had tracks in it. The big Bugs Bunny pillow Dana bought Jerry last Christmas sits flat on the center of the bed; if Katie flips it over, she’ll see the burned Coyote, the Acme dynamite box, the Road Runner’s beaky smile that made Jerry gasp in delight when he discovered this favorite character’s “friends” on the other side.

Of course her mother would clean this room, too. Katie wonders absently now how her mother reacted to Jerry’s possessions as she organized them, placed them in neat piles. If she understood the significance of this room, the backdrop to Nick’s accusations, his packing, leaving. But no, of course Katie had never told her mother the details of that last fight.

She turns off the light, lies on the bed. Cradles Jerry’s pillow in her arms and breathes in the lemon-filled air as her eyes adjust to the darkness. A weight creeps into her body, slowly crushing.

How many times did Jerry do this, after Katie and Nick had said good night? How many times did he lie in the glow of moonlight across his bed, afraid that this would be the night when God would come, full of blinding vengeance? Reliving the torture of his childhood as he huddled under the blankets, as Katie and Nick wrapped themselves around each other down the hall, greedy for the taste of each other’s skin? Or later, lying side by side silently, both pretending to be asleep? And how many times had Katie watched the ceiling like this herself when she was younger, hoping God
was
watching her, praying He would come and show her what was missing in her life, what she could do to make the loneliness go away and stop the endless longing that made her body ache?

She’s ready now, finally ready to replay that last night with Nick, to dissect the pieces and examine them. To allow the reel to slowly unwind, the images and words to wash over her. For too long she has kept her eyes wide open, has watched everyone around her, not once trying to see what was right in front of her—within view if she only looked. She’s ready to see that night with Nick, to finally see herself, to let the pieces fall where they will.