The Comfort of Lies (16 page)

“Maybe I am,” she whispered. She walked over to her husband and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Perhaps that’s my problem.”

She knew this couldn’t continue, but she didn’t know how to move forward. All she wanted at the moment was to be the only mother of Nathan’s only children.

CHAPTER 13

Juliette

The week after Passover became a temporary détente. Juliette anesthetized herself with
Vogue
and
Elle.
Nathan spent most nights behind his desk.

And then came Easter, a holiday that never failed to depress her. Girls in Rhinebeck wore frills and taffeta. Satin ribbons hung from overflowing baskets filled with yellow marshmallow baby chicks, jelly beans, and pink barrettes. At dinner, they sat on stacks of phone books, and ate ham and candied yams. People took pictures because they were so cute.

She hated Easter.

Juliette’s parents ignored all the traditions. Was it because her father was Jewish? They’d never celebrated Passover either. Was it because her father and mother taught at Bard, such a bastion of humanism? Her mother taught creative dance; her father, political science—did that make them too sophisticated for chickadee marshmallows and too liberal for petticoats? Easter Sunday, her parents did nothing different from any Sunday, except that after Juliette fell asleep on Easter eve, her mother left a chocolate rabbit on Juliette’s dresser. Easter morning, Juliette ate the entire bunny while her parents slept late.

When Lucas was two, Juliette built him an Easter basket worthy
of a prince. Nathan had come in as she curled the last ribbons—multitudes of blue and yellow ribbons twirled around the yellow straw.

“What do you think?” She’d held up her masterpiece.

Nathan had laid a tentative finger on the soft white fur of a plush bunny. He held the whiskers, letting them open and spring back. “An Easter basket?”

“Do you have a problem with that?” Juliette had asked.

“Don’t get defensive, Jules,” he said.

“I won’t get defensive, if you don’t use that voice.”

“What voice?” Nathan crossed his arms across his chest.

“The you’re-shocking-me-with-your-level-of-stupidity voice.” Juliette placed a protective hand on the blue basket and worked at not crying.

“We’d agreed to raise Lucas Jewish.”

“For your parents. I don’t think giving him a stuffed animal will make him into a Christian or a Communist. Your parents are safe.”

“There’s no reason to be sarcastic. I thought we had a deal.”

But what was her side of the deal? What did she get? Not having to listen to Nathan sermonizing about how important Jewish traditions were to his family? She longed to create their own traditions.

She felt as though their life had become a series of compromises that always tipped to the Nathan Soros side of the moral scale.

When she tried to change his mind, he’d remind Juliette that since her father was Jewish, the children were actually more Jewish than anything else—as though Max and Lucas were genetic measuring cups.

Easter Sundays now were just like they’d been when Juliette was a child. Her family tradition was being carried on. Another generation of nothing special. Not even a chocolate bunny, though she always baked something out of the ordinary for dessert. Something Nathan considered a bit goyish, like a white cake with boiled icing. She’d paint green grass, a yellow sun, and blue sky by adding food coloring to the frosting. Nothing he could truly object to, but still, it tickled her to serve it.

What a pathetic rebellion. Baking a Christian-style cake to make up for his screwing around and forbidding Easter baskets?

Juliette tugged at the
Times
Style section from where Nathan’s legs had trapped the paper.

“Lift,” she said.

He lifted without a word.

“Again,” she said, going for the magazine section.

“I was going to read that next,” he said.

“You can’t
call
sections.” Juliette pulled at the paper. “If it’s not in your hands, it’s up for grabs.”

Nathan laughed, not turning from the business section. “Who made you the queen of newspaper etiquette?”

Juliette grabbed the paper and pulled until a page ripped away and she held nothing but a scrap of newsprint. “For God’s sake, Nathan, just give me the damned paper.”

Now he looked at her. “What’s wrong with you, Jules?” He lifted the torn Style section and handed it to her.

“You don’t need to hoard sections,” she said. “Nobody gets more than one at a time.”

“Then why are you holding the magazine
and
the Style section?” He smiled, trying to lighten the mood.

“You don’t read the damned Style section. You call it crap. You think everything I do is crap and everything you do is some sort of high holy brilliant top-of-the-line gift to God.” Juliette threw down the paper and pushed it over to him. “Here. Take it. Take it all. You get whatever you want anyway, right?”

Juliette stomped out of the room and slammed into the bathroom. She turned on the faucets and shower full blast, so he couldn’t hear her crying. Jerk. Next he’d probably tell her she was ruining the environment by running the water.

She turned off the water, thinking of Lucas and Max and future grandchildren.

After blowing her nose, she buried her face in a towel, muffling her sadness and anger.

“Go away, Nathan,” she whispered when he knocked.

“Are you okay, Mom?”

Lucas.

She curled her toes. She tightened every muscle. “I’m okay, hon.”

“Are you crying?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“You sound like you’re crying.”

Oh, shit. Max. Both of them were out there, sentinel sons guarding their crazy mother.

She ground her palms into her forehead.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Lucas asked.

Your father cheated. You have a sister. I still love your father.

“Leave Mom alone, guys.” Nathan’s voice was full and soothing. “She had a sad morning. Everyone has one now and then.”

“Why did she have a sad morning?” Max asked. “What was she sad about?”

What are you going to say, Nathan?

“When Mom was little, Easter was hard for her. Now I think I’ve made it just as bad.” It sounded like Nathan was patting the door, as though it were her back. “Come on, give her some privacy.”

They walked away, and Juliette hated Nathan more than ever. If he knew her so well, why didn’t he come through for her more? Why couldn’t he always be like that?

Why had he ever gone to that woman?

 • • • 

Juliette removed a load of hot towels from the dryer, wishing she could make a nest of the warm cotton and lie down. Tuesdays were quiet at the shop. She’d come in early that morning, eager to get away from Nathan and her pounding questions.

A key turned in the front door. Gwynne’s light footsteps came toward Juliette.

“What are you doing?” Gwynne asked.

“Folding towels?”

“Isn’t Helen coming in?”

Helen was their cleaner, towel folder, and official moaner. They
tried to placate her with gifts. (Look, Helen, freesia perfume to mask the smell of disappointment! Poppy-red lipstick to smear on your wrinkled lips!) She made everyone miserable, but neither Gwynne nor Juliette had the guts to fire her.

“She’s cleaning the bathrooms.” Juliette raised her eyebrows at Gwynne.

“Which means you have to fold?”

“I had to go somewhere I wouldn’t hear her muttering ‘Pigs, pigs, they’re all pigs.’ ”

Gwynne looked at her with skeptical eyes.

“Okay, I needed to do something mindless,” Juliette admitted.

“What’s wrong? You’ve been in a funk for weeks.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are so obviously not fine that I feel as though I should be pouring you tea laced with brandy.”

“Really. It’s nothing,” Juliette insisted.

All that “nothing” burned at her throat as she worked to keep it from bubbling out and scalding everything in the beautiful shop. If she didn’t, she might unleash a torrent of “Life sucks!” all over Helen’s clean floors.

“You know what they say. Crying gets the sad out of you.” Gwynne’s light words didn’t hide her concern.

“And what gets the Nathan blues out of you?” Juliette asked.

“What’s he done now?” Gwynne knew about the affair with Tia. If Juliette hadn’t shared it, she’d have exploded like the blueberry girl in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, except instead of bursting from eating too much candy, bullshit would have blown Juliette apart.

She buried her face in a towel. Too late. It had already cooled off, and now it had to be washed again for no good reason. Here she was, adding to Helen’s reasons to hate Americans.

Gwynne took the towel from Juliette’s hand and dumped it in the laundry bin. “Stop. It looks as though you’re veiling yourself, covering your mouth like that.”

Juliette flapped her eyelashes, but tears still leaked out.

“Is he seeing someone again?” Gwynne asked.

“I don’t think so.” She retrieved the towel Gwynne had thrown in the basket and wiped her eyes.

Gwynne fell on the cushy couch and patted the seat next to her. It wasn’t elegant, this back room where they had the washer-dryer, old magazines, employee lockers, and tables piled with the cosmetic samples that flew into the store. Old chairs and frayed pillows ended their lives in this room where no one bothered sucking in her stomach.

“He has a daughter.”

“He has a daughter,” Gwynne repeated.

“Nathan has a little girl. She’s five.” Juliette leaned back, pushing her hair off her face. She’d released the secret. Made it real. Savannah, Honor, Tia’s baby, Caroline’s child, Nathan’s daughter, no longer lived only in her mind, and now she had to deal with her.

 • • • 

Juliette tried to be friendly at dinner, for Lucas, for Max, and for her plan. She’d worked with Gwynne to craft a strategy for talking to Nathan. She’d be calm. Easygoing. Give him room to have his feelings and reactions before she had her say.

Otherwise, she’d screech. He’d retreat. That would be useless.

What was more frightening in a marriage than the moments you caught your husband looking at you with dispassionate eyes, when he revealed that he didn’t like you very much in that moment? So Juliette didn’t slam the Swedish meatballs on the table. She slid them.

“Meatballs?” Max hummed in anticipation, imagining the rare treat of real beef.

“Don’t be a dope. They’re turkey balls, right, Mom?” Lucas stabbed one on his fork.

“Wait until everything’s served.” Parmesan cheese formed a perfect fat
S
for Soros on the platter of spaghetti she’d placed on a copper trivet. “And the meatballs aren’t turkey.”

“Real meat? Hey, thanks for the miracle.” Lucas spread the cheesy
S
over the pasta. Juliette wondered if a daughter would at least comment on Juliette’s food art before smearing it like that.

“Do you really think you can taste the difference?” Juliette asked.

Lucas paused before biting his meatball. “So it isn’t meat?”

Max chomped down on his. “Whatever it is, it’s good.”

“You’d think crap balls were good if Mom put cheese and bread crumbs in them.”

“Lucas, language,” Nathan said.

“Maybe they’re soybean balls,” Juliette suggested.

Lucas took a suspicious sniff. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Taste it,” Juliette said. “See if you like it. Then I’ll tell you.”

Nathan swirled a forkful of spaghetti and then tipped it with a quarter meatball. “It’s beef,” he said after chewing. “Coleman beef.”

“Come on, Dad. How could you tell what kind of beef it is?” As usual, Lucas sprinkled salt over his plate before tasting anything.

“Because your mother wouldn’t serve any other kind. She loves me too much not to give me natural free-range beef,” Nathan said.

“Don’t you mean she loves
us
too much?” Max asked. “All of us.”

“Sure, she loves us all.” Nathan gave Juliette a lazy smile and winked. “But she loved me first.”

Juliette poured herself a generous glass of Cabernet.

Surely Nathan noticed. Juliette rarely drank.

 • • • 

Why not forget about it?

She watched Nathan remove his shirt. Crinkly hair covered his chest, some sprouted on his back. Ugly, except not to her. Nathan’s back endeared him to Juliette. It was the part of him that he couldn’t see, so she felt as though it were hers.

Before Juliette could fall further into her sentimental admiration of Nathan’s body, jealousy rushed in to replace her pleasure. Tia had seen his back.

Why did men cheat? That song kept playing. The thought of listening to it forever terrified her.

Gwynne theorized that Nathan’s mother and father doted on him too much. “You know,” she’d said, “the precious only child of immigrants. First they raise him to do well in the world—constantly
assuring him that he’s brilliant! So handsome! One of a kind! Then he makes it, and they’re all: ‘Oh, Nathan! A professor! So brilliant! Your children! So handsome! Your wife! One of a kind!’ ”

Who could live up to that? Was Juliette supposed to constantly assure a husband who belched and scratched and trailed dirty coffee cups that he was God’s particular gift to the world and to her?

Still, Juliette worried that the affair was her fault. She’d become boring: talking about moisturizers and makeovers instead of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Maybe she’d become a sexual robot, always following the tracks she and Nathan had laid down early on:
touch this, stroke that, rub this.

Nathan pulled on his robe.

“What reason did I give you?” Her words sprayed out without care, lacking the coolness she’d planned. She fell back on the bed, picked up a pillow, and held it first over her face and then across her stomach.

He turned to face her, his expression a mix of worry and puzzlement.

“Reason for what?” he asked in a deliberate tone.

“You know.” She threw down the pillow and brought her legs to her chest, circling them with her arms. “Her,” she said to her knees.