Thought I Knew You (13 page)

He had grown up poor and had paid for his own education. While in college, he’d received very little help from his mother. Poverty had singlehandedly driven him to achieve, molded the person he became. To receive a large inheritance after her death would have been a slap in the face.
Why didn’t I know?
Why didn’t he talk to me, both for the financial aspect and the emotional impact it must have had?

He never spoke about his mother and said very little about his childhood. The fact that my name was on the account surprised me. But then somehow… it didn’t. Putting my name there was very much
him.
He would have wanted me to be taken care of, and sharing everything with his wife was natural for him.
But I suppose not the fact that the account existed, or how he felt about it.
Like many other things, Greg was a wonderful on-paper husband and father, but he reserved a large piece of himself for himself only, as if he thought being a husband and father meant the
act
of being a husband and a father, not necessarily the emotional commitment that went with it. Greg the Provider.

I couldn’t reconcile the Greg I thought I knew with the Greg who would abandon his family. Either way, I was pretty sure that if my name was on the account, then that money was also mine. I put my hand on my head to stop the room from spinning.

Suddenly, I felt rich.

Chapter 16

W
e are going to a
Sunday picnic for a birthday party for Hannah’s friend, Annie, who is turning four. We occasionally socialize with Annie’s parents, Steve and Melinda, but Steve and Greg have very different personalities, so we aren’t that close. I spend the morning making potato salad for the picnic.

When we get there, Greg is quiet, sullen. I ask him what’s wrong, and he says nothing. We go through that several times. There is something, I know, but I also know he will not tell me. He never does,
and I leave it alone, then it passes. There are only two other couples there. They know each other, but we don’t know them. Melinda introduces them as friends of theirs from church—their names leave my memory as soon as she says them; it’s a fatal social flaw of mine. One of the couples has a baby. I stop to admire the baby and make small talk. Greg stands behind me, withdrawn. The husband tries to chat, but Greg is short with him and somewhat rude.

We walk away after a while, and I snap, “If you’re going to be rude to people, we can leave.”

He shrugs. “Okay, then, let’s leave.” He seems serious.

“Greg, we can’t leave. We just got here. This is Annie’s birthday party, and she’s Hannah’s best friend.”

“Then why did you say we can leave?”

“Because I thought you would say no.” I falter then, unsure if this argument is my fault. I see Hannah and Annie playing on the swing set and Leah walking unsteadily around the playground mulch to get to the baby slide. I keep one eye on Leah and turn to gaze at Greg. His jaw is working, his teeth clenched. He won’t return my look.

“Greg, look at me,” I say softly.

He turns, but says nothing.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“You don’t let me be me.” He folds his arms across his chest, and we stand facing off. “I’m always not good enough, somehow not enough. I had a headache this morning, but I’m not talking, or making potato salad, or doing what you think I should be doing, so it’s constantly, ‘What’s wrong?’”

“But you didn’t tell me you had a headache,” I protest, sure that it would have been a different morning. Pretty sure.

“It wouldn’t matter,” he says, looking away. “When I do tell you, you roll your eyes.”

“Do you really want to leave?” I ask, meaning it for a moment.

He shakes his head, laughs, and walks away. I walk to the playground area to tend to the girls. A mother with a toddler is there. We chat, laugh, and introduce our kids. I forget about the argument, about Greg.

A while later, the picnic has picked up, and Melinda’s yard is filled with people. I search the crowd, find Steve, and give him a small wave. Hannah spills juice on her dress, so I head to the kitchen to retrieve a paper towel. To my surprise, Greg is there. He and Melinda are sitting together at the kitchen island, their knees touching. Each has a glass of wine. They are looking at pictures in an album. Greg is laughing in a way he has not laughed with me in a long time, his head bent close to hers. I stop short, and they look up, startled.

Greg coughs. “Melinda was showing me pictures of their vacation in Hawaii.” But his eyes are looking at my chin.

I cock my head to the side. Melinda slides off the barstool, unsteady. A bit too much to drink? Possibly. I am cemented to the floor. Greg comes over and puts his arm around me, kissing my forehead. Slipping out of his grasp, I step over to the sink, retrieve a paper towel, and move past him, back outside to clean up Hannah’s juice. I look back into the house through the French doors, and Greg and Melinda are talking. He looks uneasy now, his body angled toward the door as if to inch away. Melinda leans in closer to him. She puts a hand on his arm and gestures with her wine glass. Greg looks surprised, and then laughs, his head tipped back, mouth open.

He glances out at me, but I look away. I think of how beautiful Melinda is, with her long blond hair and gym-toned body. A size four to my size ten. She has a small waist and long legs. One of the playground moms once suggested that she may have breast implants. When I look back at them again, she’s standing so close to Greg that one of those implants is touching his arm.

I pick up Leah and tell Hannah, “Let’s get going. Time to leave now, sweetie.” I try to be cheery, but the flirtation stings. I poke my head inside the door. “I think we need to get going. Leah seems cranky.”

Greg looks surprised. Ignoring him, I turn and walk toward the car. He jogs after me and tries to take the diaper bag from my shoulder. He’s smiling now. His headache has been cured. We drive home in silence. He knows I’m angry, but won’t give me the satisfaction of talking about it.

When we get home, I put Leah down for a nap and settle Hannah in front of
Cinderella
. I find Greg sitting on the couch in the living room, watching ESPN.

I move to stand in front of him. “I want you to talk to me like that, look at me like that. Laugh with me like that.” I wince at how pathetic I sound.

He says nothing.

I take the remote, turn off the TV, and sit next to him. “Why do you stonewall me?”

“Why do you nag me?” he shoots back.

I am momentarily stung silent. “I’m not nagging you. You were flirting. With Melinda. The way you were with her, you haven’t been with me in a long time.”

“She was friendly. We were talking. She
is
flirtatious; I’ll give you that. But it felt… nice. You’re always trying to make me into a different person. ‘Greg, you should be happier.’ ‘Greg, doesn’t this movie make you sad?’ ‘Greg, be more social,’ and now, ‘Greg, be less social.’” He shakes his head. “Melinda was happy talking to me,
Greg
, exactly the way I am.”

I fold my arms. “I want to talk to you the way you are. But you don’t actually talk to me.”

He reaches out and touches my hand, his thumb caressing my palm. Despite my anger, a thrill goes through me. He hasn’t touched me in months. His hand slides up my arm and strokes my hair. It feels delicious. I tilt my head back and close my eyes. He kisses my neck, softly, leaning in toward me. His body is warm against mine. He is aroused. By me or Melinda?

“Mommy, I’m hungry.” Hannah is standing in the doorway of the living room.

Greg jumps as if caught doing something wrong. I give him a wry smile.
Later
, I mouth. The evening passes, dinner, bath, bedtime. Slowly, Greg retreats back into himself. The moment has dissipated. I try to draw him out, be more ‘Melinda-ish.’ It doesn’t work. By the time I come back downstairs after putting the girls to bed, he’s asleep on the couch. Frustrated, I go upstairs. Alone.

At two, I hear him walking around downstairs—his nightly wandering. I think I hear his voice, but I can’t tell if I’m dreaming. I drift back to sleep. When I wake up in the morning, he has left for work. It’s Monday. Tomorrow, he will leave for a business trip to San Diego.

Chapter 17

O
ne thought plagued my mind
regardless of what I was doing, and I could not break free from it.
Is Greg in San Diego?
I’d stayed up all night more than once, looking for the link between San Diego, California, and Rochester, New York. I couldn’t find one, except for the fact that Advent sites were in both places. His secret life, as I’d come to refer to it, had to be linked to his job.

I began seeing a therapist, a bespectacled fifty-something woman whose office was more like a day spa with sandscapes and trickling fountains. She played
Enya
softly in the background, and her office had woven tapestries hanging from wooden dowels on the wall. The place was calming, and I found myself thinking of it in moments of despair. She advised me to channel my fixation constructively into my children and reminded me to let the police focus on finding Greg.

After five months, the police hadn’t
found any major clues as to Greg’s whereabouts. Detective Reynolds still followed his breadcrumbs, but his updating visits were less frequent. The FBI became peripherally involved, but because no one could be sure Greg wasn’t missing of his own volition, they wouldn’t fund a task force to aid the Hunterdon County police department. Greg’s picture appeared on the FBI’s missing person’s website, and Detective Reynolds had permission to use FBI resources should he find information leading to Greg. But Greg had vanished, gone without a trace.

Most of the time, I was resigned to the fact that Greg would never return. I didn’t believe he was dead. Although logically, I had no way to know, I somehow thought I would feel it. On the other hand, Greg and I had been so disconnected prior to his disappearance that insisting I would somehow “know” if he died sounded senseless.

I resumed my life, to some extent. We went back to church and attended story time at the library. Hannah returned to preschool full time, which meant her scheduled three days a week, as opposed to the sporadic times I remembered to take her in the first three months after Greg’s disappearance. I frequently felt like an observer of my life, rather than someone actually partaking in it. I read to the children and periodically played the piano and sang. But I watched things around me happen and felt nothing.

I had yet to touch the inheritance. I didn’t need the money yet, and I fluctuated between repulsion and wanting to spend the whole thing on something lavish that Greg would have despised. Sometimes after the girls went to bed, I’d trawl online travel sites for exotic locales—Madrid, Paris, and the Turks and Caicos. I spent hours looking at expensive jewelry I’d never wear—large diamonds with sapphire accents, necklaces, and earrings.
To where? The supermarket?

I didn’t have the courage to return to work. I was still on unpaid leave, and I felt no guilt from dipping into our savings account. My boss would periodically call to check in, and I would make the concerted effort to sound sadder and more listless than I was until the silence stretched out across the line, and out of pity or laziness—I was never sure which—she would agree to another month.
Can I just fax you the leave paperwork?

Greg’s manager called to tell me that, unfortunately, the company was going to have to terminate Greg’s employment. For the first four months, Greg’s pay had continued to be deposited—I supposed from vacation time, personal time, and sick time, and then the kindness of his management—but understandably, that couldn’t go on forever. I had some financial fear, but not much. I contemplated paying off the house with the inheritance money, but knew I really needed to see a financial advisor.

In the meantime, I shape-shifted into a suburban stay-at-home mom. The real me was hollow, checked out, unavailable.

Five months had passed, and I decided I needed a vacation. I didn’t consciously choose to go to San Diego to look for Greg. But knowing he had been there and lied about it, I needed to see for myself where he had stayed, where he had eaten. The trip was different from my Rochester one, where I had been convinced I would find him and bring him home. Going to California was an act of closure. I simply had to say that I had tried.

I called to tell Sarah, who squealed with delight. She lived north of Los Angeles, but happily agreed to meet me in San Diego for three nights and four days. I felt excited as I packed. My excitement was stifled, like the sound of a band playing in the basement. I could feel the steady thumping of the beat, hear the high notes, but the melody and lyrics were lost. I used Greg’s frequent flyer miles to get my ticket, first-class upgrade included.

Mom and Dad agreed to babysit at our house to lessen the impact to the girls. Hannah was doing better with the adjustment to life without Greg, under the circumstances. She’d had some bedwetting incidents, but they didn’t last. She missed her daddy and frequently asked for Cody. I had no explanation to give her for Cody other than “He ran away.” But we talked regularly, and she was able to express herself.

Leah, on the other hand, was having a tougher time. She still asked for Daddy, and being only two, didn’t understand any given explanation—though there wasn’t one anyway. She cried often and started waking up nightly, wailing for hours on end, high-pitched and painful. I sat in her room, the lights dimmed low, rocking her gently like a newborn, overwhelmed by my solitary responsibilities. Night after night. I was worn out, and my vacation would at least provide me a full night’s sleep, which I hadn’t had in months.

I kissed the girls goodbye with a twinge of guilt. But I also hoped that years later, they wouldn’t remember me leaving. Hopefully, when they were older and looked back on their tough time, they would remember me for getting them through it—as flawed a human as I was. I also recognized that as a mother, there wasn’t a time, tragedy or not, that I could leave my kids without feeling a twinge of guilt. It came with the territory.