Valley of Ashes (36 page)

So she wouldn’t try to fuck you.

Because you wouldn’t have turned her down.

He dropped his head. “I wanted to show her
why
. That I was serious. Make her remember what was most important to me. What
mattered
more to me than she did, than she ever could. Parrish and India—”

Not me. Never me.

“Bunny,” he said, sidling up to me. “Don’t cry.
Please
don’t cry… it’s killing me—”

“You can’t even—”

“What?”

I just looked at him, so empty. So goddamn sad.

“What, Bunny? Tell me. Tell me anything you want to say.”

“You can’t even
lie
, right now?”

“I’m not lying.”

And then I wasn’t crying anymore. “You can’t pretend you ended it because
I
mattered to you, even a little?”

“Oh, my God, that’s
not
what I—”

“You couldn’t have tried to make me believe for one second that
I
crossed your mind at all, in any of this?”

“Bunny, of
course
you—”

“Too late,” I said. “Too fucking late.”

“That’s not true. That’s not how I feel about you.”

“You’ve told me
exactly
how you feel about me: I’m kind and courageous
and admirable. I’m the mother of your children. I’m the fucking Statue of Liberty, and you’re the goddamn huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.”

“You’re more than that.”

“More than
what
, Dean?”

“Bunny… the way I feel about you.”

“I know what you
don’t
feel about me. Shall I tot
that
up for you?”

He swallowed.

“You consider me neither young nor beautiful,” I said, ticking down two fingers in turn. “You do not spend afternoons in bed drifting along… oh, gee… how did you put it? Something about opiate wings, ‘thinking of nothing but how beautiful and sweet and perfect you are’? And you certainly don’t yearn to ‘kiss every inch of my silken belly.’ Does that about sum it up?”

“Don’t do this,” he said.

“Do what, Dean? Let you know that I’m
perfectly
cognizant of how little you care for me?”

“Bunny—”

“Do you remember the last time you told me I looked pretty, Dean?”

He hung his head.

“Because I do,” I said. “It was two years ago.”

“Jesus, Bunny—”

“Want me to tell you the exact day, and where we were? Because I remember that, too.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’re pretty, you shouldn’t need me to tell you—”

“Go to your office,” I said. “You’re not doing either of us a lick of good here.”

He got on his knees. “Bunny, what can I do?”

“Christ, Dean. You could start with making a goddamn
effort
. A little lip service, at the very least.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t know what you
want
.”

“What if the roles were reversed, here, Dean?”

“How do you mean?”

“Really? You need me to fucking
explain
it to you?”

“Please,” he said. “Help me out. Tell me what I can do.”

“What would you want to hear if you found out I’d been fucking some hot younger guy?”

His mouth got tight.

“Sneaking around behind your back,” I said. “Exchanging filthy secret emails and phone calls. Meeting up with him whenever you’re out of town. Plotting how to get away from you, pull the wool over your eyes, steal time for the pair of us to lavish on balling each other raw… What would you want me to say, right now, if you’d had to read
my
emails about what he did to me, what I’d done to him?”

He didn’t say a word.

“Let’s say he’s better at it—better than you ever were, even when you
did
bother. And he
loves
knowing that he’s fucking your wife, behind your back. Making a fool of you gets him off. Gets us
both
off.”

Dean’s face went cold and he turned his head away from me.

“And let’s say I spend all day,
every
day, thinking about how I’m going to get more of that. Where he’s going to take me next…
how
. What I’m going to do to him. How much
better
it’s going to be than when I have to throw you a mercy fuck, back home.”

Lick it up, you piece of shit. Every word.

“I’m thinking about him when I cook you dinner, Dean, and when I ask you how your day was, and when I straighten your tie. But you have no goddamn idea, because you’re so goddamn stupid and trusting. You can’t imagine me doing that,
any
of it. And then you find out. Everything. Every last detail.”

His jaw was clenched.

“You think that can’t happen, Dean? You think it
hasn’t
, already?”

“Bunny, I don’t—”

“You don’t
know
. And you never would, not unless I wanted you to. Because I’m better at secrets than you are, Dean. Trust me, I kick your sorry ass in that department. Always have.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m telling you what you just told me you wanted to
know
, Dean.
What you should be doing, right now, to make this up to me. Think about everything I’ve said, you fucking asshole.”

Now I was pissing him off.

“Then think about what you’d want me to say to
you
,” I said, “once you’d found out. After I’d ripped away everything you thought you could trust in this marriage. After I’d made you feel like nothing. Like shit. After I told you I’d broken it off with him for the sake of the
children
, dragging them along when we met in public so I wouldn’t be tempted to fuck him again, right on the spot. Only I
would
be tempted. Damn
right
I would. Wet for it. Hungry and aching.”

He flared his nostrils.

“What would you want me to tell
you
, Dean, to make it go down easier. What lies would cushion the blow? Fake you out so I could keep on fucking him every chance I got—because
I
wouldn’t give it up. Wouldn’t be able to settle for
you
, afterward.”

“I’d want you to tell me you love me. I love
you
, Bunny.”

“You’re full of shit, Dean. You want to make it up to me? Go steal those papers Cary was looking at, the ones that probably got him killed. Make yourself goddamn useful for a change.”

“You can’t be serious,” he said. “Of
course
I love you. You have to believe that.”

“No I don’t, actually. I am not required to believe another shabby, lukewarm word that comes out of your thin-lipped, self-satisfied, and parsimonious little mouth. Not now, not
ever
.”

“It’s true. I love you.”

“Fuck you, Dean. And fuck the candy-ass low-rent betrayal of a wagon train you rode in on.”

I started walking out of the kitchen.

“Bunny!”

“Up the ass,” I said, loud enough so he’d be sure to hear me without my having to turn back and look at him. “Up the ass with a goddamn
chain saw
.”

The only answer to that was the back door, slamming.

Good
.

I
got the girls out of their seats and put them in the playpen.

It was eight in the morning, seven in California. I sat down in the kitchen doorway and called my mother.

I didn’t even wait for her to say hello, just said, “Mom?” and started weeping.

“Madeline, what’s happened?”

I gulped down a raggedy breath. “Um, Dean’s been fucking his secretary? Since we moved to Boulder?”

I heard her breath catch. “That
asshole
.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry. Oh, you poor
thing
.”

I couldn’t really speak. It was all I could do not to get snot on the phone. I swiped my shirtsleeve across my nose. Then I got all hiccupy, trying to breathe.

“Oh, Madeline…”

“I just… I don’t…”

“Shhhh,” she said. “Just take a breath. It’s okay.”

And then I mewled, “Mummie? This… is so…
awful
…”

“Do you want me to come there?”

Yes. Instantly. Put me to bed and bring me soup and toast.

“I don’t…, ” I said. “Not right now. But maybe in a little bit? I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“You let me know. I can come. Anytime.”

“Thank you.”

And we were quiet for a minute. Just breathing together.

Well, okay, she breathed, I was all weepy and shit.

Finally I said, “Mom?”

“What?”

“Is it ever going to feel okay again?”

“Jesus,” she said. “I just want to
kick
him.”

“I love you. And I would love to have you kick him. And I should go. At least grab some toilet paper and blow my nose.”

“Call me again whenever you want.”

“Okay,” I said.

And we hung up.

I tried lying down in the playpen with the girls but I just kept crying and I worried my utter self-loathing would somehow leach into the air and taint them or something, so I checked their diapers and called Ellis.

“Hey,” I said when she picked up, “are you sitting down?”

“I can if you want me to. What’s up?”

“Dean’s having an affair.”

“That loathsome, ungrateful, unworthy, uncouth, hideously repulsive piece of
shit
,” she said. “Who’s he fucking? Want me to shoot him? Want me to shoot
her
?”

“Exactly. His secretary. Yes, and yes,” I said. “Not necessarily in that order.”

“What the fuck is
wrong
with him?”

“What’s wrong with
me
?” I said, and started crying again.

“Oh, sweetie, no no no no
no
. You are not allowed to think anything about this at
all
except that your husband deserves to die a lingering death. Preferably of something venereal and incredibly painful, involving weeping abscesses and the pissing of acridly painful blood. Except not something he could possibly infect you with, of course, and then the bitch he’s fucking should have her twat fall out in front of lots and
lots
of people before it crawls away into a storm drain and gets swept out to sea. That
asshole
.”

I sniffed, loading my other cuff up with snot. “That’s just what Mom said.”

“Deserves to die a lingering death or the thing about the storm drain?”

“Actually, she just said, ‘that
asshole
.’ She wants to kick him. And fly here.”

“Excellent. You should let her do both.”

“Not today,” I said. “Today I just want to feel sorry for myself and loll around and get snot on everything.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Free babysitting. Naptime. Someone to glare at your repugnant shit-for-brains husband so you don’t have to.”

“Tempting,” I said.

“I repeat: Don’t be an idiot. Call her back, tell her to get on a plane.”

“I’d have to clean.”

“Make Dean do it. That
asshole
.”

“I just… I feel like I don’t have any skin left. And I feel so
ugly
.”

“Shut the fuck up,” she said. “You’re gorgeous. Like I-
hate
-you-for-being-so-fucking-gorgeous gorgeous.”

“Ellis?”

“What?”

“She’s, like, twenty… and Japanese and shit. And a neat freak. And I let her
babysit
.”

“Oh,
ewwww
. What was he, taken over by some giant alien pod creature? Fucking a twenty-year-old
neat
freak? That’s just embarrassing. For
him
. I’m disappointed in our friend Dean. I thought he’d picked up some taste from you, at the very least. That
asshole
.”

“And she probably gives way… better…
head
than me,” I said, suddenly all sobby again.

“Dude, no fucking
way
. Categorically.”

“Yeah, right, like you’d have any idea.”

“Actually, I’ve heard reports. And even the, um,
French
judge gave you a ten.”

“No shit?”

“None,” she said. “You were the talk of campus.”

“You have just really, really cheered me up.”

“Hey, what are friends for?”

“Telling you you give decent head, apparently.”

“Oh,
shit
,” she said.

“What?”

“Perry just ran over the neighbor’s cat with his Big Wheel.”

“Harsh,” I said.

I heard a wincing intake of breath, then an “
Oooo
…”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “He backed over it, just to make sure?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll let you go. You totally rock.”

“Not as much as you. I’ll call you later…”

And with that, she was gone.

I picked myself up off the floor, looked in the bathroom mirror, and decided to put ice cubes on my eyes.

My husband still sucked, but my women had made me feel better.

Much better.

The phone rang.

It was Ellis.

“Listen,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with you a shot of bourbon and a smoking hot seventeen-year-old lifeguard named Bruno can’t fix.”

“Sven,” I said.

“I keep forgetting you like ’em blond…”