When He Fell (25 page)

“How is the boy’s mother taking it?” Jane asks as she takes a sip of coffee. “Ben, right?”

I nod. “Hard, of course. He’s suffered a serious brain injury.” I hate even thinking about Maddie. “He’s in rehab now. We saw him over the weekend.” Jane’s eyebrows raise and I explain, “Josh was—is—his best friend.”

“Do you know why he pushed him?”

I cringe at how bluntly she puts him. “No. He won’t say.” But I’m afraid that I am beginning to understand, to guess. Because Josh knows something about Lewis and Maddie. Did Ben tell him? Maybe Ben saw something, and told Josh while they were up there on the rocks. Terror clutches at me.
What did Ben see?
Dare I ask Lewis? Or even Maddie?

“His mother can hardly blame Josh, though,” Jane says. “It’s the school’s fault for not being more on the ball when they were playing.”

“She’s filing a lawsuit against the school,” I tell Jane. I take a sip of coffee, wincing at the acidic taste. “Well, a claim against their insurance policy for negligence.”

Jane nods vigorously. “Good for her. That’s the way to do it. I’ve wondered about doing something similar myself. I mean, Mrs. Rollins just
ignores
Amelia sometimes. And she’s put her in the corner of the room several times as some sort of time-out. Shaming children should not be part of Burgdorf’s ‘accepting the whole child’ policy.”

But,
I think,
your daughter bites.
I just smile and nod once more.

Ten minutes later I extract myself from Jane and hurry to the office. I’m five minutes late for an appointment, and I really can’t afford to annoy my patients.

Yet worries still needle and niggle at me as I work my way through my patient list. I have to go back to Connecticut on Thursday for my father’s eye appointment, and the thought of my parents’ ongoing care feels like a millstone tied around my neck. I cannot keep my parents and my own family afloat. I can’t do it all. I don’t feel like I can do even half of it.

During my lunch break I flip through one of the magazines in the waiting room and my gaze rests on the glaring headline:
Ten Signs To Tell If Your Husband Is Cheating On You.

The article is written in a light and almost flippant way; I scan through the expected working late at the offices excuses, unexplained receipts in his coat pockets, lipstick on his collar. Then I read number nine:
A sudden, noticeable emotional distance.

I swallow my mouthful of rubbery cucumber and sit back in my chair. I don’t want to think like this. I don’t want to fear like this. And yet I do.

Barbara bustles in, taking off her coat with a theatrical shiver before she goes to her desk with her own salad from the same deli. It’s just the two of us in the office this afternoon, and my next patient isn’t for another hour.

“Barbara,” I ask, and then clear my throat. “Have you…have you ever been cheated on?”

Barbara looks up in surprise, and then her face collapses into an expression of sympathy. I cringe. “Oh, Joanna,” she says. “You aren’t thinking of Lewis…?”

“I don’t know,” I say and stab a squishy tomato with my fork. “I honestly don’t know. There have just been a few…signs.”

Barbara raises her eyebrows. “What kind of signs?”

I shrug. “Emotional distance,” I say, thinking of the article. Of how Lewis and I lay in bed, still and separate. “And he’s…friends with a mother from school.”

“Friends?”

I realize I haven’t even told Barbara about Josh, about Ben. How could I have not, I wonder, since it has consumed my life? And yet work has simply become an exercise to complete, an experience to endure. “Something happened,” I say, and haltingly, hating every word, I tell her about Ben’s accident, Josh pushing him, and then about Maddie.

“That’s so tough,” Barbara says after I finish. She looks sympathetic but I know she can never really understand. “As for cheating…” She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know. Had Lewis mentioned this Maddie before all this happened?”

I rack my brains trying to think if he had, but all my memories are now colored by my current fear.
Did
he mention Maddie? And if he didn’t, was it because he was hiding something?

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“How does he even know her, really?”

“Through Ben and Josh. He took them out in the afternoons sometimes, after school. And on Saturdays…” I feel my face heat and my stomach clench as all those innocent outings take on a terrible, sordid context.

“With her? With Maddie?”

“I don’t…I don’t know,” I say again. My mind is racing, snagging on memories. “I don’t know if they did things together or not. I never thought about it.” I never considered Ben and Josh’s play dates beyond how good they were for Josh. But now I can picture Lewis and Maddie all too clearly, laughing about the boys’ antics, just as they were laughing together at the rehab center. Maybe she’d invite him in, ask if he wanted a coffee. Maybe the boys would run into Ben’s room, hoping for a few more minutes on the Xbox, while Maddie and Lewis lounged in the living room, trading war stories of parenthood.

I feel petty and small for thinking this way. A boy is brain damaged, for heaven’s sake. Our son is struggling. And yet my fear eats and eats at me, a canker that will consume me if I let it. A canker that is, perhaps, the root of everything.

“I don’t know,” I say to Barbara yet again, and this time the words burst from me. “I don’t know what he feels for her or how much time he has spent with her. But I know there’s something there. I feel it. I see it when they’re together. He put his hand on her shoulder…” It sounds so small, and yet I
know
it meant something. I swallow back a sob.

Barbara nods. “A wife knows,” she says, and this time the sob escapes me, unruly and helpless, because I am so afraid she is right.

21
MADDIE

Monday and Tuesday are hard days. Ben doesn’t want to do his therapies; he resists, flinching away from Eric, who is trying to help him flex his legs. He moans when I try to feed him some yogurt, and his hand jerks up and knocks the bowl from my hand. It sprays me with cherry goop and the bowl clatters to the floor. Worst of all, Ben glares at me, with so much heat and hatred in his eyes that I struggle not to cry.

Sheila, one of the nurses, tells me to take a break while she cleans up the mess. I leave the room, hating that I feel like I am abandoning Ben, but knowing I can’t stay and have him see me break down. And in that moment I am close to breaking down.

I can’t be this strong, I think as I pace the hall outside Ben’s room. My fingers bite into my palms and my heart is thudding; cold sweat prickles under my armpits, between my shoulder blades. I can’t do this. I can’t do this one more day, never mind forever. Not on my own.

I take a deep breath and sink into a chair, fisting my hands in my hair, telling myself to pull it together because I have no choice. This is my life. I can’t walk away from it, even if in this moment I want to.

I fight the urge to call Lewis, to lean on him just a little. It was so good on Saturday, to have his company, to see him with Ben.

I slide my phone out of my pocket and glance at the texts from Lewis. He hasn’t texted me once since Saturday, and the knowledge is bitter. Has Joanna warned him about me?

Recklessly I thumb a few buttons.
Hey, Lewis. Just checking in. Thanks so much for Saturday. Ben was so grateful to have you there, and so was I. I hope we can do it again sometime.

I press send and then slide the phone into my pocket.

Sheila pokes her head out the door and gives me a smile that manages to be both sympathetic and bracing. “All clean in here.”

“Okay.” I rise from the chair, every muscle I have aching. I feel like an old lady; last night I studied my reflection in the mirror, amazed in a distant sort of way by the new lines on my face, around my eyes, from nose to mouth. I look haggard, spent, and I’m only thirty-four.

Ben is still agitated and restless, and he continues jerking and moaning and acting out until Dr. Spedding comes in at three o’clock and diagnoses a bladder infection. He puts him on antibiotics and assures me things will be better tomorrow.

Tomorrow.
I feel like he might as well have said next year. I’m not sure I can survive until tomorrow.

I leave the rehab center at seven, after I’ve helped Ben with his dinner: tiny bits of chicken and peas speared onto the tines of a fork. He eats a few bites, his face so full of wretched misery that my voice wobbles all over the place as I keep up a monologue of cheerful chatter.

I realize as I get on the train that I smell like yogurt, urine, and sweat. Fortunately the train isn’t crowded, and so I have a seat to myself. I stare out the window at the endless night and after a few stops I fall into an uncomfortable doze, waking as we pull into Grand Central with a terrible crick in my neck.

I stumble off the train into the icy darkness; midtown has already emptied out and the last few commuters are hurrying towards the platforms, shoulders hunched and heads bent low.

I take the 7 train across town and then walk to my apartment. I’m half-hoping Brian will open his door, as he’d gotten in the habit of doing, and half-dreading it because I know I look like a mess.

He doesn’t, and disappointment floods me. I really need someone to talk to, and there’s no one. As I strip off my clothes and step into the shower, I think of calling Juliet. She must know about my claim to the insurance company, my accusation of negligence. I can’t call her. I can’t call anyone.

I’ve just stepped out of the shower and am pulling on a hoodie and a pair of yoga pants, wondering if I have the energy to send a few work emails, when the doorbell rings.

My heart leaps with hope. It must be Brian, coming to check on me. I’m wondering if I should invite him in, offer a glass of wine, or if that awkward moment the last time I saw him will make that seem like I’m putting a move on him, when for once I am not.

And then I wonder if it is Lewis, responding to my text. The possibility propels me to open the door wide.

“Hey…” The greeting dies on my lips. It’s not Lewis or Brian. It’s Bruce Decker.

“Maddie,” he says, and steps into my hallway, forcing me backward against the wall. “What the
fuck
have you done?”

I blink and stare, too shocked to reply. I’ve never seen Bruce like this; his mouth is tight and pinched, his face white except for the spots of color on each cheekbone. His pale blue eyes flare with anger.

“Bruce.” I reach behind him to close the door, although I don’t really want him in my apartment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, and to my relief my voice sounds even.

“I’m talking about the lawsuit you filed—”

“My lawyer submitted a claim to the school’s insurance policy,” I cut him off coolly. “The settlement conference is next Friday, and as far as I know, has nothing to do with you.” Although since he is chairman of the board of trustees, maybe it does. Still I stare him down.

“I know that,” Bruce says impatiently. “Which is why I don’t see the point of trying to create a media frenzy. You think that kind of attention does anyone any good? You think it’s good for your son?”

I have no idea what he is talking about. “I’m not trying to create a media frenzy, Bruce,” I say. “I haven’t told anyone about the claim.” Except for Brian and Lewis, but I know neither of them would talk to the media.

Bruce jabs a finger toward me. “Then you’re saying you don’t know about the post that’s gone viral on MetroBaby?”

My jaw goes slack. I know MetroBaby is a message board for Manhattan mothers that provides an unrestrained forum for vitriol and gossip. I know national newspapers pick up stories that gather steam on the site because so many wealthy and high-profile women post on it. Wordlessly I shake my head.

“Yesterday morning,” Bruce enunciates, “someone named BurgMom posted that you were suing the school for negligence, and cheered you on for finally ‘showing Burgdorf for the hypocritical institution it truly is’.
The New York Daily Mail
is going to run the story tomorrow. And you’re saying you don’t know a thing about it?”

I can feel the blood draining from my face as I shake my head. “No.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Maddie,” Bruce says as he takes another step toward me. “The person who posted on MetroBaby even named Juliet and Helen as the ones on the playground that morning. How would she know that? Why would some stranger post all that?”

“Bruce, I have no idea. I haven’t told anyone about the claim.” I
know
Lewis or Brian wouldn’t do this. “I never wanted media attention.”

“Well you got it, sweetheart,” Bruce snarls. “You got it for everyone. And I’m not buying that you’re Miss Innocent in all this—I know you, Maddie.”

I press back against the wall, my stomach curdling. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how jealous you’ve been of Juliet. Of what she has. A beautiful apartment, three lovely, well-mannered children, a
husband.
” His eyes glitter as he comes closer, close enough so his body is brushing mine. “You’ve wanted her life. You can’t have it, so maybe you’ve decided you would destroy it instead.”

“My life is the one that’s been destroyed,” I retort. My voice is shaking. “It’s my son who is brain damaged, Bruce, so just stop with your sob story, okay? I don’t feel sorry for you at all. Not one bit.”

“I know you don’t,” he says, and we glare at each other for a few taut seconds before, to my shock, he kisses me.

My whole body short-circuits as Bruce grinds his mouth against mine and then he reaches for my hips.

And even though everything in me is screaming,
screaming
to stop, I kiss him back. Because I am that kind of woman. I don’t want to be, and everything in me shrieks and rebels, but I still do it.

My response clearly excites Bruce because he presses me against the wall, sliding his hands under my hoodie and then groaning when he realizes I’m not wearing a bra.

I can’t believe this is happening. I gasp in shock as Bruce pushes my yoga pants down. No, I think. No, I don’t want this. I know I don’t. He’s muttering dirty words that are not remotely sexy as he fumbles with his belt and I feel like I’m up on the ceiling, watching this all unfold in horror. I may be lonely and desperate and afraid, but I don’t want this. Yet I can’t move.