17

ON EVERY AIRPLANE THAT Perri had ever boarded, she believed she’d die in a fiery crash. She considered that familiar line about air travel being safer than car travel to be bullshit: people could live through car crashes; falling out of the sky was another matter. And even if the chances were one in a million, who was to say that she wouldn’t be that one? After her Delta flight careened onto the tarmac at JFK and ground to a halt, Perri breathed a sigh of relief. Her second thought was that she hated men. It wasn’t just that her husband had come on to her sister, or that her would-be lover had made fun of her legs. It was that her father had lied to them all about the existence of a fourth daughter. Not for a minute did Perri believe that he had no knowledge of the pregnancy. When women were expecting, they couldn’t wait to tell the world.

Her third thought—after alighting at the Delta terminal—was what a terrible impression the place surely made on foreign tourists who were arriving in the United States for the first time. The carpets were threadbare, the ceiling low, the light dim. Two sparrows glided across Perri’s field of vision, just beneath the ceiling, barely skimming the heads of several travelers. Really, it was an embarrassment. So was the fact that this woman who claimed to be the fourth Hellinger sister had apparently been the one to inherit their father’s love of science, rather than Gus, Olympia, or Perri herself. Perri would have had a perfect 4.0 in high school were it not for Chemistry, in which she’d received an ego-shattering B−, having had a mental block about the difference between hydrogen and helium…

The taxi line stretched long and far. Waiting in it, Perri found herself so impatient with its glacial pace that she actually cut the old lady in front of her. Finally, she was at the head. “Larchmont,” she told the driver. But once in the car, she felt trepidation at the thought of returning home. Mike was so furious at her. And she was so furious at him. Whatever happened next, it was sure to be ugly. Despite her fears, however, Perri still had a need to “win the fight” which trumped all other emotions. On the ride home, she rehearsed her lines. Maybe she’d begin with “Whatever crimes I committed against you, at least I didn’t try to screw your brother!” But then he’d surely counter with “Yeah, but your other sister did.” So maybe the better approach was “We’re even now. Are you happy? Except what you did is so much worse.” He’d profess not to know what she was talking about, at which point she’d spring on him her knowledge of the shenanigans that had gone on in the kids’ bathroom Saturday night. And then what? They’d call divorce lawyers?

An hour later, the taxi turned onto North Chatsworth. Perri glanced out the window. Fluffy little clouds interspersed with bright patches of blue had taken over a formerly overcast sky. She thought of cauliflower sitting untouched on Aiden’s dinner plate. The child hated all vegetables; there was no disguising them, either, not even in cakes and muffins as Jessica Seinfeld had advised in her ridiculous cookbook. As they rounded the corner onto Perri’s block, the sun peeked out from behind the scrim, lending her home an enchanted glow that made it look like an illustration in a children’s book.

The taxi snaked up the driveway, then came to a stop behind the Lexus. The driver removed Perri’s three suitcases from the trunk. (She’d never seen the point of packing lightly.) She paid the man, and he sped off. Ring the bell or use her key? That was the next question. It was Tuesday, Mike’s day at home with Noah, and she fully expected that father and son would be home from music class by now and preparing for Noah’s nap. For dramatic effect, and so as not to scare everybody, Perri decided to ring the bell.

To her surprise and relief—or was it disappointment?—her nanny answered the door. “Dolores!” Perri cried. “I didn’t know you were working today.”

“Mr. Mike has to go to the city,” she said. Dolores had the habit of calling all adults by their first names, then attaching a “Mr.” or “Mrs.” She also had an overfondness for the present tense. Then again, she was bilingual, and Perri wasn’t. So who was Perri to make fun of her English? “Noah, your mama is home,” she called into the kitchen.

“Mommy!” cried Noah, appearing in the hall and rushing toward her on his short legs.

At the sight of him, Perri felt her chest collapsing around her heart. Scooping Noah into her arms and holding him close, she wondered how she could ever have gotten on a plane without him. She also wondered how such an ogre as her husband could have played a role in the creation of such a heavenly creature—never mind one who looked exactly like him. “I’m sorry I’ve been away,” she told him. “I missed you so much.”

Mrs. Dolores gazed disapprovingly at her. Or was Perri projecting? “Mommy home,” Noah said.

“I’m home indeed—home forever,” said Perri, before she turned to Dolores and asked, “Do you know where Mike is?”

“Mr. Mike says he has to go to work.”

“That’s interesting,” said Perri, talking mainly to herself, “since Mr. Mike is out of work.” She turned back to Noah. “Sweetie, do you want to come upstairs with Mommy while I unpack?”

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” he said, squeezing her nose between his two fingers.

“Nice to see you, Noah,” Perri said in a nasal drawl, causing Noah to burst into giggles.

Small children’s love was so unconditional, Perri thought wistfully as she climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. One day, of course, Noah would probably turn into a lying bastard like her husband and father. (In the previous twenty-four hours, Perri had nearly managed to convince herself that her own extramarital flirtation had never actually occurred.) But why ponder that grim outcome now?

Perri sent Dolores home, albeit promising to pay her for a full day. She wanted to spend time alone with Noah, even as she looked forward to his nap. He went down at one. Then she puttered around the house, unpacking, tidying, looking at wedding photos of her and Mike, and feeling strangely resigned to the end of their marriage. And wasn’t that what was happening here? Perri didn’t want to get divorced, but it seemed unlikely that she’d ever be able to forgive Mike, or he her. It was the kids who complicated matters. How would Perri ever forgive herself for allowing the family to be broken up? She was no better than Olympia! Just recently, she’d read an ominous article in the Times about how test scores were lower among kids who lived in single-parent homes.

At three o’clock, she fastened a still half-asleep Noah into his car seat and went to pick up Aiden and Sadie from school. “Hey,” said Aiden, hoisting himself into the backseat. As if his mother had never been gone.

“Hi, sweetie,” said Perri. “How was school?”

“Fine,” he mumbled.

Sadie, however, refused to play dumb. “Daddy says you went on vacation without us,” she said. “Is that true?”

“It wasn’t quite a vacation,” Perri told her quickly. “Though I was in Florida.”

“I don’t like it when you go away like that,” she said.

In the rearview mirror, Perri could see her daughter sulking. The expression reminded her suddenly and almost eerily of Olympia when she was pissed about something. Sadie was beautiful like Olympia too, Perri thought with pride and anxiety. Was it possible to be intimidated by your six-year-old? “I’m sorry,” she said, her stomach constricting at visions of the future, when she’d be “going away” all the time in accordance with the custody arrangements she and Mike would need to draw up. “I should have said good-bye before I left. I won’t do it again.”

Sadie glowered but said no more.

When Mike finally walked into the living room at eight fifteen that evening, Perri was seated on the sofa with her three children nestled around her, reading The Trapp Family Book, a Christmas present for the kids from “Uncle Jeff,” who had apparently picked it up on one of his ski trips to Stowe, Vermont. Surely, she looked like the perfect picture of motherhood, she thought—all the better to shame the man! Or did he have no shame? Glancing over at her husband out of the corner of her eye, Perri saw that he was wearing a suit and tie, which surprised her. (A job interview?) He was also staring straight at her. Feigning oblivion, she kept reading. “One morning Captain von Trapp received a letter from the German navy department asking him to take over command of one of their new submarines.”

“Hey, kids,” Mike said in a low voice.

“Hi, Daddy,” they mumbled, without looking up.

“What are you doing here?” asked Mike.

Perri looked up from the book, as if noticing him for the first time, and said, “Oh, hi.”

“Are you guys in a fight?” asked Sadie.

“Shush,” said Perri, folding the corner of the page down and standing up. “We’ll read more later. Why don’t you go play Angry Birds while I go talk to Daddy for a few minutes.”

“You want us to play games on your iPad?!” asked Sadie, screwing up her face.

“Just this once.”

“But what about all those Chinese kids whipping our butts in standardized testing?” asked Aiden.

“We’ll let them beat us tonight.”

“Cool!” he said.

“What do we have to talk about?” Mike asked Perri on the way out of the room.

“Please, Michael—not in front of the kids,” she muttered.

“Now I’m Michael?”

“Can we please talk about this elsewhere?”

Grimacing, he followed her into the kitchen, where he leaned his backside against the countertop, crossed his arms, and said, “I told you not to come back here.”

He really did hate her, Perri thought. And maybe she couldn’t entirely blame him. But could this really be it for them? “This is my house, too,” she said, her hand gripping the handle of the dishwasher so she wouldn’t fall over. Mike didn’t answer. Perri figured there was nothing to lose by telling the truth. This could be the last conversation they ever had without a lawyer present. She took a deep breath. “Look—I freaked out. I admit it. Okay? Maybe it had something to do with turning forty and being upset that my life was half over. Or maybe it was because”—Perri swallowed hard—“you never want to have sex with me anymore. But whatever I did to hurt you, it pales in comparison to what you did after I left. After all the stories I’ve told you about Pia undermining my confidence, did you really have to pick her, of all people, to hit on?”

“That’s not what happened,” Mike said flatly.

“No?” said Perri, catching a glimpse of his crotch and idly wondering if he’d gotten an erection when he kissed her sister. The thought both repulsed and fascinated her.

“No. She was just”—his mouth was forming words, but nothing was coming out—“there. And I—I didn’t know what I was doing.” He hung his head.

“I see,” said Perri, realizing in that moment how desperately she wanted to believe him, wanted to be reassured that it had all been a big misunderstanding, wished they could start from scratch…

“Also, I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Okay?” Mike went on. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I lost my job a few months ago. Which is a nice way of saying I was fired. It was pretty humiliating, frankly.”

“You were laid off, not fired,” said Perri.

“Semantics,” said Mike.

“But it wasn’t your fault. The whole banking system ground to a halt last year!”

“You and I both know that’s not what happened. The recession was in two thousand and nine. I got fired at the beginning of this year—just as things were looking up again, at least in the financial sector.”

Perri wasn’t going to argue. “Well, you said having time off was a blessing in disguise. I remember you using those exact words.”

“Give me a fucking break,” he said. “I love the kids, but you think I want to hang with them all day?! I’ve never been so bored in my entire life as I was constructing that underground mining station with Aiden. Maybe you don’t understand this, Perri. But a man’s confidence is tied up in his work.”

“And not a woman’s?”

“Not as much. Women take pride in other things, too.”

“Is that right?”

“And it’s not like you were very supportive.”

“I was very supportive!”

“You were bugging me about job interviews my second day at home!”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Also, it wasn’t like you instigated anything on the other front.”

“I’m a woman! I don’t instigate.”

“Why not?” Mike shrugged. “You order me around in every other part of my life.”

Perri considered this possibility—that their moribund sex life was simply a matter of her not being bossy enough—and thought he might have a point. But she had other complaints. “Maybe that’s true,” she said. “But my frustration wasn’t just about sex. All these months you’ve been home, you never bought milk once.”

“You didn’t ask me to!”

“How do you think milk gets into the house? You think it miraculously appears via our backyard dairy farm?!”

“Fine. Sorry. I’ve been a little distracted. Or depressed, actually, if you really want to know the truth.”

“You? Depressed?!” Perri said with a laugh. It was a new concept for her to entertain. She’d always imagined that guys like Mike didn’t get depressed.

He shook his head and let out a short laugh himself. “This is all pretty ironic.”

“Why is that?” she asked.

“Because”—he allowed himself a half smile—“I actually got rehired today.”

“What?!”

“Good old Credit Suisse. The private banking division needed fresh blood—you know, someone to help a bunch of bajillionaires diversify their holdings. The base salary is lower, but what the fuck. Institutional stock sales are about to go the way of the phonograph. In a few years it’s all going to be done on computers.”

“Wow—that’s great,” said Perri in a lackluster voice.

“What, private banking’s not good enough for you?!” Mike’s face tensed. “Is that what this is really about? You wish you’d married a Wall Street star and instead you got a cog in the machine?”

“No, no! It’s not that at all.” She stared at her feet, bit her lip. “I’m sure you’ll never believe this, but it was just the thought of you being gone all the time again.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re right,” he shot back, even as he seemed relieved. “What do you care if I’m gone?”

“I care because”—Perri swallowed again—“I’m assuming—or, rather, hoping—that we’re going to continue to be a family.” With that, she met Mike’s eyes, tried to smile. “At least, I hope so.”

But he looked away, toward the convection ovens. There was silence. Then he said, “To be honest, I don’t know what I want right now.”

Perri felt as if her stomach were falling out of her body. It was really happening. She couldn’t believe it, or maybe she could. Would she die alone? Would Mike marry Olympia? That might actually kill her. “Well, maybe we could go talk to somebody about it,” she said in desperation.

“About what?” asked Mike.

“Our marriage.”

“Jesus, Perri. I’m an Anglo-Saxon male! You think I want to sit around talking about my feelings!”

Was he trying to be funny? (Was that a good sign?) “You’d rather just be in an unhappy marriage?” she asked him.

“I’d rather order a pizza. I’m starving,” he said on his way out of the room. Apparently, he was done with the subject, at least for now.

Not knowing what to think, Perri followed him back into the living room.

At the sight of their downcast faces, Sadie asked, “Are you and Daddy getting divorced?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Perri, ripping the iPad out of her hands. But her words were more confident than she was.

“But you said—” began Sadie.

“I changed my mind. Where are your Kumon workbooks? You should be doing three pages a night, at least.”

“The Asian kids—right, Mom?” said Aiden, sighing.

“Exactly my thought,” said Perri. “Actually, it’s bedtime. I want you upstairs right now! It’s a school night. And I want everyone to floss. No excuses will be entertained.”

“Does Noah have to?” asked Sadie.

“No, he’s a baby.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair. Not fair at all.”

That night, Perri and Mike slept next to each other, but not even their ankles touched.