After Gabe left, I crawled into bed, and whether it was the cosmos or not sleeping the night before, I slept through the alarm, waking to a still house, a ladder of sunlight on the wood floor under the window. Erik’s side of the bed was untouched, though on my way downstairs, I saw Spencer’s sheets in disarray, a water glass on his night table. In the kids’ bathroom was the travel kit Erik kept in his briefcase, a hotel shampoo on the lip of the tub. The Conrad Chicago. We’d stayed there for my art opening. The six of us.
Downstairs, the kitchen smelled of too-strong coffee. I poured a cup, then stood at the sink to sip it. It had the consistency of mud and was about as undrinkable, and it made me ache with longing. Three days before, if someone had asked what problems Erik and I had, I actually might have said this: He can’t make a decent pot of coffee to save his life.
When the phone rang, I grabbed it without thinking, then silently begged, Please don’t be my mom. She had no clue I’d told Annabelle and Eva about Lucy, that Annabelle had taken the kids, none of it. I knew she would have said all the right things, but she would have sided with Erik, and it would have destroyed me.
It was Erik: He wouldn’t be home for dinner again. “I’ll probably be late; I have no idea what time.”
I walked the phone over to the sliding glass door. The backyard was filled with hundreds of little birds all pecking at the lawn. “We knew this week would be crazy,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess we did.” I heard a softening of that hard edge, and I closed my eyes, wishing he would talk to me. “I’m going to sleep in tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll see you when you get back from your run.”
He wasn’t in bed again when I woke the next morning, but Spencer’s door was closed, and Erik’s keys were on the kitchen counter. Outside, the grass was wet with dew, and a single bird whose call sounded like the ding of a bicycle bell trilled over and over. Erik’s car wasn’t in the drive, and I felt that register. It meant he’d had a drink too many and Eva had probably driven him home. I imagined them all at Union House. Kelly would have been there. Was Gabe? Annabelle and Scott? Something wrenched in me at the thought. How quickly I would disappear from their lives.
I did my six-mile loop around the neighborhood, but my breathing was out of sync, my legs heavy. I kept picturing them—the fellows, the Ten Chimneys staff—crowded into the narrow bar, laughing and teasing in that punch-drunk giddy way of exhausted people who have been working together on a project. Raising their glasses to Kelly and Erik, maybe to Alfred and Lynn, the actors jostling to best one another with their effusive toasts. I wanted to have been included.
At least I’m going to the play, I told myself, but that was little comfort. I wasn’t wanted there either. And the PFA terrified me, the thought of cops showing up. Would they walk me out in front of everyone?
But even if, as Gabe promised, nothing happened, Erik would be furious. My attending the performance would only make things worse with Annabelle. And didn’t he deserve to enjoy the play without worrying about me? My life would have been easier…This was his night too. I almost owed it to him not to go. But as soon as I thought, Okay, I won’t, something almost primal rose up in me. I have to, I would think, I have to. It wasn’t a thought so much as an instinct, visceral and raw. Why? I kept asking myself. But I had no answer beyond the vague sense that it wasn’t about Kelly or Annabelle or Eva. It wasn’t even about Erik.
By the time I finished running, the sun was burning through the fog. Our newspaper wasn’t in the drive, which meant Erik was already up. I sat on the porch steps to take off my damp shoes. I had no clue if he knew of my plan to attend the play, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted Eva or Gabe to have mentioned it or not. Finally, I pushed myself up and went inside.
He was sitting at the counter in his Hugh Hefner robe, drinking coffee, reading the Journal Sentinel. Sleep lines etched his face, and his hair was sticking up in the back. “Hey,” I said as I carried my shoes across the kitchen to the sliding glass door, where I set them on the mat. Sunlight streamed through the windows. “I thought you were sleeping in.”
“That was the plan.” He set down the paper. “Did you realize Spencer’s mattress was that damn hard?”
I glanced at him over my shoulder as I poured a cup of coffee, then turned to face him. “Like sleeping on concrete. Although he does have the best sheets in the house.” Eight-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton for our boy. Anything less “poked” him.
“Yeah, I noticed that too.” Erik’s tired eyes met mine, and I felt his gratitude.
“You look beat.”
“I feel beat.” He folded the paper in half and pushed it aside. “Listen, Claire—” He smiled sadly. “I feel like shit for saying what I did about the kids. You’re the best thing that ever happened to them, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
I nodded, wanting so much, as I’m sure he did, for his words to be a salve, but all I could hear was what he wasn’t saying. I was the best thing that had ever happened to his kids, but not to him. His words frightened me. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, but what if his loving me had been contingent—without either of us understanding it—on my keeping Lucy a secret?
Outside, the sunlight was so bright I had to squint. “It’s gorgeous out,” I said quietly. “You couldn’t have asked for better weather. Are you all set for tonight?”
I felt his confusion at my response—or lack of response, but he only lifted his mug and said, “Ready as we’re going to be.”
I waited for him to say more but he just extended his arms in an exaggerated facsimile of a stretch and said, “The caffeine’s starting to kick in, thank God.”
“That’s good,” I said, and opened the refrigerator, squatting down to get a yogurt on the bottom shelf. “So, it was a late night?”
“Not really.”
I pushed myself up, knees creaking, and concentrated on pulling the top off the yogurt. So, this is how it’s going to be? I thought. We answer each other’s questions, but barely? I focused on rummaging in the drawer for one of my long-handled iced-tea spoons. “Did you guys go to Union House?”
“Where else?” He swallowed another gulp of coffee. “We are nothing if not predictable.”
“Really, Erik?” I said. We are nothing if not predictable? It was his hail-fellow-well-met voice, his full-of-bonhomie voice, the one reserved for pretentious donors who treated him like the hired help. His staff teased him endlessly about this voice, and Eva did a hilarious imitation. His cheerful “fuck you very much” voice.
“I’m still your wife,” I said, hating how hurt I sounded. “I’m not some asshole donor you’re trying to get rid of.”
His face registered surprise, then immediately fell. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Honest to God, I wasn’t…I just don’t want to rub salt in the wound. I know you were looking forward to the play.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said. “I’m going to go tonight.”
He was shaking his head. “You can’t. It violates—”
“The PFA. I know.”
“Then…I don’t understand.”
“I don’t care about the PFA, Erik. Or I don’t care enough to not go.”
“Then I guess you don’t care enough about me either, because if you go and Annabelle decides—”
“Well, that would be something to take up with her, wouldn’t it?” I locked my eyes on his as I took a spoonful of yogurt. “Annabelle’s on the board. You really think she’d do anything to sabotage the performance?”
“Are you kidding me? Annabelle doesn’t think, she reacts, and when she’s blindsided, she reacts badly. And how you could not know this after the other night is beyond me!” He scraped back his stool and paced to the sliding glass door, hands in fists, the sun full on his face. “I’m stunned you would even consider going.”
“I have a right to be there, Erik.”
“No, actually. You don’t. You go to that play and you’re breaking the law.”
I pulled open the drawer next to the refrigerator to get a piece of Saran Wrap for the yogurt I no longer wanted. I can’t not go, I thought, and tried to marshal my thoughts into something coherent. When I turned around, he was still standing at the sliding glass door staring out, and something—the big robe and his skinny calves and pale narrow feet—made him seem vulnerable. “I don’t know why I feel like I have to be there,” I said. “I’m not trying to make things more difficult.”
“Really? Because I’ve got a knot in my gut the size of Canada. And most of it is about you and the kids and what Annabelle’s going to do, if not today, then on Monday when she tells her lawyer you violated the PFA. And you can actually make things better, yet you refuse.” He walked back to the counter and took a swig of coffee, his furious eyes lasered on mine.
I closed my eyes as if to deflect the heat of his anger. Who cared if I was the best thing that had ever happened to his kids if, in the end, I wasn’t worth fighting for? Fine, you win, I won’t go, I almost said, but I couldn’t. “I want to see Eva, Erik.” I didn’t know what else to say. “I want to see Kelly.”
“Yeah, I get that, but it’s not like you haven’t seen Eva in dozens of plays and won’t see her in dozens more. And maybe you feel this is your only chance to see Kelly, but if it’s that important, we’ll go to New York; we’ll see her in Mamma Mia!” He paused. “It’s not like you’d talk to her today. She’ll be backstage, and afterward, she’s going to be swarmed.”
We’ll go to New York. I clung to that, even as I was telling him, “It’s fine if I don’t talk to her.” Was this true? I only knew that I couldn’t imagine sitting at home when she was this close.
“It’s a play,” Erik was saying. He picked up his mug, then set it down. “It’s not like I’m asking you to miss someone’s birthday or anniversary or—” He looked at me, then dropped his hands to his sides. “What?” he demanded. “Jesus! What grave sin have I committed now?”
Someone’s birthday or anniversary.
My head was so filled with noise I couldn’t think. “That’s it,” I said, and could taste the grief. I moved to sit on the stool opposite his, one hand clapped over my mouth. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“I’ve missed everything, Erik.” My voice broke. I hadn’t celebrated my mom’s birthday with her in thirteen years, not even the surprise sixtieth my dad had begged me to come home for. I hadn’t attended their fortieth wedding celebration at the restaurant. I was too afraid to go back to Rehoboth, too afraid of my own shame.
And, most of all: I’d missed my daughter’s entire life. I would continue to miss her entire life.
I felt Erik watching me, but I couldn’t look at him. I knew he didn’t understand what I was trying to explain, in part because I barely understood it. Helplessly, I stared past him to our kitchen table, sunlight pooling on the wood. Underneath, on Erik’s chair, was Hazel’s purple rabbit’s-foot key chain. She did this sometimes, left things of hers—a Beanie Baby, the tiny plastic mouse from her Mouse Trap game—where Erik would find them.
I lifted my eyes to Erik’s and saw the lingering anger and confusion. “Hazel left you a present.” I nodded to his chair.
He swiveled to look, then got up and retrieved the rabbit’s foot and just held it in his big hands. I watched him, the lines on his face, the fatigue, the love for his daughter. “What do you mean you missed everything?” he said warily.
“I never gave myself a chance, Erik. I never fought for her. I was so sure I couldn’t be a good mother, I was too afraid to even try.” Tears clogged my throat. “I’m not suggesting I can undo that choice, because I can’t, but I’ve missed so many things.”
He wasn’t looking at me, but he nodded.
“I’m not trying to hurt you or the kids or damage our marriage.” I sat up straight, hands clasped between my knees to stop their shaking. “And I’m sorry I’m only realizing this now—I know my timing sucks—but I can’t not go, Erik. I don’t know what else to say. I can’t keep missing my own life, which is how it feels.” I pushed my lips together to keep from crying. “I’m sorry. I know I sound melodramatic.”
“No,” he said wearily. “No, it makes sense.” He set the rabbit’s foot down. Neither of us spoke. “I’m just scared,” he said. “I haven’t talked to the kids since Tuesday. I’ve called a dozen times.” He was still standing, hands lying in loose fists on the counter. “I know it feels like I’ve never stood up to Annabelle, but it’s not—I guess I always justified it because it meant the kids never got stuck in the middle. I was so grateful that you never took a stand with her, never asked me to take a stand.”
“But maybe I should have, Erik. Maybe we should have. We’ve never woken with our kids on Christmas morning—not once!—and we can’t ever get that back. And there’s a hundred things like it. I’m not suggesting some tit for tat—I love that we all work together when it comes to the kids, and I—you know I love Annabelle, but we’ve relinquished too much. Or I have.”
He let out a long, ragged breath. “You’re right.” His eyes looked bruised. “And yeah, you should be there today.”
Only twenty-four hours before, I probably would have thanked him, but I hadn’t been asking for his approval or permission. I’m not sure I wanted it. I got up to refill my mug, though I didn’t need more coffee. I felt him waiting for me to say more. But I didn’t know where to begin or if I even needed to. He understood what I’d been struggling to understand myself—or he was trying to, which felt huge. I thought of Gabe envying me because the truth about Lucy was out there. Maybe that was enough for me and Erik too. At least for now. We’d been so busy protecting the lies we’d told everyone else, we hadn’t understood the lies we’d been telling each other—and the lies we’d been telling ourselves.
“I really think today will be okay,” I said when I turned back around. “I’ll get there right before the show starts, and I’ll leave right after. I won’t make things worse. And I’m not blindsiding Annabelle. I’m pretty sure she knows I’m coming.”
“Wait.” He jerked his head up. “She knows? Please, please tell me—”
“No, no. It’s okay. I didn’t talk to her.” I reached across the counter for his arm. “But Gabe might have.”
“Gabe? Why would—are you kidding me?” His face turned dark. “Jesus, this just gets worse and worse.”
“Why? Is it really so awful for Annabelle to be reminded that we’ve been keeping her lousy secret for years?”
“Spare me the defense. It’s his lousy secret too. And Gabe is the last person I want help from.”
“Gabe got Andy for you,” I said. “He was defending you the other night!”
“Ahh, yes, my good old pal Gabe to the rescue!”
“Why are you angry at him? Gabe loves you, Erik. He’s your best friend.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you don’t ever really get over your best friend sleeping with your wife. Annabelle and I separated because of Gabe, Claire. I’m not saying we didn’t have a shit-ton of problems, and I’m not saying it wouldn’t have happened anyway, but forgive me if I’m a little wary about his help. Especially when it comes to my marriage.”
Later, we would go over and over it, blaming ourselves for not hearing the door, for being so self-involved we didn’t notice them standing there, Gabe holding the cardboard carrier of coffees and Eva beside him, her face leached of color. How did their presence not register? Why didn’t they make a noise, call hello—anything! Later, I would recall how I’d thought it so wonderful, the way we just traipsed in and out of each other’s houses without knocking, proof of how close we were, how we had nothing to hide.
Later still, years later, we’d wonder, actually say it out loud: Do you think they’d still be together if they hadn’t walked in that morning? I asked Gabe once at the end of one of our walks. The wind was howling off the lake and we’d turned back early. He didn’t answer at first, just shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and shook his head. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?”
In memory, it seems Erik and I realized in the same instant that they were there. Maybe we heard something; maybe the light shifted. My heart felt as if it were exploding.
“Jesus, how long have you—” Erik started to say.
“Oh my God,” I rushed in. “That probably sounded really awful! It’s not what you think.”
Of course, we were making it worse.
“I’m just venting,” Erik said. “I’m upside down over this Annabelle crap and I haven’t slept for shit.” He looked at Eva, arms limp at his sides. “Whatever you do, do not pay attention to the crazy man in the robe!”
She smiled, and I felt my breath leave and I thought, Maybe. Maybe she hadn’t heard us. But all she said was, “It’s okay, Erik. It really is. We should have called. I just wanted to see Claire before the play.” She turned to me then, and whatever shred of hope I’d been clinging to dissipated. Everything about her was wooden. Her movement, face, smile. I was aware of Gabe setting the coffees on the table. I couldn’t look at him.
“I figured I might not have a chance to talk to you later,” she said to me. “We’re headed to Door County tomorrow.” I’d forgotten she and Gabe were taking off for a few days. She turned to look at him as if to confirm their trip, and she was smiling, but there was something off, the way when someone falls and breaks a leg or an arm it’s still attached, but the angle is wrong. And then she just sort of sagged against the refrigerator, holding her stomach, and bent over at the waist. “So, it’s true?” she said to no one in particular. “I guess I always knew, but actually hearing it out loud…” She was staring down. She wasn’t dressed up—jeans, a UWM sweatshirt, hair in a ponytail—but she had on red suede high-heeled boots. The boots broke me. They were the kind of boots you put on when you’re happy, excited about the day.
“Eva, this is all of out of context,” Erik said.
“You knew too?” she said to me.
Tears rose in my eyes, and I nodded once.
“And Scott?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Behind me Gabe made a sound of disbelief.
Eva slowly pushed herself up. She tucked her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and glanced around the kitchen. “I should be mad, right?” She was staring out the window over the sink. “I should be shattered, and maybe I am, and I don’t know it yet, but all I can think of is how all these years you guys have been lying to protect me, and all these years I’ve been lying to protect you, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what we were protecting each other from.” She gave a weird little hysterical-sounding laugh. “I need to go home,” she said to Gabe. She still had that awful broken smile, and her eyes wouldn’t settle on any of us.
And then they were gone. Erik and I didn’t move, didn’t speak. We heard the thunk of the car doors. Saw the bright flash of Eva’s red Jeep as it drove by. The coffees were still in the container on the table.