At four o’clock the following afternoon, Mike rang the doorbell to Jess’s house. A FOR SALE sign was posted on the front lawn.
Jess looked amazingly well-rested and put-together with her dark blue designer skirt and ivory shirt with a long, sloping V-neck. Her hair was different too, cut shorter and with highlights, and as he took her in, he was amazed at how this woman he had known since high school, this girl who once lived in jeans and a sweatshirt and thought a fun day was tailgating at a Patriots game with friends and beers, had now morphed herself into another woman,one who took great care in picking out her clothes and spent long weeks traveling through Europe.
Mike stepped inside the foyer and she immediately hugged him.
Holding her like this brought back the larger memories, the markers that had defined their lives together: comforting her at her father’s funeral; dancing together at their wedding; hugging each other after the neonatal specialist came in and told them that Sarah had fought off the lung infection. He felt all of the smaller moments too, the seemingly inconsequential moments that he had taken for granted every day: laughing at a movie, kissing her goodbye as he left for work. It made him feel frantic, lost.
“I’m so sorry,” she said against his chest. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He wasn’t sure if she was sorry for him or sorry about Jonah, or for all of it.
Jess eased herself away from him and rubbed the corners of her eyes. She didn’t know what to say—or maybe didn’t want to say anything, at least not yet—and walked away from him and into the dining room. The majority of the furniture inside the house, he noticed, was already gone.
“When are you leaving?”
“Tuesday morning,” Jess said.
Two days away.
“This is the best I could do,” Jess said, making a sweeping gesture with her hand at the various plastic plates holding scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, sliced apples and melons.
Mike sat down. The sun pouring through the windows was warm on his face. He clung to that feeling, to the smell of the sweet, cool air blowing inside as he listened to Jess explain how the pots and pans—pretty much everything from the kitchen—was on its way along with a few select pieces of furniture. He vaguely heard her mention something about a moving company coming in and doing all the packing, how expensive it was.
Jess lies on her back, helping the pair of rough hands working the buttons of her shirt.
Mike kept his eyes on the cut-up pieces of honeydew melon as the number 10 flashed in his mind. He focused on the number, holding onto it as he took in a long, slow deep breath through his nose. Deep belly-breathing—that was the key.
Jess tucks her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans and panties and feverishly works them down over her hips and legs as though the denim is burning her skin.
Jess was saying something to him.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I asked you what’s wrong.”
In his mind’s eye Mike saw Lou grinning.
“I packed up some of Sarah’s room Friday night,” Mike said. He kept his eyes focused on his plate of food, the bright colors of the melons and strawberries.
Jess folded her hands on the table, waited.
“It felt wrong. Like I was telling her I didn’t have any room in my life anymore. The next morning I wanted to put everything back the way it was.”
“Maybe you’re not ready to say goodbye,” she offered.
That’s the thing, Jess. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.
He sighed, said, “How much do you know?”
“I read the stories on boston.com. The Globe did a very comprehensive job.”
“You want me to fill you in on rest of it?”
“Only if you want to.”
Mike started with the night he had stood on Jonah’s porch and took her through the rest of it, to his meeting with Merrick at Dakota’s, and as he talked, his attention drifted out the window to the backyard, to the patches of greening grass and blooming flowers, to the different parts of Sarah’s jungle gym—anywhere but Jess’s face. He thought if he held her face in his eyes then the thoughts he had been carrying since yesterday’s afternoon visit with Lou would boil over and he’d lose it, verbally tear into her like he did during their marriage.
“That morning out on the trail,” Mike said. “I should have let him suffocate.”
“You did the right thing.”
He could tell by her tone that she didn’t mean it.
“Is that why you’re angry?”
“I’m not angry.”
“Your neck is beet red.”
“I’m hot. I think I’m coming down with the flu that’s going around.”
“Then why are you avoiding looking at me. You only do that when you’re trying to avoid a fight.”
She was right, of course. Jess recognized all the signposts of his moods, knew all of the emergency detours and exit ramps he used to back his way out of painful conversations.
“If you’re angry about something,” Jess said, “get it out in the open and we’ll deal with it.”
A diamond bracelet was on her wrist. Probably a gift from her new boyfriend. He stared at it
(as her fingers fumble for the man’s boxers and when they find them, they grip the fabric and yank them down hard, maybe even ripping them, because when Jess Armstrong wants something, people, she goes right after it, it’s always been about her needs, about what she wants—isn’t that right, Mike?)
and felt Lou’s words from yesterday sink their teeth deeper into the meat of his brain.
Mike looked up and into her eyes. “I take it you know what’s going on with Lou.”
“Yes,” she said, then sighed. “I’m sorry you have to deal with that on top of everything else.”
“You don’t seem surprised. About Lou, I mean.”
“When it comes to your father, nothing surprises me.”
“I talked with him yesterday. At the jail.”
“Jesus.”
“He wants my help.”
“Why on earth would you put yourself through that?”
“I ever tell you I thought Lou’s claustrophobic?”
“What does that have to do with you going to visit him?”
“I thought I could use that weakness against him. Make him tell me what I wanted to know about my mother. I had him backed into a corner, and this time I had proof.” Mike told her about the plane tickets and passports, how he found it.
“You never told me that story,” Jess said. Her face looked wounded. “When the police came around asking questions about your mother, you should have told them.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good.”
Jess thought about it for a moment, then said, “You’re probably right. When it comes to keeping secrets, your father’s a pro. Did he say anything?”
Lou didn’t say anything about my mother, Jess. He did what he always did: deny, deny, deny. What he did, though, was cough up this tidbit about you being involved with some other guy the weekend before we got married. I’d dismiss it if the son of a bitch didn’t look so goddamn smug when he said it, like he was daring me.
Mike had known her since high school. Any question about her fidelity would, even now, be the equivalent of a slap in the face. She held herself—and unfortunately, most everyone else—to a strict moral code of conduct. When one of Jess’s best friends since high school revealed she was having an affair with a married man, Jess had hit the roof. Mike had been at home, listening to Jess from the kitchen: I don’t care how much you love him, Carla, the man’s married. It’s wrong.
So why would Lou say it?
Jess is your only link to Sarah’s memory. You ask Jess that question, just make sure you’re prepared to say goodbye.
Jess put her hand on top of his and squeezed it. Whatever words he chose to share, she would help bear that pain along with him and, just as she had during their marriage, show him how to navigate his way through it.
“Tell me,” she said.
“He denied having anything to do with it.”
“Then why do you sound so surprised?”
“I really thought I had him. You should have seen his face. He’s dying in there.”