Читать книгу If You Only Knew - Kristan Higgins - Страница 10

Chapter 4: Rachel

A DISTANT PART of me is so, so embarrassed that a total stranger has seen me faint. I’ve never fainted before. I mean, I’ve wanted to, a thousand times, usually when I’m at a party, trying to pretend that I’m having fun, and trying to eat when no one else is looking. I’m always worried about how I look when I’m eating. I think people who throw parties should offer private little carrels where guests can go and eat in private. So I generally don’t eat at parties, then the wine goes right to my head, like now, and that makes me feel even more self-conscious, because I’m afraid people will say, “That Rachel got so drunk at our party last night!” so in the end, I neither eat nor drink. I just stand around, hoping to faint, because leaving the party, even by ambulance, would be preferable to trying to look like I’m having a good time.

But I suppose I really earned the faint today. And Jenny’s friend is very kind. He has sad eyes. Sad for me, because I’m an idiot.

I guess I knew what the picture was. All morning long, I smothered the thought, watched as Adam read on his iPad and accepted gifts from the girls—a picture from Rose, drawn in nursery school, a tulip head from Charlotte, a rubber band from Grace. Charlotte was chattering, Grace sitting at his feet with a notepad and pen, pretending to write a book, all three girls content to bask in his half attention. Before, I never would’ve faulted him for that, those delayed responses and absentminded pats on the head. He works hard. He deserves time to relax.

But this morning, I wondered what he was looking at. Who might be messaging him. And, as ever, his phone was on the table next to him. That’s nothing new. I wouldn’t let myself read into it. It was a tree sent by mistake. I didn’t look at the picture again.

Instead, I went to the computer and looked up that hotel again. The soothing colors, chocolate and cream and white. The lobby bar, with its palm trees and beautiful clock. Looked at that for a long time after he took the kids to the museum, and though I had to go to my sister’s, all I did was sit there, looking at the penthouse suite, imagining how calm and confident I’d feel there, sipping that martini and looking out over the city.

“Rachel. Drink some more water, honey.” My sister’s dark eyes are worried. I obey. I’m sitting on Jenny’s lovely, soft old couch, and my sister is teary-eyed and furious at the same time. Leo—that’s his name, Leo Killian, a nice Irish name—is looking at me too sympathetically. Tears are leaking out of my eyes, but they’re faraway tears, tears I’m not really even aware of, except Jenny keeps handing me tissues.

Adam loves me. I know he loves me.

To think I thought it was a tree. A knothole. Some kind of hole, yes, but really, I am such an idiot. Almost forty, and pathetically naive.

I hope he’s not giving the girls macaroni and cheese for supper. Yes, it’s organic, but I like to save it for when I’ve had a really hard day. If he uses it, he preempts me. And you know what? He should never make macaroni and cheese from a box! I’m the one who gets to do that. I stay home with them all day, every day. I get to be lazy once in a while. He should make them chicken and broccoli and…and…

Oh, God, he’s cheating.

My thoughts surge and roll like a riptide, crashing into each other from all directions, then shushing back before I can figure out the current. I just… I just don’t know what to think or where to swim.

Leo hands me a glass of wine. “Thank you,” I say.

Is my life over? Life as I knew it?

My heart starts thudding in hard, erratic beats. I love my life. Our life. Finally, we seemed to hit the sweet spot. Before, even though I liked my job and my coworkers and friends, I was waiting for my real life to begin. Marriage. Motherhood. Just as I was starting to worry that I’d never meet anyone, I met Adam. The courtship and marriage part was strangely easy. But then came four years trying to get pregnant. Hormone injections and trying desperately to keep our love life fun and spontaneous—and, please, there is no spontaneity when you’re trying to get pregnant, but I did my best to trick Adam into believing I was just incredibly horny and creative. Then thirty-three weeks of sheer terror, because when you’re pregnant with triplets, you’re a time bomb, and all you pray for is to make it to twenty-seven weeks, then another week more, and another week more.

Those first few weeks, when Rose and Grace got to come home but Charlotte had to be in the hospital, and then with all three of them, at least one baby always awake, always hungry, always crying, always needing to be changed, the pain of my huge cesarean incision, my rock-hard, ever-leaking breasts… Even then, I loved it.

But this past year, with the girls all sleeping through the night, eating regular food, and the no-dairy restriction lifted from Grace, and nobody having a peanut allergy, and Rose seeming to have outgrown the asthmatic bronchitis… I’ve loved every day of so many months, been so grateful for every day.

Please don’t let these days be over. I don’t want things to change. Please, God, don’t let Adam be cheating.

I guess I said that last thing out loud, because my sister squeezes my hand.

“Maybe…” I begin. My voice sounds as thin and weak as rice paper. “Maybe whoever sent it just hit the wrong number?”

“Sure,” Jenny says, but she’s stiff and tight next to me, so it’s clear what she thinks. I look at Leo.

“Do you think it’s a wrong number?” I ask him. He’s a man. Maybe he’ll know.

He hesitates, then runs a hand through his hair. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because if you were going to send a picture like that, wouldn’t you make sure it was going to the right person?”

Yes. Except I would never send a picture like that.

I gulp a mouthful of wine. My head is starting to pound.

My husband might be having an affair.

My husband is having an affair.

The words don’t sink in.

“So you’re a piano teacher?” I ask him.

“That’s right.”

The wine in my glass trembles, as if we’re having an earthquake. Oh, no, it’s because my hands are shaking. “Some of my friends use you. Elle Birkman? Her son is Hunter. And um, um…Claudia Parvost. Her daughter is Sophia.”

“Sure. Nice people.”

Elle and Claudia aren’t really my friends. We’re in the same book club. We all belong to the COH Lawn Club. The girls and I take Mommy and Me swim classes there. Elle just had breast implants and now wears a string bikini that makes the teenage-boy lifeguard extremely uncomfortable.

Apparently, my brain will think about anything other than that…picture.

“My girls… We want them to take an instrument. I always thought piano would be the nicest.”

He smiles. It’s a sad smile, because he knows. “How old are they?”

“Three and a half.”

“Twins?”

“Triplets.” I smile, but my smile is broken and weak, wobbly as a newly hatched baby bird. “Are they too young?”

“Not necessarily. If they can sit still for half an hour, they’re not too young.” It’s a kind answer, because he doesn’t want to deny me anything right now, because I’m a pathetic, stupid wife, the wife is always the last to know, my wife doesn’t understand me, my wife will never find out, I’m leaving my wife.

I chug the rest of the wine in my glass.

“Why don’t I go?” Leo says.

“Yes. Thank you,” Jenny says, standing up. She walks him to the door, and they murmur for a second, no doubt expressing their horror and sympathy for me.

Jenny comes back and sits next to me, her pretty face concerned. This was supposed to be her weekend. I was supposed to help her, and the girls were supposed to come to cheer her up, because it’s really real now, her divorce from Owen, Owen’s new family, and she loved him so much, and God, I hope he never cheated on her, she said he didn’t but who can really know anything anymore? No one. That’s who.

Suddenly I’m crying very hard, not just leaking tears but full-on, chest-ripping sobs that hurt, they’re so vicious.

“Oh, honey,” Jenny whispers, holding me close. “Oh, sweetie.”

“Don’t tell anyone. I have to figure out what to do first,” I choke out between the awful, shuddering convulsions.

“No, I won’t,” she says. “And…Rachel, whatever you need, I’m here. If you and the girls want to stay here—”

“No!” I yelp, startled out of my tears. “No! It’s way too early to think about anything like that. I don’t even know if it’s true. Please, Jenny.”

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

My phone chimes with a text. Adam:

We’re home. How’s Jenny’s place? Should we come over?

A completely normal text. Normal husband talk. “Look at this,” I say, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. “I mean, seriously, it was probably a mistake. Whoever sent that just dialed the wrong number.”

“It… Sure. It could’ve been.”

I stare at the phone, then hand it to my sister. “Could you answer? Just say the place is a mess and I’ll be home later?”

She types my response, then hands me back the phone.

Adam replies, Okay, babe. Love you.

See? He loves me. Of course he does.

When we were engaged, we talked about cheating. I brought it up, even though it was hard, even though my heart was sledgehammering through my chest wall. I mean, I’m not really the ultimatum type, but certain things have to be said. I wouldn’t be able to stay with you if you ever cheated, I told him, and he said he’d never, ever do such a thing. He only loved me. He only wanted me.

He didn’t feel the need to warn me that cheating would be a deal breaker for him, too. Obviously, I’d never cheat on him. It went without saying, even back then.

He loves our life as much as I do. He wouldn’t risk it.

“I think this was all a mistake,” I say with more conviction.

Because if it’s not, everything is different now.

The doorbell rings. Jenny stands and looks out the window. “Shit. It’s Mom. I’ll get rid of her. Why don’t you hide in the bathroom?”

I obey. My legs feel weak, and that wine is throbbing in my brain, thick and sluggish.

“Hey, Mom, I’m not feeling so good,” I hear Jenny say. “I have a wicked headache. And I’m almost done, really.”

“You must be so depressed,” Mom says. “You look awful. Was it heartbreaking?”

“Um…not really. We’ve been divorced for more than a—”

“Of course it was. Oh, honey. I’m so sorry for you. Even though Rob’s life was cut short, at least we never had to even think about divorce. We might not have had many years together, but we made them count. You don’t even have that, you poor thing. Want me to rub your head?”

“I’m good.”

Nothing makes our mother happier than discussing the troubles of those around her—even her daughters, and sometimes especially us—so long as she can come out the winner. Those four years that I tried so hard to get pregnant, all she could talk about was how easy it had been for her. When the girls were born by C-section, all of them just about four pounds—which was great, given that they were triplets—Mom delighted in telling me for the thousandth time about how both Jenny and I came into this world at twice that weight. Both you girls were perfectly healthy, she said, sounding slightly perplexed. Well. I’m sure yours will grow.

If she saw me now, she’d home in on me like a missile. And unlike Jenny, I can’t hide anything.

My face in the mirror is nearly unrecognizable. I look terrified. I can’t lose Adam. I can’t. I love him so, so much. There has to be a mistake.

After my father died, I couldn’t look in the mirror, because the heartbreak was written over my face so clearly.

I look the same now. Eyes too wide. Skin too white.

They’re still talking; Mom doesn’t want to leave, wants to talk about Owen’s new baby and hear again how Jenny had to deliver her.

“Look, Mom, you’re right,” my sister says. “I’m incredibly depressed, I have a migraine—”

“I’ve never had a migraine. I never even get headaches.”

“—and just want to be alone so I can wallow. Maybe we can have lunch this week. Come by the shop, okay? It’s really cute.”

“Yes, but it’s hardly Manhattan, is it? I hope you won’t go bankrupt. You should’ve moved to Hedgefield. You could live with me until you get on your feet, and we—”

“Okay, Mom, thanks! Bye.” The door closes, and another minute passes. “It’s safe,” Jenny calls.

My college roommate was from Los Angeles, and she described being in an earthquake. If you can’t trust the ground to stay still, she’d said, the entire world seems wrong.

I feel that way now.

“What can I do?” Jenny asks as I come out on my fearful legs.

“I don’t know.”

I have to believe that Adam was not the intended recipient of that hideous, disgusting picture. How do gynecologists do it all day, look between the legs of their patients and not just…just throw up?

My sister takes my hand. Even though she’s younger, she’s always been more certain.

I take a deep breath. I’m a mother. I’m not a weakling, and I have to be logical and smart. I have three children with this man. I can’t just react. “I have to talk to him, I guess.”

“Want me to babysit, and you guys can go somewhere? Or I can take the girls out. They can even stay over here tonight. I’d love that.”

“I don’t know. I just… I don’t know.”

My sister nods, then takes a slow breath. “I hate to ask this,” she says, “but are there any other…red flags?”

Anything that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was cheating, she means.

“I don’t think so. He’s been tired lately. But people get tired. He’s been working on this really complicated case, and… Well. He’s been tired.”

It’s just that tired never meant too tired before.

She doesn’t say anything. Is she pitying me? Disagreeing? Agreeing?

Adam’s a corporate attorney. He knows things that save his clients millions of dollars each year. He’s great at his job, was made partner at the firm, second in seniority only to Jared Brewster, who grew up down the street from us and used to sit on the bus with me. And since Jared’s grandfather founded the firm, I’d say Adam is doing even better, maybe. He’s important. He works a lot, it’s true.

Maybe his lover is a client.

His lover. My stomach heaves at the word. I’ve always hated that word. It’s too intimate, too romantic, too smarmy. I don’t want my husband to have a lover. I’ve never even thought of myself as his lover. I was his girlfriend, then his fiancée, then his wife.

“There’s a lot to lose here,” I whisper.

“Yes.” Jenny squeezes my hand, and I hate that I need a hand squeeze. I’m usually the giver of the hand squeezes…well, in the past year or so, anyway.

It’s now past 7:30 p.m., so the girls are almost certainly in bed and sound asleep.

I guess I have to go home.

For the first time in my life, that thought fills me with dread.

* * *

I SLIP IN the house like a shadow and go right upstairs when I get home. Opening the door to the girls’ bedroom, I feel a rush of love so strong that it momentarily crushes all the horrible worming thoughts that have twisted through my mind for the past twenty-four hours.

This room is pure. I know exactly who I am in this room.

My little girls are asleep; Charlotte is snoring slightly, Grace is sucking her thumb, Rose is sleeping upside down, her feet on the pillows. I kiss Grace first, then Charlotte, then turn Rosebud right-side-up and kiss her, too. I whisper “Mommy loves you” to each of them, breathing in their sweet and salty smell.

Here, in this room, I know everything that really matters. I was born to be a mommy. These girls are my life.

Some of the sticky fear slips away.

I go downstairs, through the living room and into the den, where Adam is talking on the phone. “I feel the same way,” he murmurs, then catches sight of me and jumps.

Guilty.

“Hi,” I say.

“Eric, my beautiful wife just came home,” he says, smiling. Not guilty? “Can we talk on Monday? Great. Thanks. You bet.” He clicks off the phone and stands up. “Hi, babe! I didn’t hear you come in. Want a glass of wine? I made the girls mac and cheese, but I could make you an omelet or something.”

Of course he made the mac and cheese.

And yet, these are not the words of a cheating husband.

“I’ll have some wine,” I say. We go into the kitchen, he pours me a glass of white, and I take a sip. The kitchen is sloppy; granted, I’m almost obsessive about neatness, but the pot from the girls’ unnutritious dinner is sitting in the sink, the powdery cheese sauce hardening, and mail is strewn over the counter, which hasn’t been wiped down.

Usually I’m just grateful that Adam doesn’t view spending the afternoon with his children as a heroic feat, like some fathers do. But it would be nice if he just once cleaned up the way I do a thousand times a day.

“How’s the new place?” he asks, grabbing a beer from the fridge. “Is Jenny happy with it?”

“It’s great,” I answer. My heart pumps too hard, and I picture a big ugly hand around it, squeezing ruthlessly, forcing the blood to gush through my veins. Arteries. Whatever. “It’s really charming.” What are we talking about? Oh, yes. My sister’s place.

He waits for more. He likes my sister.

I wonder if he finds her attractive.

God, where did that come from?

“Adam, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Sure, babe.” He waits, his dark eyes expectant. I love his brown eyes. Mine are boring blue; Jenny got our father’s dark, dark eyes, almost black. But Adam’s are light brown, whiskey-colored and special.

“Um…how were the girls today?” I ask, suddenly dreading what I’m about to say next.

“They were great. Well, Rose was a maniac at the museum, and Grace’s shoe came untied, and you know how she hates that, and I had to take all three of them into the ladies’ room. Got a lot of dirty looks from some women, but really, what am I supposed to do? Take them into the men’s room? No way.” He grins. “My babies aren’t going to see a man’s junk for forty more years.”

I smile. A tiny ray of relief seems to break through the clouds around my head, checking to see if it’s okay to stay.

This is not how a cheating husband talks. It had to have been a wrong number.

“So what did you want to talk about?” he asks.

I fold my hands, which still seem to have a tremor. “Well, um, yesterday, something happened.”

“What?”

Should I even show him? Maybe it would be better if I didn’t. Maybe—

“Rachel? Hello? What, honey?”

I showed Jenny, and I asked Leo, and he’s a stranger. I have to show my husband of the past nine years. He deserves to know.

I pull my phone from my bag and tap on the text so the disgusting picture fills the screen. Slide it across the counter to him.

Color rises from the collar of his polo shirt, up his neck, into his jaw and cheeks, a heavy, dark red.

Guilty.

Oh, God. Guilty.

Adam clears his throat, then slides the phone back to me. “What is that?”

“You know what it is, Adam.” My voice trembles.

“Yeah, okay, I can guess. Who sent it to you? And why would they do that?”

“It was sent to you.”

He blinks. Is his face getting redder? “What are you talking about?”

“When you were putting the girls to bed last night, someone texted this to you. I forwarded it to myself and deleted it off your phone.”

“You deleted it? Why? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me last night?” He presses his lips together. “And why are you checking my phone all of a sudden? Why would you do that?”

“I was putting your jacket in the dry-cleaning bag, and I saw it.”

“So you just… You… Why didn’t you tell me someone’s sending me porn?”

“Who sent it?”

“I don’t know!” His voice slaps off the stainless-steel appliances. “How should I know? Did you call them back? Let me see that again.” He grabs the phone back. “Private number.” He looks up at me. “Could be anybody.”

“Anybody sending a crotch shot, that is.” I sound like Jenny.

He stares at me. “Do you think I’m cheating on you?” His eyes are hard.

I don’t answer. All of a sudden, the tables are turned, and my face is the one that grows hot.

“Jesus, Rachel! Are you kidding me?”

“Keep your voice down,” I say. “Don’t wake the girls.”

“I’m sorry! I’m a little upset! My wife thinks I’m cheating on her. I guess she thinks I’m a really shitty person!”

“Adam, there’s a picture of…that on your phone. What am I supposed to think?”

“Maybe you could think ‘Hey, this must be a mistake, because my husband isn’t some douche-bag scum.’”

“I—I’m sorry, okay?” I take a breath, feel the burn of tears in my eyes. “It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be sent by mistake, that’s all. I’d think you’d be really careful about getting the right number if you were sending that to someone.” Thank you, Leo.

“You told Jenny about this, didn’t you? I bet she had a fucking field day. She hates men these days.”

“She does not. And no, she didn’t have a field day. I showed her because…well, I wasn’t sure what it was. I hoped it was a mistake. I did. But I needed to talk to you about it, and it’s new territory, okay?”

He gives a short laugh. “Yeah. I guess so.” He takes a breath and releases it slowly. “I love you, Rachel. I thought you loved me, too. I’d hope you’d at least give me the benefit of the doubt.”

“Of course I love you, Adam. It’s just very…weird and horrible, and I didn’t know what to ask, or how to talk about this, or…or…”

“Do you believe me?”

His voice is cold and sharp, and suddenly, that terror rears up again.

I don’t want things to change. I have cupcakes to make tomorrow, six dozen, because the girls are all in a different preschool class, and each class needs two dozen cupcakes. Also, I call my mother-in-law every Sunday morning to give her a grandchild report, and what would I say if Adam is cheating on me? And Jenny’s just moved, and there are going to be long, happy dinners and lovely spring evenings on the back patio, and Adam… Adam cried when the girls were born. Really cried. He loves me, and he loves our daughters, and he loves our life.

“Rachel, do you believe me?” he asks again, more loudly.

“Yes. I do.”

He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath. “Thank you.” Then he comes around the counter behind me and slides his arms around me from behind. Kisses my neck. “Baby, I love you. The picture is disgusting, but come on. Don’t be so dramatic next time. Not that there’ll be a next time, please God.”

“You’re right.” Two tears slide down my cheeks, and honestly, I don’t know how to feel. Relieved? Sick? Happy?

I was wrong. It was a mistake.

We go upstairs. We make love. It’s good. It’s us. We know what the other likes, what to say and when, what moves to employ, where to touch for the best effect. It occurs to me that I’m glad our birth control is condoms, and then I push that thought out of my head.

We’re okay. We’re still us. Adam and me and the girls…everything is the same.

It’s just that everything feels so different.