Читать книгу If You Only Knew - Kristan Higgins - Страница 12
ОглавлениеMY MOOD OVER the next few days is shiny and hard and relentless. Nothing can get me down—not Charlotte putting a meatball in her diaper, not Rose’s tantrum at the grocery store when I wouldn’t let her swim with the lobsters, not Grace stonily telling me she loves Aunt Jenny more. I’m so, so relieved about Adam, and filled with energy. The house has never been cleaner. The girls and I weeded the flower beds—well, they played with shovels while I weeded. I baked and froze eight loaves of banana bread.
It’s only at night that my stomach aches.
On Monday, I take the girls to nursery school for their four hours of doing exactly what we do at home—reading, singing, crafts, snacks—and then go over to Jenny’s to help her unpack and organize and clean. She asks how I am; I tell her I’m great, and we leave it at that. I invite Mom to have lunch on Tuesday, and the girls are sweet and affectionate with her. I listen to her stories about Dad—I even encourage them, nodding and smiling as if I’ve never heard them before. When she leaves and the girls are still asleep, I bake so much that when the girls wake up, I put them in the minivan and drop off cupcakes for Jenny, another batch for her nice building super—though why a two-family house needs a super is a mystery—and three dozen for the homeless shelter.
On Wednesday, we have Mommy and Me swimming, and when we’re in the pool, Clarice Vanderberger tells me I sure am in a good mood. I smile and say yes, what’s not to be happy about, gorgeous weather we’re having. Then I slosh over to Grace, who’s a little too good of a swimmer and seems to be in love with Melissa, the swimming instructor, and resentful of the fact that Melissa is helping Rose.
“Can you believe Jared Brewster is actually going ahead and marrying that woman?” Elle Birkman asks me as her son laps pool water. God knows what kind of chemicals and germs and bodily fluids are in the pool, but she doesn’t tell him to stop.
“Mama! Mama! Mama! Watch!” Rose orders as she dips her chin in the water as Melissa holds her. “Face in, Mama!”
“Honey, that’s so good!” I say. “Oh, Charlotte, honey, don’t drink the water. It’s only for swimming.”
“Hunter’s drinking it!” Charlotte says. Grace tugs my hand.
“Hunter, honey, it’s yucky.”
Elle doesn’t chime in. “I mean, men will be men, but he doesn’t have to marry her,” she says instead. “Has he talked to you about it? It’s hard to believe he’ll go through with it.”
Jared is my oldest friend. Jenny and I have always been so close that it was hard for me to find another person I liked as much, but Jared was special. The Brewsters lived up the hill from us, so technically, we were neighbors, though his house was really posh; they even had a live-in housekeeper. He was that rarest of boys—clean, for one, and nice, the type who’d ask you if you’d read a book or seen a TV show, then listen as you answered. Riding the school bus cemented our friendship; we sat together every day from kindergarten through eighth grade. He went to Phillips Exeter Academy for high school, but even then, we stayed in touch. Mom used to ask if we were dating—and pray that we were—but we weren’t. It wasn’t like that. But he’s kind and nice and funny and comfortable as flannel pajamas. In addition to being my oldest friend, he’s Adam’s coworker at Brewster, Buckley and Bowman, or Triple B, as they call it.
So I’m not about to gossip behind his back.
“You guys talking about Jared?” Claudia calls from the other side of the pool, unfettered by loyalty.
“Yes,” Elle says at the same time I say no. Grace yanks on my hand again, and Elle tows Hunter through the water to Claudia’s side of the pool for a better gossip partner.
In the changing room as I wrestle my damp daughters back into their little dresses, Elle strips off her suit to make sure everyone—including the kids—is treated to a view of her new breasts. Claudia rolls her eyes, and I smile back. Personally, I thought the “before” pair was more attractive, but Elle insisted that Hunter had ruined her body.
The body looks pretty great to me.
She has a bikini wax.
So did the woman in the picture.
In fact, Elle’s body is pretty damn perfect. No stretch marks… She had a C-section two weeks before her due date. The Hollywood, she called it. The scar is barely visible. Her ass is round and high, her stomach perfectly toned.
I’m suddenly cold.
Is it possible that Elle sent the picture?
“Mommy, wrong foot, wrong foot, wrong foot!” Rose yells cheerfully. She loves the echo in here. She’s right, though. I switch feet and have better luck getting her little sneaker on.
Adam doesn’t even like Elle. Says she’s a climber. But maybe he does like her. I don’t know why I’m thinking about it. That picture was sent by mistake.
My stomach doesn’t feel so good.
“Okay, girls, sit tight. Mommy’s going to get dressed, too.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them, Rachel,” says Kathleen Rhodes. She has two sets of twins, ages seven and four—another in-vitro mom—and she’s been really kind and helpful, loaning me books on getting your baby to sleep through the night, inviting us to playdates. Not many people want three kids in addition to their own. Kathleen doesn’t mind a bit.
“Thanks,” I say.
I pull the curtain behind me in the changing room and peel off my wet suit. It’s a retro-style one-piece, red with white polka dots and wide shoulder straps. I liked it when I bought it, but now it seems matronly.
Well. I am a matron, after all.
I look at my reflection in the mirror. Unlike the mirrors in Nordstrom or Bergdorf, it’s not a magical mirror, making me look taller and more slender than I really am.
For the most part, I love my body. I’m proud of what it did, percolating three babies at once, nursing them afterward. There’s a little pooch of skin that no amount of crunches has been able to vanquish, but I’m the same size as I was in college. My breasts fared pretty well, too. Granted, they’re not what they were when I was twenty, but they’re hardly embarrassments. In fact, Kathleen once said she envied how I bounced back from pregnancy. Told me it took her four years. She still carries some extra weight, but she carries it well.
Adam has always been complimentary…though now that I think of it, maybe not as much lately.
My body is a mother’s body. It’s hopefully a MILF’s body, but it’s a mother’s body, no doubt. My stretch marks, once a lurid red, have faded to tiny silvery marks, like a small school of fish. I can feel them more than I can really see them. On the rare occasions that I get to take a nice long bath, I find myself stroking them as I read.
I’m average. That’s the word for it. This is an average body. It’s not bad. For a nearly forty-year-old mother of triplets, it’s really good.
But it’s not Elle’s body.
“Elle works out with a personal trainer five days a week,” Kathleen tells me ten minutes later when I admit my insecurity. We’re hunched over, buckling the kids in their car seats. Our cars, both minivans, are side by side. “Do you want to stick your kids in day care so you can go to the gym? Or drink kale shakes for breakfast?”
“No,” I said. “I definitely don’t.”
“And you’re fucking gorgeous, Rachel,” she says. I’ve always been both shocked and impressed by her potty mouth. “Edward, if you bite me again, you won’t have any dessert until Christmas.” She turns back to me. “You okay, Rach?”
“Oh, sure,” I say, sliding the door shut. “I just… I don’t know. I guess I’m at the age where I’m getting…”
“Invisible?”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but there it is. Very few men look at a woman wrangling three toddlers. And I don’t have time to look at them. “Yeah. Invisible.”
“I know how you feel. The other day, this guy at the deli—you know, Gold’s? The short guy with earrings?” I nod. “Well, he handed me my baloney and said, ‘Here you go, beautiful,’ and I was so fucking grateful! I mean, I used to get that all the time. All the time. And now, nothing. It takes longer and longer to pull off even not bad. Beautiful left on my thirty-fifth birthday. So I wanted to kiss this guy and buy him a car.” She hands Edward a juice box, gives one to Niall and closes the door. “Enjoy it while you still have it. You want to get coffee?”
“Maybe next week,” I tell her. “I think I’ll drop by Adam’s office for lunch.”
I call our babysitter from the car. “Hi, Donna, it’s Rachel Carver.”
“Donna! Donna!” Charlotte shouts happily, and the other girls pick up the chant.
I smile. “I know this is last-minute, but I was wondering if you were free to babysit the girls today.”
“I’d love to,” she says instantly. “When do you want me to come by?”
“Twenty minutes?” I suggest.
Donna Ignaciato is every mother’s dream—a retired widow who lives down the street, loves children and was deprived of her grandchildren when her son moved to Oregon last year. She’s the kind of grandmother my mom is not—hands-on, affectionate, completely at home, the kind of babysitter who will take the laundry out of the dryer and fold it, and leave the girls cleaner and happier than when you left. I haven’t used her much—just when Jenny hasn’t been free, because she loves to spend time with the girls. My mom isn’t the babysitting type. “All of them?” she said when I asked her to watch the kids this past winter. “At the same time?”
“No, Lenore,” Adam said. “We want you to lock two of them in the cellar, and just rotate them out.” I smiled, and Mom whipped out her ultimate guilt answer.
“If your father was alive, we could do it together, but…”
I let her off the hook, as I always do. It’s sort of my job—the softer, more understanding sister. Besides, I’d worry constantly if Mom was in charge.
When Donna gets to the house, the girls swarm her, and I go upstairs and shower. Blow-dry my hair, put on makeup, dress carefully in a pink-and-black-checked dress and pink cardigan, the dangly silver earrings Adam gave me for Christmas, and the trifold, heart-shaped locket that has a picture of each of my girls. A bracelet. Black heels—but low, because it’s daytime. Perfume, even.
Five days ago, I accused my husband of having an affair. And while it’s understandable why I thought what I did—and though he’s very generously let it go—damage has been done.
“You’re pretty, Mama,” Grace says when I come downstairs. She kisses my knee, and I stroke her silky hair.
“I should be back around three,” I tell Donna, who’s already cutting up apple slices for a snack. “Girls, listen to Donna, and have fun, okay? Give Mama kisses!”
I stop at the gourmet shop that’s just around the corner from Jenny’s shop. Maybe I’ll drop by after my lunch, if I have time.
“Can I help you?” the girl asks, and I order Adam’s favorite sandwich, a turkey-and-avocado-and-bacon panini. Broccoli salad. Two green teas. Three chocolate cookies. For myself, a green salad. That pooch of skin is all too clear in my mind.
Brewster, Buckley and Bowman, Attorneys at Law, is in a dignified old building overlooking the Hudson River. It’s on the same block as my father’s old office, which always gives me a pang; I loved visiting him at work, seeing him in his dentist whites.
I go into the venerable lobby of Triple B, which has been around for seventy years and employs more than forty lawyers. They handle everything from divorce to taxes to criminal defense. Adam’s specialty is corporate law; boring to the outsider, but quite interesting once you understand what he does. Well. I have to think so. I’m married to the guy.
“Rachel!” the receptionist exclaims when I go into the office. “It’s been too long. You here to see Adam?”
“I brought him lunch,” I say, feeling the start of a blush. You’d think I wouldn’t feel shy; I’ve been coming here for years.
“I’ll just buzz him and let him know you’re here,” Lydia says. “In case he’s with a client.”
“Thank you very much,” I say. I flash another smile, gripping the handles of the deli bag more tightly.
“You don’t have to be so shy, you know,” Lydia says.
Oh, okay. I’ll stop, then. All I was waiting for was you to say that. I know she means well. I smile—awkwardly—and let my eyes slide away.
“Hey!” A man comes into the foyer. “How are you, Rach?”
“Hi, Jared,” I say, feeling a genuine smile start.
“Bringing the luckiest guy in the world some lunch?”
“I am indeed. How’s Kimber?”
“She’s great. Want to see a picture? We went to Provincetown last weekend. Had a blast.”
“Sure.” Got to love a guy who whips out his phone to show off pictures of his fiancée.
He shows me seven pictures of his beloved. I’ve met Kimber a few times, and she’s quite a beauty, though I admit to being surprised the first time I saw her. Her hair is dyed a pinkish red that was never intended to be thought of as natural, she has a full-sleeve tattoo on one arm and wears brilliant peacock colors for eye shadow and liner. “You can just feel how happy she is in these pictures,” I say.
Jared grins. “Thanks, Rach. Listen, I have to run. Got a lunch that’s so boring, I might actually stab myself in the eye just to keep from falling asleep. Hey, let’s have dinner, the four of us, okay?”
“That’d be great.”
“Give the girls a kiss for me,” he says.
“Adam will see you now,” Lydia says.
“Lydia! Did you make her wait? Honestly. Rach, just go down to his office next time. You’re his wife. You have rights.” Jared gives me a mock-serious look, then leaves.
Dinner with him and Kimber would be nice, I think as I make my way down the hall to Adam’s small but lovely office. It’s so nice to see Jared smitten. In the past, he’d always dated country-club types, and I can’t remember one relationship lasting even a year. With Kimber, he met her and it was the thunderbolt, as he said.
Same with Adam and me.
“Babe!” Adam says as I go in.
“Hi. I brought lunch,” I say, going behind his desk to kiss him on the cheek.
“Oh. Wow, that’s so nice of you. Um…well, uh, no, it’s fine.”
“Did you have plans?”
“No, no. I mean, yeah, I was going to grab something with another lawyer, but it’s fine. Just let me send him a text.” His thumbs fly, his phone cheeps and he stands up. “Close the door so we can have some privacy, okay? What did you bring me?”
“Turkey and avocado.”
“’Atta girl.” He smiles at me and gets up.
Adam’s office has a little couch and chair, in addition to his desk, and we sit there as I unpack our lunch. He checks his phone, then slides it into his pocket.
Sometimes I feel like whipping that thing out a window. My cheeks hurt, which means I’ve been clenching my teeth.
“How are the girls?” he asks. “Are they with your sister?”
“No, with Donna,” I say. “Jenny’s working.”
“Right. But does she have regular hours and stuff?”
He’s never really understood how much work Jenny has had to do to get where she is, or how much time goes into making a wedding dress. He’s a guy, after all.
“She does. Regular hours and then some.” I take a bite of salad.
Then Adam’s door opens, and in comes Emmanuelle St. Pierre, one of Adam’s coworkers. “So where were we?” she says.
Then she sees me and freezes for the briefest second.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Adam, I thought we were having lunch today. Did I have the wrong day?”
Just let me send him a text.
Him.
And so I know. I know.
Adam is cheating on me with her.
“Emmanuelle, you remember my wife, right? Rachel, you’ve met Emmanuelle, I think. The holiday party at the club?”
I’ve seen your vagina, I want to say.
“Um, mmm-hmm,” I mumble, because my mouth is full of unchewed arugula.
You fucking slut, is my next thought, but then again, of course she’s a fucking slut; she couldn’t be a slut without fucking, could she?
“Emmanuelle and I are working on a case together,” Adam says.
“Really,” I say, swallowing the mouthful of roughage without chewing. Really, Adam? Because you do corporate tax law, and she’s a criminal defense attorney, and even your stupid little housewife knows that you would not work on a case together.
“Adam, I didn’t mean to interrupt your little…picnic,” she says, and her eyes run over me, making me feel childish in my pink sweater, silly with my “trying to be artistic” earrings, like a failure in my little wifey-goes-out-to-lunch dress. She’s wearing a sleeveless black turtleneck dress, Armani, maybe. Jenny would know in a heartbeat. Her glossy, dark red hair is pulled into an unforgiving twist. Tiny gold hoop earrings. A wide, hammered gold ring on her right forefinger. No other jewelry. Black ankle boots with thin, thin heels that must be four inches high. Red soles. Those are… What’s that name? Christian Louboutin, right. Ridiculously expensive.
These details are razor-sharp, slicing through my brain with barely any blood spilled.
I’m wearing a heart necklace. As if I’m in third grade or something.
No. There are pictures of my children inside there. I’m a mother. Emmanuelle is not a mother, no sir.
Not yet.
“I guess I’ll talk to you later, Adam,” Emmanuelle says easily. “Nice to see you again, Rachel.” Then she’s gone. The smell of her perfume lingers like radiation.
Adam exhales. “So. What else have you got planned for today?” His face is studiously bland.
“You fucking liar,” I say, and then I throw his iced tea in his face and walk out of his office.
* * *
THE UPSIDE OF having three toddlers is they don’t leave you much time for thinking. I make the girls supper, read them poems as they eat, then finish their macaroni and cheese, because that stuff is delicious. I let them have a longer bath than usual, and read them extra stories and play Animal Kisses, in which they close their eyes while I woof, meow or moo softly in their hair till they guess which animal I am, or giggle so hard they can’t. For once, they’re all smiling and sweet when I give out their final hugs. No one gets out of bed, no one asks for water, no one cries.
Clearly, I’m the world’s most amazing mother.
I go downstairs, pour what has to be a ten-ounce glass of wine and sit on the couch and wait.
The look on his face, his wet, green-tea-drenched face, was almost funny.
Oily black anger twists and rises inside me. I try to dilute it with a few swallows of wine, but it stays.
I can’t be too angry about this. Well, of course, I can be… I am. But I can’t make decisions in anger. There are five of us to consider, not two.
Jenny has left two messages for me. Does she sense something? I haven’t answered.
Adam has not contacted me. That terror I felt last weekend shudders back to life.
Does he want to leave me?
An image of my daughters in the future flashes in horrible clarity: all three resentful, whiny, confused at having to go spend a weekend with Daddy—and Emmanuelle. They’ll become horrible teenagers, piercings and tattoos, and I’ll find condoms in Rose’s backpack, get a call from the school that Grace beat someone up, that Charlotte sold pot to her classmates. I’m already furious at Adam for doing this to our girls.
Furious, and terrified.
And then there’d be me. Divorced. Alone. I picture myself trying to date again—me, forty, with a cesarean scar and a pooch of skin made by another man’s babies. Me, shy at best, socially terrified at worst, making conversation in the bar in the Holiday Inn while the Yankees are on, a sticky tabletop and a glass of cheap wine, uncomfortable vinyl seats.
Adam comes home at 8:07 p.m. Our girls have always been the early-to-bed types, so I’m sure he’s lurked somewhere—the office, a bar, his whore’s house—until he’s sure they’re asleep. He might be a cheating douche bag, but he doesn’t want the girls to hear us fight.
He comes into the living room, looks at me, sighs and pours himself a scotch. “So I guess we have to talk,” he says, and my eyes fill with traitorous tears, because I love his voice, and now I have to listen to him tell me that I’m right. This living room will never be the same again. It will always be the place where he told me he cheated.
He sits down across from me. I can see the stain from the green tea on his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“How long?” I ask.
“About three months.”
Three months? Holy Jesus! It’s late April now, so most of April, all of March, all of February.
He gave me the locket on Valentine’s Day.
“Tell me everything,” I say, and my voice is choked and brittle.
He sighs, as if I’m exhausting him, the asshole, and starts talking. He didn’t plan it. It just happened. She came on to him. He couldn’t help himself. He’s a guy, and when a beautiful woman comes on to a guy, it’s hard to say no. He loves me. He doesn’t want a divorce. He’s sorry.
And the thing is, I knew. I knew when I saw that picture. I knew when he took me upstairs for sex. I knew before Jenny told me.
Stupid, stupid me.
“Why didn’t you end it?” I ask. My real question is Why would you ever look somewhere else? What am I lacking that made you whip out your dick—my God, my language is deteriorating by the second—and stick it where it didn’t belong?
I can’t look at him. I hate his face. If I look at him now, I might swing that empty wine bottle right at him.
“I did end it,” he says, but there’s too long of a pause.
“Don’t lie to me, Adam,” I say calmly. “You’ve already cheated on me. You lied to me when I showed you that picture, and you’re lying now. Why haven’t you ended it?” There. I manage to look at his face. My own feels as if a swarm of bees is under my skin buzzing and stinging, full of venom.
He shrugs again, not looking at me. “The sex is amazing.”
The room spins.
“Look, you asked,” Adam says, and yes, that’s accusation in his voice. You’re the one who made me tell you! “Rach, I love you. I do, you know that. And I love our life. But Emmanuelle… I don’t know. She’s very aggressive. I turned her down at first, I did!”
Does he want me to praise him? Give him a sticker? Write his name on the kitchen blackboard, like I do when one of the girls does something especially sweet or helpful?
“And then one day she came into my office to talk about a case, and she crossed her legs, and she wasn’t wearing panties, and I couldn’t help myself. It was—”
“Shut up, Adam. Shut the fuck up.”
I’m quite sure today is the first day Adam has ever heard me use the F word. He stops talking.
“I told you if you ever cheated on me, I’d divorce you,” I say calmly.
“I don’t want a divorce. Think of the girls, Rachel.”
“I always think of the girls,” I hiss, the fury writhing in my stomach. “All I do is think of the girls. Were you thinking of the girls when you fucked another woman? Hmm? Is that what a great father does?”
“Look. I’m sorry. I really am, Rachel. I was weak. But I don’t want to lose you.”
How I would love to tell him to piss off right now. That there’s no going back from this. That he can talk to my lawyer.
But just the thought of a divorce makes cold fear shoot through my legs. I don’t want a divorce! No adored husband coming through the door every night, no father in the house for the girls, no “Baby Beluga” sung at bedtime. We’d have to separate our things, all our lovely things that have made our house so welcoming and happy. All the pictures of the girls; he’d obviously get to take some with him.
How could I live without things the way they are now?
My rage has been snuffed out by icy-cold terror.
“When you knew I saw the picture,” I whisper, “did you tell her things had to end?”
“No,” he admits. “I haven’t yet.”
The big question is waiting in the back of my throat like bile. “Do you love her?”
He hesitates. “I… No. Not like I love you. But yes, there are…feelings.”
Oh, God.
My temples throb, and I have to force my teeth apart.
I get up to leave. I’ll sleep in the guest room, take a long bath in the tub, maybe get another bottle of wine. Watch Game of Thrones and…and…
I stumble before I even make it out of the living room.
Adam’s arms are around me. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” His voice is rough with tears. “Please don’t make any decisions now. I love you. I love our family. Let’s not throw that away. I made a mistake. I’ll fix this. We can get counseling, or go on vacation, whatever you want. But please don’t leave me. I couldn’t live without you.”
I love him so much. I hate him so much. He picked me—out of all the women who would’ve loved to have been Adam Carver’s wife, he wanted me. We made this beautiful family, this happy life—well, obviously not happy enough that he kept it in his pants, did he?
“I’m going to bed,” I whisper. “I don’t know what I want right now. Except to be alone.”
“Sleep in,” he says. “I’ll get the girls to school tomorrow. I’ll go in late.”
I can’t bear to look at his eyes anymore. Those beautiful caramel eyes that lied so well.
Feeling more tired than I’ve ever felt in my life, I climb the stairs, holding the railing with both hands. Past the picture of my parents on their wedding day. Past the photo of Jenny and me when we were little, dressed in frilly Easter dresses. Past the picture of Adam, smiling hugely, his eyes wet as he holds three little burritos with pink caps.
Past our wedding photo. Me, in that stunning, amazing dress Jenny made for me, looking more beautiful than I ever knew I could, smiling at Adam with such adoration and…and…gratitude that it makes me sick.
Without thinking, I take the photo off the wall and toss it down the stairs behind me, the sound of glass shattering on tile bright and clear.
“Rachel.” His voice is hard and sharp.
I look down the stairs.
“Before you break anything else, just…just make sure you know what you want. Think about our life together, and what life would be like apart.” His voice softens. “Our marriage is worth fighting for. I screwed up, I admit that. But it would be smart to go slowly here.”
I turn around again and go into the guest room and close the door.
It seems I’ve just been warned.
