Chương 5
Lucy looked between us.
Her lower lip moved.
I immediately softened my voice.
“Hey, bug, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I spilled.”
“People spill things.”
Caleb crouched and started picking cereal pieces from the floor anyway.
For thirty seconds, the three of us cleaned breakfast while our marriage sat open and bleeding in the next room.
Then Lucy asked, “Are you mad at Daddy?”
My hand stopped over the wet tile.
Caleb looked at me.
“Yes,” I said.
He flinched.
Lucy considered this with solemn interest.
“Did he spill something too?”
I looked at my husband.
“In a way.”
Caleb closed his eyes.
And I hated that a tiny part of me enjoyed making him hurt.
The pleasure lasted less than a second before shame replaced it.
Lucy crouched beside Caleb and pressed one soggy cereal loop onto a paper towel as if she were helping with disaster relief.
“Can I still go to school?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Of course.”
She looked at Caleb.
“Are you going to work?”
He hesitated.
“I think so.”
That hesitation was new.
Caleb rarely thought so about work.
Work was the one part of his life that had always existed beyond negotiation.
Lucy accepted the answer and wandered toward the stairs to find her shoes.
When she was out of earshot, Caleb stood.
“We need to talk.”
“We are talking.”
“Not like this.”
He glanced toward the stairs.
“Not with her here.”
“You should have considered that before conducting a five-month emotional affair inside the same house where she sleeps.”
His face tightened.
“Don’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I’m telling you nothing physical happened.”
“And I’m telling you that you lied to my face while planning a trip with her and discussing how to deal with me.”
“I wasn’t planning a trip with her.”
“The Atlanta message says otherwise.”
“She has a client event there.”
“And you were deciding whether to go.”
“For work.”
I stared at him.
He stopped.
“Okay.”
He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes.
“Maybe partly because she’d be there.”
The admission landed more quietly than the lies had.
That was somehow worse.
Lucy came down carrying one sneaker and wearing the other.
“I can’t find my shoe.”
“It’s by the couch,” I said.
She looked.
It was.
“Mommy knows everything.”
Caleb’s eyes moved to mine.
I looked away first.
Ten minutes later, I buckled Lucy into the car while Caleb stood in the driveway with his briefcase still inside the house.
He had taken off his suit jacket.
The morning was already warming, and the neighbor across the street was dragging two trash cans back from the curb.
Normal life again.
Always normal life.
“Are you coming to pickup?” Lucy asked through the open door.
“I don’t know yet, bug.”
“You said normal time.”
“I’m going to try.”
She nodded with the solemn tolerance children develop around unreliable adults.
I kissed her forehead and closed the door.
Caleb stepped toward me.
“Margot, please don’t make any decisions while you’re angry.”
I almost smiled.
“What decision do you think I’m about to make?”
He had no answer.
That told me he had been considering possibilities long before I had.
“I’ll call you after drop-off,” he said.
“No.”
“Then when?”
“I don’t know.”
His expression hardened at the uncertainty.
Caleb hated not knowing schedules.
“Margot.”
“I need to get her to school.”
“You can’t just shut me out.”
I put my hand on the driver’s door.
The hypocrisy was so clean it did not even require a response.
He saw it anyway.
His shoulders sank.
At school, Lucy insisted on carrying her backpack herself.
She walked toward her classroom holding both straps and turned around twice to wave.
The second time, I waved too enthusiastically.
Her teacher, Ms. Howard, smiled at me from the doorway.
“You okay?”
It was a simple question.
I nearly told her everything.
Instead I said, “Bad morning.”
She gave me the look women sometimes give each other when they know a sentence is much larger than it sounds.
“Well, she’s got library today.”
“Good.”
“She loves library.”
“I know.”
I made it back to the car before crying.
Not dramatically.
There was no collapse over the steering wheel.
Tears simply began falling while I sat in the parking lot listening to a local radio host complain about construction on Interstate 77.
I wiped my face with a fast-food napkin from the glove compartment.
Then I laughed once because the napkin had a ketchup stain on it.
My life was ending with condiments.
The laugh turned into something uglier.
I covered my mouth until it passed.
At nine twelve, my phone rang.
Caleb.
I let it stop.
He called again at nine sixteen.
Then a text arrived.
I told work I’ll be late.
Please come home.
I stared at the message.
For years, work had been the immovable thing around which every family emergency bent.
Now, suddenly, he could be late.
I put the phone face down.
Then I called my sister, Anna.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“If this is about Mom’s birthday, I already ordered the cake.”
“It’s not.”
Silence.
Her voice changed.
“What happened?”
I could not say affair.
Not yet.
“He’s been seeing Rebecca Sloan.”
Another silence.
This one was longer.
“The college girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“How seeing?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is not a comforting answer.”
“He says nothing physical happened.”
Anna exhaled.
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe I don’t know anything.”
“Where are you?”
“In the school parking lot.”
“Don’t drive if you’re crying.”
“I’m not crying.”
“You sound like someone narrating a hostage tape.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Anna had always been good at making disaster slightly embarrassing.
“I found messages.”
“What kind?”
“Months of them.”
“Jesus.”
“And five thousand dollars moved from savings into his personal account.”
That got her attention.
“What?”
May you like
“He labeled it tax reserve.”
“You don’t have a tax reserve in his personal checking.”
