Chương 3
In the powder room, I locked the door and stood with both hands on the marble sink.
My breath came too quickly.
I counted backward from ten, the way I had taught young soldiers before convoy departures. At seven, my right hand began to shake. At four, I gripped the sink harder. At one, I saw Eric kneeling on our bedroom floor three years earlier, holding the syringe for my hormone injection while I pinched the skin below my navel.
“You want me to do it?” he had asked.
“No.”
“You hate needles.”
“I hate you enjoying this.”
He had smiled. “I’m not enjoying it.”
“You have the face.”
“What face?”
“The helpful face.”
“I have one face.”
“That’s the problem.”
We had laughed until I had to sit down.
The memory arrived without permission and left me bent over the sink.
Someone knocked.
“Mara?”
My mother.
I did not answer.
“Mara, please open the door.”
“Not now.”
“I need to explain.”
“No, you need to wait.”
Silence followed. Then her heel moved against the wood floor.
“I didn’t know about the pregnancy,” she said through the door.
I closed my eyes.
“What did you know?”
Another silence.
“Mara.”
“What did you know?”
“I saw them together.”
The tremor in my hand stopped.
“When?”
“In April.”
It was August.
“Together how?”
“I saw Eric kiss her.”
The room narrowed around me.
“Where?”
“At our house. Your father’s birthday dinner. I walked into the library.”
My parents’ library had one narrow window overlooking the side lawn and a brass lamp that made everyone sitting beneath it look sick. I remembered that dinner. Natalie had arrived late and left early. Eric had spent most of the evening outside answering what he said were calls from Paul about a construction contract.
I had gone home with a migraine.
“What did they tell you?”
“That it was a mistake.”
“And you believed them?”
“No.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I told them it had to end.”
A laugh escaped me. It did not sound like mine.
“You told them.”
“I thought I could stop it before you were hurt.”
“You thought I wasn’t already hurt because I didn’t know.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“It’s exactly what you mean.”
“Mara, please let me come in.”
I unlocked the door but did not move away from it.
Mother entered with both hands raised slightly, as though approaching a frightened animal. Her cream-colored dress had a dark stain where wine had splashed across the skirt. A tiny cut marked the side of her index finger.
I pulled a tissue from the dispenser and held it out.
She looked at it, then at me.
“Your finger.”
“Oh.”
She wrapped the tissue around the cut.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Through the wall, the reception had resumed its low, confused movement. Chairs scraped. A man coughed. Someone asked where the valet stand was. The party was not continuing, exactly. It was disassembling.
Mother looked into the mirror instead of at me.
“I wanted to tell you.”
“But?”
“You had just taken the position on the veterans’ housing board. You and Eric had started counseling. You seemed—”
“Stable?”
“I was going to say hopeful.”
“You were waiting for the best time.”
“Yes.”
“There wasn’t one.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
Her shoulders lowered.
“I was afraid you would leave him.”
The honesty of it surprised both of us.
“You were more afraid I’d leave him than you were that he was sleeping with Natalie?”
“I thought if it ended—”
“You thought preserving my marriage mattered more than letting me decide whether I wanted it.”
She pressed the tissue to her finger. A spot of blood spread through the white paper.
“I have spent my whole life trying to keep this family from flying apart.”
“No. You’ve spent your whole life choosing which cracks everyone else was allowed to see.”
She looked at me then.
Her eyes filled, but she did not cry.
Outside the powder room, footsteps approached.
Eric knocked once and tried the handle.
“Mara.”
Mother stepped back.
I opened the door.
Eric stood in the hall without his jacket. His blue shirt was dark beneath the arms, and his tie had been pulled loose. For the first time since I had known him, he seemed unaware of how he looked.
He saw Mother and understood something had happened.
“What did you tell her?”
Mother straightened. “The truth.”
“Which truth?” he asked.
It was the wrong question.
Mother’s face changed.
“You need to leave,” she said.
Eric stared at her. “This is my anniversary party.”
My father’s voice came from farther down the hall.
“Not anymore.”
He approached carrying Eric’s jacket over one arm. Behind him, two servers moved quietly through the dining room collecting untouched plates.
Father held out the jacket.
“Your car is at the front.”
Eric did not take it.
“I’m not leaving without talking to my wife.”
I stepped into the hall.
“You’ll talk to me tomorrow.”
“We live together.”
“Not tonight.”
“That’s my house too.”
“Yes.”
“Mara, what does that mean?”
“It means I haven’t decided where I’m going.”
He looked frightened then—not of losing the house or facing the guests, but of being excluded from the next decision.
“I’ll leave,” he said quickly. “You go home.”
I shook my head.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be in our bedroom.”
The words landed between us with more force than I intended.
Mother turned away.
Eric swallowed.
“I never brought her there.”
I looked at him.
He lowered his eyes.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“I’m trying to tell you there are things I didn’t do.”
“As a defense?”
“No. I don’t know. I’m trying to—”
He stopped and rubbed both hands over his face.
For one second, I saw the man I had married, overwhelmed and clumsy and desperate to repair something before he understood its shape.
Then I saw the wedding ring.
May you like
I stepped past him.
Grant waited beside the front door with the red folder under his arm. Through the glass panels, I could see his gray sedan at the curb.
