I made Sean watch the films I liked, black-and-white thrillers from the thirties and forties. I streamed them every night. That was how we began to joke about insurance fraud. It was a joke, at first. Sean never imagined how far I would take it.
I explained the logical steps, and Sean went along, like the all those scammed, bewitched men in those movies. He was the Fred MacMurray, I was the Barbara Stanwyck.
We needed Stephanie—or someone like her. She was almost too perfect. Sometimes I had the scary feeling that I’d created her to be so exactly what we needed that we could skip a few steps on the way toward putting our plan in action.
She was so perfect that everything made more sense than it did before she came along and unknowingly became a part of it. It began to seem more possible than when we were daring each other, when our plan was just a fun idea.
Stephanie couldn’t suspect. I was sure she wouldn’t. She was so happy she’d found a friend. Whenever she used the phrase “a mom friend,” I thought I was going to be sick.
I picked her out of a crowd. A gaggle of mothers waiting for their kids to get out of school.
When people talk about predators, what they mostly mean is sex and power and weakness. Criminality. Pedophiles prey on children. Rapists prey on women. In nature, predation is driven by hunger. The big sharks eat the smaller fish. The strong prey on the weak.
But this wasn’t like that. Stephanie is an adult. It was perfect that her son was Nicky’s friend. It was meant to be.
It was always about Nicky. Sean and I worked so hard—late nights, sometimes through the weekends—that we hardly saw him. He was growing up, and we never got to spend time with him. He was our only child. We were never going to have another.
Conceiving him had been easy, but giving birth to him had been very hard. Our doctor called us into his office (never a good sign) and told us that trying to have another child could prove fatal for me and the baby, even if I succeeded (small chance) in carrying it to term.
I’d gone on the low-dose birth control pill, and it seemed to work fine, with no side effects. Or none that the doctors would admit. If you ask me, I felt excessively irritable, even more restless and impatient. But maybe it wasn’t the pill; maybe it was life. Everything and everyone annoyed me. Everyone but Nicky.
I wonder what sort of protection Sean is using with Stephanie, who has a disturbingly uneven record when it comes to contraception. She claims that Miles was unplanned, that she and her husband conceived him by accident after an expensive hipster wedding.
My scheme—and Sean’s capitulation—was the result of a combination of things. Those old films and the new employment contract that I actually read. Twenty-some pages, clause after clause, dozens of bright plastic labels flagging blanks for Sean to initial. And then—what do you know?—page twenty-two was an application for life insurance for Sean and his spouse, a gigantic payoff in return for a teensy paycheck deduction.
I was relentless. Every morning I’d mention it, every time we were together. Sometimes I’d wake Sean in the middle of the night and pick up where I’d left off. He was reluctant, at first. He lacked the vision to see the beauty of what I was suggesting. He probably thought I was crazy. But he knew I meant it. And if he said no? The result of his refusal would be worse than whatever I wanted him to do. Maybe worse than he could imagine.
One night, after we had sex, always the best time to approach Sean or any man, I brought it up again. Maddening. You have the smartest, coolest idea in the world, but you have to fuck them first.
“Our lives aren’t so bad,” he said. “We’re working our asses off, darling, but we won’t be forever. Nicky seems happy.”
I said, “Is this what you want, Sean? Working round the clock, hardly ever seeing our son—the only child we’ll ever have. Do you want to wake up one day and realize he’s in college? Gone? Do you want day after day of this sameness, this . . . boredom?”
I’d said too much. I’d come too close to revealing something about myself that I would just as soon keep hidden. Everyone has secrets, as Stephanie says, ad nauseam.
“Are you saying you’re bored with me?” Sean asked.
I was. But I wasn’t going to admit that.
“Sean, don’t you want to take a risk? Put all our chips on the line. Gamble. Live recklessly. Live on the edge. Do you want to get to the point where we say, ‘Is this all there is?’”
That stopped him. He could tell that what I meant was, Are you all there is? What would prevent me from finding a man with more money and time than Sean—and taking Nicky with me?
I would never do that. Sean was Nicky’s dad. Nothing could change that, and no one could replace him.
I hammered away at him. If we wanted to keep leading the life we were living, the life that was leading us—the mortgage, the car, the art on our walls, the clothes that cost plenty even with my office discount but that I had to wear to work—we were trapped. There was no way out. Property values had flatlined since we moved to Connecticut, and if we sold the house, we would take a loss. We couldn’t afford to move back to Manhattan unless we wanted to live in Bushwick or squeeze into a postwar one-bedroom in Midtown. Even with Sean’s salary and mine we’d need a huge mortgage, or we could rent, which would be expensive and not ideal.
For the first time, I didn’t object when Sean wanted to relax in front of the TV. But now I made him watch House Hunters, House Hunters International, and all the house-hunting shows. Every night a couple decided to start a new life in some exotic place. Antigua, Nice, Sardinia, Belize. Why? Because they wanted to get away from the rat race, to spend more time with their family.
“They’re doing it,” I’d tell Sean. “Those losers are doing what you’re afraid to try.”
“Where did they get the money?” he’d say. “They never tell you.”
“I know where to get the money,” I said. “Money is not the problem. You’re having the balls to do something about it is the problem.”
I hadn’t forgotten the look on Sean’s face when he put his mother’s ring on my finger on the plane. It was just a matter of time until he did what I said.
Sean would take out the maximum life insurance that his company offered. I’d disappear. Lie low for a while. I’d have to fake my own death. This was the difficult part. But people did it in books and films all the time. And in real life. And they got away with it!
So it must be possible. That part needed some thought.
I’d stay out of sight for however long it took, depending on how hard the authorities seemed to be looking for me. Then I’d change my look. Get a fake passport.
Sean would collect the insurance money, and we would move to some paradise in Europe where no one would ask any questions about the attractive American expat couple and their adorable son. We’d pay the rent in cash.
When the money ran out, we’d take stock. But if we were careful that wouldn’t happen for a while. And we’d have fun. We’d do what we wanted, all the time. We would never be bored again.
It wasn’t the most sensible plan. It had a few wrinkles that needed to be ironed out. Maybe no sane person would have imagined that this was going to work. I liked that it was a long shot. The opposite of tedious and safe.