***
“I think Nick might be having an affair,” I tell Cate the next day, when I finally get a hold of her after four tries. I am sitting on the floor amid three piles of dirty laundry—although it should be more like five if I weren’t prepared to overstuff the washing machine. “Or at least contemplating one.”
The second the words are out, I feel intense relief, almost as if confronting my fears and saying them aloud makes them less likely to be true.
“No way,” Cate says, as I knew she would. Which is, subconsciously, why I probably called her in the first place, choosing her over the other candidates: Rachel, my brother, April, or my mother, somehow knowing that Rachel and Dex would be too worried, April too likely to break my confidence, my mother too cynical. “Why do you think that?”
I share with her all my evidence—the late nights at the office, the text message, and the cherry Coke excursion that lasted close to thirty-eight minutes.
“Come on, Tess. That’s a crazy conclusion to draw,” she says. “He might have wanted to get out of the house for a few minutes. Shirk his bedtime duties with a little alone time. But that doesn’t add up to an affair.”
“What about the text?” I ask. “The ‘thinking of you’ . . . ?”
“So what? So he’s thinking of someone . . . That doesn’t mean he’s thinking of undressing someone.”
“Well, who could it be from?” I say, realizing that the very thing that gives me greatest pause—that Nick has so few friends, so seldom makes new connections—is the thing that simultaneously reassures me.
“It could be from anyone. It could be a coworker who is getting a divorce and alone for Thanksgiving. It could be from an old friend . . . a cousin. It could be from a patient’s mother or father. A former patient. . . Bottom line, Nick is not the affair type.”
“My mother says all men are the affair type.”
“I don’t believe that. You don’t believe that.”
“I’m not sure what to believe these days,” I say.
“Tess. You’re just going through a little depression. A downturn. I’ll tell you what. How ‘bout you come here next weekend? I’ll cheer you up, send you home happy. This is nothing that a little girl time won’t cure . . .”
“Time to let Nick have an affair?” I say, now joking. Mostly joking.
“Time to let him miss you. Time to remind yourself that you have the best husband. The best marriage. The best life.”
“Okay,” I say, unconvinced but hopeful. “I’ll come Friday—late afternoon.”
“Good,” she says. “We’ll go out. You can watch me hit on some guys in bars . . . I’ll show you exactly what you’re not missing. I’ll show you how good you have it there with your loyal husband.”
“Until then, what’s my strategy?”
“Your strategy?” she says excitedly; strategies are her specialty. “Well, for starters, no more snooping. I’ve been down that road . . .Nothing good comes from it.”
“Okay,” I say, cradling the phone under my ear, and stuffing a load of darks into the washer. A pair of Nick’s red plaid boxers fall onto the laundry room floor, and as I pick them up, I tell myself that nobody has seen his underwear but me. “What else?”
“Exercise. Meditate. Eat healthy foods. Get lots of sleep. Brighten up your highlights. Buy some new shoes,” she says, as if reading from a list of commandments about how to be happy. “And above all else, don’t give Nick a hard time. No nagging. No guilt trips. Just . . . be nice to him.”
“To give him an incentive not to cheat?” I say.
“No. Because you believe he’s not cheating.”
I smile my first real smile in days, glad that I confided in Cate, glad that I’m going to see her soon, glad that I married someone who has earned my best friend’s benefit of the doubt.
26
Valerie
On the night before Charlie’s first day back to school, Nick stops over to wish him good luck, but ends up staying to make dinner, declaring himself a burger connoisseur as he prepares the patties, then hovers over the George Foreman grill. Although Valerie has exchanged dozens of calls and text messages with him, it is the first she has seen him since Thanksgiving and she feels giddy to be standing next to him, the only thing that could assuage her nervousness over Charlie’s return to school.
She watches her son now, playing with his Star Wars action figures at the kitchen table, as he asks Nick about his mask—which is resting on the table beside him. “Do I have to wear it?” he says. “To school?”
“Yeah, buddy,” he says. “Especially for gym and recess . . . You can take it off now and then if it’s bothering you or making you sweaty or itchy, but it’s a good idea to keep it on.”
Charlie furrows his brow, as if considering this, and then says, “Do you think I look better with it or without it?”
Valerie and Nick exchange a worried glance.