James planted a rueful kiss on my forehead. “Work happens, honey. Even on a weekend. It’s the price of being employed—distractions like this. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run to my office and . . . and put out some fires.”
Never before had I suspected James of having an affair. For weeks, this suspicion ate at me. I told myself I was imagining things. We never quarreled, James and I, and he seemed happy with our homelife. He complimented me endlessly and never failed to notice when I wore a new dress, did something different to my hair, or set fresh irises on our dining room table. And yet I sensed again and again that, even while he sat next to me on our living room couch, his mind was elsewhere.
Should I have confronted him? In retrospect, I wish I had. He probably would have denied everything, and I probably would’ve believed him.
Instead, I contacted a private investigator. A few days after I emailed him about my predicament, he sent me two pictures. In one picture, James and this other woman—Laurel—walked hand in hand over the sweeping white marble floor of the Mayflower Hotel’s lobby. I sucked in a breath and fumed. A half hour later, I summoned the courage to click open the second photo, which showed James and the same woman climbing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in broad daylight. I studied this photo endlessly, trying to figure out what James saw in this woman. She was younger, yes, but plain looking and abundantly pregnant, dressed up in a pink novelty PSST! I’M NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE! T-shirt that blatantly advertised her condition. She was what I’d always wanted to be: pregnant and happy.
Today, an hour ago, James raced home, his cheeks flushed with excitement. Claiming he had “something of importance” to show me, he urged me to get into his Volvo. Instinctively, I guessed the reason for James’s excitement—my private investigator had told me his mistress was a week overdue. When confronted with evidence of my father’s affairs, my mother would lock herself in her room for weeks and sometimes months. I was determined to show the world I was made of sterner stuff. I grabbed my cashmere cape, slid on my ruched leather gloves. He drove us through the midday Georgetown traffic with an uncharacteristic abundance of caution, stopping at rather than running the red lights. Throughout our drive, he glanced at me with a nervous insistence. Poor, silly James hadn’t realized I’d guessed what was happening. While waiting at a stoplight on Foxhall Road, I tapped his hand and asked, “So. Let me guess: your mistress just had her baby.”
The light changed. The car behind us honked at him to get moving. James shifted the Volvo back into gear. We clanked through the slushy streets slower than before. He stared at the bare trees lining the road, no longer glancing at me. Signs along the road indicated we were traveling toward Sibley Hospital. When one of the signs indicated we should veer right to get to the hospital, James veered right—but despite the road signs, I couldn’t believe he was actually taking me to see his mistress.
“You know about her?”
“Of course I do.” Despite our twelve years of marriage, James has yet to learn that nothing gets past me. It didn’t help that, in recent weeks, he’d been so careless with his secrets. I’d catch him reading baby manuals while watching televised golf tournaments. What grown man reads baby manuals? With or without a private investigator, the hackles on the most trusting wife would have been raised by that. And yet now that I was in his Volvo with him, I had no idea why he was taking me to her maternity suite.
Chapter Three
TRISH
Laurel points at me from her hospital bed and, in a slow, medicated voice, asks, “What’s she doing here?”
“Relax, honey,” James says. He takes the baby from me and, walking the five paces across the airy room, places the baby on Laurel’s lap.
Because Laurel’s been asleep, she’s hardly held her baby yet, and I expect her to gaze upon Anne Elise with the same reverent joy as I’d done. Instead, she stares at me. No joy lights her rosy cheeks; no giddy happiness expresses itself in her eyes. There’s something hard about her, as if she’s had an uncomfortable upbringing. IV tubing snakes up from her tattooed arm; wires from an electronic heart monitor coil up from the folds of her gold terrycloth bathrobe. A plastic medallion like the one on Anne Elise’s ankle is strapped to her wrist. She, too, has been kissed by Mick Jagger. The two plastic discs graze against each other, causing a simultaneous electronic smooching sound to squeak out from them.
“You let her hold the baby?” Laurel asks. Although she looks at me, the question is intended for James. I know so little about this woman James has been carrying on with. My private investigator has given me the basics on her, such as her name, age, and cell phone number, and clued me into her financial needs—her mountains of student loan debt, her penchant for Italian-crafted boots and fine leather goods. But he’s been less successful in assembling her personality profile, her psychological profile, anything that might be useful in helping me understand her. “That witch? That bitch? After all the things she’s done to you, you’ve let her hold our baby?”
Seeing the needy jealousy that overtakes her, I know precisely the kind of woman she is: lowlife. That’s the vibe she gives off. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something criminal in her background. And as I’m realizing this, a plan hatches in my mind. A woman like her would have no shortage of nasty secrets. With my private investigator’s help, I’m certain I can ruin Laurel. Or, at the bare minimum, convince James to dump her. She’s carried on with my husband, seduced him, bedded him, and probably filled his head with fantasies of the bliss he can expect if he leaves me. None of this would have happened if I’d been able to conceive a child for James. Laurel’s only means of ensnaring him was to offer him the one thing I couldn’t: a baby. But now, I see her jealousy.
Every woman reacts differently when confronted with her spouse’s infidelity. Initially, like my mother, I chose a predictable path: paralysis. Indecision plagued me for months, but at heart, I wasn’t my mother’s daughter so much as I was a child of my father. My father was a pragmatist who taught me that though the world was an ugly place, complaining served no purpose. After my private investigator informed me that James was having an affair, I had endeavored to figure out how to tilt things in my favor. Laurel’s pregnancy was a complicating factor. She had no money, no sophistication. If something were to happen to the baby, James would undoubtedly tire of her in due time. That is what I chose to believe. Yes, I hoped there’d be a miscarriage, an abortion, some permanent rift that would develop between James and his mistress. More than anything, I hoped James didn’t love her, and yet seeing the way he fawns over her and her baby, I see he loves them both. Which breaks my heart.
“Laurel. Honey. You were asleep. What harm could be done by having Tricia hold Anne Elise while you rested?” James’s honeyed yet persuasive voice always strangely reminds me of roasted cashews. Any woman could fall for a confidence man with such a voice.
Laurel rubs her eyes. “What do you mean, ‘Anne Elise’? We agreed on ‘Zerena’ if she was a girl. Zerena. With a Z like we talked about. Don’t you remember? We talked about this.”
James lays a hand on Laurel’s shoulder, and with his other hand, he “coochy-coochy-coos” Anne Elise’s chin.