54.
Perry drove Celeste back home after the assembly.
“Do you have time to stop for a coffee?” asked Celeste.
“I’d better not,” said Perry. “Busy day.”
She looked at his profile. He seemed fine, his thoughts focused on the day ahead. She knew he’d enjoyed seeing his first school assembly, being one of the school dads, wearing his corporate uniform in a noncorporate world. He liked the daddy role, relished it even, talking with Ed in that gently ironic, this-is-all-a-bit-of-a-laugh dad-type way.
They’d all laughed at the boys careering about the stage, wearing the big green crocodile suit. Max had the head and Josh had the tail; sometimes the crocodile seemed in danger of being torn in two as they headed in opposite directions. Before they left the school, Perry had taken a photo of the boys wearing the suit on the balcony outside the hall, the ocean in the background. Then he’d asked Ed to take a photo of all four of them: the boys peering out from underneath the costume, Perry and Celeste crouched down next to them. It would already be on Facebook. Celeste had seen him fiddling with his phone as they’d walked back to the car. What would it say? Two stars are born! The boys rocked it as a scary croc! Something like that.
“See you at the trivia night!” everyone had called to one another as they’d left that day.
Yes, he was in a good mood. Things should be OK. There hadn’t been any tension since he’d gotten back from his last trip.
But she’d seen the lightning-quick flash of rage when she’d made her comment about leaving him if he signed the petition to have Ziggy suspended. She’d meant it to sound like a joke, but she knew it hadn’t come across that way, and that would have embarrassed him in front of Madeline and Ed, who he liked and admired.
What had come over her? It must be the apartment. It was almost completely furnished now, and as a result, the possibility of leaving was always present, the question being constantly asked: Will I or won’t I? Of course I will, I must. Of course I won’t. Yesterday morning when she was there she’d even made up the beds with fresh linen, taking a strange, soothing pleasure in the task, turning down the sheets just so, making each bed look inviting, making it possible. But then in the middle of the night last night, she’d woken in her own bed, Perry’s arm heavy across her waist, the ceiling fan turning lazily the way Perry liked it, and she’d thought suddenly of those made-up beds and she’d been as appalled as if she’d remembered a crime. What a betrayal of her husband! She’d rented and furnished another apartment. What a crazy, secretive, malicious and self-indulgent thing to do.
Maybe threatening Perry that she’d leave him was because she wanted to confess what she’d done; she couldn’t bear the burden of her secret.
Of course, it was also because the thought of Perry, or anyone, signing that petition filled her with rage, but especially Perry. He owed a debt to Jane. A family debt because of what his cousin had done. (May have done, she kept reminding herself. They didn’t know for sure. What if Jane had misheard the name? It could have been Stephen Banks, not Saxon Banks at all.)
Ziggy might be Perry’s cousin’s child. He owed him at least his loyalty.
Jane was Celeste’s friend, and even if she weren’t, no five-year-old deserved to have a community begin a witch hunt against him.
Perry didn’t take the car into the garage, pulling up outside the house in the driveway. Celeste assumed that meant he wasn’t coming in.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she said, leaning over to kiss him.
“Actually, I need to come in to get something from my desk,” said Perry. He opened the car door.
She felt it then. It was like a smell or a change in the electrical charge in the air. It was something to do with the set of his shoulders, the blank, shiny look in his eyes and the dryness in her throat.
He opened the door for her and let her in first, with a courtly gesture.
“Perry,” she said quickly, as she turned around and he closed the door, but then he grabbed her by the hair, twisting it behind her and pulling so hard, so astonishingly hard, that pain radiated through her scalp and her eyes filled with instant, involuntary tears.
“If you ever, ever embarrass me like that again, I will kill you, I will fucking kill you.” He tightened his grip. “How dare you. How dare you.”
He let go.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
But she mustn’t have said it right, because he stepped forward slowly and took her face in his hands the way he did when he was about to tenderly kiss her.
“Not good enough,” he said, and he slammed her head against the wall.
The cold deliberateness of it was as shocking and surreal as the first time he’d hit her. The pain felt intensely personal, like a broken heart.
The world swam as though she were drunk.
She slid to the floor.
She retched once, twice, but she wasn’t sick. She only ever retched. She was never sick.
She heard his footsteps walking away, down the hallway, and she curled up on the floor, her knees near her chest, her hands interlaced over the back of her cruelly throbbing head. She thought of the boys when they hurt themselves, the way they sobbed: It hurts, Mummy, it hurts so much.
“Sit up,” said Perry. “Honey. Sit up.”
He crouched down next to her, pulled her up into a sitting position and gently laid an ice pack wrapped in a tea towel on the back of her head.
As the blessed coldness began to seep through, she turned her head and studied his face through blurry eyes. It was dead white, with purplish crescents under his eyes. His features were dragged downward, as though he were being ravaged by some terrible disease. He sobbed once. A grotesque, despairing sound, like an animal caught in a trap.
She let herself fall forward against his shoulder, and they rocked together on their glossy black walnut floor beneath their soaring cathedral ceiling.