Later that evening, he stumbled through the front door when he came home, his elbow gone straight through the window screen. She didn’t ask where he’d been. She’d never seen him so drunk. Marcus was in the living room doing a puzzle on the floor. She stood up to go to him, to move him into his bedroom where she could shut the door. She had a feeling. But Albert held her back with his arm, walked ahead of her.
He slurred vicious words in their son’s face, his angry, red nose pressing into Marcus’s soft cheek, his stinky spit wetting his thin neck. Words she never wanted to hear again for as long as she lived. Words she had no choice but to convince herself had never been said at all.
She hurried him to his bedroom and then held him as tight as she could to stop him from shaking. Albert followed them, filling the doorway. She covered her son’s ears and begged her husband to leave.
“Look at you two, like little girls whispering in each other’s ear all day. You’ve made him this way, Mara. You’ve ruined him.”
The next morning, her son wouldn’t speak to her at all. She put her ear to his mouth, rubbed his back, coaxed him to say what he wanted for his breakfast. “He’s gone for the day, it’s just you and me. Tell Mommy, are you okay?”
But she knew he wasn’t okay, not anymore. She had not let herself think of the possibility that this day would come. She knew then that she had heard him speak for the last time. He only shook his head. He whispered not one soft word to her, not ever again.
28
Whitney
Wednesday
She’s called Jacob three times as she’s driven home from work, the rain letting up. She knows he’ll still be awake, but he’s not answering. She pulls into her driveway. Her hand is about to open the car door when she looks in the rearview mirror and sees Blair toss a bag of kitchen garbage into the can at the side of her house. But she doesn’t look up, doesn’t notice the red glowing taillights on Whitney’s car.
Tonight, she’s relieved Blair doesn’t spot her before she turns back into the house. She has too much on her mind. The new business pitch tomorrow morning. The school’s concerns about Xavier. But Blair has left the front door open, she must be getting the recycling bag from the kitchen. Whitney waits.
Time with Blair is normally a welcome reprieve. Blair is grounding. She is like warm milk. She helps Whitney meet the quotient of hours she must spend thinking like a mother. But sometimes, being with her makes Whitney unspeakably envious. This way Blair has about her. How Chloe is so effortless to enjoy, their love synergistic. Sometimes Xavier feels to her like a gift given by someone who should know her better; something meant for her that feels nothing like her. Her heart hurts in that same way sometimes, of being misunderstood.
In the driveway, she cuts the engine and watches Blair’s house in the rearview mirror, waiting for her to finish with the garbage and go back in. She thinks of the conversation they had last week. About Aiden and how little they see each other lately. Blair tends to cast the topic of her marriage like bait, wanting to talk about it—but not really. A futile exercise. But Whitney usually complies so that Blair doesn’t suspect anything.
She knows Blair speaks in half-truths, testing how uncomfortable it feels to share the problems in her marriage, before she inevitably retreats. This seems to satisfy her on some level, the proximity of being almost candid with Whitney without having something to regret. She wants them to be confidantes. But she doesn’t really want Whitney to see her.
The front door opens wider and Blair’s back with the recycling. She flips the lid and pushes the bags down to make room. Whitney is careful to be still so the motion lights don’t come on.
Blair has changed over the four years they’ve known each other. They’ve grown close in a short time, closer than Whitney has been to any friend since college, closer than the circle of well-dressed women she connects with professionally. And she has no contact anymore with the moms from school, not since September. But in those four years, she has felt Blair shrink. She sees the way Blair looks around her well-appointed home, the way she hungrily consumes the exchanges Whitney and Jacob have. And if Whitney is being honest with herself, this power dynamic between them is something she doesn’t want to lose. She has the upper hand in their friendship, like most parts of her life. Although she isn’t proud to need it, she does.
A different friend might push Blair to be confessional. Are you sure there’s nothing on your mind? Everything okay with Aiden? A different friend might put a hand on Blair’s knee, insist that she can tell her anything. Say that all of them—women of their age—have moments of realizing they no longer want what they used to, but now it’s too late. Whether they admit to it or not.
But Whitney doesn’t have the space for that kind of obligation in the tight operation of her life.
And there are other perilous matters.
Matters Whitney, herself, has complicated.
She shifts in her seat. She calls Jacob again. Voice mail. She texts him. She wants him to know that she’s home. She wants to end on a better note. Reassure him.
Blair pushes on the lid a few more times. The front door closes firmly behind her, and Whitney is safe.
In the foyer, she hangs her trench coat and listens for where the children and Louisa are. They are late getting ready for bed, especially the twins. She wants quiet, she wants space to think. She wants tired children in pajamas. But it’s only seconds until they surround her, there are hands on her leg and clumps of clay in her face and reports of hurt knees that look perfectly fine. Louisa calls the children back, but they don’t want to hear Louisa tonight, they want Whitney to give herself over to them, to say things like “Wow, good for you!” and “You’re so brave!” and “Yes, it looks just like a tetradactyl!” But Whitney is thinking about what an empty house would feel like. About the meeting in the morning. About her plans later that evening. She should cancel. She should.
Xavier comes in the kitchen with his socks slid halfway off his dragging feet.
“Those socks are filthy. Please take them off.”
He ignores her. She bends to pull them but he won’t lift his feet, and when she grips his ankle, he makes a noise like an animal, a whimper, like he is wounded. She yanks the socks from him. There’s a hole in one of the toes and she throws them into the garbage.
“What are you doing? Those are my socks!”
Her chest grows tight. “How was school?”
“Did you know your phone’s cracked?”
She takes it from his hand, and sees her last message to Jacob is marked as read. But he hasn’t responded. He hasn’t called. She flips it over on the counter. She peels the cellophane off the plate Louisa has saved for her. The twins are in her periphery, on the white carpet in the adjacent living room, where they aren’t supposed to be with blue clay in their hands.
“Did anything happen today at school that you want to talk about?”
He picks up her phone again, he digs his nail into the crack. “Can we play chess before bed?”
She wonders where Louisa is. “Not tonight, sorry.”
“Please?”
“Xavier. It’s late.”
“When’s Dad coming home? I miss Dad.”
“Not for two more days.”
“Fine, then Lou will play chess with me.”
“I said it’s late. You’ve got to get ready for bed.”
“But she said she wants to play chess with me.”
“Xavier.”
“But she said she really, really wanted to.”
“She’s being polite.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Yes, she is.”
“At least she’s nice to me.”
“And so am I. But it’s late.”
“No, you aren’t. You aren’t nice to me.” His voice curls. She looks up and sees he’s trying not to cry. “You don’t like me very much.”
She would have rather he’d yelled, thoughtlessly, that he hated her. She would have rather he threw a tantrum like he was three years old. It is the softness in his face when he said the words—You don’t like me very much—that makes her stomach tighten. She thinks of the phone conversation with the teacher. Of how a child is forever changed by the way they’re treated.
“Xavi, honey, come here.” She puts a hand behind his head to pull him into her chest.
But then his palms push into her stomach, he is shoving her. He is shoving her away from him and into the handle on the fridge. And then he turns and sweeps his arm across the kitchen island. The glass fruit bowl wobbles across the floor and the oranges roll like marbles. He kicks a banana and mush bleeds from the split in the peel. He stomps his bare foot in it and flings a glob onto her pant leg.
Whitney reaches out to grab him, the instinct as flammable as gas. He ducks away from her. “Get over here NOW!” She lunges for his arm, but he’s too quick for her, and now he’s on the other side of the island. She feels her temper rise in her throat. “I am WARNING YOU!”
But Sebastian is at her feet now, there is fear in his crying, and he wraps himself around the leg splotched with banana. She picks him up and holds him tight against her thumping heart. She smooths his hair. She kisses him.