“Same here,” said Karen, childishly wishing she’d been the first to express the need to flee.
As she walked back out into the brisk morning air, she made a mental note to e-mail Laura that night, before Laura started drawing her own conclusions.
In the first years of Karen and Matt’s romance and then domestic partnership and even marriage, they’d spoken on the phone up to four times a day and e-mailed at least twice daily. But in recent years, entire weeks went by without either one of them trying to get in touch with the other one while they were at work. Familiarity was the most generous explanation. But on that day, anger and pride were clearly to blame for the silence.
It seemed only fair that Karen pick Ruby up from her first day at her new school. As such, she worked through lunch and slipped out shortly after. Which is to say, she fretted all morning and got nothing done. She had lunch at her desk. Then it was time to go. At five minutes to three, Karen found herself on the Mather playground surrounded by a mixture of Ski Hat Dads, Embroidered Tunic Moms, and slow-moving, middle-aged women mainly of Caribbean descent sporting gold teeth and pushing expensive strollers containing the baby brothers and sisters of the Mather students. To Karen’s relief, she didn’t recognize any of the parents or even nannies. Finally, the students from Ms. Millburn’s class appeared. Ruby was last in line. “Ruby!” Karen cried and waved, an exaggerated smile plastered on her face.
Her expression grim, the child said nothing as she followed her mother out of the schoolyard and through the gate. But once on the street, she said, “Can we go home now?”
“Of course,” said Karen, fearing the worst.
“In case you were wondering, I hated school,” Ruby went on.
“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry,” said Karen, her heart heavy. “But the first day is always rough. Can you at least give it a week before you decide you don’t want to go back?”
“You said I only had to go one day.”
“How about two?”
Ruby didn’t answer.
“Well, was the teacher nice at least?” asked Karen.
“She was way too strict,” said Ruby, “and the kids were mean.”
“Oh no.”
“And I had no one to sit with at lunch.”
“But that’s because you don’t know anyone yet. I’m sure you’ll make friends by the end of the week. You’re so good at that…Did you see Maeve?”
“She’s not in my class.”
“You didn’t even see her at lunch or at recess?”
“She said hi. And then she ran away to play with her friends.”
Karen took this last dispatch especially hard. “I promise it will get easier,” she told her.
But how could she be sure?
When they got home, rather than insist Ruby do her homework first, Karen let her play on the iPad for an hour. She knew she was setting a bad precedent, but at that moment she needed an ally most of all. She heard the key in the lock at seven fifteen and, fearing a reprise of the night before, went into the bedroom to hide from her husband. This is what our marriage has become, she thought as she pressed her ear to the door.
Karen overheard Ruby addressing the same complaints to her father that she’d already addressed to Karen. But to her surprise, Matt didn’t immediately say yes when Ruby asked him if she could return to Betts the next day. It was the way he referred to Karen that wounded her. “That’s not a decision I can make alone,” he said. “Your mother and I both have to agree to it.” Karen appreciated the deference, but your mother rather than just Mommy, or even Mom? To Karen, it was reminiscent of the way divorced parents spoke about their former spouses to their children. Was that where this was headed? Was that where Matt wanted things to be headed?
Angry and hurt, Karen lifted her cell phone off her bed and idly scrolled through her messages. She’d never replied to Clay’s dinner invitation from the week before. But maybe there was still time, she thought. And it was just dinner—it was just one night in a long life. And she could always back out at the last minute. She could tell Matt she had a work event. Though considering they were barely speaking, it might not even be necessary to come up with an excuse. Sorry for the delay. Problems on the home front…Sounds fun—time? Location? Karen typed, then stood staring at what she’d written, daring herself to catapult it across the length of the city and into Clay’s pocket in far less time than it took to blink. Both the immediacy and the intimacy of digital communications still astounded her when she stopped to think about it.
But she couldn’t do it, wouldn’t let herself. Karen knew that, far from making dinner plans with another man, this was the time to turn to her husband, apologize for having angered him, and promise to mend her ways in the future. Then she remembered the look on Matt’s face when he’d walked out of the room the night before. It seemed suddenly possible that he’d never loved her, never would…
After Karen pressed Send, her heart broke into a gallop.
Not even thirty seconds later, a response appeared on the screen of her phone: I thought you’d never write back. The text was followed by another one listing the name and address of an Italian restaurant that Karen had never heard of. There was a third message after that: How’s 7:30 tomorrow night sweet special k?
She felt as if oxygen was suddenly in short supply, causing her heart to pump harder and faster, while her head threatened to float up to the ceiling. Did Clay really find her special? And if so, why did she care as much as she did? See u there sweet c, Karen found herself writing back and then pressing Send.
xoxo, Clay wrote back, causing her whole body to tremble.
For Karen, the exchange, as brief as it was, had all the mesmerizing power of a dark secret whispered in the ear of one schoolgirl by another.
But immediately afterward, the practical and efficient side of her returned. Thinking ahead, she texted Ashley to see if she could stay late the next day. (She could.) So when Karen and Matt walked by each other in the hall a few minutes later, she told him only “Ashley is sitting tomorrow night—I have dinner plans.”
“Fine,” he said, his voice ice-cold approaching cryogenic.
“If you get home before me, please pay her.”
“How much am I supposed to pay her?”
“However long she stays times her hourly rate.”
“What’s our hourly rate again?”
“How can you not know that?”
“Can you just tell me her hourly rate?”
“Forget it, I’ll pay her myself.”
“Fine.”