And then Maisie’s words come to me again, about the bad man following her and Nick, the obvious fear imbuing her eyes. That can’t just be for show. Maisie saw something that terrified her.
I watch in the rearview mirror as Maisie—happy as a lark now, having forgotten all about the pilfered phone—points out the window and says to me with decision, with arrant conviction and delight, her voice decked out in a singsong cadence, canarying the words, “An elephant, Mommy. Look, Mommy, an elephant’s in those trees,” and God help me, I look, even though of course there isn’t an elephant in those trees. An elephant wandering around in suburban America? How absurd.
“You silly girl,” I say soberly, watching the way the day’s sunlight glints off the white of her eye. “Why would an elephant be here?” I ask, and as she chirps, “Just taking a walk, Mommy,” I’m filled suddenly with a sense of unease.
Did she tell Nick that there was a car following them? Did she make it all up, and for this he drove faster, manically, anything to get away from the phony car?
For the first time, I ask Maisie. I ask her about the car. My words come out guardedly, carefully chosen, cautious not to use the wrong ones. “Maisie, honey,” I say, my voice purring the words, “did you see the black car like you just saw that elephant in the trees? The car that was following you and Daddy?” but at the mention of a black car, she goes silent. She turns away from me and peers out the window, any sense of a smile washed clear from her face.
No, I tell myself. No. Of course not. Nick is much more commonsensical than this. He would never give in to the whims of a child.
But then I see them in the grocery store together, Maisie set in the basket of a shopping cart, begging, Faster, Daddy, faster, and I see Nick run like greased lightning up and down the aisles, not caring what other shoppers thought because all he cared about was his little girl in the shopping cart, happy, smiling, laughing.
This has happened. Many times this has happened.
And now, from the back seat comes Maisie’s crooning voice again as she spots the playground off in the distance, the one we’re en route to, the slides, the swings, the monkey bars mere specks on the horizon. “Faster, Mommy, faster,” she squeals, eager now for a day at the hippo park as my foot presses down on the gas pedal without intent, and the car casually picks up speed.
NICK
BEFORE
Driving home that night, I have every intention of telling Clara about Kat. Every intention in the world. It’s one of the cardinal rules of a happy marriage: no secrets, and this detail—a visit with a former flame—seems too large, too uncontainable, to omit. It’s not the same as the imminent malpractice suit or the sorry state of our finances. This is different. If Clara found out some other way, she’d be hurt, and a completely meaningless reunion would alter into something more, something sordid and wrong, something unforgivable. And so I fully intend to tell her.
But as I come into the house, I find Clara sound asleep on the living room sofa, her back pressed into the cushions for lumbar support. It’s later than I usually get home. I phoned Clara hours ago and told her that I’d be late—thanks to a few emergency evening appointments, I claimed, when what I really needed to do was cool off for a bit, to collect myself. And I did, thanks to a single dose of Halcion I pulled from the locked storage cabinet once the office ladies left for the night. It made me calm, sleepy and forgetful all at the same time.
I probably shouldn’t have driven myself home, but I did.
When I finally get home, it’s after eight o’clock, and Maisie is in bed. Harriet the dog greets me at the door, but the house is quiet, the TV turned on but the volume low. A box fan sits on the floor, plugged into the wall and aimed in Clara’s direction, and though it’s warm in the house, it’s far from hot. The breeze from the fan ruffles her hair as I drop down to the floor before her body to watch her sleep, the flutter of her eyelids, the way her nostrils flare when she inhales. I’d blame the shortcomings of our aging air-conditioning unit for the reasons Clara is hot, and yet, more likely I tell myself, it’s Clara’s hormones, the fact that she’s carrying twenty or thirty pounds of extra weight. She wears a tank top and a pair of stretchy pants that cohere with dog hair, and it’s all I can do not to run my hand along the length of my baby boy, press my lips to Clara’s midsection and whisper to him hello.
But instead I let her sleep.
I put off any idea of waking her and telling her about Kat. There’s always tomorrow.
For now I watch her sleep, enjoying the stasis of the moment, the tranquility, and as I lay myself down on the floor before the sofa with a bolster pillow and a throw blanket, not sure if I can spend the night alone without her by my side, I whisper to her, “Sleep tight.”
CLARA
What I discover is that she’s beautiful. Utterly stunning, in an exquisite, fine-china sort of way. The woman with the Seattle phone number who knows my name, sitting in a chiffon tank top and a pair of formfitting jeans beside a boy on a park bench, a boy whom she calls Gus. Gus looks to be eleven or twelve years old to me, stuck in that gap between childhood and adolescence, wearing a black polyester T and a pair of shorts. His legs are long and lanky, a set of earbuds plugged into his ears so he can mute the outside world. He holds two figures in his hands, two molded green army men who duke it out on his kneecap, punching each other in the face until one falls to the concrete below.
My breath catches; I try not to make more of this than there is.
There must be billions of little green army men in our town alone. This means nothing. These army men have nothing to do with the one I found in the plastic sack of Nick’s possessions, given to me from the morgue after he had died.
Or do they?