Much worse.
She doesn’t apologize for her candor, but says it like she means to leave this horrid visual in my mind, Nick’s broken body whisked together with leftovers and rubbish and trash, being compressed inside a garbage truck’s hopper with a bounty of hydraulic power, until there was nothing left of him at all. Flat Nick, is what I imagine, like the well-traveled children’s book character, Flat Stanley, and I envision my Nick as a card-stock clone that I can carry around in my purse and pose for photos with beside the Golden Gate Bridge, Rockefeller Center and Soldier Field.
“After that there was only silence,” she says, her hands trembling and her eyes turning red as a merciful breeze blows through the stagnant air. “The silence,” she says, voice quivering, “was somehow or other even worse than the noise. I called to him over the phone,” she tells me, but there was nothing, no crying; no screaming; no strained breaths or gasping for air; no staticky noise from the car’s radio.
No Nick.
And then she is quiet, watching the children play.
There are questions I want to ask but don’t. They aren’t questions about the crash but rather: Are she and Nick really just friends, and how does her husband feel about this friendship, or does he even know about Nick? I’m struck with sudden pangs of jealousy, wondering if she and Nick were only friends in high school as she’s said, or if there was more to it than that, sweethearts, homecoming king and queen or teenage lovers who made out in the back seat of a parked car on some bluff overlooking Puget Sound? I have to know as my mind invents details, picturing it then and finding that I can’t get that image out of my mind: Nick’s hungry, naked body raised above Kat, the rhythmical movements, the earthy and untamed moans that scream suddenly and uninvited into my ear. Eighteen-year-old Nick, wide-eyed and gung ho, full of potential, twelve years ago or so, a gamely boy slipping his hands up under the cotton of a burnout T to graze the slender, curved bones of Kat’s young rib cage, moving eagerly upslope toward her chest.
This is what I’m envisioning as my eyes rise up and greet Maisie’s eyes there in the sandbox, as I grab Harriet by the leash and call for Maisie to come, needing more than anything to get away from this woman, knowing for certain that she is the one with whom Nick was having an affair. Not Melinda Grey as I initially assumed, but Kat.
A flush creeps up my neck and into the connective tissues of the lobes of my ears, making them redden and burn, prickle and sting. “Come on, Maisie,” I call for a second time, my voice quivering, feeling this woman’s eyes on me, needing desperately to get away, to get out of here. To seek solace in the only unfailing arms I know.
My father’s arms. They will protect me.
“Please, don’t go,” begs Kat, rising to her feet, saying, “There’s more.” But I hold up a hand. I can’t bear to hear more. What would she possibly say to me? Tell me where and when they committed their acts of adultery, and how Nick was going to leave me for her. How Nick loved her more than he did me? Is that what she plans to say? I can’t stand to hear it, her confession.
“I have an appointment,” I claim, finding it hard to speak and even harder to breathe, the oxygen keeping me at an arm’s reach. “I really must go,” I gasp, hurrying to the sandbox to draw Maisie away by the hand, letting her walk barefoot through the park, carrying her shoes in her hand. “I’ll call you,” I lie. “We’ll meet for coffee,” I claim, praying I never have to lay eyes on this woman again. I get into my car, racing in the direction of my mother and father’s home.
I won’t tell my father about Kat and Nick. I can’t. But he’ll see the sadness in my eyes, and he’ll hold me tight, and for one brief moment I won’t feel so alone.
It’s nearing one o’clock as we drive through town, and it isn’t until I arrive at my parents’ home and see the driveway vacant that I remember my mother’s haircut appointment. They won’t be home. Izzy and my father have taken my mother to the salon. I pause in the drive, breathing hard, trying to remove the lewd images of Nick and Kat from my mind as I take in the small, one-story home—no stairs down which to fall—adorned in vinyl siding and fake brick. My parents moved here five or six years ago, when their previous home became too big for them, too much work. They no longer needed twenty-five hundred square feet for just the two of them and decided to downsize to a ranch in an active adult community, the kind that offered exercise classes, bingo night and craft workshops, none of which my parents attended.
“Boppy!” Maisie screams, recognizing the home, but I tell her that Boppy isn’t here right now it seems, and I’m about to pull away when suddenly, amidst Kat’s unspoken words, which muffle all rational thoughts in my mind—the unsaid admission of adultery, the blow-by-blow of her intimate moments spent with Nick—I remember the scrap of paper that bears the password to my father’s bank account in a desk drawer, and it’s a great reprieve when I do, a way to divert the unwanted thoughts that fill my mind. I didn’t go to their home planning to seek out the password, but rather for the comfort of my father’s arms.
But now that I’m here, I can’t just leave without it.
I put the car in Park. I tell Maisie that Mommy just needs to run inside real quick and find something for Boppy.
“You stay here and keep an eye on Felix, okay, Maisie?” I ask as I step from the car, putting the windows down so the kids don’t overheat. “Can you do that?” I ask. “Can you be a good big sister and watch Felix?” Maisie smiles and nods her head, reaching over as far as she can to set a hand on Felix’s arm. He’s fast asleep.
I knock once on the door to be certain no one is home, and then scurry to the garage keypad and type the familiar pass code in. The door springs open. Once inside, I take the shortest route to my father’s office where there is a desk but also a twin-size bed, which is where my father sleeps these days, no longer able to sleep with my insomniac mother.
I don’t delay. I find the slip of paper in the top desk drawer, where my father keeps a listing of his passwords. I snap a picture of it with my smartphone, and, sliding it back into the desk drawer, I leave.