“It’s the truth, it’s the truth of our marriage. You never loved me, you always loved that other person and it was never a true marriage.”
The pins were starting to drop. He never actually knew what that old phrase meant before this moment, what the fuck are dropping pins, but he saw them now, in his head, metal rods in a clock-like contraption, pieces fitting together so that the mechanism is complete.
“He’s Catholic,” Kyle told her. “You met him at church.” He took a couple of steps closer to her, so that he could see her better in the gloom. He felt like Sherlock Holmes. But how had he missed it? Holmes would never have missed the clues of what was happening right under his nose. “Who is it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“You don’t know him, Kyle, so it does not matter.”
“Is he married?”
“I’m not talking about him. He is none of your business.”
“It’s none of my business. You’re cheating on me, you’re pregnant, you’re talking about destroying our marriage—”
“It was never—”
“I’ve heard, Van; I know the arguments, okay? I know the whole stupid annulment argument, I know the whole crazy Catholic set of rules, I WAS RAISED CATHOLIC, and I understand the logic of the technicality, if some consortium of elders in the Catholic church proclaims that the marriage never existed, then you’re free to marry again within the church. Which means that somehow you have managed not once but twice to fall in love with a practicing Catholic. Which is impressive; honestly there aren’t that many of us out there anymore.” His anger was spent. Somehow explaining Catholic dogma to this devious, pretty lunatic had brought him back to himself.
Van watched him, uncertain. “So are we finished, then? Because I really am very tired.”
“I—guess—we are finished.”
She reached for a pillow. “I’ll go sleep in the baby’s room. It’s a miracle you didn’t wake her, but she’ll be up soon enough.”
“It’s okay, Van. I’ll go somewhere else.”
“I don’t want Maggie to find you sleeping on the couch. Until we get this settled about how we’re going to proceed, I don’t want her to have to worry about, you know. Why is Daddy not sleeping with Mommy? She needs to be protected.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before.”
“I did nothing but think of that before,” Van flared. “Do you think this has been easy? It has been hideous. Every thought I had was for those girls. You feel nothing for them, that is so clear to everyone. So don’t, just don’t you dare throw that at me. I am a fantastic mother. You don’t have any right to accuse me, on that level.”
Would this never end? “I will not sleep on the couch.”
“Where will you sleep?”
“I will sleep somewhere else.”
“Please don’t go to your parents’. We really do have to talk to lawyers first.”
“I will not go to my parents’.”
“Where will you go?”
“I . . . will go to Dennis’s.”
“Of course.” She smiled at this, triumphant, her point made.
Really, would this never end?
Dennis, drunk and sympathetic, was also completely unrepentant about whatever part he had played in this increasingly sordid drama. Kyle threw back a huge glass of Dennis’s best scotch—how can he afford this stuff he never has a job—while Dennis explained how Van had played him like a violin, had poured her heart out about her insecurities, had demanded the truth about Kyle and Alison, had been assuming something so much worse.
“Seriously, Kyle, she was way out on a limb. She had a whole thing going on, you were flying to New York behind her back and having sex with Alison, it was crazy, she had dates and times all worked out. It was completely insane. And that’s what I told her.”
“And then you told her—”
“I told her that the only thing I knew was that one night, at the Christmas party.”
“You mean the night I didn’t have sex with Alison? You mean that night?”
Dennis shrugged. “You were up in that bedroom alone and it didn’t sound entirely innocent, my friend. I put the best spin on it but what can I say, it wasn’t exactly innocent.” Dennis’s tone moved off of reassurance and on to something darker but it bounced quickly. “What she did with it, I have no idea. She’s an interesting woman, your Van. How you two ever got together is a mystery to me. She’s a killer.”
“She wants an annulment.” Blearily, he reached for the scotch bottle. “This is going to kill my parents.”
“Come on, parents are generally sturdier than we think.”