But after the “Summer of Acclaim,” as Ethan called it in his most condescending voice, things were a bit rocky.
Rocky. What a silly term to describe a marriage on the rocks. Tumultuous was a better description. Stormy. Torturous. Of or relating to Tantos, the pits of hell.
I got that bruise when I walked into the refrigerator.
Of course you’re sorry and it will never happen again.
Yes, I still love you.
That phone call? Just some fan, wanting to meet for coffee. They’re so very aggressive these days.
They built a house, a life, on lies.
There were good moments. Great moments. Calm moments.
Croissants with butter in bed, flakes getting on the sheets.
Walks along the river, with blossoms from the trees raining down in the breeze.
The trip to New York, that night at the Waldorf Astoria, after too many bottles of wine at dinner with Ethan’s agent and editor. They’d had fun, damn it all. They pretended it was their first time, reenacted the events of their first fateful meeting. He left her in the hall waiting to come into the room, without her panties, for ten minutes.
That trip.
Sutton knew better than to get pregnant to save their marriage. That’s something desperate women did, and she wasn’t a desperate woman. She had a rocky marriage, but they were trying to smooth the jagged edges. They’d turned the page in New York, she was sure of it.
Turned a page, yes. Then they’d driven the car right off a cliff, holding hands and crying hallelujah.
Dashiell truly was a surprise, an accident. No, not an accident, Sutton, a blessing. He was a blessing, then and now. An angel. A cherubic little angel, a gift from God.
The Lord giveth. He giveth more than we can handle, sometimes.
Her doctor told her there was a reason the birth control pill had a 3 percent failure rate, even for women who took them religiously. Which she had. She’d even set an alarm on her phone and carried them in her purse. She was never a moment behind schedule. She ran her birth control like she ran her life, seamlessly, organized, structured.
She didn’t like to think of her baby as a statistic.
But the cracks were forming before the pregnancy. The mangled car was at the bottom of the cliff, still smoking.
Dashiell, while adorable, was a thorn in her already rocky marriage. A baby meant scheduling—for the sex, for the trips, for their (her) work, for their life. They were no longer carefree, untethered. There was a constant flow of things that needed to be handled, from diapers to feedings to naps to babysitting. To nannies. Many, many nannies.
It was her Goldilocks nature again. This one was too strict, this one too loose. This one she walked in on getting high in the laundry room. Sutton blamed herself for that one; the girl’s name was Moonshadow, for heaven’s sake.
Finally, finally, they settled on a genuinely lovely young woman named Jan, Just Jan, as Sutton liked to think of her. She was plain, with pale blue eyes and white-blond hair done in two braids that swung on either side of her neck like a butter-churning dairy maid. She had a degree in elementary education, but hadn’t liked teaching. She was better off one-on-one. Sutton thought she probably had a touch of Asperger’s—her social cues were severely lacking—but she was devoted to Dashiell, and he to her.
With Just Jan on board, things returned to a more normal routine. The sex got better, and more frequent. They took a few trips, all together: Just Jan down at the pool with Dashiell under an umbrella, covered head to toe in light layers and a tiny floppy hat; Sutton and Ethan on the balcony, eating grapes and drinking champagne. It almost felt familiar. It almost felt right.
So right, Ethan started a new book. He started many new books, and generally grew tetchy and bored after a few weeks. This time, though, he’d stuck to it, and there were pages, actual pages, on the floor of his office, waiting patiently in their manuscript box for their brethren to arrive.
Ethan was a madman when he wrote, comically Einstein-esque in his eccentricity. He worked for hours, paying no attention to the normal order of things; sunrises and sunsets and bedtimes of others were irrelevant. His hair stood on end; he forgot to shower. He needed odd foods at odd hours. Eggplant parmesan at ten in the morning. Pecan-maple pancakes and crispy bacon at four in the afternoon. Always from scratch and with high-end organics, nothing premade, store-bought, or delivery would do.
Sutton cooked whatever he wanted, because that’s what good wives did. She cooked and cleaned and mothered him, and sometimes she even had time to mother her child, as well.
She began to wonder if she was in an abusive relationship. What would she say to a therapist? He pays for everything, hired me a perfectly wonderful nanny. But now he won’t let me do my work, and he makes me cook for him. All the time.
She couldn’t tell the truth, obviously. That would never do.
She decided, pound for pound, her life was simply comical. Her career could wait. Once he finished the book, she’d be able to return to her schedule. What was a few months, after all? She did so love to cook.
And then he’d gotten stuck. Ethan always got stuck. But this time, it was deeper into the meat of the novel, the important part, where the main character reveals himself to the reader for the very first time, and is judged. A seminal moment. In her brand of novels, it was called a plot point, but in his, it was seminal. Even their language had to be separate, different, his more important, always, always.
As sudden as an unexpected storm and an ear-shattering clap of thunder, his flow ended. No more fingers clattering on the keyboard at all hours, no more random food requests. He slunk around the house, hollow-eyed and pale-cheeked, pulling books off the shelves in the library, leaving them scattered on the chairs by the window that overlooked the front porch.
She offered to help. She’d helped him before. Tell me what the issue is. Let me see if I can come up with something.
She couldn’t leave the house for a week, even had to avoid Just Jan. Her swollen, bruised nose took forever to heal. There was so much blood, so many apologies. The fallout haunted them forever. It seemed fitting that she would ruin the marble she so loved with her own blood.
It had been a stupid mistake to offer like that. Everyone makes them. She hadn’t thought. And she’d paid the price.
The story should have ended right there. With the black eye and the broken nose and the baby screaming from his withy basket because Just Jan had the day off.
But that was where the story really began.
CAFé AU LAIT IN BED
Now
Sutton opened her eyes. The view was startling—to the left, the man beside her, and to her right, the Tour framed like a picture postcard in the window.
You wanted a new life. You’ve got it. You’ve started it. With a motherfucking bang, no less, sister.