“Listen to me,” Isabel said. He was still lying on his back with his eyes closed. She must have had a time of it, Lily thought, getting him into the car in the first place. He wrinkled his face in displeasure as Isabel’s voice, so close, hit his ear.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t care if you want to do this all night, but you are going to lower your goddamn voice until we get upstairs. Your children are asleep. I’m putting you into your bathtub and then I’ll shut the door and you can scream at the walls all night if you feel like it, because I don’t think they’ll be able to hear you. I don’t care. But not here. Get up.”
He burped and it seemed to imbue him with a sudden clarity, for he sat up straight and took his wife’s face in his hands. “Us, Iz,” he said. “Happen to us. That’s what I meant. It’s not just me. I know that. I remember.”
“All right,” Isabel said. “All right, Bob. Let’s go upstairs. Lily, are you going to help?”
“You shouldn’t take him upstairs,” Lily said. “I’ll go check on the kids. They were sleeping, I don’t know if they’ll have slept through this.”
She had already turned away and so didn’t see Bob’s face change, the clarity leave him again.
“I was always thinking of you, Iz. Always. Everything I’ve ever done has been for you,” she heard him whimper, and maybe it was his sudden bellow, followed by a mottled gasp, that made her turn back just in time to see him falling.
He’d pulled himself up onto his knees, then flailed forward, slamming into the floor with his chin. She heard the crunch of his teeth, heard each of his limbs hit the ground separately. He lay there on the ground, splayed out like a crime scene outline, and Isabel stood just beyond where he could get at her.
He’d tried to touch his wife. He’d reached for her, Lily saw, and she’d stepped quickly away from him. She’d watched him fall.
Isabel looked up at her now, her face as blank as a bowl of milk.
“He fell,” she said. She held Lily’s gaze, for a moment, until Lily nodded. Then Isabel stepped forward, and they positioned themselves on either side of him.
“Honey,” Isabel whispered, her voice artificially crisp. “You fell, Bob. Are you okay?”
“You fucking bitch,” he muttered, and Lily gave his arm a little twist as they pulled him to his feet. Just a little bit, not enough to pull it from its socket. Isabel looked away, but Lily could see her twitching, maybe wanting to smile.
LATER, LILY CARRIED THE TABLE with its splintered legs into the garage. She’d look up the name of the repair place tomorrow, and drive it into town. Into the city, to one of Isabel’s furniture specialists, if need be. She swept up the remaining debris—wood splinters and receipts from Bob’s pockets and coins and glass, though who could say where that had come from—and emptied the bin into the kitchen trash. She thought of the receipts, then, and replaced the bag with a fresh one and buried the old trash bag at the bottom of one of the bins at the side of the house. She took everything that had once lived on the hall table—the sterling silver tray that held keys and phones and the photo frames, the glass for which miraculously had not broken—and placed them in new spots in the living room, in the den. She put the largest wedding photo in a far corner of the den, a room Isabel rarely used herself, on a high shelf, then told herself she was being silly and put it on a side table in the living room.
She walked back up to the top of the stairs and found her paperback, the book she’d been trying to read when they came home, and closed her eyes for a moment, breathed in, breathed out. When she opened her eyes, Madison stood at the edge of the hallway that led to the children’s wing, just outside the boys’ bedrooms.
She was wearing, unusually for her, a long white nightgown that matched one of Isabel’s, the outfits they usually wore together on Christmas Eve. The lace detailing at the bodice looked like something growing vinelike up her neck, threatening to choke her.
Lily almost never told Madison what she ever thought of anything. She knew this was the biggest secret, at least between the two of them alone. That Madison thought they were close, thought of Lily as tough, candid, trustworthy, and loving, when in fact she never really told Madison any single entire truth.
Lily moved forward and extended one arm.
“It was an accident,” she said, “but he’s fine, we put him to bed.”
Madison reeled back down the hallway, her body recoiling more precisely even than it had when Lily had slapped her, on that first morning. Her eyes shone white in the darkness, staring at Lily, anger turning them almost liquid.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “I’m fine, but you should see if the boys woke up.”
She turned and ran back down the hallway, the folds of the nightgown in the darkness like white caps in a chopping sea. Lily made her way downstairs, clinging to the banister, and fell asleep on a couch.
In the morning, when she went to rouse the boys for school, she found Madison in bed between them. Both boys lay curled around their sister like newborn animals, untrusting and afraid of the coming light.
II
Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
—George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith
I can look right at you and say, this is a pain that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Regardless of what comes out of this committee, regardless of when the record book gets finally written. That’s all.
—Richard Fuld, former CEO, Lehman Brothers
FIFTEEN
After her father returned to the house, the days grew shorter, but Madison’s afternoons were endless. It was suddenly October, and the heavy, suspended quality to the air each afternoon reminded you that soon all the curtailed days would feel like slow slides into darkness, the morning sun just a feinting attempt at actual light. But the afternoons lasted forever.
No one, not even Lily, raised her voice. It was a time of freedoms circumscribed by some unuttered mandate, of moving through the house ready to remove anything that might, left in one’s wake, reveal any information at all to the casual observer. They were all very aware of what it might feel like to be watched.
From Bob’s study they only ever heard the sibilant consonants of his television, whispers that died somewhere along the hallway. Every so often the rhythm of these whispers would be punctured by something unusual—the smell of a fresh cigar or the lilting shatter, misleading in its vaguely festive air, of a glass against a wooden surface. And then they would freeze, but only for a moment, before everything resumed.