Lena. I knew the Lindas would still be looking after her, as long as they could. For an hour or two they wouldn’t even wonder where I was.
“Have you sent someone to find her?” I interrupted Ned after a while.
He was talking about television or radio, a program he’d been on or was going to be on, some anecdote to which I was incapable of listening. I wasn’t mentioning the motel, of course, in case he didn’t know where she was after all—in case the car-repair place had been his only touchstone.
“Did you send some of your guys over to where we’re living? Is that what you did?”
Ned raised one arm for the waitress, who had already fawned over him. She smiled hopefully, her lipstick bright as she rushed over to our booth, and this eager subservience allowed me to see her as he would: a worker bee possessing only the slightest shading of utility.
Still, no being with any utility, however slight, was undeserving of Ned’s charm when he was on active duty. He made small talk with the waitress while ignoring my question about our daughter. As he did so I weighed the advantages and disadvantages of running outside and jumping in my car and I decided that, on balance, I had little to lose. I had to get back to Lena anyway, sooner or later I would have to go to her and inevitably, if he hadn’t already found out where we were living, lead him there. I was impatient to be with her again, to see her and be near.
And so, abruptly—while Ned was holding the middle-aged waitress in thrall to his shining attention and I was hearing her say she’d been married to three different members of the same MC—I rose and hurried out the door, not looking behind me.
There was no flurry of activity back there, Ned didn’t ever tend to exhibit undue haste, but still it hadn’t been two minutes before I could see his rented car in my rearview mirror.
I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding: a childish part of me had hoped to lose him by bolting, though realistically I knew better.
I DROVE TO the motel with mounting panic, knowing it wasn’t the best move. But I had to be with her. I talked to myself as I drove, tapping the steering wheel restlessly at the lone stoplight between the town and the motel. Of course he can’t take her from me, with all his concern about public relations. Calm down. Calm down, calm down, calm down.
Glass half-full, I said to myself, now you have to face up to the situation, iron it out. Maybe Ned’s not dead wrong after all, there’s no need to hyperventilate—be practical. Next steps. He said it himself, we just need to sit down and figure out what’s best for all of us. I agree for the most part, I told myself, nodding as I pressed down on the gas pedal again. For the most part I agree, right? We need to figure out what’s best for all of us.
Except him.
Ned’s election to a position of state power was what he wanted, but it wasn’t what I wanted—I felt it was against the interests of many, indeed most. It’s actually my obligation, I thought, not only to think of Lena and myself but also of how not to get Ned elected. He relies on an implicit system of beliefs I think are cold as ice, a system of assumptions more than beliefs that has nothing to do with either reason or kindness. Ned’s beliefs are like the programmed responses of a computer, I thought, they require no justification, in his view, beyond the fact that he has chosen to embrace them.
Maybe I could accomplish all these goals at once, protect my daughter and myself, try to weigh in against my husband’s election: File for divorce on grounds of adultery, as a spurned wife would on TV.
But now the motel sign was up ahead of me, here came the parking lot, and I felt despairing. I’d never gathered evidence while we still lived together because once I knew the marriage was lost I assumed Ned wanted out of it too. So I had no proof of his many affairs. Most likely he was certain of this. I’d known some of their names and faces, but he would have covered his bases and I couldn’t believe those women would help me. Of the two of us, Ned is by far the more persuasive. And—except for the one instance I knew of when a woman broke it off with him—he tended to let them down easy. He wasn’t a bridge-burner; on the contrary. Even the one who’d been disgruntled had to be in his pocket now.
Don, I thought again. Could Don help me?
I didn’t want Lena to see her father yet; I wanted to prepare her. I didn’t know what to do. He’d park as soon as I did, he’d be right behind me.