The package, most definitely not from Helen, contained an advance copy of a tell-all memoir by this Bianca person, this mistress of Jake, who’d slithered into her mailbox to reveal sordid details of a story costarring Phoebe as an unknowing and now horrified participant.
Pain throbbed from her teeth to temples. No amount of aspirin would touch this headache. Bianca Miller owned truths about Jake that Phoebe never suspected, further fracturing her misaligned memories. Again and again she chastised herself for caring so damned much: how dare it matter if Jake cheated their entire marriage? He had stolen the blood of her family, friends, and more strangers than she could count in ten lifetimes. Who cared if he’d bedded this woman?
She did.
Decades of love and marriage couldn’t be wished away. It turned out she could be hurt repeatedly. Knowledge of Jake’s hideous crimes didn’t inoculate her against his personal corruption. Fuck you, Bianca Miller, for taking your own humiliation and splashing it over me.
Offprint Books had obviously sent this advance copy of Miller’s book for a response, but what kind? Fighting Bianca Miller in public? Most likely, a publicist hoped the shock of the book would send Phoebe to the nearest tabloid for a media version of hair pulling with Bianca and give her trashy book a sales bump.
Fat chance. Photos of Phoebe along with cruel theories about her were splayed across every continent already, and she had never responded. She’d been analyzed and found guilty in the court of public opinion. There wasn’t much Phoebe took pride in anymore except for sewing her mouth shut from day one. She owned herself, if nothing else.
Shaking with hunger and rage, but unable to put down the book long enough to even make a sandwich, she grabbed a jar of peanuts from the kitchen and continued plowing through.
Jake came to my bed at least once a week (sometimes more), never getting what he needed at home. Yes, I was ashamed of sleeping with a married man, but it seemed clear that his wife couldn’t care for him as I did. He was a father with still-youngish kids, so he couldn’t leave, but though his responsibilities lay with them, his dreams were about me.
I prepared for him body and soul. In the morning, I cooked dishes she refused to make. Eggplant parmigiana was his favorite. I’d dream of our night to come as I dipped the thin slices (the way he liked it, layer upon layer) into an egg bath, coated them with seasoned cornmeal (my special touch), and then do it again. I call it twice dipped. Then I dropped the slices into bubbling oil. She refused to fry anything. Jake said she hated the smell because it clung to her silk dresses! A new kind of selfish invented by Ms. Stuck-up.
I planned and made our meals ahead of time, wanting to devote every minute to Jake when he arrived. The eggplant. Pasta drowned in homemade sauce, covered with fresh-grated parmigiana. I put pats of butter in the hot pasta before smothering it with the cheese. Asparagus tips with pepper and butter. Plum tomato slices, salted and drizzled with oil.
The first dessert was something like ice cream with homemade fudge sauce or chocolate chip brownies. The second dessert? A piece of me.
Jake’s “special desires,” all rejected by her, really cemented him to me. Listen, if a wife doesn’t take care of her man’s needs, he’s bound to stray. Jake said she was a lazy lover (the worst kind!). I guess at her age that happens. (He seemed young, but women get older much faster than men. So they got to work to keep their men interested and happy.) Jake told me that just once he wished she did more for him in the bedroom. (But she never did, and I was glad.)
I’d open the door dressed just the way he liked, wearing tight, low, and slutty (yes, might as well call it what it was) outfits. Sometimes my black lace bra poked out of a sheer pink shirt; the top three buttons opened. Trampy and see-through, which the salesgirl called diaphanous. A push-up bra, of course, with me spilling out.
Total truth: I am a 38D. She’s a 32B, if that. Hardly a handful, he’d tell me, and believe me, this man likes breasts. Looking. Touching. Blush coming on . . .
Perfume meant a lot to him. He bought me a huge antique atomizer filled with my favorite perfume, Poison, and begged me not to wear any other.
Okay. If I’m going to tell it all, I will. ’Cause I think Jake Pierce’s kinks explain him. That’s what a shrink friend told me. What did he like? Having his hands tied up while I “took care” of him. In all sorts of ways, and I think you can picture it, yes?
Phoebe threw the book across the room. Yes, she could picture it, all right.
? ? ?
Phoebe woke up sure of a few things:
1. She’d break all connections with Jake.
2. She’d get on her knees if needed to see Noah and her granddaughters. She’d stand in front of his house twenty-four hours a day if that’s what it took.
3. She’d call Ira.
Phoebe began her program by calling Kate, leaving a message when her daughter didn’t pick up. “I loved seeing you yesterday, though I hate seeing you so sad. We need to reconnect: you, Noah, and I. I’m severing connections with your father. I promise this with all my heart, though it might take a tiny bit of time. Not more than a month. I need to confront him in person, and getting up there is tough. Please tell Noah. I want to address this as the family we still are.”
? ? ?
The next day, Phoebe reached out to Ira. She didn’t lack insight into her timing. Miller’s book, no matter how full of half-truths, bequeathed permission.
Attraction to Ira had churned in the past—not with the knife of sexual pull Jake held over her, but with a more dangerous appeal for a married woman: the draw of a good man.
Before calling Ira, she examined her motives for all her actions. The truth didn’t put her in the best light. Jake’s cheating and Bianca’s book drove her into an emotional anger that offered permission to break ties with him. Why that and not his far graver crimes? This personal fraud missile was a direct shot, waking her from the comfort of melancholy. No more wallowing in self-pity.
Time to say good-bye, Jake.
Phoebe needed to find out the condition of the things she left behind, beginning with Mira House.
? ? ?
Phoebe pulled it all out readying for Ira. Her extended period of barely using makeup meant that her bag had remained stocked—she didn’t expect to own potions like this again. That the feds let her take her cosmetics without discussion testified to the FBI hiring too many men; they’d never imagine that the sum total of her sack of creams and makeup added up to nearly two thousand dollars. Certainly someone would have paid at least that to try the beauty routine of Phoebe Marie Antoinette Pierce.