They each waited, a marital standoff, the silence unbearable. But she blinked first.
“How could you go meet with that fancy John Ehlers and his fancy EmPower gym with our daughter and not tell me?” Her voice bouncing around the weird dark of the yard. “You took our daughter. You and Gwen. You conspired with that monstrous woman.”
There was a sudden energy in his face, and his shoulders jerked forward. “No, Katie,” he said. “It wasn’t like that. The boosters outvoted me. They wanted me to meet with him and I knew you wouldn’t like it—”
A sound skidded up from inside her throat to stop him. “You’re lying,” she said. “I saw Molly. She didn’t know about any of this. All you do is lie.”
The weight, the bigness of the words excited her. They seldom fought, not really, so it was all here now, and she kept going, about how he had lied and lied again and Is this about Gwen Weaver and if so what kind of man are you to let her tell you and What a thing to do, shanghaiing our daughter behind my back almost like a kidnapping—and then the words had a powerful thunder to them and she said them again and again, like a kidnapping, like a kidnapping.
And as she was saying it, an equally powerful sinking feeling of what she couldn’t say: How could you two keep secrets from me? You and Devon.
Thrusting that thought to the corner of her hot brain, she just kept going.
“And you lied about where you were and left your sick son and you lied about what you’ve been doing with our daughter and you left me here, all alone—”
“Katie, stop. Stop and listen. I needed to meet the guy. Ehlers. I needed to see Devon with him. I needed to see if it might work, if they connected. I needed to fix this. To make everything right again.”
“Everything right? For fuck’s sake, Eric,” she said, a way of talking she barely remembered, hadn’t used since she was a teenager in that teenager way of playing with words like flung rubber bands, “you’re talking about qualifiers and gyms and coaches when all this is going on?”
He jumped up, the metal of the chair sparking, the bottle keeling between his sneakers, his arm diving down as it crashed. A light went on somewhere, a dog howled, a screen door banged shut.
“But this is what’s going on, Katie. Not something that happened to a kid we barely know. This is about Devon. I can’t believe I have to tell you that.” He paused, and then he said it. “You never cared as much as we did. You were always ready to give up.”
There it was. There it was. “How dare you,” she said, her voice low and ugly. “How dare you, Eric. After everything. We’ve always been in this together—”
Turning from her, his chin tilted up in a way that felt strangely churchlike, a reminder of vows taken, he said, “I know. I’m sorry. I know.”
And they both sat for a moment, the yard black, with the quality of witchy mystery it had had years ago, the first time a patch of browning green was all theirs, before patios, before the maze of all-weather tumbling mats, before the trampoline and the smaller trampoline before that. Before the lawn mower. When it was a place that was outside but private and wild but safe. Empty garden beds and rambling ivy and a dented air conditioner stained with black walnut husks, but it was beautiful, and theirs.
And she almost said it. She almost said, Our daughter was sleeping with Ryan Beck. But she couldn’t make the words come.
Then they were both drinking, a half-pint of Black Velvet Eric dug out of the kitchen cupboard. He was roaming around the firefly-studded yard while she sat thinking bad thoughts, how you can be married to someone your whole life, it feels like, and not know them at all.
You never cared as much as we did.
“I did the right thing, Katie,” he said. “I did what I had to because this is what matters,” pointing to the yard, the house, Devon’s bedroom window, lightless and lonely. “This is about our girl. Our girl. Helping her get everything she wants. Which is what we always said we’d do.”
“That’s not good enough, Eric,” she said, rising from the squeaking lawn chair, “that’s not good enough. We’re in this together. We promised way back when.”
But now she was drunk, and her foot caught in the rust-pocked frame and she fell against him, and he caught her. And she held on to him so tightly, the smell of his shirt, her face pressed against it. Feeling the heave of his heart.
She was so drunk.
When he half carried her inside the house, they were both out of their minds, her foot banging against the door frame, cutting her ankle.
Her ankle was bleeding and felt warm and cold at the same time, and they nearly fell on the stairs, her back hitting the handrail and his foot slipping on the carpeted steps.
They were on the bed, barely.
It was fast, and they might not even have shut the door.