Chapter 4
CORA
The next day, I think about Georgia while I dump baskets full of clean clothes onto the couch and sit to fold them.
I limit my soap-opera viewing time to the space it takes me to fold the laundry, so I take my time.
Today, Marco Devine has woken up from his coma only to find out that his evil twin, Blaize, has impersonated him while he was sleeping and stolen his lover.
So today, I match the socks with extra care so I can see if Bianca Lovewright will reveal who her heart belongs to.
Even as she weeps at Marco’s bedside once she finds out he’s alive, I still find it’s hard to focus.
Georgia seemed so glossy and exotic, but now, I don’t know what to make of her. She looks...I want to say ill.
I can’t imagine life inside my house all day.
We live on the Oregon coast for the exact opposite reason, in fact.
The Douglas fir and hemlock dwarf the neighbors’ and make the minimansions along the coast look like hobbit houses beneath their majestic canopy.
The houses on our side of the road have woodsy backyards that slope slightly to meet the lakefront.
Each long dock stretches out into the clear water, and most have recreational boats attached for lazy weekend rides up to Dockside’s country club on the other side of the lake a few miles down.
Georgia’s side of the street backs onto a forest of Douglas firs with a clearing, which holds a picnic table and a swing set passing for a small park.
The air perpetually smells like moss-covered tree bark, sandalwood, and pine, and it’s paradise, if you ask me, so how she could be afraid of all of this and not leave the house is baffling.
I could help her. I mean, she’s a little weird, but I think I could get through to her and get her out of the house.
I took social psychology my sophomore year, and people really respond to me, I think.
I’m not tooting my own horn, but I am a people person.
I have practiced listening to the woes of my girlfriends for years.
I was the one they came to: even back in college, I held their hair back in the bathroom of a dirty bar countless times when they got too drunk and threw up after a rejection from some co-ed.
I picked them up from the apartments of one-night stands so they could avoid the walk of shame, and now that we’re older, who does Connie Wilkinson call when her son escapes from rehab and we need to drive through the neighborhood in search of him?
Who does Vivian Fletcher call when Steve goes on a bender?
And the school, whenever they need costumes sewn for the fall play or scones made for the volleyball bake sale?
People rely on me. So I just need to figure out how I can show Georgia that she can, too.
As I try to decide whether I’ll make rhubarb squares or lemon meringue to bring over to her for a follow-up conversation, I feel a small, crinkly object fall from the still-warm bath towel I’m shaking out.
I stare down at it—the half of a rolled joint lying on the couch cushion—and my chest tightens.
I sit down and pick it up, examining it.
There’s a faint pink circle of lipstick around the edge.
I don’t know whether it’s worse if Mia is smoking it or if Finn has a special friend.
When I found a bag of pot in the garage back in January, Mia said it was her friend’s and promised she’d never tried it. She might have been lying, but it didn’t feel like it at the time. Mia, however, never wears lipstick. She has pink and champagne-colored glosses, but this is Pepto Bismol pink.
Could it belong to whoever Drinks with C is?
My hands tremble a little as I place the joint on the coffee table and take a deep breath.
Stop it. I have to be reasonable. If the pot really belonged to one of Mia’s friends last time, maybe the same pot-smoking friend wears pink lipstick.
Rational. Be rational. That doesn’t explain how it got into our laundry, but it’s just as possible as it belonging to Finn’s lover, right?
I misread things, and I get carried away.
And it gets me into trouble. I can’t overreact here.
I know what that does. A couple years ago when I saw a text on Finn’s phone, I went down the rabbit hole.
It said, Hey, babe, can’t wait to see you tomorrow.
His wife of twenty-two years should have every right to react any way she likes to seeing a message like that, but he explained that it was from Janet Palmer, and that she’s the cool lesbian from Accounting and calls everyone babe, and that she was looking forward to seeing him at a company mixer because they were planning a funny prank on the managers.
I’ll give it to him that if he were lying, it was detailed and very quick thinking.
At the time I was sobbing and screaming at him, demanding to know the truth.
When he asked me if I wanted to see the texts before that one—the ones where he asked her whether Andy Keat was stopping for the supplies or if he needed to get anything, I pushed his phone away and threw it at him, then ran upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom.
He was going to prove the conversation was innocent, but I ruined my chance to know for sure.
Now, I wonder if he really was going to show me the text thread.
He knew I was hysterical and how I respond when I’m like that.
I don’t think he ever planned on showing me the exchange.
He would have found a way out of it even in the heat of the moment, waving his phone in my face, denying everything.
I don’t know how, but I know he would have.
I wouldn’t let it go. I showed up at his job, to surprise him by taking him to lunch, trying to get a glimpse of lesbian Janet, but I never did.
He saw through my attempts, of course, and every time I found him at a work dinner and peered through the front window to make sure the attendees were who he said, or each time I followed him to the gym only to wait in the parking lot to see if he left with some muscly bimbo, he pushed me further away, and the screaming matches became a nightly event.
It was the little things that added up—all the Drinks with C sort of notes when it should really say Retirement party.
There was always an explanation, though, so I was always just the crazy and paranoid wife.
I felt that way, anyway. Between accusations, I sobbed and asked for forgiveness every time he proved himself innocent.
I told myself that I was wrong and, if I wanted to stay married, I had to let it go, but I always had this shadowy feeling, and it was almost becoming an addiction, trying to catch him.
Then one night Paige texted. She was purchasing wine for the restaurant at a little bottle shop/tasting-room place downtown, and she snapped a photo of Finn sitting at a candlelit table with a waifish redhead.
I remember feeling paralyzed, sitting there at my bedroom vanity, plucking my eyebrows and sipping ginger tea.
I stared at the photo. I could see that glossy, shy look in his eyes—the kind accompanied by an audible swallow and a nervous laugh.
I know that glint. It’s a touch of insecurity masked as self-assuredness.
I looked at their wineglasses, their hands too close together, then I looked at the silver watch on his wrist that I’d given him on our second wedding anniversary, brushing the side of her impossibly thin arm, and lost my mind.
I have little memory of driving to the bar.
I just remember knowing it was my one chance to catch him in the act.
I was right. I had been goddamned right all along, and this was it.
Thinking back to what a cow I must have looked like, storming in there in a terry-cloth robe and slipper socks, I could just about die with the shame of it.
Not to mention I was not wearing makeup and had dots of eye cream beneath my eyes.
“You wanna call me crazy now? Am I still fucking delusional?” I screamed when I reached their small table by the front windows.
The place was a small, moody wine bar with only a few other tables, and of course everyone stopped and looked.
I didn’t care. Tears blurred my eyes, and my life of single motherhood and perpetual bitterness, and the pity of everyone, was all that flashed before me, blinding me.
“Cora, let’s go outside. Come on,” Finn said, leaping to his feet instinctively, like I was some unhinged wife and he had to do this kind of thing all the time. He shot the redhead an apologetic look, and that’s when I really lost it.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I yelled, yanking my wrist away from his grip.
“You liar. He’s a fucking liar,” I said to the small woman, who just sat there, still holding her wine, with her mouth agape.
“Did you know he was married? Yeah, the son of a bitch is married with a kid to boot. Did he mention that?”
“Cora!” Finn snapped and tried to grab my arm again. The man from behind the bar came over and started to ask something stupid like “Is everything okay?” but I don’t recall exactly what.
The small redhead picked up her handbag and started to say “Maybe I should...” but I broke away from Finn’s grip and flipped the table.
Both glasses of red wine smashed, smattering onto the woman’s pale silk blouse.
Some of the glass cut through the material and into the tops of her forearms. She sat in silent shock, looking like a murder victim who had been stabbed through the heart but hadn’t fallen over dead yet.
The bartender screamed at Finn to get me out of there while someone else called a medic.
He said they were calling the police, but the redhead insisted they shouldn’t. Then, suddenly, I was outside.