Chapter 4 #2
Finn pulled me into the car and told me if I didn’t stay there and settle down, he’d call the police himself and press charges and I’d be headed for a psych eval.
I stayed there, sobbing, beating the dashboard as he went back in to take care of his little slut girlfriend.
Half an hour later, he returned. He said he’d drive me home in his car because I was in no state to drive.
He didn’t look at me or speak for a long time.
Then, when we were almost home, he said, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re lucky. She should press assault charges. But at least the glass didn’t... It could have been a lot worse. You could have...” He stopped and took a deep breath, then just shook his head.
“I don’t care,” I said defiantly, looking out the passenger window. “You should go stay somewhere else tonight.”
“Oh, I plan to.”
“Good,” I said, and then silence again.
“You just cost me, us, a lot of money, you know that? ’Cause you had to act like a paranoid psychopath.
She was a top client who was discussing her company expansion, which would have been a huge chunk of business for me.
I can’t even believe what you just did. Is this just how you are now?
Look at you!” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel, and I became painfully aware of how much I must have resembled a fat, demented Xena, Warrior Princess, flipping a table like that with one hand in my giant pink robe and eye cream.
My suspicions gave way to immeasurable shame when I realized what I had done.
And if I’m honest, we’ve never been the same since.
I went to therapy, and he finally said he forgave me after months of silent dinners and avoidance.
It was probably because she only had minor cuts on her arms and ended up giving him her business anyway, no doubt out of pity, and because they had laughed and bonded over his pathetic wife who must be such a burden to bear.
Nonetheless, things slowly went back to near normal.
Now, two years later, I cannot afford to ask him if this joint belongs to the redhead who may or may not really have been a client or if it belongs to Drinks with C.
I decide to ask Mia about it instead. Shortly after I found that bag of weed in the garage months ago, she had an incident with the car.
She hit a pole while pulling into a Trader Joe’s parking lot.
She seemed removed and distracted around that time, too.
Maybe she was lying to me about it? Something was going on.
I abandon my pile of laundry and go upstairs to have a look in her room.
Her laptop sits open on her desk, but I tell myself that looking would be an invasion of privacy, and at this juncture I’m not willing to cross that line yet—not unless I think she’s in real trouble.
Also, I don’t have the password. Otherwise, if I’m honest, I probably would.
Just to check on her well-being, of course.
But before I can even open a drawer, I hear a key in the door and footsteps lumbering up the stairs.
I barely exit her doorway before Mia is in front of me, tossing her backpack on the floor and stopping to look at me.
“Hi!” I say, too loudly, accompanied by a forced, too-big smile.
“Why are you being weird?” she says, looking me up and down. When I don’t quickly come up with an answer, she gives a sort of shrug.
“’K. I’m gonna go in here now,” she says in that condescending teenage way and then flops on her bed, already with phone in hand. I remember then that there’s a teachers’ conference, so it’s a half day, and no, she didn’t sense my spying somehow and materialize just in time to hide her drugs.
I stand in her doorway, holding the joint that she hasn’t noticed yet and wait for her to look up from her phone. She finally senses me looking at her and raises her eyebrows at me.
“What?” she asks.
I wave the joint back and forth.
“Oh, my God. Are you smoking pot?” She sits up, cross-legged on her bed with wide eyes, staring at me, confused but almost sort of excited.
“Am I—What? No. Mia. I found this in the laundry.”
“You think it’s a good idea to smoke something you don’t know where it came from?” she asks matter-of-factly. “It could be laced.”
“What do you know about drugs being laced?” I say, much louder than intended.
“Uhhh, I’m seventeen, and I have a pulse. I think those are the only requirements for knowing what laced means. What, now I’m getting yelled at for knowledge I have no control over having?”
“I’m not yelling at you. I’m asking if this is yours,” I say.
“I thought you just said it was yours,” she says.
“Oh, my God, Mia...” I stop and take an exaggerated breath, then speak slowly, an annoying motherly habit I picked up somewhere along the line. “It is clearly not mine. I found this in the laundry. I am asking if this belongs to you.”
“You found it in my laundry? No way.”
“I found it in the laundry. Can you just answer me, please.”
“So you assume it’s mine. I’m not the only one who lives here.”
“That’s not an answer,” I say, keeping my tone controlled. “Last time I checked, your father and I don’t smoke.”
“Are you sure?” she says, propping herself against her headboard and picking up her phone again.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, taking the phone out of her hand.
“It’s not mine. I don’t smoke pot. You wanna know why? Because pot makes you eat everything, and when you eat everything, you get fat. Are you calling me fat?” she asks.
I mutter Oh, my God under my breath and give her her phone back.
“Libby Patterson became, like, a total pothead, and now she shops at Hot Topic and gained, like, a million pounds. Annie Brewer called her Libby-McSaturated Fatterson, instead of Patterson, during study hall, and the nickname stuck. And then someone left a stick of butter in her locker. You think I want that to be me? No way. You should be way more concerned about whether I’m drinking and let the pot thing go.
” She gives me a look that somehow punctuates her monologue and goes back to her phone.
I don’t even say anything. I just stand there, trying to process it all.
I turn and leave, knowing she’s telling the truth.
And knowing what it means that she’s telling the truth.
I throw the joint in the big garbage behind the garage and go back to finish folding the laundry.
I missed finding out which twin Bianca Lovewright will choose, and I don’t even care.
Later that evening, I take a bottle of Pinot Grigio over to Paige’s, and we sit in Adirondack chairs in her garden like we do a couple times a week.
Since her son’s tragic death, it’s become less often, but I make a point to still pop by, though I try to sense her mood before making myself comfortable.
Paige never talks to me about Caleb. I mean, I know that she is certain it was murder and that she suspects all the neighbors and spies on everyone for clues, but she never talks about him.
He’s in all the photos that line every bookshelf and mantel in the house: the tiny Caleb standing in tall weeds at dusk, holding a lightning bug in a jar; the Caleb who was gifted at art but didn’t want to pursue it, who drank Mountain Dew for breakfast and broke his left wrist jumping off a dock at Eagle Cliff Campgrounds; the Caleb who was a football star in high school but also watched reruns of The Golden Girls with his mother; the Caleb who hated bullies and loved collecting Pez dispensers.
This is the son she never talks about, at least not to me.
We silently watch a yellow cat named Arnie balance on the wood fence around the backyard.
The neighborhood is quiet at dusk, as it always is.
A wind chime made of seashells makes a hollow tinkling sound in the breeze, and a dog barks in the distance.
I pour us two large glasses of cold wine and place the bottle on the cement pad next to my chair. I want to cry.
“I think he’s cheating,” I say to the trees, then take a deep breath and blow it out, hard.
“Oh, honey,” Paige says, looking at me.
“For real this time. I found a joint with lipstick on it in the laundry. And no, it’s not Mia’s. It was like a ballet slipper color. She hates pink. And I asked her, so, I mean, it’s someone’s. I’m not imagining it.”
“Cor, you don’t have to convince me. I believe you.”
“You do?” I look at her, feeling a flood of something. Relief, I think.
“Of course. Just because you haven’t caught him all those times you suspected doesn’t mean you’re wrong. You trust your gut. That doesn’t make you paranoid, it makes you smart.” She places her hand on mine and squeezes it a moment.
“Thank you,” I say and take a large gulp of wine.
“So tell me again why you don’t just leave the bastard?”
“Oh, no. He’s not a—I could be wrong. I mean, I really could. Maybe it’s me. And I don’t know, it’s just not...”
“Not what?” she prompts.
“Well, not that easy,” I say, and she shakes her head and scoffs.
“’Course it is.”
“There’s a prenup,” I say tentatively.
Paige purses her lips and says, “Ah!” as if she gets it now, without me needing to say anything further, but I do anyway.
“It’s not what you think. I wanted it. I wanted a clause added that there would be—” I make quotation marks with my fingers “—a substantial penalty paid out if infidelity is involved.”
Paige looks half-impressed and half-confused.
“What would make a madly in love twentysomething girl think to ask for that?”
“I caught him sneaking out of one of my girlfriends’ dorm room at three in the morning the spring before the wedding. I just had a sense about him, about his...nature, I guess,” I say.
“His nature. Is that what we’re calling it?” she asks humorlessly, but she doesn’t question why I still married him. “So when you say substantial, what exactly does that mean?”
“Well, the way it shook out, it’s about a half-million-dollar payoff.”