Chapter 13 – Adrian
ADRIAN
It’s three o’clock in the afternoon on a weekday, and I’m halfway to wasted.
After the unproductive breakfast conversation with Cora, I meant to get some work done, but after I poured myself a finger of whiskey, I brought the bottle to my desk.
I lost track—of the numbers on the screen, the time, the top offs.
This isn’t me. I need food and a cold shower. I’m not letting a momentary setback turn me into a drunk waste like Nathaniel Maddox. Besides, Cora might have refused to spend time together alone, but she came to breakfast—for Pearl’s benefit, I’m sure, but it’s forward momentum.
Downing the rest of my drink, I shut down my laptop and head for the main stairs. At least I’m walking straight. My foot is on the first step when I hear laughter from the kitchen.
I don’t want to see what’s going on. I’m in no condition to be around the girls. Still, my legs carry me down the hall. I stop just outside the door and peer in.
Cora, Vera, and Pearl are making gingerbread houses at the table. Winnie is in her swinging chair, snoozing. Minh is prepping for dinner at the counter.
Christmas carols are playing and spiced wine simmers in a pot on the stove. Pearl has icing in her hair. So does Cora. They’re all singing “Joy to the World.” None of them know many of the words except the title of the song, which they bellow, and then boisterously mumble the rest of the lines.
They’re happy. That’s good. I wouldn’t want it otherwise.
Careful to keep my steps light, I turn and track back toward the stairs.
My plan is to shower, sober up, and do an hour on the rowing machine, but when I pass the nursery, the door is cracked open, and Cora’s taunt from earlier is still in my head.
I’m ninety-nine percent sure she didn’t throw her rings in the river.
The habits of growing up with scarcity are etched too deeply in her.
Only a few months ago, I discovered that she adds water to the last of her shampoo to eke out a few more uses.
I know she’s hidden those rings somewhere until she can dispose of them at an egregious loss out of spite.
As quietly as I moved downstairs, I stalk into my children’s room, even though I have every right to be here.
This is my house. I’ve provided for all of this—the enchanted forest murals on the wall and oversized foam mushrooms and flowers covered in vinyl for Winnie to pull herself up on when she’s ready. So much plastic.
The decor is charming, though. I always feel like the Tin Man stumbling into Munchkinland here, but what man wouldn’t? I don’t think my father stepped foot in our bedrooms once. He’d shout for us from down the hall, and we either presented ourselves or made ourselves scarce, escaping via the roof.
I make my way to the daybed where Cora’s been sleeping. There is a dresser beside it with her cosmetics bag and e-reader on top. My heart rate picks up. As a rule, I don’t lower myself to snooping, but needs must.
I open the top drawer. Socks, nursing bras, and panties, the sensible ones that Cora wore those first weeks postpartum. Where are her silky, lacy numbers? Probably stuffed in the garbage bags with her gowns and furs.
After I squeeze the socks to make sure there’s no ring hidden in them, I go on to the next drawer. T-shirts and sweaters. The next drawer is yoga pants and jeans. No rings in the pockets.
Next, I check in her pillowcase and then the medicine cabinet.
No luck. I wander back to the middle of the room and turn in a circle, surveying the shelves and bins, cabinets and baskets, trunks and play kitchen complete with refrigerator, oven, microwave, and dishwasher, all of it overflowing with toys. So much fucking plastic.
So many places two small rings could be. She’d wanted something understated. A solitaire engagement ring. A simple gold wedding band.
I thought she was trying to please me, showing me that she didn’t intend to abuse my generosity after we married. Maybe she was. Regardless, I chalked it up as yet more evidence that I’d chosen wisely. I was so fucking smug.
So shortsighted.
I could buy her the Pink Star or the Oppenheimer Blue, and she wouldn’t soften in the least. Her eyes are different now.
They changed the instant those elevator doors opened, but in all the years before that, my head was so far up my own ass, that I hadn’t thought to commit how she looked at me to memory.
So now, I remember that it used to be different, but I can’t picture the look, and that feels like all the symptoms of a heart attack, all the things you’re supposed to act on immediately, but there is absolutely nothing I can do.
Did she really throw the rings in the river?
I scan the room. Picture books. Blocks. A pink trunk with lace flounces sticking out. I sink to my knees on the rug woven with a map of a fairy tale village, hissing when my patella lands on the spoiler of a Matchbox car. I didn’t realize that Hansel and Gretel tool around in a Dodge Viper.
I drag the trunk closer, flip the clasp, and throw open the lid, revealing a morass of sequins, frills, and boas with bare rubber legs and arms sticking up at random.
I sift through it, raking the bottom with my fingers, but there are no small pieces, nothing that could be a ring.
Where are the shoes and purses and whatnot?
I’ve given Pearl enough of these dolls. They come fully equipped.
Rising to my feet, I search the higher shelves, and there, above the stove, is a clear tub filled to the top with accessories.
Bingo. Of course, Cora keeps choking hazards away out of reach.
I grab the tub and return to my seat on the rug, dumping the contents out on top of a dyed wool castle with a friendly dragon waving from the turret.
Like some kind of mad gold miner, I comb through plastic high heels and hair brushes, boots and barrettes, lipsticks, binoculars, phones, umbrellas, mirrors, cameras, sunglasses, jewelry, travel mugs, credit cards, and briefcases, headphones and travel pillows. No rings.
Exhaling, I lean back and survey the mess I’ve made. I’m a grown man with a dwindling buzz, sitting on the floor in the middle of a workday rooting through a pile of pink children’s toys. A feeling like heartburn crawls up my throat.
I don’t want to be here. To be like this. It was never the plan. I was never going to care for real.
I was going to have it all—the wife, the children, the happy home—and I was never going to have to pay for it, not in any currency other than money.
If I risked nothing, there was no way I could lose. I gamble for a living. I know how to beat the house.
How did I end up here with this knot in my gut that won’t go away, this perpetual dread, this sensation that all the air in every room has been sucked out, and this incessant fucking drumming in my head, morning, noon, and night, this relentless hammering—you did it to yourself.
You did it to yourself.
I have never been lower.
I’ve never hated myself before.
I bend forward to scoop the toys back into the tub, and as I reach for a miniature plastic beach ball that rolled off the rug, I happen to glance up, and I see it—a white sock hanging from a slat under the daybed.
Well, who would think to look there?
After picking the last of the miniature combs and credit cards from the rug’s weave, I put the trunk and tub back where they belong and then lift the bed, propping it up on my thigh as I untie the sock.
It’s bulging with diamonds, gold, sapphires, emeralds, and rubies.
At the very bottom, in the toe, I find Cora’s engagement and wedding rings.
I slip them into my pocket, and return her stash to its hiding place.
I’m keeping them until she’ll take them back.
And she will. I’m not living like this until the girls are grown, and she leaves me. I won’t.
I can’t.