2
Larry chased me out of the office as I kept walking. He could have grabbed my arm, but he would never make a scene like that in front of his staff. And even in my state, I recognized that still mattered more than I did.
Instead, he waited until we were on the street. “Bev,” he said, moving in front of me so I had to face him. “It’s not what it looked like.”
I stopped walking, arms crossed. “Oh really. What was it, then?” He started sputtering, but I held up a hand. “Let me save you the effort because all your blood is clearly still elsewhere. Linda wears glasses, so she didn’t lose a contact lens. And even if she had, I doubt even you have a reason how it could have fallen into your pants that doesn’t make this look worse. So how about you tell me how long this has been going on instead of lying and pretending I’m stupid enough to believe you?” His mouth fell open. I tapped the face of my watch—a gift from him on our first anniversary. “I don’t have all day. I have to pick up our children—you know, the ones I take care of all day while you mess around with your secretary—at noon.”
He swallowed, started to speak, then cleared his throat. “Not long,” he mumbled.
“Not long like this was the first time, or not long like three years?”
“Bev—I—”
“Answer the question, please. The truth.”
“Somewhere in between there.”
My jaw tightened, and Louis’s panicked look appeared in my mind. His whole office knew, then. And I was marching in there delivering cookies every week while they knew he was fooling around with his secretary—his secretary! Such a cliché!
“Look,” Larry said, putting a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry. I just—ever since Debbie was born, you haven’t exactly—”
I plucked his hand off my arm. “You’re blaming me ?”
“What are you doing here on a Thursday anyway?”
For a split second, I understood how criminals could claim temporary insanity. If I pushed him in front of traffic, as long as I had one wronged woman on that jury and told her what he had just said, I would walk away free.
But I didn’t do that. “I have a hair appointment tomorrow,” I said coolly. “Perhaps if you had let me know about your standing Thursday tryst, I could have rescheduled.”
Neither of us spoke. “Bev,” he said eventually, reaching for my arm again, but I took a step back. I was at a crossroads, staring at two alternate futures. Could I swallow my pride, pretend this never happened, and keep our lives the way they were?
Possibly. But I didn’t want to spend the next fifty years wondering who he was with every time he wasn’t home. Because if I let this slide, he would be doing the exact same thing for those fifty years.
“No. I’ve heard enough. I’m telling the kids you’re working late. You can come home to pack a bag after they’re in bed.”
“Pack a bag?” He looked at me like I had grown a second head.
“Don’t look so upset,” I said, patting his arm patronizingly. “You can go stay with Linda, and there’s no chance I walk in on you now.”
I turned and strode purposefully down the street toward the bus stop. Larry didn’t follow.
As I entered my house forty-five minutes later, I checked my watch. I had an hour before I needed to get the kids. And for a moment, I disloyally wished for a mother whom I could call and ask to keep the kids longer without having to explain what had just happened. But that wasn’t my mother, and I wasn’t one to dwell.
Instead I peeled the offending watch from my wrist. An anniversary present was a joke now. Anniversaries were for faithful couples. I shoved it into the drawer where we kept batteries, bills, matches, and scissors, and then sat at the kitchen table.
But I couldn’t sit still either. My entire body was humming, and if I sat, the vibrations would set off an earthquake.
Instead, I went upstairs to our bedroom and looked around as if seeing it for the first time. The decor would have to go. I had selected everything, but I’d done it with an eye toward Larry’s taste and comfort. I didn’t want the dark wood or the beige wallpaper or the even beiger bedspread. I liked color and light and air. I went to the heavy damask curtains and pulled them open. They would have to be replaced as well.
Whether Larry came home or not.
Larry.
I picked up the photograph from our wedding, in its Tiffany frame. A gift from the Trumans. Larry had been giddy over the present from the former president, though I was certain either Bess or one of their secretaries had picked it out. Papa had invited the Eisenhowers too, though Ike was far too busy to attend. But with that exception, everyone who was anyone in DC had been at the wedding.
Larry was grinning at the camera in the picture, while I smiled up at him. Ever the dutiful wife.
I sank onto the bed, my engagement ring catching my eye, and thought back to the day he proposed. A perfect day. The cherry blossoms had been in bloom, and he suggested we go down to the Tidal Basin to see them. It was illegal to pick them, of course, but Larry plucked a sprig for me anyway. When he passed it to me, my ring was around the stem.
He told me that I was the one. That he couldn’t live without me.
What changed?
A wave of grief washed over me, powerful enough to carry me away in its current. What about Robbie and Debbie? How could I do this to them? And how would I handle everything all alone?
My eyes drifted back to the silver frame, and I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Was that why he had married me? The political connections. The gifts from presidents past and current. The knowledge that Papa’s name opened nearly every door on Capitol Hill.
It didn’t hurt that I was pretty and could cook and knew everyone worth knowing in DC. But I looked back at the picture. Our whole wedding had been hand shaking and clapping powerful men on the back. There were no photographs where he gazed lovingly down at me. Always looking ahead, at the camera or toward the future. Never at what he had.
I ran my finger over the glass above my own upturned face, trying to remember what I had been thinking that day. But it was a blur of people and kisses and toasts.
Our honeymoon in Havana though—he had loved me then, hadn’t he?
Maybe.
Or maybe just what I stood for and brought to the table.
Because once he had a ring on my finger, those tables turned. I wasn’t the focus anymore. He was. His career. His needs. His wants. I looked around the room again, wrinkling my nose. His taste.
Even that watch, now ticking away in the kitchen drawer—I had been late one time for an event. One. And he tried to pitch that as a sweet anniversary present. Honestly, a vacuum cleaner would have been more romantic as long as he hadn’t explained it as fixing a character flaw.
“Ever since Debbie was born ...,” I said out loud, my blood boiling again. Such a load of horse manure. I bent over backward to please that man in and out of the bedroom. What, had he rolled over and wanted me there one time while I was rocking Debbie back to sleep to make sure she didn’t wake him? No. I wasn’t doing this to the kids. He was.
I dropped the picture frame on the bed, then went to the basement, where I grabbed the suitcases and hauled them upstairs one at a time. I set them on the bed and began filling them with Larry’s things. When the first was full, I placed the wedding picture inside before zipping it. He could have his precious frame. It was a fair trade—I was going to have a life that didn’t cater to his every whim in exchange.