23 Berry
Berry
Saturday used to be my favorite day of the week, back when the boys were younger. All four of us sleeping in, then padding
our way down to the kitchen for challah French toast. That was the one and only item Phil could cook, thanks to his grandmother,
or his bubbe, as he called her.
Back then, when Harrison was just hitting puberty, Challah Saturdays were sacrosanct. He and I would hover near the stove,
snatching pieces of the warm, eggy toast off the platter Phil was loading up. Little Leo would wait patiently at his seat
at the table, fixated on a puzzle or an Erector set. The bowl of powdered sugar would be positioned, always, right in front
of his place setting. Meanwhile, Phil would sing Springsteen songs and shimmy around, shaking his butt out of time with the
music, making us all laugh at his ridiculousness. Even Leo, his back ramrod straight in his chair, couldn’t resist looking
up from the task in front of him to laugh at Phil’s antics.
As I make my way down to the empty kitchen on this rainy summer Saturday, I can’t remember the last time we made brunch as a family.
I suppose the French toast was just one of those family traditions that fizzles out gradually, the kind where you never know which time will be your last. Harrison is out of the house, of course, but Leo’s still here.
He hasn’t come out of his bedroom yet, and I don’t even know where Phil is.
Last night, he was out late with Leo, flying a drone around town again.
It seems to give Leo comfort, flying those things above all the places where he spends time on the ground.
The YMCA, his high school, Phil’s office, his aunt Yvonne’s house, you name it.
If Leo has been somewhere, chances are, one of his drones has too.
Even though it’s midmorning, the sky outside is an ominous gray that matches my mood. Since the swim lessons got canceled,
Leo has been out of sorts, and I don’t know how to help him. Every time I suggest finding a new place to take lessons, he
starts yelling that he’s not upset about the swimming. I wish he’d just tell me what it is then. Karyn at the Y said Leo could
help out at the pool there, but when I passed along her message, he reached into his pocket for his small yellow airplane.
In my desperation, I pushed him for more information. I should have known better. He walked out of the room, and the only
thing I felt sure of then was that I clearly didn’t understand. Were I not so torn up about his disappointment, I might have
been a little excited to see him acting like a typical teenager, all moody and tight-lipped. But when you have a child who’s
struggled with depression, you lose the luxury of being flip.
As I open the refrigerator and reach for a yogurt, I hear Phil walking in from the garage.
When he rounds the corner and sees me, he stops as if he’s surprised I’m there. He’s wearing a dress shirt and slacks. On
a lazy summer Saturday.
“Why are you all dressed up?” I ask, noting the French cuffs on his button-down and the perfectly tight set to his gelled hair.
“Oh, hey,” he says, quickly shoving what looks like a small paper bag from a pharmacy into his pocket.
“Did I miss the memo about an event today?”
“What? Oh.” He looks down at his clothes. “Oh, no, nothing. I just, you know, wanted to go for a drive. Didn’t want to wake
you and grabbed whatever I saw first.” He’s got his hand over the pocket where he shoved the bag, as though he doesn’t want
me to see through his pants and discover what’s inside. “I’ll go change though. It’s so wet out.”
But now I’ve had it. Enough wondering about the story behind my husband’s unusual behavior, enough of his sour attitude and
unlikely stories. This moment, these clothes, they’re the last straw. Phil hates wearing dress clothes when he doesn’t have
to and would never just haphazardly throw on any shirt that buttons. He shows up here in French cuffs at ten a.m. on a Saturday,
and I’m not supposed to ask questions? Yeah, I don’t think so.
“Phillip Becker,” I say, marching over to where he’s standing and holding out my hand. “I want to see whatever’s inside your
pocket.”
“Would you stop?” His voice is full of exasperation. “Why does everything have to be something bigger? I want to go shower.
Would you please just leave it alone?”
As he moves around me to get out of the kitchen, my anger only grows.
“I’m not a complete idiot, Phil.”
He twists around and looks back at me.
“What does that even mean?” He doesn’t sound angry—just tired. In that single question, I hear the plea of a man who’s wondering what he has to do to make me just leave him alone.
Then all of a sudden, it hits me. It’s instantly so obvious. The pulling back from me, the overnight travel.
“I kept telling myself it couldn’t possibly be another woman, that there had to be another explanation for the way you’ve
been acting. That you would never . . .” I take another deep breath, just to be sure. Underneath the heavy scent of coffee,
it’s very definitely there. “Perfume . . .” I stop and shake my head in disgust. “No wonder you looked like a deer in headlights
when you saw me standing here. Are you really such a cliché? Another woman?”
“An affair?” Phil nearly squeaks as he says it, as if it’s totally out of left field. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Leave
it to you to get so dramatic. Can we please not make this into a thing?”
“Dramatic?” I scream back at him, forgetting to keep my voice down for Leo. “You think that’s an insult? I’m Bernice Selinger
from Bay Shore! The only language I speak is drama!” I feel spit fly out of my mouth as I say it. “Stay tuned for our next
segment of the Berry show, when Berry will be kicking her lousy, no-good, cheating husband out of the house!”
“I’m not cheating!”
“You want to show me what’s in your pocket then?” I ask.
He lets out a long breath and stares back at me. I notice then the dark circles under his eyes, the pallor of his complexion.
For a split second I wonder if I’m wrong, if something else is going on.
“I’m not letting you play detective on me the way you do with Leo. I don’t need this right now.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe I don’t need you right now!”
And then I storm out of the house.
Without thinking about where I’m going, I find myself driving the route to my sister’s. I’m halfway there before it occurs
to me that she might not even be home. She’s probably on her way to some fabulous beach spot with friends, like Fire Island
or Tobay. Or maybe she’s setting up a bridal shower in the Hamptons, or doing any number of things with her jet-setter crowd
that do not include sitting at home waiting to hear about her older sister’s most recent crisis.
But I don’t have anywhere else to go, anyone else to turn to, so I just keep driving. To my relief, when I turn onto Yvonne’s
street in East Setauket, I see her baby-blue Audi SUV sitting in the driveway, sparkling in the blazing sun. Behind it, her
fifty-four-hundred-square-foot Craftsman-style home beckons me. In my head I hear Phil’s voice, asking for the millionth time
why she would possibly need so much space just for herself. But instead of musing about the answer like I normally would,
I decide Phil’s an asshole for asking. My sister can spend her hard-earned money however she damn pleases, and I am not here
to judge.
When I ring the bell, it only takes a few seconds for Yvonne to answer.
She’s wearing a semi-sheer, caftan-style cover-up.
It’s all flowy and fabulous, and something I could never pull off.
I see the shadow of a string bikini underneath, one that I’m sure displays her breasts to their best advantage.
While everything about me screams “suburban mom,” Yvonne always looks like she’s waiting for some Hollywood producer or an Italian lover to come carry her off to Monaco. And who knows? Maybe she is.
When she sees me, her smile falls.
“Oh, I thought you were Shiri.” She looks me over, presumably wondering why I’ve come. Then she must notice the expression
on my face. “What’s happened?”
“It’s . . .” I look back at my old Ford sitting in the driveway, asking myself if I could just get back in the car and drive
away, maybe just keep traveling in reverse until I don’t have to say the words that are coming next. I turn back to my sister
and wipe at a tear that has spilled out of my eye. “Phil and I . . .” I don’t even know how to finish the sentence.
She squints at me, her hand rising to the Gucci sunglasses resting on top of her head as if she’s trying to ground herself
amid my chaos.
“Come inside, darling.” Backing away from the door, she motions me into the foyer. “Let me just text Shiri and tell her I’ll
meet her at the pier.” Yvonne starts typing, and I walk past her, toward the kitchen. I open her fridge, grabbing some sort
of artisanal bread and a tub of cream cheese. I’m shocked I have any appetite given the circumstances, but I was already starving
before the argument with Phil.
“Okay,” Yvonne says, moving to the kitchen table and pulling out one of the rattan chairs. “Start at the beginning.”
I spread a hefty schmear of cream cheese onto the bread and do exactly as she’s ordered, recounting everything that’s been going on.
In between bites of bread, I describe the mysterious phone calls, the “traveling for work,” the frequent absences from home, the way he seems to be avoiding me, jumping down my throat, resisting any new interventions I suggest for Leo—all as if I’ve suddenly become an idiot.
The longer I go on, the more I ache inside my chest.
“I just . . .” I trail off, feeling so lost. We weren’t dealt the easiest hand in life, Phil and I, but compared to what other
people face, we’ve had it pretty good. I thought for a while we were moving in the right direction, maybe even living our
best lives. And now I’m stuck trying to figure out where everything went wrong, how to fix it, whether I even want to.
But Yvonne’s looking at me like she’s got other ideas.
“I don’t know, hon,” she says. “Maybe the firm’s not doing well. You’ve always said Phil cares too much about whether people
perceive him as successful. It’s entirely possible the travel has some relation to that, and he’s too embarrassed to come
clean.”
“Even to me?”
She nods emphatically. “Especially to you. Perhaps he feels he’s not held up his end of the bargain.”
I consider her theory because it’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Phil did grow up in a very image-conscious home,
his parents always buying fancy cars because they believed it “sent a message” to others. Having been raised in vastly different
circumstances, I never thought to judge people based on what they had. Most of my friends just didn’t have much at all. I
thought by now Phil would have outgrown the attitude he learned from his parents, their perspective that a man is only as
good as his career success or lack thereof. Then I have another thought.
“But what about the perfume? The dress clothes? What could that be about if not another woman?”
Yvonne purses her lips and looks off to the side, clearly trying to come up with a plausible explanation.
“Are you still having sex?” she asks.
“Yvonne!” Call me a prude, but I’ve always felt awkward talking about my sex life with anyone other than my partner.
“What?” She’s nonplussed. “It’s a valid question.”
I know she’s right, so I try to remember the last time Phil and I were intimate. There was a night just recently where it
seemed like we might. We’d both climbed into bed near the same time, a rarity of late. Phil reached for me under the covers,
and I turned toward him, thinking maybe we could get back to a better place. I mentioned something about what a long day I’d
had, meaning his advances were welcome and I was ready to relax. But all Phil heard was a complaint. We started arguing again,
and the sex never happened. It must have been the day I’d argued with stupid Neil Rumson. And also the day McKenna called
to tell us about Hollyhock canceling the swim lessons. Maybe I could have chosen my words to Phil more carefully that night.
Then again, maybe he could have been a little more patient.
The word patient jogs my memory, and I’m reminded of something else. “He had a pharmacy bag, and he wouldn’t let me see what was inside.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Yvonne says, covering her mouth with her hand, a gesture of horror.
“So you agree? Condoms?” I demand.
“Maybe he’s sick,” she says. “Something’s wrong, and he doesn’t want to tell you. It tracks with what you’ve said. The moodiness,
pinching pennies, losing weight.”
I think of the dark circles I noticed this morning. The idea of there being something physically wrong, of him being in some
sort of danger that he’s too macho to share with me, breaks my heart all over again.
“But why the dress clothes? No, that’s not it.”
“What if he was meeting with an attorney? Getting his affairs in order? Trust and estate lawyers often see clients on the
weekend.”
“Oh, god.” I look at Yvonne with dread. “You think so? Like it’s something really, really bad? Yvonne. What am I going to
do?”
She stands and walks out of the kitchen. I watch from the counter stool as she heads to the cluttered console table by the
door, where she keeps mail, shopping bags, and magazines. She rifles through a pile and pulls out her car keys.
“Come on,” she says, beckoning me, the delicate silver bangles on her wrist clinking like exclamation points as she motions
toward the door. “You’re going home to talk to your husband and find out what’s going on. No more speculation and secrets.
I’ll follow you in my car.” She grabs a couple of the magazines from the table too. “I’ve been wanting to read the July issues
of these anyway. I’ll wait in the car. You come out if you need me, or text me if you want me to leave.”
Looking at my kid sister so ready to take care of me, I’m overcome with gratitude. There are plenty of times when she emphasizes
all the things I do wrong, like being too overbearing with Leo or not assertive enough with anyone else. But right now it
feels like she’s the source of all my strength, and I suddenly don’t know what I’d do without her.
“Okay,” I say as I climb down from my stool. “Okay, yeah, let’s do this.”
Except when we get back to the house, Phil has left again. And I don’t have any idea where he’s gone.