Chapter 17
Night Six
Sybil
In the end, maybe a knife through her toe was exactly what her marriage needed. Or exactly what she needed, even though they had to suture her toe back together and Sybil was already concocting a story to tell the twins about the situation when they came home for Thanksgiving break in two weeks.
Back home in her too-big, empty-nesting house, Sybil yanked the sheets off her king-sized bed, wobbling a little uncertainly in her foot bootie.
She refused crutches and said absolutely not to a cane or a walker, so the boot, an eyesore, it was.
But the knife had cut straight down to the bone, and even in her stubbornness to carry on as normal, she wasn’t dumb enough to tempt risking a toe.
Toes, she thought, as she gave the top sheet another yank, were undervalued.
Lose the big one, and it’s way more than just a horrendous look in sandals in Turks and Caicos.
Your entire balance would be destabilized, your entire gait obliterated.
Goodbye to what babies learn as second nature: how to walk, how to stay upright.
She suspected she was now talking to herself in analogy.
Something about losing Mark. But honestly, she thought her toe was more critical to her future than her husband. So that was a pretty strong indicator.
Sybil dumped the fitted and top sheets on the floor.
She hadn’t been home for the past few nights, having camped out at the pied-à-terre since the accident, and while she didn’t detect the scent of the anesthesiologist’s perfume, she didn’t trust that Mark wouldn’t have invited her for a sleepover, despite blowing up her texts telling her that she had misunderstood at the ER.
She wondered if it would be too extreme to haul the bed to the front lawn and burn it.
She liked the imagery of that, the metaphor there, but then, well, someone would surely post about it on Nextdoor, and she didn’t really see how she could keep a bonfire in her front yard a secret from the twins.
She did have a fire pit in the back, so maybe if she chopped the mattress up into itty-bitty pieces, she could incinerate it there.
But, she thought, as she gave the pillowcases a hard tug, that wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying.
“Sybil?” A voice from downstairs, then footsteps ascending, and Natalie burst through the bedroom door. She was breathing heavily and looked like she’d just come into contact with the surface of the sun. She was too young for a hot flash, Sybil thought.
“Are you okay? Your cheeks are maroon,” Sybil said and threw a pillow, hard, against the headboard.
“Why did Zeke Rodriguez just let me into your house?” Natalie hissed, quiet enough not to be overheard a story below but loud enough to be extremely dramatic.
“Oh.”
“Is this why you asked me about your boobs a few weeks ago?”
“No—”
“Oh my god, are you sleeping with Zeke Rodriguez?!” This time, Natalie couldn’t help herself, and her voice rose to a quite audible level.
There was a clattering downstairs, and Sybil’s eyes went wide, then Natalie’s eyes went wide, then Betty’s voice called out, “Sorry! I was just giving a treat to Pluto, and he knocked over a plant.”
“Who are these people downstairs, and why are you sleeping with Zeke Rodriguez and haven’t told me?” Natalie whispered.
“I’m not sleeping with him. And that’s the girl I mentioned a while back, the aspiring actress.
She’s a waitress. I told you?” Sybil couldn’t remember if she had actually told Natalie anything.
She thought she’d sent Natalie her picture, but that could also just be something she imagined.
She was so tired that nothing stayed in her brain for long anymore.
Natalie ignored the second part of Sybil’s statement and gestured to the bed, raising an eyebrow. “Changing the sheets?”
“I kicked Mark out.”
Natalie’s palm flew to her chest as her jaw loosened. “You didn’t lead with that? You didn’t call me immediately?”
Sybil shook her head. “Sorry, I’m ahead of myself. I haven’t kicked him out. I told him that I wanted to kick him out.”
Natalie planted her hands on her hips.
“When?”
“Last week.”
“Last week? Does your phone not work? Does my phone not work?”
“It’s complicated.”
“No, it isn’t,” Natalie said. “You married a man who turned out to be a disappointment. Also”—she dropped her voice—“you want to show Zeke Rodriguez your boobs.”
“I don’t want to show Zeke Rodriguez my boobs,” Sybil said. “That’s the problem! Do you have any idea what sort of boobs he’s seen?”
“Yours are spectacular,” Natalie said, with the bravado of a best friend and not that of an objective observer.
“Well, now I know you’re lying.”
The bed was stripped bare now, and Sybil sat on its edge, dipped her chin to her chest. Natalie sat next to her and placed a hand on the middle of her back, which ached all the time now.
“Okay, but for real, are you going to explain why Zeke Rodriguez is in your kitchen?”
“I never sleep,” Sybil said. “We met online.”
Sybil felt Natalie’s gaze on her, so she raised her head to meet her delighted grin.
“So this is about your sex life. Are the other two people downstairs—” Her eyebrows pointed downward as if to say, I didn’t know you had it in you, but I’m not disappointed.
“Oh my god,” Sybil laughed. “We’re all just friends. We’re friends who don’t sleep. And we’re trying to help each other fix our problems. Zeke is injured; he has surgery next week…I’m not even sure he could sleep with me if he wanted to.”
“Girl, he could, even with you in…this.” She gestured at her foot. “Totally naked but for a medical boot. Hot. All sorts of weird shit turns people on, you know.”
Sybil had texted Natalie that she’d injured her toe but hadn’t told her how. There were too many details to explain in a text, honestly. A thought occurred to her.
“Actually let’s just…can we focus on Betty, the actress? Can you help get her some work?”
“I can probably help anyone,” Natalie said, because she had the exact type of confidence you needed from a sidekick in moments like this.
“Come on, let me make introductions. I worry about her. She doesn’t have any family.”
“You worry about everyone but yourself,” Natalie said but trailed her downstairs.
Betty was in the backyard, despite the nippy temperature.
Sybil had hung fairy lights last spring for the twins’ pre-prom party, which she had naturally agreed to host (she hated hosting), and she was surprised they hadn’t yet fallen.
Still sparkling like nothing had changed.
She and Eloise had a huge fight before the party about Eloise wanting to turn down Georgetown for a gap year, but if you looked at the pictures from that night, you’d never know.
Mark had worn a tuxedo and served the kids mocktails, though a few surely sneaked the cocktails designated for the parents.
Charlie certainly had. He was already tipsy by the time the bus pulled up to take them to the dance.
When the house was at last empty, she and Mark got into it because she needed to be mad at someone after the fight with Eloise and witnessing Charlie’s delinquency.
And she had plenty of reasons to be mad at Mark.
He ended up claiming there was an emergency and had to go into the hospital.
So she sat in her backyard under the fairy lights and got drunk enough to fall asleep in a chaise lounge by the pool.
At least, she thought ruefully now, she’d managed to sleep.
“Betty,” she said, hobbling closer. “This is my friend Natalie, and I’m pretty sure she can change your life.”
Looking back, it never once dawned on Sybil that Betty hadn’t asked for such a thing, that changing Betty’s life might be the very thing that ruined it.