Scott was still watching her. Rage bubbled up in Sylvie again. She thought about him sitting in the hospital waiting room, bored. She thought about what Charles had said to him at the Swithin banquet all those years ago, the incident he’d referenced on the phone the other day after the headmaster had called. She’d only caught the tail end of it, hearing a few awful words and then seeing both boys on the ground. When she ran inside, horrified that her children were fighting in front of guests, James was already pulling Scott away.
“Did you hear what Charles said?” James said later. “He deserved what he got.” Sylvie turned away, saying she didn’t want to talk about it. “Oh sure, you don’t want to talk about Charles doing something wrong,” James hissed. “But if Scott had said these things, it would be entirely different.”
Sylvie tried to push what she’d heard Charles say to Scott out of her mind as best she could, not wanting to believe that he’d held on to those feelings for that long, not wanting to admit that perhaps she had perpetuated it. But now as she looked at Scott—who knew—she felt such shame. He’d kept what James had done from her on purpose. He was laughing at her behind her back. He probably thought she deserved it.
“Your father was a good man,” she said to Scott now. He was down to his bare chest and boxer shorts now, all those tattoos staring at her. “You shouldn’t laugh at him. And … and how dare you put me in this position?”
Scott widened his eyes. “What position would that be?”
“Didn’t we give you a good life?” she cried. “Didn’t we take care of you?”
Scott’s forehead wrinkled with contempt. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
She was going mad. It hurt everything inside her, all this ruin. She wanted him to hate her; she wanted him to love her. She wanted him not to know this and hated that he did. And suddenly, the veil over her eyes lifted, and she saw what could have happened in that wrestling locker room. She saw her son capable, culpable. Everything that had been said about him could be true. She felt the slow dam of anger burst free. She gaped at Scott, a stranger, an interloper, a heartbreaker, and then turned away, so overcome with dizziness she could barely stand.
“Please leave,” she then said. She stepped out of the doorway so he could pass.
“But—”
“Go,” she screamed. “I can’t have you in this room right now.”
Scott gathered his own clothes in his arms. “I don’t even need to be in this house right now.”
“All right, then.”
He pressed his clothes to his chest. His eyes burned coal-black. “This house has always been a fucking prison. A big stone jail.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said stiffly. “I’m sorry we made things so difficult for you.”
And then he turned and stomped past her into his old bedroom. He dropped one of his socks on the way out without noticing. Sylvie didn’t call him back to tell him.
Chapter 12
Monday morning Joanna felt Charles’s lips on her forehead. She listened as he shuffled around the house, pulling the shower curtain back, flushing the toilet, brushing his teeth. She heard him slam the front door, walk down the driveway to get the paper. He climbed back upstairs before he left and loomed in the doorway. “I hope everything goes well in Maryland,” he said. “I’ll come with you next time, I promise.”
She sat up in bed and wished him good luck with his interview tomorrow. When he walked back down the stairs, she flopped back down on the mattress and pulled the covers over her head. She remained in bed until eight, well after he left. When Charles kissed her good-bye, he’d had such a strange look on his face. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe she was imagining it.
She got out of bed, walked to the kitchen, sat down at the island, and dialed his cell. When he didn’t pick up, she left a message saying she wanted him to call. She thought about all the things they’d gone through on Friday night. Looking back on it, she’d acted like a crazy person. Whining because his friends weren’t—what? Kissing her ass? Picking a fight with him about Bronwyn. Nearly telling him about her crush on his younger brother.
What was she trying to do? What were her actions trying to achieve?
The coffee she made was bitter—she couldn’t remember if she rinsed out Charles’s grounds or re-filtered them through. She tried Charles’s cell again. Voice mail. Same with his work phone. It had caller ID, certainly, and he saw her number coming up every time. I’m sorry, she started to text him. She was sorry she was like this, utterly and unchangeably herself, sorry that she was maybe sabotaging this relationship because of a silly fantasy of how reality was supposed to be.
When the phone rang, she jumped. The ringer sounded like a siren. She looked at the caller ID. It was a number she didn’t recognize from an area code in the middle of the state.
The phone rang again. She lurched for it and picked it up. There was static on the other end, a whooshing sound as if the caller was on a train. “Is Charles there?” a woman asked.
“He’s not.” Joanna said. “Who’s calling?”
“My name is Bronwyn Pembroke,” the woman said.
Joanna almost dropped the phone.
But it had to be a cruel coincidence. She was probably someone taking a survey. A telemarketer.
“Can I have him call you back?” Joanna whispered.
“Well, no.” The woman sounded dismayed. “I don’t … I won’t really be reachable by this phone. Can you give him a message? I need to change the time that we’re meeting tomorrow. It needs to be nine, not ten.”
Joanna watched her eyes widen in the hallway mirror. The reflection didn’t look like her at all but some other woman, some person she thought she’d never be. She placed the phone back into the receiver.
The kitchen was apathetically still. All the little charging devices for Joanna’s cell phone, digital camera, and laptop blinked red, unfazed. The phone rang again, but she didn’t answer. The machine clicked on. Her voice. Thanks for calling, and then their phone number. Because out here in the suburbs, you didn’t say the Bates-McAllister residence. No one told their last names on answering machines for fear of giving too much away. When it beeped, there was only a dial tone.
When the answering machine clicked off, she grabbed the phone again and dialed Charles’s office number. Voice mail. She dialed his cell phone. Nothing. She listened to his polite, cheerful voice recite his outgoing message. She waited, considering, and then let the phone slip from her fingers. It landed on the floor and skidded toward the fridge. The operator eventually interrupted, warning that the phone was off the hook, and then that grating, pulsing noise began.
Breathing hard, she ran upstairs, opened Charles’s sock drawer and plunged her hands inside, feeling past his socks until she hit the drawer’s fiberboard bottom. She didn’t know what she was looking for. A picture of Bronwyn? A … what, a condom? She ran her hands over his patterned boxers. There was a pair with little dogs on them, a pair with breakfast foods, a pair with paisleys. Finding nothing, she shut the drawer and leaned against it.
A part of her had expected this, and yet she wasn’t ready for it at all. Was this why Charles had abruptly canceled on coming to Maryland? Was this what he was doing after his interview of the people in the nudist colony or whatever it was? He’d probably scheduled the interview in the morning and then blocked off the rest of the day for Bronwyn.
She stopped. Maybe there wasn’t an interview. Maybe the place didn’t exist. Maybe it was a test, something she should’ve seen through. Charles claimed he was staying here because of his job—he’d told her he had something with work that got in the way, and then he’d threatened to quit, and then she said he was being ridiculous. He’d manipulated it around and made it her choice. It was positively Machiavellian. Do the interview, she’d told him. We’ll figure this out later. She’d given him permission.
She had to get out of here. She took Charles’s suitcase because it was nicer. She threw incongruous things into the bag—heavy sweaters, filmy dresses, high heels, a raincoat. Throwing a toothbrush and soap into a toiletry bag took seconds. After a moment, she decided to take some of his things, too—his expensive moisturizer, his Polo cologne, the book he was reading. Then she stood back, both palms on the top of her head. Her mother would be surprised at how early she would be. She might still be asleep, resting up for her big appointment tomorrow. Joanna would make breakfast and coffee. She wouldn’t tell her about this.
The cold outside air made her spasm with shivers. She stood for a moment at the edge of the garage, staring at the houses around her. All the lawns were sickeningly green and even, with the same red flowers in the mulched gardens off the front walks. Why hadn’t just one person planted blue flowers, or yellow? Who lived in these houses?
Joanna squared her shoulders and hit the unlock button on her car key. The door remained locked. She hit it again. Nothing. “Goddamn it,” she whispered, punching every button on the key until the alarm started to sound. The noise was so loud it made her teeth ache. She fumbled with the key chain, desperate for it to stop. Then she noticed movement to her right. Mrs. Batten stood in the middle of her driveway, staring. Her hair was perfectly combed, her trench coat knotted tightly and evenly at her tiny waist, her ballet flats unscuffed. One of her children, the little girl who played in the sandbox, leaned into her, wide-eyed. Joanna hit another button but the alarm kept blazing. Maybe she needed to try it from a different angle. As she stepped around to the other side of the car, her shoe caught on the lip of concrete between the garage and the driveway. Instantly, her cheek smacked the asphalt. There was a gasp behind her.
Joanna groaned and pushed herself up. Somehow the alarm had stopped. Blood was trickling down her knee. She turned around. Mrs. Batten’s eyes were round, but she remained motionless in the driveway, instead of rushing over to see if Joanna was okay.
“What?” Joanna shouted. Her neighbor flinched. “Jesus, what?” Joanna said again. Her neighbor’s eyes averted downward. She hustled her child into her minivan and slammed the door. Joanna hit the key again and the car unlocked, insufferably easily. Then she sat in the driver’s seat without turning on the ignition. If only there was something insulting she could scream out to Batten, safe in the privacy of her car, but the first word she thought of, after bitch, was eggbeater. You bitch, you eggbeater.
A skunk had sprayed in the middle of the night; even the air inside the car smelled of it. Joanna started the engine. It was only an hour-and-a-half drive to her mother’s if she took the highway. She usually avoided I-95, taking the quaint, quiet back roads, but today she didn’t feel like lingering. As she drove, she gnashed her teeth, picturing Charles at work, smiling about his meeting tomorrow with Bronwyn. He was in the clear. When she came to a traffic light, she noticed where she was. To the left of the intersection was the garden center. To the right was the old stone mansion that had been converted into a bedand-breakfast. This was the turn to Sylvie’s house.
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