Chapter 23
Hopes Dashed
Cecily
When I get home from the restaurant I find the kids sitting together on the couch, each engrossed in an iPad. Henry’s playing a game, and Cassie’s texting with someone, her fingers flying around the screen, a flash of emojis I couldn’t understand if I wanted to peppering her abbreviations. I used to be better at keeping up with this kind of stuff, the music they listened to, the cultural references they made. A year ago, I probably could’ve deciphered Cassie’s texts, or certainly guessed at their meaning. Now they’re like the grad note I wrote in my high school yearbook. Indecipherable.
“Hey, guys.”
Cassie flaps a hand at me, but Henry doesn’t move a muscle.
“Screens down, please.”
“Not another family meeting,” Cassie says.
I sit down on the coffee table that faces them. “Nope, just family time. It’s been a long day.”
Maybe hearing something in my tone they’re not used to, they each lower their screens.
“You okay, Mom?” Henry asks. His hair’s getting a bit long, but when I asked him this morning if he wanted a haircut, he said no, he was thinking of growing it out.
“I’ll survive. Though I’m thinking we should probably rethink this whole World Wide Web thing.”
“Paparazzi suck.”
“They do. But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about you guys. Tell me about your days. Leave nothing out. Not even the subtext.”
“What?”
“The currents and undertows, I want to hear them all.”
Cassie frowns, but Henry complies, telling me a story of something that happened in history class and how the class smart aleck got the best of their young teacher. Cassie, who was in his class in his first year of teaching, and who I always suspected had a crush on him, comes to his defense, and Henry and Cassie are soon squabbling in the way only siblings can.
This might sound strange, but I like listening to them bicker. It’s all so innocent, so before, that I half expect Tom to walk into the room and ask them to keep it down because he’s trying to watch golf in his study. When he used to do that, they’d turn to abusing him, making fun of his golf-watching habits, and soon they’d be tossing a baseball around in the yard or pulling out the Monopoly board so we could have a “real family fight, I mean moment,” as Cassie often said.
But that’s not what happens. Instead, I hear my phone ding with a text, and I realize I haven’t checked my messages since lunch when I’d told my mother, probably more forcefully than I should have, to stop texting me. I let Cassie and Henry finish their argument, then tell them they can go back to their screens. They look surprised, but that doesn’t keep them from diving back in.
I retrieve my phone and open my texts. I disabled the function that floats a preview across my screen after Tom’s texts. I never wanted to be taken by surprise again. The universe laughs at me, it does.
I have more than a hundred texts I haven’t responded to. A cascade of WTF and you go, girl! from my friends and pseudofriends and anyone who has my cell number, apparently. But buried in there are two texts from someone I shouldn’t have been ignoring today.
Teo.
Call me, he says. And so I do.
Given how we ended up, it’s easy to think badly of Tom. To forget all his best characteristics, the things I loved about him. The things I vowed to remind the children of, no matter what happened. After he died, I’d even started keeping a list, one that time and bitterness could not erase.
He was funny, and he wasn’t showy about it. He’d just come up with the perfect hilarious summary of the conversation you were having at the exact right moment. And he’d take the joke one step further, like the best comedians, mining an ordinary situation for comedy gold.
He was generous, and again, he wasn’t showy about it. I thought I knew about most of his charitable work, but after he died, I received notes from people I’d never met who told me how Tom had come through for their organization, or even them personally, right when they needed it. Even as my restaurant folly sunk us into debt, he still found the money to help pay the heating bill of an old friend long out of work so he could stay another cold winter in a house he couldn’t afford but could not give up.
He didn’t blame others for his faults, his mistakes . . .
I had to leave off there because, no matter what, I didn’t want my children to know what their father also was. A liar, a cheater, a man who took his pleasure where he could find it rather than delay his own gratification. Not that I knew for certain that there had been others, but of course there could be. I didn’t ask when I had the chance, so I’m left to wonder. How many? When? And who was she, goddammit, who?
He didn’t deny it, though, when I finally confronted him in that New York hotel room, both of us still too drunk to have the conversation. He didn’t deny it, and he didn’t blame me, didn’t make excuses or bring up our dwindling sex life or do anything but apologize abjectly. He’d “fucked up,” and he was ashamed and mortified I had to find out at all, and especially that way. His hope had been that I thought it was a joke.
“A joke?”
He stepped toward where I was sitting on the edge of the bed and tried to take my hand.
“Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Why?”
“There’s no excuse. No explanation.”
“There has to be.”
“Come on, Lil. Do you want to get into this? I made a terrible mistake, one I’ve regretted from the beginning.”
“The beginning? That means there was a middle. How long—no, stop. I don’t want to know.”
“It wasn’t as bad as you think . . . Nothing actually happened.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Maybe if you let me tell you—”
“No, shut up. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t. How could you?”
His chin trembled, and this made me angrier. How dare he cry at his mistake?
“I wish I could take it back,” he said.
“Then why didn’t you stop? Why did it happen in the first place?”
“It was . . . The only thing I can say is that it felt like an addiction. And I don’t mean that as an excuse. It just felt like I couldn’t stop. Not even when I wanted to.”
“Do you love her?”
“No.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“I don’t expect you to believe me, but . . . no. No, I don’t love her. I’m not in love with her.”
“You’re right.”
“I am?”
“I don’t believe you.”
Round and round and round we went until I crawled into the soft sheets and told him I needed to sleep. Even though I knew I wouldn’t, I needed that day to end.
He didn’t try to press me; he just took a blanket from the closet and a pillow from the bed and set himself up on the floor.
It was a pitiful sight, and something about that, that I couldn’t stand to have him near me even when I most needed comfort, broke my heart for good. I stuffed the end of the pillow in my mouth so he didn’t hear my sobbing, but the bed shook around me. Tom rose and climbed into bed, wrapping his arms around me, and I let him. I needed comforting, and the only person there to do it was the source of my distress. I hated him for that, too, but it worked after a while.
“Lil?” he asked when I finally spat the soaked pillow from my mouth.
“Yes?”
“Have I fucked up our family for good?”
I pushed him from me and fled our room, those words chasing me, finally, away, because somehow, I hadn’t factored the children into it yet, what this could mean for them. I felt the selfishness of that, and then reasoned it away. I was in shock, I told myself, blameless. But he’d forced the thought on me, like his texts, and now all I could think of, as I stood shaking at the end of the hall, was our children and our home and our life, and how I didn’t want anything to end. How it would’ve been so much easier for me to remain in ignorance.
How could he have done this? How could he be so careless with our life, our children, our future, our family?
Why couldn’t he have died instead?
In the end, the easiest thing was for Teo to come to me. I asked him to wait until the kids were in bed, till after lights-out, and to come through the backyard, climbing over the neighbor’s fence, because there’s a man sitting in his car across the street, the firefly wink of his cigarette giving him away. I can’t tell if it’s the same man from this morning or even if he’s there for me, but I don’t feel like taking any more chances.
Teo’s punctual, his hand rapping on the patio door seconds before I start to listen for him. He’s got a dark fleece on, zipped up to his chin. The cold night air follows him in.
“I feel like a criminal,” he says, his white teeth flashing in the dimmed light.
“I feel like a zoo animal.” I indicate the bottle of red wine sitting on the counter. “You want?”
“Sure.”
I pour him some, listening to it glug into the stemless glasses I used to think it was so important to have. I’m nervous, and my hands are unsteady.
“Should we sit?”
He nods, and we go to the couches in the family room. I’m suddenly conscious of all the things I have, how this room is full of them. This couch, so comfortable and soft and six months sought after. The TV, large and flat and wall mounted. All the money in this room, all the things we wasted it on because we could, and even when we couldn’t. And this lie I carry around, all the little lies it’s spawned, it’s because of the money, too.
“How are you?” Teo asks.
“I feel strange, to be honest.”
“Strange?”
“Like I’m outside of myself. Like this one time in college when I took acid by accident and I thought I was floating around the room. Which is probably saying too much, as usual.”
“It’s fine. I wish you wouldn’t worry about that.”
“But it’s not fine. I’m so sorry I didn’t call you today or text. I should’ve checked in.”
He takes a sip of his wine and puts the glass on the table.
“You already apologized.”
“I know, but not face-to-face. A text. A text doesn’t mean anything. Ha! You see, I don’t mean that at all. A text can mean everything.”
Teo puts a hand on my arm. I cover it with my own. His fingers are still cold from outside.
“You must think I’m nuts.”
“It’s been an odd day.”
“Yes, very odd. Indeed. Good grief, we sound like characters in a Jane Austen novel.”
He smiles. “No one’s ever accused me of that before.”
“I meant so stiff and formal and thinking things all the while . . .”
“You’re going to have to help me out here.”
“I would if I could.”
I burst into tears. Teo’s grip tightens.
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right in a second.”
I turn away from him, lifting my shirt up to wipe the tears away. What must he think of me? What am I thinking of myself?
“Perhaps a drink?”
“Yes. That might help.”
He hands me my wineglass, and I take a large gulp. A sort of calm spreads through me, which must be a placebo effect—no wine could work this quickly—but I’ll take it.
“I think I can control myself now.” I give Teo a tentative smile. “Thank God you don’t have your camera with you.”
He frowns.
“Or, oh . . . Did you wish you were filming me falling apart? The ice queen cracks at last?”
“Of course not. It’s . . . Why don’t you tell me everything that’s happened first.”
I don’t like the sound of the word “first,” but I fill him in on the almost break-in, the guy across the road, my day at work, the Supra Board’s decision, and the reappearance of the camera at drinks with Franny and Joshua. I speak quickly, but the note of crazy has left my voice. Teo listens, asks a few questions, sips his wine. I meet his eyes tentatively, trying to prolong I’m not sure what.
“So, in all the confusion, it didn’t occur to me to call you. Which sounds like I forgot about you . . . But I don’t want you to think that. I had a nice time last night, despite everything.”
“I did, too, but . . .”
“Yes?”
“I feel bad about saying this, especially given the day you’ve had, but I think . . . I think we can’t see each other again. Not like that, anyway. Not as more than friends.”
There are two bright spots of color on his cheeks, as if he’s embarrassed to be adding anything negative to my day. My own face feels hot.
“Why?”
“It’s the film.”
“The film?”
“It’s wrong of me to get close to you. It hurts my objectivity.” He looks at the floor. “I feel terrible. But . . . right now, no one knows who was in that picture with you, but if it came out . . .”
“The Initiative might cut your funding?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But that’s not the point. It was . . . wrong of me to take advantage of you like that.”
“I don’t think you were.”
“What I do, it makes people vulnerable. It creates a false intimacy. Kind of like therapy.”
“Teo, what are you talking about? Where’s this coming from?”
“I know it seems sudden. I know I was the one who suggested we go out.”
“Yes, you did. But that doesn’t mean you took advantage of me. If you’re not interested, you can say so.”
“I promise you that’s not it.”
“I’d almost rather it was,” I say. “It’s better than being passed over for the sake of a stupid documentary.”
He grimaces. I’ve hurt him, but it feels justified.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“We seem to have spent a lot of time apologizing to each other today.”
I pick up my wine and drain the rest of it. At this point, there’s only one day that rivals this for awfulness, and that involved Teo, too.
“I hope this doesn’t mean that you’ll—”
“Pull out of the film? Honestly, Teo?”
He looks ashamed. “I should go.”
“I—”
My front doorbell rings insistently.
“Mom?” Henry’s voice calls down the stairs. “I think the police are here.”
“What?”
I drop my glass as I stand. It bumps against the thick carpet. As I pass through the hall to the front of the house, I can see the police lights rotating blue and red through the front windows.
I open the door. Two uniformed officers are standing there, looks of concern on their faces.
“Mrs. Grayson?”
“Yes?”
“We’ve had a report that there might be an intruder in your house.”
“What? Who—”
“On the ground. On the ground, now!”