Chapter 29
The Least Complicated
Cecily
Tom and I never spoke about the texts again. When I woke up the next morning in our hotel room, he was gone. He’d left a note—out for a run, then coffee, I’m sorry—and didn’t return for several hours. When I could drag myself out of bed, I climbed into the large marble shower and stood there until it felt like I was drowning, as if every pore in my body was waterlogged, my skin turning into an angry prune. I still didn’t know how to process what had happened, but I felt dirty, contaminated. I wanted to scour every inch of skin off my back, and my insides out, too.
As I scrubbed and scrubbed, I started to question everything that had happened in the last six months between us. All the times I’d cuddled up to Tom in bed. The times when we’d had sex. The small intimacies every couple has. Was it all tainted now?
Was six months enough? Should I go back a year? Two? How much of my life did I have to readjust? Tom didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask so many things. The lack of details was killing me, and yet I knew better than to make a list of particulars, because Tom would tell me, and then instead of speculation, I’d have facts. Somehow I knew the facts would be worse than anything I could imagine, even though I had a good imagination.
When I started envisaging Tom’s tongue trailing over someone else’s skin, I got out of the shower and wrapped myself in the oversize bathrobe like a hug. I kicked the blankets Tom had slept in into the corner. I didn’t need any more reminders of him. I picked up my phone. There were messages from the kids with questions about missing soccer equipment, whether something was in the laundry. My mother asking if we were having a good time, Kaitlyn wondering if we could meet for lunch on Monday. I’m shocked at the gall of that now, knowing what I know, but then I was happy to hear from her. I almost called her to talk about what had happened because I needed someone else’s voice in my head other than my own.
Tom brought back coffee, a bag full of freshly made bagels, and a container of fruit. We sat at the small table in our room in silence. He tried to speak, but I raised my finger to my lips and he fell silent. I couldn’t eat, could only sip at my coffee, which tasted bitter and scalded my tongue. I felt as if I needed to hollow out my insides with a spoon, to remove every extraneous thing. My wedding band was tight on my finger. I twisted it off. Tom watched me do it, his eyes wide, wanting to ask if this was some greater symbol, if this was the end. But I silenced him again with a look, and then I brought out the laptop and rebooked our flights home. We dressed and packed quickly, and Tom took our luggage downstairs to check out while I did a last sweep of the room.
I stood in the doorway in my belted trench coat, looking at the ruin of the bed, the dirty windows that couldn’t block out the iconic view. I shoved my hands in my pockets, balled into fists, and came up against the rough edges of a piece of paper. I pulled it out. It was the certificate Tom had given me the night before, the star he named after me, his big romantic gesture, which I would’ve been delighted with a few days ago but now felt like a cheap joke.
I tossed it in the trash.
I go upstairs, leaving Kaitlyn in the living room, and admonish Cassie again to stay in her room. “No texting, no outside communication,” I say.
“But what’s going on?” Cassie asks. “That’s Aunt Kaitlyn, isn’t it? How can she be here?”
I almost tell her to hush, Henry might hear, but what’s the point? There’s no way to keep this secret in my own house. Besides, things have been dicey with Cassie ever since I told her and Henry that things between her father and me were rocky before he died. “Not the best” was the euphemism I used when I explained why I was leery of the press, of people finding out our secrets. I didn’t tell them about the affair or give them an explanation of why we were in trouble, just that we were. I told them we hadn’t figured everything out yet, that we were still in the process of trying to figure things out when he died.
Cassie hadn’t reacted when I’d told her, but two days later, she’d flown into a rage over a book she thought I’d moved in her room, and I knew what it was about.
“Aunt Kaitlyn?” Henry says, coming into Cassie’s room. “She’s alive? But does that mean . . . Dad’s alive?”
“Oh no, I’m so sorry, honey. I don’t . . . No, Dad’s not alive.”
Henry starts shaking. “But if Aunt Kaitlyn is, then he has to be, too. Their offices were on the same floor. And I read this thing on the Internet about how it was all some big hoax, anyway, because if it had been a gas leak, then the building wouldn’t have blown up that way and—”
“You’re so stupid, Henry!”
“Cassie!”
“But it’s true. Why do you even read that stuff?”
I put my arms around Henry. He feels cold, chilled. I rub my hands up and down his back, trying to warm him up. “Henry, Cassie, please. Not right now. I need to talk to Aunt Kaitlyn and find out what’s going on. I promise I’ll tell you as soon as I know, but it’s very, very important that we don’t tell anyone she’s alive or here or anything like that, okay?”
“You’ll tell us everything?” Cassie says. “Ha! Like you told us all about you and Dad fighting?”
“No, not like that. And this isn’t a good time for this.”
“You always say that. It’s never a good time.”
“Will you just give me this, Cassie? Please?”
“Why?”
That stops me. Why is it important to keep Kaitlyn’s secret? Do I need another to add to the pile? But there’s a reason she’s at my house and not her own. And then there’s what she just told me about Franny, which, if true, is a whole other problem, one I can’t even wrap my mind around.
“Because she hasn’t had a chance to talk to her family yet, and they can’t find out like this, that their mom’s not dead. Imagine if Dad were still alive and you read about it on the Internet.”
“But he is alive,” Henry says. “He has to be.”
“No, Henry. I’m so, so sorry, but he isn’t. Remember? We saw him at the funeral home.”
Henry’s whole body is trembling now, either from remembering the awful sight of his father in a casket or the new, new reality that his father’s still dead, maybe both. One of the “miracles” of October tenth—Tom’s body had been intact, and his parents had insisted on an open casket. I was too tired to fight with them, so I caved. But when we’d walked into that tamped-down room and seen his waxy form in the coffin they’d picked out, I’d felt sick to my stomach. Cassie had run from the room, and Henry went so white I thought he’d faint. When we passed Tom’s parents on the way out, I couldn’t help but glare at them. Was this how they wanted to remember their son? If they knew the truth about him, would they feel any differently? But I already knew I could never tell them the truth, that Tom’s secret was mine to keep now, even though death had parted us.
“But maybe . . . ,” Henry says, then hangs his head in defeat. “He’s really dead?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He pulls away from me and slumps onto the edge of Cassie’s bed. He curls into a fetal position. “This isn’t fair!”
“I know, sweetheart. It isn’t.”
“But how is Aunt Kaitlyn alive?” Cassie asks. “We went to her funeral, too.”
“I don’t know. Let me go down and find out, okay?”
“Can I come with you?”
“That’s not a good idea. Aunt Kaitlyn and I have some things we have to work out in private.”
“Okay.”
I sit down next to Henry and rub his back. He’s shaking, emitting hiccupping cries I know are the end of his crying cycle. “How about you can download that new game you wanted and play that?”
“For real?”
“Just don’t kill too many bystanders, okay?”
“Seriously, Mom?” Cassie says. “That’s your solution?”
“What do I have to bribe you with?”
“I don’t have to be bribed. God, Mother.”
My heart cracks. She’s never called me “Mother” before. I feel an urgent need to call my own mother and apologize for every time I did that as a teenager.
“Just think of the girls. Kaitlyn’s girls. Imagine if you were them?”
“I kind of am them.”
“You’re right. But you also know what I meant.”
“Okay, okay. I already told you I wasn’t going to say anything.”
I stand and hug her quickly. “Thank you.”
She shrugs away and slinks off. I give Henry another hug and ask him if he’s going to be okay. When he says he will, I creep back down the stairs, passing our montage of family photographs. I purposively avoid looking at the one of all of us on vacation a few years ago. The person I’ve been thinking about since I got those texts has been hanging on my wall this whole time. She was in my house, right next to me, my confidante.
I hear a rushing sound in my ears. I sink to the stairs. I’ve had this feeling before, on the worst days, my own brand of panic attack. I place my head on my knees, wrap my arms around my head, and concentrate on breathing. I will not call Kaitlyn for help. I will not call Kaitlyn for help. I repeat those words to myself over and over until the feeling subsides. It takes only a few minutes, much less than it used to. In fact, it’s been a long time since I’ve had one of these at all. I stare at the wall and think back over the last few weeks. I haven’t had any anxiety since I left Linda’s office a few weeks ago. Was she the cause of it? No. She was the deposit of my memories, the symbol of what was causing the anxiety in the first place.
I stand, straighten myself out, check my reflection in a photograph of Cassie and Henry and my mom from five years ago. I look pale but together.
No more putting this off.
Downstairs, Kaitlyn’s sitting on the living room couch, watching the gas fireplace. There’s only a small lamp on, and the way the shadows work, the weight she’s lost, the difference in her hair color and cut—if I saw her on the street, I might not be sure it was her. I’d probably dismiss an across-the-street sighting, like I have the many times I’ve thought I’ve seen Tom, as a mind trick, my brain swapping out unfamiliar features with the known.
I walk into the room.
“Did you run away with Tom?”
Her head snaps around. She looks like a panicked animal caught on the road. “What? No. Tom is . . . Isn’t Tom dead?”
“Yes, but then again, so are you.”
“But Tom would never . . .”
“Tom would never what? Run away? Sleep with my friend? Betray his family?”
Kaitlyn flinches at each question.
“Tom would never run away. He loved you. He loved your kids.”
“And you didn’t?”
“Of course I love my kids; it’s not like that.”
“So what is it like, Kaitlyn? Please enlighten me.”
She drops her head into her hands. The bones in her neck are sticking out of the unfamiliar argyle sweater she’s wearing. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ve had a whole year to figure it out and I just don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know it isn’t.” She sits back up. The end of her nose is red. I feel violent, the need to reach out and smack someone, her.
See what you’ve done to me, Tom? You’ve turned me into a parody, a woman who might actually slap another woman just for the dramatic impact of it.
“So what, then?”
“Will you sit down, and I’ll try to explain what I can? Please?”
I sit on the couch across from her and grab the blanket off the back. It’s cashmere, soft and cozy. I need to be wrapped in the gentlest thing I can right now; another echo because this is exactly how I felt in that hotel room in New York. A coincidence or just one of life’s little harmonies? Who cares, who cares.
“So what happened?” I say.
“Which part?”
“The Tom part.”
“How do you know about the Tom part?”
“Coincidentally, I just found out.”
“How?”
I measure my words. “Joshua told me.”
“He knows?”
“He found some e-mails between you and Tom. Or Franny did.”
“Franny did?”
All the color has bleached from Kaitlyn’s face, and, like Henry at the funeral home, she looks like she might faint. I want to feel sympathy for her, but I’m having a hard time mustering the energy.
“I read that they . . . Are they engaged?”
“You saw that piece in Vanity Fair? Is that why you came home?” I saw the article after I learned about it from Joshua and the girls. It was all anyone was talking about these last two days.
“It’s one of the reasons. What happened? How could . . .”
“Franny and Joshua have apparently grown quite close. She moved in a few months ago—to help with the girls, I thought—but it looks as if she’s been worming her way into Joshua’s heart. As your daughter. And then a couple of days ago, they had a fight after they told the girls they were getting married—”
Kaitlyn raises her hand to her mouth.
“Do you need the bathroom?”
As if the word prompted her, Kaitlyn gets up and runs to the powder room. I listen to her lift the toilet seat and choke up what sounds like her insides. I feel both cruel and satisfied. I never thought I was the vengeful type, but perhaps I am. Maybe this is what I’ve needed this whole time—my pound of flesh.
I wait a few minutes and then knock on the bathroom door.
“You coming out?” I ask.
“In a minute.”
“I’m not going to do it, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Hold your hair.”
The door bursts open. Kaitlyn’s crying and laughing at the same time.
“What are we going to do, Cecily? This is such a fucking mess.”
“You think I know? This is your rodeo, Kaitlyn. We’re all just along for the ride.”