Like you, I think unkindly. My stress is coming out sideways, but Farah doesn’t notice. She types the password.
“Nope. Not it,” she says.
For tallying points in the “everything is fine” and “everything is shit” columns of my marriage, the new password isn’t helping even things out.
“Okay, we’ll have to go analog. I’ll grab his bag; you go through his briefcase.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Receipts, statements, love notes.”
“You think he could be having an affair?” Farah asks.
“No, not necessarily. But that’s the only thing I care about. If this is just a mood, it will blow over.”
“What do you think the astrologer would say about searching for proof of your husband’s affair? Are you thwarting your destiny? What about his?”
My words from earlier, thrown back at me.
“Ha, ha. Listen, Little Miss Science. I’m not asking for the universe to step in. I’m seeking facts. Information. This has nothing to do with destiny.”
I unzip the front compartment of his briefcase and pull out a stack of papers.
“Oh, this is good,” I call out in relief.
“What is it?”
“It’s an essay he’s writing for GQ about a long, healthy marriage,” I lie.
In reality, I’ve uncovered the first five pages of Adam’s current work in progress. Although no one besides me, Adam, his editor, and his agent are supposed to know the true identity of Audra Rose, I would trust Farah with that secret. The only reason I don’t tell her is because she would think even less of him than she already does, and I don’t need that kind of headache. Farah’s not the kind of woman who would have any respect for a male romance novelist. She’s too old-fashioned for that.
I skim the first page and hug the stack of papers to my chest and close my eyes. Adam named his protagonist Scarlett. Like my scarlet fever.
Adam and I had been dating for a year when we went upstate to the Berkshires for some autumn hiking and cozy lovemaking. Instead, I got sick.
I worried that Adam might treat me the way my mother the nurse always had. She’d set me up in bed, with tissues, water, medication, and the remote control. She’d check on me every few hours with objective precision, like she had a chart at the end of my twin bed that she had to complete. It was confusing and lonely.
Or I was afraid Adam would react like my hypochondriac father, who wouldn’t even look at me while I was sick but then would overwhelm me with hugs and kisses when my mother assured him I was no longer contagious. In different ways, I felt disgusting to both of them.
To avoid having Adam seeing me the way they did, I wanted him out of the hotel room. I told him to go to the museum without me. Go out to eat alone on the reservations he made. But Adam wouldn’t hear about plans. He held my hand. He brought me a cold washcloth, and when my fever roasted it, he wrung it out and brought me another. Nothing he did was intended to make my sickness pass quicker. He did it for comfort. It was a love I’d never known.
People think you have to have horrendous things happen to you in your childhood to be messed up. I believe you can live in the same house your entire childhood, have an insurance broker for a father, a nurse for a mother, both gainfully employed but not overworked, neither of whom have any substance abuse issues, and you can still be royally screwed up too.
All you need is one part critical, cold, exacting mother (ironically all the qualities that made her a great health care provider), two parts dad with gushy need that is palpable but misdirected. I was smothered and ignored. Praised without reason, criticized without cause.
But Adam’s love was measured. He comforted me when I was sick. He walked out of the room when I was lashing out for no reason. His love was within my control. Not him—I wasn’t controlling him or his actions—but the dynamic between us had a logic I understood. And when I loved him the way he needed to be loved, we had a big, dynamic, intense connection. And when I didn’t love him the way he needed, he abandoned me. I never want to feel his absence again. And now I’m sure I won’t.
“It tells me Adam still loves me and wants our marriage to last as much as I do,” I say to Farah.
He knows it wasn’t only me who stopped giving that intense, dynamic love. Adam dropped out too. He became utilitarian, and there’s nothing less romantic. To think, I used to be the one gloating to complaining moms at our wine nights that I held the secret to a strong marriage after kids.
Adam is a great father because he takes my instructions well. By previous generations’ standards, he’s a superstar. He drives the girls to ballet and soccer. But he doesn’t exactly take the lead on anything. I don’t sweat that stuff, because I want to be in charge at home. And when I’m done with the arduous work of the day, he greets me with the most important question: Red wine or chocolate ice cream? He brings my choice to me with a blanket and asks what I want to watch while I unwind. He takes care of me the best.
It hasn’t been like that for a while. How long? Months? A year? Time with little children goes so fast and so slow all at once. No matter how long it’s been, I’m not ready to lose Adam. Not to his career or whatever else might be creating distance between us. We are a happy family and we’re going to stay that way. No matter what.
“So things are all good?” Farah asks.
“Not yet, but they can be still,” I say.
Farah heads downstairs first while I shove Adam’s papers back in his briefcase. I notice my pants and shirt strewn across the floor where I left them before my shower. It gives me an idea for a post. These aren’t the right clothes for the job, but I have the perfect lacy black bra and panties. I rummage through my suitcase and place them on the plush cream carpet just so. I get the shot and type.
Being a mom is the greatest thing in the world, my purpose in life, but it’s so important to reconnect with your partner. He’s the reason this all exists. #ad #laperla #sexy #blacklace
RINI
I lied to Farah and Aimee when I said there was no access to the turrets. Well, I half lied. There’s no access for the guests. But for me, there’s a way. You must go down to go up.
Tonight, after the readings are done, after the staff from Claudio’s has cleared away the food and drink, after every single light is switched off, it’s my time.
I move through the shadows from my cottage to the main house. I quietly lift the well-oiled metal bulkhead doors to the utility basement. I pass the hot-water heater, the oil tank, and the panels of circuit breakers. In the back corner is a door. It’s a simple hollow-core wooden door with no lock on it. If you wanted to kick it in, the fiberboard would easily give way, exposing the honeycombed plastic keeping it upright. That door opens to a narrow hallway. Three feet into this enclosed, damp, dark hallway is another door. This one is solid. You can feel its heft simply by touching it. You wonder if it’s metal, and you’re half-right. The doorframe is, and the solid-core wood is reinforced with metal bars inside. If you tried to kick it down, you’d break your leg.
I gather the chain from inside my shirt, where a key stays safe around my neck, next to the heart-shaped locket, and pull it over my head. I unlock the deadbolt and make my way up the winding staircase. Because the shaft is so small, like in a mine or a lighthouse, a spiral is the only type of rise that works in the space between an elevator (too loud) and a ladder (too tenuous). When I reach the top, I wait for my eyes to adjust in the new room. I tiptoe through the small bedroom and living area to the door between the kitchen and the bathroom.
After opening the unlocked door, I ascend the final staircase to the turret on the east side of the house. I close the door behind me and the metal frame squeals. Last time, I said I’d remember to bring the WD-40, but that didn’t happen. I freeze and wait, hoping it’s far enough away from the current guests’ balconies to go unheard.
I take a moment to breathe in the salty air. I relish the hint of marshy sulfur scent that accompanies the extra-low tide of the moon. The back lawn and the dock are bathed in the moon’s luminescence. I swing one leg over the thick wooden railing of the turret and then the other, careful not to snag any splinters. Atop the railing, I let my legs swing back and forth over the ledge below. Once I’ve been there long enough to know I haven’t woken anyone with my skulking around, I hop over the railing and onto the ledge that circles the turret.
I’m untethered and high enough to feel slightly dizzy, but I hold on with my hands behind me. While my equilibrium steadies, I take a step onto the tiles of the steeply peaked roof. I walk with my arms extended for balance until I reach the middle. I slowly crouch to sit straddling the peak and slip my phone from my pocket. Still no response from Eric after three hours. He doesn’t want to see me and I don’t blame him.
I was born unlucky. Not “brick falls on my head as I stroll by my favorite coffee shop” unlucky. Not “struck by lightning” unlucky. Nothing that would go viral on social media. My life has mostly been “Alanis Morissette’s ‘Ironic’ ” unlucky. Black flies and myriad spoons. With the constant threat of death.
My father left our family when I was seven. A year later, my mother dragged me and Andi with her to Pittsburgh for a psychic reading. The psychic said my mother would meet and fall in love with a wealthy black-haired man who would rescue us and keep us safe in a tower in the city. My mother couldn’t hide her joy. The psychic had promised three things she had always wanted but never had: true love, riches, and a lavish home. She was so happy, my mother tipped the psychic handsomely.
In a hushed tone at the end of the session, the psychic added that maybe my mother should consider spending more time with “the little one”—she nodded her head toward me next to my older sister—because I would die as a child. My mother’s new smile crumbled for a split second, but she snatched back the cash gratuity and recovered her glow.
At the time, I must have thought the session was pretend storytelling until my mother met and married that black-haired rich man who swept us away to Manhattan. They divorced five years later, and my mom, my sister, and I ended up in a one-bedroom in Queens. The psychic hadn’t said anything about it lasting forever.
An eight-year-old’s brain can’t truly process the idea of dying. It only knows that it is unsafe. As a result, I was on high alert at all times. Since I didn’t know what danger I was looking for, I became scared of everything. It was simply how I moved through the world: afraid.
When my stepfather left us, my mother sought the counsel of an astrologer. Unlike the psychic who had rocked side to side with her eyes slightly closed, this astrologer was composed. She sat in front of stacks of books printed in languages I couldn’t read. She studied a massive piece of paper, a map of your mother, she’d said. She drew lines with her finger and pointed to symbols of planets we’d learned in science class. She told my mother all sorts of truths, about her and her future, but something more amazing happened that day. My fear evaporated in that room.
Astrology was something I could study, unlike the psychic prediction pulled from thin air. Looking at the stars, my challenges could be found in the location of the planets in certain houses of my birth chart. Obstacles were explained by noting the angles these planets made to one another—the oppositions, trines, and squares. And yet, there is still one thing I can’t find in my chart: my death date.
I pick up a stray acorn on the roof and toss it as far as I can. I don’t hear it land. I shimmy over to the landing and pull myself up. But instead of climbing to safety, I stand on top of the railing so that my head pops above the turret’s roof. With nothing above me I have to grip the edge of the roof from underneath. My fingers bend and burn, but I hold on tighter and spit into the wind. I let go of the underside of the tile with my right hand and shake it out. I switch hands, simultaneously grabbing the tiles with my right hand while I shake out my left. I lose my balance but stabilize by pulling myself closer to the turret roof.
I lean back farther this time and do the switch again. My left hand slips and I scramble to catch myself. My favorite purple pen falls out of my pocket and bounces off the lower roof with a click, click, click. I let myself hang there until sweat springs on my upper lip and my fingers cramp up.
I never mentioned the psychic’s prediction to anyone. Not my astrology mentor, though I asked her for strategies in predicting death all the time, which she repeatedly dismissed. She thought there were some dark matters that should stay outside the purview of the practice. Namely, no forecasting elections and no death dates.
