Other People's Houses, page 18
Frances wondered if Shelly was suggesting that Frances was somehow complicit in Anne’s cheating, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Yes, it’s sad. I hope they’re able to work it out.”
“For the children.”
“Sure, but also for them. I imagine divorcing someone is very painful, even if you’re both ready to leave the marriage.”
“And Charlie presumably isn’t ready, seeing as he wasn’t the one cheating.”
Frances shrugged. “You’d have to ask him. I’m trying to stay out of their business.”
“How do the kids seem?”
Frances nodded her head at a distant field. “Theo’s playing goal, and hasn’t let any in yet, so he’s presumably fine right now. Kate is sitting with her dad over there, doing stickers. I expect they’re sad, but they’ll be OK. Kids are resilient, right?”
Shelly looked at her and tipped her head to one side. “You know, Frances, you don’t need to be defensive. Friends rally around at times of crisis, it takes a village, right?” She smiled sweetly. “It’s interesting when other people’s pain brings up issues . . . Are you and Michael having problems?”
Frances resisted the urge to punch the other woman in the throat. “I didn’t think I was being defensive, Shelly. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.” She felt herself starting to sweat, hating any kind of conflict. “If you’re so worried about the Porters you should go and speak to Charlie, he’s right there.” She wasn’t even going to touch the comment about her own marriage. She herself never felt she was intimate enough with someone to ask about their marriage, unless they were, like, friends for a decade or related by blood or thrown together on a sinking cruise liner or something. You came across this false, fast intimacy all the time in the circles she moved in. People who loved to talk about their feelings, their fears, their colonic irrigation, their therapy, their children’s therapy, their sex life, their new car. Frances barely had room in her head for her own feelings plus a running grocery list. She felt like the Mad Hatter: No room! No room!
She looked around, hoping the soccer game was nearly over, or that Lally had been mildly concussed, or something that would end this stupid conversation. But no, Lally was now running in a different direction, still wrong, but different. Over on a nearby pitch Milo was playing a real game of soccer, as the difference between four and ten years old was significant when it came to rules and balls. Ava had loved soccer. Frances suddenly had a vision of the little trophies she used to bring home proudly, the slices of orange making her wrists sticky, the bouncing ponytail as she pelted across the grass. That nine-year-old was long gone now and Ava seemed to barely remember her, or even care about the things that used to matter so much. Dinosaurs. Doll clothes. Horses. Legos. Drawing was the only one that stayed, the one passion that had yet to wane.
“Frances?” Shelly was still looking at her, a deeper wrinkle between her eyebrows. Shit, apparently she’d drifted off there for a moment. She looked at Shelly and smiled vaguely.
“Sorry, Shelly, got distracted. What were you saying?”
But Shelly herself was suddenly distracted by something behind Frances, and the way her eyes widened suggested it was way more interesting than Frances’s apparent descent into dementia. Frances turned, guessing before she saw her that Anne Porter had just arrived.
* * *
• • •
Anne realized as she got closer that this was a major mistake, but she had told Charlie she would show up and there was no turning back. She couldn’t have chosen a more public place to appear, as pretty much everyone she knew was there, or at least enough of them that everyone she knew would get a firsthand account.
She felt like crap. Apart from the eggs at Frances’s she’d barely eaten in the last few days. She still hadn’t called her parents: Her mother didn’t enjoy bad news. Or maybe she did enjoy it, but whoever brought the bad news lived to regret it. Anne decided to wait until she had a better story to tell. Rather than, “Hi, Mom, I fucked up massively and now my life has shattered into a million pieces,” she wanted to be able to lead with, “Hi, Mom, Charlie and I have been having some problems, but it’s all better now. How are you?” It might take a while, but she was going to wait for that. Her mom preferred to parent the good parts of her children only.
Now Anne was standing in the heat of the soccer fields in the park, looking around for her kids and trying very hard not to make eye contact with the parent body of her school. It was hard because although a generous third of them were doing her the courtesy of pretending she wasn’t there, the other two-thirds were avidly watching and hoping she was either drunk or insane. Some of them were looking behind her, hoping she’d brought the eighteen-year-old she was supposedly sleeping with.
Suddenly she saw Frances, and instinctively started walking toward her. Frances was looking at her, but with a question in her eyes, rather than judgment: Are you OK? Anne walked toward her resolutely, avoiding any other eye contact. As she got closer, though, she realized Shelly was standing with Frances and nearly stopped. Shelly was absolutely the worst possible person to run into, but fortunately Frances was stepping around her and walking to meet Anne in the middle, curving her body as she walked to suggest a bench off to one side as a meeting point. It was like semaphore: Don’t panic, we’re heading for that bench, we’re going to make it, keep going. Anne had started to feel tingling in her hands, and pulsing nausea; she was going to have a panic attack.
“You’re fine,” was the first thing Frances said as they got close enough to hear each other. “You’re fine, just sit down on the bench. I’ll get out the taser and keep the bitches at bay, OK?”
“OK.” Anne’s voice was a whisper.
They were now walking together, and Frances added, “Lili’s here somewhere, and so are Jim and Andy, and between us we will create a human shield if we have to.”
They reached the bench and sat down. Anne was breathing rapidly, her color very bad, her nausea worsening.
“I’m going to throw up.”
Frances shifted her purse on her shoulder and let it fall to the ground. “Oh dear, I dropped my purse. Quick, bend down and help me pick up my shit. Keep your head lower than your knees.”
Anne did as she was told. Frances, it turned out, had a great deal of stuff in her handbag. Toys, sweets, coins, a pack of cards that spilled helpfully across the grass, a little Hot Wheels car, a bottle of bubble solution, several pens, several pen lids, none of which went together, and so on and so forth.
Frances knelt on the grass in front of the bench, shielding Anne while they picked up the contents of her bag. “Feeling better?”
Anne kept her head down, and a sob escaped her. “No.”
Frances made a soft noise of support, such as one might make to a child, and touched Anne on the knee. “Anne, you messed up, but you’re here now for your kids, and you need to pull it together. You are not going to throw up or freak out, you are going to let the blood flow back into your extremities and once you’re able to stand up again we’ll find the kids and you will be good once you see them, alright?”
“If they want to see me. If Charlie will let me.”
“He told you to come here, right?” Frances looked worried, suddenly. “You’re not just turning up unexpectedly?”
Anne shook her head, gathering the playing cards together and searching for a rubber band or something to keep them together. Frances handed her a black-covered hair elastic, which worked just fine. “No, I’m invited.”
“Excellent.” Frances looked relieved.
“He’s coming,” Anne said and suddenly sat up, the blood restored, the nausea subsided, the inner anxiety reduced just by seeing her husband, even though he hated her now. She tried a smile. He’d always loved her smile.
Charlie didn’t smile back. Instead he spoke to Frances. “Nice to know whose side you’re on, Frances.”
Frances sat back on her heels and looked up at him. He was barely holding it together. “Don’t be silly, Charlie. She looked like she was about to pass out, and rather than give the local witches something even juicier to talk about, I helped. I hope you would do the same for me.”
He shook his head. “Not if you’d cheated on your husband and ruined the happiness of your children. You’d be just as big a bitch as she is.” He looked at his wife with disgust. “I’d have let her fall, personally.”
Frances stood up. “I’m glad to see you’re handling this so well. I’m going back to my kids now, before I say something we both have to live with for years.” She turned back to Anne and smiled. “Sorry, Anne. I hope you feel better.”
Apparently soccer was over because behind them they heard Kate and Theo happily calling to their mother, and thundering in their direction. Frances walked away, and the kids passed her going top speed. Her own kids were waiting for her, watching her come with trusting expressions. There were juice boxes in their future, and possibly ice cream.
“Is Anne OK?” Shelly had stepped into her path, looking concerned in a way that suddenly pissed Frances off. Shelly barely knew Anne, she just wanted to be the One Who Knew the Scoop.
“Sure,” replied Frances, not slowing down very much.
“Can you believe she cheated on Charlie? He’s so nice. Those poor kids. So selfish, right?” Shelly made a little clicking sound with her tongue. Frances still didn’t slow down, but she looked at Shelly and raised her eyebrows.
“You know absolutely nothing about it, Shelly, and you should keep your ill-formed and unwelcome judgments to yourself. Maybe your life is a well-orchestrated series of elegant vignettes, with perfect photo opportunities every ten minutes, but if you’re anything like the rest of us then you’re lurching from one near-disaster to the next, crossing your legs every time you cough so you don’t pee your pants after having had four children.”
Shelly just stared at her, her mouth open.
“That’s what I thought,” said Frances, walking by and farting silently as she went. She was opposed to chemical warfare on principle, but sometimes you just had to go with what you had at hand.
Twenty-five.
Theo and Kate were beyond excited to see their mom, which wasn’t surprising, thought Charlie. He had felt the usual warm feeling, too, for a nanosecond. Habituated neurons firing as they always had. It takes a while for the head to catch up with the heart, it would seem. He was so incredibly angry with Anne it took all he had not to scream at her or slap her, something he had never, ever even been remotely tempted to do to her, or to anyone. But he didn’t, because his kids were beaming and hanging on her and she was smiling down at them as if she hadn’t just thrown away their happiness for a fuck.
Two days earlier, after he had spoken to the school principal, he had forced himself to call his wife.
“It’s me.”
“I’m so sorry, so sorry, Charlie, I really never . . .” She had started crying as soon as she saw his name on her phone, “ICE Charlie Porter.” Would he even come in an emergency now? She’d have to change that along with every other single aspect of her life.
He couldn’t have been further from tears. “Save it. We need to tell the children together. I just met with the principal. She persuaded me that it’s better for them.”
There was a pause. “What are we going to tell them?”
“We’re going to tell them that we’re not being very good friends right now, and that you’re going to move out for a while so we can stay friends. That we love them just as much, that we are still their mom and dad, and that it has nothing to do with them.”
“You’re not going to tell them about what I did?”
“Not today. Today we’re going to just tell them what’s going to happen. Are you able to do that? Mrs. Garcia said it’s better if we both do it, but if you’re going to fall apart I’ll do it alone.”
For a split second Anne remembered how cold he had been on the phone, as she hugged her children on this hot Saturday afternoon, and looked up at him. He looked like he could punch her any minute, and although she had never been afraid of him before, not even fleetingly, now she dropped her gaze.
“Where do you want to go, my loves?” Focus on the kids, Anne.
Kate shouted out for ice cream, but Theo looked confused. “Aren’t we just going home?”
His dad’s voice came from behind him. “Mommy isn’t living there right now, remember?”
Theo frowned, and turned to face his father. “But she can still visit, right? She’s still our mom.” He turned back to Anne and tugged on her hand. “You can come to my room, Mom.”
“And mine!” Kate said, jealously. “We can play Littlest Pet Shop.”
Theo was scornful. “She doesn’t want to play that.”
Anne would have given her right arm to play Littlest Pet Shop with Kate as if nothing was wrong, but she tried not to show it. She waited for Charlie to give her permission to visit her own house, a house that was half in her name, a house she could choose to forcibly occupy if she wanted.
Charlie was wrestling with competing desires: On the one hand he wanted Anne nowhere near his house, but he also wanted his kids to feel safe, loved, and on his side. He was so ashamed of this feeling that he immediately said Anne could come. Of course.
“I want to ride with Mom!” Kate said, jumping up and down. “Did you get a new car?”
Anne shook her head. “No, I walked here, we can all just go home together.” The words came out smoothly, but she suddenly needed to use the bathroom, her gut twisting at the thought of walking into her house.
But her face showed nothing, and together they all walked to their car, just like it was any other Saturday.
* * *
• • •
Walking into his house behind his wife, Charlie nearly lost it when Anne went to hang her keys on the hook, then realized she didn’t live there anymore. Like a sound wave her pain passed back from her to him, the whole moment lasting maybe half a second. He wanted to cut out this connection to her like a tumor. He wanted to wind back his arm and throw a ball of shared history arcing out over the ocean, an unheard splash, unrecoverable. But he couldn’t forget loving Anne any more than he could forget a second language spoken every day for a decade. She was in the curls of his brain. His eyes had recorded and decoded her tiniest expression. They’d seen and codified her fear, her caution, her passion, her childbirth, her laughter. His hands had touched her intimately, aroused her, held her hair while she threw up, carried her into their first house, wiped her brow in fever, handed her diapers and wipes, brought her coffee. He’d smelled her perfume, her blood, her hair, her bad morning breath. He’d heard her voice, possibly every word and tone her larynx was capable of. She was talking now, asking the kids if they were hungry, as if she was still their mother, which of course she was, and always would be. Suddenly he hated her with each and every one of the senses that had loved her so thoroughly for so long.
“I’ll get them a snack,” he said roughly, pushing past her, aware he’d made her step sideways, knowing by that brief touch that she’d lost weight, that she was barely holding it together. Get out of my head, he wanted to scream, disappear from the earth and never have existed, all of you.
“Is there raisin toast?” Kate asked. He smiled at her and nodded. For a moment he had the mad thought he was cheating on his children by pretending to be OK when, in fact, he was clinging to sanity with only the tiniest sliver of fingernail. He wondered if this was how Anne felt, if the distance between her inside and her outside had been that yawning a chasm. Well, he was holding it together for the kids and she should have, too, the bitch.
He pulled two pieces of raisin bread from the bag and put them in the toaster, pushing down the lever hard enough the first time, rather than having to do it over and over as so often happened. See? Broken on the inside, capable on the outside.
The kids had run upstairs to change out of their soccer stuff, and Anne watched her husband standing by the toaster, apparently guarding the little machine from attack. He’d made it stay down the first time; she could never do that. It was fussy, that toaster, maybe the fifth one they’d had in as many years. How come they couldn’t make toasters that lasted anymore? Her grandparents had had the same toaster her whole childhood, one with enamel sides with blue flowers on them, drawn by what must have been a drunken artist with a shaky hand, his blue pencil wavering as he drew those long stems and petals.
Charlie was angry, she could see it in his shoulders, and she ached for him more than she’d ever ached for anything. The toast popped and she watched him butter it for Kate with quick, efficient movements, getting the butter to the edges, no further. He loved his kids so much, and he would never love her again. He turned and carried the toast past her, the cool breeze of his passing sweetened by the smell of raisins.
“Charlie,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Toast,” he replied, walking out of the room.
* * *
• • •
She waited for him in the kitchen, but he didn’t come back. Looking around she noticed how much tidier it was now that she no longer lived there. Who would have guessed she was the messy one? She went upstairs but her bedroom door was closed, so she went to Kate’s room. Kate was out of her soccer uniform, but had clearly been interrupted by the arrival of the toast, because she was wearing leggings and socks, but no top. Anne brushed toast crumbs from her daughter and pulled a little sweatshirt over her head. Then she sat down in the glider where she’d rocked this child from birth, and pulled Kate onto her lap.
