She said all the right things, offered her mother compassion and sympathy. But, deep down, she hadn’t really understood. Why had her mother endured the shame, the humiliation, the rage and just let him get away with it for, it turned out, decades? How could she live with it, with him, with herself? Selena had wondered. In this moment, in the dark of her bedroom, talking to her oldest boy, the truth of it came home, hard. You’d endure just about anything to spare your child pain. She pulled on her robe.
“I’ll go get him,” she said. “Let’s get you back into your bed, okay?”
“But—”
She stewarded him to his room and tucked him in again.
“Do you hate him?” Oliver asked as she moved away.
The answer was so complicated it backed up in her throat. “No,” she said. “Of course not. No more than you hate Stephen.”
He nodded, seemed to get the complexity of the statement, her little old man. “And we both love you and your brother more than anything. Never forget that.”
No matter what happens next, she thought, but didn’t say.
He was already drifting off, exhausted, as she pulled the door to his bedroom closed.
Downstairs, she turned off the alarm and walked out into the dark in her robe and slippers. She knocked hard on the window, startling Graham from his doze. She looked around the neighborhood. She should have just called him on his cell phone; what would people think if they saw? They’d think they were a flawed mess of a family, just like everyone else probably was.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked when he rolled down the window.
“Joe kicked me out,” he said, pathetically. “He had company.”
“Have you ever heard of a hotel?”
“I didn’t want to spend the money.”
He had her there. She’d thought about canceling all his credit cards, moving their money from accounts he had access to into one that he didn’t know about. But she hadn’t followed through.
He had a bandage over his eye. In her rage, she’d picked up Stephen’s robot and hurled it at Graham, hitting him right on the forehead. There had been lots of blood. Not her finest moment. She almost felt sorry for him.
“Just come inside. Do you want the neighbors to see you out here?”
“I don’t give a fuck about the neighbors.”
“Or anyone else.”
He offered her an elaborate eye roll, dropped his head back against the seat.
“Selena.”
She walked across the street and up the path to their door, hugging herself against the cold, and he followed.
“Sleep in your office,” she said.
“Can we talk?”
“No,” she said, walking up the stairs.
She didn’t turn to look at him, just returned to her bedroom, closing and locking the door. She sat in the chair a while, heart racing, mind spinning. What was she going to do?
She was surprised to hear her phone ping, half wondered if it was Graham texting her from downstairs.
A text from an unknown number read:
Hey, how’s it going? Great meeting you last night.
Who was this now? She was about to delete when her phone pinged again.
I’d love to continue our conversation. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Can we get together?
No, thought Selena. It couldn’t be.
The woman she’d met, her dark tone, the strange energy of it all, came back to her vividly. Heat came up in her cheeks: Selena had confessed her most personal secret to a stranger. Of course, the other woman had shared her secret, too. There was something oddly bonding about that, wasn’t there?
They hadn’t exchanged numbers, had they? She moved to delete the text, but her finger hovered.
Maybe she should answer. She felt a powerful desire to hear the other woman’s voice, to tell her what she couldn’t tell anyone else in her life. She hadn’t even told Beth. Yet there was a strong pull to bare all to this stranger.
No. It must be a wrong number. She tapped to delete and block, but the phone chimed again before she could complete the action.
It’s Martha, by the way.
From the train.
ELEVEN
Selena
Selena woke Monday morning before the alarm went off. It was still dark, and the wind howled, knocking branches against the window. Before she even opened her eyes, her to-do list asserted itself into her consciousness—write an email to Stephen’s teacher and schedule a meeting, get a birthday gift for her nephew, Jasper, polish her part of the big client presentation that afternoon, file her expenses, call her mother.
Amazing.
World crumbling, still making lists. Life went on.
Graham pushed in the bedroom door and climbed into bed beside her. He was sleeping in the home office, coming into their bed before the boys woke up. She ignored him, kept her eyes pressed closed. The truth was that, at the moment, she could barely stand the sight of him. The image of Geneva on top of him was on an ugly loop in her mind.
“Are you awake?” he whispered, reaching for her.
“No,” she answered, shifting as far away from him as possible while still remaining on the bed. He turned away, lay on his back, gazing at the ceiling.
The truth.
Selena had posted on Instagram three times over the weekend. First, the boys helping with breakfast on Saturday morning. Every smart mom teaches her boys how to cook! she wrote. Their wives will thank me one day!
Then, the family walk they took at the state park about a half hour from the house. They’d hiked the trails, the boys rambling the rocky paths, she and Graham lagging behind, a dull silence between them. She snapped a picture of them by the river—Graham leaning down to show the kids a rock he thought might be a fossil. Nothing like a couple hours in nature to center and calm after a busy week!
On Sunday, she and the boys finally got started on the Lego Death Star, an epic project that would take weeks. She posted a photo of the open box, the stack of instruction manuals, the clear bags filled with tiny pieces. Oh, boy! This is going to be a major undertaking!
What didn’t make it onto social media: the leaden silence between Graham and her; the boys, clearly picking up on the tension, acting out every chance they got; Oliver and Stephen literally wrestling on the floor over a ladle; how they never got very far on that Lego project because of a fight over who got to open the first bag; Graham checking and checking his phone compulsively while the boys raged and were finally sent to their room. Later, while Selena did the laundry and some of the cooking for the week, the boys vegged in front of the television—for hours. She let them, just to get some quiet time. More laundry. The dishes. Stephen’s skinned knee. Selena crying in the shower out of sheer exhaustion and unhappiness.
Was it a lie to only show the glittering moments? What about the dull, the mundane, the ugly? If they weren’t posted online, were they less real? Graham wanted to know: Why post at all? What are you trying to prove?
“What’s going to happen?” Graham asked now. “What are we doing here?”
Morning light made its debut, leaking milky gray through the blinds. He moved closer to her, pulled her back from the edge of the bed, and draped an arm over her middle. She thought about pushing him away. But the truth was that his warmth comforted her. She stayed still, marveling at how she wanted to throttle and cling to him. Even though the weekend was hard, they still laughed at times, still parented, still cooked and ate. The truth was that it was everything—the beautiful and ugly all in one impossible tangle.