Bigger (The Nicky Beets series) (12 page)

“Hey,” she said, and from the tight sound of her throat I could tell she
was crying.

“What’s wrong,” I asked, suddenly concerned.

Laurie cried for a moment, breathing heavily into the phone. “I just
can’t do this by myself anymore.”

“What, honey? What’s going on?” I didn’t have the foggiest idea what she
was talking about.

“I can’t raise this child by myself,” she enunciated each word with
force, as though she’d like to be punching something – or someone –
as she said them. “This is going to sound ridiculous. Sage has not had a bath
in a week. It’s not getting better; it’s getting worse. The mere sight of water
sends her into a panic. I’d just buckle down and force her in the tub if she
didn’t scream like she was being tortured when I do that. And meanwhile,
where’s her father? I finally went to find him in his office and he’s not even
in there! And he’s not answering his phone. I don’t know where he is …”

Laurie broke off, crying softly. I wasn’t even sure where to begin, but I
figured I’d start with the problem of the missing husband.

“Maybe he’s still at work?” I suggested.

“Maybe he’s at a bar. Maybe he’s fucking someone else – God knows
he hasn’t touched me in months. Maybe he went back to the UK, for all I know.
I’m not even sure when I last saw him!”

Laurie and Frank had a strange relationship. He was a loner who I assumed
spent most of his free hours holed up in his office, playing World of Warcraft.
I considered him practically asexual. But if Laurie wasn’t even sure when she’d
last seen him, this was beyond strange.

“Ok, well that’s not good,” I said helpfully. “I think I should come
over.”

“Please,” she agreed meekly.

Minutes later, I pulled into Laurie’s driveway and hurried up the front
steps, still wearing my slippers. I opened the unlocked front door to find
Laurie lying on the couch with a tissue over her face. Intermittent toddler
screams were still bursting from Sage’s bedroom in the rear of the house. Frank
was still nowhere to be seen.

I walked straight to the kitchen to find a bottle of wine. Locating a
serviceable pinot noir, I fished two glasses from the cabinet and brought
everything into the living room, where Laurie had graduated to laying her head
on a stack of pillows and hiccupping into a wad of tissues.

“Shhhhh” I comforted. I poured a generous serving of wine into her glass
and handed it to her. “Drink this, quickly.”

I poured myself a small taste and sank into the couch with a sigh. Laurie
and I stared at each other for a couple of minutes, shaking our heads as Sage’s
wails pierced the silence every few seconds. Laurie made a movement as though
she were going to get up.

“Sit your ass down,” I commanded.

Laurie sank back down and a fresh stream of tears started pouring from her
eyes.

“So you know I make it a rule not to say peep about your marriage,
regardless of how unconventional it may seem,” I started. “It’s none of my
business, or anyone else’s, what you do in your relationship, or how you raise
your kid. But honey, you’re miserable. And it’s just been getting worse as time
goes on.”

Laurie nodded slowly and wiped fresh tears from her cheeks. “I know. I
know it. Something’s got to give.”

I studied her for a moment. She was clearly exhausted and fed up.

“All right,” I said. “Hang tight. Drink more wine. I’m going to give Sage
a bath.”

Laurie looked at me like I was insane and opened her mouth to protest.

“Don’t argue with me. Let me give it a shot,” I said. She just looked at
me and nodded. I heard more wine glugging into her glass as I walked to the
back of the house. I opened the toddler’s bedroom door and came upon quite the
scene. Sage had been throwing a tantrum fit to beat the band. She’d flung every
stuffed animal and various other toys around her room in a fury and was now
perched on her bed, red-faced, snot dripping out of her nose. When she spotted
me her face transformed paradoxically into an expression of happiness.

“Aunt Nicky!” she yelled, lunging toward me for a hug.

“Hey kid,” I said, hugging her back. I gently set her back on her bed. “I
need your help with something very important.”

Sage stood tall with importance. “What?” she asked in wonderment.

“I need you to take a bath,” I said.
 

“Nooooooo!” she screamed immediately, shaking her tangled locks back and
forth irately. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

“Hey, hey, hey! Hear me out. You’d be doing me a really big favor. I
forgot how to take a bath and now I’m stinky. My boss said if I don’t take a
bath she’s gonna fire me!”

It was the best I could come up with spur of the moment. Sage looked
dubious, at best.

“You didn’t forget,” she accused.

“I did. I swear it. Want to smell my armpits? My boss says they’re really
smelly.”

Luckily I hadn’t showered yet that evening, following my workout. It was
plausible that I looked like a person who’d neglected to clean herself.

“Eeeew, no! I don’t want to smell them!” Sage yelled.

“Well I don’t blame you!” I exclaimed. “But can you show me how to take a
bath so I don’t get fired?”

Sage looked at me very seriously. “OK,” she agreed, unexpectedly.

“Oh, thank you!” I exclaimed, as though she was doing me the biggest
favor ever.

Ten minutes later I was naked as a jaybird and sitting in the tub with a
very dirty three-year-old. She was expertly pointing out all the areas I needed
to be sure to wash, while ignoring the fact that I was scrubbing her down with
soap and warm water as quickly as I could. I thanked her with wide eyes and
told her I thought I kind of remembered how it was done, now that she was
reminding me.

Half an hour after that, I’d thanked Sage profusely for her expert advice
and tucked her snugly into bed in a pair of clean pajamas. I closed her bedroom
door gently behind me and tiptoed back to the living room, where Laurie had
worked her way through most of the bottle of pinot and was lying prone on the
couch, staring at the wall.

“Done and done,” I told her.

Laurie’s eyes widened in disbelief. “No way. No
fucking
way. I’ve been trying to give that kid a bath for a week,
and you’re telling me she let you do it?”

I explained my modus operandi and recommended she try the same. At the
very least, bathing with Sage for a while might do the trick.

Laurie sank into the couch cushions and shut her eyes. “Thank you,” she
said, her eyes still closed.

“You’re welcome.”

A couple minutes passed. I poured myself more wine and settled in more
comfortably on the sectional.

“I have to leave him,” Laurie said suddenly. She was looking at me
resignedly.

“Are you sure?” I asked. Frank had been missing in action for years, but
maybe therapy would help.

“Yeah,” she nodded slowly. “I’ve tried. Believe me. I’ve tried
everything. We’re getting nowhere, fast. At this point, at least if I’m raising
Sage by myself, I know that. I can’t be worrying about where he is at ten
o’clock on a Tuesday night, too. That he’s not here, and I don’t know where he
is or when, or if, he’s coming back? It’s not OK. And who knows how long it’s
been going on.”

I couldn’t argue with her. Frank could get away with the reclusive
computer-guy schtick for a while, but a recluse who’s also MIA and potentially
having an affair with someone else? That was a no-go.

“I’m sorry, Laurie.”

“It’s OK. It’s probably been a long time coming, and I’m just now
realizing it,” she said. “At least I have you. How many people have friends who
will race over at this time of night and get in the bathtub with their hellion
of a child?”

I laughed. “You’d do the same for me … if I had a hellion of a child.
Anyway, Chuck and I had a fight and I wasn’t really feeling the love. I was
glad to get out of the house.”

Laurie was in no condition to discuss my comparatively minor relationship
woes. She gave me her “men are jerks” face and let her head fall heavily into
the couch cushion. She’d had an exhausting evening and ended it with half a
bottle of wine, and now her eyelids were drooping sleepily.

I rose to collect my purse and bid her goodbye. Laurie stayed put on the
couch as I pat her hair lightly and waved before shutting the door behind me
and climbing back into my car.

When I got home, Chuck was in bed. I regarded his still form in the
darkness of our bedroom. He was lying on his side, and obviously not asleep
– he breathes deeply and noisily when he’s asleep. He didn’t say
anything, and neither did I.

We were usually good at abiding by the age-old relationship rule of not
going to bed angry. But on the few occasions when it had happened, I couldn’t
stand to sleep next to Chuck; being that close to him when I was angry
prevented me from sleeping at all.

I backed out of our bedroom, closing the door behind me, and made my way
to the couch, where I settled in with a blanket. My thoughts disturbed me, even
though I didn’t consider the fight between Chuck and me serious. My personal
superstition about going to bed angry was that it allowed poisonous thoughts
from an argument to fester like a dirty wound. If I went to bed with hurt
feelings at night, chances were I’d awaken even more morose and probably
indignant. When that happened, the chances of resolving an argument quickly
pretty much went out the window.

But, I was drained. I shut my eyes, and fell asleep with my brow furrowed
and hands balled into anxious fists.

The following morning, Chuck was gone when I opened our bedroom door, the
blanket from my night on the couch wrapped around my shoulders. He’d obviously
taken pains to quietly ready himself and leave the house without waking me,
which was in itself disturbing – Chuck always left the house about an
hour after I did. If he was already gone, he was definitely still in rage mode.

I got myself ready, pulling on a new pair of gray wool trousers and a
flowy, dark green silk top I’d just bought that made me feel happy and
graceful. I’d dropped two pant sizes and had added a few pieces to my wardrobe
to fill in the gaps as I lost weight. I’d even bought a couple pairs of kitten
heels, so was no longer disgracing myself quite so frequently at the office
with my clunky flat footwear.

I admired myself in our bedroom’s floor length mirror before feeling a
pang of guilt for enjoying myself while I was still in the middle of a fight
with Chuck. I supposed I should have tried to resolve things the night before,
but hadn’t he started the whole thing in the first place? Frankly, I was still
baffled by his attitude and felt
he
should apologize to
me
. It wasn’t my
fault his dad had died and he was in a perpetual bad mood, so it wasn’t fair to
take it out on me.

I decided not to call him that day. If he wanted to call me, I would
answer and hear him out, but I definitely was not going to make the first move.

I spent the rest of the day checking my cell phone for missed calls, but
Chuck never phoned. By the time I was done being tortured by Evil Phil, as I
now referred to our sadistic yoga instructor, I was very worried about Chuck
and determined to make everything right that evening. I picked up a few things
at the grocery store on the way home, hustling myself and my sweat-soaked yoga
pants in and out as quickly as I could. When I got home, Chuck wasn’t there
yet, so I skipped my shower and started making my peace offering: A healthy but
scrumptious-smelling chicken curry, which was simmering on the stove next to a
pot of rice when I finally heard his key turn in the front door.

“Hey,” I called out tentatively.

“Hey,” he answered tersely. He walked out of our small entryway without
bothering to take his shoes off – yet again – and into the kitchen.
He was carrying a large, flat box, containing what smelled like a pepperoni and
sausage pizza.

I was stunned. I stood rooted to the spot with my mouth open.

“Um,” I started. “I made dinner?”

I was rather confused.

“I’m gonna eat pizza,” Chuck informed me. He slapped the box down on the
kitchen table, grabbed a plate from the cupboard and loaded up with a few
slices. As he was carrying his dinner into the living room he said, “Oh yeah, I
got half vegetarian if you want some.”

My nostrils were flaring in rage.

“You know I can’t eat pizza,” I said. “I can’t even eat
rice
.”

“Huh,” he said, staring at the TV. He’d already polished off half a
slice. Despite myself my mouth was watering with desire for the greasy pie.

“Why didn’t you at least call me to let me know you’d be bringing this
home?” I asked. “I made this dinner for you – I’m trying to make food
you’ll like.”

Chuck glanced at me, unconcerned. “I like pizza,” he stated flatly.

Fury was bubbling in my chest. “You can’t keep treating me like this,” I
began. “I’m not the asshole who fucked up your life. Why do you keep doing
this?”

I’d begun crying, which was humiliating, considering how pissed off I
was.

“Everything is all about you, isn’t it?” Chuck answered, without even
looking my way. “The way I am has nothing to do with you.”

I shook my head. “Well it feels like it has a lot to do with me.”

“That’s because you’re self-centered. You’ve never stopped to consider
what I’m going through.”

“You are unbelievable,” I answered, tears still running freely. “All I do
is consider what you’ve been through. You’re the one who’s being
self-centered.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

That one hit me like a blow to the stomach. I turned and covered my face
with my hands, weeping loudly.

I turned the stove burners off and stumbled to our bedroom, slamming the
door behind me. I slid down to the floor and cried, gasping convulsively. What
was happening?