Kindergarten Baby: A Novel (2 page)

Most of all, she wanted everything to be the way it was‌—‌or at least the way she thought it had been when she’d headed out to work that morning. She let the fever carry her away, let herself melt into foggy memories of that morning, when he’d brought her breakfast in bed, complete with her favorite crunchy wheat toast, sweet cantaloupe, a tall, hot latte‌—‌even a red chrysanthemum from their garden, standing in a bud vase. He’d smothered her with cool, tickling kisses and told her to have a wonderful day in kinderland. It had all seemed so romantic…‌and so unreal. Could all the extra attention he’d given her lately merely have been a cover up? Had he hoped just to keep her happy so she wouldn’t suspect him of this destructive, sordid affair?

She was startled when a wet nose nuzzled her fevered cheek. “Oh, hello, Wendell,” she said sadly. “You’ve been a good boy today, right?”

He sat by her side, cocking his head as if he were trying to understand her mood.

“You don’t want to know, Wendell. Believe me, you really don’t.”

“I’ve got to get back to the clinic,” Anthony announced, sweeping into the room. His voice carried about as much warmth as a corpse.

“Really?” she croaked, giving him a taste of her own bitter coolness. “It wasn’t so important to be there earlier today, was it?”

He sat on the coffee table in front of her, propped his elbows on his knees, and met her eyes. “Look, Lindsey, I know you’re upset. We need to talk.”

We need to talk?
“It seems a little late for that,” she said dryly.

The combination of illness and shock blanketed her with an oddly numb, empty sensation, but she knew it was only a matter of time before her intense pain and justifiable anger arrived.

“I never meant for you to see that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Well, that’s probably true. That’s probably the only truth I’ve had from you in quite a while.” She made an attempt at a shrug. “Of course you wouldn’t want me to see that. It’s much more difficult to pull off an affair when the wife knows about it.”

He stared at her, his strong jaw set, and she thought she’d never seen such cold, distant eyes before. “We’ll talk,” he told her. “I’ve got to go.”

Without another word, without any attempt to comfort his ill and traumatized wife, he left.

Wendell kept vigil by her side as she stared at the ceiling, detaching herself to the best of her ability from the unfathomable situation at hand. So this was her new reality, she mused, waiting for the Nyquil to take affect. Why did they always seem to call things a “reality” when the outcome looked dreadful or dim? All she’d wanted was a little happiness, a little love.

The clock on the mantel ticked, and Wendell’s warm, damp, rhythmic breathing puffed on her face as he waited for an explanation.

I was a good wife
, she thought, just before her eyes closed.
I was
.

When she awoke, the clock still ticked, but darkness had crept over the interior of their tiny home. Lindsey rose from the sofa like a feeble old woman, searching for Wendell, Anthony, and something cool to drink. The drink was easy to find. The fridge was full of not-so-healthy soda, fruit and vegetable juices, and sparkling water. She chose a soda and drank it straight out of the can, enjoying the cool shock of the bubbles against her rough throat. Locating Wendell took a bit more effort. He wasn’t in his well-worn, jumbo-sized, dog bed, and he wasn’t in the backyard, which was his favorite place to be when left to his own devices. When she finally found him, he was sitting stiffly by the front door, as if on guard. Then she noticed the clock. Not the sound, but the time‌—‌3:45 a.m.

Wearily, she climbed upstairs, expecting to find her sleeping husband. She would forgive him, she decided. They would start over. She toyed with the idea that the whole ugly scene had been a hallucination, just a figment of her fevered imagination. Deep down, though, she knew that wasn’t the case. Still…‌there might be a reasonable explanation‌—‌or perhaps not reasonable, but at least an explanation of some kind. No matter what, she would save her marriage. Anthony was everything to her. He was her only family.

She poked her head into their bedroom. “Honey? Anthony?” she called in her softest, sweetest voice.

He wasn’t there. He hadn’t come home. She walked to the side of the bed, stroked her fingers over his pillow. Then she pulled her hand away and examined the long strands of hair that had attached themselves to her fingers. The other woman was a redhead.

Out of habit, she glanced at the upstairs answering machine, and her mood lifted when she saw the red light blinking. Only one message. With anticipation, she pressed Play, expecting to hear him apologizing with the utmost sincerity, begging for forgiveness. Instead, she heard Laura’s perky voice, inquiring about her health.

“Hey Linds, you’re not answering your phone. Good! You must be sleeping. Rest up. You don’t often get the chance to lie in bed all day. They called a sub for you tomorrow, so don’t even think about coming to school. And don’t stay up all night writing lesson plans. I put a video on your desk for the sub to use. It’s educational…‌or it’s
somewhat
educational.” She hesitated. “Well, okay. It’s entertaining, and the kids will like it. I’ll say a tiny prayer that the principal doesn’t do a walk through while it’s on. And I borrowed some fun worksheets from the Ditto Queen. Your students will survive one day of less than perfect instruction. Don’t worry about a thing. Sweet dreams. Call me if you need anything your hunky hubby can’t provide.”

Lindsey dropped onto the side of their king-sized bed and stared despondently ahead. Her friend and colleague
cared more about her than her own husband did
.
Her thoughts drifted to memories of her first true friend, Cindy, a little girl she’d met at the group home after her parents died. Cindy was the one who had introduced her to fairy tales. Together they read from a collection of fairy tales for hours. Often, in their own way, they acted them out.

“All right,” she remembered Cindy saying, “you can be Sleeping Beauty first, and I’ll be the old granny at the spinning wheel. But next time, I get to be the pretty girl.”

Just as little Lindsey pricked her small finger on the imaginary spindle, the home’s supervisor walked in, grabbed Lindsey, and marched her down the hall. Then she handed the little girl off to her first foster family. Funny, she’d forgotten all about that day until just now.

Where is my husband?
As if she didn’t know. She bit her lower lip, forcing herself to think straight. That wasn’t fair. Maybe he was just at a friend’s house‌—‌a
male
friend’s house‌—‌trying to figure out how to make things right, win Lindsey back.

Who am I kidding?
He was probably with
her
, she admitted to herself.

Who was this mystery woman who had seduced Anthony, singlehandedly destroying their marriage? Lindsey scowled. She was probably tall and gorgeous, with long red hair‌—‌no matter how she tried, Lindsey just couldn’t get her hair to grow quite as long as Anthony wanted‌—‌and most likely the other woman was far more voluptuous than Lindsey would ever be.
Damn it!
she thought, springing off the bed. That woman had been right there in her bed, doing God knows what with her husband.

Lindsey’s life had become a soap opera, and she was the most pitiful character of all.

She couldn’t stay in that room, but she couldn’t physically stand up any longer. Wrapping her arms around her stomach, Lindsey dragged herself back downstairs to the sofa. She held her breath against the strong, medicinal smell, then took an extra large swig of the stop-the-aching-coughing-sneezing-fever-so-you-can-rest medicine, hoping to escape.

Wendell stared at her, his big brown eyes confused. She reached over and scratched behind one ear. “Wendell, you might as well lie down,” she said. “He’s not coming back tonight.”

Her faithful friend gave her a sympathetic nuzzle, then circled three times and lay down with a grunt. Lindsey briefly hoped she’d fall asleep first, but Wendell won. He began to snore, making a sound that only a one hundred and sixty pound, overtired mastiff can make. It was going to be a long, long night.

***

“Lindsey? Are you okay?”

Anthony!

“Have you been sleeping all day?”

She battled her heavy eyelids and looked up, still groggy. “What? Huh? What time is it?”

Anthony stood beside her, as handsome as ever, and the look in his eyes was tender. He sat beside her and placed a cool, strong hand against her forehead, then shook his head. Just like that, he began to take care of her, with all the usual attention. He took her temperature, brought her an extra pillow, then placed her favorite books and DVDs so she could reach them without getting up. After that, he set out some aspirin and made a phone call to a friend from the hospital for a prescription that he couldn’t legally write.

After last night, all this wonderful attention made little sense, unless…‌Wait. Could it have all been a dream? A nightmare? Maybe. Yes. She blinked slowly, watching Anthony when he brought her toast and a cup of tea then set it gently by her.
He must still care if he’s able to do all this and still smile at me so tenderly.
That meant it had all been a nightmare. It
had
to mean that.
Oh, thank you God,
she thought, fleetingly happy, despite her aches, fever, sore throat, and cough. She couldn’t imagine her life without him.

“Honey,” he said softly, sitting by her. “I’m sorry that you have to go through all this.”

She smiled, trying to sound like her usual perky self through the congestion. “Oh, I’ll be all right. This darned thing will run its course, and I’ll be back on my feet in a few days.”

He swallowed. “I’m not talking about the flu, Lindsey.”

“All right,” she said sleepily. “What do you want to call it? A bad cold? Sinus? Overwork? Poor alignment?” She gave him a lopsided grin. “With a few of your super spinal adjustments, maybe a cranial adjustment or two, I’ll be back on my feet even sooner.”

He jumped to his feet. “Lindsey!” he said sternly. “Stop it!”

The walls she’d built around her began to crumble. So it hadn’t been a hallucination.
No, no, no!
But he kept talking, saying things she couldn’t stand to hear.

“Listen. I never wanted to hurt you. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I wish it hadn’t, but it did, and now I’m in love with someone else.”

She tried to speak, tried to scream, but nothing came out. He shook his head violently, then turned away. She stared at his back as he walked out the front door.

“No!” she whimpered. “No, you don’t. You love
me!”

Life swirled in slow motion around her, out of reach, out of control. Her head buzzed, throbbed, and she felt a deep, enveloping numbness close around her as if she were submerged in murky water. She was nothing but a pawn now, she realized, waiting for Anthony’s next move.

CHAPTER THREE

When Lindsey woke to the pounding, ringing, and shouting, still hazy from her trauma-plus-Nyquil induced sleep, it took a moment to put it all together. Fighting gravity, she managed to sit up on the sofa, though even that made her dizzy.

“Lindsey?” she heard. “Anthony? Wendell? Is
anybody
home?”

Wendell bounded in from the backyard, barking loudly, ready to defend his territory, but he backed off when he recognized Laura. The barking turned to wagging as she let herself in.

Laura narrowed her eyes at her friend. “You really ought to lock your door, you know. Even with the world’s greatest‌—‌well, at least the world’s
largest
watchdog.”

“Oh. Hi, Laura. How are the kids?”

“Your kids are fine. But how are you? You don’t look so good, Linds.”

Lindsey made a brave attempt at a smile. “You know me. I’ll find some way to pull it together by Monday. I’ve got all weekend to get over this.”

“Oh, I have no doubt that you’ll be back at school on Monday,” she said, frowning, “but I’m worried about you.” She sat beside her friend, looking concerned. “I’ve never seen an illness get a hold of you like this. Are you sure you’re all right?”

No,
she thought, feeling miserable.
No, I’m not all right.

She hesitated at first, not wanting to tell her friend what had happened. What if Laura saw her as a loser? But deep down Lindsey knew better. Laura was the closest thing she had to family besides Anthony. So she confided in her friend. She told her how it had been, coming home to a not-so-empty house.

“What am I supposed to do?” she cried.

“What
did
you do?” Laura asked, eyes wide with shock.

She felt her body give in, and the tears started up again. “I fell apart.”

Laura gathered her friend in her arms, rubbing her back and speaking gently. “Oh, honey. Maybe he just made a mistake. Granted, it’s a big one, but it doesn’t mean it’s the end. She might have caught him in a vulnerable moment and seduced him. Maybe she—”

“His last words were, ‘I’m in love with another woman,’ and I assume that meant her. You have to admit, that doesn’t sound like a momentary lack of judgment.”

Laura wiped tears from her own eyes. “Oh Linds. Don’t give up. This other woman, who is she?”

“I don’t know. In my book she’s the wicked witch, the cruel stepmother, the evil fairy all rolled into one,” blurted Lindsey. “All I know is that she’s got long red hair. And I seriously doubt she’s ugly.”

“Ah, now that’s where you’re wrong, my friend. In my opinion, any woman who would do what she did‌—‌sleep with another woman’s husband, and
especially
in the other woman’s bed‌—‌well, she
is
ugly.”

Lindsey sniffed, then silently nodded. “What do I do now?”

“Take a shower,” Laura advised. “You’re a mess. I’ll whip up something for dinner.”

It felt surreal, stepping into the familiar shower, and her mind couldn’t help but flash back on intimate moments she and Anthony had shared there. As the steam rose around her, Lindsey yielded to the pain roaring through her mind, body, and soul. She slid down the wall until she sat on the cool tiles, then rocked back and forth, sobbing convulsively, and her tears mingled with the drops of water raining down from the shower.