Social Lives (12 page)

Caitlin read the last entry again and again. It provoked her from the inside out, this girl's story.
Yes
, she thought,
that's what it feels like—drowning slowly in the quicksand of your own life.
Could she survive if she never felt Kyle's hand against her skin again?

Cbow: I don't know. But it feels better to talk about it. Wanna hear about my guy?

Totallyfkd: Yeah, I do.

 

 

 

 

 

F
OR ALL INTENTS AND
purposes, life had returned to normal. David left for work every morning at the same time, on the same train. He came home after work at the same time, on the same train. They had dinner together, he and Jacks, after the kids were in bed or settled in their rooms. The menu was leftovers from the meal prepared for the kids, usually by the maid, sometimes by Jacks if she was feeling inspired, which hadn't been much lately. Consumed with worry and a biting anxiety, she'd spent every spare moment hounding Red for answers and concocting an escape plan.

It had taken him over a week to figure things out, but he had done it. That little bald man who was most certainly motivated by the faint hope that her sister might warm to him, as well as a primal sort of curiosity about a world he had never experienced, had managed to sort out what he could.

The words from that conversation were still playing over and over in her head:
Embezzlement. Fraud. Bankruptcy.
Everything Red had surmised that day at her sister's house had been right. It had not been easy to track down the information. Now that Red was a criminal, the vile and repulsive sort who had taken a life for nothing more than a night of debauchery, he had few contacts to work with. Some had turned him away, indignant, and wary that his stink might rub off on them. Some had felt a shred of sympathy. He'd
sought out public filings. And he'd called in a favor with a local lawyer who had worked at the U.S. Attorney's office in Hartford. It was more of an exchange than a favor, really. Red had promised to forget the man's presence at the Pink Panty Lounge, and the man had made a call to some government lawyers he still knew in New York.

All told, there had been over two hundred million dollars lost, most of it on a hotel complex in Vegas that hadn't been properly insured when it burned to the ground. David's fund had been the primary source of capital—capital that was now gone. All that remained was the land, but there was no money to rebuild. He'd raised the second fund under false pretenses, presenting the investors with bogus deals that didn't actually exist, thinking he could save the firm and himself if he could pay off the first investors, then get the hotel up and running before people started asking questions. But his race against the clock had ultimately failed. Desperate to hold off the investors, he'd bought time with his family's assets, the equity and 401(k), but it hadn't been enough. Now the investors wanted an accounting, and they had the weight of the government behind them.

Something had made him careless, and now he, and they, were close to losing everything. This was the thought that ran through Jacks's head as she watched him toy with a filet mignon across the table from her. He wouldn't eat it. The hollow spaces around his neck were proof of that. Maybe a few bites, swallowed down with glasses and glasses of cabernet. She knew this because his worry was now hers. Burning inside her like acid, it left no room for food, for rest. It was not the worry of having to make a decision. Or find a solution. Or even to come clean. It was the worry that rides on the back of tidal waves, hurricanes. The kind of worry that comes with the certainty that disaster will strike and that it will be devastating, leaving as a prelude nothing less than the torture of waiting. It was the kind that cannot be settled.

David was quiet now that the kids were gone. The show was over, the feigned enthusiasm as he listened to their stories, their tales of days spent in ignorance of what was about to occur. It was now, sitting alone with his wife, that he appeared capable of being absorbed into the silence. Jacks had seen him like this before, tired, things on his mind. And had she been another woman, a woman not so observant, it might all have gotten past her, as he seemed to believe it had. Still, in this moment, as she watched his face staring down into the full plate of food, aged beyond his years from the past several
months, she could almost believe that he knew—that he could feel it lurking from under her skin.

But then he looked up and smiled. “How was the field trip?”

Jacks heard his voice, but the words went right past her. “What did you say?”

“How was the field trip? Beth's trip to the fire station? She told me you drove.”

“It was good. This is my third time going, so I've got it down pretty well.”

David smiled. Jacks had been mothering their girls for fourteen years. “I guess this is the last one.”

“Is it awful to say that I'm not even a little sad about it?”

This drew a smile from her husband. He reached over and touched her hand, giving it a squeeze. “No. I'm ready to move on, too.”

“I've been thinking,” Jacks said, pulling her hand out from under his.

“What's that?”

Jacks sharpened her focus on his face, hoping to catch him flinching as she gave him the test. “I've been thinking that maybe it would be nice to bring the girls to France for spring break. They've never been to Europe.” It was a cruel test—surely the thought of an expensive trip four months away would be nothing less than a wrecking ball, plunging into his already weakened frame. But she was at her limit. This charade had come between them, a barricade that held her from the primary source of comfort she had in her life, her love for her husband. And his love for her. In spite of her promise to her sister, she needed them to share this secret together.

Nothing.

“That sounds great. Maybe I can get some time off and join you for the second week. Will you start in Paris?”

He was almost carefree now, back in the role he played when the kids were underfoot. His face had even lifted a bit, making her wonder if she was wrong about everything. Maybe it was all a mistake—the letter from the government, the information from that drunken little man. Could she believe all that over her husband? And more important, could she believe her husband would deceive her so completely?

“Really? It's not too much?” Her voice was shaky, and she could barely look at him.
Please
, she thought.
Let me in.

“It's fine. You'd better start planning it before the flights are gone.”

“I will. I'll start tomorrow. But let's not tell the girls until I have it all set.”

“Good idea. Maybe we can make it part of Christmas.”

“That would be fun.”

David took another sip of wine, slipping back into his silence. Jacks stared into the same silence, her eyes replaying scenes from a past she had thought was gone forever. The promises, the highs that would elevate her to the heavens.
This is the year, girls
. Promise after promise would come, at times for something as little as a new pair of shoes. Sometimes there were dreams of Disney World, or a house by the shore. None of it ever came, and it did no good at all to understand now, as an adult, what had driven their father from the heights of optimism to the depths of despair. Jobs came and went, and with them their only means of survival. The evidence had been there, but what is evidence to a little girl? Empty cupboards, eviction notices, the hushed conversations between teachers and social workers when she came to school dirty and hungry. In spite of it all, she had always believed. He was their father. He loved them. And they were promises.

“You look tired. Why don't you go up to bed?”

David nodded and stood from the table, taking his plate.

“Leave it. I'll get it later.”

“Are you sure?” The maid was off at six.

Jacks smiled at her husband. “I'm sure.”

She watched him leave, then cleared the table. She rinsed the plates, put them in the dishwasher, scrubbed the pots, and put them away. Reality was a strange thing, always shifting and turning with the light. It had taken her years to grasp this—far longer than her sister.
He's lied to you.
That's what Kelly had said. She was older, but more than that, she was simply built differently. Or maybe it was because they had suffered differently, Kelly having had to carry within her the memories of their mother's love, and the agony of her departure soon after Jacks was born. It was Kelly who had always been wiser, more perceptive, and inherently distrustful. It was Kelly who had taught Jacks what to look for, how to excavate the truth from the layers upon layers of earth that were used to keep it buried. In the grips of agony brought on by their mother's abandonment, Kelly had been programmed to trust nothing and no one but herself, not even the men she had been so careless with, the ones who had given her two perfect children. But no matter
how well she had tried to teach her sister, Jacks still, miraculously, harbored the hope of trust—trust she had placed in her husband.

She heard the words as she climbed the stairs.
He's lying, stupid.
Of course he is. But it had been seventeen years, and Jacks was not ready to crawl back into the dark hole where her sister lived.

He was in bed when she entered the room. His sighs were heavy as he tried to will himself to sleep. Standing in the darkness, staring at the body that lay beneath the covers, she thought back to the man she knew. He had been predictable in so many ways, the clean-cut Wall Street banker with the nice family and impressive education. And yet he had somehow known, even before she told him, that there were many walls he would have to break down to get to her. The first night she spent with him, he had held her in his arms until she felt something real, and he had been that man ever since. Now he was lying. But there were reasons. Nothing was black or white. Everyone Jacks had ever known lived within the complex shades of gray that were formed from the passing of time, the mistakes and reinventions of oneself that were inevitable. He was a good man.

She brushed her teeth and washed her face. Changed into a nightgown. She turned out the closet light and pulled back the covers on her side. The need was powerful as she reached for him in the darkness, enveloping him in her arms.

“I love you,” she said, and she felt the air rush out of his body, his heart pounding beneath his ribs. It was in these primal reflexes that she heard his silent confession.

She kissed him then, not to say good night, but to draw him back into her soul, to tell him she knew, that she could forgive him if he would only let her. She felt his arms reach back for her, pulling away her nightgown, drawing her into him. Surrounded by their deceptions, they made love, and through the desperation that pulled their bodies together, Jacks could feel the pleas of a drowning man.

She held his face, which was wet with tears, kissing him again and again. Whatever price she had paid along the way, she had survived her past, and now, as her body let go, she could feel the strength inside her, convincing herself that she would do the impossible. That she could do now as a grown woman what she had been unable to do as a child. Feeling the rush, she told herself she could save this man. She told herself she could save them all.

 

 

 

 

 

A
FTER SLIPPING IN A
quick pedicure, Rosalyn returned home from a day of errands and other tedious nonsense made necessary by the party that was quickly approaching. There was the trip to the costume designer, the test run with the makeup artist, and a stop at the caterer to approve the hors d'oeuvres. Of course, all this busyness did serve the purpose of distracting her from the other contents of her head, and she tried to remind herself of this as she walked through the kitchen and into the playroom, where she found Mellie and Barlow. Their four-year-old should have been down for her afternoon nap. Of course, nothing was ever as it should be since Barlow's retirement, and today was no exception. Barlow, who should have been doing something productive for the party, was instead wearing a pink Indian-princess head-dress as he sat cross-legged in the family room. He had apparently whirred Mellie into a little tornado, and she was now dirty from head to toe and in the pajamas from the night before. Her hair was matted into a giant brown tangled mess, and she was wired from sweet snacks and no sleep. Nothing about this was endearing to Rosalyn—not the crazed look of glee on her daughter's face as she ran circles around her father, not the enthusiasm with which her middle-aged husband sang a made-up Indian song and shook maracas. None of it.