Social Lives (42 page)

 

 

 

Cbow: TF?

Totallyfkd: Here. What up?

Cbow: It's Friday. Duh.

Totallyfkd: Shit!

Cbow: I know.

Totallyfkd: What's the plan?

Cbow: He's meeting me at the end of the service driveway at eight. That's less than three hours from now.

Totallyfkd: Service driveway? How rich are you?

Cbow: You don't want to know. As if it mattered anyway.

Totallyfkd: True. So three hours! Are you freaking?

Cbow: Totally.

Totallyfkd: Where will you go?

Cbow: His house.

Totallyfkd: Parents out?

Cbow: Yep. Mine, too.

Totallyfkd: Weren't you supposed to do something with them?

Cbow: I'm just not going to go. I'll use the accident if I have to, make a
scene. Whatever. I'm just not going and they can't make me. My dad will back me up.

Totallyfkd: Good old pop.

Cbow: Yeah.

Totallyfkd: So . . . can I be a bitch again and ask if you're sure?

Cbow: No. I'm going. I know you want to help, but my guy isn't your guy. Does that sound harsh? I'm sorry if it does, but my guy's been really sweet.

Totallyfkd: OK.

Cbow: OK? That's it? No lecture?

Totallyfkd: Nope. The thing is, I knew in my gut that it wasn't right. I just knew. DH might be different. Sounds like he's into you.

Cbow: Fuck you, now I am confused!

Totallyfkd: Why?

Cbow: What is a boyfriend anyway? I think I had one last year, but it was so lame. It never made me feel like this. Not once, even when we were doing shit. I don't want to lie and say my new guy is like sending me flowers and calling every day, and sometimes he still walks past me. He did it today, but then he turned and smiled.

Totallyfkd: God, cbow, I know what you're feeling. You're describing me a few months ago. And now he's chasing after some girl for some social climbing bullshit. He has no soul, and I swear to you, if he knocked on my door, I'd probably let him in.

Cbow: Don't say that! After what he did! I don't believe you. You're going to college. Get over this prick! I command you . . .

Totallyfkd: Easy to say, harder to do. It's unbelievable. His parents want to get into some fucking country club to save their reputation. Everyone thinks they're secretly broke so this prick is all over their daughter.

Cbow: You think his parents told him to do it?

Totallyfkd: No. I think he just knows. Like some slimy little scavenger.

Cbow: A slimy scavenger you would open your door for?

Totallyfkd: Pathetic. I suck. So do you need any advice? Are you “prepared”?

Cbow: He said he would be, or at least he hinted. How could he not? Duh.

Totallyfkd: Well, believe me—it happens. Make sure. Write first thing when you get home. Please. I'll be waiting.

Cbow: I'll try. Hey, it just started to snow. Are you freezing your ass off like me?

Totallyfkd: Gotta go—late! Promise you'll write first thing.

Cbow: Promise.

Totallyfkd: OK. Good luck. XO.

Cbow: Thanks. Good bye. XO.

 

 

 

 

 

S
HE SAW HIS CAR
as she pulled up the drive. It was parked at an angle just at the back walkway, its front end turned sharply toward the house as though he'd considered driving right up the steps and through the door, and this brought an unexpected surge of relief. He was back, living with her in this crisis. The trance or spell or whatever it was he'd been in these past weeks must be over. The deliveryman must have shocked it right out of him.

Parking behind his car, she reached for her purse and set it on her lap. One after the other, she removed the traces of her affair that she had collected to use against Barlow. She wouldn't think of that now. The receipts, the photos. She didn't look at them as she placed them carefully into the plastic bag from the morning paper. It was over, and she wanted to erase it, all of it. She felt the exhaustion deep in her bones, replacing the anxious waiting and wondering about what she would do, what would happen. She still didn't have the answers, but the devil had shown himself and now she could fight him out in the open, in the daylight.

She tied a knot at the top of the bag, then stepped out of the car. Her movements were sluggish as she closed the door and walked with a steady pace to the garage, where she tossed the plastic bag containing her crimes
into the trash. A smile came across her face when she saw Chester waiting patiently for her at the foot of the door that led to the house.

“Ches!” she called, and he came to her and let her pet him. She bent down and rubbed his ears, checking him head to toe. Except for the missing collar, he was perfect.

“Come on,” she said, leading the way to the door. She pushed it open and Chester ran inside to his bowl of food that Jacks had put out earlier that morning, before that ring at her front door. Before this day had washed over her.

She set her purse on the counter, then her keys. She stopped and took in the silence. With her mind so burdened with all that had happened and all that still lay ahead, she had forgotten what she had expected to find when she walked into the house. David.

She called his name, but there was no answer. Just the panting from the dog, the ticking from the clock that hung on the wall. She called out again.

Sweeping away everything in her thoughts but the relevant facts, she walked herself through her husband's day. He'd left that morning with that vacant expression, coffee mug in one hand, briefcase in the other. He'd kissed the girls, said good-bye, though she had ignored him because her tolerance for his denial had been depleted days before. She'd watched the car roll down the driveway, and that was the last she'd seen of him.

Fast-forward to the man in her house, sitting on her sofa with his implied threats and eerily pleasant smile. He'd called David, and Jacks had heard her husband's voice yelling through from miles away. David had snapped back, there was no question. The anger, the fear—she had heard it even though she had not been able to make out his words. There had been hushed instructions given, along with the orders to come home, and now here he was, home somewhere in this house, but it was quiet and seemingly empty. She'd left the note, told him not to worry. Still, would he not be waiting anxiously for her return? Would he not have tried to call her cell? What human being could really sit and wait when the things he loved most in this world were in danger?

“Chester, come,” she said, fully alert now, back on the rush. She patted the side of her leg and the dog obeyed, walking with her slowly through each room.

“David?” she called out, and suddenly she knew. It was happening all over again.

Bounding up the stairs, the dog at her side, she didn't bother to check his study or the bedroom. She didn't stop until she was at the bathroom door.

“David!” she screamed as she pushed through it. But David wasn't there and she was strangely relieved. Catching her breath, she noticed the briefcase and the signed deed that lay on the very top of the papers inside. She lifted it up and studied the signature, the date. Then she reached inside the briefcase, finding a stack of bearer bonds and other bank documents that he had signed on behalf of his firm. He had done all of it, everything they had instructed him to do. And he had come home to save them.

She heard the wind slam against the window and her eyes turned to it by reflex. Through the window she saw the woodshed in the yard, the one with the broken door hinge that always got pulled open on days like this, when the wind barreled across the lawn. But today its broken door somehow remained closed.

Dropping the papers on the floor, she ran out of the room, down the stairs, and through the back of the house. She ran to the garage and out the open door, then around to the backyard through the snow until she reached the shed.

“David!” Her voice was more urgent now as she laid her hands against the rough wood door and pushed hard. She grabbed the handle and turned it up, then down, not remembering which way opened it. It didn't budge.

“David!” Her voice echoed across the yard and into the brisk, blue sky.

She pushed again and again until the obstruction gave way, a piece of wood that had been jammed into the handle from the inside. Stumbling into the room, she braced herself for what she would find, pulling from her memory the images of her father, and of David that day in their bathroom. But nothing could have prepared her for the way she found him now.

“Oh, God!” she screamed, kneeling at his side. Her hands were shaking as she stared at the rifle. Still, she managed to reach in and pry it from his hands.

“David?” she said, softer this time. His eyes were blank as they stared back at her. The switch had been turned off and he was gone.

Not knowing if the rifle was loaded, she held it by the barrel and placed it on the floor, out of reach.

Watching him, alive but so close to being dead, everything she had thought in her darkest hours, the things she had imagined that he had done, the mistakes he'd made and the risks he'd taken that she had wanted to believe were not true—none of it mattered anymore. An innocent man would not have come home with his life's possessions in a case. An innocent man would not have placed a gun in his hands. Looking at him as he sat there, exactly as he had been weeks before, she felt no urge to crawl inside his world and hold him. What had that done anyway? Nothing had changed.

She sat beside him, but did not touch him as her face streamed with tears. “It's over, David. If you can even hear me, it's over.” She spoke without looking at his face.

“Listen to me now. I have taken care of everything. A very generous investor has stepped forward. Your debts are paid, the hotel is off your hands.”

She looked at him then for a sign of recognition.

“David? Are you hearing me? It's over.” She wiped her face with her jacket sleeve and pulled in the tears. “We will be indebted for the rest of our lives, and if it takes that long, we will find a way to repay this man. But for now, it's over. Our house, our life here. Everything is going to be all right.” With the fear subsiding, her voice was now laced with anger, because that was how she felt. Throughout her childhood, her entire life, she had been forced to swallow it down. It seemed inhuman to hold anger for a sick man, and her father had been sick. Still, things had been done, to her and her sister, that were unforgivable and she could not forgive. Somehow the anger had not come, not until this very moment, and she felt it like an enormous wave that had been slowly building for decades and had finally made its way to shore.

Jacks studied her husband. He was sick, just like her father, maybe different, but still the same. She knew this.
God
, how she knew this. But what she had not realized was how contagious his sickness had been. Looking within herself, she could see the infection, the deadness that had begun to take hold of her. It was in her soul because she had let it in. She had taken it on as her own, the way her sister had done for their father. She saw in herself what she had always seen in Kelly and it left her in a state of quiet devastation.

David began to weep. He had heard what she'd said, and now maybe he
was coming back to reality, to relief that it was over, or perhaps the fear at knowing what he had come so close to doing to himself in this dark place.

She took one short moment before reaching for him. “It will be all right now, David.”

He looked up, his face strewn with tears, his mouth gaping. All of this left her cold. She handed him a towel and gave him a moment to dry his face and pull himself together. Then she spoke to him one last time before taking his arm and pulling him to his feet.

“You need to get up, get dressed. We have to be somewhere.”