She dumped her tea in the sink and poured herself a glass of gin. She left the letters where they were and walked into the living room and looked out at the lake, something gnawing at her mind. Something highly unpleasantâMaine, the incident at Remington Pond, the awful scream she'd heard in the night. She'd been dreaming about loons.
Cheater!
The word taunted her. Again she looked out at the lake. She could be anywhere, she thought. The lake, the endless rows of trees. She felt stranded, abandonedâthe way she'd felt up there.
Cheater!
They'd found the girl in the lake. When they'd pulled her out, her skin was the color of violets.
Things didn't really go away. You just learned to push them deeper.
There was the dream of happiness and then there was what was real. Happiness all lined up in a row, like the houses in Hilltop Acres, lined up like tissue boxes at the supermarket, their pale colors as predictable as the lives inside. Wellâwho was
she
to talk? Anyway, those weren't their customersâthose children went to public school.
She sipped her drink and lay on the couch as the gray sky grew dark. The girl had been depressed, she reminded herself. She'd had issues. It was a school for kids with problems. They used behavior modification. The girl suffered from aquaphobia, a fear of water, since early childhood. Her parents had never been able to teach her to swim, which of course, for safety reasons, was essential. But she was not a normal girl. Maggie could picture her, touching her toe on the surface of the lake. They'd tie a rope around her waist and lead her to the shore. She was a scrawny girl, knobby-kneed.
Don't splash me, the water's cold!
She and Jack had put Remington Pond behind them and moved on.
Jack was late getting home. Wanting to avoid him, she'd gone to bed early. He came heavily into the room. In the darkness she watched him unbutton his shirt. A fragrance wafted off him, the smell of lilacs, but perhaps that was the new laundry detergent. He went into the bathroom to get washed. He coughed, urinated. Then the bathroom door opened, spreading light across the bed. He stood there a moment looking at her as she feigned sleep, her heart beating loudly in her ears. If she didn't move perhaps he'd leave her alone. But that wasn't the case. He pushed up her nightgown and fumbled his way between her legs and thrust inside of her. His mouth smelled of gin. It did not take long. Then he turned away and began to snore.
But sleep would not come so easily to Maggie. She lay awake all night, the word
cheater
jingling in her brain.
In the morning, Ada stormed into her room. “I'm out of uniforms,” she complained. “How do you expect me to go to school without any clothes!”
“That's impossible,” Maggie defended herself. “I just did the laundry. ” She went to the girl's bedroom and opened the closet, expecting to find the plaid skirt where she had hung it the day before, but it was gone. “That's odd,” she said. “I could have sworn . . .”
“You're really losing it, Mom,” Ada said cruelly, grabbing the skirt she'd worn yesterday from the hamper.
“What's all the commotion?” Jack asked when they came into the kitchen. He was sitting at the table drinking coffee and grading his students' history papers.
“No commotion,” Maggie said. “Ada needs to order some more uniforms, that's all.”
“So order them,” he said, uncharacteristically generous. “And hire a cleaning lady while you're at it, this place is a mess.”
“I'm trying my best,” she said to him.
“Your best doesn't cut it.” He looked at her hard. “You're obviously overwhelmed.”
The insult chilled her. She went into the bathroom and shut the door. For several minutes she sat there on the edge of the tub, trying to catch her breath.
When she came out, it was obvious to her that no one had noticed she'd been gone. Ada was looking over his shoulder, trying to see into his grade book. “What did I get, Dad?”
“You'll get your paper back like everyone else.”
Ada rolled her eyes and finished her juice and put her toast in her mouth and pulled on her coat. “I'm going to walk,” she announced, grabbing her lunch bag before Maggie had even finished filling it. A moment later she was out the door.
Maggie pulled on her green crewneck sweater and brushed her hair in the mirror. Her skin was pale and dull. She had dark circles under her eyes. Behind her, in the reflection, she caught Jack staring. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“Is there something wrong with my outfit?”
She stood there before him. He shook his head. “You look fine.”
But she didn't believe him. “I've put on some weight,” she admitted, although it wasn't really true and they both knew it.
He looked at her blankly.
You can lose all the weight you want, I still won't love you.
He got up from the table and dumped his coffee into the sink then stepped into the side hall to put on his coat. He stood there looking out at the day. “I don't know why she couldn't wait,” he said. “She's always in such a goddamned rush.”
“She wanted to walk.”
“Her paper was weak.”
“Really?”
“Let me put it this way: I've seen better.”
The way he said it made it her fault. Everything was always her fault: the missing uniform, the untidy house, the bitter coffee. She turned on the tap and rinsed the dishes, stacking them in the dishwasher. The door slammed. To her surprise, Jack had walked out, leaving behind his grade book. “Jack,” she called. She went to the door, but he was already in the car, backing out. There had been a frost, and the windshield was clouded. His face was obscured behind the glass. She ran outside, across the cold grass, waving his ledger in her hand, but the back windshield was cloudy too. He hadn't even said good-bye. It occurred to her that she was barefoot. She stood there, as though it were her punishment, almost relishing it. Maybe she'd catch cold, she thought. Maybe she'd get so sick she could no longer work and would have to go to a hospital where she could get the proper kind of care.
The proper kind of care.
The words lingered a moment in her mind.
The book felt heavy in her hand. She brought it back inside to the table and flipped through it, curious to see what he'd given Ada on her paper. Maggie ran her finger down the row of names. There were only fourteen in Honors Historyâthe brightest of the group of juniors. Ada had gotten an 80 on the paper, which was respectable enough considering the challenging subject matterâher overall average was a 90, which was, in fact, highly respectable. Meticulous about handwriting, Jack listed all the averages in a trim row, yet still something didn't look quite right. It took her a moment to pinpoint it, but then she observed that Willa Golding's row of grades was smudged with erasure marksâapparently Jack had changed her numbers. Willa had gotten a 97 on her paper, which was inordinately high for herâ she was, at best, a mediocre student and wouldn't even have been placed in Honors History if it weren't for her meddling father. The only reason she was in Honors anything was because her father would complain if she wasn't, and Jack didn't want Golding complaining. Jack always did what Golding wanted, no matter what, including losing at golf, and Golding always showed his gratitude with a substantial check to the annual fund. It was what Jack called a symbiotic relationship.
She supposed it was possible that Willa was improving. But to this degree? Possible, but doubtful. An ugly feeling stretched up her spine.
Time for breakfast, she thought. Time to eat. She poured herself a bowl of Shredded Wheat and sat down. On her second spoonful, something hard and strange rolled across her tongue and instinctively she spit it out. There on the table, in a puddle of milk and chewed-up wheat, was a Scrabble piece, the letter E to be exact.
What in the hell?
Wielding her spoon like a weapon, she poked around in the bowl and discovered three more little wooden squares, then dug into the box and found three more, seven in all. A quick glance at the letters told her what they spelled, but she moved them into place anyway, as though seeing the word again would somehow secure in her mind its intended meaning.
Cheater!
The idea that someone had come into their home and done thisâ one of Ada's friends perhapsâbut
who?
Someone knew
something,
but
what?
It was all too familiar. There was a pattern here, she could see that now, a perverse sort of logic, and in her most rational mind, in that cold little place where even the worst sort of news could be assimilated and processed, she understood that there was the very likely possibility that her husband was sleeping with someone else. That Jack, in fact, was the
cheater.
And worse, that someone in the community knew about it.
Headmasters didn't have affairs, everyone knew thatâbut her husband hadn't seemed to grasp that particular concept. Not only was it against the law, it was against their moral code. Even if it weren't true, the mere suspicion of an affair would be enough to ruin himâand her too. Trust was what made people send their children to Pioneer; it was the essential ingredient. Without trust, you had nothing. Moreover, Jack's position as Head was only half the equation. He was a distinguished member of the community. People knew him, they looked up to him, they sought him out for advice on a variety of subjects. And the
church!
What would Father O'Rourke say? What would he
think?
Sweat prickled her skin. Was it possible? Was it
true?
“Are you all right?” Nate Gallagher asked her during lunch. “You look pale.”
“I'm fine.” She tried to smile.
“You're not eating very much.”
“Of course I am. In fact, I eat a very balanced diet.” But she made no effort to put anything in her mouth.
“I want to show you something,” Nate said, fishing out one of his student's papers. “It's a story by Teddy Squire. I thought you'd like to see it. It's quite good. I was pleasantly surprised, given the boy's deficits.”
He handed her the story and she detected the slightest tremor in her hand as she reached for it. She could feel Nate watching her as she pretended to read the first paragraph.
“It's pretty ingenious,” Nate said. “Told from the point of view of a pit bull.”
“Can I take it with me? I'd like to finish it. I have some time now.”
“Of course. Just put it back in my box when you're done. I think you'll be impressed.”
She smiled at him.
I doubt it.
“Well, I'm late. See you later.” He gathered his things and stood up. “Take care of yourself.”
She nodded that she would. Of course she would.
For reasons she could not entirely explain, she went back to her office and read the boy's story. The story detailed the dog's escape and subsequent attack of its owner, ripping the man to pieces with his teeth. Although it was highly irregular, as she was not the boy's writing instructor, she took it upon herself to make corrections, using her red Sharpie like a scalpel, cutting open sentences and ridiculous metaphors with such vigor that the marks all over the paper resembled blood.
She couldn't help herself.
After she'd finished, it came to her that perhaps she wasn't well. She shoved the paper into Nate Gallagher's box and walked out.
The sun was very bright. It flooded the windshield. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to go somewhere, to be anonymous. The bookstore in Pittsfield was a good place. It was enormous; she often hid there among the books, losing herself in the possibilities they presented. She spent an hour in the Self Help section, flipping through books on dieting. There were books on how to manage your metabolism, and she herself had experimented with laxatives from time to time, but that took too long and you always gained the weight back. She wanted to find something that was quick. All the books warned that you had to be patient. It took time to reach your ideal weight.
Behind her, she could feel the presence of the cookbooks. Wooed by a vivid cover, she picked one up and leafed through it. She loved the way it smelled, the ink, the fine paper, the oversized photographs. Ordinary vegetables looked glamorousâthe violet tips of the artichoke, the bulbous flesh of the leeks, the pulpy womb of an acorn squash. And the pastries. The raspberry tarts, the éclairs bursting with custard. She gazed longingly at the pictures of couples in their kitchens, or sharing wine on Nantucket decks. They all looked so happyâ they were
enjoying
life. Life wasn't just something to get through, like a series of narrow tunnels. That was how she had begun to feel, like she was inside a tunnel trying to get out, trying to get to the light, but the more she tried the longer the tunnel seemed. Why did Jack hate her so much? What had she ever done to him? She'd been a good wife, the
best
wife. She'd given everything to him. She'd gone against her parents' wishes for him; a mistake.
She turned the page and saw a beautiful dining room that resembled the one she'd grown up with. Her mother had been a marvelous cook. She'd entertained all the time in their big white house in Andover. Maggie had been the one to set the long shiny table in the dining room, and she'd polish the silver and put out the crystal, setting each glass down ever-so-carefully under her mother's owlish gaze. Her mother would make cream of spinach, her favorite as a child, and roast beef, and potato pudding, and always elaborate desserts with crazy names, Baked Alaska, Cherries Jubilee. Maggie turned the page to a photograph of an omelet and found herself wondering what could be more perfect than a cheese omelet, its cheddar filling oozing languidly over the plate. Standing there in the cookbook aisle Maggie could almost taste it, and then the taste turned awful, wretched, like something dead in her mouth, and she ran to the bathroom and threw it up.