The Promised World (13 page)

He did manage to slow down, but not by much. He was still walking so fast that before he’d had a chance to catch his breath, he was at the beach. The sight of the ocean normally calmed him, but even the ocean couldn’t compete with the garbage that woman had spewed into his head. He wanted to cry or scream or break something, but instead he wandered up to the boardwalk and kept walking, trying to think his way out of what he felt, the way he always had before.

He wasn’t worried that Lila and Billy had ever done anything physical with each other. The thought nauseated him, but even their mother admitted it hadn’t happened. And he’d watched them together for years; they were very affectionate, but in an entirely innocent way.

But what about all the rest? What about the things he’d always known, but never understood the meaning of? That Lila wouldn’t have married him if Billy hadn’t approved. That Lila seemed to enjoy spending time with Billy more than with him. That Lila talked to Billy and laughed with Billy and obviously confided in Billy in ways she’d never done with him. And yes, that Lila loved
Billy more than she had ever loved him. If she’d loved him at all. Even of that, he was no longer sure.

He didn’t really know his own wife. That was the other thing that kept stabbing him in the heart. She’d lied to him numerous times: about Nathan, about where she grew up, and of course about her mother being alive. That was still the worst lie, the one he couldn’t imagine ever forgiving her for.

He kept walking, and with each step, he felt like everything he’d believed about his marriage to Lila was coming unraveled, until all he could see were the losses. The children he’d wanted and they’d never had. The countless times he’d ached for her and kept it to himself, so she could keep working. The research he would have done if he hadn’t given up his own dreams so she could have her dream of living by Billy.

He wasn’t sure how far he’d wandered when he noticed Joyce sitting on the beach with her shoes off and her pants rolled up to her knees. She was bent over, writing something, probably lecture notes for tomorrow. That’s when he realized that it was already late afternoon; the sun was hanging low in the sky. By the time they got through Philly’s rush hour, she’d be lucky to be home by eight.

When he walked up behind her, he noticed she was writing a proof. He apologized for being gone so long and shrugged off her question about how it had gone with Lila’s mother with a quick “Okay.” He took a deep breath and forced his voice to sound light. “Working hard or hardly working?”

“I’m trying to prove Stone-Weierstrass,” she said, smiling. “I’m sure it’s trivial to you, but it’s not going well. I think I’ve forgotten too much from my courses in real analysis.”

“You’re a number theorist. Why are you bothering with that anyway?”

She stood up, brushing sand off her jeans. “No reason,” she said, but she sounded unaccountably shy. He didn’t understand
what was going on until a sudden gust of wind blew her papers all over the sand. He leaned down to help her pick them up and that’s when he found a copy of his own latest article. She’d either xeroxed it from the obscure journal or downloaded it from their even more obscure website.

A few weeks before, one of the older secretaries had teased him that the “new girl professor” had a crush on him. At the time he hadn’t given it a moment’s thought because no one ever got a crush on him, not even his most impressionable students. He just wasn’t the type of man women had crushes on. And even holding the evidence in his hand, he still thought that perhaps Joyce just had an odd interest in the topic of his paper. She wouldn’t have to re-prove Stone-Weierstrass unless she wanted to understand it as completely as he did, but maybe she worked that way. He wasn’t like that himself, but he didn’t have time to be anymore.

But then he asked her why she was reading this, and she said, “It’s fascinating.” He knew she meant it, but he also knew it wasn’t true. His paper couldn’t be fascinating to someone with her background. It wasn’t even fascinating to anyone in his field, which was why it ended up in such a little-known journal. It was a minor result, and sure, he was proud of it, but it didn’t mean much in the scheme of mathematics.

He was so surprised he was speechless. And maybe he was blushing. And maybe he wanted her to do what she did next. Maybe that’s why he came a little too close to her when he was handing back her papers.

Still, even as she kissed him, he knew he would feel guilty later on. But right then, it seemed like the simplest, most normal thing in the world. Though most people would consider Joyce entirely ordinary—short and a little chubby, with a nose that was a little too big and a mouth that was a little too small—Patrick found her smart and incredibly easy to be with. She also had one thing his
gorgeous wife didn’t. She actually wanted to spend time with him. She wanted to talk to him and listen to him and even kiss him. Such ordinary stuff, but it felt like the upending of all he’d believed about relationships.

He knew it couldn’t continue, but at that moment, he thought if only he could stay here forever, listening to the clean, normal sound of the waves breaking on the beach while she held him in her arms, as though he were worth holding, as though he were a person someone was capable of wanting most of all.

CHAPTER TEN

E
ven Ashley’s mother had to admit that Billy was turning out to be an amazing father. Her mom didn’t like that they named the child Pearl—she thought it sounded like an old lady’s name—but she said Ashley had obviously done the right thing letting Billy pick the name, because look how close that man was to that baby! It was a sight to see, especially as most men couldn’t care less about their kids until they were old enough to do things with. Even then, the things most men wanted to do, like hunting and fishing and throwing a ball, meant they were never as close to their girls as their boys. But not Billy Cole, or, as Ashley’s mom was now calling him, Super Dad. The name was partly tongue in cheek, but there was real affection, too, and not only from her mom, but from the rest of her family, who’d decided Billy Cole was all right. A real keeper.

By the time Pearl was two years old, Ashley’s mom seemed to be damn near in love with the man. On Saturday mornings, when Ashley and her mom went to the grocery store together, the same way they had for years, Ashley would listen as her mom went on and on about what a great provider Billy was—for getting a job and keeping it—what a great husband he was—for not cheating and not leaving—and what a great all-around catch he was for Ashley—smart and funny and good-looking to boot. Sometimes Ashley tried to hint that things weren’t as wonderful as they appeared, but the hints went nowhere. If she said, “I wish I was happier,” her mom would say, “Don’t we all?” When she tried, “I wonder sometimes if he loves me,” her mom said, “Welcome to marriage.” When she mentioned, “We never go out like we used to,” her mom snorted and said, “You got a child now. What did you expect?”

What did she expect? Not much, actually. If someone had told her, before she met Billy, that she’d end up with a man who
would
cheat or quit his job and stay home all day, drunk on his ass, she’d have been mad as hell, but deep down, she’d have known it was probably true. She never, ever expected to marry a man who would dance around in the living room with their daughter before he left to work at a dirty construction site for eight- or nine-hour days, sometimes longer if they were doing inside work. She never expected to marry a man who came home from work all smiles, asking how his “two favorite girls” were doing today.

It was only when Pearl went to bed that everything changed, almost like a curtain dropped and the perfect father was replaced by a completely different guy—not the Billy she’d known before their daughter was born, but another person who was quiet and strange and damn near impossible for Ashley to understand. Yeah, he was tired from working all day and Ashley was tired, too, from running around after little Pearl, who was always a real handful when her dad wasn’t around. “Daddy” had been Pearl’s
first word, and by two, she was already saying whole sentences, many of which were screams as Billy left in the morning. “Don’t want you. I want Daddy!” “Don’t weave, Daddy!” “Play wif Pearl, Daddy!” Billy would respond with a smile and a kiss and a promise to come back as soon as he could. For Ashley, it was harder, because once Pearl heard Billy driving away, the little girl would throw a full-fledged tantrum, complete with fists pounding on the floor and earsplitting screams at her mother. And then Pearl would demand that Mommy play “moonbeam” or “catch the air people” or some other bizarre-o game that Billy had invented, and inevitably get mad when the game wasn’t “right.” It took Ashley months to figure out that these games were really nothing but Billy pretending that something exciting was going on, and it was his excitement that their little girl was missing, not some rule Ashley wasn’t following. No matter how often Ashley opened her hand and showed their daughter that she had caught one of the “air people,” Pearl insisted her mommy’s hand had nothing in it. Daddy, though, could catch them anytime. Daddy could even catch the air people queen!

At night when Pearl was in bed, Ashley tried to talk to the stranger Billy about the way their daughter acted when he wasn’t home, but he shrugged it off as no big deal. Her mother did the same, saying all little girls have a thing for their daddies.

“I don’t remember being that way,” Ashley said.

Her mom rolled her eyes. “You were the worst of all my girls. You followed that loser everywhere, even when he yelled at you to go bug Mommy.” She looked at Ashley. “You got a husband that doesn’t yell or hit your child. What are you complaining about?”

She wasn’t complaining; she was just trying to figure out why she felt like an outsider in her own family. Sometimes on the weekends, when Pearl was happily playing with Billy, Ashley would go for long drives alone in the mountains outside Albuquerque,
wondering who would care if she never came back. Trish would, for sure. Her mom, too, even though they weren’t close like they used to be. Billy, she had no idea, but it wasn’t him who bothered her most; it was her daughter. Would Pearl even notice that her mommy was gone? Would she remember anything good about her mom, or only the fights that had gotten so out of hand lately that Ashley was afraid to tell anyone about them?

Everyone in Ashley’s family believed in spanking. She’d been spanked herself many times, and it hadn’t caused her any harm. But what she was doing with Pearl, though it had started out as spanking, ended up being something that Ashley was deeply ashamed of. Because Pearl didn’t react like a normal kid when she was taken over her mother’s knee and swatted a few times. She didn’t cry and she certainly didn’t calm down. If anything, she was madder than before, flailing her chubby arms, kicking Ashley in the stomach and on the legs, even biting Ashley on the knee so hard it drew blood. It was the bite that caused Ashley to slap Pearl in the face. Ashley’s own mother believed in biting toddlers back, but Ashley couldn’t bring herself to do that; plus honestly, she was afraid of what Billy would say if he discovered marks on the little girl. So she slapped Pearl instead, not hard, but hard enough to make Ashley burst into tears at what she’d done. She was about to tell Pearl she was sorry, but the little girl was too furious to listen. She elbowed Ashley in the nose and proceeded to hit her mother again and again, all the while screaming that she wanted to go “back.” “Back” meant the tiny backyard they had now that they were living in a rental house a few miles from Ashley’s mother. But when Ashley took her daughter outside, Pearl immediately ran over to the hole in the coyote fence, squeezed herself through it, and took off toward the arroyo that led to the highway where she saw Billy disappear each day on the way to work. Ashley managed to grab her little
girl before she got far enough to be in real danger, but when she picked up Pearl, hugged her to her chest, and said, “You scared Mommy,” her daughter looked right at her and said what sounded like “hate you.” Ashley was never sure about this—or at least she wasn’t until Pearl started saying it all the time, even when Ashley managed to keep her cool, even when she and her daughter hadn’t had any fights for days. Unfortunately, the “hate you” would often cause Ashley to blow it all over again.

For as long as she lived, she would never forget those horrible battles with her two-year-old. Pearl fought her mother like her life depended on it, and too often, Ashley fought back. She slapped her child, she shoved Pearl away when she was hitting or kicking, and once or twice, she knocked Pearl down. She was just lucky that none of those shoves landed Pearl into the corner of a table or a sharp object. She would never have forgiven herself if she’d bruised her baby, much less seriously harmed her.

Thank God, by the time Pearl was three, the fights had completely stopped. At the pediatrician’s office, Ashley had discovered a booklet about disciplining a child without spanking using timeouts. She was surprised how much it helped. Using timeouts, she only had to slap Pearl’s hands occasionally, when the little girl was reaching for something dangerous, like a pot on the stove, or breakable, like her father’s computer. But Pearl still said “I hate you” to her mother just as much as ever, until Ashley thought she really meant it.

Her own family was no help. They all doted on Pearl, especially Ashley’s mom, who said her granddaughter was “cute as a pixie and sharp as a tack.” They were amazed that Pearl could read and write words at only three years old. Ashley’s mom told Billy, “That must be from your side of the family, ‘cause none of the Harris line could do that. Hell, some of us don’t read that well now!” Billy said something humble and kind, as he usually did—to them—and
Ashley’s mom loved him more than ever. It was all just so perfect, from where Ashley’s family sat, that if Pearl hated her mother, it had to be a harmless phase.

In the end, it was Billy who fixed the problem, though he didn’t mean to and wasn’t even aware of it, really. Or maybe he was. Ashley was never sure what he was thinking during those nights when he would sit quietly staring out the window of their kitchen, or writing on the computer that Lila had given him for his twenty-second birthday. He was polite enough, answering any question Ashley put to him, discussing any problem they had with their bills or the house or the car, but he never said much about how he was doing beyond “tired,” “worn-out,” and the worst one: “empty.” He did seem empty, like he wasn’t even there when Pearl was asleep. Even when they made love, he went through the motions, and they were always finished before the news came on. Billy didn’t watch TV, but Ashley did. She had to do something to pass the time and lift her spirits a little.