Between Husbands and Friends (30 page)

“We thought she was with you.”

My heart explodes in my chest. “
You
had her! Damn! I don’t believe this!” I scan the streets. Clusters of parents and children stroll or run through the rain to their cars or into Yogurt Plus, but no small girl with braids is anywhere in sight. “Jeremy, you stay in the car with your sister. Matthew, come help me look.”

“I can look, too,” Jeremy offers.

“You stay right there!” I scream, and he flinches, hurt by the shrillness of my voice.

I race back to the movie house. It’s empty now. Only a few people stand in the entrance to the movie house, looking up at the sky, waiting for the rain to cease.

“Abby?” I call.
“Abby!”
I rush into the theater, which is empty except for a man picking up discarded popcorn boxes. “I’ve lost a little girl.”

He looks around him, holding out his arms. “She’s not here.”

“Oh, God,” I murmur, turning back to the street and the rain, “oh, God, don’t do this, please don’t do this, it’s too much, I can’t bear it …”

“Lucy?” Matthew’s standing by the entrance, his hands on Abby’s shoulders.

“Where have you been?” I shriek, falling to my knees, grabbing the little girl, embracing her. “Where did you go?”

She’s soaking wet. “A man had a puppy—”

“A man had a puppy!”
I cry. “Don’t you know better than to talk to strangers? Where did you go?”

“I didn’t go anywhere. He was standing right there, with his baby, waiting for the mommy and his little girl.” Abby points, and there, materializing before my eyes, is a slender young man with a baby in a Snugli and a blond cocker spaniel on a leash and a woman with soft brown hair and a child in her arms.

“We’re sorry,” the man says, coming forward. “We saw that she was separated from her family. We waited … we would have called the police if you hadn’t come back.”

“Thank you, thank you,” I babble. “So nice of you, such a crush, wasn’t it, it just gave me such a scare, we’re all getting soaked in this rain, we’d better go, thank you again …”

Matthew, Abby, and I run to the Volvo and climb in.

“Where did you go?” Jeremy asks, and Abby answers, but all at once I can’t hear their voices. A white mist rises up around me, and the roar of the ocean fills my ears. I lean my head on the steering wheel. I’m aware that I’m making a terrible moaning noise, but I can’t seem to stop until Margaret asks in a terrified voice, “Mom? Are you okay?”

“No, I’m
not
okay!” Turning, I glare at Matthew. “Don’t you ever lose sight of your sister in a crowd like that again, do you hear me? I thought you had more sense.”

Matthew glares back at me, stunned and insulted. “I didn’t—”

“Don’t say a word!” I snap. “Not one more word.” I start the car and with a shriek of the tires, peel away from the curb. “I don’t know how you can be so selfish. My God, she’s your only little sister, you saw that I was dealing with Jeremy, it’s not like you’re mentally
incompetent, it’s just incredibly negligent and selfish of you to lose sight of her like that—”

“Mom!” Margaret says, leaning forward and touching my shoulder. “Hey. What’s up with you?”

Looking in the rearview mirror, I see that Matthew’s jaw is clenched and his face red with suppressed emotion, while Margaret’s face bulges with anger. Jeremy cows, wide-eyed, and next to me on the passenger seat, Abby weeps.

“Oh, God, Matthew, I’m sorry. Kids, all of you, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I was just so scared. Abby, honey, I’m sorry to be so mean, I was just frightened. Matthew, I’m sorry.”

The rest of the ride is in silence. None of the children will forget this night. They’ll never trust me again. They shouldn’t.

The next day it’s still raining. I take all four children with me to the grocery store and we fill the cart with nothing but ice cream, fudge sauce, Marshmallow Fluff, sprinkles, candy, and Reddi-wip. We pick up videos with Jim Carrey, with Bruce Willis. We stop at the Hub and I buy junk reading for them all, violent comics for Matthew,
Casper
and
Smurfs
for the Littlies, romance novels for Margaret.

At home we spread out our purely sugar buffet on the dining room table. We heat the butterscotch and hot fudge in the microwave, pour sprinkles into a bowl, and make sundaes of repulsive extravagance which we eat as we watch the videos. I fully expect someone to have a stomachache, even to throw up, but no one does.

When the sun comes out, it slants differently, and that night a cool breeze drifts in. Ads for back-to-school supplies dance across the television screen. As she comes down the stairs, Abby stubs her toe and bursts into tears. When I try to console her, she continues to weep. God, I think, her toe is broken.

“Hold my hand and hop into the living room,” I tell her. “I’ll get some ice to put on it.”

“I want
Mommy
!” she sobs.

I settle her on the sofa, dial Garrison’s number, and give Abby the phone. I can tell by her
expression that Kate is refusing to come back to the island, even for a day.

That night I call Chip. That weekend he arrives to pack his children’s things. I expect my own children to be sad and cranky when the Cunninghams are gone, but to my surprise, they don’t seem to mind. In the evening the three of us sit together on the back porch, watching the light flare and fade in the sky. Margaret asks me what it was like here when I was a girl. Jeremy lies with his head in my lap, eyelids heavy, insisting he’s awake. While I tell my daughter about my aunt and my childhood days in this house, I twine my fingers through my son’s gold-tinged curls.

Max doesn’t answer the phone at our house, so late the next afternoon when both children are in their room, conked out into naps by the heat and humidity of the day, I phone him at the paper.

“Look,” I say. “You have to talk to me. Are you planning to come back to the island?”

“No.”

“The children miss you.”

He does not reply.

“Did you have the test taken?”

He does not reply.

“What can I tell the children? You’re not being fair to them, Max. You’re punishing them more than me.”

He does not reply.

“Max, please. I’m so frightened. I’m so alone.”

He does not reply.

“I’m coming home this week,” I tell him. “It’s too hard on the children, being away from you for so long.”

He does not reply, and I hang up the phone.

Margaret and Jeremy help me pack. Always before I’ve had another adult to help me lug the heavy suitcases out to the car. Now I miss what before used to make me impatient: Max or Kate
saying, “Did you throw all the perishables out?” “Are all the windows shut and locked?” I need another adult to help me with even the smallest things.

Because we’re leaving before the end of August, we make it on standby on the last boat to Hyannis. The kids are wired about going home, and probably they’re nervous about their father’s absence. They squabble on the boat and in the car until they both fall asleep, leaving me to make the drive through the dark to Sussex with only my thoughts to accompany me.

The Volvo’s headlights flash over our front lawn. Max’s van isn’t in the drive. I turn off the engine and sit for a moment in the dark night, hearing the late summer clicking of cicadas. Max often works late, but he doesn’t work
this
late.

“Are we home?” In the passenger seat, Margaret stirs.

“We’re home, baby. Here, you unlock the door. I’ll carry Jeremy.”

The moment we enter the house, I know: Max hasn’t been living here. The air is hot and stale, oppressive. I carry Jeremy up the stairs. Margaret pulls back his sheets and I gently lay my little boy in his own familiar bed. I untie one sneaker; Margaret unties the other. We slip off his socks. He smacks his lips together and whimpers, but doesn’t wake. I pull the sheet over him. Let him sleep in his clothes for one night.

Margaret helps me carry the luggage into the front hall, and then I say, “That’s enough for tonight, honey. Go on to bed.”

She looks at me, her dark brown hair a whirled shaggy mess, her eyes old. “Mom, where’s Dad?”

“He must be working.”

“Mom. I’m not a complete idiot.”

“Honey—”

“What’s going on? Look, I won’t tell Jeremy. But come on!” She can be so fierce, a tiger of a girl.

“It’s complicated, Margaret. And I’m too tired to tell you about it tonight.” She looks at me, relentless. I have to tell her something. “Your father and I have had an argument. But things are going to be okay. I promise.” How can I promise that? When do I stop lying?

She doesn’t believe me. She still stands in front of me, obdurate.

“It’s late, Margaret. I’m exhausted.”

She glares.

“Please, honey.”

“I hate this.”

“I do, too.” I reach out to hug her, but she wheels away from me, storms into her bedroom, and slams the door.

In the kitchen I discover that the cats’ bowls are completely empty. When did Max feed them last? I wonder. While I put out dry and canned food, Midnight and Cinnamon meow and rub against my ankles. They eat ravenously. I watch, pleased by this sight of satisfied hungers.

The answering machine has sixteen messages, some for Write?/Right, some for Margaret, one for Jeremy, some for Max. All can wait until tomorrow.

I open our bedroom windows to let fresh air in and it comes, cool and dry, bearing the scent of apples, and with that scent the sense of autumn brushes over me, making me shiver. This is such an unsettled time, still as soft as summer, knife-edged with fall.

I slip beneath my sheets and try to sleep. Can’t. Sitting up, I try to read, but the words seem smudged. I pad around the house, looking in on my sleeping children. I heat a pan of milk; it tastes awful. I pour a glass of wine and set it down untouched.

I know where my husband is. He’s sleeping at the office, he’s hiding from me.

I change into a pair of sweatpants and a loose T-shirt, slip my feet into sandals, grab up my keys. I scribble a note: “Went to Dad’s office; be right back; xoxox Mom,” and leave it on my daughter’s bedside table, just in case she wakes.

It’s after midnight when I pull into the parking lot at the newspaper offices. Max’s van is parked in front.