Chance Harbor (8 page)

Eve frowned, thinking back. “That you and he needed a night out, and would I come down to look after her. I said I was happy to do it and he thanked me. That’s it.”

“Didn’t it seem at all odd that Russell called you and not me?”

Eve shrugged. “I suppose I did wonder, but then I decided he was probably trying to surprise you.”

Catherine made a face. “He surprised me, all right.”

“Is it you or him?”

“Me or him what?”

“Who wants the divorce.”

“Both of us know it’s over.”

“My God, Catherine. Surely this deserves more thought than just one bad weekend?”

“No. It absolutely does not. It’s done.
I’m
done.” Catherine rose from the table. “Listen, I think you’re right. You should go, Mom. I’m sorry. Thank you for coming, but I need a nap. I didn’t sleep well at the hotel.”

“Please,” Eve said. “Don’t rush into this.”

A grimace twisted her daughter’s pretty features. “Funny. That’s exactly what you said to me when I wanted to marry Russell. Guess I should have listened.”

“Listen to me now, then! I don’t presume to know the inner workings of your marriage, but you and Russell are both good people who love each other. And you both love Willow! Think of what this will do to her.”

“Trust me. All I’ve done this weekend is think about what this will do to Willow,” Catherine said, her voice breaking.

Eve felt sick to her stomach. If Catherine set her mind on something, that something was likely to happen. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay tonight?”

“Yes. It’s better if you go home,” Catherine said, then left the kitchen, head and shoulders bowed as if she were marching to her own execution.

In a minute Eve heard the bedroom door slam. She stood alone in the kitchen, staring at the sweating glass her daughter had left on the table and wondering what in the world would happen now.

M
iraculously, Catherine made it through Sunday dinner after her mother left and Willow came home: beef stew from the freezer, a salad made from the remnants of romaine and tomatoes her mother had brought in from the garden. She’d dodged Willow’s questions about Russell, diverting her with questions about her new friend, Henry. It broke Catherine’s heart to look at her daughter, laughing and chattering away like any nicer-than-average fifteen-year-old, and thinking about what it would do to Willow when she discovered that Russell and one of her classmates were having a baby.

She sent Willow upstairs to do homework and get ready for bed while she cleaned the kitchen. What the hell was she going to do with so many tomatoes?

Catherine started to dump them into the compost bucket, then stopped herself. She might need these tomatoes. Money would be tight now. The head of school was bound to act swiftly once he caught wind of the situation. Russell would definitely be fired. He might even be charged with some criminal act, for all she knew.

She managed to keep things together as she went upstairs to kiss Willow good night, telling her that Russell would be home later but might have to go into school early.

“I’ll see him tomorrow at school, right?” Willow asked, settling against her pillows with a book.

“Right.” Catherine heard the note of anxiety in Willow’s voice and leaned forward to kiss the girl’s forehead. Her hair rose from the static electricity and gave them both a shock, making Willow laugh. “Good night. Don’t stay up too late reading.”

“I’m glad you went to a spa,” Willow said, as Catherine started to close the door. “We should go together sometime.”

“Sure,” Catherine said. “Maybe for your sixteenth birthday,” she added with a smile. “’Night, now.”

She went downstairs, glad that Willow had believed her story. The truth: it was a cheap motel on Route 1 by the airport. She’d stopped only because she’d been too shaken and too woozy from the sangria after that horrible dinner with Russell on Friday night to drive home. The motel had pink plastic chairs outside the bright blue doors, as if this were Florida, not Boston. The rugs had smelled like wet socks. There had been several truckers’ rigs in the parking lot, and television noise emanated from every wall, as if she were surrounded by speakers.

Catherine didn’t care. She’d taken two antihistamines to ensure that she would sleep.

Saturday morning, she had awakened feeling like somebody was pounding spikes into her head. She’d gone for a massage at the spa across the street, where she’d been vaguely horrified by the sight of a dainty Vietnamese woman weaving thread through an older woman’s eyebrow hairs and yanking them out.

In one of the back rooms, Catherine had stripped off her clothing and gotten facedown on a table beneath a warmed blanket, applauding herself for seeking a tension reliever that wasn’t also a destructive behavior.

Unfortunately, all the massage did was make her cry. It was the warmth of those small hands on her shoulders that had done it. She’d had to ask the masseuse to stop. She’d given her a good tip anyway. Then Catherine had climbed off the table, pulled her clothes back on, and returned to the hotel after stopping at a liquor store to buy a bottle of whiskey. All of her resolutions about healthy behavior had flown out the window: she drank the whiskey straight from the bottle. It made her stomach burn, but at least it helped her sleep.

She had alternated between crying so hard that her eyelids were encrusted with salt and feeling angry.
How dare he
, Catherine thought during those times when fury kept her going. How dare Russell have the life he’d always wanted—a pretty wife and a baby of his own!—while she was stranded with their old life, the tired one built through hard work and determination as they’d gone to grad school, carved out careers, bought a house, and spent every cent they had and some of her father’s money, too, on infertility treatments that proved she was barren?

Barren
. That word said it all about her, emotionally and physically.

The worst of it? She hadn’t seen this coming. In the past year, she had celebrated their wedding anniversary and birthdays, made love to her husband several times a week, shared meals and house chores and her father’s death and Willow’s art with him, all without having any idea that her husband was being unfaithful. For
months
! How could she have been so clueless?

She and Russell had spoken by phone twice while she was at the hotel. During those conversations, she’d pressed him for details. Russell told her how, the weekend he was supposedly biking with a college friend, he’d actually been with Nola on her father’s sailboat. He confessed, too, about the Back Bay hotel Nola had put on her credit card to celebrate Russell’s birthday.

“She’s a very determined girl,” Russell said, sounding awed. “What Nola wants, she gets.”

“But I don’t understand,” Catherine had said, truly mystified. In a way, curled up on the motel bed’s slippery floral spread with the phone pressed to her ear had been like talking to Russell before they were married, from her dorm room to his. She could almost imagine they were still getting to know each other: this was like talking to a stranger. “Why does she want to be with you, Russell? Out of all the boys she could choose?”

He had sounded equally bewildered. “I don’t know. She says I’m smart and cool and funny.” He cleared his throat. “I thought Nola was on the pill, and she thought I’d had a vasectomy since I didn’t have any kids of my own. The pregnancy was an accident. But now Nola says she wants my baby and will die without me. I believe her.”

A powerful aphrodisiac, that kind of damsel-in-distress need. Catherine wanted to hate this girl. But Nola was a child, she reminded herself, no matter what Russell said about her. Worldly! At eighteen!

Oh, Russell
, Catherine thought as she stepped into the shower now.
You’ve lied to me, but you’ve lied to yourself more
. And that knowledge made her cry again, her anger evaporating as she felt the pain of losing him.

After the shower, Catherine pulled on her flannel pajamas and robe; she felt so chilled from the shock of it all that her teeth were chattering. She and Russell had agreed they couldn’t keep this from Willow for long. The kids at school would be blowing up their phones the minute word was out. Catherine suspected the student rumor mill was already churning. They probably had hours left. Maybe minutes. She wanted to protect Willow from that ugliness.

Russell was due home anytime now. They had agreed yesterday that he could come by the house after Willow was in bed to collect some of his clothing and other things. They would tell her about the divorce tomorrow at dinner, together, as the experts suggested.

They had also agreed that Catherine would stay in their small Cambridge house with Willow. The mortgage was modest and neither of them wanted to uproot her. When Catherine had asked where Russell planned to live, he’d said he had no idea, sounding so forlorn that Catherine had almost felt sorry for him. Then her fury returned when he said, “It doesn’t really matter where I go now. Once Nola and I are married, of course, we’ll need something big enough for a baby. Luckily, she has a trust fund.”

Remembering this made Catherine run into the bathroom and throw up. She retched again and again as she tried to rid her body of anger, grief, and Russell.

She’d just finished brushing her teeth when she heard the key in the front door. She’d have to change the lock, Catherine thought, then scolded herself: Why? Russell was still Russell. Nice, compassionate, honest.

No, scratch that last thing: her husband was far from honest. She scrubbed her face clean with a washcloth, hung it up, and went downstairs to greet him.

Russell hadn’t shaved and he wore the same clothes he’d had on Friday night. They were wrinkled and stained. He looked like a chiseled, good-looking actor made-up as a homeless person. She wondered if he’d been sleeping in his office.

“Do you need a suitcase?” she asked. “The black roller is in the front hall closet.”

“You sure you won’t need it?”

“Go ahead. Take it.”
Take everything
.

She sat in the living room, wishing she were the sort of person who knitted or did scrapbooking. She didn’t want to turn on the television, for fear of waking Willow, and her stomach couldn’t handle any more alcohol. But sitting there with nothing to do was agony.

Finally, she remembered the laundry—she normally did it on Saturdays—and carried the hamper down to the basement to throw the clothes in the washer. She pulled Russell’s clothes out of the hamper and stuffed them into a trash bag. He could do his own damn laundry.

By the time she’d returned to the living room, Russell was sitting in one of the wingback chairs by the fireplace. “I just took what I could carry in this.” He gestured to the suitcase beside him. “I’ll have to get the rest of my stuff later. Look, I wish we could work something out.”

“Like what? You and your child bride coming to live here with the baby?” She dropped the trash bag of his dirty clothes on top of the suitcase.

“No. Not that.”

“What, then?”

Russell dropped his head into his hands. “Jesus, Catherine. I don’t know. I can’t think straight.”

“Obviously you haven’t been thinking straight for a while. You’ve been following your dick.”

He jerked his head up. “There’s no need to be nasty.”

“And yet somehow I can’t seem to stop myself.”

“You’re hurt. I understand that.”

“I’m fucking angry, too. Don’t forget that, Russell.”

He held up both hands in surrender. “I get it. But bitching at each other isn’t going to help the situation. We’ve got to try to work something out.”

“About what?” Catherine demanded. “Custody? I’ve already said you can see Willow whenever. But she’s not going to want to live with you and Nola. That much I know.”

“No, not about custody. About a place for me to stay until things are out in the open. I’ve been thinking that maybe I could stay here at the house until then.” At the look on her face, Russell became defensive. “Look, it’s my house, too. I even contributed most of the down payment. Why should I be the one forced to leave?”

“Because you’re the asshole. This is all your fault.”

“This is a no-fault divorce state,” he reminded her. “And I’m only talking about staying here for a little while. A few weeks, at most.”

“Seriously? Are you insane?”

“Think about it.” Russell had adopted his soothing teacher’s voice. “It’s going to be expensive for me to rent an apartment anywhere in Boston or Cambridge. You know how landlords want first and last months’ rent, a deposit. Where will we get that kind of money?”

“Borrow it from your trust-fund baby! That’s not my problem!”

“It’s our money, Catherine. At least until the divorce is official, everything is a fifty-fifty split. I’m not even certain I’ll have to pay child support, realistically, since Willow’s not mine and I have my own child on the way.”

“Just when I think you can’t sink any lower, there you go!”

Russell, trapped in his own delusions, acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “Plus, if I’m staying here, I can at least help out by taking Willow to and from school until the administration finds out and does something. I’m hoping Nola and I can keep this quiet until we’re married. Maybe even until Christmas.”

Nola and I
.
Married.
Catherine stared at him. “Russell, if you think your hottie girlfriend will keep your secret until Christmas, you’re a moron. She’s a
teenager
. She’s going to tell her friends. She’ll probably put it on Twitter, for Christ’s sake. She’ll send Instagrams of her growing belly to all her followers! Some other student will tell her parents, and then the shit will really hit the fan. I hope you’ve thought about a different career, because you’ll probably never be allowed to teach again! And no matter what happens, Nola will definitely not want you to still be living here with your
wife
.”

“What about Willow? Have you thought about her?”

“How can you even
ask
me that, when you couldn’t think about your own daughter long enough to keep your dick in your pants instead of screwing one of her classmates?”

“I’ve told you—Nola’s not in Willow’s class.” Russell’s voice was still calm. “She’s a senior this year. Eighteen. Almost nineteen.”

“That’s old for a senior,” Catherine said suspiciously. “Have you looked at her driver’s license?”

“She took a year off to ski in the Alps with her mother when she was ten.”

“Oh. Perfect.”

“Anyway,” Russell went on, “the age of consent to marry in Massachusetts is sixteen. Nola’s old enough to make up her mind about whether to marry me or not. She’s an adult.”

Catherine picked up the suitcase with both hands and hurled it at him, missing Russell’s kneecaps only because he was agile enough to leap to one side. “An adult?” she yelled. “An adult who probably didn’t even have boobs or her
period
five years ago! I don’t care if you sleep on the street! We can talk to Willow tomorrow like we planned. Then we’re
done
. Now go!”