The Girl in the Comfortable Quiet (17 page)

My heart stops.
Oh fuck.
What made me say
that? Panicking, I click off the phone.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
flick the signal and turn onto the 101 freeway south. Another ear-piercing
scream comes from the passenger seat and my fingers tighten on the steering
wheel.

“Kaley, will you please stop crying?” I plead as
I fight to merge into the faster moving traffic. “I’m not going back to the
house. We can buy you another bear when we get to LA. Won’t that be nice? A new
friend for you and Bear.”

The crying intensifies. I struggle to stay calm
and focused so I don’t cause an accident. But when Kaley cries this way it
would drive anyone mad. Ear-piercing, unending screams from an inconsolable
child. When she doesn’t get her way, it never ends.

“I’m sorry I forgot Bear,” I murmur soothingly.

Well, that apology worked brilliantly. She’s
kicking the dash now. How could I have forgotten the freaking bear? But then, I
was feeling it again, irked and not knowing why, as we loaded the Range Rover
to leave.

Everything on the surface seemed normal. Neil
putting the suitcases in the car. The way he felt hugging and kissing me. How
he said goodbye to Kaley. Him loading Kaley into her car seat and chiding her
to be good.

All familiar and ordinary, and yet it didn’t feel
familiar in any way. It felt like I was being rushed, like he was pushing us
out the door, and then, worse, an aura of relief seeping from him when we were
finally ready to go. Like he was relieved that we were leaving and fighting not
to show it.

I shake my head. I wonder if it felt strange to
Kaley and that’s why she’s more irritable than usual. Or maybe it’s just me—my
unease and anxiousness—that has got her into a full-blown tantrum.

I can’t stop myself and I shift my gaze. Her
round face is red and tearstained. Those giant eyes lock on me, and my heart
clenches.

I exhale a ragged breath. “Fine. I’ll go back.
See, Mommy is getting off the freeway. Will you stop crying now?”

She stares out the windshield in a smart and
alert way no three-year-old should be capable of, crying and sniffling, crying
and sniffling, until she sees something that confirms to her this isn’t a
trick.

The screaming stops. I roll my eyes, disappointed
with my crappy parenting. All the books say ignore the tantrums, but heck, none
of those authors have met Kaley. Even Jack can’t ignore it. He opts for
diversion. Me, I just take the simple route. I cave.

Face it, Chrissie,
y
ou’re
a terrible mother. One look at those giant dark eyes and your heart melts and
she wins. Kaley always wins.

She’s asleep by the time I turn onto the highway
up the mountain. As I enter the narrow one-lane, tree-lined road to the
house, I check the clock. Fudge, forty minutes and I’m no farther than where I
started from. I do a quick check of Kaley. Sound asleep. At least I won’t have
to haul her from the car into the house just to grab her stuffed bear. If
she were awake, she would never let me step away from the car for two minutes
without her.

Slowly I ease down the steep decline, avoiding
bumps so as not to wake her, and park in the circular drive in front of the
house. I unbuckle my seat belt, pull the keys from the ignition so that warning
beep won’t sound, and carefully open the door.

Once out of the driver’s seat, I hurry to the
front door. Inside the house, I freeze, my already taut nerves growing tauter.

There is music blasting from every ceiling
speaker and the air is suffocating with the stench of weed and other things.
The house feels strange, but I don’t know why, and my internally messy grows
even messier because I now know what I felt before leaving wasn’t my
imagination. Neil
was
anxious to get me out of the house. He wanted to
get loaded with Andy.

I grow even more determined in my dislike of
Andy. I have to get rid of him. My marriage will never be on the right track
again unless I find a way to get Andy out of our life. How is it possible for
one repulsive guy to so effortlessly put a wedge through two people who love
each other?

We were doing all right, good, before Andy.
Weren’t we?

I do a fast inspection of the living room and
move on to Kaley’s room. I start pulling apart the neatly stacked stuffed
animals on her bed. Shit, where is that bear? I need to find it and get the
hell out of here before I run into Neil.

There is too much inside me running frantic and
loose. I don’t want
this
confrontation with Neil today. Not now. And not
in front of Andy. Somehow, I need to work out some alone time with Neil so we
can work through our issues privately. Hash it out. Argue it out. Fuck it out.
Anything. Just somewhere away from Andy.

The drinking has to stop. The getting loaded has
to stop. The ignoring me and not coming to bed has to stop. The no sex status
of our relationship has to stop. And Andy in our house—that sure as hell has to
stop. I’m his wife, Neil needs to choose, and I’m not putting up with it any
longer.

What was it Linda said?
Deal with it and fix
it. That’s what women do.
Well, I’m ready to deal. Ready to fix. And ready
to fight Andy for my husband.

That last thought makes me only more chaotic
inside, since there has got to be something desperately wrong between Neil and
me that I have to fight a guy for him.

My gaze does another fast search of the nursery.
That freaking bear isn’t here. Maybe I put it with the suitcases before I left.
Maybe it’s laying on my bed.

I step into the hallway and falter. The door is
closed. I left it open when I wheeled my suitcases out for Neil to put into the
car. Why is it closed now?

Double-time, I rush down the hallway, feeling
strange and not knowing why. The surface of my flesh is tingling with ice
pricks. My heart is racing in my chest. I can’t feel my limbs. I’m numb and
overly alert at once. Dread and fear are careening through my veins from out of
nowhere.

I’m just outside the door when a voice inside my
head shouts out unexpectedly
No, Chrissie, no
. I have a sense of knowing
something before I see, a terrifying moment of clarity inside the emotional fog
and heartache in which I’ve existed. A need to know. A fear to know. A
desperation not to.

Why would my bedroom door be closed and music
pouring out from there?
It’s only 9:30 p.m. Neil hasn’t gone to bed
before dawn since he returned from this last trip. Why the hell would he do it
tonight?

My thoughts and emotions are crashing through me.
I hear sound from the other side of the door. A marginal part of my brain,
mercifully disconnected from the rest of me, has a vague awareness of what I’m
hearing, but I can’t catch the words in my head through the roaring in my ears.

I am strangely aware that I know what is
happening in my house before I open my bedroom door. I carefully turn the knob
and, as quietly as I can, enter the room.

The world shatters around me. Disjointed worries
and suspicions, once without meaning—thoughts I discounted as ridiculous—lock
in horrible clarity. Everything around me is without a feel of realness except
the scene I’m staring at in horror on my bed. That is too real,
incomprehensible, but unavoidably real nonetheless.

I feel sick, like I’m going to vomit. My thoughts
are running too fast for me to catch any of them, and instinctive fear is
chiding me not to look, but I can’t drag my eyes away, not from my husband, not
from
this.

For a moment I can see nothing but Neil. The way
he looks…my heart chills…the pleasure. The bliss. The love taking possession of
his gorgeous face in a way I’ve never seen before. He’s never looked at me like
this.
And his body moving in carnal want, glorifying, giving and taking.
His naked flesh gleams with sweat and his eyes are closed as he plunges over
and over again into the figure huddled beneath him.

Blond hair floats back from a face I recognize
and don’t want to.
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.
Blue eyes lock on mine.

Understanding shoots at me from my own bed. Andy
isn’t here because he’s Neil’s drug supplier. How stupid I was to think that.
To miss what I already knew, deep down inside, before this moment. Neil moved
Andy in because…

Neil runs his hands up Andy’s back, touching him
with a tenderness I can taste, and for the first time in a very long time I can
read my husband’s heart clearly.

I can’t take in air. The world is growing dark
and twirling. The hallway is a tiny tunnel of light I can barely see. Neil
opens his eyes.

No! No! No!

I run for the front door.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I’m
frantically trying to open the car door. The shaking of my hands makes them
useless and I can’t manage to squeeze my fingers around the handle.

The tears pour faster, clouding my vision and clogging
my throat. I’m going to faint if I don’t pull air into my lungs soon, but the
second I suck in oxygen my emotions push it out.

I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t feel.

My weak legs give way and I sink to the ground
beside my Range Rover. I’m hyperventilating and I know that the concrete
beneath me is cold, but I can’t feel that either. I can’t feel anything. My
body is nothing but a loosely joined collection of deadened cells, and even the
front drive, brilliant with lights, has a strange surreality to it, surrounded
by darkness that swallows all detail and shape.

I bury my face in my hands, blocking out the
world around me and wishing I could die right here. I fight to pull myself
together, but it’s my thoughts that join instead. I left the house with a
series of devastating truths, I don’t want to acknowledge them, but there is
one I can’t push away. Can’t keep from my head. It bursts from my center all
through me, refusing to be denied or contained.

Neil loves Andy. My husband is in love with Andy.

Everything I believed to be true before today is
wrong. The problems in my marriage. It isn’t drugs. It isn’t Alan. It’s love.
Neil is in love with Andy. And all these years we’ve been married have been a
lie, because Andy existed in Neil’s world before me.

Oh God. How could I have been so stupid? How could
I not see this? There was never an ex-girlfriend. That was why Neil never
mentioned her by name. It was always Andy between us, even in our good moments,
the subtle feeling of almost perfect but not quite enough, it was all because
of Andy, just like it is Andy between us today.

I lean back against my car, staring out into the
darkness, lost and not knowing what to do. Above me Jesse’s house shines from
the hill, and my over-shocked nerves get another electric jolt. Is he up there,
spying down at me, witnessing the worst day of my life? A petty worry and
definitely foolish, but it feels like the moment someone else knows of this it
becomes forever part of me. Defining. Inescapable. Real.

I run my fingers through my hair trying to get
hold of myself, but I can’t. This night has happened. It is forever part of me.
It became a part of me the second I saw Neil fucking Andy.

I breathe in and I breathe out, but the waves of
panic are only increasing. Hands appear out of nowhere. Fingers close on my
arms.

“Chrissie—” Neil’s face is above me, and the
words he’s speaking fly around me, unwanted and dismissed.

“Don’t you touch me,” I scream, trying to break
free of his hold, and because he won’t release me I start hitting him and
struggling harder. “Let me go. Get away from me. I hate you.”

“Baby, settle down,” Neil murmurs, anxious and
afraid. “You don’t want to hurt yourself. You don’t want Kaley to hear. You
need to calm down.”

I jerk away from him, springing to my feet, and
laugh, a harsh, jagged bark that cuts at my throat. I stare at him with eyes I
can feel are wild and flashing.

“Calm down. Calm down? Don’t talk to me like I’m
overreacting. You didn’t break a plate in the kitchen. You fucked your best
friend in our bed. You don’t settle down from something like this. Not ever!”

I can see it in his eyes. Those words hurt him,
and I hate that I’m glad and that he’s scared out of his mind and that I’m
hitting him and can’t seem to stop it.

He tries to keep clear of my flailing arms.
“Where are the keys? You’re not driving like this. You are not going anywhere
until you’re rational and we’ve talked this through.”

“There is nothing to talk about,” I scream. “You
are having an affair with Andy. That’s pretty much a dead-end street for our
marriage.”

Somehow I get my door open, avoid Neil’s attempt
to grab onto me, and climb into the driver’s seat.

He reaches in trying to get the keys out of the
ignition. “You are not driving with the baby. Not like this, Chrissie. I can’t
stop you, but you are not taking my daughter anywhere. Not like this.”

I push at him, trying to get him back so I can
slam my door. “
My
daughter, Neil—” The flash of pain in his eyes nearly
stops my words. I’ve drifted into territory we never venture into, but hurt
catapults me onward. “I’m not leaving her here with you. Not in that house. Not
with Andy. Are you crazy? And you are not taking her from me. Not ever, Neil.
Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do with my daughter.”

Screams pierce the sound of our heated argument,
and I realize the baby trapped in the car seat is in full-blown hysterical
crying. Our yelling must have woken her up. I look over at Kaley, her
penetrating dark eyes studying us, her sweet face startled and distressed.

Oh shit.
I didn’t want her to see this.
I don’t want to fight with Neil in front of our daughter.
Damn it,
Chrissie,
get hold of yourself now and end this.
Whatever it is I’m feeling has to
wait. Kaley is watching us.

My fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “If you
don’t step back, I will drive away with you there, Neil,” I inform him stiffly,
but at least my voice is a normal tone and steady. “Get back from the car and
let me get out of here.”

I can tell by his expression that Neil is
debating whether to do as I ask, that he’s afraid to let me drive, and his eyes
betray concern for Kaley and for me…
damn him.

The way he is looking at me is just enough for my
emotions to go into free fall again. For a split second, I’m trapped in this
hideous morass with my Neil. Sweet and kind and caring Neil. Damn him.

His body is quaking and he looks as if he doesn’t
know what to do. He’s afraid and I’m afraid, everything changes the instant I
drive away from the house, and I think we’re both dreading where we go from
here.

I turn my face to stare stonily forward through
the windshield. I can’t look at Neil. Not any longer. If I do I’ll fall apart
again.

I hear my door click closed. I turn on the
ignition. I have no awareness of anything, of putting the car in gear, of
pulling from the driveway, but I know that I’m driving, that the car is moving
down the long road to the highway. I just can’t feel it. Even Kaley’s shrieks
can’t penetrate the leveling emotions crushing me. She shrieks and I can’t feel
it.

I don’t know what I’m doing. Not really. My body
moves on its own, mechanical and without command. I am drowning in a void and
yet somehow I am breathing and driving and endeavoring to mumble soothing words
to my daughter and going somewhere.

The mountain highway ends at State Street, and I
sit at the intersection and stare. Where am I going?

The next thing I know, I’m parked in my dad’s
driveway without ever having made a decision to come here. I sit in the car
while Kaley continues to whimper, staring at the house, forcing myself to
breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.

Jack’s car is parked in front of the garage, but
the house is dark. I look at the clock on the dash. 10:30—
has it really been
only an hour since my life blew up in my face? How is it possible so much has
changed and it’s only been sixty minutes?

My shaking intensifies and all I want to do is
get from this car, give my daughter to Maria, and get to my bedroom so I can
let loose everything churning inside me.

Please. Oh please. Oh please. Let Jack be asleep
or out or anything. Just let me get to the safety of my room so I finish
falling apart without anyone watching me do it, asking questions, expecting
answers or wanting anything from me.

I climb from the car, rush around to the
passenger door, and quickly unsnap Kaley’s belts. She fidgets in my arms, still
whimpering but too exhausted to be too difficult for once. I’m a mess, she’s a
mess, and of all the things I’ve done badly tonight, letting her see the scene
in the driveway with Neil is what I regret most. It’s the part I’ve given to
her of this horrible event that will be a part of her life forever, too.

Patting her back and making soothing sounds,
praying she doesn’t burst out in a full tantrum again, I round the house to the
entrance at the far wing where my bedroom is.

I slip into the dimly lit hallway and stop at
Maria’s door. I knock softly.

Oh please, Maria. Be awake. Be here.

The door opens.

Maria’s dark eyes search my face and then widen
in alarm. “Chica, why are you here? What’s wrong?”

I push Kaley into her arms. “Can you take the
baby tonight for me, please? Do whatever you have to do. Just keep her quiet,
keep her happy for one night.”

I whirl away toward my bedroom. Damn it, I can
hear Maria following me.

“Chrissie, you are scaring me,” she exclaims
worriedly from my doorway. “What has happened?”

Somehow I manage to meet her probing dark stare
directly. “Nothing is wrong, Maria. I need a little time alone, please. That’s
all. Is my dad home?”

“
Señor Jack…” and then the words become a
jumbled mess, a rapid torrent of Spanish and English, but my emotion-frazzled
brain doesn’t have the energy to translate them. I can only catch fragments.
Nothing more.

“Please, Maria. Will you stop talking? I can’t
deal with it. If my husband calls tell him I’m not here.”

Her eyes fly even wider. “No. What has happened,
Chrissie, that you do not want to talk to your husband? I will not lie for
you.”

Brown eyes shift back and forth rapidly examining
my face. “Nothing,” I exclaim, more loudly and harshly than I want to.

Disbelief flashes in her gaze. A hint of
reproach. “Do not lie to me. I can see when something is very wrong with mi
niña.”

I take in a steadying breath. “I’m all right,
Maria. Neil and I had a fight. It’s nothing. I just don’t want to talk to him
for a while. You understand, don’t you? Married people sometimes fight. We take
time-outs from each other. We—”

Oh fuck. I’m only worrying her more and I clamp
my mouth shut. I hate that when she questions me I feel like a little girl,
snotty and bitchy and babbling. But I am not a little girl. I’m a grown woman.
With grown woman problems—I feel my heart start to beat out of control
again—and I don’t owe anyone my private hurts and pain. Not even Maria.

“Can you not tell my dad I’m here?” I ask.

Her lips tighten, but she nods.

I give her a hug. “We’ll talk in the morning,” I
assure her. “I promise. I’m all right. I just need to be by myself for a while.
Take care of Kaley, OK?”

I put a fast kiss on Kaley’s forehead and Maria’s
cheek, and then I close the door between us. I turn the lock and drop my
forehead against the frame, straining to hear sound from the hallway. Finally,
I hear Maria’s bedroom door click closed.

I move to the center of my bedroom and stare. Now
that I’m alone, I don’t know what to do. And I feel it starting over, like panic
attacks or PTSD. The sickness in my stomach. The world spinning. My body
shaking, flashing images in my brain that I do not want to see, and new tears
gathering in my throat.

It is running in my head like a movie I can’t
shut off, each scene, one by one, that brought me here. Over and over again.

I go into my bathroom, switch on the shower and
lock the door. Numb, I undress as the room fills up rapidly with steam. My legs
are wobbly and don’t want to hold me. I lean back into the tile and slide
weakly to the floor, the hot streams of water reddening my flesh.

It is scalding, but I can’t feel it. I hug my
legs with my arms, rocking on the shower floor in a huddled ball. The tears
start again, unstoppable, and all I want is to feel the burn, but I can’t feel
anything.