The Real Liddy James (22 page)

Dear Sebastian

THANK YOU!
I wanted to escape but I didn't know where to go.
I am tired, it's true—mentally, physically, every way I can think of.
Mostly I'm tired of being me.

Liddy

Of course Rose had heard Peter angry with Liddy before, but when she heard him shouting on the phone there was a tone in his voice that made her want to cry. After he had hurled the receiver to the floor, however, his ire defused and he was engulfed by the violent despair she had not seen for years.
“How could Matty do
this to us?”
he kept saying, and at first Rose thought he was referring to her in the collective pronoun, but afterward, as he pounded around the bedroom, grabbing his coat and searching for his keys, she understood he meant himself and Liddy.

Rose soothed, “The only thing that matters is that he's safe. He needs to come back and live here right away. We'll manage.
We know it's difficult at Liddy's, with her hours. Maybe he should
never
have been sent to camp. . . .”

“I wish it was that simple, Rose. What if the problem isn't Liddy. What if it's you and me?”

“If anyone it was that idiot
manny
! I hated the sound of him.”

“He's been looking after Matty for six weeks. We've had what amounts to primary custody for nearly six years!”

“Peter!”

Peter had never made any criticism, implied or otherwise, of Rose's relationship with Matty before and she felt shocked and upset. Rose had assumed he would continue to blame Liddy, allowing her to breathe the self-congratulatory air of the moral high ground. She soon saw, however, that she could not take credit for the prize for drama and the captainship of the soccer team without the reverse applying. She cast around to blame something else.

“It must be the school,” she said.

“
What?
Liddy put him in private school supposedly to keep him out of trouble. She coughs up thirty-five thousand dollars a year in fees for it!”

Rose sat down on the bed, wishing he had not been so unusually
specific.
She had followed Peter's lead on the fact of Liddy's financial support, pretending it didn't exist, in the same way that she added extras and trips and music tuition onto the school bills without even thinking about it. And she had never asked him how much money Liddy gave him every month, because she avoided any evidence that their combined salaries did not cover their expenses.

“What did we do wrong?” Peter demanded, and this time he meant himself and Rose. “Where the hell are my keys?” He riffled through the drawer of her nightstand, in his frenzy ignoring the envelope containing the draft “Couple Cohabitation Agreement,” which so far she had ignored too.

“Peter, please, all teenagers experiment, especially ones who live in New York City. He's probably scared himself more than us.”

Rose felt quite proud of the measured way she delivered this, particularly given how hysterical she had become about the two sodas a day and lack of keyboard practice, but Peter turned to look at her as if she had slapped him.

“Rose. Matty is my flesh and blood and I cannot allow him to head further down a self-destructive path that will bring misery to all of us, including you. Do you want an out-of-control adolescent taking drugs around our small child?”

“No,” said Rose helplessly.

She listened as he stomped down the creaky stairs, his exit punctuated predictably by the sharp double bang. She tried to sit up, but an excruciating pulse of pelvic pain sliced between her legs. She clutched her belly tight and felt helpless. She called Doctor Barbara.

Four hours later, however, when a call came through from Liddy's office and a young woman named Sydney told her that Liddy had “gone fucking nuts” (Curtis's words, not Sydney's) live on national television, Rose decided to be helpless no more. She was glad Peter was already on his way to Vermont, and despite the sciatica and the sleeplessness and the high blood pressure,
and despite Barbara's protestations, she did what the nicest woman anyone had ever met would do. She stood up, every pain-filled step reminding her of the Little Mermaid in the original story, who gives up her tail and walks as if on knives for love, resolved to go to Liddy's apartment herself.

She did not get past the couch.

So it was an exhausted Peter who arrived there in the early hours of the next morning, with a dirty and malodorous Matty, to be greeted by Sally, the new nanny, her obedience and enthusiasm considerably diminished. Sally opened the door, pointed them in the direction of Liddy's bedroom, and promptly quit.

“My mother says I have to leave,” she said, running into the elevator. “I've never seen anyone behave like this before. It's scary. Her phone rings every five minutes. She doesn't pick it up.”

Peter told Rose all this when he called that afternoon. He said that he and Matty were back safe, but that Liddy was lying motionless on her bed in the stifling New York summer heat, eyes shut, body half hidden under a white lace throw (like Camille Monet in her husband's painting). He would have to stay in Tribeca for the night.

“Did she say anything to you?” asked Rose.

“Only that she wanted to know how bad her . . .
episode . . .
was. Did you google it?”

“Yes. It's bad.”

“I don't like to see Liddy like this. She looks dreadful,” said Peter. “I hope she's going to be okay.”

“Should we call her parents?” said Rose, concerned.

“No,” Peter replied. “She's wouldn't thank us for that.”

“Barbara says it was probably some form of panic attack brought on by stress and she must rest. And so must you. How's Matty?”

“I've spent seven hours waiting for him to apologize and he hasn't and now he's in his bed and I don't want to see him. I shouted my head off at him all the way from Albany to Grand Central, and I've had enough. It seemed to distress me far more than him, I might add.”

Rose knew this before Peter said it. She told him she loved him before hanging up.

Sleep banished for the time being, she picked up her laptop to look again at Liddy's “episode” and see if it was better on the second viewing. She pressed play, heard a few bars of the theme music of
Jaws,
winced, and automatically pressed fast forward. She reached the bit where Liddy burst into tears and started shouting,
“It's all bullshit. I'm bullshit. I can't do this anymore,”
and decided she'd had enough. However, she accidentally hit pause instead of stop, and as Rose saw the image of Liddy frozen on the screen (Liddy's face stretched wide in a savage cry, her fingers clawing at the clothes on her chest, as if a terrifying, toothy, little alien Liddy was about to burst out of her stomach), she had a vivid sense that this event was not just about the disconnect between appearance and reality in Liddy's domestic life, but also revealed a fundamental disconnect within Liddy's self.

It wasn't better the second time around (if anything it was worse), and though Rose did, of course, feel desperately concerned for Liddy and her altered mental state, her own mind raced
with a series of far more ignoble preoccupations. What was the “it” that Liddy couldn't do anymore?

Rose wondered if she should read about nervous breakdowns, but feared what she would learn, so she did not. Barbara had assured her that what Liddy needed most was sleep—there was, after all, no imaginable universe in which Liddy would not be, in the end, a woman who coped—but she could not tell how long this would take. Rose shivered and lay on her back to rest, but the baby kicked in protest, so she tossed and turned around and let it sleep on her bladder again.

The next day Peter had not called by lunchtime, so after Rose had finished researching psychiatric institutions in New York State that offered rest cures, she dialed the number at Liddy's apartment. When Peter picked it up, he sounded harassed. He said he had just finished cleaning up a puddle of dog pee, after feeding the boys pizza, and was now building a LEGO starship with Cal, as the nanny had quit.
You told me that yesterday
, Rose was about to say, but she decided against it.

Peter reported that the apartment phone had rung twice that morning. The first call was from Liddy's former boss, Marisa Seldon, who had said Liddy must get in touch with her the moment she surfaced, and on no account was she to talk to Curtis Oates on her own. When Rose asked why, Peter said, “Marisa says Liddy needs a lawyer. Curtis will try and fire her.”

“But she's not well,” said Rose.

“Marisa says that's why.”

Rose shook her head, appalled by the unpleasantness of such a working environment. Then she remembered how several of
her own colleagues had waited less than forty-eight hours after her hospitalization to rush to the new dean's door waving their peer-reviewed articles and proposals for upscaling the courses she taught.

The second call had been from Liddy's literary agent, on his way to a meeting, who said that Liddy must get out of bed and finish her new book, as he was already fielding offers for serialization. “She's trending at the moment, so tell her to tweet from her bedroom!” the agent shouted as his cab went into the Holland Tunnel.

Rose and Peter allowed themselves a shared chuckle and Rose was relieved. Even if Liddy did get fired, it seemed her earning potential had not diminished. And the dramas of the previous day had proved that she could not manage on her own.
Now Liddy'll see how much she needs me,
Rose thought. She was aware this was not something a nice woman would think.

She felt ashamed. Then she felt reassured.

“Is Liddy up yet?” she said.

“No,” said Peter. “But I heard her talking to herself, and Cal says she's reading e-mails, so there's definitely movement. Oh . . .” He paused for a moment. “Her shower's on. I'll call you later.”

In fact, Peter did not call; he just texted the news that he was staying another night and then arrived back at the house the following morning, desperate for some peace and unwilling to face any sort of interrogation. Rose, however, desperate for information, could not control herself.

“Where's Matty?” she said.

“I left him with Liddy.”

“How long for?”

He made the sort of soft groaning noise that so irritated Rose and took off his shoes, at that moment looking every minute of his fifty-seven years.

“She's going to take him and Cal to Ireland on vacation this weekend. Some friend of hers has lent her his house for a few weeks.”

“
What?
What friend? A boyfriend? Will he be looking after the boys too? What about what happened with Josh?” said Rose.

Why didn't you discuss it with me?
she thought.

“It'll just be her and the boys,” Peter replied slowly.

He pulled off his clothes, on which Rose could detect the smell of Matty's sweat and sick, and headed into the bathroom. Rose arose from her bed and followed him.

“Liddy should be getting professional help, not leaving the country with two children,” she said, before delivering a succinct précis of possible treatment options.

“She says she's fine.”

Rose looked at him. If the “fine” comment wasn't annoying enough, she knew now she had wasted her time reading about how to get Liddy involuntarily committed, and, worse, it had lulled her into a false sense of security.

“Liddy doesn't cook, she doesn't clean, she doesn't do child care. How will she cope?”

Peter looked at her. Then he replied evenly, “There was a time when Liddy did all those things.”

“Well, Matty
must
see the child psychologist.”

Peter, naked, sat down on the toilet seat.

“We talked to the child psychologist yesterday afternoon. You were right, Rose. He said it was very regrettable behavior and a warning, but it's important not to overreact. Drugs, drink, sex. They're all out there and we have to deal with them. Liddy checked the history on his laptop and read all the messages on his phone. There's nothing scary, I'm happy to report. A few curse words and self-penned rap lyrics about the injustices of his life, but no visits to terrifying websites and no porn.”

Peter shuddered.

“I thought you didn't believe in us spying on him,” said Rose quickly and quietly, not wanting to admit she had no idea how to do this.

“Not anymore,” said Peter.

Peter stood up wearily and turned the bath on. She saw the blue-gray ridges of the varicose vein on the back of his right leg, the legacy of a football accident at Harvard when he was nineteen and the handsomest young man on the field. She felt a pulse of lust at the image. On the days when Rose regretted the fact that she had not met him sooner, she reminded herself that if they had coincided at college he, Mr. All-American hero, would never have looked at her, bespectacled and Birkenstocked.

“What about Liddy's job?” she asked.

“She's taken a leave of absence. She needs time off.” He paused for a moment. “It's the quietest time of the year, apparently. The biggest day for divorce attorneys is January second, closely followed by September fourth—just after everyone's spent a holiday weekend with their spouses.”