Valley of Ashes (20 page)

I
haven’t had any reason to go out to the warehouse for a while,” said Dean. “Not for a couple of months, anyway.”

“Well, I needed to check over some shit this morning,” said Cary.

Dean nodded. “What kind of shit?”

“Invoices that were misnumbered. A spares order for that new Pemex facility. Same problem we had with Bangalore last month, remember?”

“Of course,” said Dean. “Rajiv wanted to beat the hell out of me.”

“Well, different client, same clusterfuck. I’m telling you, Bittler’s doing some weird shit.”

“All appears yellow to the jaundiced eye,” said Dean.

“Jaundice didn’t re-key all the warehouse locks without telling anyone,” retorted Cary.

That got Dean’s attention. “
What?
”

“I went out there this morning,” Cary said. “Couldn’t get in the damn place. Setsuko says Bittler’s got the only set of new keys. And he’s conveniently in Houston all week. What the fuck, right?”

Dean thought this over.

“Come on,” said Cary. “Your wife should do some investigative reporting, here…
60 Minutes
the guy a little. Right after she figures out who this arsonist is—”

“
What
arsonist?” asked my husband, turning toward me.

“Um,” I said, swallowing audibly. “The guy in my second article.”

Dean started shredding little bits off the edge of his napkin. “I thought you were writing about
restaurants
.”

I looked down at the table. “I got an extra assignment.”

“That you conveniently neglected to mention this morning?”

“Yeah, I was
totally
hiding it from you, Dean,” I said, crossing my arms.

Well, technically I
had
been, of course, but this whole cranky-husband-bullshit thing was starting to piss me off.

He looked up at me, having now destroyed his entire napkin.

I stared right back. I mean, when had he decided our marriage was a dictatorship, for fuck’s sake?

“Madeline’s really talented,” said Cary, smiling at me. “You have to read her stuff. It’s outstanding.”

“No,” said Dean. “
Not
outstanding. By any stretch of the imagination.”

Cary’s eyes widened and he turned toward Dean, but my husband was focused on me.

“Not even
acceptable
,” Dean continued, frostier with each syllable.

“Acceptable to whom?” I asked, looking him straight in the eye.

He leaned forward, nostrils flared just a bit. “Jesus Christ, Bunny, what the hell were you
thinking
?”

“What the hell do you
think
I was thinking? I’ve finally got a job again, doing what I’m good at. I’m making a little money, trying to do my bit for the familial finances.”

Okay, so not exactly in any big fat profitable way,
yet
, but still…

“Goddamn it,” said Dean. “You’re a
mother
now. Haven’t you put us both through enough of this shit already?”

Both my hands were clenched into fists now. “Enough of
what
shit, specifically?”

“Your morbid fascination with violence and mayhem. Your goddamn death wish.”

“I do
not
have a death wish.”

“Really?” He pursed his lips into an annoying smirk that made me
want to kick him, under the table. “Let’s see… there’s the guy who was going to light
you
on fire, the woman who tried to push you off the fourth-story roof, oh… and the gang boys in Queens who were planning to
shoot
you, after they’d managed to run you over with a car and break your arm during a
homicide
investigation. None of that qualifies as a flirtation with your own mortality?”

“None of which I sought
out
,” I said. “Or even instigated. I mean, if anything, I have a
life
wish. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be here—”

Cary’s head swiveled back and forth between us, following these volleys.

“And now you’re jumping
right
back into it,” said Dean. “Putting yourself at risk. Putting our
children
at risk. Our
daughters
.”

“I am not,” I said, starting to tear up. “I am
not
.”

But my gut went cold with fear at what he was suggesting, like I’d just choked down an entire tray of ice,
and
the tray—the old aluminum kind with a ratchet-lever on one end to tilt the cubes out of their tinny rectangular partitions.

Hadn’t I thought the
exact
same thing myself, when I assured McNally the first day we met that I had no interest in anything other than restaurant pieces?

Yes. Of course I had.

“You need to give up this
writing
shit,” said my husband.

Cary blanched, turning toward me with such a tenderly crinkle-browed faceful of sympathy that I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to hug him or crawl out of the restaurant in shame.

Yes, Dean had been tantrummy for the last couple of months. But this was different. He’d never bullied me in front of a friend before, never in public.

I surveyed him through narrowed eyes: the pompous jut of his chin, the moue of entitlement twisting the corners of his mouth.

And suddenly I felt like I’d x-rayed through to what this was really about.

Not about danger for me, not even concern for the girls’ safety… at least not at the root of it all.

My father would’ve laughed, summarizing with the Marine Corps’s unofficial motto:
Shit flows downhill
.

Dean was at other people’s beck and call all day, every day. Bittler and the rest of them.

“Working for wages,”
his
father said, every time we visited the family farm—a mere three words to dismiss his son’s every achievement, out in the world.

Damn right it all comes downhill, and here I am, up to my waist.

“You need to give up this writing shit, Madeline,” Dean said again. “You’ve never made any money at it, and I want a
homemaker
.”

I was just about to tell him to get royally fucked and rot in hell when India knocked his water all over the table and the waitress arrived with our lunch.

D
ean was petulantly silent with me for the rest of the meal, not to mention the entire drive back to Ionix after lunch.

Yet he chatted with Cary as though nothing had happened, while I sat in the backseat between the girls.

And the whole time my confidence receded, the way the tide does before a hurricane hits. Maybe Dean was right, maybe I was putting the girls in danger, and I sure as shit wasn’t making any money. In fact I had to rely on being subsidized by my mother even to attempt this job, this
hobby
.

“Listen,” I said, reaching forward to put my hand on Dean’s shoulder, when he’d pulled into a parking spot back at work.

He flinched my hand off and yanked up the emergency brake. Pocketing the keys without a word, he got out, slamming the door shut behind him, and stalked back into the lobby.

Cary and I took a minute, just sitting there with our seat belts still on.

“You okay?” he asked at last, turning around to give me a tentative smile.

“Sure,” I said, from my perch between the girls’ car seats. “I’ll be fine. Eventually.”

I didn’t feel fine. I felt like a small dog that had gotten its ribs kicked in by the very human it most wanted to serve and protect.

Cary was still doing sympathy-face. “That was total bullshit, everything he said in the restaurant.”

I looked away. “It’s complicated.”

“Your husband is being an utter dickhead. What’s complicated about that?”

“I mean, from a certain perspective, I can see his point. He’s got a right to be concerned…”

“ ‘Concern’ my ass, Madeline. There is
no
excuse for spewing vitriol at your wife in a restaurant. Or anywhere else, for that matter.”

“Granted, Dean’s mode of expression was appalling. And I’m sorry you had to be there…”

“Does he speak to you that way at home? When you guys are alone?”

I didn’t answer.

“Madeline, that was not a rhetorical question.”

“Cary… look, Dean and I, we’re both exhausted.”

“Answer me.”

“Oh, great. Now
you’re
going to start ordering me around?” I looked out the window.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please. Talk to me about this. I’m your friend. I think it’s important.”

“Does Dean do this at home, when we’re alone?” I said. “Yes. Often. He’s been an asshole since we moved here. Intermittently, but still… huge gobs of assholish-ness.”

“Madeline,” he said, putting his hand on my knee.

“Look, do
you
think I’m endangering myself, or the girls?”

Cary thought about that. “Do
you
feel like you might be?”

“Well, I’m not investigating an ax murderer or anything,” I said. “This is just some guy who likes to light shit on fire. Junior-varsity crap.”

“Compared with that other stuff Dean was talking about?”

“Yeah.”

Stupid, dangerous, lethal “stuff ”… and my fault for getting caught up in it, every damn time.

“People have really tried to kill you?” asked Cary. “Not just the guy who wanted to chain you in the fireplace?”

I sighed. “Several people.”

“Seriously? Jesus…”

“You got a few minutes? I’ll flesh it out for you.”

“Sure,” he said. “Bittler can go fuck himself. I’m not in any hurry.”

So I proceeded to tell him the story of the Madeline Dare Misspent-Youth Massacre, with full orchestration and five-part harmony.

At the end of it, Cary didn’t speak for a good thirty seconds—just stared at me with this look of tremendous sadness on his face.

“You think Dean’s right,” I said.

Cary shook his head but still didn’t say a word.

I dropped my eyes, whispered, “
What
, then?”

“I think you’re a goddamn
hero
,” he said, his voice hoarse, “and I’m going to tell your husband it’s about time to get his head out of his ass and start
appreciating
you for it.”

I closed my eyes. “Please, don’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Look, you aren’t married. It’s like a dance after a while. You hit a rough patch, and there’s stuff on both sides, and it’s not about taking sides or who’s winning. It’s never about that. But anybody external joins into the fray, it just bends things more out of whack.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m not kidding. Dean’s been through a ton of shit lately. And everything’s resting on his shoulders. He’s on the road at least two weeks a month, he’s worried about supporting all three of us. He’s worried about what Bittler’s doing to
you
, and this job, and whether or not he’s going to make it all work out—and he knows his father and brother would love to see him fail, come back to the farm with his tail between his legs. And it’s
exhausting
, having little kids. Just generally. He gets home from getting beaten to shit on the road and I’m exhausted and the house looks like a bomb site and all I want to do is order a fucking pizza and have him take the wheel for a while, you know?”

“Maddie, that’s not—”

“I’m serious, Cary.”

“If you can’t treat the person you’re married to as your friend, what’s the goddamn point?”

I shrugged. “Hell if I know. My mom’s on her fifth husband. I figure the best bet is you just suck it up, play it as it lays.”

“You deserve better. And Dean can goddamn well
treat
you better, starting today.”

“Cary, we’re okay. We’re going to be okay. We’ve got a good solid base and we’ll get through this bit. It’s just toughing it out a little longer, just getting a little more sleep. And he’s right, I haven’t been pulling my weight, not as well as I could be. I’m just so fucking
tired
. But this too shall pass. The only thing I want to explain to him is that for me, having something going on outside, in real life—that’s only going to help me be
better
at the homemaking shit. We all need perspective. You have to leave the fucking house every once in a while so you notice it needs vacuuming or whatever when you get back. That’s all.”

“I still don’t see where he gets off—”

“Cary,” I said, “don’t fuck with this, okay? Promise me.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I really am.”

“Okay. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye: I will not berate your husband for giving you crap for wanting to balance a career with being a mother. Much as I want to, and much as he deserves it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And look, I’m not, like, the abused wife in a movie of the week here. I’m just married to a guy who gets cranky-pants with the occasional bit of stress overload. In real life, he’s got my back. And I have his.”

“I still—” But then he stopped.

“What?” I asked.

He looked away. “Nothing.”

“Cary,” I said, leaning forward to touch his arm. “You’re an incredible friend. To both of us. And that’s totally huge.”

He blushed a little, then helped me get the girls out of their car seats and carry them inside.