Kai didn’t want to talk about Jared anymore. And neither did Larissa.
On Tuesday, she left rehearsal and stage production early and went to the mall, where in one of the kiosk stalls, she bought a hundred-dollar pre-paid phone, number untraceable. She paid for it in cash.
7
Surveillance, Human
Before, Larissa went months without seeing a familiar face; now she saw them everywhere. In Stop&Shop she ran into Rita, one of Michelangelo’s friend’s moms. “What are you doing all the way here?” asked a friendly Rita.
“I could ask the same of you,” Larissa replied.
“I was in the neighborhood, thought I’d try it out. Looked big and new.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“You want to grab a coffee? They’ve got a Starbucks right on the premises.”
“Maybe another time? I’m in a bit of a rush.”
And then by herself in Neiman’s lingerie department. Suddenly: “Larissa!”
And it was her friend Diane, the wife of Frank, who happened to be Asher’s guidance counselor, who once every couple of months played poker with Jared. She could see it now. Diane tells Frank that Larissa bought a $400 sheer lace black babydoll, and Frank asks Jared while he’s laying down four queens if the black babydoll has paid dividends and Jared returns home inquiringly.
“Shopping for a friend’s birthday,” Larissa said. “As a gag. Trying to find something wholly inappropriate. Any suggestions?”
“Well, what you’ve got in your hands should do the trick.”
“You think? Thanks.”
Larissa, pulling out of Albright, waiting for the cars to pass before she could make a right, and an oncoming car, pulling up alongside her, window rolling down. “Larissa!” What are you doing in this part of town?” It was one of Maggie’s teacher friends, Amy.
“Having my car checked out,” said Larissa. Such a trivial thing. Yet people clearly had little to talk about, little to do, little to think about. Because Amy told Maggie, and Maggie told Ezra, and Ezra the very next Saturday night said, “Everything okay with your Jag, Larissa?”
“Yes, of course, it’s fine. Why?”
“Amy said she saw you were getting your car fixed.”
“No, not fixed,” Larissa said, trying to mask the exhaustion, the irritation, the fear out of her voice. “Not fixed. Oil needed to be changed.”
Jared came back in the dining room with more drinks. “I thought we just changed the oil on it a few weeks ago?”
“Yes, but the engine was running rough on it. Rumbling. Sure enough, oil needed to be changed.”
“Again?”
“Guess so.”
Maggie chuckled. “How fast is Larissa riding that engine that her oil needs to be changed every two weeks?”
She and Maggie were ambling to Neiman’s one Thursday and who should come walking toward them but Fran, her nail companion.
“Larissa, baby! Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in monthloads.”
“Hi, Finklestein. Maggie, Fran.”
“Hi, Maggie.” Fran, so smart in her skin-tight jeans, her loose striped sweater and spiky boots, turned to Larissa. “Have you found a better place?”
“No, but it hasn’t been that long. In fact, I’m coming tomorrow.”
“Ah, I can’t tomorrow. Maybe next Friday?”
“Absolutely, Finklestein.”
And as they walked away, Maggie said, “You haven’t done your nails? But look at them. They always look freshly manicured.”
“Mags, have you tried the Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Nail Hardener? The stuff keeps your nails for ever. I just reapply every couple of days. You should try it.”
Maggie showed Larissa her bitten-off nubs. “Not for me.”
Larissa breathed out a small sigh of released tension.
Oh, but the joy ride on his bike. Straddling it, flying in the clover fields through the dandelions, their white florets raining down like daisies on postcards, like summer wishes. To think that Union County of the state of New Jersey could hold paradise.
8
Much Ado on the Stage
“I want to come to your play.” It was set to open the first week in June, before the proms and after the interminable Memorial Day weekend spent without him.
“Are you crazy? No.”
“Why can’t I come? I’ll sit in the back. I’ll watch. After it’s over I’ll go.”
“Kai, don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I am.”
“You can’t come.”
“Why?”
“Kai. Do I really have to explain it?”
“It turns out that yes, you do.”
“You can’t come because if Jared catches one glimpse of you, he’ll know. At the very least, you’ll raise his suspicions. He’ll start to snoop around. He’ll become more watchful. He won’t think it’s a happy coincidence. He won’t think it’s normal. Why would you, of all people, come to my play?”
“I’ll come on the day he’s not there.”
“I’m there every night, so he’s coming every night.”
“Even if he sees me, is he really going to think about it all that much?”
“Yes!”
“He won’t see me.”
“He will. By accident, he will. Michelangelo will run up your aisle and drop his Milky Way candy in front of your seat. Oh, hi, you’ll say to my husband.”
“I’ll act like I’ve never met him.”
“But you have! Kai, I’m serious. No.”
“Really, no?”
“Really, no.” And when she saw his wounded face, she said, “I’m begging you. Please.”
“Am I even real?” asked Kai.
Funny, that. That’s what Larissa kept asking herself. Was she even real?
Chapter Five
1
Split Rock
She told Jared she didn’t want to go to Lillypond. “But you love that house,” Jared said. “What happened to, if we could, we’d live there year round?”
“I’m not feeling the love this year, okay? Plus the children never get to hang out with their friends, they never get to do any of the fun summer stuff their friends do. They want to spend July at the Swim Club. Emily wants to go to music camp.”
“No, I don’t!” called out Emily from the computer in the den.
“Asher wants sports camp.”
“No, I don’t!” called out Asher from the TV in the living room.
“Michelangelo wants to go to day camp with his friend James.”
“I do, I do, Daddy!”
Jared didn’t understand. “Why even have the place if we’re not going to use it in the summer?”
Larissa didn’t say anything. “Well, maybe you’re right, hon. Perhaps we should sell it. Is there an economic downturn? Is your job secure? Maybe this isn’t a good time to be carrying two houses.”
He looked at her funny. “Is my job secure? What are you talking about? You want to sell Lillypond?”
“I’m just saying. I don’t want us to pay for that plus the kids’ camps. It’s too much. That’s not being practical. We should be careful.”
He watched her carefully.
“We’ll do what you like, honey,” Larissa said. What she was doing wasn’t working. She had to try another tactic.
“I want to go to Lillypond. The kids love it there.”
“It’s hard for me, Jared,” Larissa admitted. “You’re not there for six weeks…”
“That’s not true.”
“…I’m taking care of the house, the kids, the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, the shopping, all by myself. It’s hard. It’s nice that you roll in on the weekends…”
“And a week in August.”
“…And everything is done for you. You play with the kids for a few hours and then go back to your grown-up world. But I’m with them twenty-four hours a day, I don’t have
any adults to talk to, and I just don’t want to do it anymore, okay? It’s too much for me.”
Jared reached for her, but she was too far away. She moved herself too far away, imperceptibly, as she was speaking, and when he reached out, he couldn’t touch her. “I didn’t know you felt this way. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now. This is called telling you.”
“The kids are getting older,” Jared said in confusion. “It should be easier, not harder. It’s not as hard as it was when they were babies, is it?”
“Maybe to you it seems this way,” said Larissa. “But the cumulative effect of the years of taking care of the kids by myself must be having its toll. It’s like the clouds. They don’t seem like much, one by one, but get enough of them together, and there’s a downpour. I feel a little bit like that.”
Some of this was true. She did feel isolated. In the past she would go, hoping to read, relax, get away from the urban life, as she called the school year in languidly suburban Summit. But in the wilderness there was no Ernestina and no husband; Riot was always running in soaking wet and muddy, the kids always needed the rowboat pushed out, and everyone’s clothes were in a perpetual state of filth even though they hardly wore anything but bathing suits. There was no time for reading. She never had a moment to herself. Michelangelo came everywhere with her. So did Emily. And Larissa was going to be three hours away from Madison! For six weeks. And then they were going to Miami. It just wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t not see Kai for two months. Simply couldn’t, that’s all there was to it.
Jared and Larissa compromised. The children went to day camps for the month of July, and in August, Jared insisted on taking two weeks off to stay with her in Lillypond.
“I can manage two weeks on my own, Jared. Don’t take off.”
“No, I want to. I don’t want a crisis on my hands, an unhappy wife.”
“I’m not unhappy, darling. Not at all. Believe me.”
“I believe you. I’m still coming. We’ll spend the month together. Two weeks in Lillypond, then two weeks in Miami.” He smiled broadly at her through his thick-rimmed glasses. “Happy?”
This is what happened when you made up bullshit reasons for your decisions to a good man who tried to help you. He helped you. She wanted adult company? He came and kept you company.
In July, Larissa lived like she suffered, she lived like she was blockaded and in famine. Kai worked from sunrise to sundown, from six in the morning till noon at Cortese Builders, seven days a week, and then at Jag from two until closing, every day except Monday. She carved out three hours every Monday when he was off in the afternoon and her kids weren’t back from camp until 4:45. They spent those stifling summer hours in a tortured perspiring embrace, clammed up even as they were opened up.
“You’re not going away forever,” Kai kept saying to her. “It’s just for a few weeks. I’ll be here when you come back. Right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him that she couldn’t do without him, couldn’t be without him. She thought if he filled her up with himself those three hours, filled her up, like a tank of gas, all twenty-two gallons of him inside her, then she wouldn’t run on empty when she was in Lillypond.
But when August came, and her family packed up the house and the kids and the two cars, and the dog, and drove out to their summer retreat in the woods on the lake, not a day went by when Larissa wasn’t on empty, dragging her limbs, all of her listing down, down, down like a willow in the rain. After the first day, she couldn’t imagine another hour without Kai, much less a whole month. The cell phone that was once her friend was now her enemy. There was no cell phone signal in Lillypond. In the previous years that was part of the delight, and now it was a blight on her soul like a plague of locusts. Not even a call to hear his voice!
After suffocating for two more days amid the pastoral sunny pleasures of the great outdoors, Larissa tore her bathing suit. Tore it with her hands, and told Jared she had walked into a tree branch, and look, she’d only brought the one.
“You only brought one bathing suit?” He was incredulous.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she agreed. “I’ll just run out and buy a new one. I’ll be an hour or two. Will you be okay?”
“Will I be okay while you run out to buy a bathing suit? Yes, I think I’ll manage. We’ll go fishing. I’m going to teach Michelangelo how to row a boat. But where are you gonna get a bathing suit around here?”
“Oh, there must be a place somewhere.”
“I mean, something you can actually wear.”
“Well, you’re right. That might require some searching.”
She and Kai met at Lake Harmony, sixty miles away, about halfway between Lingertots and Madison, at the Resort at Split Rock, a sprawling vacation destination for families. There was no time to get a room, plus Larissa wasn’t sure if the Great Pocono Lodge on Lake Harmony was the sort of three-star holiday establishment that rented rooms by the scorching afternoon. They met in the parking lot—they were used to that—and made feverish, clothed, cramped, desperate love in the passenger seat of her tiny Jaguar, parked in a remote corner at the edge of the forest. Lake Harmony was one of the Pocono lakes, the entire area given over to families coming with their children for fun and frolic in the fjords of Pennsylvania, where everywhere you looked were placid trees and lakes and gently rolling rising rocks and mountains, where oak and ash grew abundant over roads, and families came to play badminton and volleyball and rent boats for water adventures. In a secluded green corner of that unspoiled esthetic, Kai and Larissa succumbed to a corner of their own rising rocks and falling ash. He made her take off her clothes and sit naked on top of him for the second time around, with the windows open and the roof off, daring her to moan, to keep quiet, his palms on her wet back, his mouth at her throat.
They slumped afterward, their bodies glued together, until she told him she had to go, and he said of course you do, squeezing her hard nipples in his regretting fingers. After she went, she realized she hadn’t gotten a bathing suit. The Resort Shop in the Galleria sold simple black one-pieces with the Split Rock logo stitched in. Larissa pulled out the threads that fastened the logo to the fabric with her teeth and brought the suit home without the bag that read, “THE POCONOS! ENJOY YOUR PLACE IN THE SUN AT LAKE HARMONY!”
Jared didn’t think much of her choice. “This is all Wilkes-Barre had?” he said with a critical shrug. “You would’ve done better going back to Short Hills, to Neiman’s.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right. But too far. I didn’t want to leave for the whole day.”
“Nonsense. You should,” he said. “Me and the kids will be fine. It poured in the afternoon. We’re going to go tomorrow to see if we can find any mushrooms.”
“It rained?” Not sixty miles away it hadn’t. “But Jared, you hate mushrooms.”
He laughed. “I know. I’m thinking of the children.”
“They hate mushrooms, too.”
“It’s time they learned to pick the things they hate,” he said. “Go tomorrow, if you want. Leave early, though, so you have all day. Go shopping. Get yourself a facial. Pamper yourself. Go to a movie, buy some sandals, have lunch. Have fun.” He brought her to him and kissed her, his amber eyes soft and affectionate. “I didn’t realize how hard this is for you. I haven’t been considerate. Go. I do this so rarely, it’s a treat for me. I’ll be mom for a day. I’ll put on your apron, bake brownies.”
“Jared,” she said, still in his arms, “I don’t own an apron.”
“Maybe you should get one tomorrow.”
With Jared’s blessing, she went. Kai called in sick, to both jobs.
They rented a room at Split Rock, the “Woodland Retreat,” on the ground floor, with a kitchen, a Jacuzzi, and a small patio overlooking the lake. Kai paid in cash. They bought baby oil at the hotel sundry shop, they ordered room service sandwiches, coffee, water, champagne. They put a “D
o Not Disturb” sign out.
They had eight hours. It was like a waterfall.
2
Spilled Milk
“So how new is this life for you?” They were soaking in the Jacuzzi, sitting across from each other, their legs intertwined. She’d had too much champagne, was feeling woozy in the hot water.
“Which life?” Did he mean him?
“The house and all.”
“Oh, the house is over seven years new. A little older than the baby boy.” She probably should get out. They’d been in for a while. She was losing grip on her speech.
“The boy came with the house?” Kai chuckled, flicking water at her. “Why didn’t you stay in Hoboken? Continue to teach theater.”
“Why? This is a much better life.”
He said nothing at first, his hands moving in cliches, in circles. “Is it?”
“For the children, absolutely.”
He kept silent. “Did you do it for the money?”
“We did it for a better life, Kai. We were broke, fighting all the time, the kids were unhappy. And then our college friends Katie and Scott came over for dinner one night, and we found out that they paid their babysitter more per week than what Jared and I made. Combined. And we had all been English majors. English, theater. We had all been in the same boat at NYU, yet there they were and here we were. Chris had an MBA, and was the head accountant for Shearson. And they didn’t seem stressed and unhappy like us. They were happy. Like they didn’t have a care in the world. So after they left we talked it over for weeks. We said we also have a choice. We can continue living Evelyn’s life, and our life, and Ezra and Maggie’s life, or we can try to build a different life. It was a joint decision. We both wanted it.”
“Did you?”
“We did.”
“No, that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking, did you?”
Larissa tilted her head back. And slowly blinking, closed her eyes. Definitely too much champagne.
She was speedwalking down Henry Street in Hoboken, nine months pregnant with Asher and huge like an elephant’s ass, with Emily barely a year and in the stroller. She was carting a half-gallon of milk in a plastic bag hooked over the handle, because they had only one car and Jared took it into the city to look for work before he went to his night job, and the plastic bag broke, and the milk fell and crashed and spilled all over her shoes and coat and stroller—milk! All over everything, the small child in the stroller crying, hungry, and she cursed the milk and the stroller and the crying, and possibly even the small child, and resented Jared because he was out gallivanting in their only vehicle while she was rolling back the years, and stomped back to the store, wet with sticky milk, to get another gallon and this time she asked for a double bag, and it was a quarter-mile back home to the three-room apartment they were renting on the fifth floor, and when she got to the store, thinking it couldn’t get any worse, her water broke.