“I don’t know.” I pick up a handful of mini marshmallows and drop them into the cup. Picking up the concoction, I move through the empty dining room and to the living room, carefully settling down on the floor before the fire. “I never found out.”
I’d always wondered about Simon’s fidelity. A man that attractive, that funny, that kind… I knew how women looked at us, compared us, plotted against us. He was the husband they all wanted. I was the odd girl with the big ears and flat chest, the one who nagged, and scowled, and never let Simon have any fun.
“Did you try?” He follows me into the room, crouching before the fire and grabbing the poker from the hearth.
“No. I think…” I close my eyes and try to remember that day. “I think I was afraid of finding out too much. If she loved him, then maybe he loved her. And where would that leave us?”
“You were worried he’d leave you.”
“Yes.” I set down the mug and hug my knees to my chest. I had attacked Simon the moment he’d gotten home, screaming accusations, my insecurities raging. I’d swore to leave him, and he’d begged me to stay. I’d called him names, and he’d told me he loved me.
Standing before my husband, that note in hand, I’d considered a scenario where Simon and I parted. I’d thought of a life without him and Bethany. I’d thought of another woman, playing with my daughter before dinner, and spending the night in bed with my husband.
The thought had filled me with such fear, such despair, that when he’d pled innocence, I believed him. I caved and I accepted—and pushed aside the words of the note. I love you. I want you to kiss me again. I believed him when he swore he’d found the note, that it hadn’t been his. I want to be yours.
I’d decided to believe him, but I’d never trusted him again. And that difference, that small tweak to our relationship… it started a crack in our armor that we never recovered from.
I tilt back the mug and avoid Mark’s eyes.
The front door swings open, and I turn my head and watch Mark’s boots trek inside and across the polished floor. He has firewood in hand and moves out of sight, to the left side of the house. When he reaches the living room, I hear the loud tumble of logs onto the tile, the clack of wood as he stacks it. The front door hasn’t fully shut and I eye it, watching it slowly swing, just a little more open. Ridiculous of a man to bring in the cold while trying to warm the house. His boots clump back, the sound of him similar to an elephant, and I relax only slightly when he pushes the door shut and flips the lock. The housekeeper will have to come back. Mop the floors, clean up his mess. Another person. Another invasion. I stab at a piece of Debbie’s reheated broccoli and lift it to my mouth.
He takes off his boots and comes into the kitchen, moving straight for the coffee pot.
“You need a refill?”
I shake my head and turn the page.
“Thought I’d build another fire tonight. We’re supposed to get a cold front. Temperatures are dropping into the thirties.”
“Okay.” He’s obsessed with the weather, his most frequently used app one that shows radar and dew points, as if anything outside will affect our writing progress. We have a thermostat, our heater works—I don’t understand the dogged interest in what my front yard feels like. I cross through an unnecessary line and he settles into the other chair. “Kate’s coming into town tonight. She’s asking if you’d like to go to a movie.”
My pen stops, halfway through an exclamation point. “A movie?” A familiar prickle, one of paranoia, moves through me. They’ve been talking about me. Together, alone. Comparing notes, making assumptions, calculations, assessments of my health and mental state. Perhaps they’ve decided that I am crazy. Perhaps they think this book is ridiculous, and I am throwing away my money. Perhaps Mark has told her everything—about my postpartum, about the hospital. Maybe she thinks I should be committed. Maybe she is reviewing all of my contracts, and pulling the ones she doesn’t like, ones she can reject for reasons of incompetency. I feel hot, for the first time in a week. I scoot back against my seat, and the pen drops from my fingers.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t talk to her.” The words hiss, and he looks up at me, confused. Simon had once looked confused, his face an innocent mask that hid all of the scheming he had done with my mother.
“Who? Kate?”
“She’s my agent.” She’s my daughter. He’s my husband. This is my family. I shouted those words once, at my mother. She looked less confused than Mark.
“I’m not trying to steal her away.”
I close my eyes and try to focus, my mind loose from the Vicodin and Klonopin cocktail, one that was supposed to relax me but only seems to make everything worse. Already I can’t remember why I am upset. Something about Kate. Mark and Kate. I let out a breath and remind myself that they are not Simon and my mother, that their friendship is not an attempt to take my child away from me.
“You want to talk to her?” He sets his phone down in front of me. “Fine. Here’s my phone. You talk to her.”
My jaw clenches, a painful flex of muscle that didn’t used to hurt. “I don’t want to talk to her. Neither one of us needs to talk to her, or go to movies, or do anything except write. That is why you are here.” I stab the pages before me and my finger slips a little on the page. “This is what we need to focus on.”
He doesn’t say anything, and I look up at him quickly, just in time to see the sympathy cross his face before it is gone. “Don’t,” I snarl. “Don’t look at me that way.”
Simon would have asked what I was talking about. My mother would have moved down a list of questions designed to uncover the root of my feelings. Bethany would have scrunched up her face and begun to cry. Mark only smiles. No wonder he has so many damned wrinkles. I’m surprised his teeth aren’t bleached white from all the exposure.
“Relax, Helena.” He picks up his coffee cup and stands, leaving his cell phone in front of me. “You’re screwing this cat. I’m just holding its tail.”
“That’s disgusting.” I stare at his phone, the screen dotted with fingerprints, and it has to be a cesspool of bacteria. I haven’t seen him clean it once. He only washes his hands after the restroom. When I looked through his overnight bag, he didn’t even pack floss.
“The movie’s a comedy,” he says from his place by the sink, speaking loudly over the running water. “Might be good to clear our heads.”
He’s talking about the movie like it’s still a possibility. I’m not going to a movie. The last movie I saw was an animated one with Bethany. I checked her out of kindergarten and we played hooky and shared Twizzlers and an Icee, and Simon said I was setting a bad example.
“No movie.” I use the end of my pen to push his phone away. Maybe the simple sentence structure will get through to him. Bad Author. No Movie. Write Now.
“Want to work through the next chapter?”
Another chapter? I’m still exhausted from the last, which had taken three days and left me emotionally drained. Up next, Bethany’s fourth year and the square off of Me against Them. We are climbing the hill toward the climax, though Mark doesn’t know that yet. He has no idea that all of these pieces, all of the stories, are blocks of dynamite, carefully placed and positioned for the eventual explosion.
“Helena?” Mark prods. “Want to do the next chapter?”
“I’m still editing this.” He should know this, should see I still have a dozen pages to go.
“Then I’ll head out. Do you need anything before I go?”
I can feel something lingering in the air, something he is hiding. He wants to leave, yet he never leaves early. I set down the pen and turn in the seat, really looking at him for the first time.
MARK
Suspicion is not a new look on Helena, but it still stabs when it hits. He shifts against the counter’s edge and meets her stare. She seems to be ca
lculating, eyeing puzzle pieces and moving them together. He helps her out, his words slow and unemotional, the sentences as clear as he can make it.
“I’m picking up Kate from the airport at seven. The movie starts at eight. Would you like to come with us?”
“No movie.” The words are quick, an automatic response as she continues to think.
“Okay.” He lets out a long breath. “Would you like to come to the airport with me to pick her up?”
“We need to work.” She’s stuck on this, her dedication impressive, if not exhausting.
“I can’t write any more until you tell me what to say.” This side of her is new, and he wants to ask questions, but doesn’t want to start a fight. She’s taking enough drugs to kill a small animal, and he’s dealt with some of them before, handled the side effects of increased irritability, ones that had occasionally turned Ellen into a raging bitch.
“I’m sorry. I get paranoid about…” she sighs. “Things. I don’t care if you and Kate are close, but I don’t want you to tell Kate anything about this.” She taps the top of the manuscript with her finger, and he sees the vulnerability in her eyes. A spark of understanding flares.
“I don’t. We don’t talk about anything like that.” His conversations with Kate had been strictly Helena-focused, but never about that. They had been almost business-like in their execution, calls about groceries, doctor appointments, blood test results and travel arrangements. He’d expected, in every call, a question about the manuscript—but there had been none.
“I am a very private person.”
“I don’t talk to anyone about the things you tell me.” She must read the truth on his face, her shoulders relaxing slightly, her voice dropping in intensity.
“I’m sorry.” She looks down, her fingers lining up the pages, making them perfectly straight in their stack.
“No need to apologize.”
“My mother and Simon…” her voice trails off and he crosses his arms over his chest, waiting her out. She presses her lips together, her eyes darting across the table. “I shouldn’t assume that you are the same.” She looks up and his hope disappears that a revelation is coming. Her face is closed, the expression one he’s becoming increasingly familiar with. When she gets like this, there is no discovery to be had, no confessions of the past, no stories to record. When she gets like this, he can only retreat and wait. “Enjoy the movie.” She smiles and there isn’t a bit of sincerity behind the gesture.
He waits for more, but she picks the pen back up, and he loses her to the words, her head dipping, body relaxing, eyes moving. When he leaves, the house is quiet, his truck halfway to the motel before he realizes he never built her a fire.
My earnings have gotten excessive. Simon doesn’t have to work, but he does. I don’t have to write, but writing has never been about the money anyway. So I’m writing. He’s working, and he’s spending.
First, a new Jaguar coupé, one that Bethany’s carseat wouldn’t fit into, one that took up the only spot in a garage that was quickly filling with more and more things. It caused too many fights, and was quickly replaced by a Range Rover.
Then, a sailboat, my name emblazoned on the side as if that would make the terrible purchase okay. An expensive chore, that’s what “The Helena” was. Simon wanted to spend a summer on it, talked about me writing out on the open sea, like it would be exciting to bathe in a gallon of water, and vomit from rough weather, and constantly be on the lookout to make sure that Bethany doesn’t fall over the side. We paid marina rent on that boat for two years before it sold. Every month, I hated him when I wrote that check. Every month, a small dark part of me wished he would go out sailing, catch a storm, and never come back.
Then, skis. A SubZero fridge. Automated blinds that rose and fell with the click of a remote. Heated floors in our master bedroom. Season tickets and a skybox to some football team three hours away.
He won’t stop spending, and I only watch and say nothing. Our house fills with things; I close the door to my office and write. The more I earn, the more he spends.
Maybe we’re normal. Maybe every husband drives his wife crazy. Maybe every wife falls short.
But it doesn’t feel normal. It feels like we are at war. A war I am losing.
I write, outline, then set aside the notepad and build a fire the way I was taught. A core of paper, finely shredded, set against the base of a log. A surrounding tee-pee of kindling. I strike the match and watch the flame, my hand shielding it as I take it to the base of the kindling, the first three matches burning out before anything catches fire.
Then, a glow of ignition, the crawl of the flame up one stick, then a second. The paper catches fire and there is a small WHOOSH of action, the warm crackle bringing a smile to my face. Simon hated fires, his stubborn chauvinism never allowing me to handle the task, his own attempts pitifully inept. Every winter, in this house, he had tried to build a fire. Every winter, there had been cursing, the lighter fluid grabbed from the garage, our living room reeking of failure and chemically-created warmth. Mark’s fire was the first authentic fire in this fireplace. And now mine. I leave the grate open and scoot back until I reach the couch, leaning back against the leather as I watch the flames, their lick and spark, the jump of embers, smoke curling its way up the chimney. The warmth heats my legs, and I close my eyes, appreciating the moment.
When the knock sounds, I almost miss it.
I wrote my first novel about my mother. They say you should write what you know, but I didn’t know her. I wrote about her to understand her. I built a world around a character so that I could live in her shoes, could think her thoughts, could understand her intentions. I wrote a hundred thousand words and barely understood any of them.
The readers didn’t care. They loved the woman I didn’t. They embraced her when her husband left. They rallied beside her when he reappeared. They never read the truth. I buried those pages in the back of one of my journals—my knowledge of the romance world advanced enough to understand the value of a happy ending. So I gave my mother one. When my father returned, they fell back in love. And when the daughter ran from him, he chased her, hugged her, loved her.
All of that second half was lies. When my father came back, I was eight, and my mother was bitter. There was no joyous reunion. There was a lot of shouting. When I ran from him, he called me a nerd. When I woke in the morning, he was gone. And I didn’t, not in my third-grade uniform, nor as a college freshman, give a damn about it.
The last time I spoke to my mother, I was dressed in black and huddled against the wind, staring down at a fresh gravestone. She tried to hug me. She told me she loved me. In response, I told her the truth.
I told her I hated her for turning Bethany and Simon against me. For calling me unfit. For siding with him. For taking my daughter from me. All unforgiveable sins, ones that I could only punish her for with cruel silence, ignored calls, and spiteful words snarled beside a black hearse.
I vowed, in that graveyard, to never speak to her again unless she found a way to return my daughter to me.
I open the front door, and that threat scatters in the wind.
Any other night, Mark would be here. He would be the one to answer the door and deal with this. Instead, I am unprotected, exposed in the doorway, when I’m hit with her eyes.
“Mom.” Just a single word, yet it burns on its way out.
“Helena!” Her head snaps back, and those eyes widen in alarm. “Are you all right? You look terrible.”
My eyes automatically drop, to the space beside her, to see if Bethany is there. It is out of habit, and my stomach clenches, my heart frustrated with my rote memory.
“I’m fine.” I pull self-consciously at the neck of my sweatshirt, grateful for the bulky material that hides my thin frame. Her eyes move into the house, darting into the spaces behind me, and I fight the urge to turn, to see what she
does.
“May I come in?” She is wearing a rust-colored sweater and her hair is shorter, now almost completely white. She has a scarf around her neck but no jacket, and she rubs her arms as if she is cold. It’s an odd moment for her, preparedness being a skill she taught me early on. You make lists. You pack appropriately. You prepare for unknown situations. I was the child at school with a back-up set of clothes in my backpack. We had fire emergency routes in our home and first-aid kits in the car trunk. We attended CPR training courses on the weekends, and if I’m ever abandoned in the wilderness, I can create a flame from two sticks and determination. In some ways, I am exactly like my mother, and maybe that was always our problem.
She has to have a jacket. If this shivering routine is an attempt to gain entry, she should know me better than that. “No.” I close the door until just a crack shows, enough for me to see everything and her to see nothing. “Go away.”
“Helena—“ she holds up a hand. “I’m here for a reason.”
Oh goody. I can’t think of anything I want to know less than her reason for coming.
“A woman came by the office today.” The office. That sterile room where relationships are judged and families critiqued. It has been half a decade since I pushed open that door, but I bet my life it’s exactly the same. A black tweed couch. A bowl of peppermints on her desk. A view of the city through streak-free windows. The click of her pen against her notebook. Do you have feelings of love for Bethany? My mother swallows and there are more wrinkles than before, the last four years unkind. She thinks I look terrible? Ditto, dear Mother. “She’s a reporter—”
“Charlotte Blanton.” I interrupt, anxious to get on with this exchange.
“Oh. Yes.” She is surprised, and glances away. “So you know her.”
“What did she want?” My mother is a professional, one who considers me to be more patient than daughter. I’m not worried about what she told Charlotte Blanton. Her professional standards wouldn’t allow for idle gossip.