Doing something wrong, it turned out, packed a heady adrenaline rush. Seth was dark and uneven and unpredictable and-oh, God, just thinking about him was making her drive too fast on this road. On the other hand, Laura?s husband was the most solid, dependable, mild-mannered man in all of Maine. Daniel never forgot to put out the recycling bin; he set the coffee to brew the night before because she was a bear when she didn?t have any in the morning; he never once complained about the fact that it had taken a good decade longer than he?d liked to make a name for himself in the comics industry because he was the stay-at-home parent. Sometimes, ridiculously, the more perfect he was the angrier she got, as if his generosity existed only to highlight her own selfishness. But then, she had only herself to blame for that-wasn?t she the one who?d given him the ultimatum, who?d said he had to change?
The problem was (if she was going to be honest with herself) that when she asked him to change, she was focusing on what she thought she needed. She?d forgotten to catalog all the things she?d lose. What she had loved most about Seth-the thrill of doing something forbidden, the understanding that women like her did not connect with men like him-was exactly what had once made her fall for Daniel.
She had toyed with the idea of telling Daniel about the affair, but what good would that do, except hurt him? Instead, she would overcompensate. She would kill him with kindness. She would be the best wife, the best mother, the most attentive lover. She would give him back what she hoped he never realized had been missing.
Even Dante said that if you walked through hell, you could climb your way to paradise.
In the rearview mirror, Laura saw a carnival of flashing lights. ?God damn,? she muttered, pulling over as the police cruiser slid neatly behind her Toyota.
A tall officer walked toward her, silhouetted by the headlights of his vehicle. ?Good evening, ma?am, did you know you were speeding??
Apparently not, thought Laura.
?I?m going to need your license and?Professor Stone? Is that you??
Laura peered up at the officer?s face. She couldn?t place it, but he was young enough; she might have taught him. She offered her most humble expression. Had he gotten a high enough grade in her class to keep her from getting a ticket?
?Bernie Aylesworth,? he said, smiling down at Laura. ?I took your Dante class my senior year, back in 2001. Got shut out of it the year before.?
She knew she was a popular teacher-her Dante course was rated even higher than the Intro to Physics lectures where Jeb Wetherby shot monkeys out of cannons to teach projectile motion. The Unauthorized Guide to Monroe College named her the prof students most wanted to take out for a beer. Had Seth read that? she thought suddenly.
?I?m just gonna give you a warning this time,? Bernie said, and Laura wondered where he had been six months ago, when she truly needed one. He passed her a crisp piece of paper and smiled. ?So where were you hurrying off to??
Not to, she thought, just back. ?Home,? she told him. ?I was headed home.? She waited until he was back in the cruiser to put on her signal-a penitent motion if ever there was one-and pulled into the gentle bend of the road. She drove well within the speed limit, her eyes focused ahead, as careful as you have to be when you know someone is watching.
?I?m leaving,? Laura said the minute she walked through the door. Daniel looked up from the kitchen counter, where he was chopping broccoli in preparation for dinner. On the stove, chicken was simmering in garlic.
?You just got here,? he said.
?I know.? Laura lifted the lid on the skillet, breathed in. ?Smells really good. I wish I could stay.?
He could not pinpoint what was different about her, but he thought it had to do with the fact that when she?d just said she wanted to be home, he believed her-most of the time, if she apologized for leaving, it was only because it was expected. ?What?s going on?? he asked.
She turned her back to Daniel and began to sort through the mail. ?That departmental thing I told you about.?
She had not told him; he knew she hadn?t told him. She unwound her scarf and shrugged out of her coat, draped them over a chair. She was wearing a black suit and Sorel boots, which were tracking snow in small puddles all over the kitchen floor. ?How?s Trixie??
?She?s in her room.?
Laura opened the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of water. ?The crazy poet is trying to stage a coup,? she said. ?She?s been talking to the tenured professors. I don?t think she knows that-? Suddenly, there was a crash, and Daniel turned in time to see the glass explode against the tile floor. Water spread in a puddle, seeping beneath the edge of the refrigerator. ?Damn it!? Laura cried, kneeling to pick up the pieces.
?I?ve got it,? Daniel said, tossing down paper towels to absorb the spill. ?You?ve got to slow down. You?re bleeding.?
Laura glanced down at the gash on the pad of her thumb as if it belonged to someone else. Daniel reached for her and wrapped her hand in a clean dish towel. They knelt inches apart on the tile floor, watching her blood soak through the checkered fabric.
Daniel couldn?t remember the last time he and Laura had been this close to each other. He couldn?t remember a lot of things, like the sound of his wife?s breathing when she gave herself over to sleep, or the half smile that slipped out like a secret when something took her by surprise. He had tried to tell himself that Laura was busy, the way she always got at the beginning of a trimester. He did not ask if it could be anything more than that, because he did not want to hear the answer.
?We need to take care of that,? Daniel said. The bones of her wrist were light and fine in his hand, delicate as china.
Laura tugged herself free. ?I?m fine,? she insisted, and she stood up. ?It?s a scratch.? For a moment she stared at him, as if she knew, too, that there was another entire conversation going on here, one they had chosen not to have.
?Laura.? Daniel got to his feet, but she turned away.
?I really have to go change,? she said.
Daniel watched her leave, heard her footsteps on the stairs overhead. You already have, he thought.
?You didn?t,? Zephyr said.
Trixie pushed her sleeves up and stared down at the cuts on her arms, a red web of regret. ?It seemed like a good idea at the time,? she said. ?I started walking, and I wound up at the rink?I figured it was a sign. If we could just talk-?
?Trixie, right now Jason doesn?t want to talk. He wants to take out a restraining order.? Zephyr sighed. ?You are so Fatal Attraction.?
?Fatal what??
?It?s an old movie. Don?t you ever watch anything that doesn?t have Paul Walker in it??
Trixie tucked the phone between her shoulder and her ear and carefully unwound the screw neck of the X-Acto knife that she?d taken from her father?s office. The blade came out, a tiny silver trapezoid. ?I?d do anything to get him back.? Closing her eyes, Trixie scored the blade over her left arm. She sucked in her breath and imagined she was opening up a vent, allowing some of the enormous pressure to ease.
?Are you going to complain about this until we graduate?? Zephyr asked. ?Because if that?s the case, then I?m taking matters into my own hands.?
What if her father knocked on the door right now? What if anyone, even Zephyr, found out that she was doing stuff like this? Maybe it wasn?t relief she was feeling, but shame. Both made you burn from the inside out.
?So, do you want my help?? Zephyr asked.
Trixie clapped her hand over the cut, stanching the flow.
?Hello?? Zephyr said. ?Are you still there??
Trixie lifted her hand. The blood was rich and bright against her palm. ?Yeah,? she sighed. ?I guess I am.?
?Good timing,? Daniel said, as he heard Trixie?s footsteps pounding down the stairs. He set two plates on the kitchen table and turned around to find her waiting in her coat, carrying a backpack. Her cascade of hair spilled out from beneath a striped stocking cap.
?Oh,? she said, blinking at the food. ?Zephyr invited me for a sleepover
.?
?You can go after you eat.?
Trixie bit her lower lip. ?Her mom thinks I?m coming for dinner.?
Daniel had known Zephyr since she was seven. He used to sit in the living room while she and Trixie performed the cheerleading moves they?d made up during an afternoon of play, or lip-synched to the radio, or presented tumbling routines. He could practically still hear them doing a hand-clapping game: The spades go eeny-meeny pop zoombini?
Last week, Daniel had walked in with a bag of groceries to find someone unfamiliar in the kitchen, bent over a catalog. Nice ass, he thought, until she straightened and turned out to be Zephyr. ?Hey, Mr. Stone,? she?d said. ?Trixie?s in the bathroom.?
She hadn?t noticed that he went red in the face, or that he left the kitchen before his own daughter returned. He sat on the couch with the grocery bag in his hands, the ice cream inside softening against his chest, as he speculated whether there were other fathers out there making the same mistake when they happened upon Trixie.
?Well,? he said now, ?I?ll just save the leftovers.? He stood up, fishing for his car keys.
?Oh, that?s okay. I can walk.?
?It?s dark out,? Daniel said.
Trixie met his gaze, challenging. ?I think I can manage to get to a house three blocks away. I?m not a baby, Dad.?
Daniel didn?t know what to say. She was a baby, to him. ?Then maybe before you go to Zephyr?s you could go vote, join the army, and rent us a car?oh, hang on, that?s right. You can?t.?
Trixie rolled her eyes, took off her hat and gloves, and sat down.
?I thought you were eating at Zephyr?s.?
?I will,? she said. ?But I don?t want you to have to eat all by yourself.?
Daniel sank into the chair across from her. He had a sudden flashback of Trixie in ballet class, the two of them struggling to capture her fine hair in a netted bun before the session began. He had always been the sole father present; other men?s wives would rush forward to help him figure out how to secure the bobby pins, how to slick back the bangs with hair spray.
At her first and only ballet performance, Trixie had been the lead reindeer, drawing out the sleigh that held the Sugar Plum Fairy. She wore a white leotard and an antler headband and had a painted red nose. Daniel hadn?t taken his eyes off her, not for any of the three minutes and twenty-two seconds that she stood on that stage.
He didn?t want to take his eyes off her now, but part of this new routine of adolescence meant a portion of the dance took place offstage.
?What are you guys going to do tonight?? Daniel asked.
?I don?t know. Rent a movie off the dish, I guess. What are you going to do??
?Oh, the same thing I always do when I?m alone in the house. Dance around naked, call the psychic hotline, cure cancer, negotiate world peace.?
Trixie smiled. ?Could you clean my room too??
?Don?t know if I?ll have time. It depends on whether the North Koreans are being cooperative.? He pushed his food around his plate, took a few bites, and then dumped the rest into the trash. ?Okay, you?re officially free.?
She bounced up and grabbed her pack, heading toward the front door. ?Thanks, Daddy.?
?Any time,? Daniel said, but the words turned up at the end, as if he were asking her for minutes that were no longer hers to give.
She wasn?t lying. Not any more than her father had when Trixie was little and he said one day they?d get a dog, although they didn?t. She was just telling him what he wanted-needed-to hear. Everyone always said the best relationships between parents and kids involved open communication, but Trixie knew that was a joke. The best relationships were the ones where both sides went out of their way to make sure the other wasn?t disappointed.
She wasn?t lying, not really. She was going to Zephyr?s house. And she did plan to sleep over.
But Zephyr?s mother had gone to visit her older brother at Wesleyan College for the weekend, and Trixie wasn?t the only one who?d been invited for the evening. A bunch of people were coming, including some hockey players.
Like Jason.
Trixie ducked behind the fence at Mrs. Argobath?s house, opened up her backpack, and pulled out the jeans that were so low rise she had to go commando. She?d bought them a month ago and had hidden them from her father, because she knew he?d have a heart attack if he saw her wearing them. Shimmying out of her sweatpants and underwear-Jesus, it was cold out-she skimmed on the jeans. She rummaged for the items she?d stolen from her mother?s closet-they were the same size now. Trixie had wanted to borrow the killer black-heeled boots, but she couldn?t find them. Instead, Trixie had settled for a chain-link belt and a sheer black blouse her mother had worn one year over a velvet camisole to a faculty Christmas dinner. The sleeves weren?t see-through enough that you could see the Ace bandage she?d wrapped around the cuts on her arm, but you could totally tell that all she had on underneath was a black satin bra.
She zipped up her coat again, jammed on her hat, and started walking. Trixie honestly wasn?t sure she?d be able to do what Zephyr had suggested. Make him come to you, Zephyr had said. Get him jealous.
Maybe if she was hammered enough, or totally stoned.
Now there was a thought. When you were high, you were hardly yourself.
Then again, maybe it would be easier than she expected. Being someone else-anyone else, even for one night-would beat being Trixie Stone.
A human heart breaks harder when it?s dropped from a greater height. Seth lay on the sheets of his futon, the ones that smelled of the cigarettes he rolled and-he loved this-of Laura. He still felt her words like the recoil from a shotgun. It?s over.
Laura had gone to pull herself together in the bathroom. Seth knew there was a hairline fracture between duty and desire; that you might think you were walking on one side of it and then find yourself firmly entrenched on the other. He just also had believed-stupidly-that it wasn?t that way for them. He?d believed that even with the age difference, he could be Laura?s future. He hadn?t counted on the chance that she might want her past instead.
?I can be whatever you want me to be,? he?d promised. Please, he had said, half question, half command.
When the doorbell rang, he nearly didn?t answer. This was the last thing he needed right now. But the bell rang again, and Seth opened the door to find the kid standing in the shadows. ?Later,? Seth said, and he started to shut the door.
A twenty-dollar bill was pressed into his hand. ?Look,? Seth said with a sigh, ?I?m out.?
?You?ve got to have something.? Two more twenties were pushed at him.
Seth hesitated. He hadn?t been lying-he really didn?t have any weed-but it was hard to turn down sixty bucks when you had eaten ramen noodles every night that week. He wondered how much time he had before Laura came out of the bathroom. ?Wait here,? he said.
He kept his stash in the belly of an old guitar with half its strings missing. The battered case had travel stamps on it, from Istanbul and Paris and Bangkok, and a bumper sticker that said, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, GET THE FUCK AWAY.
The first time Laura had visited his apartment he?d come back from digging up a bottle of wine to find her strumming the remaining strings, the guitar still cradled inside its open case. Do you play? she had asked.
He had frozen, but only for a moment. He took the case, snapped it shut, and put it off to the side. Depends on the game, he had answered.
Now he reached into the sound hole and rummaged around. He considered his sidelight vocation philosophically: Grad school cost a fortune; his tech job at the vet?s office barely paid his rent; and selling pot wasn?t much different from buying a six-pack for a bunch of teenagers. It wasn?t like he went around selling coke or heroin, which could really mess you up. But he still didn?t want Laura to know this about him. He could tell you how she felt about politics or affirmative action or being touched along the base of her delicate spine, but he didn?t know what she?d say if she discovered that he was dealing.
; Seth found the vial he was looking for. ?This is powerful shit,? he warned, passing it outside.
?What does it do??
?It takes you away,? Seth answered. He heard the water stop running in the bathroom. ?Do you want it or not??
The kid took the vial and shrank back into the night. Seth shut the door just as Laura walked out of the bathroom, her eyes red and her face swollen. Immediately, she froze. ?Who were you talking to??
Although Seth would have gladly crowed to the world that he loved Laura, she had too much at stake to lose-her job, her family. He should have known that someone trying so hard to keep from being noticed would never really be able to see him.
?No one,? Seth said bitterly. ?Your little secret?s still safe.?
He turned away so that he would not have to bear witness as she left him. He heard the door open, felt the gasp of cold air. ?You?re not the one I?m ashamed of,? Laura murmured, and she walked out of his life.
Zephyr was handing out tubes of lipstick-hot pink, Goth black, scarlet, plum. She pressed one into Trixie?s hand. It was gold, and Trixie turned it upside down to read the name: All That Glitters. ?You know what to do, right?? Zephyr murmured.
Trixie did. She?d never played Rainbow before, she?d never had to. She?d always been with Jason instead.
As soon as Trixie had arrived at Zephyr?s, her friend had laid out the guidelines for Trixie?s surefire success that night. First, look hot. Second, drink whenever, whatever. Third-and most important-do not break the two-and-a-half-hour rule. That much time had to pass at the party before Trixie was allowed to talk to Jason. In the meantime, Trixie had to flirt with everyone but him. According to Zephyr, Jason expected Trixie to still be pining for him. When the opposite happened-when he saw other guys checking Trixie out and telling him he?d blown it-it would shock him into realizing his mistake.
However, Jason hadn?t showed up yet. Zephyr told Trixie just to carry on with points one and two of the plan, so that she?d be good and wasted by the time Jason arrived and saw her enjoying herself. To that end, Trixie had spent the night dancing with anyone who wanted to, and by herself when she couldn?t find a partner. She drank until the horizon swam. She fell down across the laps of boys she could not care less about and let them pretend she liked it.