Tom, now somewhat ashamed of his earlier behaviour, became more so when they pulled onto the highway to find traffic backed up forever. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her yank out her cell phone and construct her apologies, punching them out on the keyboard pad. His fingers mimicked the action, tapping steadily on the steering wheel.
Seconds later the phone rang and Jennifer picked it up, her voice bright and caustic. “I know. I know. Ha ha. Sooo sorry. Had a crazy day with Abby, wait until I tell you, unbelievable. Yes. I know. I told him we were going to be late again, how could we not be when he never steps into the shower until I’m almost apoplectic with rage about the fact that we are most certainly going to be late? Ha ha. They’re all the same, I know. Okay, we are on our way. Oh yes, yes sure go ahead and start, we totally understand. Bye.”
Tom saw the disappointment spread across her face, then the resignation. He knew that she had tried to make this a nice night for them, a chance for them to get out together. She tried so hard at everything, too damn hard. He felt bad for her, and sorry for himself as well. He was hungry and his eyes searched in the rearview mirror for the tray in the back seat, knowing it would be mutiny to suggest another taste, even though the meal was apparently about to begin without them. He could see the condensation beading on its surface, the delicate asparagus wilting, smothered by layers of protective plastic wrap.
Jennifer hung up and said nothing. Tom, angry at being the butt of her little hen party jokes, filled the silence. “You bring it on yourself, you know. You’ve raised the getting ready stakes to the point where anything less than an amber alert meltdown on your end makes dressing a pale, unexciting task stripped of all sexy danger and risk.”
He didn’t know why he’d said it. Ostensibly he could say he had wanted to cut the tension, but as soon as it came out of his mouth, he know he’d just dug his hole a little deeper.
She didn’t even look at him. She couldn’t. It was just little joke, she knew, exactly the kind of idiot line he threw out when he was feeling guilty or defensive, but she still couldn’t believe he’d said it. After all the crap he had put her through that night, jokes were just cruel and insensitive. And he wouldn’t stop. She wanted to hit him.
She hated him sometimes. At first that had surprised her, more than that it had terrified her, to realize how much she could despise him. It was a feeling far beyond offence, or distaste, a real, intense, and passionate hate. It made her sad beyond measure to think about it, even though she knew it was a common feeling between spouses. Her friends even laughed about it. “Two sides of the same coin are love and hate,” they would say. Or something like that. Something vaguely literary that made them sound clever and always made her feel stupid and inadequate. “We can’t imagine why you’d think you two would be above it.”
But her friends hadn’t started their marriages by breaking up another one. They didn’t get their engagement rings because they were asking for two. Their unions weren’t based on the fact that another woman had bowed out of the race. And that made a difference. You knew from the beginning that people were capable of doing things they swore they never would. Or that the line between doing what you wanted and making do was paper-thin. Seeing for yourself how the strongest bonds could snap, it made you careful, very careful.
Tonight she also despised her friends, people who had always been there to feed on her misery and the scandals, and who were always willing to share their best gossip about anyone’s problems as long as they were out of earshot, but who refused to hold dinner for an hour so you could enjoy it with them.
“Screw it,” Jennifer said quietly. “Screw them, and screw you. Just take me home.”
“Jen, we are already on the highway, it won’t take that long.”
“I said, take me home.”
“Listen. I’m sorry, okay. I know I’ve been a bit of an ass tonight.”
“Just take me home. Now. Please.” With that Jennifer closed her eyes and rested her head against the glass. Tom turned on the radio and looked for the next exit, understanding that her mind was made up.
“Okay.”
When they pulled up in front of the house, Jennifer told him to wait in the car so he could take the sitter home before she disappeared inside. By the time he’d dropped the girl off, with a full night’s pay and a fancy veggie tray by way of apology for the repeated inconveniences, and made it home, the lights were all off downstairs. In no rush to head up, he cobbled together a meal from the fridge and poured himself a good stiff drink. When he finally climbed the stairs, he peeked into Abby’s room, knowing he would find the two of them together, Abby, forgiving in sleep, curled up in Jennifer’s arms.
They both looked young and fragile like that. He remembered the months when Jennifer was pregnant with Abby. How hellish and heartbreaking it had been at home, but also how he and Jennifer had come together under all of that pressure and judgment and committed to making a home for their child. She had been so scared and told him how much she needed him. And it had felt so good to be needed, to be able to fix something. To be the one who could soothe her in the night, his arms strong around her, her forehead pressed tightly into his chest, breathing in her clean scent.
That scent was how he fell for her in the first place. She smelled of soap, not passion fruit or eucalyptus or roses, just plain old bar soap. It was what had disarmed him against her other womanly charms. The ones a married man knew to watch out for, at least a man not looking to ruin his life: too much leg or breast exposed, long hair, and longer eyelashes. But her scent was so clean and good. Virtuous. He just couldn’t get enough of it. And when he’d first been with her and she would come fresh out of the shower, her face bare and glowing and her hair all piled up in a towel exposing that expanse of skin between her shoulder blades and up to the nape of her neck, he was intoxicated. That smell could right the world’s wrongs. And it caused a number of them as well.
It had been such a heady time when they were first together. He thought that even then he knew there was no coming back from the infidelity, even if Jennifer hadn’t gotten pregnant. She offered him something that Cynthia couldn’t ever have. Cynthia was too focused, too confident, and too strong. She could live without him and he’d known that even before she had had to prove it. He had resented her for it. It was never really that she was successful at what she did, no matter what people thought. He had never wanted her to be less. He loved her and was so proud of her for all she was and what she’d done, but somehow in comparison he’d always felt less. Then Jennifer had come along, so beautiful and smart, though she didn’t know it, so young and seductive and in love with him. It had made him feel strong and like a real man, if not a good one. He knew the first time he asked her for a drink after work that he had crossed a line, and he knew that to risk all he had with Cynthia was both unthinkable and inevitable, because a man never feels more powerful, more godlike than when actively destroying his own life. He had called it “living.” Being with Jennifer had made him feel alive, so he dove in, hoping in his way that it would all work out in the end.
And maybe it had. But when he’d first heard about the baby, he had been devastated. His love for Cynthia was not something that had ever been in question, not even now. He had been bored and felt neglected, and on the surface was a little jealous of the attention she was getting for her work, the time it was demanding of her. His affair, as exciting, lusty, and erotic as it was, was always supposed to come to an end. Even when the fear that his actions would be the undoing of his life with Cynthia and the kids became a reality, he still could not face it. And when Jennifer had told him she wanted to keep the baby, the first thing he had said to her was that he wished she wouldn’t.
It was something he regretted the first time he saw Abby’s heart beating on a monitor at the hospital, and something he had not been able to forget or forgive himself for since. That moment, his first introduction to his little girl, was also the moment he knew whatever the cost to him, and so heartbreakingly to those around him, he would spend the rest