The Idea of Him (11 page)

16

Confrontation Catalyst

Wade pushed open the bedroom door that same night, which startled me so much that I knocked over a glass of water on my jewelry tray. I'd hung up after the James call a mere thirty seconds before.

“Damnit, Wade. Can you give me some warning?” I felt like I'd cheated on him with two men in two hours and I was very jumpy.

“Last I checked, this was my bedroom too. I'm just getting my pajamas before I go back to the study alcove. Do you have a problem with that that I should know about?” He walked into the bathroom and tore his boxers off and threw them into the corner basket in a huff.

“You look too thin, Wade.” His skin was sagging.

“I'm on a new health kick they say will decrease free radical damage, boost antioxidants and omegas . . .”

“Wade. A goop fasting cleanse is for women who want to look like Gwyneth Paltrow. A forty-nine-year-old man cannot exist on parsley juice for a week.”

“Parsley juice and a little cheating with a Häagen-Dazs bar. I feel like a million bucks. Psycho energy.”

“Well, you have a pathological level of energy when you aren't on a goop cleanse, so let's rethink this. I'm glad you feel so good, but you don't look well when you don't eat. And why does the entire apartment look like a pigsty?” I asked, coolly. “I leave you alone one night with the kids and the whole place goes to shit?”

While brushing his teeth, he mumbled back, “I lost something I need very much.”

The flash drive.

“Like what?” I had him, I just knew it. It made me think that perhaps Jackie wasn't lying.

The brushing stopped, but the water just poured out loudly into the basin for a while. In the reflection of the door's full-length mirror, I could see him hanging his head down and steadying himself on the end of the sink before standing in the doorway and looking at me. “I'm sorry, Allie. I really am. I'm sorry about everything.” He then wiped the toothpaste off his mouth and threw the towel on the floor. “I hate to do this . . .”

“You hate to do what?” I had no idea what was coming. I thought he might admit he was in love with someone else, or might ask for a separation, or might just be asking for a simple wifely favor, like could I please get a loose hem restitched at the cleaners. I braced myself for everything. And I considered telling him I wanted out because he lied and cheated on me with Jackie Malone and always would.

He squinted at me as if in discomfort, so I knew he wasn't going to be talking about a dry cleaner. “I hate to bring up the unfortunate incident at the party. It's just that as I was grilling that young woman, I lost something important and I had to tear the apartment up to find it and I don't know what day the cleaning lady comes and maybe she put it someplace and . . .”

“Laundry Room Escapades for $600, Alex.”

“Allie. Stop. This is serious. I need this thing and I can't find it and I'm getting extremely upset trying to figure out where on earth . . .”

I pulled the object out of my pocket. “And the answer is: What is a flash drive?”

“OH MY GOD!” Wade was so relieved, he crumpled down on the edge of our bed and put his head in his hands to regain some kind of composure. He mumbled through his fingers, “Where did you find it?”

“Thousand-dollar Polly was trying to abscond with it. What's on it, Wade?”

“I'm sorry for all the drama, Allie. It's for a film project that's linked to one of our magazine pieces. I couldn't explain it if I tried. Please just excuse me this one time.” He looked up at me like a Hallmark puppy who had just peed on the carpet. What did it matter if I gave it to him? I had a copy on my computer and on another flash drive.

I wasn't at all sure if life would take me there, but I thought I could someday break out from my marriage and experience something new: liberation. I breathed in deeply to familiarize myself with what that might feel like. No more mendacity from a husband brushing his teeth or putting his head in his hands so he didn't have to look me in the eye. No more analyzing half-truths. (
The flash drive with account numbers on it has to do with a film project linked to a magazine piece? How lame an answer was that?
) No longer would I have to pretend that everything was so damn okay with the man I loved. Yes, I Ioved him, or at least parts of him, but everything was not okay. Those truths can live in full-blown, blossoming tandem.

“Wade. Take the flash drive.” I tossed it in the air and he jumped up to catch it, scampering back to the study alcove like a boy who had just stolen a load of cookies from the kitchen jar.

I felt a sliver of something shoot down my body that I'd someday recognize as rock-solid strength. It took intense will to walk from that plane, to live without my father so young, and, yes, to smile through my husband's “distractions.” But that didn't mean I had to put up with Wade going forward if I didn't want to—that part was my choice, and understanding that equation made me feel pretty damn good suddenly. Sure the pain followed me around like a lapdog, but maybe, just maybe, all this time the strength inside lingered just as closely.

 

I SAT ON
our bed and thought,
Not so fast.

I marched after him and found him furiously poking the flash drive into his computer. “Allie, I can't get this damn thing to work; will you just tell me how to—”

“I've got a better idea,” I answered, no longer able to stick with the non-confrontation-about-Jackie-Malone plan.

He looked up, unfamiliar with my new tone of voice and visibly startled by it. I barely recognized my own speech. That brief notion of liberation did feel so good, I almost considered donning Wonder Woman–red hot pants and a superhero shield. “What's your better idea?”

No answer.

“What, Allie?” He looked terrified and guilty.

“One question: What ‘unfortunate incident at the party'?”

He closed his eyes and started to scrub his face with both hands as if he could clean his mess up right then and there with his bare hands.

Hallmark puppy look again. I wasn't buying it this time either.

“What
unfortunate incident,
Wade?”

“It wasn't like that,” he answered.

“It wasn't like Jessica, the horny photo assistant who threw herself at you while I was breast-feeding your infant? It wasn't like that this time?” I cocked my head in feigned confusion. “Then what was it like? Elucidate, if you will. You threw yourself at
her
?”

“I didn't!” he insisted frantically.

“You didn't what? You didn't sleep with that girl at the party who went back to the kitchen with you? You mean you didn't sleep with her at the party, or you didn't have sex with her ever?”

“I didn't!”

I crossed my arms. “Well, I think you did, numerous times. Maybe you even loved her at one point.”

“I DIDN'T!” He yelled it this time, but tried to come over and hug me when he saw my pooling eyes beneath my bravado. He spoke softly. “That woman was rifling through my stuff and . . .”

I managed to say, eking out the last reservoir of fortitude inside, “That woman? Which woman, Wade?”

“The woman at the party; I found her in the kitchen. I was getting a drink and she just appeared back there.”

“Um, I don't think so.” I shook my head from side to side and swallowed hard so I could get some words out. Anger must prevail over heartbreak. “I think I watched you follow her back there. Caitlin saw it too.”

“That girl was simply searching my stuff, and I had to get her to leave. Plus I did have to help her with some information and, yes, we stupidly went into the laundry . . .” I knew he'd never admit it; that's why I needed the goods from Jackie or this confrontation would be fruitless. He might even claim she was there for a
film project linked to a magazine piece
.

“Then why were you in the room with her for so long?”

“I don't know. I had to ask her what she was doing, I guess.”

My newfound, bold persona was drifting away rapidly, but before I lost it in front of him, I pushed him out the bedroom door and threw his pajamas after him. He at least wouldn't get the satisfaction of witnessing my reserves of strength go from one million to zero before his very eyes. The betrayal hurt, plain and simple.

17

Torn in All Directions

Somehow I made it through my next workday in one piece. Standing in the hallway outside my apartment door at 5:30
P.M.
, heels in hand, I bit my lip, and then clenched my teeth as I carefully turned our large brass doorknob. No way the kids would detect the slight noise of the spring lock being pulled back into the casing. I pushed the door open very slowly and peeked my nose through to survey the hall before I would tiptoe, delicately as Tinker Bell, into the living room to get on a call that Murray had just ordered up.

The pressurized volcano erupted in all its glory.

“Where
werrrre
you?!” Blake hollered at me, throwing his arms around my waist and knocking my shoes to the floor.

“Mommy! Mommy!” yelled the more docile, yet equally indignant, Lucy.

“Jesus, I love you guys,” I whispered under my breath. I hugged both of them tightly and for a lot longer than I normally did. If I couldn't show them love between husband and wife, I needed to start showing them possibility: a sturdy, determined mother, and two parents who adored them no matter what life brought.

I knelt down to focus on Lucy and Blake at their level. “You guys. I really missed you so much all day, but I have to make one quick . . .”

Blake groaned. “C'moooooon, Mom. Can't you do that at work? Why now? I had the worst day at school ever.”

My phone rang before my coat was off. As my kids clung to me, I acrobatically grabbed my Bluetooth headpiece from my purse and saddled it onto the back of my ear.

“You better be ready, because I've got a fuckin' government agency twenty feet up my asshole and . . .”

“Mommy, Mommy, my tooth is loose!” Lucy shrieked, hanging around my waist. “We need to leave it for the Tooth Fairy!”

Blake chimed in, “The Tooth Fairy isn't even . . .”

“Stop.” I put my hand on his mouth before he destroyed Lucy's total obsession with a real live fairy buzzing around her room.

“Jesus, Allie,” Murray bellowed in my ear. “I give you flextime, now do you think you could return the favor by locking those kids up during a conference . . .”

I pushed mute on my phone to squelch out Lucy's primal scream as Blake took a swing at her for no particular reason.

I released the mute button long enough to say, “Murray. You have two young boys. I know Eri does all the heavy lifting and I'm not saying you're not a modern dad, but don't tell me they are not disappointed if you come home and get on the phone right away.” But the sobbing was so loud that I had to yell over Lucy's complaints. “My children have missed me all day. They just saw me come home, but I will now move into a room and lock the door on my babies so you can talk.”

I hated him for making me unable to tend to their needs, especially Blake's. He was still shut out of his group again by that mean kid Jeremy who thrived on dividing and conquering. Explaining to my nine-year-old that Jeremy was power hungry wasn't working because Blake's feelings were constantly bruised during playtime on his school street every day.

“You're a hero mom, but you need to spend some of that money I give you on decent help.”

“My sitter is better than decent, but Stacey has her own life, Murray.” I put the phone back on mute and shepherded the kids into the kitchen where Stacey already had her coat on. I mouthed to her,
Five more minutes? Pleeeease?
The kids would have none of it.

“Then tell that cheapskate Wade I think you should have married better!” Murray cracked up, not understanding I was beginning to agree with that statement.

“I'll be sure to tell him.” I wiped the tears off Lucy's face and reached in the freezer for ice pops—handing one to each child—which instantly stopped her crying. My heart ached to hold her and give her all my love and attention. I held both kids tight again against me while they unwrapped their Popsicles behind my head.

“Look, the next shit storm is Max Rowland. Not easy to come out of prison and get things back to normal when you're running an empire that crumbled in the downturn. Everyone's on Max Rowland's ass, and we need some good press to rehabilitate his image. The
New York Post
is running a piece in the morning called ‘How the Great Max Lost His Groove.' ”

“Murray, how am I to get a puff piece published about someone who destroyed his own company? He is a tax-evading, money-laundering convicted criminal whose company has had a forty percent market share drop. It was more his greedy moves than the economy that caused so many of his people to lose their jobs.” I muted and unmuted as best I could as the children started squabbling about the flavor of their ice pops. I tried to walk down the hall away from them as I unmuted. “I mean he's kind of a major pig, Murray.” Mute. “Lucy, get a grape one. Blake doesn't like those.” Unmute. “I could write him a good speech for some charitable work that we might get covered. Some of those inner-city schools he and every hedge-fund guy sponsors.” Mute. “Blake, please stop grabbing at her. You hate grape. You're just taking that one that to . . .” Unmute. “You know, Max Rowland caring about poor kids.” Mute. “Just go in the kitchen for five more minutes and I'm all yours. I love you, please!” Unmute. “But it's just so disingenuous, Murray. The Rowlands never had kids because they don't like children, so why are they helping inner-city kids anyway? His magnanimity isn't the easiest point to prove when he just fired two thousand people, lost forty percent of his stockholders' money—all due to his own greed. It makes me sick.”

Murray ignored my clipped speech. “Rowland and poor kids. I like that. I can work with that. Get on that. Maybe a photo on a Harlem stoop, with kids around him, make him look like a fuckin'
Sesame Street
regular. And for the film festival, I want you to produce some splashy panels, something Max could sit on and be informative to the crowd.”

I fished a Tootsie Roll out of my bag and raised an eyebrow at Blake. He took it and put his arm around Lucy, shepherding her back to the kitchen for ice-pop replacement. I exhaled and unmuted. “You do know that the first screening is tomorrow, right?”

“After each film, I want a moderated panel that explores some issue in the film—with experts, actors, or directors. I know we have a few scheduled already, but I want more. As for the audience, I don't want some boring New York cross section of starstruck filmgoers. We need opinion makers in the audience. I want Max tomorrow night with a hard-on on his way in
and
on his way out of our first film. You got me, Allie?”

“Murray,” I said smoothly, trying to draw him out from the little fantasy world he was creating. There was no way I was ignoring my kids tonight to make sure we had hard-on-inducing
opinion makers
in the audience. “You're in one of your moods.”

“Well, then you know I'm a momma's boy who needs to be indulged. And I can't survive until I get what I want.”

“I'm not your mother, Murray.”

“Goddamn right, you're not my fuckin' mother. She'd tear the whole production to bits. She'd see there's not enough buzz on the festival for it to make it worth Max's while and we're the ones who convinced him to invest in it!”

“Some say you have a great business mind, Murray. Maybe you can amortize some of the hundred grand you spend a year on your shrink to remember that you're getting all panicky because you might not be achieving one specific little thing—but you're achieving many things at once, and very well,” I said. I felt a poke at my forearm and looked down. Lucy. I took her down the hallway.

“Allie! You're not my fuckin' shrink, either. Fuck my mother. Fuck my shrink. Just let's get this done.”

I considered Murray's understanding of the word
Let's
as I went back to the kitchen and whispered to Stacey, “I'm sorry, I can't get off the phone.”

She smiled and lured Lucy into the back of the kitchen with the promise of a book she loved coloring. God only knows what had happened to Blake, but the muffled sound of a video game from the general direction of the TV area suddenly gave me the answer. I pushed mute to unmute again, I hoped for the final time. “I'm so sorry to tell you this, boss, but you're going to have to suffer with your impatience for a little. I can't pull off any new events for tomorrow night. Not enough time to book the important people you want for these. You're going to have to give me a break and be reasonable.”

Murray screamed. “Damnit, Allie, pay attention. If it's that film with radiation in the seas near Japan, we need some corporate pro-nuclear-power asshole on a panel to say he doesn't know what they're whining about with a twenty-four-billion-mile-square mass of water covering the planet. You got me, Allie?”

“You want controversy, Murray. I will give you controversy, just not tomorrow night.”

“I want fireworks on that stage after each film, and get Caitlin to deal with the party afterward; she's ready for that. You concentrate on content.” Murray roared on. “I want people to say I educated them. I want everyone saying we blew this thing out of the fuckin' park. I want hard-ons, Allie.”

I stifled a laugh. “Hard-ons. That has always been the plan.”

“You know who I want, Allie?” Murray yelled so hard I had to pull the phone back from my ear. Here we go again. “No more ass-kissing celebrities. Been there, done that. I want a fuckin' criminal on that stage. Someone everyone loves to hate. Remember that British Petroleum CEO prick from the oil spill in the Gulf off Louisiana? The guy from BP who said he wanted his life back when his company's negligence had just killed eleven men on his rig and fifty thousand fuckin' pelicans? Let's get him to say there's no problem in the waters off Japan.”

Big shots always had big ideas. But many of those ideas were bumbling and unrealistic, or worse, offensive.

“Murray, you're off base. The British Petroleum CEO got hammered to a pulp by the press; he's not going to—”

“I don't give a shit. Tell him we'll pay for a first-class ticket and give him a spa package at the hotel. Might even work out a happy ending for the guy!” Murray laughed out loud. “And you, this Friday. I want to see all the contracts for the films next week. Prepare a report of what we can do for panels in a week's time. Pull it all together so it makes some goddamn sense, okay? I want poster boards in the old-fashioned way I like. Make it pretty.”

“But I can't possibly . . .”

“You can. That's why I hired you.”

 

ONCE THE CALL
with Murray was over, I was able to concentrate fully on my kids in the hope of having a somewhat normal end to the day. I wanted to pour my love all over my children and to allow their innocence to heal me as it always did.

Just then my phone pinged.

JACKIE:
I am going to the screening tomorrow night. It's going down tomorrow.

ME:
What kind of stuff? Something really bad? YOU MUST TELL ME THAT!

I worried that Wade would lose his job, or that something I'd done by innocently helping someone's PR was going to be linked to something bad.

JACKIE:
Not your personal safety but your livelihood is in danger. Keep your eyes open and you'll see that everything I've said is going to come true. It's time to trust me a little more. I need that flash drive.

ME:
Clues PLEEEEESE.
I CAN'T DO THIS!

JACKIE:
I don't know much more than I've told you; it's all unraveling tonight. Keep watching how everyone interacts—your boss will be blowing more steam than usual. And remember, I never lie.

I threw my phone on the bed and decided tomorrow would be one of those days of reckoning my screenwriting professor lectured about. Maybe I'd finally see things I didn't want to see.

This night, of all nights, the kids were winding each other up, so much so that Lucy threw up her dinner all over my bedroom carpet after Blake sent his hundredth verbal missive her way, including whispering in her ear that the Tooth Fairy wasn't coming because she wasn't . . . I stopped him again just in time. So much for their joyful innocence healing me; they almost put me under that night.

As I placed the dirty laundry in the hamper in the kids' room, with my back to Lucy just six feet behind me, my tears flowed. Especially at night when I was tired, when I let myself slide down the “I'm scared to be on my own” side of the slope rather than the “I will make it through this” side, the fall felt impossibly treacherous. No hot pants or shield would make any difference once the descent began, and I could feel myself slipping the moment I hugged my kids that night.

Lucy was too intuitive to let me hide my red eyes. “Mommy. Why are you sad? Where's Daddy?”

Did my five-year-old just say “Where's Daddy?” because she was looking for another adult to help me, because it's unsettling to see a grown-up cry? Or because she instinctively knew that Daddy was the reason for the tears?

“It's allergies, honey.”

“What's that?”

“It's something itchy in the air that makes people's eyes water.”

“It's in the air?”

“Yes, honey. It's called pollen.” I couldn't even finish the word without my voice sounding weak and unconvincing.

“Mommy. Why does the pollen make you so sad?”

I was so anxious, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. How was I ever to leave my cheating, lying husband, find a new home, pay for that home, and, during it all, keep strong enough for Lucy and Blake? I lay down in the bottom bunk next to her.

“Mommy, why are you crying?” Lucy wasn't buying the pollen story.

“Honey.” I had to stop this. I had to pull it together for her. “Mommy just feels frustrated. Like you do when your day isn't working out the way you want. Like when Samantha canceled her play date last week and you were looking forward to it.”