Accidents of Marriage (39 page)

“Ben!” Maddy screamed from the kitchen. “I need you.
Now!
”

He skidded into the kitchen, his tie looped loosely around his neck. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Gracie shrieked, arching her back, trying to shake off the ice cube Maddy rubbed on her angry red arm.

“She burned herself,” Emma whispered before hiding behind Maddy.

“Jesus!” Ben threw out the word as he came toward them.

“Hold her arm under the cold water,” Maddy said. “I can’t hold her up.”

Ben lifted Gracie and brought her to the sink, slamming the previous night’s dirty dishes from the basin to the counter, shattering a bowl in the process. An accident, Maddy prayed.

Gracie screamed, trying to pull away as Ben forced her tiny arm under the streaming icy water. “
What happened?
” he shouted over Gracie’s shrieks.

Maddy stroked Gracie’s leg, whispering
shah, shah
in a futile attempt to calm her. “I think she grabbed the oatmeal pot handle and spilled it over.”

“You think? You
think
, Maddy? Where were you?”

“The stove wasn’t on.” She bent over the sink, watching him spray the water on Gracie’s tender flesh, her heart turning as welts rose. “How is she?”

Ben took Gracie’s arm away from the faucet for a moment, inspecting the damaged skin, and then placed it back under the water. “Bright red. Let’s pray she doesn’t end up with scars. Were you watching her?”

“I needed to pee,” she said.

“You left her alone with hot cereal on the stove?” Ben asked.

Emma pressed closer.

“Please. No inquisition.” Maddy worked to keep her voice from shaking.

Gracie cried, twisting, trying to get free of Ben’s iron grip.

“Stay still,” he bellowed.

“Don’t yell, Ben, you’re scaring her.”

“I’d better start to scare someone around here. What’s going to happen when you’re watching three children?”

She tipped back her face, keeping to the vow she’d made two days earlier:
I need to learn fear control. I think that’s how I let Ben win. Showing my weakness feeds something in him.

Gracie’s chest shook with sobs; snot bubbled from her nose. Maddy took her arm from the water for a moment. It was still red, but no blisters rose.

“Give her to me,” Maddy said. “I can hold the ice on her now.” She sat in the kitchen rocker and held her arms out. She took a deep breath and caught Ben’s eyes straight on. “You need to calm down. Right now.”

Sometimes she wondered if Ben loved his anger more than he loved his family. Given the choice between biting back a rant and the relief of bellowing, he’d release his steamy rage every time.

Maddy pushed away the memory. The present had enough pain without her grasping for more.

“I need to pick up my kids,” Kath said. “Come with me. Have supper with us. I don’t want you home alone.”

Being with Kath’s unscrewed-up family sounded unbearable.

“I can’t.”

“How about I drop you off with Olivia?”

She wrapped Maddy’s scarf tighter around her neck, as though Maddy were one of her daughters. Poor Kath. She needed to fix, to help. All the shrinks, guidance counselors, social workers, and nurses, they were all obsessed with the halt and the lame. Had that been her?

“Want to go home,” she said.

Traffic was heavy. She gave in to sleep as Kath drove, barely finding the strength to kiss her good-bye as she pulled up to her house.

•  •  •

“Maddy?”

Ben knelt next to the sofa where she’d been sleeping.

“Maddy? Honey?”

An afghan that hadn’t been there before now covered her.

“You’ve been asleep awhile,” Ben said.

“What time is it?” she croaked.

“Six thirty,” Ben said. “I came to get the kids for supper, but they weren’t here. Your mother took them to her house. She left a note.”

Anne the matchmaker. Maddy chewed on her rising anger.

“Are you hungry? When I saw you sleeping, I made soup. Mushroom barley. I used the recipe from that vegetarian cookbook you like.”

Mushrooms. A cure for what ailed them. Is that what he thought? Soup would solve their problems?

Ben reached over and brushed hair off her face. Despite everything, his touch still soothed her. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.

She held up seven fingers, praying for him to hold up three.
Thirty percent, Ben. Come on. Tell me you stayed in the right group.

“Ben,” she asked. “Who did you sleep with??”

When he didn’t answer, her stomach juices curdled and rose to her throat.

“Someone. Saw you. With a woman.”

Yes or no, Ben.

“Did you sleep with her?”

His hands remained at his sides. She waited. He stared. She stared back. She tucked her thumbs under rigid fingers. She willed him to show three fingers.

Please. Tell me that you’re not a complete asshole, Ben.

Slowly, finally Ben nodded yes, looking as though the effort exhausted him.
Yes,
he nodded.
Yes, I slept with her.

“Who. Who. Who?” she asked as though who mattered. As if that were the point.

“Elizabeth,” he said. “Elizabeth Fullerton. My intern from this summer.”

Elizabeth. Elizabeth the whore. She nodded. Maddy remembered her from some picnic. Memorial Day? A moneyed do-gooder type. Straight hair falling around her horsey bitch face.

“She came to my hotel yesterday, but I didn’t sleep with her. I didn’t touch her. I drove her home. It only happened once. Before. While
you were—” Ben stopped, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Then he resumed. “In the hospital. Yesterday she came to try to get me—but I wouldn’t.”

“Want medal?” she asked.

“She had a crush on me.”

Who cares, Ben?
“Sounds like her crush. Had great success.”

“She just showed up yesterday. Out of nowhere. And I told her she had to go. I drove her home. That’s all.”

“
Who cares?
” She screamed as well as she could ever scream now. “Who the fuck cares? Yesterday? Shut up, Ben. Why? Why sleep with her? How. Could. You?” Waves of rage made everything inside her tumble, knocking her heart into her guts. How could such hatred stay inside a body? She waited to erupt in boiling pus-filled hives of anger.

Ben dropped his head into his hands, scraping deep furrows through his thick hair. Gray strands she’d never seen before shot through the brown. “It’s nothing. It meant absolutely nothing. I was scared. About you, Maddy. She—she was just there. I was tired. I was depressed. I was worried. The kids needed so much. You. You might not make it. Seeing you lying there had me terrified. Doing what I did, it was like having ten shots of bourbon. Trying to drown out the pain.”

“Depressed? Scared? Drink. Rip things up. Cry to. A. Goddamned priest.” She pulled the afghan off. “You should have. Drunk the bourbon.”

“I didn’t look for her. It just happened.”

Right. She jumped on top of him—Supergirl, able to leap tall penises in a matter of seconds. How could he sleep with that shiny, shiny girl while she slept like the dead?

“Things never. Just happen, Ben. Get. Out.”

“Maddy. I’m telling you the truth.”

“Do you think. Truth is a free pass? Old truth?”

CHAPTER 37

Emma

Audubon Circle looked like an expanse of suburban gardens crossed with the stuffiness of Beacon Hill. Before meeting Zach, she hadn’t known this Boston neighborhood existed. Emma walked by glowing houses, incandescent rooms visible through open drapes that revealed giant china cabinets and dining room tables the size of cars. Sculpted bushes outlined generous lawns.

Where would her father live if he never came back? Two nights before, at yet another McDonald’s dinner, he’d hinted that he was looking for an apartment. “It’s been a month, kids,” he’d said. Gracie wept so horribly that he’d backtracked—talking about options as though their family were some stupid corporation.

A brass lion’s head stared out at her from the middle of Zach’s glossy red door. Running her tongue over her teeth, she searched for stray bits of popcorn from the bowl she’d shared with Gracie that afternoon. Then she’d popped her last pill, wanting to be fun and smiley for Zach’s family.

She lifted the heavy door knocker once.

At least tonight she wouldn’t have to sit through another depressing dinner with her father, acting as if everything were normal and
he wasn’t looking for an apartment and living in a hotel, and leaving them.

“Emma!” Zach’s mother greeted her as though she’d recently cured world hunger.

“Hello, Mrs. . . . I mean, Dr. Epstein.”

“Please, I told you last time—it’s Shoshanna—there’s no doctor here tonight. Give me your coat, dear.”

Emma wished she’d worn something better than her grimy down jacket with the feathers poking out, not to mention the pilled sweater underneath. All of her clothes were limp with being overworn. Her bras were getting too small. She’d heard Mom talking to Kath about money, and now she was frightened to ask for anything.

At least Emma could still squeeze into her clothes. Poor Gracie was busting out of her skirts, and her brother’s stomach showed from above his T-shirt every time he moved.

Zach’s mother reminded Emma of Grandma Frances’s good china, all muted and expensive-looking. When Zach’s twin sisters, Gabrielle and Alana, walked in, wearing their cashmere sweaters and candy-pink lipstick, Emma wanted to turn, leave, and never come back. The sisters, miniature perfect, appeared to be female versions of Zach. Three Epstein females smiled with Zach’s magazine-perfect grin.

“Welcome!” Gabrielle swung a college-girl version of Dr. Epstein’s perfectly layered bob. “Happy Chanukah!”

“Happy Chanukah,” Emma repeated. She didn’t know they’d be making such a big fuss. For God’s sake, it was already like the third or fourth night. If it weren’t for Zach, she’d have totally forgotten it was Chanukah. This year the holiday fell weeks before Christmas—that’s probably why nobody in her family even noticed the holiday.

Last December her mother’s holiday display had driven Grandma Frances a bit insane, but the rest of them loved the mixed-up display. Her father had hugged her like she’d hit a home run when he saw the mantel lined with religious decorations of the holidays—a bright red cross; a silver Star of David; a green, red, and black kinara; a flaming star and crescent; a saffron-colored Ganesha; a black-and-white yin-yang; and a golden Buddha—all intertwined with twinkling white lights.

Plus, they had a Christmas tree and a menorah.

Emma followed the sisters Epstein into the living room, where Zach and his father were playing chess. Grandma Anne had been right; she should have brought a box of candy or something.

Zach looked up. “Hi.”

“Emma, so glad you could make it.” Mr. Epstein rose from one of three velvety couches making a giant chocolate-colored U.

Vacuum cleaner lines showed in the pale cream rug covering half the living room. There wasn’t a television anywhere in the room. In her house, TV had become the living room shrine.

“Sit,” Mrs. Epstein said. “Have a cracker. Some cheese.” Zach’s mother held out a white plate with crackers, cheese, and grapes. Fanned out on the shiny living room table were tiny blue-and-white napkins. Cloth.

“No, thank you,” Emma said.

Instead of pushing it at her again, as Grandma Anne or her mother would have—
Come on, take something. At least try it!
—Zach’s mother simply put down the plate.

“You must be happy school vacation is almost here,” Mr. Epstein said.

“Oh, yes. Very happy.” Her words fell in a heap at her feet. Brilliant conversation she was making. Had Zach lost his power of speech? “It gives me a chance to catch up. On my reading.”

Catch up on watching
SpongeBob
with Caleb was more like it.

“Do you celebrate Chanukah?” Alana asked.

“Umm. Usually at my grandmother’s house.” Emma picked at the edge of her sweater. “She made potato pancakes last night.” That was a big fat lie.

“Do you light candles?” Gabrielle fingered the silver Tiffany bean hanging from the faceted chain circling her neck.

“Remember what I told you?” Zach asked. “About her mother?”

“We light them. Always.” Emma sent Zach a
shut up
look. “Especially now.”

“Zach mentioned you were Jewish,” Mrs. Epstein said in a phony-sounding not-that-it-matters voice.

“Half,” Emma said. “I’m half Jewish.”

“Who’s Jewish? Your mother or your father?” Alana asked.

“My mother.” Emma hadn’t realized Zach’s sisters were religious fanatics. She took a chunk of cheese and put it on a cracker, placing a tiny napkin under it. Every little crumb would show on this couch. Velvet. Why would anyone make a couch velvet? And who was stupid enough to buy one?

“That makes you Jewish,” Gabrielle said as though giving Emma first prize in the Judaism contest. “It comes through the mother.”

Emma stuffed another cracker in her mouth, not having a clue what to say, wanting to say something sarcastic and stupid that would get her thrown out.

Really? Do tiny dreidels float through the mother’s umbilical cord?

Zach’s mother leaned forward and patted Emma’s knee. “Let’s give Emma a break from the Epstein third degree. How
is
your mother, dear?”

Emma nodded, blinking back sudden tears. She wanted to be on the couch with her mother and Gracie, even if Gracie did have a disgusting snuffling cold. Her father had taken Caleb to a basketball game. Mom and Gracie were watching
A Christmas Story
and
Bad Santa
. Her mother said they might as well get ready for the kind of Christmas they were probably going to have—screwy as her brain. It had been funny the way she said it. The Epstein family would probably choke on their kosher cheese and crackers if they knew her family celebrated Christmas.

“My mother’s fine.” Even if that was a lie, her mother did seem much stronger lately.